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Guest Intro: Courtney Elmer
SPEAKER_00Well, Alvin and Kevin are out this week. So joining me for this episode is Courtney Elmer. Courtney is the founder and CEO of Podlaunch, and you might know her from her podcast, Insider Secrets, to a Top 100 podcast, which Alvin and I both have been on. Have you had any other Buzzrop people on that podcast? Tom's been on it too a couple times. Tom, of course, of course, Tom. Yeah. It's so funny. I feel like I know you so well, but I think we've only met in person one time. And it was when you were emceeing the stage that I was like speaking at at like podcast movement. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01I think so. And then I think we saw each other at Podfest, like wave hello, like y'all were wrapping up and heading out and like, hi, hugs. Good to see you. I know it's glad. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be the stand-in. I mean, you know, I'm always down for that.
SPEAKER_00Honestly, it was one of those things where, like, okay, fingers crossed, please, Courtney, be able to come on Buzzcast. And it worked out so well, especially last minute. So I appreciate you popping in and joining me.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad it worked out. I know right before we hit record, I was telling you this is the last week that I have like child care help. It's the middle of the summer here right now. And I'm like, we got those weird weeks coming up before school starts. And I was like, there's no recording that's going to be happening over those weeks, let me tell you. So I'm glad it worked out.
SPEAKER_00I didn't realize that you really had a focus on psychology in your uh podcast coaching. Can you talk a little bit about how you use psychology to inform podcasting?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, this is one of the things that I feel like this is not even on the radar in the podcasting industry. Yeah. And when you look at podcasting, you know, we see a new tool hit the market every day. We see a new AI platform hit the market every day. When I started teaching podcasting, there were no such thing as like podcast strategists. Like that was not a thing. Now there's like a podcast strategist on every corner, you know, and they're teaching strategy and all of this. And to me, there's a lot of good that's happening in the industry right now. We're seeing the industry really coalesce around this idea of like we need better metrics. We need to really be able to identify and really pinpoint, you know, the success of our shows and, you know, all these conversations around, you know, the metrics that are better to track success than downloads and all of that. But to me, when I look ahead at podcasting over the next three years, over the next five years, over the next 10 years, the next era of podcasting is not going to be defined by us having better metrics because metrics are a trailing indicator. It's going to be defined by a better understanding of what drives those metrics. And so when you understand what drives podcast performance, that's when growth becomes predictable. And so that's what Pod Launch is all about. You know, you can think of it like the operating system for predictable podcast performance, and it's through the lens of listener behavior and the lens of listener psychology and applying my background in communications and human behavior to understand like not just what listeners did, but why they did it. And rather than follow, you know, the conventional podcast advice that was out there, you know, publish consistently all the things that we hear all day long. Yeah. My my angle has always been, you know, research and testing and refining like what actually drives podcast performance, you know, and over the years have helped launch and grow over 70 top 100 podcasts across like a you can't even count how many industries, how many niches.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01But the thing, yeah, the thing that was the most amazing though is that it all comes down to psychology. The highest performing podcasts, what we found, they're not accidental. They're the predictable outcome of how well a host can understand and then influence listener behavior.
SPEAKER_00I personally struggle with this kind of stuff. And it's hard for me to get a bigger picture of the choices that I'm making in podcasting, especially when I was first starting out. And that's actually kind of what we're talking about. That's exactly what we're talking about today, is we're we're discussing like making these decisions that might come back to haunt you because there's several things, like, you know, how you name your podcast or the cover art that you choose, or, you know, whatever that we're gonna get into that sometimes down the line, once you kind of get going, you go, oh shoot, I messed up and I gotta fix this. And you've developed kind of a system for people to identify where those problems lie.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And kind of the bigger picture, if we were to zoom out for a minute before we zoom in and kind of talk specifics, which I'm super excited to unpack with you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But the bigger picture, think of it like this. I want you to think of your podcast like a flywheel. Now, all of the performance of your podcast, the growth of your podcast, the audience engagement of your podcast, the metrics of your podcast, all of those things are a result first of the input that you, the host, are the decisions that you're making that go into your podcast, which then influence the decisions that your listeners make. These are the two upstream things that the industry never talks about. But these are the two things that have to happen first. And they're two sides of a coin. It's the host decisions and the listener decisions that then inform a strategy for a particular show, which then drives podcast performance, which then produces the metrics, and then in reviewing and analyzing those metrics, it then informs host decisions. So we just go round and round and round where the host decisions influence the listener decisions, which informs the strategy, which creates the performance, which drives the metrics, which informs the decisions. And when you understand this, it's like, oh my gosh, now suddenly we're looking at a podcast from a completely different way than we've maybe looked at it prior to that. Yeah. And so this is a really powerful thing to realize as a host is like not only are you in complete control of the destiny of your show. And I know that might sound a little like far-fetched, like what according to my show's destiny, like, yes, you are in complete control of the performance that you have or do not have from your show. And when you realize that it tacks back to and it tracks back to your host decisions that are influencing the listener decisions on your podcast, within podcasting gets a lot of fun because then it just becomes a game of now, how am I optimizing these decisions? How am I making the best decisions for my show? What decisions do I need to make? What decisions have I made that maybe I didn't realize panned out the way I thought they would, and that now I might need a tweak or fix?
SPEAKER_00It's so much more fun when you're not spending energy on like menial things that just don't matter at all in your podcasting, you know? And so wasting so much time analyzing every single download and where it's coming from and, you know, like tracking that kind of stuff. It kind of sucks the fun out of it. I mean, unless you unless you're into that kind of stuff, but I I'm not into it.
