Hello, hello, welcome to the live stream.
We're getting up and running here.
I don't have my B machine ready to go right now.
So I'm just going to double check that everything is working as expected here on the old iPad.
So let's see.
Yeah, we're here.
We're live on YouTube.
Check that off the box.
This is where like a producer would be like a separate producer would be amazing.
But I don't have that.
And it's kind of capricious when I go.
It's not really capricious when I go live, but here I am.
Great.
I'm live on LinkedIn.
Let's double check Twitter slash X.
Welcome welcome to everybody joining.
I hope you're doing well.
Let me know where you're coming from.
Say hello.
And I'm really excited to talk about this topic today because it's it's a topic that
I get a lot.
And I think that it's going to be good and very helpful for you.
So let me know where you're coming from.
Say hello.
Let me bring the comments up here.
If you have any questions while we are recording, I'll be checking all of the various social
networks.
YouTube is best because YouTube comes right to me.
The comments come right to me.
I think Twitter comments also come right to me, maybe.
But you know, that's YouTube is going to be the best for that.
All right.
So let's you know what?
Let's let's dive into it.
I was thinking about this the other day.
A few years ago, I saw the worst talk I've ever seen.
And it was bad for a couple like several reasons.
First, they start off by saying they were not prepared.
So that's like bad.
Right.
I gave a talk in grad school like that and my teacher just like ripped into me.
He's like, you never start a talk that way.
He's like, you are immediately putting yourself at a disadvantage.
You're basically telling people that you are not the subject matter expert that you are
claiming to be.
And so I thought that was really interesting.
Right.
So they said they were not prepared for the talk that they were about to give.
They read from their notes the entire time, just like stared really hard at their notes
the entire time.
They talked way too much about themselves the entire time.
And they didn't deliver much value.
So they basically just used the talk as a pitch for their services, which is counterintuitive.
Right.
So if you're not delivering any value, then I'm not going to buy your services.
And so this was really bad.
Right.
And I was stuck in the room because I don't want to leave.
You know, I feel for people who are struggling to give a good talk.
I know that I I'm lucky enough to be a decent public speaker, maybe even a good public speaker.
And I know it's really hard for a lot of people.
And so I'm not going to get up in the middle of this talk, especially because it's not
a huge auditorium.
It's like a it was a small room.
It would have been pretty obvious if I had left another people had left.
So I I wasn't going to leave.
Right.
But when people listen to your podcast, you don't really have the luxury of a captive
audience.
People can very easily stop listening to your podcast, especially because unlike this conference,
there was maybe one other talk going on at the same time.
So my options were staying the talk I was in, leave and find the other talk or just
not attend any talks.
And so I opted to stick around and hope maybe fall victim to the fallacy of the sunk cost.
Hope that the talk would get better.
But with your podcast, if you are not delivering value, people will leave and find literally
anything else.
Another podcast that's in their podcast feed, a YouTube video, something on Netflix, a video
game, they'll go out and go for a walk.
The competition is stiff, which means that you need to create engaging content.
And that's what today's live stream is about.
And I'll be honest with you.
And maybe if you stick around, I will show the mind map for this, but I am working on
a new book called podcast cheat codes.
And I am kind of working through some of this content now.
And so I thought I would live stream some of the topics, get my thoughts out there for
anybody who's watching live or watching the replay later, get feedback and hopefully make
the book better.
And the inspiration for this as both a topic for the book and just a topic for the live
stream is I got this question in a recent coaching call.
And it's a question that I tend to get fairly frequently.
How do I make my episodes more engaging?
So that's what I want to talk to you about today.
And again, like if you're just tuning in, let me know, say hello, let me know where
you're coming from, leave a comment.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave the questions.
I'm going to answer as many questions as I can.
If you're watching on LinkedIn, I'm going to do my best to routinely check over on LinkedIn.
I feel like the comments on the live stream kind of go into an abyss over there.
And so, you know, I think maybe I'm in the right spot.
So if you have comments there, I'll do my best, but YouTube, YouTube is the best place
because YouTube comments come directly to me and I will be checking around in the other
places like LinkedIn and Twitter to see if any questions are coming through over there
as well.
So, okay.
First, let me tell you what an unengaging, non-engaging conversation or podcast episode
looks like, right?
Maybe you have pre-roll ads, maybe you don't, but I have seen ads or I have seen Matt Madaro's
coming in.
Matt, thanks for being here.
I see you're cheating on me with a new podcast book.
Yeah, I'm sorry, Matt.
You know, we had a good run, but unfortunately it's time for me to move on to more complicated
topics.
Matt, thanks for being here.
