121: The Uncomfortable Secret to 1 Million Downloads Per Month, with David Shands

This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts from anywhere. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, companies like Spotify, and even the New York Times. What's amazing about Riverside is that when you're recording a podcast or a remote interview, the recording quality is independent of Wi-Fi stability, which is huge. Your content is recorded locally, which ensures reliable and uncompressed content quality. It's basically a studio inside your browser, and it is super intuitive and easy to use. Once your recording is done, you'll automatically be able to download separate audio and video tracks and edit your content all with a few clicks. So if you haven't yet, give Riverside a try. Visit Riverside.fm and use my code Grow15, that's GROW15, to start recording studio quality sound and video and get 15% off a membership plan. One million downloads per month. That is a lot of downloads. How can a number like that even be possible? Could you imagine what your life would be like if your podcast got a million downloads per month? I know my life would change. I'm definitely not there yet. Thinking about it now, it seems impossible, but that's the beauty of it. It's not impossible. It's been done by multiple people, and guess what? You can do it too. Today on Grow the Show, you're going to learn what it actually takes to grow a podcast past a million downloads a month, and you're going to learn it from somebody who didn't even know what a podcast was five years ago. His name is David Chans, and today his podcast, Social Proof, gets more than a million downloads per month. He's got over 300,000 followers on Instagram and more than 320,000 YouTube subscribers. And his different products and services that him multiple seven figures in revenue every year. Today he's going to share with you the secret to growing a podcast business that large and spoiler alert. It has nothing to do with growth hacks. But I guarantee that when you hear David talk about how he thinks about serving his audience and putting on a show, you're going to notice something for yourself and your show that'll get it to the next level. So if you're ready to learn how David Chans built his audience into the hundreds of thousands and how you can do the same, then let's get started. This is Grow the Show. The podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach, and my mission is to help you to grow your audience faster and monetize to the max so that you can have a thriving, profitable content business. In this episode, we're going to dive into how David Chans went from cheesecake factory server to mega-podcaster in short order. And he's going to help you rethink your show and your audience in a way that'll make it more obvious how you can grow and monetize faster. So if that sounds good, then stick around to this episode of Grow the Show. Now, before we start, you should know that David and the team behind his upcoming podcast summit event actually sponsored this episode of Grow the Show. So here's a big thanks to David, not only for joining us today to share his wisdom, but also for actually supporting the show. Stick around to the end of this episode to hear the details about his podcast summit, and if you want to grab tickets, it takes place July 30th and 31st here in Miami. I'll be there and you can get 20% off your ticket by using code Grow the Show all one word. The link is in the show notes. Alright, let's get to it. So about a decade ago, David Chans was like most new entrepreneurs. He had a lot of fire, a lot of passion. He knew he was destined for more, but for some reason, he just couldn't get anything to stick. So he hopped around from job to job, side hustle to side hustle. Until finally, he had an epiphany when he got a job at the place that's famous for having an overwhelming number of options, the cheesecake factory. I had this like, this realization that I never stayed a job long. So before I worked there, I worked at Olive Garden and I was there about 10 months. While I was working at Olive Garden, I still had the security job even going into the cheesecake factory, but I was there like a few months because I was doing both of them. I worked at Circus City, I worked at Apple Bees, I worked at Foot Action, I worked at like a call center, a couple call centers. But none of those jobs I ever held like longer than 10 months or so. Part of the reason why David was hopping around so much was that he wanted so badly to be a successful entrepreneur and he wanted it right away. Take some money from my job and I'll put it into something and I'm like, you know what? This is going to work and then I'm going to quit and now I'm this full time entrepreneur, eventually the excitement dies and then I go to the bank and get a job. Like that's happened so often throughout my life. So once I got to the cheesecake factory, I had this moment like, wow, I haven't really stayed anywhere for 10 months. He just started looking at my relationships. I couldn't hold a relationship past 10 months. So this has nothing to do with the job or the business or my relationship status or anything like this is a me problem. I mean, I can't focus for too long. So once it hit me like a ton of bricks and I said to myself, I'm not even going to be chasing entrepreneurship for at least a year. I am going to work at this job. I don't like it, but I have to have to figure out how to stay somewhere, stay put somewhere because I'm starting to see this cycle. So that's what he did. David decided to go all in and really devote himself to performing well in his role at the cheesecake factory. And what happened next? Well, he started to see how that entry level job was actually an opportunity. I knew I wanted to be a better communicator and what better way to be a better communicator than communicating every