 In this episode of Mind Pump. So we don't talk too much about fitness in this episode. We talk about podcasting podcast. We talk all about how to create a successful podcast like how do you start one and how do you make one that's impactful and one that can become a business as you guys know. Mind Pump started five years ago and has turned into quite the fun business for us. So we talk about you know what worked for us and what we see working for other podcasters. We start out with the episode by talking about the statistics around podcast. How fast they're growing and what the future looks like for podcasting and why podcasting is the highest converting form of new media around. Then we talk about the four things you should focus on if you want to be a successful podcast. We started by talking about how to be an expert. Then we move on to talking about effective communication or how to communicate well. We talk about consistency that's very important. And then we finally talk about encouraging community and why that's important if you want to be a successful podcaster. Now before the episode starts it's January and our best most effective fat burning workout program that we have this one's excellent for fat burning especially in the short term it's MAPS HIT. Remember HIT stands for high intensity interval training. Now we have programmed it so you're doing HIT the right way with resistance training to maximize fat loss. Here's how you get the 50% off because it's on sale. Go to mapshit.com that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T and use the code HIT50-H-I-I-T-5-0 no space for the discount. What's one of the top questions that you guys get in your DMs that it's not fitness? It's not fitness related like what's the number one? How do I pick up chicks? Yeah, what? Do you get that all the time? Do you really? Yeah, I do. I get like that. Pick up lines and stuff like that. People use that all the time. Oh, that's funny. No, that wasn't where you were going. No, a good forum. Terrible. That was a terrible assist. You guys don't get people DMing you how to start a successful podcast? Yeah, I do get that every now and then. I get that all the time as a DM and we even see it in our qualm when we put up the qualm meme and we get questions underneath. That's like a reoccurring non-fitness related question. I actually just literally text someone, message someone that was messaging me. So I do get it. I'm just teasing you. It is really popular and it's becoming more popular. Dude, when we first started Mind Pumps almost five was five years ago. I remember people would ask me, Hey, what do you do or whatever? And it's always I start a podcast and people would be like, What's a podcast? Do you remember that? No, I still have not used to the transition we've gone through because I got so used to the first two or three years of having to explain it all the time that I go right into explaining what I do. Right? Instead of just saying like, Oh, yeah, we have a podcast. It was a lot like you remember when the iPod came out and like everybody like totally loved iPod and all this. And then I would I talked to somebody is like, Yeah, whatever iPod is done. Like I listened to a zoom. Like what the fuck is a zoom? That was like what I felt like when I would say I have a podcast. Yeah, I have a zoom. I immediately felt like I had to explain I have like a real job. That's what I felt like. Yeah, like, Oh, so you're saying you're unemployed. That's what you the growth of podcasting over the last five years has exploded, especially over the last two or three years. Like I was bringing I was pulling up statistics. So this is 2018 statistics. Okay. This is just a year ago. 17% of Americans say that they had listened to a podcast, you know, in the last month, 17%. In 2019, 26%. Almost double in one in one year. You went almost 10% growth from 2018 to 2019, which that constitutes millions and millions of Americans. I guess that's not almost double. Sorry. It's exploding. But what's really cool is that the potential, the potential for growth is still massive. What we're at is the, the beginning of the rapid increase in, you know, podcast awareness. It's like the very beginning of shit exploding. You know what I'm saying? Because still to this day, 56% of Americans have never listened to a podcast. So still over half today have never listened to one, but 92% of Americans listen to the radio on a regular basis. Well, there's two problems they solve right away. I mean, being able to listen and then carry that conversation with you outside of your car was a huge thing for me because I remember listening to the radio and I would get into shows and I'd get into the conversation. And then I had to go do stuff. Right. You know, and then it's like, yeah, and then you miss out. And then it's like, I would always like hear about it later from people in conversation and try and catch up that way. And then they totally, I mean, provided that extension where it's like it's such a convenient feature. Well, we see it's, the writing is on the wall with video and movies and television, right? I mean, it's, it's right there for us. If you don't believe it, I mean, it's, it's obvious what has happened with streaming television. Oh yeah. Cable is going to be gone. Yeah. It's dead. It's completely dead. Or not completely. It's almost. It's on its way. Yeah. It's on its way. And it makes total sense why you, where everybody is going the streaming route for those reasons like you're naming right now, Justin. And literally podcasting is the radio version of that. Dude, back in the day, the way everybody watched TV was with their antenna. They had an antenna on the top of the house and the TV had an antenna and you tuned in to stations. Then cable became a thing. And I remember in the 80s, the 80s is when cable really started to come out. MTV was one of the first stations or whatever to push cable. They came out with the music videos. Like I want my MTV or whatever. Please give me cable. I want my MTV cable. Now know who the hell watches TV with antenna, you know, tuning in. Nobody does. It's gone. The same thing is happening with cable was streaming very soon, very quickly. It's going to be totally gone. The same thing has happened. It's going to happen to radio. Radio is going to be dead and it's going to be all streaming audio. And that's where podcast really shines. So when people are seeing this and advertisers are seeing this because they're looking at the whole radio market, which was massive, still massive, but declining very quickly. That's the market that's going to move over to digital audio, which includes podcasting. Well, and the point that you always like to make that is so true in this case is how low the barrier to entry is. It's because of the bandwidth is unlimited. Even when we first all talked, I'll never forget when we thought of the idea of doing it. I mean, I was clueless to how inexpensive it was. And I remember when Doug was like, oh yeah, I have the most equipment already. I'm like, what? And then we're like, how do we put it up? He's like, we just put it up. Yeah, we didn't even need this huge