I appreciate it.
Okay, so maybe you've heard this on a podcast before, but you'll get like three pre-roll
ads, right?
And like, sure, you can skip those, but let's say they're two, maybe three minutes long,
right?
In total.
Then the host does a intro.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show.
Today my guest is whoever, whoever, and they give their whole bio.
I'm really excited to talk to them today about whatever, whatever, right?
Then they get into the actual interview and they start the question, they start with the
question.
So tell us who you are and what you do.
And then the guest proceeds to give a slightly more long and rambling version of the intro
we just heard.
So now we're 10 minutes into an episode and we've gotten no value, right?
We've gotten pre-roll ads that we may or may not have skipped.
We got who the guest is in the host's words and then we got who the guest is in the guest's
words.
That is too long to deliver value, right?
You need, when we talk about good writing, we need an inciting incident right off the
bat.
We need something to hook the listener or the watcher.
One of the ones that really stand out to me is the very first few moments of House of
Cards, which was like the first really popular Netflix original.
And in House of Cards, if you, I mean, so spoiler alert and like content warning, if
you like animals, I guess, but it starts off with a dog getting hit by a car.
We don't see it.
I don't think we ever see the dog.
But you can kind of hear the sound effects and then Frank Underwood comes out and he
talks directly to the camera.
So we're like really setting the tone here, right?
And it's dark and it's moody.
And he walks up to this dog and you think he's going to help the dog, right?
And he ends up killing the dog.
And that's the first few minutes of the show.
How can you not be interested in that?
It's an inciting incident and sets the tone and it draws you in.
Three pre-roll ads or one pre-roll ad, right?
But by just kind of a meandering intro is not going to draw me in or draw our listeners
in.
It's going to do a really bad job of setting the tone because it feels unorganized.
So your goal in the first few minutes of your podcast episode is to deliver value however
you can.
I've heard the statistic that we have 60 to 90 seconds to hook our guest or our listener
rather.
If that 90 seconds still feels like a long time and I get it.
Like for pre again, for pre-roll ads, you could skip, but you want to create a really
good listening experience, right?
And I know that there are podcasts that will do this and they still have tons and tons
of listeners, but they have a huge audience.
They are probably people who are well-known.
And so they've gained trust in a way that a lot of independent podcasters, small business
owners who are starting a podcast to build their authority, they don't have that trust
yet, right?
We start that podcast to gain people's trust.
And so we need to do it.
There are a few ways that I think you can start off your podcast really good.
And we've seen some of these before, right?
One is the cold open quote from your guest.
This takes a little bit of planning, but it should, right?
So what happens here is you pick something good that your guest said, pull it out and
make it the very first thing the listener hears.
And you do that because either you're opening a curiosity loop where now they want to listen
and find out like what the whole thought is, or you're delivering value immediately, right?
For shows I've been on, the pull quote has been something about like the number one thing
that you can automate for your podcast to save you time, right?
That's great because now people, like they already have something that they've learned
from the podcast and they're like, wow, what else can I learn, right?
It's like the opposite of syllabus day in school.
And so that's one thing that you could do if you have guests, right?
If you don't, then I like to start my solo episodes off with a story much like I started
off with this live stream, right?
And so, well, the live stream is a little different because I always start by checking
to make sure I'm actually live.
Even though I always am, right?
I use Ecamm live, shout out Ecamm live, but I always feel like I need to check anyway.
But I start off my solo shows with a story, right?
And that story is usually, feels like it's not related at first, but ends up being related
somehow.
So I started a video for rss.com today with a story about how, like imagine you go to
a grocery store and you buy a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread and a pack of bacon, and
then you make breakfast for you and only you, right?
So you maybe make two eggs and two strips of bacon and a slice of bread, and then you
throw out the rest.
So you like eat what you made and you throw out the rest.
That's like a huge waste, but that's kind of like what you're doing if you don't repurpose
your podcast, right?
You release the podcast and then you're just kind of leaving that content out without putting
it other places, right?
And, you know, in that case, repurposing could be actually like taking clips from the podcast
and publishing them, or it could be using that same subject matter in a video or a short
form or a newsletter, right?
It doesn't just have to be, oh, I'm going to run this through the magic AI clipper of
the week and publish 10 clips to social media.
You spend some amount of time talking about a topic and to only put it on your podcast
is like, feels like a huge waste.
You should use it in other places as well.
So like I always repurpose my podcast content to my newsletter as a blog post.
I haven't done short form video yet just because I don't feel like social media is the best
place for me to invest my time, but the assets are there.
So anyway, my point is if you're running solo or even if you're not, right?
