How to Get 13 Million Downloads & Escape the Social Media "Rented Land" Trap with Jordan Blair

Are you relying too much on social media to build your audience? In this episode of Podcasting Momentum, we dive deep into brand building with podcasting alongside Jordan Blair, producer at Buzzsprout. Jordan shares her wild career journey from working in accounting to creating a bedtime stories podcast that organically reached over 13 million downloads.

We explore why building an audience purely on social platforms leaves you acting as a "hostage" on "rented land," and how true ownership comes from leveraging your RSS feed. Jordan also shares unique strategies for podcast lead generation, including "boots on the ground" tactics like using QR codes to find listeners exactly where they are.

Key Takeaways in this Episode:

• Pivot When Necessary: Jordan originally targeted 7-to-9-year-olds but realized through a listener survey that her actual audience consisted of adults, leading to a massive growth spike when she changed her podcast category to mental health.
• Avoid the Social Media Trap: Stop trying to be everywhere at once; spreading yourself across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter is a quick path to burnout.
• Recording Best Practices: Skip the echoey kitchen or bathroom—recording in a closet full of soft clothes is often better than an expensive, untreated room.
• Navigating AI: While AI is fantastic for cleaning up bad audio or organizing thoughts, listeners are getting tired of fully automated "AI slop".

Connect with Jordan Blair:

• Dreamful Bedtime Stories Podcast: https://www.dreamfulstories.com/
• Jordan Blair Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-blair-a7124231b
• Jordan on Buzzcast: http://buzzcast.buzzsprout.com/

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Transcript

0:00

To take something where you've started a podcast to help your kids go to sleep, to turn that into thirteen million downloads. That's big. How do we translate that into business? That is what this week's guest is going to talk about. Stay tuned. Jordan, you started out and this is what I love. You started out in accounting and now you go to a podcast. You had Dreamful Bedtime Stories which was essentially for your kids. Mhm. And now you work for Buzzsprout. That is one hell of a career path. How did this happen? How did how did this happen. When was it like screw accounting. I'm going to become a podcaster. Oh man. I spent seven years in the accounting firm and I was I was doing I worked from like, receptionist up to bookkeeper Because. If you have a background in accounting, like especially these days, you know that the computer software does it for you. So it's a very, very mindless task to be a bookkeeper and do like payroll and stuff like that, because the computer programs do it all for you. And so I discovered podcasts in twenty sixteen because of bookkeeping, and I fell in love with them. And, you know, I just kind of felt like I hit a bit of a ceiling in my career, like seven years in accounting firm, and I wasn't really going anywhere because it was just bookkeeper. Right. And so I quit that job and then it like, was like the pandemic hit and I was like, oh no, what do I do? And so really, it's so funny. My My Wild Ride is actually a little bit wilder than what you even describe, because then I got into, uh, petitioning the Department of Homeland Security for non-immigrant visas for agriculture in the area. And I turned out to be really good at that. And so that was like a side gig. But then I also like got into graphic design, and I took some Skillshare classes and then became like a, like freelance designer for this company in Toronto. And then yes, basically what happened was I got my kids into podcasting and they wanted to listen to podcasts, to go to sleep. And a lot of the bedtime story podcasts for that age group were very short. And I don't know about a lot of other kids, but I know for certain my children do not go to sleep in thirteen minutes. So if you have an episode thirteen, it's not going to cut it. And a lot of times they were like very high energy and kind of bubbly voices because it's geared towards toddlers and my kids are a little bit more mature than that. And so, um, I figured, you know what? I was a theater major in college, and I was a children's librarian back before I was an accountant. And so I'm just going to kind of like Frankenstein these experiences together and make my own podcast, because how hard can it be? And so, yeah, that's that's kind of like the journey into, like starting a podcast. But I just did a bunch of research through, you know, YouTube and listening to podcasts about podcasting. I just consumed it all. And I got really obsessive about it, about how much you can do with podcasts as opposed to like starting a YouTube channel or starting something else. And I just realized that there's so much you can, there's so much more that you can do through podcasting. And I got really involved in the community and I, you know, was kind of annoying in the community, to the point where Buzzsprout finally said, do you just want to be like a moderator of our community group? And I said, yes, thank you. And and then I, um, got to guest