475. Is Your Podcast Too Conversational?

0:05 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Tuesday, March 17th, 2026, and today it's our listener mailbag episode filled with real world podcasting questions like whether conversational can go too far and how to invest in gear without overspending. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, etcetera, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:21 Good morning again, podcasting, morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. Happy Saint Patty's Day if that is something you enjoy and celebrate. Which means by the way we don't have Matt Bliss with us on stage. I think he is observing Saint Patty's Day today. But on stage with me currently we have my Co host Sid Meadows, Ralphie Step, Dr. Faye, BC Babbles, Alex Baelish and also Tide AKA Nikki has joined us from the audience. A good morning to all of you and a shout out to our first members of the Clubhouse audience, Mike and Austin. Thank you for being here bright and early this morning. Today, as I said, we're going to be digging into the mailbag, have several interesting questions to dump to dive, not dump into dive into. And I want to first, before we do share with you what's coming up The rest of this week, specifically Thursday, March 19th, we're dedicating the podcasting morning chat to Podcast Thon.

2:24 By the way, Podcast Don spelled with one T. It's a global podcast movement that encourages podcasters to use their platforms to highlight a charity or a nonprofit that they care about. I'd love for members of our community to join us live and share an organization, a charity, or a 'cause that they support along with why it matters to them, right? Podcasting. We talked about the fact that this is a storytelling platform, and I have a feeling that if you have an organization you're picking, there is a story behind that and I want to hear about it. So join us live on Thursday, 7:00 AM Eastern, and tell us about a 'cause that means something to you. What do they do?

3:08 Why is their work important? This is a chance for us to come together, spotlight organizations doing meaningful work, and maybe introduce each other to causes we might not have discovered otherwise. And the charity I'm supporting is the CMTA, cmtausa.org, the name of that disease that they are researching, refining money, raising money to research. It's Charcot Marie Tooth disease. It's a neurological disease that kind of presents itself as a physical disability similarly to muscular dystrophy in the sense that basically the the brain signals don't properly send the right signals to the person's extremities.

3:55 So they're usually, it's their most affected are their wrists, fingers, ankles, feet, toes, hands, those areas. And it makes it really challenging to walk because basically the signal doesn't get there and then eventually the muscles start to weaken and deteriorate because they're not able to be used, quote UN quote, normally. Dr. Can I ask a question? Go ahead, your friend. I'm sorry, I've forgotten his name. Jonah. OK, when did Jonah find out that? When did he get diagnosed with it? Good question, thank you for asking. Actually, it is something you're born with and in many cases, not all cases, 'cause sometimes this can just happens spontaneously, but it is a genetic disease and it's passed on. And there's a whole thing about how it's passed on that's really kind of complex.

4:49 But basically, let me the way I can only explain it is using Jonah as an example. So Jonah has CMT and he if he has female children, they're guaranteed to have the disease and, and it's because of the specific strand that he has. And then if he has a boy, the boy does not have the disease and it has to do with being carried in the female chromosome. I believe so, yeah. So that's why or how it gets passed. But again, that's just for his specific strand of CMT. But there are. Several.

5:29 So it doesn't. It's not one of those things that kind of lies dormant and then all of a sudden, boom, you're showing us fine. Yeah, that is a good question as well. It doesn't generally or always show up instantaneously as far as symptoms. And I think Jonas started experiencing some sort of weakness symptoms. He started experiencing them preteen to early teen years. Yeah, so but you know, never, never the most, well, I should just say kind of clumsy growing up, right? Never really athletic because his there was just already, I guess some signs, but nothing that you could really notice other than maybe thinking he might be a little clumsy or not good at sports.

6:11 Quote UN quote. But yeah, not until his teen years was it more noticeable. And that's what actually ended up leading to the title of his book. He walks like a cowboy because he was visiting with a friend of his whose sister had never met Jonah before. And apparently once he met them and and left from that hang out, the sister asked, Hey, he walks like a cowboy. Why does he walk like that? And, and actually he loved it. He thought that that was actually brilliant. Obviously that ended up being the title of one of his books and he embraced that. And that's one of the beautiful things about Jonah is he does embrace his, this disease.

6:51 He doesn't let it define him, but he absolutely embraces it, understands it and takes it on as a challenge in a really positive way. And he's a huge inspiration to me. And that's why I'm supporting that cause. So that's a good thing to know because during podcast fawn, it's hard to say without the a fawn on it. So you can also have a CTA for him, for us, if we do like the, you know, the what is it called? What's the disease, the CMT? CMT.

7:31 The call to action would be something about buying his book, right? Sure. That would be one way you could support. I mean that would support him specifically. But if you want to support, and I will share this on Thursday as well, but since we're talking about it, if you want to support the CMTA for research, go to CMTAUSA dot org. Make sure you include the USA so cmtausa.org and you can hit that donate button at the top right hand side and donate any amount because any amount would be a huge support of the organization. So thank you in advance for that. More to come on that.