If you don't want to start with a cold open, start with a story, right?
I another episode I had with a guest.
Gosh, I need to remember what the subject was now, but I talked about the first person
to go skydiving and I tell their story and they use that to segue into I really wish
I could, it's like a relatively recent episode.
I'm sure I could find it quickly.
But that, like I used that story to kind of hook people in and make them interested and
make it relatable.
So I think, let's see, I wish I could find it.
Oh, it was building native apps with no code with Carla Fernandez.
Great episode by the way.
Yeah, so I talk about mitigating risk and I use the story of the first person to go skydiving
to talk about that and how skydiving has evolved to mitigate the risk of death and why like
no code is a way for solopreneurs to mitigate risk even if they want to build a native app.
So there's a lot of ways that you can do that, right?
Now if you, so maybe you don't want to do the cold open, maybe you don't want to do
the story.
You could also do the top takeaways from the episode right at the beginning.
This is another thing I always do, right?
So I will either combine the story or the cold open with the top takeaways.
And so I always say like, you know, and that's what we're going to talk about today and I'm
really excited.
Look for these top takeaways and then I tell them the top three things I think that they
will learn from this episode.
And so why am I doing that?
Why am I giving away the biggest takeaways right at the beginning?
Am I worried that people are going to leave?
I kind of treat it like I had a math teacher in college and he basically said, you don't
have to come to class if you don't want to.
Like this is what he said on the first day.
You don't have to come to class if you don't want to.
If you can pass my tests without ever attending a single lecture, then you don't need to attend
the lectures and you'll still get full marks.
So he didn't have an attendance policy.
And I thought that was so interesting and I kind of feel that way about the episode,
right?
So my recent episode with Caitlin Morola, the top takeaways are a content calendar is
a central place to organize, plan and track all of your content efforts across different
channels for SEO purposes, prioritize quality over quantity and map your content to the
buyer's journey stages.
Awareness consideration decision to ensure it serves the right purpose at each stage.
If based on those things, you're like, yeah, I'm good.
I got it.
I can create a content calendar.
Go ahead, leave.
You don't need this episode.
You don't need your time making the content calendar or using your time more wisely, right?
But if you think, okay, well, like I know a content calendar is a good thing to plan.
Oh, and like, yeah, of course I want to prioritize quality over quantity.
But like, what's this about buyers journey stages?
I'm really interested in that.
Then your listener will stick around.
So you've given them something and you've enticed them to stay because you've already
delivered value, right?
This is your main goal for the, and like, okay, I should say that I help small business
owners, solopreneurs, people who want to leverage their podcast to build their authority and
maybe like sell a product that they have, right?
If you have like a historical fiction podcast, well, yes, my advice is still good, but the
goals are going to be different, right?
Because you want people to stick around.
I think Lindy Graham, the podcast or not the senator does a really good job of this with
his shows, American History Tellers and History Daily, where like he draws you in almost immediately
with a story, right?
You know, it's June, this is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, right?
So if he's doing an episode about D-Day, he'll say like, oh, it's June 1944 and you're in
a boat off the shores of Normandy.
You're a little bit seasick, but the adrenaline is keeping you from throwing up or whatever,
right?
Like now you're like, oh man, what's happening?
What am I doing now?
It really draws you in and he's telling, and then maybe he's telling the story about
norming the beaches at Normandy, right?
So you always want to open with something interesting, right?
How many books have you put down or how many TV shows have you abandoned or how many movies
have you abandoned that get off to a really slow start or don't draw you in in the beginning,
right?
Or do a bad job at the exhibition stuff, right?
Like if a movie has one character who just kind of always states the obvious, they're
not doing a good job of telling the story and including the exhibition, right?
Or the context, I guess.
So if you want to create engaging content, start off strong.
That's my whole point here, right?
Maybe I have not demonstrated that in the first 20 minutes of this livestream, but you
want to start strong because maybe you only have 20 minutes, right?
Maybe your show is 20 minutes or your show is like 45 minutes and you want to deliver
value.
I'm over on LinkedIn now.
I'm sorry I'm going to say this wrong, but Hansla, I hope that's right.
Thanks for being here.
Good to see you.
Thanks for joining the livestream.
If you have any comments, questions, concerns, be sure to leave them on the various platforms
where I'm streaming right now.
I'm streaming and you know this because you're watching on one of them.
YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.
So YouTube is going to be the best because that comes right to me and I can kind of see
it out of the corner of my eye in Ecam Live.
I'll be kind of intermittently checking the other platforms when there's a good break.
So number one rule of creating engaging content, start your listeners with a win.