professional studio right away. We just ran out of his living room. We did. And again, it's just and here it's because there's an unlimited bandwidth with technology because in the back in the day, you only had so many radio stations. It was limited. You couldn't just create a new radio station. So to get on a radio station, there were a lot of doors you had to walk through. There were a lot of barriers or a lot of people you had to that, you know, had to be satisfied with what we're going to do. Mind Pump 100% would not exist if the podcasting space didn't exist. So today, because the bandwidth is unlimited, anybody can start a podcast. That's both good and bad. It's good because now if you're listening right now and you want to start a podcast, it's great. Can it be challenging? Yes, it can be challenging to become the biggest podcast in the world. But you could definitely build a nice, loyal audience if you do a pretty good job. Well, if you have compelling points and you're an expert in a field, I mean, that's a massive advantage that you have coming into it. Because you know, there's again, this is what you saw on YouTube too, where it was like they're finding like real talent and stars, you know, from formats like that that would have never got exposure. But it was that they were that good that they shined through all those people. So ad revenue for podcasts in 2018 was well over a half a billion dollars. That was 2018. It's growing exponentially, meaning it's growing faster and faster and faster. And we're probably five years away, maybe 10 at most from podcast revenue being one of the it's going to be one of the number one places that companies spend money on ads. And the reason for that is of all of the new media platforms podcast convert the highest. They just do if you and when you look at the different media platforms, each one of them has a conversion rate, right? So like, you know, Instagram has a certain conversion rate versus Facebook versus YouTube, the longer and more profound the content is allowed to be the more that the better the conversion rate is. So 10,000 listeners on a podcast is equivalent to like, you know, 150,000 or 200,000 or more people on YouTube or millions of people on Instagram because it's long format. You're listening to the persons in your ear. So when it comes to selling a product or promote it or influencing people, podcasting is king. It's absolutely king. I also think it's it starts to niche down your audience better than any other thing too, right? Like when you watch something like a sporting event like football, I mean, the type of people that are all tuning in the millions of people that are watching at that moment. And then they we all get hit sit with the same commercial. So, you know, I see the the same Dorito commercial as, you know, Katrina does that, you know, I'm saying so you it's like it's really hard to target us individually on what we would probably consume. And so it's very generic, right? So just throwing spaghetti on the wall and just hoping something sticks. Such a good point. But with advertising with a podcast, you have a pretty much a single topic for most part of what really it encompasses, whether it be fitness or health or finance or motivation. And within that, you have topics that are being covered by these hosts. So you can really start to understand who who listens to these people. So even if it is only 5000 people that are listening to you, it's a much more narrowed down avatar, which in marketing, if the more narrowed down the avatar can be the easier that they can market to them. What a what a boon for producers, because let's say you come out with a product that has a lot of success potential, but really has your targeting a narrow audience, but it still has a lot of potential. In the past, it would cost too much money to advertise it on a broadcast media platform, you know, like you invent the, for example, chili pad, like, okay, how are we going to advertise this on TV? It's going to cost way too much. The conversion is not going to be good enough. It's not going to make us money. But now a company like that can target audiences that are interested in health, want to spend extra money on quality sleep or whatever. So it actually gives producers more effective avenues for advertising. And that's one of the reasons why podcasting is exploding. And that's also another reason why a lot of producers are successful, because now they have a way to, like you said, Adam, target a specific audience. To that point, I think since we're doing a podcast around this, we should share what that looks like, too. So there's a formula that's out there for how podcasters get advertising, as far as how much money should you get based off of how big your audience is. And it goes by, and this is different from podcast to podcast, if you do a really good job, you should be able to get this number up. But there's a generic number that when you first start getting involved that most advertisers and companies are looking for, and that's $20 to $25 per CPM. And CPM represents the amount of listeners, which is a thousand. So for every thousand listeners, you're getting paid $20 to roughly $30 for that ad. But you can do way better than that. Some podcasts do four times. I mean, that was something that we saw right away as we got into this space. We recognized that because, again, this is a very, which is, I love getting into a market very similar. Like when I got into the cannabis industry, when it was really early, when you're really early to the marketplace, there's a lot of opportunity to do things better. And you know, this is, even though it's been around for nine years, it's still relatively new for the majority. And the advertising side of the house is really a clusterfuck. And we saw that instantly like, okay, wait a second, you mean to tell me, you know, I have all these years of sales experience, not only selling myself, but then also teaching others how to do it. So I've refined the skill really well. And I've been doing that for two decades. And you're going to lump me in the same category as, you know, Earl, who's 72, and is never sold in his life. And he's a boring monotone author who is talking on a podcast. And yet, because just because we had the same amount of downloads, we're both going to get the same amount of money for advertising. Well, that's a bunch of bullshit. So, you know, we saw that opportunity. And when we started to do advertising, instead of waiting for the companies to come to us and, you know, playing by their terms, we saw it after companies that we knew would match with our audience and brands that we liked and that we would be using. And then we convinced them to spend more money with us knowing that we would do better for them. Right. Now, generally speaking, generally speaking, the podcast audience are the listeners are more or more loyal than the average consumer of other media, meaning they're more likely to tune in consistently than consumers of TV, social media and other things. They're more affluent and the more educated. It's actually the perfect audience. If you're trying to sell a