8:12 I am going to try to get Jonah to at least stop in on Thursday to share a little bit more about it. Otherwise, if not I'm we're going to be recording a little something as well so I can help promote and share this awesome organization that I also volunteer at their summer camp this year. I'll be doing it twice this year. So more on that. Also quickly, a meet up is coming to the Washington, DC area hosted by yours truly and my friend Christina. We are doing this on Thursday, March 26th at 5:30 PM Eastern at a place called Pinstripes in North Bethesda, MD. We'll give you a link in the show notes if you want to learn more about it, but you can go to Podcasting Morning Chat.

8:58 Uh oh, I think I've forgotten Podcasting Morning chat.com/EPC March, EPC March, and you can get those details there. I will be there along with a lot of other community members from the Empowered Podcasting Conference. So come checked out that we would love to see you there in person. And actually Tide, are you thinking about making it? Let's see if she can come. Up. I really hope I can. Come up there she tide some in the morning sometimes is very busy, so she'll just pop on real quick and say something and then pop right back off good. I hope you can make it tide. I would love to meet you there in person.

9:39 All right, so let's dig in to the mailbag. And of course, I got to pull out the mailbag. Grab a piece of mail here. All right, this one comes from long time community member Simona Costantini. You may have heard me tease this one last week. We didn't get to it. Simona asks, is there such a thing as a podcast that is too conversational? For example, no structure at all to the conversation, no direction, guest and host are just going off on tangents, etcetera. People say they want a conversational podcast, but what does that really mean?

10:21 And is there a way to do it that's more effective? Let's we'll dig into this. I want to hear from more people. And yes, I see several of you want to chime in. I personally do think a podcast can be too conversational. I think a lot of people say they want a conversational podcast when what they really mean is they want something that's natural, that's relaxed, that's human. But to me, natural doesn't mean winging it in these days in an organic conversation. I'm wondering, is it overdone at this point when we say that? In other words, is it just me who feels like there's a common explanation A podcaster gives when they explain their show? Oh, it's, it's just like a conversation that you're sitting in on, eavesdropping on the conversation. How many times have you heard that when you ask somebody what their podcast is about?

11:15 I think the best conversational podcast still have direction, even if the structure is subtle. So when you hear someone say they want their podcast to feel conversational, what do you think they mean? And is there really such a thing? I'm going to go to Nikki first, our guest from the audience, and then I'll check in with BC. Go ahead, Nikki, good morning. Or Tide, whatever you prefer. It's two. No, you're totally fine. You can call me Nikki, that's perfectly fine. So for me, when I think of conversational, I typically lean towards interview style like the Q&A. That's the first thing for me that comes up because most of the podcasts that I have been on as a guest have not really been natural in that sense. I've never been on a podcast where we're just shooting the breeze talking about things and it's very, it's felt very relaxed.

12:04 Every podcast has always had some sense of formality to it where it was more just AQ and A and there may be some brief commentary in between, but very little. Now, I adopted that same type of mentality for my podcast, but I just recently realized, like, as of, you know, 48 hours ago that I needed my podcast if I was really going to step up my game and have it be a podcast that could hang in the big league, so to speak. You know, with all of you guys and, and the people who you talk about, I was like, I really have to step up my game. And I wasn't 100% sure how to do that. But then I realized, you know what, it's my voice, it's my own commentary.

12:44 It's my analysis that pulls the whole podcast together, not the fact that I can bring on and attract good guests and have it be informational. That's not what's going to take my podcast to the next level and having these sort of formal conversations. What's going to take my podcast to the next level is bringing the guests on and attracting those people, but also making sure that there's a balance between the information that they're offering and the culture that people are constantly living in and thinking about South. Yesterday, I filmed my first podcast where I adopted that mentality entirely. And I said, you know what, I'm going to interview this guy where I'm going to ask him questions.

13:25 But the conversation is going to be focused primarily on the culture that parents are living every day. And the example to that was instead of just interviewing the guy and asking him questions about his life and the way he raised his child, now the conversation was centered around modern day parenting philosophies around like low expectations and the current educational system and the expectation that some parents have that they have to wait for someone or something like an institution to step in and help their child when there's a problem, etcetera. And so that shift in the conversational style really elevated the the podcast, I think.

14:09 And I'm looking forward to feedback on that on that episode, because as soon as I post it, I'm going to ask for direct feedback. Awesome. We could do an evaluation episode if you want, Nikki, happy to do that for you with that episode. And thank you for your insights. I, I something that really struck me that I wrote down, as you said it was that you're looking to find that balance of structure and culture. I think that's what you said. If it's not, please forgive me. And I think even taking that a step further or adding on to culture is really that idea of storytelling, right? Because the culture often times harvests a lot of interesting stories. And I think again, as we've, as I mentioned earlier and I, we mentioned before that storytelling is really, in my opinion, the heart of what makes a podcast so listenable. Or maybe not if you're not doing any storytelling. But yeah, I think that it's creating some structure so that there's you can so that you can navigate the conversation, but then allowing for that room, that breathing room, that storytelling, so that and and allow the storytelling to happen, right?