single day to my guests that come and sit at my table. So my objective was to I want to make a million dollars in sales. Well, if I can't sell my guests a slice of cheesecake at the end of their meal, it's going to be impossible for me to make a million dollars in sales. David got really good at sales. And he went on to work there without a side hustle for two and a half years. And only then did he launch his now famous t-shirt brand sleep is for suckers. But unlike David's previous side hustles this time, he made sure that he didn't bail on his day job until he was truly ready. But unlike with David's previous side hustles, this time, he made sure that he didn't bail on his day job until he was truly ready. Told myself, if I get to this certain number consistently for three or four months, I'll quit. So I hit the number and I quit. And that was it. You know, it wasn't off of emotion. It was very logically. I said, I'll donate this goal. So as I hit this goal, I left. Yeah. Not a minute or though. The level of focus that David was able to achieve would wind up being the difference between constantly jumping from one thing to the next and actually building something that would turn into an empire. Now, David finally has that empire. He's got a clothing brand, a coaching business, real estate, you name it. David has finally become the entrepreneur. He was always dying to be. The only reason I could stick in that business of focus and I started chasing real estate and chasing this and chasing that and chasing money over here is because I told myself, I'm going to stay at the cheesecake factory and stick here. But if I didn't learn that lesson, I wouldn't have been able to transfer that into focusing on this one business and this one business alone. And so for any entrepreneur early on, this is the nut you need to crack. You need to pick something and go all in on it, devote yourself to it and stick with it for the long run, even when the going gets tough and shiny objects pop up that seem like they would be easier. And that's going to be hard because even if you do convince yourself to stay focused, everybody else in your life is going to be telling you to do the opposite. It will start saying, you need to start teaching it. Hey, you sell it to eat shares, but bed sheets. You need to make bed sheet. I'm telling you, you could take over the bed sheet industry before this moment. I would be like, yeah, bed sheet, let's go. And then I'm off my bed. Yeah. But yeah, it was really the ability to focus. And I don't think a lot of people have the ability because they don't focus on it. They don't focus on their ability to focus. Well, yeah. And like what brings us into entrepreneurship tends to be, you know, that's just like, oh, shiny object, blah, blah, blah, which is a good thing. But it sounds like what you're saying is in order for us to be successful as entrepreneurs, we actually have to kind of undo the thing that got us into entrepreneurship in the first place, right? Now, this principle of focus doesn't just apply to actual businesses that sells products or services. It applies to your podcast too. Some people when they start a podcast, they're focused on making a bunch of money. So they're going to go every which way they can go to try to make some money and they never really make any right because they haven't figured out, okay, this is the trick that I'm going to pull over and over again. Let me just have an amazing show that people love and the advertisers are coming. And I don't know what your trick is, but yeah, that's commendable. I would much rather have one business making a million dollars than three businesses making $333,000. Right. Same amount of money, but somebody would say, you need multiple, no, the more you can lock it on something, you build a foundation and a stronger foundation is hard for it to both. David's t-shirt brand became the foundation that he would build an empire on top of and a huge part of that empire is his podcast, which is called social proof. As I've said before, that show gets a million downloads a month, and the YouTube channel has over 300,000 subscribers. But the funny thing is that when David started doing the podcast back in 2018, he was not intending to build something that would have a massive audience. So I wanted to show, but I didn't know it was like a podcast necessarily because my objective was I was doing an event in 2019. So 2018, I come up with just really good idea. I say, well, we're doing this entrepreneurship conference. I'm going to have all these speakers that are coming to speak. I'm going to interview the speakers and put it on YouTube. And hopefully people see it on YouTube and say, hey, I want to meet the person that you interview and they'll buy a ticket. So those earlier videos, you'll see me saying, hey guys, make sure you meet us at the social proof conference August 4th or whatever the day was. And I just kept doing it. And I liked it. But by the time the event came, I stopped because that was the strategy to grow that not to be a podcast. Right. If that was over the next year, I'm doing the event again. And I run that same playback. But one, I really start enjoying these conversations to realize the networking is credible. I would do an interview with somebody. That's like successful. And that person's successful friend would me. I would say, hey, can I be on the show too? I'm like, yeah, sure. No problem. And that the networking was insane. So I'm like, man, I really love this. My audience loves it. I'm able to network with people that otherwise wouldn't get close to. And I think I'm going to keep doing this thing. And then the moment I started getting consistent, whereas not just based off the event, the show just started to work really, really well. Fascinating. What would you attribute to it working so well? Why did the show start to take off? Man, if I'm being completely