product, that's the audience you want. You want loyal, affluent, educated people, podcast listeners fall in that category. Podcasters or podcast listeners are much more active on every social media channel. They're far more likely to subscribe to things like Netflix and Amazon, which means they're less likely to be exposed to TV advertising. So podcasting is just, you know, I know some people are like, oh my God, it's so hard now or whatever. No, no, no, you're still in the beginning. Believe me, it's still, I mean, it's not like the Wild West was five years ago, but it's still as an incredible opportunity because what we're talking about is it's going to explode. It's growing faster and faster and it's a phenomenal space to enter and there's a low barrier to entry. Now, what are some of the reasons why you guys think that? Now, I know Gary Vee has been saying this now for at least, you know, five to seven years. I've been hearing him tout this for a while. Like audio is going to be the very next thing. Yeah, that audio is king. Yeah, that audio is going to be the future period. I totally agree. And my theory on that is because, you know, we're getting to this time where we can be doing so many things at once, like multitasking. Dude, you can multitask. You could drive, you know, Amazon Alexa is audio. Siri is audio. Pretty soon you'll be buying things and hearing things audio. So instead of going on to Amazon Prime, I'll say, hey, you know, Alexa, you know, I'd like to buy a pair of white salt, whatever. We have these three choices. Which one would you like? How much does that one cost? It'll be a conversation. It's just a faster medium of communicating. I also think there's just been a general mistrust of media and that's come to like its climax. Like people just don't trust the sources of, you know, news out there that they're getting from people. And these are all really short soundbite conversations. And there's, you know, people are just like completely sick of that format. And I think that like podcasting is a platform that actually provides a long form conversation around subjects and also even on the political sphere. Like it brings them in to actually have a long form conversation where, well, I want to know what you really like think about this policy in depth, not just like your knee jerk reaction. Totally. Cause like Joe Rogan, who's one of the most widely consumed pieces of media period, period. In fact, his podcast gets more listens or whatever, you know, then all mainstream media news outlets combined on just his one podcast and his episodes are two to four hours long. If you went back 10 years, 15 years, and you said, Hey, we're going to make a two or three hour or four hour, you know, channel. What do you think everybody was, you're crazy. Yeah, you're crazy. That'll never lose everybody. And the reason is because we were, we were reading the signals wrong. We thought that people wanted short tidbits of information because that's all we were able to deliver because the bandwidth was so short. If a politician was getting on TV or an athlete or someone's supposed to talk about something, they had five minutes, 10 minutes max. So you got really good at the taglines or whatever. Complex discussions couldn't be had because I cannot talk about fitness properly. I wonder if that's changing or we are just, we have just provided something that attracts the more intelligent. Meaning, you know, there's still the people that get, you know, bamboozled by Facebook ads or by YouTube short video funny clips or click baity type things. Yet, we still see this rise that we're talking about in podcasting. So I wonder if it's. We just didn't have the option before. Right. Like, they're really, they're really intelligent people were still just getting hammered by that. They said they weren't buying into it like a lot of the Lemmings were. And somebody finally got smart and said, Hey, you know what, these smart people, there's an opportunity still to market, advertise, speak to them. They want it more in a longer form. And so what we see is less of things changing so much. And it's just get we've now provided something for more intelligent people. No, it's not just more intelligent people. It's that this is what people have always wanted. Complex conversations to be explained properly. It's far more attractive. The problem is you couldn't do it before. If I was going to talk about fitness and explain fat loss, which, you know, I can talk about decently in an hour and do a good job of really communicated properly an hour. You put me and tell me to talk about fat loss in five minutes. I'm going to convey a shitty message. It's going to be catchy. It's going to get your attention. You know, I don't know if it's what everybody always wanted. I don't know if I agree with that. Because look at our example, our YouTube channel. One of the number one complaints that we have to deal with is, you know, just get to the exercise. Just give me the tip. Just tell me what I need to do. And there's people that are searching on there. They're using it like a Google search. Yeah. It's utility though. Right. How to build my shoulders with that. They don't want to know the science. They don't want to hear about Sal or Adam talk about anything like give me the fucking exercise so I can move along. But if you search podcast, so I really think that it's just a little self selection here. It's actually the intelligent people, the people that are seeking the truth, the people that will listen an extra 20 minutes to get to the real answer. They don't think of that as wasting their time. That's starting to categorize those people. Of course, there's all those people. Of course, there's people in either camp. But here's my evidence. The most widely consumed form of media before television and radio and all that were books. You had books and they were spread everywhere. The Bible is the most widely circulated book known to man. The second most widely circulated was Marco Polo's travels. People wanted to learn and wanted information. But when you have a limited bandwidth, all you deliver are short things. And so I think, yes, there's definitely people that just want here and there. They want to hear a few things. But I think we totally miscalculated how many people want to hear the full story. You look at the interview of Elon Musk with Joe Rogan. That interview of Elon Musk got way more views than any of his short interviews on NBC or whatever. Because people want to hear the real stuff. And so this is a great opportunity. But it also makes it difficult if you're a bullshitter. If you don't know what you're talking about, it's hard to bullshit a podcast. It's the great equalizer. Yeah, it's easy to bullshit a short clip. Very hard. Imagine if politicians had to get on an economy podcast. A podcast with economists. They would crumble. Most of them would crumble because they're going to get asked real questions that you can't just shoot back and forth real fast. It's going to be a two hour conversation. I don't know. I feel like we're just, I think we're just appealing to a smarter group of people that work. You're trying to