SPEAKER_01No, I mean, most of us started our podcast because we have a topic that we're passionate about. We have a a calling in a sense. I've talked to so many podcasters who are like, you know, I feel called to do this work. I feel like, you know, this is this is the work I'm meant to be doing. And yes, the podcast might serve multiple different avenues in their business, driving leads, driving traffic, driving sales, driving conversions, all those things are great. But at the end of the day, like the root of it, most of us aren't doing this just for those reasons. Like there's a message that we feel compelled to share.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and
Podcast Health Score
SPEAKER_00to help podcasters understand this, you've been working on something that you have called the podcast health score.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I'm so excited about this. We've been working on this for almost a year now. And, you know, when I thought about how do we think about podcast performance, you know, psychology is a very fuzzy sort of concept. You know, you could say, okay, do XYZ on your podcast, get XYZ result. You know, we're always looking for what's the quick fix, what's the next thing that I could do on my show. When we sit here and take a step back and kind of talk about psychology, it's like, why does that really matter, Courtney? I don't know. One of the things that I noticed was the same problem happening over and over and over in the industry was that every time I would talk to someone who was struggling to grow their show, you know, they'd launched it six months ago, they've been doing all the right things. They've been publishing an episode every week. They've been putting out, giving away their most valuable content for free. They've been guessing on other podcasts, they've been doing all the things that we've been told to do, will grow a show. And something's still not working. And I don't know what I'm missing. That's a hard place to be because you're giving your time and energy to something that is not giving you a return yet. And you might love podcasting and you might believe in the medium and you want to make it work, but all of us will only do something for so long without getting something in return before we throw in the towel. You know, it's just like the reality of how we are as humans. So one of the things that I notice is that the industry isn't solving the wrong problems necessarily. It's solving a lot of the right problems, but in the wrong order. And a lot of the podcast tools that are out there today that we see, you know, hitting the marketplace are really, if you think about it, they're just designed to solve one part of a podcast at a time. So that's really what the podcast health score is designed to do. It's to diagnose five different areas of the podcast, the five different systems, if you will, that need to work together for a show to be successful, to diagnose where these breakdowns might be happening and then also give immediate next steps for what to fix.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'm so excited about this. And I think this is going to be such a useful tool to podcasters. Um, I think you have a wait list that we can link to in the show notes, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I'll definitely give you that link. You can link to it in the show notes. We need as many people we want you listening right now. If you have a podcast, please go get on the wait list because we need as many beta testers as we can to go through this so that we can get your feedback and make it more valuable for you. Because right now it'll be a series of questions that you answer. It's gonna calculate your scores based on your answers and then give you a customized roadmap to show you what to fix first and in what order. But eventually in the future, my hope is to where we can turn this into a way that you can just connect your RSS feed, plug it in. It's gonna read everything on your show, calculate everything, might ask you a couple questions still, and then rate your show based on these criteria that we're gonna be digging into here in just a second.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I love it. So today, on this episode, we're kind of doing like a live testing of our own with one of the systems. Um, just so our listeners know, like I have a very basic like skeleton outline because Courtney is really bringing all the information, everything to it. And so I'm just like along for the ride. And this is such a weird experience for me right now.
SPEAKER_01I'm excited to do this live though, because okay, like I spend my days like thinking about this stuff, ideating on this stuff, and it would be like totally overwhelming to dig into all five. And when I was emailing you part of this, I was like, may not want to do like all of them, but let's do this section and we can do the ones that are in this section, which is gonna be super relevant.
SPEAKER_00Great. I'm I'm super excited about this. I I do want to note for our podcasters that are already established, and if you've been podcasting for a while, we're gonna go through some things that you decide pretty early on. I mean, pretty early on, you decide when you're first starting your podcast. We're gonna be kind of going through these decisions that you make as a podcaster, but I wouldn't not be deterred from changing some things about your podcast later on.
SPEAKER_01And I'll add to that too, Jordan, just because this is a really important point. You know, and I would say actually, probably about 70 to 80% of the people we've worked with have been existing podcasters with a show that was struggling to grow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And this messaging is usually where it starts to break down. Messaging is the number one predictor of whether your podcast is going to convert potential listeners into loyal fans and into revenue. And so I want you to think of messaging as the written content of your podcast. It's what listeners will experience with your show before they ever hear your voice, before they ever hear your content, before they ever hear how knowledgeable you are or how valuable whatever it is that you teach or talk about. So this is really important because there comes a point in time in podcasting where if you're gonna grow, if you want to grow your show, we got to get outside of your warm audience. When you first launch a podcast, you know, we're telling our friends, we're telling our family, of course they love us, they want to support us, they're gonna go follow the show, they might listen to an episode, we might share with our social media, probably share with our email list. All these people know like and trust you already. So where messaging really, really matters is not so much with your warm audience, because most of them are gonna have some layer of know like and trust where they're gonna have context for you and what you do. Where messaging really matters is for someone who doesn't know you, who's never heard of you, who doesn't know if they encounter my show, Insider Secrets for a Top 100 Podcast, why it's been named the best podcast on podcasting by listeners. Like they don't know who Courtney Elmer is. Like, why should I listen to this girl? Like, okay, maybe she has cute headphones and like a cute picture on her cover, but like, why should I care? So, like, this is about the why should I care for the people who don't know you yet. Okay, so I just want to like drive that point home because that's why this is so important, particularly if you have an existing podcast. And like you said, Jordan, like we can totally make tweaks along the way and change things. So no harm, no foul there.
The Five Content Gatekeepers Explained
SPEAKER_01All right. So let's dig into the gatekeepers because this is really where messaging, you know, if I when I'm talking about messaging, I like to break it down into these five steps of the listener journey. I call them your five podcast content gatekeepers that will ultimately determine whether or not someone hits play.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So if they don't make it past these gatekeepers, they're not gonna hit play. I want you to hear that because this is so important. Because it's like, again, if we're gonna convert someone who doesn't know you yet to actually giving your show a chance, we got to be able to show them is this gonna be worth my time? These next 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes that I spend giving this show a chance. So there's five gatekeepers. And let's go through each one. And if you're cool with it, I really would love to ask you a couple questions about BuzzCast. Okay. And then we'll do like a scoring. And then if you're when you're listening to this, follow along and answer these questions for your show. We'll tally the scores as we go, and at the end we'll we'll talk about the scores and what they mean and kind of next steps from there. Does that sound good?
SPEAKER_00Cool. Yeah, I'm ready.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
Cover Art That Stops Scrollers
SPEAKER_01Gatekeeper number one is your cover art. So this really is what's gonna make people click or keep scrolling. Like when someone sees your show in Apple and Spotify, I want you to think about this question and then just like give me your gut answer, Jordan. Okay. All right, you ready? Yeah. Okay, I promise. This is not scary. Take a breath. Okay, it's good. We're good. Okay. All right. How confident are you that your cover art visually signals what your show is about and makes a listener immediately want to click? I'm gonna give you three possible answers. And I want you to score a 10. So just in your head, Tally, give yourself 10 points. If you feel like your show artwork immediately visually conveys what your show is about, who it's for, and why they should listen. Okay. Give yourself a five if you like your artwork and you think it looks really good, but you're not really sure if it grabs attention or communicates your show's value immediately to new listeners. And then give yourself a zero if you haven't really thought much about your artwork and how it helps listeners decide to click play or not. Okay. Again, no judgment here. Okay, Jordan, kind of where do you feel like Buzzcast falls?
SPEAKER_00I'm locked in. I feel like we're a solid six. Okay. But the reason behind this is that we have Buzz Sprout on the cover art. And so you know it's a branded podcast. So there's kind of already a little bit of a um like a branding privilege being associated with Buzz Sprout. So they'll see that and go, oh, it's Buzz Sprout. Yes. But if it did not have that on there, I do not think that anyone would know that this was a Buzz Sprout podcast.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I agree with you there. Also, though, I will say I give y'all a lot of props because your production value of your cover art is really strong. Like it doesn't look like you just kind of threw it together in Canva. Like it looks really well designed. Yes, something that you can also look at for your cover art depending on the category that your podcast lives in. So if it's business, if it's how-to, whatever your category is, your primary category, you can look at the other shows around it and see what colors are they primarily using. Like I'd be curious if you were to pull like with a podcasting podcast and specifically like the technology podcasting podcast, like the industry technology, you know, niche within podcasting, and just look at your competitors and take that in. And then also look at what what's y'all's primary category?