honest, one, I think I'm good at it. I think I'm good at being curious and really interested in people. So that works in my favor. But two, in my community, there weren't many podcasters or there weren't many platforms where you would introduce a successful entrepreneur and have an hour long conversation in 2018. Right. Now it's all over. It's like everybody that's on the show. They're on a bunch of other shows, but it wasn't like that before. Yeah. There's some like super successful entrepreneurs. I was like their first interview because I'm casting wasn't necessarily a thing like it is now in 2018. So I think timing, because where else would you get to hear these conversations? Yeah, especially in our community, like in the African American community, it was interviews of celebrities or athletes, not necessarily entrepreneurs, unless it's like high-level entrepreneurs. But the ones that's right in your city making two, three million dollars, it didn't exist like that. So it was timing. Now I know what you're thinking. Well, isn't he lucky? David's lucky that he started doing something that nobody else was doing at that time. Ah, but it is not about luck. You can do the exact same thing today. You have to find out what's not in the market. Because if you find that, you do a show on that. That thing will start to work because he can't find it anywhere. And once it works, you'll see a bunch of copycats. There's not many people teaching podcasters how to podcast. Right. You're doing an amazing job. I'm actually building the show around interviewing podcasters specifically that are successful. Why? Because there's not many doing it. Yeah. And eventually your show is going to continue to grow. And once people realize that it's out there, because there's a lot of people that don't even know that there's a show that can teach you how to podcast. They just don't know. Yeah, you got to find the gap. We found the gap. So creating something that doesn't really exist yet, finding the gap is one thing that David recommends to any podcaster looking to establish themselves. But that alone did not propel David into the podcasting stratosphere. There's actually another thing that became an unfair podcasting advantage for David. And we've already talked about it. Focus. In my mind, there's only one person I listen to my show. It's a guy named Rico. He has a job and a dream. And he wants to bridge the gap and become a full-time entrepreneur. He's a little confused on which avenue he's going to go in. He starts his stops. He starts his stops and runs his entrepreneurial treadmill. Try to post on social media. It doesn't really get much hits. He's in the personal development. But now it's starting to create little wedges between him and his friends because his friends still want to go out and party and drink all the time. And for some reason, Rico is like, I don't want to do that anymore. I don't know why I don't have anything better to do, but I don't want to do that. So for every episode, I'm having the conversation with whoever is in front of me for Rico. We're going to get him out of that situation. We're going to inspire him. We're going to motivate him. We're going to give him an opportunity to make some money somehow. Whatever that guest is doing, I'm going to I'm asking questions as if Rico's in a crowd and Rico asked me before the interview, hey, how does that person make money? How could I do it too? So I'm interviewing like in that particular style. So it doesn't matter which episode you come in on, you're going to get the same thing. Same conversation, just a different person. Was it like a single exercise that you put this persona together? Like did you sit down and be like, okay, I need to figure out who my listener is because that is so detailed, which is just so rich, which the beauty I'm like freaking out because that's crucial to understand your audience at that level. And when you have that level of detail, it's obvious what to do. We don't have to ask ourselves how to grow out of monetize. You know it. So how did you get to that level of understanding, that level of depth with your audience? I'm an entrepreneur for a love of time. I coach a lot of entrepreneurs and I get the same day and they're just confused. They ask a question this week and do something else in six months. You know what I mean? So it's like you keep changing in this hard, it's hard for people to follow you because there's always a different mission. Like there's always a different message. There's always a different fight. I got one fight. How do I get someone average person to make a bunch of money? I got one fight that I'm fighting. So of course you'll follow me. It doesn't change. So I just realized that I want to have the same show that's going to continue to feed people long term. And I can't do it about one week. I'm talking to someone about how to make their first hundred thousand. And then the next week I'm talking to somebody how to go from ten to a hundred million. I interview Grant Cardone and it wasn't about how did you go from a hundred million to a billion. My audience doesn't care. It's like what is the psyche it takes to go be successful period? Like tell me how you got into like entrepreneurship to begin with. Tell me the story. Like I want to know how to. I don't care who I'm interviewing. Same conversation because I want the one person to continue to follow me. I'm not reaching for different audience. Even with an audience of over 300k, David has resisted the urge to be more broad. And here's the thing that urge is always going to be there. But you can grow beyond your wildest dreams if you're just able to identify your specific audience avatar and ruthlessly focus on serving them. And remember when you're figuring out who your audience is, don't focus on demographic information like age or generation or location. I was actually talking to a young lady. She