15:18 Not just force it, but allow it to happen. Sit back and in and enjoy and ask more questions about the story, etcetera. That's what keeps people engaged and listening. I see that here Mike Short puts in the chat. Really depends on the host and his or her ability to lead a conversation and be able to change directions based on how the conversation goes. Style of podcast, skill of host and format all play a role and it can it be too conversational? Probably for most people yes, but not for everyone. Valid points there, Mike. I appreciate that. All right, I see lots of people want to chime in. I'm going to go to BC 1st and then I'm going to check in with Sid.

16:03 Yeah. I think the the goal to be Uber conversational is one of the many reasons I call my show casual Babble because I know we're not going to stick to any strict script. And often when I send my interviewee a prep sheet, I have only a list of topics, but I tell them in the prep sheet, this is not a verbatim script. These are things I want to try to make sure we hit on the conversation. We will pivot, we will have little nuance tangents here and there. But that's part of the beauty of it. And even though I don't explicitly say this, I know I want my show to eventually, ultimately come across as well. What happens if you do walk into a room and you're listening to two thought leaders discuss something happening in today's business world that is catered to the young entrepreneur?

16:54 And what happens if you just choose to sit down at the table and listen to them discuss whatever the topic is? And for me, this just goes back to us discussing, you know, listening intently to somebody because if you've really do that, and if you listen to those moments where they touch on something in a response to an earlier question and you take that opportunity to open up sub questions and, and nice, great little pivot points to really explore the nuances of any given subtopic of a of an episode or, or a recording session. And it really opens up a lot of great new insights that you may not have planned for. And if you do it well enough, I think there's really an arch you can develop into it where you can find a flow with yourself that you can kind of pull someone into that way. It doesn't seem too interview style. It seems super casual.

17:53 It seems super flow based. So it can come across ultimately as very casual, but still having a focus and an overall goal. And I knew I had one other little caveat I wanted to mention. I'm going to lose it now. So I'm going to give my time back because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to recall it in a timely fashion. So I'm going to give it back. Installing technique. Give it back. Thank you, VC, appreciate it and totally relatable. I know you've heard me do that many a time here on this show for getting one of the points I want to make and even writing it down sometimes doesn't do me any justice as well. But thank you, Fairpoint.

18:34 I'm with you there. I want to keep it moving because there are lots of people that want to chime in. I'm going to go to Sid Ralph and I think Alex wants to chime in as well. Go for it, Sid. Good morning. Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Great question, Simona. I have this type of podcast and I have an intention of what the topic is going to be about. And I do have a run of show document that most of the time I really don't follow. I look at it occasionally, but I'd have the idea of the topics I want to talk about. But what I tell, my guess is it's literally just we're just talking shop. We're just like having a conversation. And I do that specifically because I don't want them to get stressed out about, oh, I'm behind a mic and I'm on camera and you know, blah, blah, blah. Because most of my guests have never been on podcasts before. But you know, my goal is to just, it is literally just a conversation.

19:27 Again, I have an intention and a direction I want to take it. But sometimes it doesn't go there because if you're doing your job as a host listening, the guest is going to say something that's riddled with gold and you're going to be able to take the conversation somewhere else or go deeper or get more Nuggets out of them. So, but you know, I like the informalness of just having a conversation. Now, on the flip side, I watched a show the other day that a friend of mine was on. It was a music show, which is not something that I typically watch. And it was a YouTube first show, which is also something that I don't typically do. Anyways, it was awful. It was like these two guys just literally rambling.

20:12 And I thought to myself, what's the purpose of the show? What are they trying to do? Where are they trying to go and what are they trying to do? And then they talk about a song and they play a they play a clip and then they have this. My friend came in and talked about his view of the song because he listened to the song. So that was the intent. But between those little segments, it was just like straight up rambling. So you can have a conversational podcast and it be not really serve much purpose and have very little intention. Thank you. Sid, I have a follow up question for you. If that's the case, what are the signs that a podcast conversation has lost its direction? You know, you just said you listen to the show and it was awful and it sounded like there was no real direction of that show. So what are those signs for podcasters who may not really realize it?

21:03 What are those signs of that they've lost direction on during that conversation? That's a really good question mark. And I think that my, my initial response to that is if you're just rambling, like if you're just rambling and you, you brought somebody in to talk about podcasting and all of a sudden you're talking about your favorite sports team, right? If you're just rambling or if the conversation goes too far off track from what you were supposed to be talking about, I think those are some signs. And also, I think a really good sign here is how is your guest engaging with you? Like, are they responding back to you or they kind of sitting quietly listening to you ramble?

