Find Your Hundred | Jon Dispenza | Full Battery Media

I sat down with Jon Dispenza, Client Success Manager at Podchaser, a company that surfaces data across more than six million podcasts, and his perspective completely reframes what podcast success actually looks like. Before you stress about microphones or download counts, the real question is simple: what are you genuinely curious about? 

The biggest shift Jon talks about is moving away from chasing big numbers and focusing on reaching the right people instead. A hundred loyal listeners who are deeply invested in your niche will always outperform a million passive ones, and the brands paying attention already know this. Advertising in podcasting is getting surgical, and the hosts who understand that are the ones winning.

And if you're just getting started with nothing but a phone and one hour a week? Jon's advice is as simple as it gets: go live a life worth talking about, then record 15 minutes of the most honest thing you learned that week. Post it. See who comes back. That's your data.

What does success look like for your podcast right now, are you still chasing the numbers, or have you already found your hundred?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Subjective coming from me, but easily I would pick honesty every single time. Obviously, it's kind of a situation where a little bit of both have to be true, but I feel like if your focus is on being interesting, then you're focusing on a performance. And maybe you can maintain, maybe it doesn't become exhausting, but honesty is easily sustainable. It's just you sharing your direct experience, your direct perspective. And I think one, it's it's easy for someone to make the decision that you're being fake. And a lot of things are fake on the internet. Like you said earlier, there was a political figure that had a picture of themselves as Jesus. So there's more fake content, our sort of fake detectors are maybe working in overtime. But if you can approach a subject, a topic with honesty, then you can learn to make that more interesting, but you can maintain that commitment. And to your point, if someone is telling a story about how they had to fix a sewer line with a plastic beach bucket, like that's that's not something that I was even thinking about this morning. But if I can hear an honest take on that story from that person's perspective, it opens my eyes up culturally. It's someone solving a problem. And I and I want them to tell that with honesty. I want them to share what they were thinking when they woke up and knew that was their assignment today. That to me to me, to your podcast audience, should feel a lot more like connection than if someone is just going, I shoveled 45 gallons and I did it in six minutes in this plastic beach bucket sponsored by like that's the kind of the fake trash that I think we're all being inundated with. So it long ends or short. I think every, I would wish every podcast would be approached with honesty as sort of the the baseline floor for your standard.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Well, welcome everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and I have an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah, thanks, Sean. I'm John Dispenza. I work. Well, I jump right into what is my career. What do I do? I work at a podcast data company, and what we do is we kind of surface behind-the-scenes insights. There's over six million podcasts that have been created. So that's a lot of disparate data points. And then we have a set of clients that want to know, you know, how many people listen to this podcast? Which business podcast has the most parents listening to it? So we can help people find the right podcast. Sometimes it's for advertising, and sometimes it's because they uh they want to go on a podcast because they think it's a great way to distribute information and share their story or share their startup journey or how they hit a hundred free throws in one afternoon, whatever it happens to be, uh, we can usually help them find the right outlet in terms of podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