butter up our audience right now. Yeah. Well, it's true. If you're listening, you're probably pretty damn smart. Yeah. Well, that's true. It says that about a podcast. Yeah, no, there's statistic improvement. And I think it's more of that. Otherwise, movie theaters would be less packed and libraries would be more full. I mean, it's just they're still going to be, you know, and that interview example you just gave. Well, that, you know, the 22 year old, you know, our 17 year old kid in high school probably didn't watch that interview. He caught the YouTube soundbite of something and wanted something short. So I still think that I still think those short things are going to survive and they're still going to, you know, still get a lot of the idiots. Sure. But the conversion rate of podcasts rests on the fact that it's long form and it's influential. Yes. And you cannot influence as powerfully in a short, you know, bit of time. Maybe sometimes, but definitely not on a consistent basis, which is why. I agree with that. Yeah, which is why podcasting is such an excellent medium to get into if you want to build a business off of media. But I think there's a few steps that are important to take or to identify within yourself as to whether or not you're going to have a successful podcast. Because I don't think everybody or anybody can start a podcast and be successful. Yeah. The number one thing that I'm going to make an argument for is, is this, if you're going to start a podcast, be an expert. Now, I don't mean you need to be a doctor or a lawyer, if you're going to talk law or whatever. But what I mean is, if whatever your podcast is about, if all it is, is you're having fun conversation with your friends, you should probably be a comedian or an expert communicator. Right. If your podcast is, you know, going to be about sports, you should probably know sports pretty damn well. If you're going to have a podcast about fitness. And the reason why I say that is you're going to be talking for an hour and you're going to be doing episodes every single week. And at some point, if you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, aimless conversations only goes so far. Right. You're going to be having fun and we get into that sometimes too. And I had fully enjoyed those moments. But at the same time, it has to be rooted in something and, you know, this is all with like trying to find your why. I mean, this is with every business. You really do have to spend that time, you know, what, what is it I'm trying to convey? What is it that, you know, I'm going to try and do with this? You have to really put a lot of time in that direction and think about it. Well, I think people find a podcast like fighter and the kid, for example, like, what do they talk about? They don't really talk about anything in general. They just hear two guys being funny and having great conversations. It's topical. They're being funny. Oh, I can do that. I can do that. I can get on there with my buddy. No, no, no. Brian Callan has been a comedian for 20-something years. And that's the reason why that can happen. These are experts at their field or what they're doing. Well, and even more so than being an expert, but it does fall kind of on that category. I think it's more important that you just add value. And value sometimes could be comedic relief, right? It could be that. Entertainment? Yeah, I want to be entertained. And I love listening to the fighter and the kid because they're extremely entertaining and you're right. It's not just a couple of guys, even though they make it come off like a couple guys just playing goofing, those guys take their craft very seriously. I mean, even Brendan Schaub, who wasn't a comedian when he started, he pursued that to sharpen his skills on that side. And yes, he's always had an unbelievable co-host that is intelligent and funny. So, you know, they make it look simple and easy, but they are very good at their craft. At the end of the day, though, what it is is they add value. People listen to it. It's funny. It makes them laugh and smile over the day. They get to hear current events and topics. Those that love MMA, Brendan Schaub does a lot of stuff around that. So every time you listen to an episode, if you're into those things, you get value from it. 100%, we would have never survived off of our skills in podcasting if it wasn't for that. That at the end of the day, like us or hate us, you would listen to an episode and you would get valuable information. When we talked about a subject we've been talking about for decades. And we were talking why it was so valuable because at that time, a lot of the stuff we were sharing was kind of paradigm shattering and counter common knowledge in our space. And that's where we saw opportunity. We saw, okay, we have an opportunity to get into a space, share with people our experience, our knowledge over the last two decades that's counter to what's being presented right now, which left us an opportunity. It's okay, nobody else is really saying this message. Yeah, we're not going to be the best at it yet, but it's going to be compelling enough because it's going to add value to people's lives every time they listen. And that was for sure the reason why we could do otherwise. Even if somebody listens to the show now because they go, oh my god, they're fun and they're funny and they cover topics, they're like my news. So we hear all that now. But that was over the course of over a thousand episodes of refining our skills and improving on what we do in our craft. But at the very beginning we leaned heavily on, okay, this has to add value, value, value, value, value. And the only way to really add consistent value on a long form format is to know what you're talking about. You have to be somewhat of an expert in terms of whatever it is you want to communicate. So if it's entertainment, then you should probably be an experienced entertainer. So, you know, somebody who's practiced stand-up comedy for years or improv or a presenter. Maybe you're somebody who does lots of speeches and talks and you just excellent at that. So now you have a podcast and it's entertaining and enthralling. That's fine. You're an expert in that. Maybe you want to talk about health. Well, you better know what you're talking about. If you want to talk about science, you better know what you're talking about because you can get away with bullshitting on a short format. I can bullshit an Instagram post or even a short blog I can bullshit, but try to bullshit an hour-long podcast day, you know, week in and week out. It's just not going to work. Stay in your lane and be an expert. That's number one for me because I see a lot of people who start podcasts and, oh, I started a podcast with my friend, Sal. It's pretty cool. I'm like, oh, what are you guys talking about? Oh, we just, you know, we just talk and have fun. It's like a lifestyle podcast. Yeah, that's a big one. Oh, it's a lifestyle podcast. What the fuck is that? Are you a lifestyle expert? We're all doing a lifestyle right now. I don't know very many lifestyle experts out there. And if you are one, you better damn well be