said, well my audience are women between 22 and 40. I'm like a 22 year old woman has nothing in common with a 40 year old woman. So on this particular episode, you're either going to talk to the 22 year old or the 40 year old. And if you have that type of range this week, you're going to talk to the 22 year old and a 40 year old can relate. They're like, I mean, this isn't for me. I don't think like that. I don't do that, right? And if you're talking to a 40 year old, the next episode, the 22 year old is like, oh, this is kind of out of my league. So neither episode three, nobody's going to follow you because you broke in brand trust. They can't trust that this episode is going to be for them. 100%. So it's super important. It's not an age range. It's I've one person and I know what that person is going through. I know what that person is. I know what type of food that person likes. I know that the person's kind of vegan sometime, partially, it's just a struggle. So if I say something like I crack some sort of joke about being part time vegan, Rico's gonna laugh. He's going to relate and say, yeah, me too. I keep trying it. I keep failing. This makes sense. And the secret to actually understanding your specific audience so well that you can crack a joke like that and the laugh is the obvious yet annoying thing that nobody wants to do. You have to actually interact and engage with your audience all the time. You need to start building a community around the people that you're trying to serve as especially if you're a podcaster. If you're a real estate, they have real estate meetups. You need to be there talking to people. One learning so you can bring stuff back to your show with two. Maybe even educating those people and giving them some games so they see, yeah, this person is a part of community. It is not always about recording and views and lights. Gotta be interested in people, man. So that's one way I engage my audience on a regular basis. I create a lot of content on social media around the same topics of entrepreneurship and content creation. I have a studio here and I'll just do meetups like my community. We have a morning meetup group and they can come to all of our recordings, live recordings on Wednesdays and they just hear like I just invite them. It's not no charge or not. You in the community. Come on. So we have like a full room of people that come and watch our interviews all the time and we just finish like a four city tour of going to different cities to talk to people in person. I'm really, really big on community and I have to be around people not as a mechanism to keep them engaged, but it's just something that I need. I need the energy of the people that are around me. Now, if you're a little bit earlier in your journey and you're still searching for that avatar to serve, the best thing you can do right now is find a way to go get in front of people. Go find the people that you're excited to serve. How can I get in front of the audience? It sounds so like simplistic. Very few people actually sit down and think of a way to get in front of their audience. They just do it. It's just active. This is going to be good and I know someone's going to catch on and I make Postal Instagram, but you're not thinking so presence. We're doing this podcast on it and I'm sitting there thinking, how the heck am I going to fill up this place with over a thousand podcasters? And for the first couple of miles, I'm just pushing it thinking, hey, it's just, I'm just going to tell people about it and they're going to come. Well, it's such a niche market, like you have to like want to be a podcaster. You got to kind of want to get into the space, right? So over the last few weeks, I just started thinking, are there any shows that are speaking to people who already have a podcast or want to start a podcast? Oh, grow the show. No problem. Then, uh, how it puts me in touch with pod news, which is a podcast, like a magazine for podcasters and let's start podcasters, you're not even going to subscribe. I should have been getting in front of these people way earlier. Now, because I'm thinking about it, I'm finding all these different outlets of people who have the audience. So if I'm doing a show one like to teach podcasters on a podcast, I'm running relationships with all of those people because they have the audience, but the only reason I didn't do it soon is because I was just acting. I was just running and I didn't think how can I get in front of these people? Where are they? Yeah. Who has my people? I hear two questions ask yourself. Success is about asking yourself the right questions, right? And so it's instead of saying, how can I get butts and seats at my event, you then ask yourself, how do I get in front of podcasters? Which is, it seems obvious, but that's a different question that has better answers that actually get the job done, right? And you touch another one there, which I want to emphasize, which is anybody that you want to reach is already following somebody else, right? Somebody has already assembled your dream audience. All you got to do is collaborate with them and do something cool. And they'll just haven't tell you about it. Tell their audience about what you're doing, right? Like, have the louis. But again, wait, he's just said and done. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But I think it's easier done than said sometimes. Did you say in a sound super difficult versus, here's the thing, I've been subscribed to pod news for years. It's like for me to say, oh, you know what? I'm going to reach out and advertise with them. It was easier to do it than it was like saying convince myself that I'm supposed to do it. It was easy to just like, hit up the email, say, hey, I want a sponsor. They hit me back to it. Okay, cool. Got you. Oh, wow. That was super easy. Five minutes ago that he's five months of thinking for five minutes of action. It's crazy, man. Coming up, David's going to talk about the number one reason that his podcast has been so mega successful. And he's going to share how you can use it to take your show to the next level. Stay tuned. This episode of Grow the Show is presented by Factor. 