How To Create Your Audience's Favourite Podcast with Jay Acunzo

Speaker A: If you really want to create a successful podcast, don't even think podcast, think show. I want to make something that makes a difference. That's what shows do. Shows. Are you saying to somebody the status quo of our community or the society we live in, or this niche or this trend, status quo is broken away in the distance I see some kind of mountain peak. I think that's the better way compared to where we're at today. I'd like to reach that mountain peak.

Speaker B: You're listening to Customer show, the podcast that explores what makes people tick, click and buy. I'm your host, Caitlin Burgoyne. I'm a marketer by trade and a four time founder by choice. And I believe whoever gets closer to the customer wins. So here's the multi million dollar question. In a world where everyone is fighting for your buyers attention, how do people like us marketers, uh, and entrepreneurs who want to drive more sales without working around the clock or resorting to shady marketing techniques, how do we persuade more customers to buy from us? That's the question. And this show has the answers. As marketers, it's our job to get people's attention. But here lies the massive problem. Anybody with a big advertising budget or a clickbait headline can get attention. What separates good marketers from the world class ones is their ability to get and hold their audience's attention. This is especially true when it comes to podcasting. There are so many podcasts out there. So how do you get your podcast to become somebody's favored podcast? I've been grappling with this very question as it relates to this show. I know that people like our show, but we need more than that if we want to earn a spot in their earbuds each and every week. We knew we needed to up our game, so I went searching for answers and that led me to today's guest. And according to m my guest, if you want to create a show that can get and keep your audience's attention, it all starts with the right premise. So what's a premise? Well, as you'll hear my guest explain, a premise is a combination of a topic and and a unique angle by which you approach that topic. I want you to think about your favorite show. It could be a TV show, a podcast, or even a YouTube channel. What makes you come back again and again? I'm willing to bet the reason it's your favorite show is that the premise speaks to a deep interest or desire you have. All right, so let's look at an example. There are thousands of cooking shows out there. But the reason that I love Iron Chef is because I can't wait to see how the contestants are going to use the mystery ingredient. As a foodie and the wife of a chef, I'm always looking for new ways to use unique ingredients that might impress my husband or our, uh, other foodie friends. So this topic interests me. And it's the unique angle that gets me to watch every episode of Iron Chef. Meanwhile, when shows come on like Martha Stewart's Kitchen, I get totally bored. Same topic, different premise. Now, the premise doesn't need to be complex. It just needs to be focused. And who better to help us understand how to craft your audience's favorite show than Jay Aconzo? Jay is a podcast expert who has designed and hosted shows for companies like Podia Drift and Help Scout. Listen closely throughout our conversation about how Jay keeps coming back to the premise as the most important factor that content creators and marketers need to be thinking about when it comes to their work. To kick off the conversation, I asked Jay how he thinks about the difference between getting people's attention and keeping it.

Speaker A: We're so obsessed with becoming discoverable, which in and of itself is a problem. I understand we could talk about that a little bit, but we're so obsessed with discoverability that we've forgotten that the goal is memorability. And it's not enough to get a bunch of people to arrive unless they stay. And nothing good happens unless that happens. Coming up, as I did in tech, working in content marketing, I was always struck by how people talked about the marketing of the content, not the creation of the content. People talked about, like, basically trying to get a, uh, poorly built rocket to orbit. But it's a lot easier if you, like, build a great rocket to get up there and stay there. And, you know, so whether you're talking about, like, story techniques and frameworks, knowing what a story even is, let's start there, people. Or you're talking about service to the audience and, uh, a focus on them first and yourself second. And by doing that, you're then better served. There's all these symptoms that we see, which I think if you just distill it down, it's marketers, creators, entrepreneurs, people running businesses that are using the created work to trigger a result. They're so focused on triggering the result that they stop paying attention to the pathway there. But that's everything, right? Like, a metric is a measure of how successful you're being, achieving a goal. And your goal is not the metric. That's how you Measure your goal. Your goal should sound like some variant of make something that makes a difference for your audience. So if you just started there, you can't help but think about how do you actually ensure people stick and stay? Because it's not about grabbing attention, it's about holding it.

Speaker B: So true. And as marketers who have come up in maybe some. This old school of thinking, this way of it's all about eyeballs and gathering attention and, and people who aren't maybe putting nearly enough emphasis on holding that attention and creating something that is attention worthy. Like, can you give an example of maybe a brand that's doing this exceptionally well? A brand that gets about like, that is really good. Let's talk about a podcast. Maybe that has really done a great job of holding that attention and is maybe one of the newer ones to come out.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, my, my bias is always to learn from the best. Why do we have to get an example of a podcast from, I don't know, B2B software when we're a B2B software company? Like, who is better at crafting an experience that holds attention and creates word of mouth? Well, probably not a peer brand, probably somebody in the media. So, you know, I host a show called Three Clips, which is perhaps one of the reasons you said that you were, uh, a little nervous having me on the show. Because all we do is invite hosts onto the show and then deconstruct their work. So it's kind of like Song Exploder meets Inside the Actor Studio for Podcasts. And so if you look at like some of our recent guests, these are in my estimation, world class at holding attention. And they're not all, like, narrative style, heavy, heavy edit type shows. You know, I think about Discoveries Curiosity daily. When I talk to the co host, Ashley Hamer and Cody Goff, they talked about we need to like, fire out of the gate strong. It has to grip you right away. So what they do is, you know, they don't have guests, it's just the co hosts, but they need to articulate the reason you'd care immediately. And, you know, so often we don't do that. We don't. We. We pull a quote out of context because it sounds nice, but it doesn't really speak to the soul of the listener. It's almost like, okay, I think this could be interesting. Or we summarize the value of the episode, which, if you can do that, removes the need to really listen. I know what we're trying to do. We're trying to say, hey, you should listen because here are the bulleted takeaways. But that just means we probably shouldn't create a podcast if you can just bullet out a bunch of takeaways. So starting strong, like Curiosity Daily does, like the Smithsonian podcast side Door does this incredibly well with host Lizzie Peabody, where right away you're gripped, right? You're launched into the middle of a story or a question or some intrigue, and there's no choice but to go with them. And so too often, I think we're trying to give people the ability to decide if they should keep listening. Here's the summary. Here's the pull quote. Don't they sound smart? Just start, get them going. It's like when you give a speech, don't say you're excited to be there as the first words out of your mouth. Of course you are. Would you be sad to be there? Just say thank you and start. Get people really interested right away. The train is already leaving the station, so you better be on board. And people don't even think about it. They're like, yes, I'm with you. So, yeah, the three Clips feed is full of shows that do this exceptionally well because, and I think this is the punchline to all this. The people designing those experiences are actually designing them. They have intention behind how they're crafting the narrative. And that starts with moment one.