entertaining and very experienced in that field. So that's why I said that number one. It's almost like you got to have something to bring to the table before you try all the other stuff, you know, when it comes to, you know, making a successful podcast. That brings us to the second one. Communicate well. Learn how to communicate very, very well. Now to start with, this sounds very simple, but it's ridiculous how this continues to happen. Make sure you have good sound. This was, Doug was huge, really big on this when we first started. He would hang up blankets and make sure that there was a carpet on the floor. He would even put, you know, a tarp, like a fluffy tarp over the table that the microphones were on when we were in his living room. And all, you know, the three of us were kind of like, let's get this going. Let's just start the podcast. He was a stickler on sound, but studies show when people listen to anything where the sound isn't good, even if the information is good, you just want to turn it off. Well, and especially like nowadays, like there's so many podcasts now, like, you know, they used to get away with it a little bit back, you know, when it was first coming out and like you'd have like one, whatever that was called, that one mic in the middle where everybody's kind of contributing towards it, all this like feedback, you know, you're getting from that. And, you know, it was sort of like the Wild West. Now everybody's paying, you know, more attention to the quality of the sound. And I mean, think about it, you're sitting there, you're listening in your headphones and do you really want a bunch of static and a bunch of background noise happening? Like that irritates. Well, it's relatively inexpensive to make the quality of the sound really, really good. And so it's no different than why the fuck nobody sits down and watches a 1980s boob tube right anymore. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You could probably go on to eBay and find like an old 1980s television that still may work. But who the hell is going to use that when I can go down to Costco and buy one the same size for probably the same price or less. And it's like 50% lighter. It just doesn't make sense. You would way rather watch that in great quality because it's that easy and accessible now. That's where the sound quality is in podcasting is it's not that difficult to elevate your sound and put a little... It's not a big investment at all. It's not a major investment to have professional type sound quality. Now everybody thinks it's the mics that create... Now, the mics do play a large role. Environment. But yeah, good mics are not that expensive. You can find them on Amazon for a few hundred bucks and you'll have a decent mic. What are these running? 250 done? These are 400 a piece. The original ones? However, the original ones we had were 100 bucks a piece. 200, yes. You don't need super fancy mics but what you do need is a room that doesn't echo and that really absorbs sound. Deadens the sound. Deadens the sound. So I have a friend who started a podcast and he took my advice to heart and he went in his closet. In his closet, he made sure that the walls had... You know, blankets or carpet really does a good job of absorbing sound. Cheap foam. He has clothes already in there. We use foam on the sides. Foam tiles, yeah. And that made a huge... Because we could have the best mics in the world but if I'm recording in a tiled bathroom or an echo-y room it's just gonna sound shitty. So that's really key. And it's one of those little things that we do that just... It's one less thing someone's gonna complain about and make them leave. There's other things that are far... Getting good at communicating may take you hundreds, maybe thousands of episodes to get really good at your craft. So that's just flat out. That could take a long time where taking a little bit of money and investing in how you improve your quality of your sound is a reasonably small investment you can do immediately and that's just one less thing that you're turned off by. So it's like, to me, that's a no-brainer place to kind of start. And you automatically separate yourself and sound professional. Automatically. Now, in five or 10 years everyone's gonna sound really good. But right now, if you have good sound and someone hears you automatically you sound polished, automatically you sound professional. Now, another thing you want to do for good communication and this is something that I'll give us some credit on before we even were good at podcasting, we learned how to be really authentic and vulnerable. And this was a skill that we learned personal training clients. So none of us did podcasting. None of us were on media. But through years and years and years of training clients you start to learn how to be effective with what you say and because you're communicating basic information, eat less, move more, lift weights, you know, here's what carbs do, fats do, proteins do, and all that kind of stuff. But then you start to figure out in a minute, the information is important, but what's more important is am I getting buy-in and one of the most effective ways to get buy-in is to sound or become authentic and vulnerable because then the person believes and trusts you. And this right here is key. It's funny because it's, that's one of those accidental things that really worked in our benefit. I think if we were starting out and we're trying to listen to other people's advice of how we should run a podcast back then it would have been the old entertainment style where it's like, you know, it has to be all scripted, you know, you guys want to stay away from this type of language and, you know, you guys, like, we were just like being ourselves and that was part of it, was talking to clients and the way that you were able to relate and connect with clients was, you know, to really, to be vulnerable and share stories and things that, you know, you're not awesome all the time, like people connect with that. Now, a counterpoint that I want to make to that, though, too, is that, you know, there are different styles of podcasters, for example, you know, I think we would fall under a category more like Joe Rogan and Fighter and the Kid stylistically as far as what you just- Conversational. More conversational, more just being authentic, real and sharing opinions. Now, that doesn't mean there is, you can be very successful like our friend Jordan Harbinger who runs a more formatted and formal type of podcast. He is, you know, he's been doing this for nine years. He is very structured, methodical about his approach and his interview skills and has had a tremendous amount of success. So knowing where- He's a black belt, though, at media communication. Right, right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And that takes a long time and it takes skill dedicated to being really- Well, it takes that and, you know, more importantly, a lot of- I mean, he made a living off of teaching people how to enhance that skill because he didn't have it naturally. So it's- you can work at this and you can prepare really well. I mean, if you- if you're- if you do better with that and that is your style, then I would- I would tell you to lean into that. If you're not a natural conversationalist and you don't like talking for long periods of time and you don't ad-lib well, then maybe you are better off with really trying to think about, okay, these are the questions I want to ask and talk about, this is the direction I want to take my listeners, then I'm going to go here and plot that out. Along those lines, like there are podcasts out there that do crazy well that are really high production. Yes. And so they're, you know, and story-wise, like stories do- do well. People love stories and so if they're really high produced and they have, you know, clean transitions and you really pay attention to, you know, enhancing that experience, you know, there's a place for that, there's a place for messy conversations. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what your strengths where that goes. And I feel like it depends who we're talking to. Yeah. Right. If I'm talking to a media personality, if I'm talking to someone who's on TV or has experienced radio or, you know, then I would say, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If I'm talking to somebody who's like, look, I don't have a lot of experienced media, but I'm an expert on hormones. I want to start a podcast. Then I think being authentic and vulnerable is going to be part of their strategy because the media, you know, I'm like, look at us. How we were good in the beginning, but not because we were good in the media. Well, again, we fall in that category. I think you talk to you talk to somebody who is more like an engineer or a doctor. And that is, is a little more methodical and pay way more attention to detail and maybe a little more dry and doesn't have that personality like you have or Justin or myself. They would probably do much better leaning into, you know, being more structured in the way that they deliver a podcast. Wouldn't that be authentic for them? Sure. So, so authenticity. I just, what I, the counterpoint that I wanted to make to Justin, the great point that Justin was making is that I don't want people to think that they have to follow in this path that we went down, which is this conversational humanize, be authentic, be yourself, have a good time and just talk, you know, and be experts in your field. It's, you know, a couple of people that are close to me that are starting podcasts and knowing that, like one of them is a principal and he is completely opposite of me or any of us in this room. And I'm not going to try and say like, you know, hey, listen to how we do this and kind of have this free flowing conversation. No, that is not him. He is definitely, you know, Mr. Anal, organized, structured, doesn't say a lot, you know, but then also has, he's been in the the education system for two decades now and he's very intelligent, but his, his podcast will fill more, very, more like a PowerPoint presentation than that. And that's, now that's his authenticity. Sure. Right. Cause he's not going to copy. Sure. So I think at the end of the day, the point stands, you want to be real and authentic to yourself. And for us, it was how we communicated to clients is how we communicated on the podcast. If you're a great presenter or style doesn't fit your style, I think copying us would probably be a mistake. I would agree with you. And it's all about being authentic because in long form communication, that really does come out. When you're trying to be something that you're not, I don't think it's going to come out very well and in an hour long, you know, consistent podcast that comes out every single week, which brings us to the next one, which is, and this one's funny because it's, it sounds obvious, but I'm surprised how many people miss this one is to be consistent. You know, when, when, when I was a kid, you watch a TV show, it came on a certain time of the day, certain channel, you could expect it to show. You could count on it. You could count on it. Although podcasts are out there and they're recorded and they're available, your core audience will learn to depend on when you release an episode. So skipping weeks, I know a lot of podcasters do this though, release, you know, some episodes and I'll ask them, how's your podcast? Oh, I haven't done it in a couple of weeks, but I'm going to get back on it. You're going to kill avid fans and listeners by doing that. This is actually the first piece of advice that I give, even before the other ones we did, is because, and I got really frustrated with one of the two people that I'm helping right now and that's all capital letters like when we were texting, I'm like, be consistent with whatever you decide to do. Start with less. You know, if your goal is to have three shows or five shows a week, eventually, don't start there. Start with one time a week or even bi-leakly, whatever you decide you're going to tell your audience and what you're going to do, stick to that and be very consistent to the point that I highly recommend and I tell anybody that's doing this, you should have a minimum of 15 to 20 shows already locked and loaded and ready to go. Yeah. That way you can, you can, when you, first of all, when you launch, you should launch, what is it, Doug? Four or six? How many do you launch right away? I'd say three at the minimum. Right away, right? The first day, there's more in a couple. So within the first week or two, we were releasing probably six or so episodes, right? Something around there? Boy, it's hard to recall. Somewhere around there, right? So you're going to need just to get that first week because here's the thing, when you first launch a podcast, in the first eight weeks, you are ranked only against other people that are starting their podcast in the last eight weeks. Yeah, they call that the new and notable section on iTunes and you have an opportunity to rank highly in that. Absolutely. This is your best, to try and compete with somebody who has built an audience over the last five years is silly. No matter how famous you are on Instagram or how big your email list is, to try and compete with someone that big already, but if you already have a small audience of people from social media or you have some pool or you're talented and you start off getting that attention early on and getting ranked in the new and noteworthy is really valuable. So you need to have a good plan when you first start off. You need to have a good amount of episodes that you already have stored and then you can release relatively quick and then after that already be planning for what's coming the next eight weeks so you don't get stuck like one of the people that I'm helping right now are, you know, all of a sudden he ran of an idea. It's like, dude, you can't just you know, pause for a week because you didn't have a good idea and your reason behind not going is oh, I wanted to be authentic like you said and I didn't want to just bullshit something so I didn't do anything. Well, that's a fucking Yeah, that's a terrible idea. Like, you know, spend some time in preparation and coming up with ideas ahead of time