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This July get factor and enjoy eating well without the hassle simply choose your meals and enjoy fresh flavor fact meals delivered to your door ready in just two minutes no prep no mess had to factor meals dot com slash grow 50 and use code grow 50 to get 50% off that's using code grow 50 at factor meals dot com slash grow 50 to get 50% off welcome back to grow the show with David shans now earlier in the episode David shared that one of the big reasons his podcast is crushing it is because he's naturally talented at interviewing it's a strength of his and he knows that because he hears it all the time from strangers I can't get people like stop me in a airport I have not been to the airport in like the last two years and somebody didn't stop me like hey I love your show so let's tell you have something good yeah right and I get multiple people who's after their interview was done they say that was the best interview I've ever had I get it a lot like yeah for what I heard the first of all you're trying to be nice but I get that a lot now yeah so I know I have something good but you're not getting that response you need to find out why not you need to talk to your friends in your circle and say hey have you listened to my show yes well how many of them all listen to one what you did like that one tell me how I can improve but don't be my friend right now want you to be a hater okay I want you to act like you don't like any you ever had like a someone you dated for a while you seeing their phrases while you with them or when they break up you're like you know you know what another thing I ain't got it I ain't got it I ain't got it I ain't got it I want that okay treat me like an ex okay tell all the bad stuff about my show because I need to improve because it you could just not have a good show like you're doing a lot but it's just not good and there's some things that you can't see about yourself that's why companies pay millions of dollars for serving because they want to know what don't you like what do you like let me keep doing the things that you do like when you change up the things that you don't so do I have a better package or a presentation so I can start creating fans this is a crucial point that I want to re emphasize you need to find a way to get real constructive criticism about your show especially when it comes to your interviewing skills and your performance as a podcaster everybody thinks that they're a good interviewer and a good storyteller and most people aren't and there are a lot of podcasters who are really average at interviewing and at speaking they sound boring they don't sound compelling and that's not a show that tons of listeners are going to listen to but you can become better it's not just about natural talent those are all skills that you can hone can you talk a little bit more about how to perform as a podcaster in a way that's really really great because you said you get a lot of great feedback from your interviewers and you know we're on camera now more and more as podcasters it's just that's just going to continue so you know we can listen to our audiences feedback all day unlike the you know nitty gritty of what they like but what it comes down to is you have to be good at podcasting so how can you get better at it create some friction in the conversation I'm intentionally looking for points that I don't agree all with my guests really intentional yeah for sure so I'm trying to find something that I don't 100% agree also I could say you know I I'm not feeling that that doesn't make sense because it forces them to come back with more energy and there's friction there so if you're talking to your friend like to think about your best friend yep y'all probably argue more than you guys agree that's the best friends do like yep Brian Kobe like it's just there's friction there all day yeah you know I just said you know you know what you're right wow that was an amazing answer no there has to be some sort of friction also in the middle of the conversation I'm gonna cut them off and there are some people in my comments that said stop cutting the guests off well there has to be friction if I'm talking say you're my you're my friend and we're having a conversation it's not like I ask you a question and do you answer it and I sit there while you answer the question and when you're done answering the question I ask you another one and then I'll let you answer it we don't talk to our friends that it's like my friends that hey so I went out I went out on a towel without with Tammy Tammy you Tammy you you know Tammy with this okay go ahead they'll start telling the story so I get out of the car and I open the door she'll say thank you she'll say thank you nah I so would you do right so it's friction it's not like question to answer question to answer question to answer so we got to create it we got to create a conversation got it but also you have to listen too so some of you will have prepared questions which you have to be really good to prepare questions and have a good interview you also got to be really good to not prepare questions have a good interview and this what I mean if the questions are prepared in advance like you know what you want to ask person it takes the way to element of surprise you got to be able to pivot around those questions to make it seem like you didn't prepare the questions earlier right so most of my questions are coming off the answer of the question I just asked I can't prepare for that right but you have to be genuinely interested my goal isn't to show