Speaker B: This is such a good point. And I think about, you know, as we've been talking internally about what we want to do with our podcast, the thing that keeps coming up for me is like, how do people actually consume audio and why? And we're not, like you said, we're not competing against other marketing podcasts. We're competing against some epic content out there that has incredibly, like, like, you know, incredibly talented teams behind it. You know, like all the teams from Gimlet, they're producing incredible stuff. Cbc, like, those are what people are putting in their earbuds every day. And if they're going to choose to listen to something that is business focused or marketing focused, it's probably because they are looking to upscale in a particular way and they need to understand how this is going to help them get there. And this idea of how do you become somebody's favorite show? How do you continually prove to them that you deserve a spot in their rotation of their favorite podcasts? Let's talk a little bit more about that because I know that that's something that, that struck me about your work. I remember reading a post from you and it said, it's you Know, it's not enough just to have, you know, a show today. You've got to have a really strong concept. You can't just be another same same show. So as creators are looking at going into this journey of trying to create something that could become their listeners favored podcast, what are some of the roadblocks that they're currently facing? What are some of the beliefs or mistakes that are stopping them from actually achieving what you're talking about, which is being able to hook people right away and keep them listening.

Speaker A: So the biggest problem facing most shows is that, and you know, especially coming out of the business world as I do, I think this is really problematic with a show that supports someone's business. I think when you, when your show is your business or you're in the media, maybe it's a little bit less likely to happen. I still see it all over the place there, but I would call this, uh, the problem is something I call transactional value. So transactional value is just meant to be a quick injection of information, tips and tricks, how tos, news and idea curation advice, the bio or backstory of somebody that you know is all pretty googleable. There's a misalignment between a delivery system like a show and transactional content or transactional value. What is the point of transaction? To finish the transaction, to have completed it in the past. That is the promise of too many podcasts today. We're saying if you listen to this show, you will not have this information in your brain and you can go about your day, you can go back to work and whatever you're trying to do, whatever we just taught you, you can go do better. Here's the problem with that. I'd rather actually have already listened. So it's really hard to earn trust and love, which is the entire point of a show. It's really hard to create super fans and affinity. If time spent is not the entire point, the point shouldn't be having listened. The point should be the listening. So when it's transactional value, people would prefer to have bulleted takeaways. They would ask you for the transcript, not to revisit the points you made, but almost instead of the points you made. Because I can scan a transcript or a blog post, or even better, can I just ask a friend what they learned listening to episode seven of this show? You would never, ever, ever ask your friend to summarize your truly favorite show because you want to be in it. And that could be Game of Thrones, but it could also be the show about marketing that you really admire, or a story style show or an interview show where you just get lost. The point should be the experiencing of it, not the having experienced in the past. So we have to stop creating transactional content. And let me give you an example of how you can move from transactional content to the polar opposite, which is a transformational experience. Imagine, uh, you were creating a podcast about coffee. I'm going to use a fake example because I don't want to demean anybody's hard work of trying to make a good show. And, you know, it's hard to say what someone's intent actually is. It's easy for me to critique. So we'll pretend we know what a show is, that it's transactional in coffee. Let's call it the Coffee Lovers Podcast. And the Coffee Lovers Podcast promises to cover the latest trends, expertise, advancements in technology and home brewing in coffee. Very similar sounding show to a lot of different industry niches. They all, we all have these shows talking to entrepreneurs, experts, authors, influencers and athletes about success. That show is better if you could just Google it. Or if the Matrix chairs existed, you know, that, you know, I'm talking about like in the movie the Matrix, where they could, like, download knowledge to your brain. Yeah, I'd rather have that and download what I need to know from the show into my brain than have to endure it.