on a couple of the Buzzsprout podcasts, of which I was a super fan of buzz cast. I mean, I listened to all of their episodes probably two or three times through. I just I love the energy. I love that they make podcasting so fun. And, um, then they announced that they needed a producer because their producer was leaving and I was like, okay, well, this is my chance and time to kick the annoyance in. And so I guess and now I'm the producer, I, I guess we're kind of kindred spirits in a way, because I often say that whoever drew my career path was drunk. Yes. There's some there's some bobbing. There's some weaving. Um, there's three steps forward, two steps sideways, a jump and a skip. Um, yeah. That's, uh. That's interesting. Um. What? I don't even know how to respond to that, which is ironic with this. You've gotten to the point, though, of, if I remember correctly, it's over thirteen million downloads, correct? Yeah. On on Dreamfall. Yeah. The Bedtime Story one. You describe it though as a long game. Um, you obviously saw a whole, uh, just this giant gap in the industry like, hey, my kids don't do this, my kids don't do this, and my kids don't do this, and I want something for my kids specifically because it wasn't out there. Um, you also describe the long game of persistence, which we'll we'll we'll say you're not annoying to them. You're just persistent. Yeah, sure. For for a business owner like we specialize in mainly like marketing oriented type podcasts, when someone's in that messy middle, that stuck part where traction feels maybe a little slow. Where there's like, what was a was there a point where you made like. This tactical shift like, hey, I need to look at this a little bit differently. In order to make that next step. Was there a spot where you had that? You know, what's interesting is, um, like we had stated a couple times already, I made the podcast for my kids. And so when I created it, you know, they always say like, have your audience in mind when you create your podcast. And so in my head, I'm thinking, you know, seven to nine years old or four to nine years old. And so I started this podcast and I wanted it to be really high quality, similar to like, if you've ever heard the calm app stories where they have. Yeah, they have like A-list celebrities and there's this beautiful music, bedding, and it's very ambient and kind of just magical. And I wanted to create that for kids. And what happened, what really shifted things and actually propelled me forward even faster because I was already experiencing growth that was way past what I anticipated or wanted. And, um, what happened was I created a, uh, listener survey through a Google form just to, like, get an idea, you know, how old are you? How many kids do you have? Because I'm thinking about sponsorships. Right. And sponsors want to know these kind of demographics, which are hard to obtain when you are a podcaster, because we don't have a lot of those analytics that you get through Google and all that stuff where, you know, everyone's like intimate details. And so I created a listener survey and I got like over two hundred responses to it. And I was looking at it and I was just like, oh my gosh, my audience isn't children. It was just like this crazy, like light bulb moment where I realized the vast majority of my audience was actually like college students through to like seventy year olds. And some of them had kids. Some of them didn't. Um, some of them did have kids, but their kids didn't listen to it. And they're like, I had as a line item in the survey, what kind of story would you like me to, you know, have in the future? Because honestly, one of the greatest ways to create, uh, like topic ideas is to ask your audience, what do they want, right? And then they provide it to you and you go, great. And you select from what they've provided and it's amazing. And, um, a lot of these stories were like, um, and a lot of these stories were things like, um, Picture of Dorian Gray and Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and, uh, Pride and Prejudice. And they were asking for these, like, adult classic novels. And so, yeah, I realized I was just, like, doing this, like simple survey. What blew me away was my audience was not actually the audience I thought they were. And so in my head, I'm talking to like, children, like elementary school aged children. And it turns out I'm talking to, like, full blown adults. And so What I ended up doing was I took my podcast. It was a huge decision. It was really scary actually, because you can change your podcast category at any time. And so I took kids and family out of my podcast category and I changed it to mental health. And then my podcast just grew. It just it went really bananas. Yes. After I changed it because I listened to my audience, I analyzed them. I realized that who I thought I was talking to was actually not the listenership that I was serving. And so I adjusted and it benefited me so much. It was just that simple change of adjusting what category I was in. That's interesting. That's really interesting. It's funny because we often talk about how analytics they are, what they are, but they're so different from one platform to the next. And what does one thing mean over the