SPEAKER_00I think it's tech technology.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I would look at other tech podcasts too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And see what colors are they primarily using. You know, you might have an opportunity where it's like similarly where maybe the green, the buzzprout green is, you know, the way to go instead of the black background or something. But those are things you can take a look at. And then with this in mind, like consider that. You know, if we if the goal is to draw a listener's eye, draw their attention, and then make them feel like this is a serious podcast, is our cover art doing that? So if you're listening, like consider these answers and go ahead and score yourself in your head. Nobody's gonna know what your score is. It's okay, you don't have to like share this publicly.
SPEAKER_00Unless you want to, you can send it to us. It's fine.
SPEAKER_01You totally could, but this is just for your benefit.
SPEAKER_00So
Podcast Names For Search Visibility
SPEAKER_00awesome. All right, so let's move on to number two, and this is the podcast name. I've got I've got notes for myself on this one.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01I want to hear your notes after. Okay, so let's talk about podcast names. Cause this is the thing that if your cover art attracts a person's eye and their eye stops, then they're gonna read the podcast name. Like, and this happens so quickly next to each other that it's almost it's almost indiscernible, but it really is two steps to the process, right? Because we draw their eye, then if their eye lands, they're gonna read it. So your podcast name, if you think about like, okay, podcast name, most people approach this from the standpoint of like, well, what is gonna be like the the best expression of what I talk about and teach? And, you know, how can I come up with something that's just really creative? Like people are just gonna get it, hint, nobody is ever gonna get it if it's really creative or clever, like or inside joke, yeah. Inside joke, we hear all of these, like, you know, do this, not that for podcast names. But I want you to like put all that aside for a moment, just think about what's the role that my podcast name plays in attracting listeners. It plays two roles. The first is uh search visibility. Because if a listener is searching for a podcast like yours and your show is not so showing up in search, then you're missing out on over 50% of listeners who are looking for podcasts that way. So it's really important from just like a grass tack like search perspective, if you want your podcast to get found. But it also plays a role in relevance to your listener because they need to be able to understand before they click into your show and long before they hear an episode what your podcast is about. Is it for me? And is it relevant to something that I'm experiencing, thinking about a problem I'm solving, a topic I'm interested in learning in, is it relevant to me? So think of your podcast name kind of like the storefront sign that you would put if you had a brick and mortar, like this is the sign we're putting out front. Yeah. And if you have a barber shop and you know, you don't at least say barber haircuts, like whatever it might be, nobody's gonna know that you have a barber shop, right? So it's like it kind of needs to be obvious. It doesn't mean it needs to be boring, but when people see your podcast name, they should instantly understand what's inside. All right, so here's the question. We're gonna rate it, and then I want to hear your notes, Jordan, about like buscast and y'all say I am. Okay, so for you listening right now, think about this as well. So, does your podcast name make it obvious what your show is about and who it's for? From the name alone. There is no other additional context that someone has on your show at this point. So your name is doing all the work here. All right, so give yourself a 10 if your podcast name clearly and immediately tells your listeners what your show is about, who it's for, and what they'll get from tuning in. Give yourself a five if it sounds clever, or maybe it's witty, or maybe it's fun, but you're not totally sure it helps new listeners instantly understand what you stand for, what your show's about, or what they're gonna get from it. Or give yourself a zero if you picked your podcast name because it sounded creative or it was personal to you, but you really haven't thought much beyond how it impacts your discoverability or the listener perception of your show.
SPEAKER_00I would give us like a two because it's sort of like a portmanteau of Buzzsprout and podcasts. But other than that, like you would not know that it was a podcast about podcasting. And additionally, in recent years, it's actually gotten even worse for the performance of the podcast because there's now like this kind of, I don't know, shady like chat app, sort of like Snapchat or like TikTok, I don't know what it is, um, called Buzzcast.
SPEAKER_01And oh my gosh, I've never heard of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I I'm not convinced it's appropriate, but I don't know. I haven't looked into it too deeply.
SPEAKER_01Um spend any time there, huh?
SPEAKER_00No, no, thank you. But yeah, if you just give it like a quick goog, like we do not come up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's that's the reason why I give us like such a low rating, is it's like a portmanteau, it's fun, but it doesn't actually talk about like podcasting, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Totally. I would say for your audience, for your clients and customers, like people who know Buzz Sprout, who know the brand, who identify with the brand, who use the platform, they would get the name because when they see, oh, Buzzsprout has a podcast, oh, it's called Buzzcast. Well, that's cute. Yes, Buzz Sprout is podcast. I get it. Click, boom, I want to learn from Jordan. I want to learn from Alban. I want to learn from Kevin. So I'm gonna listen anyway, right? But with that, we're still kind of in our warm circle of people who already know you and have that additional context.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so this is where for you listening, this is where the name is really important. Because if the purpose of the name is not only to, you know, get someone excited about your show, but it's also to get a new listener who doesn't know you to click, then we gotta be able to communicate what is the show about and not so much what it's about as much as what you're gonna get. From it.
SPEAKER_00And this is one of those situations where you can change this at any point in time. At any point in time, you can log into BuzzSpro and you can go into your podcast title and tweak it, change it to something that serves your podcast a little bit better. So I'm going to use us again as an example. So we wanted a, I say we, I wasn't even working here yet, but I know the story of this. So we wanted to have a quick hit kind of like podcasting help weekly episode. And the guys called it five minute Mondays because it was every Monday that it launched or that it published. And then it was five minutes long. So you got the tips in under five minutes and less. So five minute Mondays makes sense. And it was like the cover was like 5mm. And I don't think it was getting any traction. And then they were like, oh, we should probably change the title of the podcast. And so they did a whole rebrand and they renamed it to Podcasting QA, which is actually still going strong today. Kara Passetti from our support team has taken over that podcast now. And it does so much better. I mean, it's obvious. It's podcasting QA. You have your podcasting questions, we answer them. And they're just like these quick hit episodes. So we didn't change the format of the podcast very much, but it's so much better and it's so much more clear what we are.
SPEAKER_01I love that tangible proof that you've gotten, like with just that, just that alone. And not only, I mean, I guarantee you it's surfacing in search when someone's searching for podcasting or podcast-related podcasts. It's like, okay, yeah, that makes sense because that's who we want to reach. And that's what I will say here. Okay, one final tip I'll leave you with on the name before moving on to the next gatekeeper is if you have a name that you really love and you're just not ready to part with it yet, I get it. I'm not gonna like force you to change it. But if your show is not seeing the traction that you expected it to have right now for the work that you've been putting into it, these gatekeepers are typically one of the first places that we want to look. Because again, when we want to grow our show, we've got to get it in front of new listeners. If those new listeners are not clicking into it because they're not seeing how it's relevant for them, then that's just gonna hurt you right there at the gate. So if you're not ready to part with that name yet, then please at least do me a favor, do yourself a favor by putting a search optimized tagline in the name field of your podcast behind the podcast name inside of Buzzsprout. You don't have to put this on the cover art, you don't have to put this anywhere else, but we want to have a search optimized name, ideally. And if we don't have that, then let's at least add a search optimized tagline with a keyword or two keywords, if you can work them in. We're not keyword stuffing here, we're being very strategic, that can help surface your podcast when people are searching for your topic. Because Apple and Spotify both look at the name field of a show to see what it's about. And think of it if you know anything about traditional SEO like Google, blog, SEO, it's like that header one tag. And so they're gonna look at that and they're gonna see, okay, what is this about? Because they're searching to see, okay, what can we match, what shows can we match with listeners who are searching for this topic? And so you want to give your your show the best chance of surfacing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and AI is doing something very similar. And yeah, that podcast title goes really far. I've I've done this with so many of my own podcasts where I've tweaked the titles to have just a couple keywords in it. And either I tweak the title to have keywords in the actual title, like Dreamful Bedtime Stories, or I will tweak it to where we have our creative name and then we have like happy to help and then a customer support podcast. Yes. It's so helpful.