21:44 I mean, watch the body language and the facial expressions of your guest. That could also give you some clues. I hope that answered your question. Yeah, I think it does. Yeah. Dr. did you want to add on to that? I know I'm skipping the line most. People are saying that yes, it can be too conversational. I used to edit a show where the host decided to interview his best friend. And I'm going to caution people to keep a sharp eye on on the conversation because it can very definitely veer off into forgetting that you're on the mic and just having just the two of you talk. And no one knows what the hell you're talking about except for the two of you.

22:32 So it was, hey, you know, I love Tony. Oh, yeah. I went to temple with Tony. Oh, did you go to temple with Tony? Oh, you know what we're talking about for Tony's. No, I went to temple with Tony. I mean, it was just so nothing. And they completely forgot that they were on the mic. So yeah, I did a lot of content editing on that show. Yeah, that was exactly what was just popping through my head. Is, is that's when you're creating good, bad, or indifferent, you're creating potentially more work for yourself because you got to do more content editing. You got to find those moments after the fact, which again, I'm not judging and saying whether it's good or bad because in some ways that could be to your advantage, right?

23:12 Is to allow the conversation to go wherever it wants to go, as long as you have time or the resources to edit some of that conversation out so that you're keeping it entertaining and interesting for your audience. Right. And Sid had mentioned something about rambling. You know, when you're in the middle of a ramble, sometimes it's hard to catch yourself. Like if you're on a roll, you know, occasionally you'll stop and take a breath and go, OK, I'm rambling. But for the most part, a lot of people will not be able to catch themselves. They're like on a soapbox, you know? Yeah, yeah. Especially the guests, I think that guests who more times than not, they aren't really trained to do this. They don't have the repetitions to recognize when that's happening.

24:03 And I think, again, that's a sign of a good host to be able to catch that and redirect the conversation accordingly. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Dr. BC, Did you want to share the point that you just remembered? Yes, so I do sometimes have to let my guests know and even I do this in like job interviews too that when I listen intently and maybe others may be able to feel this too. I have a tendency to have resting bitch face so and that can sometimes cause an interviewee to be discouraged. Like I don't care about what they're talking about, but I have to let them know I do care. And when I listen intently, I don't control how my face responds. I just let it kind of droop into this RBF state, but I'm listening so I know how to respond.

24:49 Maybe other people people out there have similar caveats to their approach and interviewing, but I do have that particular element I do have to clarify prior to most interviews. Fair enough, I've definitely witnessed the RBF before from BC. You're welcome. I've seen it there and wondered if he was happy or you know, just didn't want to be here sometimes. But but ever since he's called that out, that's this not being the first time I've known. It's just B CS face, that's all. He just has that look when he's not I guess when he's just not engaged in the actual conversation, meaning speaking in the conversation. That resting bitch face definitely comes out. I've seen it, yes.

25:31 Ralph, did you want to add something to all this? I did. I have a little bit of a different approach to this and I think the key conversation we should be having is with our audience. And I think if you want to be really effective content creator, you should be engaging your audience. When I'm listening to a show and I'm talking back to the show, when I'm feeling like I need to comment on the show, I think that and it's not what we're talking. It's a little bit of a different take, But I, I feel like that's the conversation we should be focusing in on. And if you have two people, you're doing a guest show. I'm the third party in the room. I, oh, I got to get this in. I want to say this, I think that one of the places where I see this done exceptionally well is on the podcast or the pod News Weekly Review. Sam and James do this.

26:13 They do it throughout the show, but then they have a part at the end where they go back and talk about what's going on with you, James, what's going on with you, Sam. So I think there's a place for it. The third thing I want to say is the money guy on the show. This is a great opportunity to build in some affiliate, build in some ideas of way to build some support for your podcast by saying, you know what? I if you're feeling the same way I'm feeling, if you, you know, this is a place where you can demonstrate some value that you can bring to them. So I just don't want to miss sight notes because the conversational part is a great segue into, hey, if you're feeling this way, I work with such and such, or I have this product or I have this person that I could recommend. So I think there's a lot of Simone, I think there's a lot of value in the conversation. I just think it has to be structured. I was listening to 1:00 this morning, actually appeared on somebody's show and they totally changed the structure of the show and they put this huge conversation at the front. I was like, that's terrible.

27:06 I want to give them value first. I think there's a place for conversation later, but I think you've got to give your listener value at the front end. So thank you for letting me pipe in with that Mark. Yeah, you're welcome. And by the way, I should say, because you you said Simona's name and that triggered something in my mind, I should say that I think it's safe to assume that Simona has a very strong opinion of this. And I'm guessing that that opinion is, is that she believes podcast can get too conversational and lose its focus as an inexperienced podcast producer, I know that she must have an opinion on that. I think she was asking because she was just curious what the community feels about that question. So just, yeah, adding that little asterisk there. And yeah, Ralph, I mean, this all goes back to, again, something that we just mentioned a moment ago that I think that this mostly comes back to the host. It's the host's responsibility to have that quote UN quote, great conversation because in my opinion, a great conversation can sound loose and natural.