the audience that I understand all the stuff that the guests are talking about there's certain things I don't understand they might use a word and I'm like I don't know what that word mean so you gotta explain that and I'm okay with that I'm comfortable because I genuinely didn't know and my audience didn't either I actually broke up with a not it wasn't that what I did it somebody she was an attorney and she was just super smart as she was words all the time and I'm like within me and she will get so upset where I'll tell you I'm like you're joking I'm like kind of dropped out you know I don't yeah yeah that's awesome but you make a great point which is like if you don't know the word that your guests just use there's probably a good chance that you're a lot of your listeners or don't either right so it's funny you're the second guest in two weeks to tell me to disagree more and that is I'll work on it I'm like so that is so against the way I've ever done things that it's I get it I'm like I'm totally with it but I'm like oh that's gonna tell like I could my hairs are standing up I'm like oh yeah yeah I think that's my point and the real it forces the guests to like come up and say some stuff they wouldn't normally say because mostly we're gonna leave it to you know how do you monetize I don't know let's say affiliates right but I'm my guard well how do you collect all your money what if the people don't give you your money how do you track all that I know for sure you're losing some money because you can't track all the affiliates you got a bunch of them especially if there's no system in place or how do you track it then they say well this is how I track it but well what about this though this this I know this system is broken so I'm not assuming that my guess is perfect and they actually got a proof to my audience that they really know what they're talking about so I'm curious yeah yeah and no it's true and it's what it's what we want right I'm gonna have to decide if that's the one thing that I want to disagree on it's whether I have to disagree like I don't think we have to disagree maybe that's the thing I don't there you go I can check the box for sure awesome yeah you ever listen to like some Larry King interviews for sure yeah the spiciest stuff in the world yeah yeah oh and it's true and like you know this day and age man it's it's true it's like that's what the people pay attention to which is conflicts which nothing is interesting without that's why I kind of started getting that part from I just really got engulfed in Larry King and he was so raw and uncut and yeah you could tell like you're not about to he's not pandering you don't care who you are you could be the president of a country yeah he like a politician he's all you so yeah finding friction in the conversation is just one of the many tools that you can use to improve as an interviewer but that tactical loan is not gonna be enough to level you up as the talent of your podcast you're gonna need more skills and how can you pick up on those skills you have to be in the community like you've got to get around other podcasters there's no other way around it I've got so much game and information by being around other podcasters a lot of my friends have shows and I see other personal social media I see the stuff that they're doing they see the stuff that I'm doing and it pushes each other and I we can have conversation about downloads and affiliates and monetization and cbms and we can have all these conversations you have to get into community with so a lot of the people that are like the tech giants they were friends in the 80s and we like it was it was like this this community of people that are like really in the tech and then it becomes all city of Silicon Valley like these are people who built it because it was a community of people so you have to stay in a community you have to find someone you can listen to I think you can have as a great person to continue to listen to somebody that's maybe a little further along than you they can pull you along right because they just see things from a different perspective we actually have red circle that's my podcast distribution platform and I love them they make me a lot of money they bring a lot of ad deals to me we're gonna be interviewing them at podcast summit because there's certain things about the corporate space that they see they know what advertisers want because they're doing business all the time I think I know what they I think they want an audience think they want to like an ad read right but they have different insights so I'm pulling on them to find out what is it that makes a show attractive to somebody to give $100,000 deal $50,000 deal right but also you have to I just focus on being good at it like outside of if you have a sports show you really need to be talking to sports beyond the microphone beyond the camera if we go out to lunch and we have a friendly waitress you will see me interviewer our friends get sick of it I'm tell it they all the time oh I feel like I'm being interviewed because I'm just curious like I want to know what's going on so I mean you got to practice your craft 24-7 incredible absolutely like I'm sure when you watch TV you see podcasting oh yeah right percent like everything everything's a podcast so let's say if I go for all the time everything's a podcast we can't listen on road trips because I'm always breaking them down she's like will you stop I'm trying to listen so it's 100% you got to be obsessed you got to be obsessed you got to make your life about it so David we're going to have the link in the show notes for folks to grab tickets to podcast summit they're going to be able to use code grow the show to get 20% off can you tell us just a little bit about what's going to go on that weekend here in Miami absolutely man there are very few opportunities for people want to learn how