Descriptions That Answer Why Care
SPEAKER_00All right, so let's move on to the gatekeeper number three. And again, I have a personal story about this one.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I want to hear your stories. But gatekeeper number three is your podcast description. Okay, so this is the about section of your podcast. This is what listeners see before they hit follow. It's that blurb of text that tells someone what the show is about. So if along the way you've been noticing the trend that each of these gatekeepers' jobs is to get a listener to click, it's to get them interested, it's to move them. The first click will happen right after the podcast cover art and name. If those things are relevant and believable enough for someone, the next step that they will likely take is they will click into your podcast. At that point, the first thing that they see are gonna be the first two lines of your podcast description. They're not gonna read the whole thing. We do want to have the whole thing, but they're not probably gonna read it word for word. But those two lines, like if you were to focus on nothing else, let's pay attention to those first two lines because this is not only what listeners are skimming to get more context for your show, it's also what podcast players are looking at to determine what the show is about. And so, you know, you may have heard me talk about this on my show or from stage if you've been, you know, people hear me talk about this all the time, Jordan. So I feel like a broken record when I say it, but it's like someone listening might not have heard this before. And at the end of the day, every podcast is designed to solve a problem. But it's not designed to solve a problem so much as it is to move people. The way we move people is through solving problems, and we can do that in our messaging. And so what we want to communicate here is essentially again, reinforcing who it's for and what they're gonna get, but in a way that makes them feel like this is so relevant to me, I can't help but now go browse the episode titles, which we'll get to in just a second. All right. So thinking about your podcast description, think of it like, I mean, an easy way to think of it is like an elevator pitch. It's either gonna get someone excited to hit play or it's gonna make them click out of your show. So this is the moment where they're gonna click in or they're gonna click away. So think about this question. Okay, how confident are you that your description converts potential listeners into actual listeners? All right, give yourself a 10 if you feel like your show description clearly speaks to what your listeners want and positions your show as the one to deliver it. Give yourself a five if you feel like it explains what your show's about, but you're not totally sure if it's persuasive enough to make someone who has never heard of you click play. And give yourself a zero if you're like, Courtney, I honestly have not thought that much about my description as something that should help convert new listeners. Like I just wrote what my show's about, and or like, you know, use some AI prompts to help me generate this. Like, that's what I have up there. Maybe it needs to be improved. No judgment if that's you, but tell me, Jordan, where you feel like you fall.
SPEAKER_00Like seven or eight.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Like I'm not mad about it. You know, I think it's a seven or eight. And and the reason why I'm giving that answer is because I actually recently updated our podcast description because I hadn't looked at it in years. I mean, really. And then I saw it in like a website mock-up sort of thing, and I was like, oh no, I gotta fix this.
SPEAKER_01I want to hear this before and after story. And look, I want to also be transparent that if you want me to just kind of like first reaction, take a look at it, I'm happy to do that. Because I did not look at BuzzCast intentionally before this interview, in case you wanted like my first like gut response, which I do be really fun to do. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Okay. Can can I read you my my original and then what it updated to?
SPEAKER_01Read me the original so I have that context. And then yes, read me the updated. You know, of course, let me know which is which. And then I might close my eyes just so I can like listen because that this is kind of an intuitive thing for me, but I'm gonna be like totally locked in.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'm so excited. Let me get my glasses on so I can read this. Okay. Okay. So here's the original one that I was like, okay, this is probably not accurate. Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the customer support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up to date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you. And I thought it's it's nice and short. I like how concise it is, but it actually wasn't accurate because we don't dip into the customer support mailbag. I think they maybe did that like one episode. Now we have fan mail that we dip into. Um, so yeah, there's there's just like things like that. And I was like, I feel like we've actually kind of ventured away from like our current event punchies sort of thing, because we've experimented throughout the years. So here's the new one. All right. Buzzcast helps podcasters stay informed, inspired, and excited to keep podcasting. Each week, Jordan, Kevin, and Albin break down the podcasting news, trends, tools, and creator debates that actually matter. We share what we're seeing at Buzzsprout, what we're testing ourselves, and what podcasters should pay attention to without chasing every new thing. The goal is to help you keep podcasting without burning out, expect honest opinions, practical takeaways, occasional rabbit trails, and a reminder that podcasting should be fun.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Okay. Well, you're first of all, this is the they're worlds apart. This is the new one is much, much, much improved. Yes. Let me give you kind of like, and I was jotting things down as as you were reading. So with the old one, there was there were things you were doing well. Like you had SEO keywords, absolutely worked in there. And I know what keywords work for podcasting podcasts, because I have a podcasting podcast. It was like, I heard all those like fuzzy keywords. Like I knew that. But then you said it was concise. I agree with you. It was short, it was to the point. The main thing that the first description, like what came up for me is that it's explaining what, not why. Oh. And this is important because if our listeners, if the goal here is to convince a listener, like, yes, I want to listen to this show, it has to be relevant for them. And so there's a lot of times where, you know, we're talking about what we do, we're talking about why it's important, we're talking about trying to make it all, you know, like exciting and all this, and that's great. But at the end of the day, the listener only cares, like, what's in it for me? Yeah. And I know we hear this, you know, preached throughout marketing for centuries. Like, what's in it for me, yes, is true and always will be true because we're humans. And that's how human psychology works. Like, we always want to know, like, if I'm gonna spend 30 minutes listening to this show, like, what am I gonna get out of it? And how is this different than another show that I could listen to on a similar topic? So when I heard your new one, what I really liked was not only did the first line speak exactly about what you're here to do for your listener, it did a nice job of aligning that with the mission of Buzzsprout and your brand as a whole, which is key. Like that, if we can check both of those boxes, that's great. Because, you know, we're we're tying those things together, which is great. The one thing I think it was in the second sentence of your new description where you talk about the things that actually matter, immediately my brain goes, matter for what, matter to who, matter why. How can we expand on that a little bit? And so this is a really fun exercise, Mitmal. It might not be fun for you. You might be wanting to hit me through your headphones after I give you this homework. But if you're listening right now and you want to take a stab at your description and thank me later, you can do this. Okay. So take your description and I want you to look through your description for any words that convey emotion. So this often shows up like it'll say feel and then but like if you're someone who feels overwhelmed or you are struggling or you feel angry or you are grieving, right? Like we tend to use a lot of emotional language when we write, copy, and emotional language does not convert. And the reason is because emotions are subjective. And so if I say, and this is an example I often give because it it'll help you understand the difference, where if I say to a mom of a two-year-old, are you feeling overwhelmed? That's gonna mean something different than if I say to a seven-figure business owner who just had to fire half of their team because they had to make cutbacks or whatever, like do you feel overwhelmed? It's a different level of overwhelm. It's a different context, it's a completely different situation. So the way that we can avoid leaning into subjective language is to take any feeling word that you see throughout your description and turn it into a visual picture. For the mom of the two-year-old, it might be if you are tired of your two-year-old flinging their macaroni and cheese off the table because you gave them the red bowl instead of the blue bowl, this podcast is for you, right? Immediately that listener and that mom's gonna be like, oh, you understand me, you know, or the seven-figure person, like if you have a business that's generating seven or more figures per year, but you just had to lay off half of your team because of the recent recession that hit the market, like this is the where we're gonna talk about these things to help you, right? So immediately it gives your listener the context that they don't have to figure out in their brain. So that's one thing that you can start to look at, you know, everything that you write, not just on your podcast, remove those feeling words and then look for language that doesn't fully answer the question. It's really because, like the point that I've said earlier, um, what was it? Actually matter. Okay, actually matter for what? What matters? What matters about what? Like, let's expand on that. Let's get really specific about that. Let's make it concrete. Why does it matter? And why should it matter to your listener? So, like looking for like vague phrasing or even just phrasing that gets used a lot of times, like podcast growth is one of those things where it's like, I'm no longer talking about podcast growth. I'm talking about what drives it. We're talking about podcast performance, like changing the language around things so that your listener's brain doesn't have to fill in the context, is going to help them get to the action you want them to take faster, which is to click play.