28:06 It can sound conversational, but the host is still guiding it behind the scenes. You know, I, I know Sid, I've heard Sid do this before, right. Sid does allow to, to allow the guest to be conversational. It, he allows the conversation to go in potentially different directions, but I've also seen him guide it back to the direction he wants it to go. I think there is a skill to that and I think it, it's it can come with practice. By the way, good morning to Jonathan Howard, who's joined us. And I just want to shout him out again and say great episode yesterday, the Obsession Worthy podcast episode. Thoroughly enjoyed that one. And you can go back and listen to that one at Podcasting Morning chat.com/O WP.

28:56 That is the those are the correct initials that I continue to get wrong and even flustered Jonathan yesterday in the process. Anyway, So going back to it here, what can a host do? I mean, Ralph gave some some ideas here or an idea here, but what can a host do to keep a conversation natural while still giving it shape? Any thoughts on that? How do we as hosts keep it sounding natural, feeling like a conversation, but still shaping it the entire duration, or at least a duration? Alex, good morning. Go for it. Hey, when it comes to get and hosting, it's to me it's about rapport and trying to find out what makes that guest tick, what they're interested in and that if you can put the guests at ease. You know, Sid was saying a lot of the people that he talks to are first time podcasters And you know, once you start, I mean, I do this in my own non podcasting life in terms of my job.

30:06 You know, you have people that are scared to do CPR, they're scared to work on mannequins. You find out what they love, why they're there, and work from there and chip away at it so that they can get to you can get to the layers that make them comfortable. Hopefully it's not too comfortable like we just talked about, But and then once you find out what makes them tick as a host, you can kind of pull on those strings, so to speak, and get the best out of them. And I think that that's what it's about it. It's really about getting the best out of them. So I know Todd had something. Yeah, that's awesome. I appreciate that response. Yeah, I think it is the host's responsibility to develop a little chemistry, a little rapport with their guest. And that's why we're not going to go into it today because I feel like lately we've been going at it at nauseam. But that is why I personally prefer having a pre interview, even just just getting face to face with people, having a few minutes prior to the show, the day, days before the show. It there's just something that it creates for you and your guest that next time you sit down, there's a little less awkwardness or discomfort because you've gotten that initial meeting out of the way and you feel a little more loose.

31:26 In most cases, not all cases. But I like I said, I don't want to dig too far into it. Go ahead, Tide. Sure. Yes, For me, in terms of shaping the episode, I think that one important piece is to challenge any assumptions that people might be making about the topic at hand. So having a conversation with someone, I can usually pick out what the assumptions that the guest is making and what assumptions my audience might be making about the topic to shape the episode. I also might try to identify like any and that helps to shape it as well. And it kind of engineers the episode in a specific direction because instead of just the conversation being informational or like AQ and a or, or just banter, ranting back and forth, it's it actually has a purpose and a focus. And that really is to bring a level of enlightenment to the conversation.

32:19 We are assessing you waiting myths, relooking or re examining at information. And so I try to also start my my podcast. I don't do it great yet, but I try not to start the podcast with a topic. I try to start with some sort of a cultural or a personal problem that people are facing. And I start with that tension. The destination for me for the rest of my, the rest of the podcast becomes very clear because now I know what the challenge is and where what emotional insights I need to distill. And so you guys do a really good job of this on on this show is when somebody says something, I know Ralph does it a lot. And I think it's good when somebody says something, Ralph, when Mark, you're not here a lot of times and you do it too. A lot of you guys will summarize in terms of like this question that we're answering.

33:15 So we all kind of say our piece and then addled into one emotional insight or one piece of activation, information that someone can use and then take and apply to their podcast. Thank you, Tide. I love all of this. And yeah, I I definitely do that intentionally. I will try to summarize on occasion what was just spoken right out of the gate, right? Like you'll say something, I'll talk about it, I'll summarize it and then I'll get into my answer. The other thing that I like to do is also I try to wrap up summarizing the original question. Again, it's a way to kind of reiterate your point and show your audience that you've actually answered the question that was asked.

33:59 And it goes, that goes a long way. And by the way, it's something that while you were sharing Tide, it reminded me one of the things I like to do sometimes with guests, if I like to try to find out some of their interests or hobbies outside of what we're going to actually talk about on the show. Because if I can do that and find a way to ask them about it, work that in that goes to Alex's point, again, building that chemistry, that rapport, right? So sometimes I, if it's during a pre interview, I may literally ask or poke around a little bit with them and find out what some of their interests are. What I really like to do is Google them a little bit further than just, again, just not just the topic, but just learn a little bit more about them.

34:45 Or I'll even stalk their social media for that regard and see if they're posting anything of interest. And this way I can call to it, especially if there's something that we have in common, I'll say, hey, yeah, I was on your social media preparing for our interview and I saw that you love The Muppets. I love The Muppets too. I'm look at my, here's my Kermit the Frog puppet behind me, etcetera, etcetera. It's just a way to loosen things up, get them feeling more comfortable. Yeah. Sid, I think you had something while Tide was sharing. Did you want to say something? Yes, Sir, I did. So I brought up a couple of really good points. And one of the things that I have done is when the conversation goes off track, because they can go off track, I'll say something like, hey, this has been really great, but I want to go back to what we were talking about. I want to go back to the question and then I take us back to where before we, you know, went down the the hole, if you will.