I love that, man, because it's like it's a whole other world. And, you know, I I know it's gotten more mainstream, but there's still a lot of people that have a huge learning curve that don't necessarily know how to interact with it. And like, what how do I how do I go about this? And businesses that are like, you know, trying to figure out should we do a podcast? Should we get our people on a podcast? Like, there's a lot of questions that people have. And, you know, one of the things too, I think that I I love that, you know, you think about it. I think about, you know, 20 years ago, you know, people would want to get uh someone onto a radio show. Well, there was this this this challenge with it because you have to figure out you got to go through all of the gatekeepers, you gotta go through all of this and that. And even to have the radio show, there was a lot of that, you know. I I've heard great stories about people who were on radio shows and they were like, Yeah, you can't say that, you can't do that. But one of the great things with the podcast revolution is that anyone can start a podcast. And, you know, whether that's good or bad, I don't know. You know, there's a lot of people that start and throw some weird stuff out there. But, you know, at the end of the day, isn't the beauty of being able to create, you know, I think the gatekeepers now are just are people. The listeners are the gatekeepers, they're the ones sitting there going, you know what, this is great content, or it's not. But you know, I wanted to ask you this because it seems that everyone wants to start a podcast today. You know, what's the first thing you tell them to focus on if someone was starting a podcast?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Ooh. That's uh people have asked me this question before. Uh, I've been a serial podcast on an offer for a little over a decade. And sometimes they want to ask, you know, what microphone should I get or what host platform they're very technical about it, and they're not even focusing on what should my podcast be? Uh, what's the ethos of this? What's the reason for doing it? So usually the first thing I want to figure out with them is what are you curious about? Like if you're thinking about starting a podcast, you could go the route of a business podcast. That's a whole genre, and there's there's kind of like a whole structure to how those are kind of put together. But beyond that, my advice would be out outside of that, you know, what what makes you curious? Don't try and sound like a broadcaster to your point. Anyone with an iPhone or a smartphone can start a podcast. You're technically capable. So, like there should be some authenticity. There should be something unique that you can provide, like a perspective, something that you can share. Because to your point, Sean, the ultimate gatekeeper is are people going to tune in? And if and and if you're starting a podcast, the answer is no. It's gonna take a while for people to tune in. So knowing that, you have to kind of it has to be something that you're excited about doing. If it feels like work every time you're preparing an episode and you're uploading it and then you're promoting it on social media, if that all feels like work, you're not gonna have the long tail consistency that you need to build the audience that's gonna stick with you. So, again, and in short, what are you curious about? And and that's how we should start the focus of what is your podcast going to be.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Yeah, I love that. And um it's interesting too, because what is your podcast gonna be and what is the story you want to tell? Yeah, because whether people realize it or not, podcasting is storytelling, you know. It might not be, you know, traditional storytelling of like, you know, oh, Mary had a little lamb, you know, but you might be telling your story and you might be telling why your story or the people's stories around you are important, you know. I for my different podcasts have different themes. I've got four podcasts, which I'm a bit of a crazy person, and uh, you know, because each of them has a different focus, but like the the full battery media podcast, this one is focused on trying to inspire people to make content because I think that, you know, we are getting spammed with bad content right now. And if we can be part of creating good content, I mean, right now in the news, there was a certain political figure that put them up itself as a picture of Jesus. And, you know, it's like right now, it's a bit, a bit wild the type of stuff that we get out there right now. But I mean, without going down that that rabbit hole, you know, there's a lot of content out there that's that's not great. And I come from the background of an educator, and I was a teacher for many years. And to me, one of the most powerful things that we can do is to turn our podcast into platforms of education, whether it be educating people about how to have a better life, how to, you know, pay your bills on time, you know, how to make a great cocktail, whatever it is that you're into, can you educate people and can you use that platform to to kind of find your community and your niche that want to hear what you're talking about, you know?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

It is very experiential. I think there's a lot of there's a lot of people that would say the COVID uh disaster caused podcasts to kind of have uh a resurgence in popularity because we were so disconnected from each other that listening to someone tell a story called a podcast for 45 minutes felt more like a social connection than scrolling through all the other forms of social media or media that exist today, where it's like, even if you look at traditional news media, it's a broadcaster talking at you. Whereas I think one of the parts of about a podcast that makes it a little more unique is it feels like there's an opportunity to trust, to learn, to get to know the host of that podcast. And a lot of times I feel like that's one of the most important things. There's over 10,000 podcasts that are talking about AI in the tech space or politics. And a lot of them that have that repeat listenership. It's really just because you like the person presenting the information. And sometimes that can make it's because you feel important or it's because you feel related to, but it it I think it goes back to it's important as a podcast host to just be yourself and share the story that you think people want to hear.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I um last night I had a guest midway through that told me they loved the Lord of the Rings. And so I really quickly started trying to pivot and throw Lord of the Rings references into my questions. I failed multiple times. But like I was sitting there thinking, and my brain was like, should I do this? Is this a good idea? And I was like, fuck it, man. It's who I am. Like, you know, if that's something that's funny to me, might as well run with it, you know, and just be authentic. It's part of who I am. And I think that's one of the things that with podcasting is important is to figure out who you are, and because people are tuning in for you, you know, they're tuning in for the way that you approach things, you know. When I I have a I have a wine podcast as well, because why not? I grew up in the Napa Valley and you know, grew up in a wine country, and right now the wine industry is hurting really bad. And one of the things that for me, I started telling these stories because the stories of people in the industry, one of the things that was special to me growing up in that area was seeing, hearing, and being around these amazing people. They were just down-to-earth people out there in these fields making this beautiful drink. Now, whether you like wine or not, it was really interesting stories. But one of the things that I found is that people love my take on it because it's refreshing. I'm like not a wine guy, you know. I'm not a psalm, I'm not a winemaker, but I'm just a guy who loves it. And I love hearing people's stories and kind of breaking things down and make it accessible. And so I think that's kind of the angle that I had. And I that's why people tune into that podcast. They tune in because they know they're gonna laugh, they know they're gonna have a good time. What we're gonna talk about, well, you know, it kind of matters, but for the people in the industry, they enjoy it. But for other people, they're just happy to be there, happy to be a fly in the wall for what's going on in these conversations. And I think that's a really important thing, too.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