Episode Titles With Relevance And Urgency
SPEAKER_00All right, so let's move on to gatekeeper number four, which is episode titles. Oh, I love this one. This is something that I had to learn later on in my podcasting journey because, you know, I it's so funny. I want to say I grew up, but it's like I grew up as a podcaster. I grew up in my podcasting presence in the era of like the quirky punny titles working for podcasts like reply all or, you know, something like that. And so that's kind of like where I started. And then I learned through just kind of like maturing in podcasting that like that doesn't work out so well. So I'm excited to talk about this.
SPEAKER_01I'm also excited because episode titles are getting more love lately from the industry as a whole, I feel. And that's a good thing because episode titles are one of the biggest gatekeepers that stand in between a listener hearing your voice for the first time, especially if they're a new listener. And this is something that ultimately, way downstream in our podcast, plays out in terms of how many listens we're getting to our show. Because if your episode title doesn't convince them that they should click, well, then chances are they're not gonna click, they're not gonna click play. Like they're not gonna click into it, and they're not gonna click play. And then what? Right? We struggle. So episode titles are big because let's say someone so far, they've seen your cover art, they've seen your podcast name, they've skimmed your podcast description. Those first two lines really convince them to take a look through your episode titles. At this point, think about your own user behavior when you're finding a podcast for the first time. And not a podcast necessarily that someone recommended to you, although it could be that, but a podcast that maybe you stumbled on. Maybe it was advertised on a website or you saw it recommended somewhere. You know, maybe it's like, you know, if you go to the Buzzprout website, like down at the bottom, you'll have like podcasts we love, you know, and there's podcasts there. Maybe you saw one of something like that and you clicked into it, right? And it's you're just trying to get a sense of the show. The episode titles are gonna give you a really strong sense of that show out the gate. And what's important to remember here is that a listener is not gonna scroll endlessly through your back catalog to find something that's interesting to them. So all of your episode titles need to be again relevant. I know I keep coming back to that word, but it's about convincing the listener, this is for me right now. It's relevance with urgency at this point. Because we want to be able to get them to click, like because it's so specific to whatever it is that they're looking for. So we'll talk about like some best practices for titles, but first, let's score. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER_00I feel I'm feeling confident about this one. I feel really good about this. Okay.
SPEAKER_01I let's go. I I feel like you're gonna be strong here too. Okay, so thinking about your last five titles, and for you listening, do the same thing. Think about your last five episode titles. Would someone who's never heard of you instantly see why it's worth their time to listen? Now, let's assume this is your ideal listener. Okay, so it's not like someone who wouldn't be interested in your topic. They're interested in your topic, but would they instantly see why it's worth their time to listen? All right, so score yourself a 10 if your titles clearly tell listeners what they'll get. They use keywords people actually are searching for, and position your episodes as the obvious next click for someone interested in that topic. Give yourself a five if you feel like your titles describe your episode content, they say what the episode's about, or they summarize the content. They're not optimized for search. You think they're pretty good, but you're not totally sure if it would make it obvious to a listener who doesn't know you why they should care. Okay, that's an important distinction there, right? Like it's it's telling people what it's about, but is it really making it obvious what a listener is gonna get out of it? All right. And then zero, if you usually let your team or AI handle your episode titles and haven't really considered how they show up in search or influence the first impression that your show makes on a new listener.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I know you said like the last five episodes, but I'm gonna exclude our most recent one because it was more of like just a personal update sort of episode. So I gotta cut that one. Um, I'm cheating a little bit. Um, but the five episodes before that one, I want to give myself like a solid 10. I just want to like give myself a gold star.
SPEAKER_01Let's do it. I love it. I feel like your titles are really strong too. Thank you. And again, I didn't dive deep. I've dug deep into the archives in the past. Whenever I'm prepping, like, you know, when you came on my show, I'm like, okay, what topics have y'all not talked about that we can cover on my show? You know, like all of that thing. Like so, I'm familiar with your titles. Um, but I do feel like your titles are strong. And that this is the thing, really, with episode titles is again, going back to specificity here, because in our world, Jordan, like we talk a lot about podcast monetization. You know, that's something you've talked about on my show. It's something that gets talked about a lot in the industry. You know, someone might come up with a title for that and be like, okay, well, let's just not say three ways to monetize a podcast because, well, that's been done before. Three new ways to monetize a podcast. Like, surely that's gonna get someone to click. You know, so it's like, we'll do things like that, but at the end of the day, it's still generic, it's still pretty general. But if we were to say three new ways to monetize your podcast before you reach a thousand downloads an episode, well, now you're talking to someone very specifically and it's providing additional context around that topic. So there's a lot we could go into with episode titles, but I have spent gosh, I don't even know how many years at this point testing episode titles. And one of the things that we've noticed that performs the best is when a title can kind of irritate the pain that someone's experiencing intentionally.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. This is psychology coming in, uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01But also provide relief to that pain. And so it's not always like a how-to or like teaching you something. It's do we show an understanding of what the listener is going through and do we show them our expertise in that we're here to help them solve it. And so there's a different few different things you can do with your titles that you can play with. But one thing I always recommend is add numbers in your titles. It doesn't have to be every title. You don't have to have like everything be feel like a listicle, you know, seven ways, three strategies, four things. Like it doesn't have to be like that. But in the example I just gave, it wasn't even three ways to monetize, but it was also before you reach a thousand downloads.