Troy Dean talks about that, right?
Or he did years ago.
He would say like he would always design his courses to get the learners from zero to win
and then he would do the same thing for each lesson, zero to win.
Pat Flynn talks about that.
How can you deliver a quick win immediately for your students or your customers?
You want them to feel good about the choice they made.
And if you hit them with three minute long pre-roll ads followed by just like completely
unstructured meandering, you are not doing that.
Each minute that passes, your listeners like, did I invest my time wisely here?
Right?
And again, this is not going to apply to Conan O'Brien or Dax Shepard or Joe Rogan or they
call her daddy lady.
I don't listen to any of those.
So I'm really sorry.
It's not going to apply to those people because they are celebrities and the value that they're
delivering is like a seemingly behind the scenes conversation, right?
Like an open conversation with somebody that you admire.
But for those of us who have a business focused podcast or a podcast that's focused on learning,
that's where we want to deliver value quickly, right?
There are, I had to Google this a little bit, but like I remember it from my public speaking
class in college, like there's like a few different types of speeches, right?
There's like the informative speech, right?
Which demonstrates now, now I'm reading directly from Google, demonstrates, describes, defines,
has general purpose of informing the audience.
There's the persuasive speeches and these are about facts, values or policy.
They make a claim that they prove to the audience and there's entertaining speeches.
These speeches are generally ceremonial or inspirational, right?
And you need, each one is going to have their own structure.
78% of people listen to podcasts to learn something new.
That is certainly going to be the case if you have a business or you're creating a podcast
where you're trying to deliver value and establish your expertise and maybe grow your business
or ingratiate yourself with a new audience.
That's definitely going to be the case.
And in that instance, we have very little wiggle room to mess up, right?
This is why most podcasts don't grow.
And the J. Klaus talks about this, the hidden like killer or not killer, but like the hidden
downfall or, I can't think of the right word, but like the hidden trouble, I'll say, of
podcasting is with your newsletter, it's really easy to see when people unsubscribe, right?
So you know if you send an email and 10 people out of 100 unsubscribe, that's really bad,
first of all.
Even just like 10 people out of a thousand, right?
If 10 people unsubscribe and usually four people unsubscribe or three people unsubscribe,
you know that that's not a hit, right?
That email didn't deliver the value people were hoping for.
If your downloads dip from week to week, maybe you know, but you don't know when a specific
person stops listening or why they stopped listening, right?
Or if you lost five listeners but gained six listeners, right?
You have net one new listener, but you don't know that, right?
Like you don't know that people have left.
You just think, oh, I had very small growth this week.
And so it's really important to continue to deliver value for people.
Draw them in with a story.
Draw them in just by like telling them, hey, these are the big things that you're going
to learn in this episode.
Draw them in with a cold open, hit them with a quick win.
The rest of the time you should be continuing to deliver wins throughout, right?
And this is why you want to plan your episodes and keep it focused.
I haven't always done a good job at this.
It's really hard to do a good job at this, especially when you're having a conversation
with a friend.
I've interviewed my friend James Laws about kind of leadership and he's a little bit older
than me, but like old guys trying to make it on TikTok, right?
We had a really good conversation where we did talk about that stuff, but we went on
a lot of what I called side quests.
We talked about going to the movies in the middle of the afternoon, Cabo Press and whatever.
Just like a bunch of things that were definitely things like longtime friends talk about, right?
And maybe I should have edited those out.
What I ended up doing was adding chapter markers for them and I told people, I'm like, hey,
there are, I don't usually add chapter markers, but if you're listening to an app that supports
chapters, you just skip these.
Like you just go to the chapter section and skip over to the next like piece of value,
right?
And so you want to design a good user experience.
I know that's like weird to kind of apply to podcasts, but it's true.
Like we want to design a good user experience for them.
And so creating a structure to your episodes, whether they're solo episodes or like mini
episodes or interviews is going to be really important to make people feel like they're
continuing to get value.
The way that I recommend that is if you do an interview, do some research, right?
This is a time consuming thing.
And this is why I help people with their process.
So that instead of spending two hours getting the show notes ready and writing a description
and publishing it to their website and hoping it published right, they can spend maybe an
hour doing some research on their guest and coming up with good content.
And then they gain an hour, but they've spent their time more wisely, right?
These are the things that I like to help people with.
I help them improve their process so that they can spend their time creating good, engaging
content that will grow your podcast, right?
So those are the things that I talk about.
And I guess now it feels like a good time to mention this.
I do have a membership.
It is $7 a month or $70 a year.
You get ad free extended episodes of my podcast.
You get some emails here and there, maybe some additional content.