other? And it's why we always talk with our clients about like, don't get caught up in the first off, don't get caught up in vanity metrics. Um, the second off is like, okay, what are we actually trying to accomplish? And yeah, it is difficult to see exactly who it is and why they're listening. Um, it's interesting that you got that feedback with that from the I mean, obviously with you working at Buzzsprout, is there a point where you see a lot of people just are stuck in other podcasts and what they should be doing to move forward, or you're like, oh my gosh, if they if they would do this, they would move forward. What's the is there? I mean, obviously you're looking at thousands of podcasts with Buzzsprout. Yeah, we host hundreds of thousands, right. We host a number of them with you guys as partners. So like is there a is there something that you see that so many podcasts aren't doing that, that they just need to flip that switch? And obviously we don't expect to be the one hundred thousand next week. But in the same sense, what's the thing that's that ceiling that they keep bumping up into that they should try and remove. Um, I think that it really depends on the podcaster. I'm not going to give a non-answer. I'm going to provide an answer, but I do. I do think that podcasts and the audiences that they are targeting vary so wildly that it's hard to give an exact reason because everyone might encounter different obstacles than other podcasters. But one of the things that I do see a lot, especially in our community groups and stuff like that, is people are saying, um, I'm posting to LinkedIn every single time that I have an episode and I'm posting like three times a day, and I'm not getting any traction on my podcast. And I really think that a lot of podcasters kind of get stuck in the mud and their wheels spin because they're trying to do the marketing that they perceive they should be doing, which oftentimes is social media. And I really feel like social media is difficult. It's not as difficult as it used to be. But the thing is, is depending on what platform you are focusing your energy on is going to change who you're reaching out to. So the people on LinkedIn, they're very like business minded. Um, those are going to be the people like, um, you know, the audience for this podcast. But if you're targeting like Gen Z or millennials, you're probably going to want to focus on Instagram. There's there's just different things. And then there's different kinds of content that performs better. So, you know, are you going to do short term short form video or are you going to write blog posts and promote it that way? Are you going to do Twitter threads? If you have an audience that is mostly on Twitter? You have to really focus your energy where it matters. Otherwise, you're going to be spending so much energy and not reaching who your target demographic is. And the other part that I think has gotten easier than it used to be is that there's there's a little bit of friction getting people from one platform to the other. So, you know, when you are promoting something on Instagram, a there's no links in the post itself. So even if someone sees the post, there's a good chance that they're not going to go to your profile to click the link in your bio to then follow, like over to whatever your podcast website is. Then to jump over to Apple Podcasts and subscribe from there. It is way too many steps. It's it's so difficult. And so really where I think you should focus is um, where your listenership is. So are these people who are already podcast listeners. They understand what a podcast is, and really we're going to reach them is either going to be, um, where they're at in the real world, such as at conferences, or I saw this great example in Pod news of this podcast that was about a town, and they posted a QR code, um, for their it's essentially like a tour guide podcast at the local, like City hall and like bus stop, because the people who are there are going to be looking at and is among like the travel brochures and things like that. And they'll go, oh, there's a podcast about this, like scan the QR code, follow the podcast, and then they can go about their vacation. And so there's there's something to be said for like reaching out to people in the real world and then also on podcasts that are in your niche too. I know that's like a really broad answer, But those those are the two things I really feel will get traction if you're spinning your wheels in social media. I, I actually love that answer, and partially because it affirms something else that we've thought, as we've seen it very difficult to get people to come to a podcast from another platform. Um, the platforms are designed to keep you in their ecosystem. I mean, Facebook, Instagram, they all exist to make money. The longer you're on there, the more money they can make. And that's so they're they're they're designed that way. We've even found with YouTube that people that watch a podcast do not see your shorts, and vice versa. If they see your shorts, they're probably not going to they're probably not going to see the video version of your podcast. They're they're just different people and how they consume the content. So it's interesting to