and planning and I know that was something we did. Now we knew with our experience that we would have unlimited conversations and topics to talk about just from our experience alone but that doesn't mean we still didn't map out and have ideas of, hey, let's start with these. When we first started we launched the three or whatever and I think we had like 10 episodes or 15 already recorded. They were already sitting there ready to go and because you want to be super consistent, you know, you want your if you do build a core audience which is what you want and what I mean by that is you'll have a core audience and then you'll have people that pop in and out but if you do a good job the core starts to grow and what you don't want to do is alienate what you're trying to sell or produce those are the people that are going to be the biggest impact and if you release an episode once a week every single week on Monday and then the following week you do it on a Wednesday a Thursday or you skip a week you're going to lose you can lose a chunk of your most valuable audience so I say whatever you decide to go with you got to stay with so err on the side of less so rather than being super ambitious and saying I'm going to do five episodes a week okay how many episodes do you consistently for at least a couple years that's the question you would want to ask now I don't know if this falls under the be consistent category or where you would want to slot this information but I do think it's important I remember us learning this lesson and how you title matters oh yeah the way the podcast algorithm works now it's very similar to like a google type search so titles that are more likely to be searched or titles that jump out at people through multiple different podcasts is important so just saying episode one and it's your name or something so you know what I'm saying like nobody knows who Adam Schaefer is at this point and episode three or whatever my business name may be at that time not a great strategy doing titles that are going to grab somebody who has maybe never heard you and now they listen to you or that are more likely to be shared that's important so without it was so like duh because I mean how do you use how do you find things on google you know it's like what are you interested in of course podcasting is going to get on that level where it's like you're just searching for an actual topic and you'll be able to find new podcasts that are covering these things so I think there's a lot more chance invisibility if you do have that strategy well we also learned later on too when we had a much larger audience to where we could have it it's not like people that listen to podcast a small percentage of them are the type of people that are like I listen to every show every show I never miss I listen every single day die hard fan that's a small percentage of the bulk of downloads that we're getting most people weave in and out or have busy lives or drop in when they can and listen to a podcast episode and the way most those people choose is they drop the screen and they look at the last five or six episodes and the title that you know appeals to them they listen to and they listen in that order so this is an important I think strategy for people to pay attention to when when titling your episode as far as being consistent here's another one practice a lot podcast often I could say that I learned this through fitness myself you know if you want to get good at a squat extremely true again we had zero experience with media but one thing we did is we had a lot of information on fitness we could talk fitness all day long so we pushed it we started out with I think three episodes a week then four now five and we just podcast podcast and what's funny with us and this is different from person to person but with us it seems like every hundred episodes or so we reach a new level of skill in terms of what we do then from like 150 to 250 and then every hundred or so we just get to a new level I think there's a lot of freedom in that mentality too because I know like there's a lot of people out there that are really critical and self critical of the kind of content that they would put out and fearful you know fearful how people are going to receive it and if you if you just like have a solid plan and you know you record these episodes like we're talking about but you put it out there and you have it and you tell you that you're going to keep getting better and the only way to keep getting better is to just keep pumping these out and then also you know pay attention to the response and pay attention to what is striking accord and what is not with your audience it's really a war of attrition can you keep showing up week after week and putting out content and knowing that you've got a long way ahead of you still before you're not going to make a dime for a couple of years you're not going to penetrate a ton of people right away you're going to it's going to take a long time before you get a solid base where you can probably make really good revenue and can you keep trucking along can you keep doing it and keep it's a long road and keep showing up every day and I think that's why a lot of people struggle is just I remember when I first turned on Instagram with the intention to build a business around it and I remember hanging out with the folks and one of the things that I remember him telling me is that you know most people just can't stick with it they want the attention they want the money they want the success they want the business to come from it right away because they hear oh so and so they have this big Instagram business or so and so built this off of Facebook and they make millions and they compare themselves to that and they think that they're going to get the attention to you know you have to build and refine that skill and that just takes reps I mean one of the things I think we always love to talk about is amongst ourselves off air is I mean how many is it 10,000 hours before you're considered a master that's what they say and we talk about we're not even halfway there on podcast and to me that excites me that doesn't like discourage me like oh my god that's so far away it makes me go we consider ourselves experts I know how shitty of a trainer I was even the success that I had early years well before those 10,000 hours hit I know I wasn't very good I know how much better I became when I considered myself an expert as a trainer and that excites me about podcasting that you know I'm still haven't hit that 10,000 hour threshold and we have a long ways to go to really improve our skill and do you have do you have what it takes to stick with it when you're not making a lot of money trying to suck before you're good so practice often and be okay with sounding bad at first cause it's gonna get better and the last thing I'd say that's important I think this is important for any business but especially for a podcast business is to encourage community among the people that listen now this is important because here's a deal with podcasting it's the odds that you're going to create a podcast that's going to reach