35:43 The other thing that I like to do is to I learned this and you know, I was getting my coach certification. I like to reframe what the guest just said, especially if you're interviewing a tech person or a business owner that has a tech company or does something really complicated, man that can talk so far over your head. And so I like to reframe like, OK, Mark, I just want to make sure. Let me let me tell you what I heard you say was podcasting is not for the week. Podcasting takes lots of hours and it's podcasting is really expensive. Did I get that correct? And so that then is allowing me to tell the guest what I heard or the listener what I heard and what they should have heard as well.

36:24 And then I give the guest the opportunity to confirm or to correct me. And there have been cases that I've been wrong, which is also really leaning into like getting to the meat of the conversation and allowing them to, you know, if I heard something, if I heard it incorrectly, then my audience heard it incorrectly. Thank you, Sid. Appreciate those those insights and I'm going to keep it going here just for sake of time. Ralph, did you want to add something? Yeah, I want to add something, that kind of champion, something you said. Mark, here's the deal. If you are going to be a host, you got to do your homework. That's how you prevent these things in the 1st place. Have a plan, have a system, manage the conversation. I will tell you behind the scenes, I'm going to spill the beans here on Mark.

37:10 Mark does this and Mark does it really well. When Mark puts together a show, Mark has a plan for the show, and Mark is an expert at illustrating and promoting. Orchestrating is the word I'm looking for. Orchestrating that plan. Well, guess what? If you're going to host a conversation, be like Mark, make sure you have a plan, have guardrail set up. I will share and I'm sure Mark won't mind me saying this before today's conversation. Mark has an idea of where he wants this to go. Now he's opening it up to the community because Mark values all of us, but he understands it. There are times when we have to have a guardrail. The thing that frustrates me immensely is when I go on someone's show and it's just like this. We're going to have a stream of consciousness that's not valuable to your audience.

37:56 Have a plan. You got to do a little homework. You know, it's not just some just let's go have a let's go hang out and have a beer with our friends. That's not what we do here. Now, there may be a place for that and you may have a show that works like that, but I'm just saying do your homework, have a structure and and understand you got to guard your audience is valuable. Make sure you're bringing them value by being prepared for that. So Mark, I hope you don't mind me making a little bit of red face there a little bit, but this is what Mark does very, very well. Yes, my face matching my Indiana sweatshirt right now for sure. And thank you, Ralph. Yeah, I, that is, I don't know, for better or for worse, that's just my style.

38:37 I have to have some kind of plan in front of me. Even if we end up going off track. I'm OK about going off track, but I, I will have too much stress and anxiety going in blindly to an episode. Sid and I had a conversation not too long ago, Sid mentioning, you know, hey, why don't we go back to some of the old, old days where it was not a curated conversation, where it was just, let's swing it and see what happens. And that for me personally just terrifies me. I won't sleep at night knowing that tomorrow we're just going to wing it. And again, it's not a knock, It's not a judgement on those who do wing it.

39:19 It's it's specifically for me and I can't personally operate that way. But see. It's also pretty counterintuitive because if you're not tracking what it is you're discussing, you have really no way to avoid redundancy. You don't want to talk about the same thing in a back-to-back episode because you're not progressing and insights, especially if your aim is to provide something to the audience that they can take home and apply to their day-to-day life. Yeah, fair enough. That makes yeah perfect sense. Thank you BC. OK. Let's dive into the wheel jargon before we do, and I know I say that wrong jargon is the right way to say it, and we'll dive into one more mailbag after this, so stick with us. The idea of this wheel is there are lots of terms in podcasting and content creation that get thrown around a lot. Sometimes we here on the show take advantage of that. We assume that you know what all of these terms mean, and quite frankly, we have a lot of newer podcasters in our audience. So I want to make sure we are accommodating them as well. So I'm going to go ahead and spin this wheel. If you can't hear it on Clubhouse or elsewhere, don't worry, it'll be heard on the podcast. But it is spinning as we speak right now. Let's see where it lands.

40:46 Always takes a moment for it to finally OK this. Well, I was going to say this might be more opinion than anything, but no, I think there are clear definitions to this community versus audience. So a lot of times people will throw out the term audience, right? And do they really mean that? So I'm curious, what do you think? What is the difference between having a community and having an audience who would like to share? Go ahead BC. So my off the cuff definition, not not to be too off the cuff, but I would say the audience, your ideal audience base, that's your ideal demographic of people that you are aiming to engage with at any given point during your show.

41:36 Your, you've based your topic, your format, your frequency, your sector of your podcast around this ideal group of people you're hoping will engage with your show as you produce it, as it goes out there, as it lives in the digital ether. And then I would distinctify, that's not a word, but I would distinctify the community as the portion of that audience that has engaged in a way that they have showcased some form of loyalty, whether or not that's signing up for a newsletter, joining your Substack, connecting on social media.