But really the ad free extended thing is the biggest one.
You can go to Streamline.fm.com to become a member and get access to a private feed.
And this is one of the things that I'm going to be really experimenting with over the summer
and over the next few months, maybe throughout the rest of the year, because I want people
to get a lot of value from my show.
I want to keep it tight, but I also like having that organic conversation.
And so I experimented with this with my friend Sarah recently.
So her episode will be the first one that tries this, but I was on a podcast recently
and they didn't ask me point blank.
Like they didn't say like, how come your episodes are so long?
But they did kind of suggest that I make my episodes like a half hour long and then put
the rest behind a paywall.
And I thought this was really interesting and my answer, non-answer was I want to make
sure that the listeners get the whole story.
And so like we talked about two podcasts that do this a little bit differently.
These podcasts are strictly examples.
They're not like a commentary on my politics or any of these politics.
These are just two I've observed do them differently, one well, one not very well.
The can't even remember the name of the, it's not Sam Harris.
Let's see.
I'm going to Google it right now.
No, oh, making, oh, it is Sam Harris making sense with Sam Harris.
So who's the other, who's my first million?
Who's the my first million guy?
He's another Sam, right?
Sam Parr.
Okay.
So Sam Harris is the guy I'm thinking of.
Trust yourself, Joe.
So what I think Sam Harris does particularly well is mention at the beginning like, hey,
if you're seeing, I think it's like black and red.
So like if you're seeing the black artwork, you know, then you're, you're on the free
feed and you're going to miss like half of the conversation.
And so that's like a really good visual signal and like that little like, hey, if you want
to hear the whole conversation, become a member.
The problem is that, and I guess, like, I guess he can get away with it.
He has a pretty popular podcast, but part of the conversation is not a complete conversation
and so it really, it doesn't build trust in the listener base, right?
Like you're going to, you're going to like tease me with part of a conversation and I
have to pay for the rest, which is like a lot of news organizations will do that, but
that's not my style, right?
The daily wire again, for example's sake, I think does this better.
They usually make the first or maybe first and second segments free and then the third
and fourth segments are behind a paywall.
So you will get a full episode.
Like you'll get the whole story in the free episode and then you just get more in the
paid episode.
The same thing is for downstream, a podcast I love that sadly the cohost Julia, who just
like knows so much about the streaming industry, she's leaving and so I'm super bummed, but
the podcast downstream would do that where every other week was a members only, like
the full episode was for members only.
And the cool thing about that Julia Alexander is her name loudmouth Julia on Twitter strongly
recommend following Julia because she's just brilliant.
So smart.
I don't know how much she'll be able to tweet now with her new job.
I don't even know what her new job is, but she's leaving the show anyway.
That's neither here nor there really smart.
But what they do like almost stealthily and I'm a member so I know this is they'll have
a segment in the middle of the show that is for members only.
And so like last time for Julia's last show, it was the sports corner where they talk about
sports streaming, which is particularly interesting to me, but they don't segue it at all.
They don't go like, you don't even really know you missed something until they say it
at some point in the show where they're like, Hey, by the way, members got the sports corner
this week.
That would encourage me to sign up because sports streaming and sports rights are as
a baseball and football fan, the bane of my existence.
I'm lucky to not live in the Yankees like broadcast area.
So I'm like out of network so I can use MLB TV to watch the Yankees every day.
Because if I was like in New York City, well now I guess I could subscribe to the yes app.
But like for a while it was like, well, if I don't have cable and I live in New York,
I can't watch the Yankees, which is really annoying.
And that is the case for the NFL unless I buy Sunday ticket and I'm not paying $300 to
watch a pretty bad American football team in the New York Giants.
So anyway, bane of my existence, but that's, that's I think a really smart thing to do,
right?
Every other, first of all, every other week, right?
So they do fortnightly episodes, they do two per month.
One is full and open for everybody, the other is most of it, or a portion of it, let's say
half is available for everybody.
Half is not, but it's not like they don't cut off the conversation.
They keep a segment for members only.
So I think that's a really good way to, I don't really know how I got here.
I was, we were talking about structuring your, oh structuring your episodes, right?
So you want to structure your episodes, me going off on a tangent like I just did here,
right?
If this was a podcast, I would make that part members only.
So the interview, right?
If you're doing an interview and it gets me andering or you want to have a bigger conversation
then, then, you know, editing it or structuring it in such a way where the listeners still
get a ton of value would be really good.
So here's what I do there for interviews, right?
I structure my interviews as a three act story.
And you know what, like this is, the camera has just been on me the whole time.
So I am going to, let's see, let me pick one that's out.