tens of millions of people is very very slim very very very slim but if you're decent you're an expert in your field you do a good job with all the stuff that we're talking about you could build a community that can generate you know a nice deep six figure business for yourself but that means you need to talk to and tend to your community so I would suggest doing things like building private forums answering people's questions on social media being accessible to connect people because that turns an audience of thousands into a bank account that potentially could look like hundreds of thousands well who's the first to say it I don't remember who talked about the thousand tribe first I don't know do you remember who that was it wasn't Tim Ferriss it was someone Tim Ferriss I think referenced whoever I don't remember who it was but I know there's a book out there called tribe there's an article called a thousand true fans yeah yeah and it talks about 100% believe it to be really true and really close to being spot on accurate I think it's Kevin Kelly really? yeah I think that's correct okay cool so when we got to that point where and for us the best measure of this was the forum the private forum where you had to pay access to get into this so if you value the us and the information that we were giving the amount that it cost to get into our forum at that time fee then you were in back then so if you if you you saw enough value in us that you would pay to get in this private forum we knew that you you valued the information obviously that we were providing and you were probably a valued customer and so those people so not when we had a thousand listeners but we had a thousand people that were willing to spend a couple of bucks on us to be closer to us in that forum when that hit a thousand people was when I think we really got to realize and be able to make money consistently enough to start to begin to scale this business and that doesn't mean it got easy it doesn't mean like it all fell together then it just meant that we got okay we have a real business on our hands now we have enough loyal people that they can really they were the foundation and we know I hop on there occasionally to and to remind them how valuable and how important they are to us in our community because if it wasn't for people it wouldn't exist it's funny because we've gotten so our views have gotten so distorted on numbers we see things like 100,000 followers 500,000 followers I mean if you any any business would die they would kill to get a thousand customers a thousand customers of any business I mean 15 years ago you started brick and mortar business if you had a gym with a thousand members paying you you're making all it is so it's no different the difference is it's virtual but the way you build your business is by treating them like a thousand customers to that point so that brings me to something that it's been on top of mine for me because when we went to Arizona I get an opportunity to talk to a lot of other quote unquote influencers that have successful businesses and they have marketing guys and teams that are supporting them that are running all the talk about oh yeah we get to this conversion rate on Facebook that's when we scaled up and we were making millions and this is what's going on and then I love to ask what lifetime value is on their customers and a lot of them would be like oh yeah when it comes to that people are really finicky and only about 20% or less that people buy something else from us once they buy the one and what that tells me is that we are in a time right now especially with the way Facebook is and Facebook ads most people know that that's the new Google ads and that's where one of the best places is to advertise is on Facebook so many companies and businesses are so focused on acquisition that they fail to pay attention to retention and back when you were in brick and mortar and these tools didn't exist where you could acquire all of a sudden 10,000 leads in a day which is insane before the internet existed and you had to go meet you couldn't meet just 10,000 people to really take your time you got one person who walked through your store oh yeah so how were you you walked over you asked them about their day you found out about them I mean you just read carpet that person because it is the only fucking lead you had all day long and you treated them that way business still hasn't changed not in that sense people still want to feel that experience when they opt in and buy or purchase or experience anything within your community and so valuing the retention piece of business and focusing your energy on that not worrying about having this massive audience where I need to look cool on Instagram and have a million people I am way more impressed with somebody who only has a thousand people that are paying attention but those thousand people when they talk about you or when they say anything about your product or what you provide for them they speak of you as like life changing for them like oh my god what they've done that is so much more powerful than just having maybe not at first not dollars because if you do have a million eyes and you only convert it 1% 1% of a million is still a lot more than 20% of a thousand so you're still going to get a lot more money upfront on the more attention and that's why I think so many people are focused on acquisition but what's funny is that what people don't realize is getting the attention of a million people is actually harder more impossible than developing tremendous value with a thousand people because it's actually although it takes work it's the more realistic route now what happens when that thousand turns into a million now you've got some real power now you've got a real company doing a phenomenal job so I would say stay away from worrying too much about gathering millions and millions of people but rather encourage the community among the people that's right take care of the five paying attention to you that's it take care of the five talk to them find out what you can do better for those people stay away you know people ask a lot of times like the direction we're going and I know it bores people to hear like oh that we're you know the 2020 we're putting a lot of energy and focus on the back end of the business but the back end of the business is the customer service side it's the support like we all care just because we're we're converting at a high enough rate that we're we're making good money and if we were to throttle down advertising we would 3x 5x the business that's less important to our ecosystem the experience that they're getting and how can we how can we improve that and continue to enhance that process because those people are the people that you end up changing them forever they become lifelong customers and billboards for you that go off and talk about you for 5, 10, 15 years later totally and with that go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our resources guides and ebooks for free go check them out mindpumpfree.com you can also find I'm Justin you can find me at Mind Plump Sal and Adam at Mind Plump Adam