That's I I I love that point. I at one point in my life sold wine for a distributor that had a bunch of wineries, and we would go to, I would go to bars and restaurants, and and what I learned is that the best way to sell wine to a bar and a restaurant is to come with a story of how they named this wine after the winery dog, and the daughter's gonna be taking over as the new winemaker and like that human connection. Nine times out of ten, that's what sold the wine because that's what the servers were going to share with the table. Because wine is generally scary. At least in America, wine is scary. You don't know what the difference between a Chardonnay and a sans serre is. It doesn't matter if I can tell you that this is the wine that they drink when they're hanging around southern Spain and it's a warm day like it is today. And that that storytelling, I felt like for me was such a big, a big factor in how successful I could be, regardless if I could name the grapes that were in the wine or not. If I could name the winery's dog, I was in.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

100%, man. It's like what you literally just described as like half of the winery is like, no, it's like literally, like there's they named after like a dog or something. And then there is like a daughter or someone who's taken over the winery. Like, that's a bunch of them. And the cool part is is like it's authentic, you know, and it is the way it is. But like, if you're just trying to sell a bottle and some some alcohol, like, man, people people have other options, you know. But if you're telling something, selling something that's interesting, this is one of the things that I remember. Like with Nike or Lululemon, what's Lululemon selling? They're not selling yoga clothes, they're selling a community. You wear this and you're part of this this larger community. You're you know, under armor, you wear this and you're kind of this sports community that's a little edgy, you're not the mainstream, you're this other group. Nike's the same, you know. It's like this community that you're becoming a part of. And I think that that's one of the things, too, is that we get these. I mean, and nowhere was it more evident than the most recent election that, you know, people were the power the podcast played in their communities to influence people in their opinions, whether it be um the Joe Rogan podcast or what was the other podcast that um man, I can't, I'm blanking right now. That Michelle uh that uh call her call her daddy call her daddy, call her daddy with Kamala Harris Mom, you know, and so both of these had this influence and they had their communities that were so important for that. And so it's interesting to me that we're looking at that. But it also leads to another question because as we're talking about people and building these podcasts, I I want to know because I'm still figuring this out, why you some podcasts get a lot of listeners, but people don't actually care about them, or other people get like huge, you know, no listeners, but they have these powerful niche, you know. I I I want to know that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Ooh, you're you're not alone, Sean. There's a lot of people that don't know why that. And I think there's a lot of there's there's a lot of like I want to start a podcast and I want to rival Joe Rogan. Well, okay, you're you're it's there's one in six million chance of of achieving that. And and Joe also had some celebrity before, so okay, so it's gonna be difficult, but I think when you ask that question, it brings me to like there are podcasts that you can view as like a utility versus a storytelling sort of connection podcast. And I'm I I would think of like a news podcast where I listen to it every morning, it's 10, 15 minutes long, and I just kind of get the rundown of what happened in technology yesterday. And I wouldn't care if that was someone reading a script every morning or if that was just replaced by a voice robot that read it to me. I'm here for the utility of the information, but I don't really feel a connection with the podcast. And on the other end, when it's that sort of connection-driven thing, it takes a while to find my interest. Let's say it's it's sci-fi novels. I got to go through all the sci-fi podcasts and find people that are reviewing novels, and then I gotta find someone that presents it in a way or likes the same type of sci-fi that I do. So it takes a while to kind of find it. And then, but then once I do, I tell all my friends, you got to listen to this. He he he talks about the books that I love, and I think you'll love it too. So it almost you're relying on that slow podcast discovery funnel. And then word of mouth, I think, is still the best way to grow because you're not, most of the time, you're not trying to reach seven million strangers. You want to reach a group of people that like the information you're presenting and the way that you present it. So you're building like a like a rabid fan base of hundreds rather than 20 million disparate folks that couldn't care if you showed up tomorrow or not.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