Speaker B: Okay, let's take a quick time out. If you're listening to today's episode, I bet you're already imagining how you can apply all these ideas to your work. But before you go out and eagerly rewrite all of the copy on your website or change your whole marketing strategy, first I need you to ask yourself this very important question. Do you know without a shadow of a doubt who your most valuable customer segment is? If not, you're in trouble. You don't have time to waste by chasing the wrong customers. Even with all of these ideas from our amazing guests, if you're chasing the wrong people, it's going to feel like an uphill battle. But if you're ready to stop wasting time on marketing that doesn't work and attract more dream customers, then I've got something you are going to love. I put together a free tool just for you. I call it my Customer Ranking Calculator. Now, in a matter of minutes, this quick exercise can help you to gain clarity around which customer segments you should focus on and which ones you may want to stop serving. That sounds good, right? So if you want to download this free tool, head on over to CustomerCamp Co calculator. That's CustomerCamp Co calculator. Okay, back to the show. I love the way that you're communicating this because I had this conversation with somebody that I was. Had come through one of my programs and she's a lawyer and, and she teaches. She kind of works in a particular niche. She works with online course creators and she helps them to make sure that they're protecting their digital assets and all that. And she was like, yeah, I'm thinking about creating a podcast. And, you know, I don't know exactly what it's going to be. And I'm like, why? Like, nobody wants to listen to an audio experience about, like law in that format. Like, they don't want you to tell them how to make sure that your terms and conditions are written correctly. Like, that's not an audio experience people are searching for. Do they want to Google it? Sure. Do they want to have the information to make sure their ass is protected? Absolutely. But an informational show about copyright law, I don't think that's what the audience is searching for. And I wasn't able to articulate it as well as you just have, which is, it is transactional. And there's other ways to be able to get that content that are far more valuable than listening to it in an audio format.

Speaker A: Right, Right. And if the best case scenario is when the other options aren't available, you also have the podcast. Just acknowledge that that's what you're creating. It's a nice to have. It's a vitamin, not a painkiller. It's a companion to the other stuff that you'd rather have. And so you have to acknowledge it might not succeed. It might just be this afterthought that a few people stumble into, or to this person's point, what they said to you. I'm thinking of starting a podcast or I want a podcast. Nothing wrong with that. Self expression is such a reward in and of itself. So just admit you're starting a podcast because you want to podcast. Fine. You now need to measure it accordingly. Are you learning? Are you getting better at the craft? You're not looking at the numbers. It's almost a bonus if people listen. Why? Because you started with I want to create a podcast. What you should start if you really want to create a successful podcast. Don't even think podcast, think show. I want to make something that makes a difference. That's what shows do. Shows. Are you saying to somebody the status quo of our community or the society we live in or this niche or this trend status quo is broken. Away in the distance, I see some kind of mountain peak. I think that's the better way compared to where we're at today. I'd like to reach that mountain peak and if you believe in reaching it, to join us on this journey where we're trying to get there. Every episode we yada, yada, yada. That is an incredible way not only to invite people to join your journey and thus, uh, subscribe, but to frame a show as a vehicle to solve problems, as a vehicle to create change. In other words, it's a transformational experience, not transactional content. So most people are creating things because they want to create it again. That's beautiful. Keep going. Just make sure you align your incentives and your expectations accordingly. It's for self expression or they're creating like a nice to have a companion piece. You can also listen to it via podcast. Again, align your incentives and your metrics. But if you really want to create a powerful show, it's not really those kinds of transactional bits of value. It's far more foundational. It should change people, it should immerse them. The point is spending time with it, not already having listened.

Speaker B: Mhm. Okay, so one of the things that you shared, you talked about, you know, you need to hook them right away. You need to give them a reason to want to listen. It's not enough to just pull a quote abstractly and think that that's going to be the thing. And I know that you talk about how important it to get people to the end of the show and you know, you want to get them to listen to the whole thing all the way through. Now I, you know, not having any data in front of me, like, I'm sure that you know the, you know the stats a lot more than most. How often are people kind of like bouncing off of shows? Like, is this idea of I'm going to search for something and I'm going to listen to the first 15 seconds and then if it's no good, I'm going to move to the next thing. Like, is that the way that people are really examining like, like podcasts or is it more so somebody said this was good or I know this person's interesting because I've already experienced them in another format, I'm going to actively seek out and listen to this episode. Like when it comes to that discovering and choosing if it's worth committing more time to. Do you have any information on how people are making those decisions? Like what those analytics typically look like,

Speaker A: oh, no, and we shouldn't care because that's too, that's too general. Like, that's, that's people in general. It's really focusing on your specific audience matter more like it's a mess of a mess. Some people listen because they found the show, some people listen because they were referred to the show. But I think what we are, what we can do to, you know, achieve these lofty things. I'm talking about, like, no more transactional content, be transformational. Sounds pretty out of touch or out of reach. Well, we can ground that in the actual show development process. And that is where we typically go awry. You're not really developing a product, you're not really developing your show. And that's the issue. We need to. And the way you start is to develop the premise because the premise is what prompts subscription. And that happens if people discover the show through a, uh, newsletter or a tweet. It also happens if a friend refers you to the show because either way, you're either viewing or encountering the premise or friend is telling you the premise. So the better developed the premise of the show, the more likely it is that the show grows. Like, I think that's the key to creating what I'd call a growable show. Everyone wants their show to grow and. But very few people have created something growable. So the way to do that is start with the premise, right?

Speaker B: So you start with the premise. And so give me some examples. Give me maybe, you know, you do the three clips. So let's do three examples of shows that just nailed the premise. Like if you can kind of, uh, you won't say exactly the way the show might say, but like, what are three that stand out in your mind? Where you're like, I know what I'm coming for and what the promise is and what the transformation I can make is, right?