42:18 You notice that they are commonly downloading pretty consistently your episodes as they come out, they're commenting things like that. I would call that engaged sub sect of your target audience, the community. So in review audience, the group of people that you hope to engage with, community is the sect of that audience that has engaged and are consistently engaged. Yeah, I'm right there with you BC and yeah, I could say that that those audience members are the equivalent of those download numbers that you see on your podcast hosting platform. That's your audience, right? And you know, granted, the people that join us in the mornings alive are, are quote, UN quote, audience members. I call them audience because that's the terminology used here on Clubhouse.

43:08 But in my mind, I really consider those people community, especially the ones I'm looking at right now here on stage on Clubhouse. These are people that regularly show up in the mornings to listen to this show. I consider those people community members, right? Because they are engaging, they are participating. Tide, who's on stage with us every day, she I can absolutely consider a community member, not an audience member. To BC's point, she's not somebody that's just listening that I hope to engage with. This is a person who engages with us every day. Sid, did you want to add on to this? I'm going to say the same thing, but I'm going to say it differently, OK?

43:50 An audience is people who listen. The community is people who engage. Yeah, putting it quite simply, that is the best way to put it. Yeah. Thank you, Sid. All right, so that is the wheel of jargon. This is the mailbag. If you could only see me on video, I hope you come to podcastingmorningchat.com/join us to find out how you can see us on video, because I do that. That sound effect. Very makeshift. It is quite literally me moving out of the way from my microphone to shuffle a bunch of papers for you. All right, so this next mailbag question and actually, Jonathan, this might be one for you. Let me make sure I still have it. Yes, I have it right here in front of me. This comes from Reddit as a matter of fact, and it says I'm a 28 year old female and work at a medical device company. But I've always wanted to do something more creative with my life.

44:51 When I was younger I tried acting and music but things didn't work out the way I had hoped. At some point I started telling myself maybe I was just being overly optimistic. She goes on to say. Recently I've been thinking about starting a podcast. My idea isn't necessarily to become famous, but more to talk with interesting people and learn from different perspectives. The thing that makes me hesitate is that most successful podcast today seem to start with people who already have a platform on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube. I don't really have a following like that, so part of me wonders who would even listen. How many people have asked that question out loud in this community?

45:36 I also know part of the problem is me. If one thing goes wrong, my brain immediately assumes the whole idea won't work and I abandoned it before giving it a real chance. I can relate to that big time. She finishes up by saying. So I'm curious, for people who started podcasts without an existing audience, how realistic is it to grow one from scratch? Great question, Jonathan, I'm going to come to you, but I'm going to give you a minute to think that over. I'll give you that minute while BC responds first. To go to a real life example, I have a client who is post retirement. She comes from the health industry. She previously had no social media.

46:18 She has never podcasted before, but she wanted to get into the digital storytelling realm. And I can confirm as of this morning, I'm going to have a meeting with her later today that in the past month, again, having no previous social media, having no previous following anywhere, she on Facebook, which is her primary form of engagement, she's had over 370 views in just the past month alone. She's seen engagement and that's just from posting a couple times a week with consistent weekly episodes. So there's definitely an absolute ground for you to build something organic. And again, at this kind of goes back to us saying don't compare yourselves to the anomalous.

47:07 And granted, she didn't mention the Joe Rogan or Logan Paul, any of them crazy anomalous anomalous podcasters. But yes, it is a smart marketing choice if you have already a following somewhere to bring them into podcasting. But you don't have to have that. Yeah, Thank you. BCII tend to agree with you. I mean, I worry about this particular person, right? Because I think that most of us here would probably agree that you can do this. You can grow an audience from scratch using a podcast. And if you're not making any major effort, whether it's financial or time to help grow that audience, grow that community, then it's going to be a slow burn.

47:50 It's going to probably take a while. Look, this very community I've done up until recent and even then some for that matter, I have done very little to promote this. And we've been at it now for four years, right. And I would still consider our podcast following relatively small. And, and now I'm recognizing that there are some things I want to do, need to do if I want to grow this community. And that's going to take some more time and probably a financial investment. But I'm not saying that this is something you have to do. I'm just saying that if you are someone like this person who says the, the problem that they believe is partially themselves, because if something goes wrong, they immediately assume the whole idea doesn't work and they abandon it. That's that's where I get concerned for this person. So I think that this person really would want to consider a real strategy for growth if they're going to go in this and not only focus on the content itself. That's that's a big part of it and it starts with your content, but I think you need a strategy built in there as well. Ralph, I know you like to talk about strategies. Go for it.