My wine podcast, I have not many like listeners, but I will tell you this that everyone's listening to that is deep in that wine industry in the Napa Valley. Like, and so my listeners are all industry people. And, you know, and we're shaping the narrative about how that industry is starting to go in a different direction, how we can talk and connect to a different group of people. And people like, oh, you only have a hundred downloads on this episode. I was like, Yeah, but that's a hundred people that are decision makers in this niche, you know. So, like, well, you're not you you have to think very carefully. And that was interesting because even though that has one of my lowest numbers of uh of of downloads, people have been coming to me going, Hey, can we uh can we sponsor this podcast? You know, can we kind of kind of throw some stuff in there? I was like, I want to know why. Like, talk to me about why. They're like, because it's not wine related. They're like, well, um, because I have a financial podcast too. And some of my financial planning guests were like, Can we throw a critical, like, you know, blurp this episode brought by this? And I was like, why do you want to advertise in the wine one? Because they're like, because we know who's listening to that, and those are the people that we want to talk to. And so it's interesting too, because I think that people one mistake that I see people make is that they're so focused on getting more views or more downloads, but they don't understand that you want the right views and the right downloads, you know.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

I I totally agree. And I would echo I learned this from the brands that I work with at Podchaser. And I think we're all the brands, the market, everyone's kind of learning that we're shifting away from what used to be, you know, let me run an ad on cable news, and that'll get viewed by a lot of people, hopefully the right people. Worked good if you were selling paper towels, because almost everyone needs them. But when you're trying to get, when you're trying to drill down, that's kind of, I think I see that as the focus in in marketing with all of the content producers that we have today and the more narrow channels. It's much more advantageous if I'm selling a tool that a doctor would use and a doctor would need to get his hospital to buy it. Then it's much better if I can just, if I can advertise on a podcast that has a couple hundred doctors listening, uh, or a chief of medicine at, you know, Pittsburgh Hospital or something. I want her to hear about the the product that I'm selling, not 10 million people that are trying to diagnose themselves over over podcast listenership. Like I want to find the right people. And I think the brands that are doing really well are the ones that are learning. If I can talk to Sean's listeners and his wine podcasts, who cares if it's only a couple hundred, a couple thousand? I'm getting the right attention instead of kind of scattershotting it across and hoping one of these people can make a decision.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I think so. And I think one of the things too is that, you know, it it has become much more surgical. You know, advertising, I think, has become much more focused and much more finely tuned. And yet people are still in this mindset of shotgun, you know, shotgunning things and like, you know, hey, let's blast at the wall and hope it hits something. But you know, I want I want to ask you this because like if someone makes 10 episodes and they think that no one's listening, what should they do next? Should they just, you know what, dude? I I tell people just, you know, you don't even have a sample size yet. Just keep going. But you know, should they look at something else? Are they doing something wrong that they should change?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