SPEAKER_00It's so interesting that you mentioned like using numbers in your titles because we actually found something very similar. We found through like analyzing the performance of all of our episodes, the ones that had like five ways to do this, those perform really well. But what doesn't perform well is when you have season or episode numbers in your titles. And there's a huge distinction between that because I have gone to podcasts where it was like recommended to me by somebody, or maybe it's someone who is in the community. I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting. And I go in. And when you put episode number sign 236, and then you have something about like the theme of the Yeah. And then it's already used up all the space in the title section of your page. And like on Apple Podcasts, it creates friction because now I have to click into every single episode to see what this episode is about. Oh, is it like sequential? Do I have to listen to it in order? Or are you just doing this for the sake of ease of recommendation? You know, it can actually create an issue if you have those kind of things in the way.
SPEAKER_01Yes. In fact, it's so funny you mentioned this because I was in the Buzzprout community. This was a couple of months ago, and I was just searching for like most frequently asked questions because I was doing a rapid fire QA episode. I'm like, what are podcasters asking these days? What are they curious about? Episode numbers. I'm like, and so I'm glad you flagged this because I'm not talking about numbers in terms of episode numbers. This is a hill I will die on. I will rant on this until the cows come home. Like, please do not put episode numbers in. And there's multiple reasons why you've named a lot of them. Yeah. But like this question, Jordan, I scrolled back as far as I could, like, and I'm like, I'm done scrolling. Like, this is too much. Like it goes forever. Every other post was like someone asking about episode. I've got at least nine instances. People had asked, like, over the course of a couple of months, like, should I include episode numbers? I'm like, oh, MG. But you know, think no, no, absolutely not. You know, but think about it this way like you've got 60 characters to convince a listener to click play. Yeah. Like you're within perspective pretty fast. Yeah. It can feel like a tall order when you say, like, oh my gosh, I'm only 60 characters to convince someone they need to listen to this episode. Oh my gosh, like what uh uh. And you know, and then we turn to AI to just try to do it for us because we think it can do it better. But but really just remember these principles, you know. And in fact, I would love to give this to anyone who listens to this podcast, Jordan. We can link to this in the show notes. I have like a Mad Libs style cheat sheet. I call it your bingeworthy episode title cheat sheet. It's literally what it's called. And it's based on all these psychological principles and more that we didn't even cover here, but they're baked into all of these. And it's like a plug-and-play, fill-in-the-blank situation where it's like, okay, you take your topic, you look at these episode titles, and then you're like, okay, let me use this format, you know, and start testing these different formats. And when we're working with clients, you know, we're always looking on the back end, we're then evaluating the how well did those titles perform. We have a whole like popularity score that, you know, we score a podcast on the episode titles. And then we can tell that client, say, like, these are your top performing episode title formats. So these are the ones you need to be following most frequently for your show when you talk about these topics. So it's like it connects the dots, it comes full circle. But the first step is to learn how to write really strong titles. So I would love to give that to anyone listening here today who's interested.
SPEAKER_00I'm going to use it for this episode. I'm going to title this episode to do it. That's so fun. I love it. Okay, great. Let's move on to uh gatekeeper number
Show Notes As Teasers Not Recaps
SPEAKER_00five. This is the last one, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, this is the last one. Yep. All right, so quick recap. We've done your cover art, your podcast name, your podcast description, and your episode title. So you're like, okay, Courtney, at this point, they should click play. Like, is there anything else standing in the way? Yeah. And this one is your show notes. This is your episode descriptions. And a lot of people treat this like a recap or a summary of the content in the episode. But really, this is a conversion tool that's going to help new listeners decide yes, this is going to be worth the 30 minutes. It's going to help them hit the follow button. It's going to help them take action based on what they hear. So let's look at show notes and we'll rate BuzzCast. I want you to give me your score and then we can talk about it and unpack it a little bit. Okay.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01So thinking about that, thinking about how show notes are a conversion tool for your podcast that's going to convince a new listener to click play that this is worth their time. How confident are you that your show notes do that job well? All right. So give yourself a 10 if every episode has clear keyword optimized show notes that highlight the value they're going to get when they listen and use high-intent keywords that they search for. And point them towards clear next steps, like following the show or exploring your offer. So whatever step it is you want them to take. Okay. A five, if your show notes summarize the episode, but you're not totally sure if they're helping new listeners discover your show or take the next step after listening. And a zero, if you just normally like take your transcript and you run it through AI, Claude, ChatGPT, hey, write a short blurb about the episode. Like, I really don't think much about it beyond that, Courtney. Like it's just a summary. Like that's really what I'm putting there. You know, haven't really thought about how they influence discoverability or listener action. Again, if that's you, no judgment. Like this is to help us see where the biggest opportunities are for you with your podcast and moving listeners through this piece of the journey. So, Jordan, where do you feel like you fall?
SPEAKER_00I feel very confident in my show notes. I've always felt confident in my show notes. Um, I learned how to write show notes from uh Amanda McLaughlin from Multitude. She's got some great resources on that. And I feel really good about it. So I'm gonna give myself, again, like a gold star on here. I feel like I'm a solid nine. Um I always point listeners to um resources in the show notes. I get like we get fan mail because we have the fan mail link in the show notes. So I feel pretty good about it. I feel solid about it. And I'm looking at um our Buzzcast website here, and I feel like the first couple uh uh sentences that I see, I feel like they're hook. It's good. It could be a little bit better, but so that's why I'm doing a nine, but I'm I'm pretty confident.
SPEAKER_01Always room for improvement, right? I know I've stopped like giving myself tens for things because I'm like, I can always improve. That's a perfectionist in me. Like it can always be better. It's like it's okay to pat yourself on the back if you feel like you've got a good handle on things. That's just totally okay. So I love this. Okay, so show notes, and for you listening right now, the biggest favor you can do for yourself is if you've previously been thinking of your show notes, like is summarizing what we've talked we're talking about in this episode. I want you to stop thinking about your show notes as an episode summary and start thinking of it as an episode teaser.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because before someone presses play, they need a compelling reason to believe this is going to be worth the next 20, 30, 40 minutes of their time. So this is the last opportunity that we have. If for some reason your all the other gatekeepers to this point did not fully convince them yet to hit play, this is the last chance we have to do it. So your episode really should answer the question why should I listen to this? You know, are we challenging a belief here, an outcome that they're walk that they're gonna walk away with? Are we solving a clear problem for them? You know, they don't need the whole play-by-play of what's in the episode. And I've seen so many different versions of show notes, you know, through the years. And it's been interesting. The times where it's like I open up show notes and I'm like, oh my gosh, we have like the whole guest bio here. We have like the entire outline for what's covered in the episode. We've got like a blog 14 links. Yes. And I'm like, now what reason do I have to listen? You've just told me everything I need to know. I know, yeah. You know, so we want to avoid that. And again, kind of going back to, you know, you had mentioned in the the podcast description, like concise is good, and I 100% agree. Like, people are not gonna read things word for word. We need to get to the point as quickly as possible. And so a very concise short paragraph or a couple short few short sentences of what they're gonna get out of the episode, what problems are gonna be solved, what beliefs we're challenging in this episode, what outcomes they're walking away with. We're not telling them what we're teaching, but we're telling them why it matters. You know, if you tell them what you're gonna teach them in your episode show notes, why should they listen?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. On the other hand, if we tell them why it's important, well then that's gonna make them more likely to click play so they find out what it is that we're teaching. So if you want an example of show notes that do this, go look at my podcast. Like I always tell people, I mean, of course, I want you to listen to my podcast. I want you to learn from it, but I want you to study it. You should. I want you to study what we do on this show. And this will kind of just help you start to see your show through a maybe a different lens than you've been looking at it.