Speaker A: Take out all the big name shows. And by big name, I mean literally a person's name. You know, like the Bill Simmons podcast or Sway with Kara Swisher. The premise of these shows, Akimbo with Seth Godin. The premise is this incredible person has a show. So assume for a moment that's not our shows. Let's actually talk about a premise. So a premise combines both topics and a hook an angle into those topics. And some of my favorite examples are you said three. So let's start with, let's start in B2B and then we'll move out of it. Lessonly is a software company in Indianapolis. They sell training software for salespeople, all their peers. And according to that team, they have almost 800 competitors. All the peer companies they compete with do the same type of content, expertise and how to's for salespeople. Here comes Lessonly. And they believe that sales is being great at sales is about being great at practicing sales. Obviously, they believe that they have tools to help you practice and train. So they create a podcast called Practice First. That is a premise. And instead of saying, we're going to teach you the tips and tricks from the world's best sales leaders, they say, we're here to elevate the role of practice in sales because we know if we master our ability to practice, we master our ability to sell. Oh, my God. Uh, you're speaking to my soul for some people. Other people are like, no, just tell me like the exact verbiage exactly what I need to say on a call. They're probably not going to succeed trying to sell to that second person. But to the person going, you're speaking to my soul, Practice first sounds like a show for me. That show is deeply transformational and stands to maybe become their favorite show, at least for that purpose. So that's one I love. They don't create a podcast at lessonly. They've created brand IP Practice first and you're seeing them extend it. They have a research report now about the value of practice in sales. All this other stuff emerges because they're more importantly exploring the premise that than they are trying to make a bunch of episodes. Let's move outside of B2B. There's a wonderful podcaster by the name of Julika Lantigua Williams, and she runs a production company that's been nominated for very many awards, including a Peabody. Her personal show is called how to Talk to mommy and Poppy about anything. And it's. It's about helping adult children of immigrant parents. So adults who have older parents that are immigrants in the United States talk to their parents about the hard stuff. That is a premise. There is no other show that does that. You could white label both Practice first and Julika's show and you would know it was these shows. You would know. Okay, this is an original here. It's actual intellectual property, not a generic exploration of a bunch of topics. So that's another one that I love. And a third one I'll put forth is trying to mix it up here. Well, I mentioned coffee before. Uh, we can evolve that show right now. The generic catch all talking topics with experts about coffee. Let's evolve that show into a Real show, which is transformational. It's called Fueled by Death Cast. It's from the company Death Wish Coffee, which is the world's strongest coffee. And they are, their whole mission as a business is to fuel you to go after your life aggressively. It is very much not like an artisanal, parchment paper laden brand, dark colors, black, red, uh, skull and crossbones logo. They're trying to help you chase what you're chasing harder because life is finite. You're fueled by death. So here's Fueled by Death Cast. So unlike other shows where they talk to similar guests like say athletes or entrepreneurs, on this show they're trying to see how your life is different because you're acutely aware you're going to die someday. How does that influence your work? How are you chasing what you're trying to chase aggressively? So those three are wonderful premises.

Speaker B: Those are such fabulous examples. And so now, before we hit record, I was sharing with you that we've been looking at making some changes at customer, uh, show for a little while now. And while the show started off with what I thought like was a kind of like really awesome premise, a good hook and like when it came to actually executing on it, we really struggled because it was a lofty vision for a very small team. And so initially when we started the show, the, the whole, the whole promise was it was a show that would help you to understand what makes people tick, click and buy. And every episode was going to start out with an actual customer of an actual business sharing something about the brand that they loved or something that they hated. So it would be that voice of the customer in a real way. And then we would get to interview and the people behind those businesses and understand what are they doing that's making those customers really love them. Like how are they moving the needle forward in their business in that way. Or in the case of, uh, this is something that somebody hated, we would talk to an industry expert who happens to specialize in that area and how the brands can avoid that conceptually seemed great. And so where the show has come to is it's really more me chatting with brilliant marketers about topics around buyer psychology and consumer behavior. And it's just felt too generic, you know.

Speaker A: Good for you. Good for you for saying that.

Speaker B: Well, no, it's, it's, it's, you know, I recognize it from the beginning but you want to give something time and you want to see if you can get the flavor going. And it's, at the end of the day, I don't Want to create that? Another how to podcast. I'd rather not podcast and put something out that is forgettable and.

Speaker A: But you have to manage costs and time to produce.

Speaker B: This is the big question, right? So how do you know conceptually, when you look at the execution of a really good show, it doesn't need to be highly produced to be a good show. But what when you don't have those production resources. Talk to me about how teams might be doing that or how you're doing that. You know, with some of the companies that you're working with who don't have the resources that they can have this be a big team lift. It's one person with a mic showing up every, you know, week putting up something awesome like, uh, talk to me about that.

Speaker A: Awesome. It is about how deeply you can explore something with relentless focus. So let's take this example. Click, tick and buy. It would have been wonderful if you could throw the time, money and emotional labor at we're going to talk to a customer of this business, then talk to the business side and then we're going to like marry the two somehow and we're going to weave in different voices and music and sound design. Wonderful production value is just the value of your production to the audience doesn't mean lots of editing. You can increase production value through planning, through the actual production, in other words, the recording of it, and sure, through post production, but it doesn't have to just come from post production. So you can increase the production value of a show by planning ahead and saying yes. We are tempted to explore this long run on sentence of topics. With this wrong long run on sentence of people it is far better. However, again, just pursuing click, tick and buy. If we took one very specific behavior per episode. It's like, you know, you're so you're basically surveying the business and marketing landscape and you notice that everyone's doing these like kind of passive aggressive opt out options. When you get a pop up, it's like, yes, I'd like to download this ebook. No, I hate results. Right. Like you ever see those? Yeah, yeah. So like you start with curiosity or for me that's starting with frustration. It's like, I'm so annoyed by those. And then you wonder, is there merit to this? What is the actual motivation in psychology? So who do you, who can you then best find to speak to that? Do you find, uh, a person who's great with conversion rate optimization, who has tested these things until they're blue in the face? Do you find a psychologist? Uh, do you find a dating expert who can talk about the strategy of negging. Do you find something? You find one person, and you still interview them, just like this show. But instead of doing a little bit more of a background bio, lots of topics, you just take one very narrow thing under the premise that helps you explore the broader premise. But today, you're going really deep into this one thing, and you spend all of your interview on that. And sure, there's going to be some questions your audience has about, like, who is this guest? So just summarize it. You know, as a voiceover or a narrator, as a host. Skip the part where the person gets to opine too much about generic things or tell their backstory. And you're like, look, we're exploring this on, um, the show all the time. Today's attempt to explore that premise of what makes people click, tick, and buy is we dug up this one question or this one little thread we're pulling, and we want to spend all our time talking to you about that. And right away, your show is original. You have a premise. You have intellectual property, you have a higher production value.