This is a this is another, I think, very common question. And 10 episodes is you've done a lot of work. You've you've created your your sort of your first art rough draft of of this podcast. And there's a couple ways it could be going where your your listenership isn't spiking. Uh, one, 10 episodes is like you said, that's not nearly enough. Um, unless you came with some really heavy presence or fan base already that you could draw. Like if you have a newsletter of 20,000 people and you say, I'm starting a podcast, tune in, great. Then you could expect you're going to get more than 50 people listening in your first few episodes. But the first thing I would say is that's all just data points until you get to 50 episodes, ideally 100, and now you're kind of established. But beyond that, maybe have someone that you can trust, um, a partner, a business partner, a friend, someone that gives you straight information. Because what I see a lot of new podcasters do is they kind of build their podcast in a vacuum and it reads more like you're doing a podcast at them rather than for them. Maybe you've lived a great life story. Maybe you farmed potatoes on the moon and you think that's a really cool story to share with people. But the way that you're giving that information, if it it might just kind of not, you might not be a good storyteller. You might not know how to craft something that's going to hook a listener in the first 10 seconds and keep them around for your 30 minute story of frying potatoes on the moon, which would be really cool to hear about. But you have to, I think you also have to be careful that you're doing it in a way that honors or respects the audience that you're trying to build. And I think you should keep it, you shouldn't be, you should be narrowing. Narrow enough to attract potato farmers or moon people, not everyone. Like you should be honest with your subject and keep it relevant for the specific audience you're trying to build. And then, of course, the last bit you might be missing out on is I'm just going to say generically marketing, but most people discover podcasts from a social media short. So if you're recording 45 minutes of audio content and the only way that they can find it is by going to their podcast platform and searching for moon potatoes, then you're missing a huge opportunity if you don't at least put some moon potato shorts on Instagram, TikTok, whatever your social of choice is, because you're going to get that's where most podcasts are discovered.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

100% agree. And it's interesting too that I think that there's so many ways to go about doing it because you let's say that you start going, hey, I want to be a chef. And your specific thing is I want to be a baker. I want to start baking cakes, right? But you are not necessarily um getting out there and getting your cakes out there. So you might be a great baker. You might have phenomenal cakes. But if your cakes are just sitting at your home and you're eating them for yourself, then you're not really gonna be growing, you know? You're gonna be growing, but not not your listenership and not your uh not the people that you want to come in and be eating those cakes. You're not gonna be growing your business. I I started a small apparel company with my brother. It's based around the Napa Valley. It is based around where we grew up. It's called Odie, O-A-T-Y. It's name after a famous trail up in the Napa Valley region. Started the LLC, started all this stuff, got the trademark going. Super happy about that. And I'm still sitting here with a bunch of hats and bags in my house. Now, if I want to have a company, I have to get them out there. I have to get them sold. I have to start putting them into shops. I have to start doing, you know, getting a great Shopify website so that we can actually sell things straight to people. But the the idea is like you don't have a brand if you're just putting it out there. You have to be figuring out ways to connect with people, whether that be through social media, whether that be getting great guests on and having them share it, you know. And I think that that there's a lot of ways to grow things. But I wanted to ask you this because what does the data say? You know, do people come back for the topic or for the person? You know?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Ooh, I great questions, Sean. So I live in a world where the only real answers come from data. And this question is hard. I've I have yet to find a specific enough research study that shows why people subscribe rather than click play rather than just don't come back. But the prevailing thought is that the, if you think about it like a professional bakery, the topic that your podcast is covering might be the sign out front and the front door. And then once you get them to click play, because they they saw your topic from the street and they decided they wanted to come in and check out your uh bakery items. This analogy is getting weird. Um, but once they come in, then it's kind of up to you, the host. Uh, going go up. So if I'm talking about my history as a baker and I'm trying to sell people on the idea of my podcast, I would expect I'm going to have people coming to listen that also like baking or want to start a bakery. But once they click play, it's up to me to earn that. Are you going to subscribe? Are you going to come back? And I think a lot of us, myself included, take it as like a personal affront. If you listen but you didn't subscribe, if I had 50 listens on my first episode and 10 on my second episode, then I view it as like I'm doing something wrong. And that's human nature. You can view it that way. But I think what helps is if you're confident in your approach and you don't view it that you're doing something wrong. It's just some of those people didn't like the way you presented the information. And from here, the challenge is how do I figure out why these 10 people came back? Who are they? What do they, what do they like, and how do I find more of them? Because those are the people that like how I'm presenting my story, my podcast. I don't know if that was a good enough analogy to answer the question, but I think it's it's really it's like it's up to you to earn that subscribe. The topic can only do so much as to get people to click play once or twice.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