hear your perspective on that. I love the boots on the ground effort. Um, the QR codes, the things of that nature, the reaching out, find them where they're at. In a manner that they're accepting of. That, to me, is a huge, huge, huge thing because that once again, it it it tells us that we're on the right track. So thank you for that. Um, yeah. That being said, I mean, a lot of people like we use the podcast to not only generate the podcast, but to generate content for those other platforms. Typically it's done as something like lead generation, like, how do you see the RSS feed itself as being an advantage to someone, like having that library of information? How does that how does that turn into an advantage for someone that's trying to market their business through through a podcast? You know, I think that the thing is, is when you have a podcast, it is long form content. You have people's attention for a much longer amount of time, and people anticipate it to be long form content. When you are doing shorts or promoting your business or things like that, you get like two seconds. That is, that's it. That's all you get is two seconds. And a lot of times there's not so much collaboration over competition in those because you're all competing for this algorithm. Whereas I really feel like when you are in podcasting, it is all about community and collaboration because the rising tides raise all ships. And I haven't found podcasters to be so precious about their space, you know what I mean? And additionally, the advantage with RSS is that it is a non-centralized sort of thing. So, for example, um, I have a friend who, uh, he runs, man, he, he has this huge Facebook page. It's like he's super awesome and he's got all these contacts through Facebook. He communicates with a ton of people through Facebook. And for some reason, Facebook deleted his account. No idea why. He's a great person. There's no reason for it. But that's the thing is, when you have these, um, free social media accounts, you're kind of beholden to their will. And so. Hostage. Hostage. Hostage? Yes. I'm trying to be nice about it, but YouTube can demonetize your your channel or, like, someone can report you for whatever. Like a six year old can report you on Instagram and get your page shut down and then your toast. Your audience has no way to get Ahold of you. Whereas if you have a newsletter or you have an RSS feed, a podcast, that doesn't matter. You know, if YouTube decides, for whatever reason, to take your podcast off their platform, you can still be found in other places. You're not just completely putting all your eggs into that one basket. And so I think that is a huge advantage for people who have a business to run, because if anything happens, which it does often happen to your social media account, you're done. And it's really hard to rebuild that. That's that's a great point. You're working on rented land at that point? Yes, exactly. With social media, or once again, as I blunt in how I put things, you're hostage. Uh, yeah. You're the hostage. Um, that being said, I want to ask something from a two pronged approach here. Obviously, as you started your podcast and grew it, I'm assuming there may have been a mistake or two that you made in there that you learned a lesson from. Um, similarly, I want to ask it from the buzzsprout side of things. Um, what? So first off, let's cover the like. What was one mistake that you made early on in your podcasting, in your personal podcasting journey where you're like, oh yeah, shouldn't have done that. Or if you would go back, you would do it differently again. Wow. This is this is such a tough question because, I mean, obviously I don't make many mistakes, but I may have made one or two with my podcast. Um, thinking about it, I think that one mistake I made was with monetization, oddly enough, is I tried to make everyone happy as far as like subscription subscriptions goes. And so now I currently have a Patreon page and I have a Supercast page, and I have Buzzsprout, and I have Apple Podcast subscriptions because my listeners were like, oh, you're not on here. Like, I need, I need to access your podcast from this. And then like this other thing started up and then Apple added subscriptions and I felt like I needed to do all of it. And then suddenly I'm managing four subscription channels, which is insanity. And I tried so hard to lay down the gauntlet, and I went to, uh, my Patreon subscribers, and I wrote this long post about how I was going to be shutting down my Patreon in like January, which was like six months out. And they all need to move over to this other account, like, I need you all, you gotta move. You got to go over this other thing. It's just as good. It's amazing. And yeah, so I tried moving them over to Buzzsprout subscriptions and my listeners will not budge. And it's been like two years that I've been trying to get them to move over just to like, cut Patreon down and they won't do it. And I finally I gave up. So now I have four channels still that I'm managing. And if I could go back, I would not. I would have just held out in my Spotify listeners could have just like, hung out until Patreon started going to Spotify and stuff like that. Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that again. I would just manage like one. And if you know what, if you can't access the subscriber episodes in this one thing, then that's fine. Make that make sense. Additionally, what is like I mean, as podcasters, we all make mistakes. Um, myself included. Um, what is like the most common mistake that you see podcasters making, um, with their podcast on a regular basis? Because I know, like you said, hundreds of thousands of podcasts go through Buzzsprout. Um, there's I'm sure there's a theme. Gosh, maybe multiple themes. There's a couple. Can I do a couple? Can I do that? Can we break the rules a little bit? I was about to say, let's break the rules a little bit and let's because to me, it's for us, it's making sure that we are helping people prevent these mistakes. So yeah, if we can if we can get the short list of don't do that, then we're in good shape, boy. Um, I'm going to say so if we are looking at a recordings perspective, like, let's just start like front to back. So when you record the episode, a lot of times what I will see people do is they will record it in a space that has crazy echo, like, for whatever reason, they'll feel like recording in the bathroom is a good idea, or the kitchen, or in their cabin with like the lofted ceilings. It just doesn't work. Like get into a closet. It is the best sound environment you will ever have. I have spent so much money on sound paneling and everything in my home office, and it doesn't sound as good as my closet, so I think So go in the closet. Don't go in the closet. Go in the closet. Stay in there. It's great. The water's fine. Um, yeah. Just stay in the closet. It's. It's so good. There's actually, like, one of my favorite images ever is, um. During the pandemic, IRA Glass, who hosts This American Life. He posted an image of him sitting in his closet, and he had a TV tray with his computer and microphone on it. And he was recording This American Life from, like, his little, like, walk in closet. And it is one of my favorite images to circulate the internet. I have a great story about that too. Is Mike Rowe used to be when he was doing filming Dirty Jobs, the TV show. He was also doing the voiceovers for the TV show Deadliest Catch and where he would film, where he would record the voiceover. He would often be on the road, so he would literally be in his hotel room with his laptop under the duvet recording his voiceovers for Deadliest Catch. And you would listen to it and you'd be like, man, this guy came into the studio for this? Nope. Just in a cheap hotel underneath a duvet. Yeah, yeah. The one thing that works too, that works really well, along with, like, the couch cushion, like things, you know what I mean? Um, the one thing about duvets that you don't know until you're in it is that if you are in a long interview, it gets hot. Your computer generates all this heat, it gets hot really fast. So be aware of that, like have some ventilation or something if you're doing that. But duvets work clauses are great. Couches, couch cushion forts are great. Um, so that's that's really the recording thing that I see a lot is people are um, they think they can just record anywhere. And really you need a lot of like, soft surfaces. Um, I think that when it comes to marketing your podcast, you know, I'd already touched on this, you know, focusing your energy in the wrong area with like social media. One of the biggest things that I see is, is podcasters wanting to be everywhere all at once. Yeah. And I really feel like that is such a quick way to burn out. If you are posting to, you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube and Twitter. It's so hard to keep up with all of that. It's really difficult. And so I think that that is, um, probably the biggest thing with like marketing that I see people struggle with is just spraying themselves a little too thin and not just laser focusing on something that's actually going to move the needle, both pieces. It's nice because those are both things that we talk about with people in a lot of cases too, like it's it's fine if you want to post everywhere, but pick where you're going to spend the time and pick where you're going to spend the focus. Yes. Because yeah, we we want to make sure focus where your people are. Um, I love how you talked about the different generations you're going to find in different spots. And if you're business focused, great, go to LinkedIn. If you're more Gen Z. Uh xennials. Then obviously the Instagrams, the things of that nature, the TikToks, those are where you're going to be that, um, you as a we're going to call you the industry insider. Um, you see, look at that. You got another new title. Now, um, I always like to I always like to ask, like, what do you see for podcasting over the next year or so? Obviously, AI has changed a lot of things. I mean, I know that you guys have, I mean, some editing tools, some help with like dynamic content, co-host AI, things of that nature that Buzzsprout has done recently to help with some of the editing, help with some of the information side of things. What do you see as like exciting for RSS feeds in that or podcasting in general over the next year or so? I think that AI has removed such a barrier to entry in the