Is the Lauren one good?
Yeah.
It is good.
Okay.
So let me share my screen.
Okay.
So I structure my episodes as a three act story.
This is Lauren.
I'm sorry, Lauren.
I think your email address is public, but I'm really sorry if it's not.
So if we get down to the notes, right?
Act one, I try to structure this in the standard three act story, which is the setup.
Act one is the setup.
Act two is the confrontation or the conflict.
Act three is the resolution.
And so you're taking the listeners on a journey with you.
And so act one in this episode is what is SEO in 2024, right?
So we're giving a little bit of setup.
We're delivering value because I mean, Lauren's a pro, right?
And she does a really great job of answering this question in a way that delivers value,
right?
I don't know if you have a guest, but she does a really good job of delivering value
in such a way that the listener gets something and probably wants to continue.
And I will say like Lauren's is one of, is the most popular episode since the rebrand
from how I built it to stream on Solarpreneur.
So she's totally delivering there as well.
And so it's proof that she's delivering, right?
So I take a sponsor break and then act two is does SEO matter?
Can't I just use AI, social media, ads, whatever?
That's the conflict, right?
Why should I be putting all of this effort into SEO when I could just post on Twitter
or use AI to write articles for me, right?
And she does a really, again, a really good job of answering that question.
We edited a swear word out because I want to keep that clean rating on Apple podcasts.
But this introduces a conflict.
So we've set up a story for the listener and then we introduced some conflict.
Hey, SEO is really important.
Is SEO important though?
Because like social media exists and I can just like pay for traffic, right?
We all heard about that guy who's like, I just spent a month using AI to write a thousand
blog posts.
And then I was like number one in Google, right, which was probably just like a good
amount of bull.
But also probably like a one off thing that he was using for engagement.
And then act three, right, is how can a solopreneur with no ads budget?
This was a really important clarifier for me.
Get started with SEO, right?
How do I figure out what keywords to focus on?
How much content should I create?
Questions that the listeners are going to have and we use this time to set up where
we deliver, hey, what is SEO?
And then we, this is, this is sometimes called the inoculation effect, right?
In journalism, this is what the, in your writing a story or you're giving a speech and you
anticipate what your reader or listener is going to push back with.
And so you include that in your speech or your article and it inoculates your article
against pushback.
So act two is the conflict, which I like to call the inoculation effect.
This is like the most inflammatory question I think a listener might ask in this situation.
And then the resolution, right, where we deliver a ton of value.
And then you could see I have like up here, I have the top takeaways for people like people
who will know what they're getting into and so this is what they can listen for.
So if you're doing an interview, right, then you want to make sure you have some sort of
structure in place.
I'm not saying you need to do the three act structure.
I like the three act structure now.
I might decide in 40 episodes or something that this isn't working or maybe it's no longer
working the way I'd like or it's not working as well as I'd like and I want to try something
else, but having the structure to continually deliver value with your content is the important
bit.
And so if you're doing a solo episode, usually my solo episodes are based on articles, so
it's mostly scripted.
Sometimes I will do like a ramble episode like we're not doing summer camp, right?
So I kind of go through the who, what, why, where and how.
Why are we, why aren't we doing summer camp?
Who is with me on this journey?
How are we going to make it happen?
How is it affecting my business?
If you're a parent and you want to try this, what should you consider?
But usually my solo episodes are written articles and so they're a little bit scripted, but again,
I try draw people in with the story.
They're reckoned like recommend episodes.
My summer camp episode got recommended to a bunch of parents and like tagged and that
was really cool to see because it shows, first of all, I'm not alone, but it also shows those
people they're not alone either.
And I'm being really open about how that's going to affect my business.
My daughter's last day of school is tomorrow.
So, so, okay, start off with something good and juicy and valuable, either a story or
the best piece of advice from your guest or the top takeaways.
Structure your episodes so that every five minutes or so, every five to seven minutes,
you're delivering some really good value.
And then with solo episodes and then consider scripting or outlining, right?
Outlining really helps.
I should say that I'm reading a book right now called Write Useful Books and he basically
says this.
So, you want to create your outline for your book and make sure that every section delivers
some value because you don't want your readers to put the book down and feel like they wasted
their time.
And it's the same for this, right?
So he says like make sure to deliver value every heading or subheading.
I'm saying make sure to deliver some value every few minutes, right?
And it doesn't have to be huge earth shattering value, right?
It could be, oh, wow, this tool is on AppSumo and I didn't know that, right?
Or Obsidian can do what, right?
Or like, oh, how do you check?
It could be little tips along the way, right?