One of the things that people don't realize is that there are these people that are just getting stardy because you you're getting all of this data and like they don't know how to like understand it. And I don't think that people realize there's patterns until you start seeing what one of the things that I try to tell people is like start focusing on what starts to hit. You have something that starts hitting well, you know. What was it about that? Like, I noticed some patterns for myself. I try to be all super business professional, talk about all of the wins at my company and this and that. That's not what people respond to with me. What people respond to with me is the authenticity. Like, I'm sitting there and I'm posting about all the interviews I'm doing and all that. But the stuff that really hits is when the other day my daughter had a respiratory bug, a respiratory bug that went down, got into her like uh got into her chesty throat area, and then kind of went into her tummy and she started vomiting. Geez, she was vomiting for like a week, man. It was not fun. And there was one night that I was up from three in the morning and dealing with vomit, and until like my wife was traveling till around 11 p.m. the next, like that evening, 3 a.m. to 11 p.m. And I'm dealing with the vomit the whole night. And it's like I had just gotten to sleep and I felt this projectile vomiting hit down my back, and I just was like, damn. And I looked and my mom was like, How are you doing? And I took a selfie and I was like, I'm about here, mom. Took a selfie, sent it to her. The next morning I looked at that selfie and I was like, God damn, I look like shit. And I posted it. I was like, let's put this on LinkedIn and see how everyone, all these business people handle this shit, you know? And I posted it, and what I found was the most wild response I've ever seen. Probably one of my best posts ever on LinkedIn. And just because I think everyone is like, man, I know this is a business platform, but I've been there. And that's one of the parts about business and resilience that no one talks about. Everyone's like, I got kids too, and this week has been a nightmare for me. And I'm sitting here watching all these people going, I'm crushing it right now. And they're like, I'm surviving right now, you know. And so I think that was one of the things. And for me, I started trying to look at those patterns. Where was I, where was I actually getting through with people? And when I started looking at that, I was getting a lot of feedback about okay, well, let's try to lean into topics like this. And it doesn't mean that you have to do all that, but it just means that you can start looking at, you know, what's working and what's not working. You know, we we did this for my daughter's YouTube channel. We did this, right? One of my team was like, let's try her singing a song. We tried that, it did not work. It was not what they were looking for on my daughter's YouTube. And so we were very quickly learned, okay, that's not it, but let's have some fun. We had some fun, we tried it, we moved on. But I want to ask you this like, why do you say podcasts are more like a special space instead of just content to push out? And I love that term special space, man. That sounds awesome to me. I'd love for you to elaborate on that as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Special space is part uh satirical, maybe. It makes it makes me laugh as well. Um what it's alliterative, but and it's funny. But I think it the like to your point, you post on LinkedIn. A lot of people post on LinkedIn, they sometimes try and polish it up to present their best self. And then you have this breakthrough when you share a part of yourself that's a little more authentic, because my I would suggest it's because that's relatable. And history shows us that relatable content, if we can compare movies and the Seinfeld series to content, that relatable is is what kind of keeps people coming back. They who hasn't had their daughter throw up on them at some point if you're a a dad? Hopefully not in your mouth, but like we've all been there. So it's it's it's another part that, and I think for podcasts, if you consider your like if you consider your podcast like content, which I think is sort of a catch-all term, but it's also something that generally we sort of consume and discard. It's like a potato chip. It feels good for a moment, maybe you have another, but there's no uh long-term sustainability there. And a and a podcast, if done well, it's going right into my ears as I'm doing the dishes, as I'm sitting contemplating on the back porch and trying to learn about space potatoes, is the most intimate form of media that I think we have in a world where now media can be directly catered to not only my specific interests, but how I like them presented to me. And when you switch to treating your podcast like that special space, like a place where you honor and value your audience that you've built, you're treating them more like a guest than a metric. And that's what I think that's the staying power of why podcasts are so special, like why a podcast of a hundred listeners can be monetized if they're the right listeners. You won't have that on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. But with podcasts, the way that you give the information is, I think, the the closest thing we have in digital media today to a real form of connection, which also I think a lot of people are craving because of the digital media we have today. So it kind of bridges that gap from going out to the bar with your friends after work and learning why so-and-so loves the masters and having a conversation about it where no one's sort of talking at me about why golf is so important or just hearing about someone's passion for golf. And I get to learn a few things about it. And for me, I'm not going to subscribe. I don't understand golf, but it's a conversation that I would have had, and now I can do it via podcast, sometimes while I'm doing the dishes and sometimes while I'm mowing the lawn or just sitting in the yard. But it's it's like having a friend over if you do it right.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