podcasting space, because I can record from my phone. I just got done talking about recording spaces, but let me tell you something. I can record just on my iPhone and then run it through like on Buzzsprout. We have Magic Mastering, which will like clean up audio. I actually recorded, um, just on a thirty five dollars microphone, thirty five dollars in a conference space, and I recorded with, like, James Cridland and Dave Jackson on this microphone talking about podcast movement. And it is loud in those spaces. And we have this new feature on magic mastering called Power Clean. And the audio was not great. Let me just say it's not great. But I ran it through power, power clean. And you could not tell we were in a conference room like it sounded like this interview right here in like a treated space. And I just think that tools like that or Adobe like Voice Enhance have changed how easy it is to create professional quality audio in in, even if you you don't have the equipment like the the cost of equipment, the microphones themselves have become so much less expensive. They're more geared to podcasters, they're USB microphones. So you don't have to have an audio interface if you don't want one. There's just there's so many things like that. And I really feel like AI helping with organizing. Maybe your thoughts into an episode outline or helping with audio editing process, or helping you write SEO rich podcast descriptions and titles. Those kind of things make it so much easier for someone who struggles in one department or the next to create a podcast. It makes it so much easier. Now that being said, I do feel that podcast audiences and honestly, audiences in general, whether it be like Instagram users or, you know, Facebook, YouTube, they are getting AI fatigue to the point where they have to think to themselves, like, I think that consumers are just so tired of listening to something, seeing an image, seeing a video, and having to kind of cognitively deduce, is this AI or not? Is this real? I recently saw a video, um, um, on Instagram and I thought to myself, this can't be real. This must be AI. And I looked it up and actually was real, and it took me time to figure out if what I was looking at was real or not. And I think that people are just so tired of being deceived. And so I think that there is a line being drawn. AI needs to be used as a tool to, um, kind of enhance your podcasting experience to maybe make your podcast better for the listener experience. But I think that AI creating like what we call slop, where it's involved in the entire process, where it's combing the internet for what the topics are going to be, it's writing the script, it's voicing the episode, it's writing all the things. I think that listeners are going to be turned off by that. I think that the advertising space is turned off by it. They don't want to see ads being run on these like AI slot podcasts, and I think that a lot of the platforms are going to be kicking those off. So I in terms of AI, I think that it is really great, but also really bad. It's just this double edged sword. And I think we as a people need to like, figure out how exactly we're going to use and manage AI, if that makes sense. Makes perfect sense. I mean, really, we've seen the same thing. It is that the AI fatigue of how much stuff is coming out. And then once again, there's the stuff where it's obviously and then there's stuff where you're like, well, what is this? And I truly feel like it's going to be tough to replicate the number of ums, ahs, and times that I stammer on a podcast. Um, in order to, to kind of get rid of that. Um, with that, uh, question that's kind of dawned on me. You're obviously so enthusiastic about it. What's your favorite part of podcasting? Gosh, I don't know. I think what my favorite part of podcasting is, and it's funny because my answer would have been different before. I used to hate editing. Oh, I hated it. And I would take forever to edit an episode. But as I've kind of grown and my knowledge of the tools and the gear and the editing software and all that kind of stuff has changed and gotten better, Man. When I am able to take an episode that maybe is a little bit messy, maybe we get off topic a little bit and then we have to, like, bring it back around and oh, we forgot this thing later. And I call it, uh, Franken episodes. Whenever I encounter Franken episodes, it is the most satisfying thing. I actually had one a couple of weeks ago and I made a post about it. I was so proud of this episode. I was so excited and I talked about what a mess the, uh, actual recording was. But to be able to take something that is just an absolute disaster and piece it together, and your audience doesn't even know that you spent all this time fixing it. And it just sounds like your guess sounds so concise and you sound so intelligent, and you're asking all these questions and you're getting to the point right away, and you're staying right on track and getting through the episode. That is so satisfying to me. When you're able to edit something and make it just sound like super professional. And I think that that's kind of like a pride in the artistry of editing, because I really feel like editing is an art in a way. It's it's similar to