Extracting good questions and setting your guest up for success or creating an outline
or a script that allows you to deliver that value every few minutes.
And then the other way that you can deliver value is through your call to action, right?
This is like, you're going to ask people to do something.
If you're not, you definitely should.
You want to sprinkle that in where you can.
But if you're asking them to join your mailing list, you could say something like, hey, by
the way, if you want to get my 40 automations, you can join my mailing list, right?
Or if you want to hear even more great advice from my guest, become a member, right?
Getting them join your mailing list or become a member, you're, by delivering value through
the rest of the episode, you're proving to them that you can deliver even more value.
And getting them on your mailing list is one of the best things that you could do for your
podcast because maybe they're just listening to this one on the web or maybe somebody forwarded
it to them.
And you want to turn them into a subscriber or you want them to keep coming back.
And a mailing list puts you front and center in their inbox, right?
People are checking their email, right?
And so, or if they become a member, right, they're giving you money, but having a good
and clear and single call to action is another way where you can deliver even more value
for your listeners.
But this is only going to work if you've delivered value the rest of the way.
So, okay, let me see if there are any questions.
I haven't seen any come in.
Those are all of my prepared remarks.
I can check my notes to make sure.
I guess I did tease one thing, right?
I said I would show you the outline or the mind map for my upcoming book.
And this is still in flux.
All, you know, heavy caveat.
This might not be the finalized version, but it's called podcast cheat codes.
Now see, if I was smart, I would have a landing page ready for you to sign up and get updates
for this if you want it.
But for now, I guess the best thing to do is just join my mailing list, which you can
do over at podcastworkflows or streamlined.fm, right?
There's opt-in boxes on both, in both places.
So here it's podcast cheat codes is the working name because it's designed to help people
live time without sacrificing quality so that you can produce a good show that helps you
grow.
Um, intro is going to be my, uh, one of my clients, Annie asked me, like, how can you
run three podcasts, uh, with three kids?
And that kind of set me off on this journey.
We'll do a quick podcast audit and I'll share with you, right?
This book, the right, useful books book was hugely helpful because, um, I cut out this
entire section from the book, setting your podcast up for success, because if you already
have a podcast, you're not really going to be interested in this in a book that promises
something different.
So I replaced it with, um, a self audit of your show.
Um, let's make sure we're doing this foundationally correct.
If you want to learn more, I talk about that, right?
Um, and then we get into, Hey, you don't need to, you have a show.
It's set up to grow organically now.
You don't need to do everything.
Um, here's how you figure out how to not do everything.
Right.
And I'm showing you this outline.
If you already know all this and you don't need to buy the book, right?
Um, automation, types of automation, uh, generative AI, maybe this is like, maybe I'm going to
add this.
Um, then we get into delegation and how to build a small team, especially on a budget,
how to create your first workflow, big list of automation ideas.
Um, so this is the mind map I'm, I'm working off of.
This is going to turn into an outline.
Um, how do I zoom out again?
Right.
Like this.
Um, but I'm really excited.
I've had this, this book idea for a while and, um, I'm happy that I'm, I'm finally
making some headway on it.
And I think it's going to be good, right?
Cause I think, I think the big thing, um, uh, Chio, thank you.
I hope I said your name right.
Uh, thanks so much for being here.
Uh, you're very smart, but at times we all miss one thing or two.
Absolutely true.
No one's perfect.
Right.
And we're always trying to improve.
So, uh, Chio, thanks so much for being here and for your comment.
Again, I hope I'm saying that right.
If I'm not, let me know.
Uh, and I will happily correct myself.
Um, anyway, I've had this book, some version of this book in me for a while and I'm really
excited to, uh, get to writing it.
I took a little bit of a break after my last book, which was web development focused because
it was a grueling process.
And I think I had, uh, I think we had two kids during that process.
Um, could have just been one.
But I remember I started at pre pandemic, et cetera for this.
Uh, I haven't seen any more questions come in.
Uh, and so I want to thank everybody who watched live, uh, right now, or is watching the replay
later.
Thank you so much.
Again, if you want to get, uh, hopefully episodes that deliver a ton of value, like following
this framework I'm following here.
Um, and you want to get them ad free and longer.
You want to see like how this experiment is going to shape up, uh, with, which I don't
even know if I fully described, right?
It's the experiment.
Oh my gosh.
I opened the curiosity loop and now I'm closing it here at the end.
Um, I'm going to do the regular three act interview and I'm going to try to keep that
to 30 minutes long.
So you will get a full story, the full intended story.
And then the members only episode will be more me and my guests just chatting about
stuff, right?