I 100% agree. I love Mike Rose Dirty Jobs. I love that show back in the day because you show these people's having their experience. And it was just like, dude, I can't understand that. There was the other day, I made a small video about this. So we get so in our own little world, and when there's a problem in the US with a sewage, they dredge it out. They they got a like a machine that goes in and cleans it out, you know. And for bigger sewage problems in cities, they have their tools, right? Where I'm living right now in Southeast Asia, the there was like the our sewer main got bubbed plugged up for the street. So they put a dude down in there in like his jumpsuit up to his neck, and he's shoveling out of the sewage main with a plastic bucket, lifting it up to his buddies. He's just down to this, and like, and just in it, man. And I'm just watching this going, God damn. And like the other guys are like, Hey, would this be like what it's like in your home? Like the other workers standing there, and I'm like, No, not without that guy making an insane amount of money for hazard pay, like, yeah, and he's gonna be in a full hazmat suit with a breather and all this other stuff, but he's just there, just you know, pulling the stuff out, and they're like, Oh, really? That's how it is here. And I was like, Yeah, such different, like like situations, but being able to see that, being able to hear those stories and and and bridge those gaps between these cultural divides, you know, and realizing that we're more similar than we think. And that's one of the beauties of things for to me with podcasts, is because it can allow us or any content, it allows us to see someone's else this lived experience. And I wanted to ask you this one too, because it it gets me thinking like if you had to pick one, what matters more? Being interesting or being honest, you know? Uh, is it better to try to just grab attention, or is it better to try to tell stories that are really honest about the world and all that other stuff?

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Subjective coming from me, but easily I would pick honesty every single time. Obviously, it's kind of a situation where a little bit of both have to be true, but I feel like if your focus is on being interesting, then you're focusing on a performance. And maybe you can maintain, maybe it doesn't become exhausting, but honesty is easily sustainable. It's just you sharing your direct experience, your direct perspective. And I think one, it's it's easy for someone to make the decision that you're being fake. And a lot of things are fake on the internet. Like you said earlier, there was a political figure that had a picture of themselves as Jesus. So there's more fake content, our sort of fake detectors are maybe working in overtime. But if you can approach a subject, a topic with honesty, then you can learn to make that more interesting, but you can maintain that commitment. And to your point, if someone is is telling a story about how they had to fix a sewer line with a plastic beach bucket, like that's that's not something that I was even thinking about this morning. But if I can hear an honest take on that story from that person's perspective, it opens my eyes up culturally. It's someone solving a problem. And I and I want them to tell that with honesty. I want them to share what they were thinking when they woke up and knew that was their assignment today. That to me, to me, to your podcast audience, should feel a lot more like connection than if someone is just going, I shoveled 45 gallons and I did it in six minutes in this plastic beach bucket sponsored by like that's the kind of the fake trash that I think we're all being inundated with. So it long ends or short. I think every, I would wish every podcast would be approached with honesty as sort of the the baseline floor for your standard.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

I love that. I I do videos for a lot of people, but I try to get them to see like don't just be reading AI scripts. I love AI. I love what it can do. I love how it can help me with my workflows, I love how it can process data in huge ways. But if you're gonna tell a story, tell your story. If you're gonna tell your an experience, tell your experience because that's what people want to hear. You know, like um, I the other day I was I was uh mess, I was bouncing an idea off ChatGPT, and it's like dad to dad, here. And I was like, you're not a father, dude. Like, first of all, like where is this? Whoever programmed you to say dad to dad or father to father, like you know, all right, because you don't understand what I'm talking about. I love that it's programmed with all this information, but you know, be real with people. And I think this is why I come to people and say, in an age where we're inundated with inauthenticity, you know, I I think that we need to keep telling people um your story matters, you know, and we need to get people to see uh how they can tell it, you know. I think it's a challenge for people too, because so many people think their story matters, but a lot of the time nobody seems to care, you know, and how do we help people keep going out and telling it, even if they they don't feel that positive response?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