49:06 Yeah. And what I want to say here to answer this question is what is your why? Before you do anything else, define what your why is. And then once you define what your why is, how are you going to measure success? Because there's a bunch of ways to measure success. You can measure with downloads. I don't think that's a good measure of success. You can measure with interactions of people. You can measure with money. I like money side of stuff, but know your why and know what the measurement is because that's the thing that's going to keep you going. You may not have anybody to start off with, Mark and you and I probably agree with this, that that is a hard slog when you do that. That is not easy if you're not speaking to somebody. The discoverability is not a simple process. A lot of people think, well, I'm just going to put it out there and people are going to find it magically. I got a news for you.

49:55 It doesn't usually happen like that. You know, it's word of mouth, it's one-on-one, but know your why. Build a system around how you're going to measure if you are being successful. Because the other side of this, it's success is what you define success to be. It's not what other people say that it is. And I think a lot of people get burned out in podcasting because they look at success by these metrics of followers and viral videos and downloads that may not be success for you. You can have 10 downloads and be extremely successful. I have one show that it's it doesn't get a lot of downloads, but it's successful because people push back to me. It's a way for me to speak what's in my heart. So know what your why is and know what how you measure that success.

50:40 Mark, thanks for letting me chime in with that. Thank you, Ralph. I appreciate it. Yes, with you there fully, wholeheartedly. Jonathan, are you able to talk? I know you have a docking, A dogging bark, a barking dog in the background. Oh, wait. Let's see if he can chime in. Go ahead. Yeah. So I mean, you can start. You can start small. There's a lot of things that you can do. I think starting within an existing community, you know, find Facebook groups and stuff that's gonna help you build quicker, you know, small and mighty small and loyal is better than anything. So even if you've got 10 really great people that listen to your podcast that you're impacting, that's, that's powerful. That makes a difference.

51:32 Yeah, thank you, Jonathan. I think that's a really important point. It's focusing on the people that you do have that are listening, even if it is 10 people, focusing on who they are, getting to know them, appreciating them, showing them gratitude, getting them involved. These are ways that you can focus less on oh how many more people are coming through that door and start focusing more on those people that are there so that you can better understand why it is that these people are interested in your content and do more of that to find more like minded people. Sid, did you want to add something? Yeah, I was thinking about my journey as I was listening to everybody here.

52:13 And her question is about is, is it unrealistic to start a podcast with no audience or no social media following? Thank you for putting that into the chat. Rough. And the reality is we all have an audience. We just don't call them that. I had people that followed me. I had people that were connected with me when I started my podcast. I had people that had bought for me. I had people that I'd worked with. And so this young lady, whoever she is, she's got a network of people. It's called a network of people that likely will listen because most of us, especially those of us that started from scratch, the first people that listened to our show were our friends and our family and then we grew from there. So I would wager to bet she already has a network of people that would likely because they like her, maybe because they know her would TuneIn to hear what she's going to talk about. There were people that tuned in because they know me and they like me and they trust me.

53:06 So I think we all have a built in network. Agreed. Yeah. And that's how I've always started, by recruiting my personal and professional networks and with every podcast venture I've had and with every podcast client, that's what I recommend to them as well as one strategy. Yeah. Tap into those people that know you, that you know are more likely to support what you're doing. It's a good start. It's not necessarily something you want to rest your hat on long term, right? Because you do want to grow this audience and your personal network may not always resonate with the content that you're making, but it is a great place to start. I'm with you there, Sid. Ralph, did you have more you wanted to add?

53:47 Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing to what Sid just said, because I think we can all learn from that. And what Sid is really saying is you, we all have an audience already, and I think that's ideal. Here's what you can do. Say to your audience, hey, if you're getting value from what I'm bringing you, tell somebody, tell a friend. You know, I'll give you a church example. At church sometimes we say bring a friend Sunday. It works. It works because you are the best ambassador. Your people, those core 10 people are or your die hard people are your brand ambassadors. Reach out to them and say, like, I end my show sometimes. Hey, if you got value today, one of the best ways you can help your friend is to tell them about the show. I think that is a brilliant thing.

54:28 And I think Sid was was saying that is that we all have an audience. Ask that audience to speak to other people and that's the way it grows. This is the best way to grow A podcast is word of mouth, one-on-one people telling another person and tells another person and tells another person. That's how you really grow. So, Sid, I champion what you said, my friend. Yeah, and I see Sid was not going that right back to you while you were sharing there. Ralph. We have some synergy there for sure. And I think this is a great place to wrap up today's conversation. So thank you all for some really good discussions today. I hope that this served a lot of people. I think there was a lot of value to be had here. And a reminder that we're back tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern Time, covering all the news around the world of podcasting and sharing our thoughts and opinions of those different stories. So come check that out and be in the know. I think it'll be helpful for you as a content creator. And then again, remember Thursday, it's our podcast on episode.

55:27 Bring your favorite charity, nonprofit organization, etcetera, that you think deserves to be supported and share a little bit about why you're bringing that along the way. So tomorrow, What News Thursday Podcast on, more to come on the rest of the week, and a big announcement tomorrow as well, by the way. So stick around for that and until tomorrow, make it a great day everybody, take care.