SPEAKER_00I see that all the time where they're basically writing like a user manual in the episode description. I'm just like, yes, oh great, I don't have to like listen to this episode. And then I also have seen the complete opposite end of the spectrum where people just leave it blank. Like they don't do an episode description, they just like have a title and then there's like a couple links from their footer that are just in there automatically and it's like yes, it'll just have like their their website and that's it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I know. Okay, so I'm gonna I want to give you a framework. I I actually was pulling this up just now because I I hadn't planned to do this, but I would like to do this if you're cool with it. I'd love to give you a framework that I have found really helpful when writing show notes. So for someone listening right now who maybe, if you're like, okay, I I I'm not a writer, like I I'm not a marketer, like I just want to podcast, you know? It can sometimes make us feel like really out of our element or out of our comfort zone to suddenly write something that now has to convert and it can feel like a lot of pressure. And so for me, it's always like if I have a framework as a fallback, that can really help. So I like to think of it like this the first sentence, that's your hook. This is your opportunity to have some sort of bold, polarizing statement here, or share a statistic that's really like gonna blow somebody's mind away. Or reverse a belief that maybe somebody has, I do this all the time, where it's like the industry believes this, and I might not say it literally like this, but it's like, you know, the industry believes, I don't know, you gotta publish every week to be successful, right? Let's just go with that. It's like we all know consistency is important, right? So if you've been publishing every week for the last year and your show still hasn't grown beyond 100 downloads a month, the question is why? Right? Because it's all of a sudden like poking holes into what we've known to be true, but like, yeah, I'm about to show you a different way. Yeah. So that's your first time. Yes, because then it gets someone to lean in, right? And if and if they're only gonna read the first sentence, well then we want them to really understand like what's in it for me. So whenever you break down, you know, what you're talking about inside of your episode, again, just kind of talking about not every little detail, but why it matters to you. What's the cost? What's gonna happen if you keep doing it this way or not? And then end with a call to action. I can't tell you how many clients we've coached who they don't have any sort of call to action in their show notes. And literally all of my show notes, and I'm not talking about the links that come below, but it's like, what do you want the listener to do now that they've read these three sentences that are so amazing? And it the next step is to do what? To click play. So it's like, let's tell them to click play. You know what it is? So you you can go look at my show notes. Literally at the end of all of them, I say, here's all these amazing things we're gonna talk about, hit play, and let's dive in. So some version of that. So all we're doing at any stage of the listener journey is we're opening loops in the listener's mind that the next step then closes. So at this point in the journey, your show notes are opening a loop in their brain, or that's how they should be designed, to open a loop in their brain that now they have to click play to close. And then beyond the gatekeepers, right? Then we get into your content. That's when they hear your voice for the first time. So please don't put a minute and 30 seconds of ads at the beginning of your podcast because you want to make $12 through CPM advertising. Like, just don't do it, right? Like the host at that, I mean the the listener at that point needs to connect with you. Yeah. And then from there, there's a whole episode structure that you then follow to move someone from hearing your voice for the first time through the content, through what is it that we're talking about, through why should I care, through okay, what's the next step you want me to take at the end of this episode? And it's all about the listener journey. So again, when just kind of coming full circle here, like when we can remember that it's the host decisions that drive the listener decisions that drive the performance of our podcast. That's really when we can begin to take full ownership versus saying, like, I'm gonna sit here and publish every week and I don't know what's working. It can feel like a very kind of out of control like experience. You're like, this sucks, I don't like this. But you feel when you feel like you've got full ownership and full control of the direction of your show because you understand now how to inform and guide it to the outcome that you want to achieve, podcasting does become fun. It does become enjoyable. You get out of it what you truly are
Adding Scores And Reading The Results
SPEAKER_01putting into it. Okay, so now it's time to add up our scores. If you're listening right now and you have been keeping track and you've got your score, just go ahead and tally up what you gave yourself for each of the gatekeepers. I know this is a little bit subjective, and this is why my like future version of this is ultimately once it's out of beta, like it'll be able to evaluate your show based on all of these criteria, you know, and kind of we always bring our own personal bias there, right? So I say that as a caveat because it's like we're gonna sometimes we're gonna score ourselves a little better than maybe we should have. Sometimes we're gonna score ourselves a little worse than maybe we should have, and we should give ourselves more credit. Okay. So this is why we're kind of working within ranges here. So, Jordan, so adding this up, and you may want to check my math, I got 31.
SPEAKER_00Yep, that sounds right.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so 31 or thereabouts, because math and me are not the best of friends, but something, something along those lines. All right. What I always say, and if you again working within ranges here, you know, 50 50 is the perfect score, right? 10 out of 10 for each of these sections, then great. Please stop listening to this podcast to go back to what you were doing. You don't need, you don't need the next steps. But if you scored less than a 40, all right, and being a little bit generous here, because again, we want to leave a little bit of margin for error, being that we're self-scoring, but less than a 40 means you got some room to grow. You got some room to improve. This is a good thing. You know, this doesn't mean like you have to go rebrand your entire show and overhaul everything. This means mainly that like you've got little tweaks to make. All right. So if you kind of had like mostly fives or thereabout in that range, then this means like you we may have some tweaks we want to make to the messaging of your show. If you have mostly zeros or really anything under a 30 at this point, if you kind of tallied everything up together, you are in the best position because you might be like, oh my gosh, my podcast sucks. Like, this is terrible. Nobody's listening, like, oh, and you're feeling bad about it right now. Like, please don't, because you have the biggest opportunity, you have the most growth potential. And it's just shows that we see that score the lowest when they make the recommended tweaks because they finally understand what they need to change and why they need to change it. Now they're not out there just like throwing spaghetti and hoping it sticks. Then they see the changes the fastest because it has the most potential to start. You know, you have the widest gap to cover. So it's like, okay, when I'm gonna put my efforts into like building the pathway that gets me across this gap, well, I'm gonna get there a whole lot faster than if I had just like incremental progress to make.
SPEAKER_00It's super fun when you're in that position where things could be a lot better. It's so fun because you see results much more quickly than if you already have a high performing podcast and you're making these slight tweaks. It's just it's not quite the same. Totally. And it gives you that jolt and that hope, which we all need.
SPEAKER_01We all need a little bit more of in life is hope.