I I think the the the full-hearted millennial in me would say that everyone's everyone's story does matter, at least to them. And sure, that's a great starting point. The I think the difference in it comes in your presentation. Like if I'm trying to share my story with it's like unsolicited advice. If I walk up to the first three people I meet and I tell them how to improve their relationship, they might say, I'm not even in a relationship. Like, get out of here, I don't care. But if I can come up with a way to approach it less ego-driven and more like a service, and the goal that I always approach it with is like giving my audience a mirror to see themselves or like their own, map their own life journeys to that. Maybe you're not in a relationship today, but you've been in one in the past, and here's some common things that happen, and kind of convert it from a monologue about my own lived experience and present it more as a service where you can see these situations in your own life. Even if, even if I want to tell you how to make an authentic Basque cheesecake like I had when I was in northern Spain. Maybe you've never been to northern Spain. And if I approach that whole episode like when I was in Spain, this is what they did. It almost comes across more like a press release, inauthentic, boring. Even if I'm looking for good cheesecake recipes, I'm not going to give that ego-driven presentation the time of day. Versus if I just say, how many times have you had the same cheesecake and you love it, but you want a new experience? Well, if you're like me, here's a situation that I found myself in and it was really helpful, and they do their cheesecakes differently, and now I can share that with you. Just kind of earning, earning the opportunity to share that perspective, which I think really can be done through any form of storytelling. You can if you're, if you're very if you have a lot of experience and a lot of value and education that you want to give people, but you don't find that it's resonating, or your partner tells you all the time, like stop monologuing, you just keep telling me, right? Like take an improv class, watch a couple of how-to improv YouTube videos or something, and just get an idea for how to present information and have it have someone want to listen to it.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

I love that. I love that. Well, I want to ask you uh one last question. If someone had only a phone in one hour a week, how would you tell them to build something people actually care about?

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Well, with today's modern cell phones, you you have basically everything you need to produce a podcast. You're not going to be sitting on all the fancy viral, like you won't have a sure SM7B. You won't have a little mini, mini microphone, like whatever. You have the equipment that you need. And sometimes I would say it's better to start there than to put yourself into debt just to get a microphone, which is no one cares about your microphone. So if you only have an hour a week and a cell phone, I would say one, spend your life living a life that's worth talking about. If you're just consuming content all day, it's going to be hard to share your own story experience. If you're planting vegetables for the first time and you're not an expert gardener, you have an opinion and you have experience of someone that is just learning to plant vegetables to sustain their own love of red peppers. That's a story worth telling. So live your life and be honest. And then because you only have a cell phone, go into a closet or a small place surrounded by clothes so that you get some decent audio quality. Sit there for 15 minutes and record a voice memo about the most honest thing that you learn that week. It can be, I shouldn't have planted the vegetables that way. They all, the squirrels got them. Like you're giving people information and education based on the it doesn't have to be I'm I'm now funded and I'm selling peppers to every grocery chain. Like share that honest feedback that you learned. Don't worry about intro music. Don't worry about starting a TikTok channel and going viral. Just start with consistent honesty from your own lived experience, end the voice memo, post it and learn from your metrics and see who who listens and who comes back. And that'll tell you what you need to do more than buy a microphone or uh sit down for three weeks and put together a podcast production plan. Like just first, just do it. Where can people go to learn more about you and what you do? LinkedIn's probably the best, the best place to find me. If you're talking about podcasts or professional things, um, you can find I'm one of I think I'm one of the only John Dispenses on LinkedIn. Um I work for, like I said earlier, a company called Podchaser that uh surfaces a lot of podcast data that I Get to learn from because it's my job. So while I'm inundated in my nine to five, I get to carry that information with me and help people that ask questions about podcasting. Otherwise, if you like woodworking, if you like cooking food, if you like photography, if you like 3D printing, if you like video editing, I am on Instagram as well, but I'm I'm much less active on traditional social media. I'm in my 40s and I've learned that real life gives me more reward than social media has.