Speaker B: I love that. Well, I will say to you, is that what I tried to do, and I desperately failed. So, like, we have a, um, coded document. And initially what I thought about was like, I was like, I'm not going to think about who the guests are. I'm going to think about the topics that I want to cover. And then based on what I think, what I know that the audience is going to want to learn about, I'm going to start with the topic, then identify who the. My. Who the right person might be. That's how I started. And then I got lazy. I thought, okay, you know this person. I know that they talk on this. I'm sure I can find something interesting to talk to them about. I can shape it around, you know, their area of expertise. And so while we started with the right intention, the. It was more. It was a lot more work than just going, okay, like, I know that this person's smart. I've heard them on a lot of podcasts. I know they're going to put out like gold. I'm going to go to them.

Speaker A: Well, that's fine. I mean, the workaround there is like, just take this interview as an example. Having as a guest, having no knowledge of the click, tick and buy thing. I think I don't know what minute it was. I'm looking at the recording timer here. Let's say it was minute 12 where you mentioned about, like, what Causes people to start listening and subscribe and stay. Is it referrals from friends or whatever? And I immediately went to premise development. Like we could spend the entirety of the interview after that. Even though it took you some questions to get there, just zooming in on that, you're like, great. I've actually found, even though you started with me, the guest to book this episode, you're saying, oh, I found the thread, it surfaced. You know, I had to shake it out a little bit in a couple of questions, but I found the thread. Now we're just going to pull it for the rest of the episode and just go really, really deep. Examples, questions, psychologies, frameworks, techniques, everything I could possibly say about that narrow thing. And then the episode becomes about this theme. Even though for you in the production process, it started with me, the guest. Does that make sense?

Speaker B: It totally makes sense. And so with that in mind, like, if we were like, like, let's just workshop this. If I had reached out to you and said, jay, we are doing an episode all about how to create the right premise for your show, or the right premise for any show, not necessarily just a podcast, but the, you know, how to have a great show. Like my husband's looking at doing a new YouTube show. And we were working on the premise for that. And so if I came to you and I said, jay, I want to talk to you, I know that this is an area of expertise for you. Talk to me about what you think I should be doing on the back end to make sure that that episode is one that you're going to be set up to like, you know, deliver gold in that I'm going to be able to know enough about your background to be able to ask the right questions again so that lazy marketers aren't able to kind of just come up with the same old run of the mill questions and can really get something meaningful out of, out of that thread. Walk me through what you would do if you were me.

Speaker A: So, okay, so from your perspective, I. The assumption here is that you already know. You want to talk to me about this narrow focus of, you know, hey, the premise of the overall show. Click, tick, bye. One behavior that we're trying to explore in an episode is what causes people to click and subscribe to a podcast. So can we focus on that in our interview? Jay, like, you already know that when approaching me, right?

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, so from there, first of all, on my side as the guest, you're approaching, I am loving that because it's like, oh my God, I get to go deep on something I passionately love. Like, I love talking about premise development, I love talking about the motivations of the audience and all of these things. And I have all these frameworks and things like that. But you know what ends up happening is if you listen to 16 of my episodes. Why did I say 16? Listen to two.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: You're going to find commonalities, you're going to find similar answers. And I'm trying like crazy not to shut off my brain and give the same answers. But when you get the same questions, now I'll go to 16, 16 different times in a two month span. It's all you can do to just like stay alert and mindful as a guest. Right?

Speaker B: So but it also is sometimes nice from a guest perspective in that I've been invited to be on a lot of shows and it's kind of nice when you can just be like, all right, new audience to hear my same old spiel that I know is effective because I get lots of good feedback on it. So like I can see kind of both sides where you, you want to be challenged. But at the same time as a guest, it's like, okay, they're asking me again, like, you know, for instance, April Dunford, she's gone on the world's largest podcast store and everybody just asks her about, about positioning. And if you're hearing her on uh, so and so's podcast, her answers are probably pretty similar to what they were on so and so's podcast. And so I totally hear that that's