being a copy editor for like a book. You're just you're making the experience better for the listener, and you're making the guests feel better about their experience on your podcast. And it makes me so excited because when we have return guests on the podcast, they are so, um, just at ease, like, especially the second time around, because they're like, I know you're going to make me sound really smart. And so I'm not worried at all, which actually makes the interview better. It's funny, I love that because one of the things that I typically say to people when they come into the studio is, I'm always like, my job is to make you look and sound your best. Yeah. And obviously that that typically lets people relax and kind of settle in and go from there. As we start to kind of wrap up here, the question that I always like to ask everyone is if someone's starting out, if someone's just getting into podcasting, you cannot say, just press record. Too many people have that as their answer. You're like, damn it. He took my answer. Um, is to me like, what is the one thing that you are going to suggest to people that what's the one piece of advice that you would give to someone that's and let's not say just starting, let's say someone that's in the first year of their journey with podcasting. What are you going to tell them? I'm going to tell them that, you know, at Buzzsprout we always say keep podcasting. That's that's our thing. We sign off buzz cast every episode with that, keep podcasting. And boy do we mean it. We really mean it. And sometimes part of keeping podcasting is making podcasting fun. Have fun with it. Try to find ways to have fun with it and remember the why. You know, if if, um, trying to think here. You know, if your why is to reach single moms who are struggling with, you know, taking care of children, then maybe make a group and get in contact with those people and like share your show, get in conversation with them. Because when you are like in connection with your audience, you're in connection with other podcasters in your space. You're just having fun with it. It makes it less of a job, less of a chore, which makes it much easier to keep at it. And just remembering your why. And even if you make like a folder in your email, and when someone like writes in and says, hey, this episode really touched me, here's why. Or hey, I actually really enjoyed this. Like screenshot the comment, file the episode. Just keep focused laser focus on why you are doing this and just have fun with it. It's going to make the experience so much easier. And you know, as we said earlier, like podcasting is a long game, it is a marathon. I'm sure I'm not the first person on this show to say this, but if you make the journey much more enjoyable, then you're going to keep at it for much longer. That is wonderful advice and I truly love that. Yeah, that being said, where if people want to connect with you. People want to connect with Buzzsprout, where can they and should they find you? Uh buzzsprout. We are just. You can find a podcast hosting at buzzsprout. Com and we have our podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout at Buscot buzzsprout. Com so super simple. Yeah, those those are both pretty simple and I, I, I am a listener. Um, that makes me so happy. I've, I feel like as the running a podcasting production business. We should probably stay up on that news. So yeah, we tune in. Thank you. I really appreciate the information today. Uh, tons of great insights and especially, I mean, the growth that you had, seeing how that happened and the way you had to lean into it and make that pivot. I mean, it went through six years, though, so I think it may have sounded like it was a two year thing. No, it was over six years, sure. But that that pivot in the same sense that, I mean, that's your teeth and hang on moment and, uh, yeah, just see what happens for sure. Uh, thank you very, very much. I really appreciate it. Been an absolute delight to have you on the show. Thank you. For everyone else out there. I am gonna take a look at some of my notes here, and I'm going to be back with some thoughts. Stay tuned. The first thing that I really want to dive into after my interview there with Jordan is We've been much more intentional about the guests that we've been getting on recently. There's there's a purpose. There's a gap that I'm trying to fill instead of just saying, hey, look, you've got a pulse come on the show. And it's something that I being intentional about. It has really, really helped. I'm reaching out to more people. Another thing that I want to talk about with that too, is we have been using Pod Match to make sure that we're finding the right people that fit all the information's there. It's been a really good tool for us. So if you're looking for guests that are in the general areas, it is one that I am going to recommend with that. The fact that Jordan grew that show in that way, and then what I found so cool about it was the fact that she was able to to like, look at what her audience was and what she thought it was knowing, like the realization that they were two different things and that she needed to lean in to where she actually had an audience instead of where she thought her audience