to start grow or monetize a podcast air issue opportunities for them to learn and even fewer opportunities to learn from people who have built something amazing we have people who have built like seven figure empires eight figure empires from podcasting that are teaching exactly how they did it very few people who teach podcasting now actually built a successful podcast yep very few yep because it's hard to do like it's hard to be a practitioner I'm building a show and coach me very difficult very few people can do it yep Kevin you are one that can do it like you can go build it and teach it I build it and teach it but very few people can do it David can teach it too and he's actually going to be teaching it at his podcast summit in just a few days here in Miami but I'm going to be teaching the art of the interview because it's it's a dance it's not just a question there's an art so if you're hearing this episode before July 30th 2023 and you want to meet David and me at podcast summit the link to grab tickets is in the show notes if you use code grow the show all caps you can get 20% off but if you're not hearing this episode before the conference or for some reason you can't make it just remember this the three major things that have propelled David chance into the podcast stratosphere are as follows number one he learned how to focus and commit himself to one thing over a long period of time number two he used that focus to develop a deep and relentless understanding of his one specific podcast listener avatar everything he does for the social proof podcast serves Rico his imaginary listener number three David devote himself fully to developing his skills within the craft of podcast he works hard to make himself and his show better he surrounds himself with others who do it well and he's constantly practicing and studying so he can get better so if you feel like that you're missing any of those three things then that might be why your podcast isn't where you want it to be and so I encourage you try to focus more try to get more specific with your understanding of your audience and work on your craft so that you can put out a better show that's going to be much easier to grow that's going to do it for this episode of grow the show if you are planning to attend podcast summit let me know shoot me a dm on instagram or twitter at kevin smidlin and if you're on the fence about whether you'd want to attend here are a few more details about the event David we're going to have the link in the show notes for folks to grab tickets to podcast summit they're going to be able to use code grow the show to get 20% off can you tell us just a little bit about what's going to go on that weekend here in Miami absolutely man there are very few opportunities for people want to learn how to start grow or monetize a podcast air issue opportunities from the learn and even fewer opportunities to learn from people who have built something amazing we have people who have built like seven figure empires eight figure empires from podcasting that are teaching exactly how they did it very few people who teach podcasting now actually built a successful podcast yep very few yep because it's hard to do like it's hard to be a practitioner I'm building a show and coach me very difficult very few people can do it yeah Kevin you are one that can do it like you can go build it and teach it I build it and teach it but very few people can do it so we have an amazing lineup and G Martina and I and you want to have our wishes I'm gonna get our next year and she's been a media for decades she's gonna be teaching uh it ends in outs of kind of how she built the breakfast club you know what's going on in the media space different we radio on podcasting where the gaps are we have earlier leisure who is built an eight figure empire and they used to record their podcast at their kitchen table with cell phone wow and now they're all good morning America they're traveling to got it they sold out venues in the UK sold out that's crazy millions and millions of monthly downloads it's mind-boggling so they are coming to teach how to do what they do I got a a guy's day as finesseary goes viral pretty much every week yeah and uh he has a formula was gonna be teaching a formula I'm gonna be teaching the one the importance of podcasting but I'm gonna be teaching the art of the interview because it's it's a dance it's not just asked questions he has there's an art suite we have a panel building out a podcasting agency because some people that they want to be in podcast and make money but you don't have to be the person podcasting to make money off of podcasting there's so many shows that need guests there's so many guests that need to be all shows need appearances yeah if you are the person that puts those together you can get wealth we got so many men if two days July 30 31st I know I know I was looking at the list I'm like I can't believe this is only two days for all of the sessions and the guests I'm like this is gonna be action packed so awesome like I said link will be in the show notes for everybody to grab tickets David thank you so so much for coming on the show thank you for the time this has been awesome we really appreciate you thank you for what you do for the podcast community man I love the podcast community so thank you for being like a front rudder of teaching people how to grow it so you are really breaking the chains off of a lot of people's voices and they're gonna be really really successful outside of money but powerful and their voice is gonna be recognized because you've been teaching all this time so thank you this episode of Grow the Show was written by me and post produced by podcast boutique here's a special thanks to david and his team for sponsoring the show and for dropping the knowledge with us here today for grow the show my name is cabbage midland I'll see you next time