Speaker A: the problem, that that is the problem. Because April, I guarantee you, if you asked her, her favorite moments are where somebody asks her a question she's never been asked before. Not as a gotcha or a clever, like if you had a billboard, what would it say? But like, April, I noticed you like have recently be talking a little bit more about this. Like why is that something that's becoming interesting to you? Or hey, in your book, like I went to the acknowledgment section. I actually have a friend who does this when he interviews authors, he goes to the acknowledgment section first when he interviews them and he talks about like the influences on this person's life. Like you're still talking about the book. Just like everywhere else those people appear, you're still talking about brand positioning and brand story to April Dunford. But you're going like really deep. You're almost like alerting them to the fact, without this being your intention, that you've done the work that you've put in some actual prep time to think deeply about. How can this person who does spend more time than they will on your show thinking about this stuff, like, answer questions that authentically get them excited and curious? Nobody, uh, who appears on lots of shows wants to be a robot. Nobody wants to give the same sound bites. Right now, I'm wading into waters, um, like, as we speak right now. These words. Well, I've never said this before on a show. Like, I'm lighting up right now. This is awesome. You're a good interviewer. Like, that's what people want. And so the way you do that, almost like a shortcut to it as a host, is you just. You forego the generic of lots of topics, the same old sound bites, and you're like, look, I know April could talk about 16 things having to do with brand positioning, but I really just want to go really deep on this specific thing and have her say things and think through things in a way she hasn't before. And if you're hosting a show where you're actually okay with somebody just sort of, like, shutting off their brain and regurgitating sound bites, you got to ask, is, isn't that disrespecting your audience? Like, that's not a show worth doing. So I think from both sides, host and guest, this is just a better approach for, like, really valuable content that you can't find anywhere else.

Speaker B: So now I want to, like, dig into this more so you're sharing that. Let's going back to our example of I'm bringing you on because I want to do a show tightly focused on how to get somebody to subscribe and return to your show, how to make it their favorite show. And I'm preparing to have you on. You talked about, you know, your friend that will go and read the, uh, acknowledgement in their book. Tell me about some tips for how you are, how you might prepare to do an interview with somebody like you. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah. So I think through my audience first, guest second, like, what questions do I hear from them or what are they struggling with? The more I can actually get into their mind, the better. And I'm, like, drafting a few what I'd call, like, leading questions, where it's just like. It's like opening salvo or opening firing round here. It's like, I just want to start going to the left a little bit here. So here's question one. What even makes a good premise for a podcast? And then, you know, the guest starts talking a Little bit. And now you don't have anything planned. You're just in the moment being very mindful to listen. And the prep you've done on who the guest is and what they've said elsewhere, it's really not intended to get you to questions. It's intended to equip you so that when they're speaking, you can go to that to inform your follow ups. Like, I think most of us think prep time is about learning enough about the guest such that I can draft the questions ahead of time. Really great hosts. You have a few threads you want to pull or a few topics you'd like to touch on with this, this guest, again, tightly at home to the narrow focus of the episode. And then everything else is follow ups. So what you're getting good at doing is actually two things. One or three. One is keeping them really close and tight to whatever it is you're exploring that episode, which also then explores the premise over all of your show. Two, researching them, Understanding, yes, the basics in the bio, but like, what are they saying publicly? Has it changed lately? What are they really frustrated by or passionate about that you're seeing from them? Where are these little like rabbit holes you can follow where they seem to be kind of like underexplored content? That's not like the most popular thing they've ever done. Alternatively, what are the most popular things they've ever done? So research on the guest. And then in the moment you're supposed to be really good at listening and following up. And there's like broad buckets of questions I can direct you to. Like, you can kind of break apart questions into tell me about and how did it feel? Like, tell me about is the details of what actually happened. And you forego asking for their advice or insights like tell me about a time when or tell me what happened in this moment. And as they give details, you then flip to the how did it feel? Which is emotional reflection. Great, great tape. But also a lot of the insights and teaching come out there in ways that are better than you asking for it up front. So those are the things you start to get good at.

Speaker B: So one of the things that we do in our business is we do interviews. We do buyer interviews with people to really understand their buying journey. And we have a set of questions that I call our deep dive questions where you can basically follow up anything that the person says and you're going to be able to get them to go that layer deeper. And so one of them is just interesting. Tell me more about that and the amount of things that can come out of asking that question. It's almost like when you lift up a rock and there's this whole ecosystem of ants and worms underneath it and it's so such a simple thing. Or oh, that sounds to. That seems to really bother you. I bet you there's a story there and then they can go off on this interesting tangent. So like, I love that you with this focus around this is. It's so exciting for me to hear your process because I think that when you go into a new format that you are unfamiliar with, you look at how it's being done, you look at the resources you have, the constraints you have, the time you have, and you say, how can we do this? In a way that's going to be good, but it's also going to be manageable. And that's certainly the experience that we've had. And part of trying to make it good was, well, we'll prepare our questions in advance and we'll send those to the guests so they have time to prep. But of course we're doing our research on our guests. But I think we were focusing too much on this is the narrative we're going to follow in this episode. And these are how the questions are going to stack versus here are the threads we want to pull. And let's let uh, the story, let's let the conversation move organically based on where those threads lead as opposed to then saying, okay, now we're going to go to this topic or this section of the interview.

Speaker A: That's such a good point. And you know, I've come to believe why we don't do that is typically because we want to ask questions that we know the answers will be good.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: We know that so and so can speak to this topic. And so we know if we just lead them down a path they've been 700 times before, that it's guaranteed to, you know, they'll have thought about that. I think stepping out on the wire a little bit more, it actually gets better content and better lessons and better stories than you'd imagine. And it only takes a couple of attempts to do that. Like this is a little scary for me because I don't really, I've never really asked this question before or I'm not sure they've thought about this. Or I'm going to try to tie this back to my audience and then ask how they'd comment, you know, or have them try to come up with an example on the spot. Like these are Scary things to ask because you're not sure that they definitely know what to say right away. But it's those moments of contemplation that are great, totally.