was. It's funny when you think about seven to nine year olds and then sometimes seventy nine year olds there. Who knew that those audiences you were going to be able to mistake for one another? But that was very much the case. That being said, it's not a bad idea to survey your audience. What do they want to hear? What do they want to see? What's what do they need to learn about? Those are all big things that we should probably each be addressing. I mean, what are the things that you want to know about? Yes, this is going to be that time where I'm going to be like, hey, look, give me a comment, send us a message, go on. One of the social media programs. Send us a DM. I would love to hear what you want to to know about who should we have on who should be our next guest? Why? What's the thing that we need to find out for you? The other thing that I liked was the boots on the ground effort for promoting the podcast. We've been talking about this with a number of people recently. People want to have an Instagram and they want to have a Facebook, and they want to have other things to promote the podcast. And once again, these social media channels, they are meant to lock you into their channel. You aren't supposed to go other places, they are just trying to lock you into their channel. So you're not going to really promote your podcast. What you are going to promote is you are going to promote your business. And really, isn't that the goal? You want to promote your message. You want to promote like what you're doing, not necessarily the podcast in so many cases. Just work through this with someone else. Right now, they've got a great message behind what they're doing and they're like, hey, we need all this to point to the podcast. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Your Instagram, your TikTok, your Facebook, those all deliver the message just as well as your podcast does. It's a different format. It's the format that those people want to get that message in. Meet people where they are. Don't worry about promoting the podcast as much as you are worrying about getting the right message out. As you start to work with that, the message will find the right people, I promise you. I do love the fact that she had QR codes. She talked about QR codes. Hand out QR codes where your people are. I can think of so many different ways that you could just put a business card with a QR code on it, and hand that out at events that are relative to your podcast. One of the ones that I'm going to think of here is the Late to Grid podcast that Bill snow does in our studio when he's at a racing event. That is his target audience to walk around handing out QR codes. Yes. Yes. Bill, if you're listening, we're going to talk about this. The fact that she also said, don't try and be everywhere all at once. I we try not to make this mistake because in so many cases, if you try to be everywhere at once, you're nowhere. Pick what you're going to focus on. As I've mentioned, LinkedIn is a big focus for me and frankly, for us. I'm not going to neglect Instagram, but I'm going to spend my most time, my most effort on LinkedIn, working with LinkedIn to grow my audience there, to work with my audience there to make sure that I'm engaging with people there. That's what I really want to do. I want to make sure we're we're we're focusing on where our people are. If we start to focus on the other things too much, guess what we take away from what we're actually trying to do? Another note that she had was talking about AI to organize thoughts. We help clients build AI tools like this all the time. we. I explained to her our process for my interview with her and all the AI that we use in helping me do that. These interviews don't like I'm not just coming off this like coming off the cuff with these questions in so many cases. There's research that's been done by me and AI together in order to come up with the questions, because once again, I want to make sure that I'm asking the right questions at the right people. And I've got the right background and I've got all the right information in front of me. So that way I'm not just asking a question like, hey, how'd you do the thing? Because guess what? That doesn't matter to anyone. The other piece is editing is an art. In so many cases we don't edit much because we love that flow of the conversation. But there's been a few edits that we've had to make in a couple of episodes, and our editing team is good enough that you probably have never, ever noticed them. Once again, we're not changing the The conversation. What we are is we are in many cases, we're making the conversation more concise. We're making it so it's easier to listen to. We're making it so you get the best information possible. That is what we do for others. We want to make sure that we've got stuff distilled down. So that way you get the greatest value for your time as a listener. That's what you always want to present to your listeners that greatest value for the time. Speaking of which, I've used about enough of your time. Thank you for listening. Subscribe. Share all the other stuff you guys know what to do. That being said, take care of yourself. If you can take care of someone else too, I will see you very, very soon.