SPEAKER_00Oh man. Yeah, this is this is something that is made for people like me who get overwhelmed really quickly when I feel like I'm I'm kind of like trying to run a self-diagnostic on like why something's not working. So, like I said, we're going to link to all this in the show notes. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you click through, sign up for Courtney's beta program, and also listen to her podcast, Insider Secrets to Top 100 Podcast, just chef's kiss. So good. So thank you, Courtney, so much for sharing your expertise with us and taking the time. You took a lot of time for me today. And I'm so, I feel so lucky that I was able to take this much of your energy and attention. So thank you.
SPEAKER_01Jordan, thank you for having me. It's truly been my pleasure.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, if you want to reach out to us and let us know what your scores were, go ahead and tap the Send Us Bama link in the show notes. And as always, thank you for listening and keep podcasting.
Post Show: AirBnB Of Her Own
SPEAKER_00I've been obsessed with like these home remodeling shows and like do-it-yourself kind of things and like fixing up houses and stuff and kind of doing stuff around our house. But you have taken it to like a whole new level and you have fixed up an Airbnb. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Because owning a company and my husband having a full-time career and having an eight-year-old apparently wasn't enough. So we decided let's get into short-term rentals.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. What how did this even come up? Like what? You're busy. I understand that. And I I also have like a couple kids, and like thinking about taking on something else just sounds crazy.
SPEAKER_01I know. Going through the process, there were many times I questioned my sanity, but yeah, it has always been a dream. Like my husband and I, my husband in particular, it has always been real interested in real estate. And we live in New Orleans, and the the house that we actually live in, like where my office is, if you're watching this on video, like this room that you've come to know is like coincidental with my podcast, because this is where I do all the things. This house was a house that we built right when we got married, and or actually not right when, but it was a year or two after we got married. But also, we don't know if we want to live here forever. And my husband was always interested just in real estate investing in general. So we've always just dreamed of like, okay, well, where would we want to have this property? It's gotta be somewhere we would want to enjoy, at least for the first one, like, you know, because we'd want to be able to vacation there and like have that place. Like we like our house, but we're on like a tiny little lot and just all those things, right? When you dream about this kind of stuff. And I have always, in fact, I almost went into interior design. Really? Yes. And so, like you, HGTV is like my love language. Like, I just I love, I love all that stuff. And so it's like the idea of doing an Airbnb was always exciting, but we never really had found the right place. And so, fast forward last year, we we've always kept an eye on the market for like other areas that we love here that you can get to within an hour or so of New Orleans, and we just never really found the right place, and we weren't really like serious about buying something. But then there's a street that is on a river in my hometown, about 45 minutes north of New Orleans that I have always dreamed of having a home on one day. Like it's yeah, beautiful, it's peaceful. It's like you drive onto this road and suddenly like you just exhale. Like it's just one of the most peaceful places. And so this house went up for sale, and we were in some really stressful season in in our work life. And anytime my husband would get stressed, like he would look at real estate, and so he'd send me properties. So he sent me this house, and I'm like stress shopping. Yes. So he sends me this house, and I'm like, Are you stressed? Should we talk? Like, are you okay? And he's like, No, no, just just just check it out. And so we went to my parents' house that weekend for a visit, and turns out my parents live about 10 minutes from where this property is. So my husband was like, let's just go see it. Like, let's just call up an agent. We're not gonna do anything, we're just gonna look. Yeah, we're just gonna look at it. Yeah, well, the next day we were putting in an offer along with three other people, and like had the other two people or three other people, I don't even remember at this point. It was like, all of a sudden, this house had been on the market for like five months, no interest, like nobody was interested in it, I suppose. And all of a sudden it was like everybody wanted to put in an offer. So I was like, okay, I guess we're putting in an offer. So we did, and all of the way through, like, I'm a very spiritual person, and I feel that this the whole way through was meant to be. It was one of those things where like God orchestrated this. Like, I could not have done this. And the fact that all of those offers went in, and the fact that they accepted ours, and the fact that it was on like this dream street, and the fact that it was in our budget because the market happened to be like in the toilet, like all of these things worked out. Yeah. And we got the property. Amazing. And so we were so excited because it was all of a sudden, and you know, when you have those moments in life where it's like there's something you want to do, but then all of a sudden the opportunity presents itself and you do it, and it's scary, but it's exciting at the same time. Like, this was totally that. This was totally that. We're willing to take on, like, you know, reasonable risk, but also it gets really real, really quick. So we were like, okay, this has to work. You know, we got to launch this, we got to get this live, we got to get it cash flowing and all this stuff. The house itself took us like five and a half, six months to like fully fix up. We thought it would take us like three. It's just like we ran into like one thing after the next, after the next, like, oh MG. Yes. Oh my gosh. I'm like, they they that was six months and 60 minutes out of wow, like that was amazing. Um, very true. And I'm telling you, down to like where I'm trying to install the cabinet door that I had measured and remeasured and like triple measured and painted myself, and like it literally was like an eighth of an inch off because the wall wasn't square. I'm like, just the stupidest stuff that you'd be like, really?
SPEAKER_00Like, really. My house is a hundred and oh my gosh, how old is my house? My house, like 110 years old. Oh my goodness. I know about like not square walls. Yes. It is, it was uh yeah. We've we've done a couple things. We've we've knocked walls out and put in door frames and put in bathrooms where there wasn't a bathroom sort of thing. We put in like the entire kitchen, like yeah, when you're in like these older homes and things are not square, it's just like, oh boy, okay, here we go.
SPEAKER_01Yes, but but the character of the home is so worth it.
SPEAKER_00It is, it is so worth it. And the ghosts.
SPEAKER_01I mean, yeah, and the ghosts, but that Airbnb was built in the 1930s. It was like two cottages that at some point they joined together. Cute. And it's like, I don't know, I want to say I can't even remember the exact square footage, but like 3,500 square feet or right under 4,000, like all on one level. Yeah. So it's like sprawling, and like all the windows in the back overlook the river, and there's like these beautiful trees, and it's just like it feels so tucked away in private, but yet you're like five minutes to this beautiful, cute little historic downtown. This is a house I hope to move into at some point where it's like this is gonna be like our forever place eventually, one day, and then we'll have Airbnb's elsewhere, I guess, if this goes well. But um, yeah, and so we redid the house. We had someone inquire about it, and they were like, this place is is so uh beautiful. Like, we have a wedding coming up. We'd love to book your house. Like, will it be ready by this day? We were like, um, yes, it will be ready by this date. Like, okay, we have four weeks to go. Yes, we could get it ready by this.
SPEAKER_00Sleep who?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let me tell you, down to the wire to get it ready. And it's been booked every weekend since.
SPEAKER_00Amazing.
SPEAKER_01And I it just kind of reawakened all the things that I love, like about design and hospitality and serving people and connecting with people. And people would walk through the house, like friends and family that came to visit before everything, you know, before we had guests staying there. And they were like, Um, why are you podcasting? Like, you should be doing this. Should you be in design? Like, this is amazing. And I'm just like, it just made me feel so good, you know. But it's like I checked that box, it filled that little desire, and I'm back to podcasting, which I also love. So it's the best of both worlds.