Speaker B: But, like, they're scary to ask. But at the same time, they're also. It's scary to be on their. These host end because you're afraid, what if I have nothing to ask? Or what if the question that I asked doesn't add to the conversation and enrich the listener? And so there's this. I think that there's this pressure on the host when you have these list of questions going in. It's like, now I have a safety net, and I can fall back on that safety net. Whereas when you start with this concept of these are the threads I'm going to pull and here's. Here's how I'm going to kind of dive into this person's story so that I can ask things that are contextual and I can bring it back to things I know that they're passionate about or interested in. That feels a little bit more loose. And I'd say there's more room for it to potentially be gaps or dead air or, like, short answers that you weren't expecting that don't actually take you somewhere. You know what I mean? Like, you're such a great guest that I'm sure that I could give you terrible questions and you would still come and make the show. People would learn lots. But not all guests, uh, are necessarily like you.

Speaker A: I think it's a couple. First of all, thank you for the compliment, but more so, I think this is like the but my boss objection that I hear a lot, like, stepping off stages where it's like, this is great, Jay, I like your speech, but my boss is this way. And I m used to think I needed to give you a clever heuristic to, like, convince your boss. And then I just started asking people who were worried about their bosses. Have you had a conversation like, does your boss know you're thinking this? Have you asked the question of, like, hey, you know, this is an interesting strategy, you know, Mrs. So and so, why are we doing it this way? Most people say no. So there's like a boogeyman boss, then there's the real boss. So go talk to your real boss, because right now you're stuck on the boogeyman. Same deal with the interviews. There's like a boogeyman scenario, which is, what if I don't know what to ask? What if I've run, uh, out of things to say I don't think ever in the history of people who have decided to start a podcast. Like, that's a narrow group of people already. If you're, if you're saying, like, I'll stick a microphone in front of my face and smack these meat cushions on the front of my, my mug back and forth for a while, there's a visual for you. If that's you, you're not going to run out of things to say. If you just stop trying to be clever. If you just start saying, I'm in the moment, I'm curious. And, yeah, you exhaust a certain line of questioning and then you go in a different direction, it's fine. Like, one of the worst things you can do is try to acknowledge everything a guest says. If you listen to great interviewers, a lot of times there's no acknowledgment on the back end of a certain answer. They just ask the next question, which is awkward when you're over coffee, but you don't notice it. It's a great experience both when you're being interviewed and also when you're listening.

Speaker B: Hmm, that's interesting, because I think that, as in, you know, conversationally, there's this reflex to emote and to acknowledge, and that, uh, feels like it's the appropriate way to respond politely. But to your point, the listener, they don't need you to do that. They want you to get to. To continue the conversation, to keep the good stuff coming, and they don't need you to do the polite thing and acknowledge the way that they said that. It. Okay, so in our, like, our hypothetical situation, I have got you on the show, I've got my threads, we're starting to pull up, and the conversation is moving organically. Now tell me, how do. What should I be listening for? In your answers? That can be an indication to me as to where things should go next or what, where the opportunity is to keep the story flowing.

Speaker A: So really great hosts are thinking like editors. They're thinking like producers. They're like, okay, the audience needs to hear this next, or else it'll derail the situation. So, like, an easy example is if you do the pull quote thing, you know, you go deep into the interview, you take a nice sound bite, and that's the first thing people hear when they hit play. The very next thing that they need to know is, like, who the heck was this person speaking? Right? Because it's out of context. So, like, if that's missing, if it's not in the headline and it's not in your words, as a narrator, uh, afterwards the editor would go, whoa, whoa, hold on. People will be too focused on that question to like take in anything else, so let's just address that question first. So there's always a dialogue happening between you and your audience and the key is to anticipate what they're asking so you can answer it. So what? The reason I say that is you should not be looking for things that I'm saying. You should just be understanding and be in touch with how you're feeling in that moment. Because if you're confused, your audience is going to be confused. If you're excited, the audience is going to be excited. So be confused. Be excited. Like if something doesn't make sense, ask for clarification. If it's too general, ask for an example. If they didn't give you a good example, paint a scenario and you know, tell them which way they would go. There are things that we're kind of ignoring here as humans. Like you feel a certain way during the interview, provided you're paying attention to the experience and not whatever scrolling Twitter behind the scenes, which I've seen people do or legitimately or, or you know, you're taking notes, you're documenting your next question or looking at your list of questions. Like, again, it's just like a great interviewer really should only need to know the premise to show up and give like a pretty darn good interview. They might have to like, get into it. It might take a few of the, you know, wheels grinding to start and get the momentum a little bit more than if they were prepped. But really all you should know is like, all right, what are we actually exploring? And that's it. I don't even need to know the name of the guest. Provided you're just in the moment and you're thinking, all right, well who are you? Cool. What did you do? All right, well the premise of the show is this. Ah, uh, let's go in this direction. Ask question one. Now I'm just listening. Like it's just I need to get, I need to push the guest to get them rolling and as they start, I can keep pushing them, I can move in a different direction. It's a dance, right? And if you're mindful of what's happening during that dance, you're not thinking about like, oh, they did X, so now I need to do Y. You're just in the moment.