Um, right now for all of the episodes that come out until Sarah's, it's really me figuring
out what like a 10 minute segment to talk about with the guest.
Um, but it ends up us like just chatting anyway.
And so I thought let's shorten the main interview, deliver as much value per minute as possible.
And then for the people who are really interested in hearing a longer conversation, um, we can
give that to them in streamlines over New York accelerated, which you can get over at
streamline.fm slash join.
Okay.
That's it for this live stream.
I'm tired.
This is a lot of work.
But thank you so much for being here.
Thanks Matt and Chio and, um, oh gosh, uh, I'm sorry.
I don't have the LinkedIn comments up in front of me right now.
Um, uh, Hensla.
I hope that's right.
Thank you so much for being here.
And everybody who joined in and was, uh, lurking, um, oh man, uh, Bruno coming in with a question
right at the end.
Love it.
Uh, what, let me change scenes and then bring your comment up again.
Um, what do you think is the right percentage of listeners to become part of your list?
That's a really good question.
And it's tough, right, because it's going to depend on, um, your topic and things like
that.
I know when I was really promoting my list to my listeners, um, I was getting, uh, like
a handful, like a dozen signups a day.
And I, I get, you know, between, well, at that time, Apple and others were reporting,
I was getting like three or 4,000 downloads per episodes in the first 30 days.
Um, it's probably closer to, uh, I get a thousand, a thousand downloads in the first seven days,
for sure.
Um, at least, uh, probably like 1200.
Um, but I'm not really promoting my mailing list on that podcast right now.
I'm really promoting, uh, the membership, right?
That's, that's the thing I want to make work there.
And I think that my mailing list is more tailored towards podcasters who want to learn.
Um, and, uh, oh, that's my chain of thought.
Oh, um, so my, my mailing list is tailored more towards podcasters who want to improve
their systems.
And my show, the streamlined solopreneur is for solopreneurs, obviously busy solopreneurs,
probably parents who want to improve their business.
My mailing list doesn't really talk about general business.
It talks pretty specifically about podcasting.
And even when I email my list about new episodes, I include like a behind the scenes production
tip for, um, for like, for the podcast.
So they're, they're going to continually get podcast information.
Anyway, that's a long way of saying, I've been promoting my membership on the show more.
Um, and I think I need to find the right kind of configuration to make that work.
So it's always an experiment.
Um, uh, you know, truth be told, it might behoove me to go back to promoting my mailing
list or creating a separate mailing list just for the show, but that's not really something
I want to do.
Um, so I think it's, you know, it's, it's going to vary depending on how closely your
mailing list is tied to your show.
I know that wasn't like a great answer.
Um, but I think it's, I think it's important for me to mention that the streamlined solo
preneur, formerly how I built it, um, is not fully aligned with what I talk about on my
mailing list.
And so there's a little bit of tension with me promoting that to people who only want to,
to, to people who aren't necessarily interested in starting a podcast.
And so I think the big value proposition that I can deliver through a call to action there
is to join the membership.
Okay.
Uh, and last question, Gio, it's fun.
Haven't heard you in a long while, probably since the past WordCamp.
Uh, did we meet at WordCamp, South Carolina, Charlotte, uh, Charleston, WordCamp Charleston,
maybe 2024, uh, circa 20, not 2024, uh, 2014, um, maybe 2013, 2014.
If you're the, the same guy I'm thinking of, um, either way, thanks so much for tuning
in today.
I really appreciate it.
Um, of course, as I'm starting to wrap up, uh, more people are joining the stream.
Um, that's great though.
If you, you know, uh, subscribe or follow me wherever you happen to be, I'm going to
go live every week.
In fact, um, I have, thanks to the book, I have a schedule for what I'll be talking about.
And so, uh, the next live stream, um, will be called should you stop doing interviews?
Interesting.
Maybe you should.
I guess we'll find out on the next longer than that about five years.
Yeah.
I've been a while.
Um, I haven't been to a WordCamp since before the pandemic.
Um, and I'm not really in the WordPress space anymore, so it's definitely pre-pandemic
situation.
I think WordCamp US or WordCamp Miami, no WordCamp US 2019 in St. Louis was the last
WordCamp I went to.
So, um, okay.
Awesome.
So I guess tune in same bat, same bat time, same bat channel next week, YouTube, LinkedIn
and Twitter.
I'm streaming on all of those.
I'll be talking about should you stop doing interviews?
Um, yeah, tune in to find out.
Thanks so much everybody for being here.
I really appreciate it.
If you are interested in becoming a member, um, you can do so at streamlined.fm slash
join until next time.
I'll see you out there.