Speaker B: Mhm. And in your point, like I'm thinking about the audience now and I'm thinking about what Are they getting out of the conversation that we're having? Because for me, super informative. Like this is something that's really top of mind for us right now. Having the opportunity to ask you and get this expert, this expert advice is brilliant. And let's thinking about my audience and what, you know, what's next for them now and how do I take this conversation in the direction that's going to give them what they need. So where my mind goes is now they've been introduced to you, many of them might already know about you and broadly know about your work. Now this is what you help people do. So tell me a bit more about how you do that so that my audience can know. Is Jay somebody I should be paying more attention to and should I be listening to his podcast to learn?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, don't pay attention to me. If anything, I'd like you to pay attention to some of the stuff I've made. But that's the more important thing is that you go and create. You go and put in the reps. Like, my job is done. If you're like, cool, I'm motivated, I'm excited, I'm inspired. I have some techniques here. Uh, I don't need to go and pursue more research and follow folks with a platform. I'm going to go make stuff, you know, but so I. But the easiest way to continue these kinds of conversations is my podcast. Three clips. Because literally we're like going out to podcasters we admire and we're trying to bring their craft back down to earth. Not that they've lost sight of it, but we have. We put creativity on a pedestal. We put larger looking projects, like shows, uh, on a pedestal. We think it's out of reach. We couldn't do this. I don't have time to do that. And when, uh, you get down to it, it's just repetition plus reinvention over time. That's creativity. So all these people we talk to come on our show and they're going way in the weeds of very specific decisions and then the philosophy is driving those decisions. And every single thing someone has said, whether they are building a show for a global brand, a giant media outlet, or they're a freelancer starting their first show, every single person is saying things that sound like stuff that we could all do. It's accessible. Right? It's just that when you actually consume the final product, it's hard to see between the seams a little bit. So that's, you know, I mentioned song exploder. They do this with Music. They break apart a single track and have the musicians put it back together again. We're kind of borrowing a little bit from them and then borrowing a little bit from more career based, craft driven conversations like Inside the Actors Studio. So if you are interested in this specific domain, I'd point you to three clips.

Speaker B: So good. Of course, we'll link to that in the show notes. And from your experience with three clips now, having produced a lot of these episodes and having got to learn from other podcasters, things that they're doing that are interesting that you can then extract and evaluate. Is there anything that surprised you and you know, is there an episode that you put out and you said, hey, I went into this with this mindset about this particular clip and ended up coming out with a different mindset.

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it's like the difference between trying to teach this stuff and do this stuff. And I felt this as a maker who now also teaches. There's some like kabuki theater that happens sometimes where like we try to exaggerate and overdramaticize some of the stuff that, you know, you created on gut feel. But the reason you were able to create that is you're somebody who trusts your intuition and you've put in the reps. Like I love the Ira Glass quote about creativity where he says that your taste is going to far exceed your skills. So you're able to recognize that your work doesn't match your taste. You're like, ah, this could be better.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And the only way to close that gap between your taste and your skills is you got to do a lot of work. And so we're talking to people and it's very clear. Like sometimes I get an amazing answer where it's like, how did I do that, Jay? I don't know. Like I did things that were similar for years and then in the moment I decided to do it that way and I just reacted and it's like, oh, right, they saw this as just the next rep, not some like, fancy heuristic or framework. And then maybe it's my job to try and put a framework to it to make it more accessible for the rest of us. So I think like, when you hear creative people talk about their successes or their craft, it's uh, when they try to, they try to manufacture a good answer, understandably. And so often it's really not that it's that they just got to the next rep. They got there faster and they got there somehow improved. So we're all kind of better off just Viewing this stuff as like a building of our body of work to do the stuff that looks similar to the things that we admire.

Speaker B: So good. Okay. I think that for our purpose today, I feel like listeners are going to leave, they're going to understand the number one thing is having that tight premise. And they will have heard my journey and how difficult we found it to be to really live up to the premise that you said. Even if you feel like you've set something that's strong, the actual living up to it and putting in the reps as you. Super hard, it's hard. And hopefully that will make some of you know that if you're feeling that right now, if you're listening to this show because you already create a show and like me, you're wondering how the heck you can make it better. You're thinking about evolving it now you have a incredible resource in Jay's three clips show to go and listen to some really great episodes, hear them broken up, understand what's working and what's not better. And so, Jay, thank you for being here. If folks want to keep following you, and I know that they're going to, whether you're too humble to admit it or not, where should they come and what's the best way for them to engage with you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the people who want to find me will find me. I have a website, jaconza.com. all my stuff is there. But like I said, if, if, if you're excited, point that at creating something instead of following stuff, something that I do. Honored if you follow it. Really excited that you would consume my work. But at the end of the day, my whole goal is to help people make what matters. And the emphasis should be on the make part. So let's get to that.

Speaker B: Let's make what matters, but at the same time, let's see how good good can be. So that we know, as Ira Glass says, you know, that our talent doesn't meet our skill yet because we have high taste and high expectations. So thank you for making. Putting those high expectations into makers like me and showing me and being so candid today and sharing how you actually can do that, like, you know, revealing behind the. Behind the curtain a little bit. So thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me and thank you for being so vulnerable and actually talking about your process and your journey. Because I feel like listeners will appreciate that more than anything.

Speaker B: Well, if anybody can learn from my mistakes, we're all making them. So we might as well be honest about the them. Hey there. I wanted to take a moment to thank you for listening to the show. I absolutely love getting nerdy with you and our guests each week. It is just so much fun. And speaking of nerdy marketing stuff, have you heard about the power of reciprocity in marketing? Reciprocity is one of the best methods you can use to persuade people to take action. It's simple. Give something small for free. Free before you ask for a sale. You see this all the time in marketing. Sometimes it's a free sample, a free trial, or even a free podcast like this one. With that in mind, I've got a small favor to ask. If you've gotten at least one aha moment while listening to the show, could you go to Apple Podcasts and give customer show a five star rating? It'll only take a few seconds and ratings are really the best way to help new people discover the show. I see every rating and am beyond grateful for each one. And who knows, maybe one day you'll need something from me and then I can return the favor for you. So thanks again.