138: Why You Should Publish Episodes More Often, with John Lee Dumas

This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Captain Tridland, I am your podcast growth coach, and today I'm really excited to share with you a conversation that I had with John Lee Dumas. So JLD is the founder and host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, which is a daily podcast that has been around since 2012, so more than a decade. John is one of the OGs of the podcasting space, and he's somebody that I and a lot of other podcasters really look up to because he was a trailblazer and continues to be a trailblazer in our space. Now the reason I had John on Grow the Show today is because I wanted for you to hear what he has to say about volume. Now back in 2012 when John originally launched Entrepreneurs on Fire, there really weren't any daily podcasts yet. And if you fast forward to today, there are tons of them. But still I get a lot of questions from podcasters on how often they should publish new episodes. How many episodes should we publish in a month? In a week. And so I wanted to hear from John number one why he decided to publish a daily show back in the day. And number two, if he still thinks that a daily show is the way to go. At the end of this quick episode, you're going to learn how John has leveraged volume over the years. And you're going to be able to discern for yourself how much volume you should be putting in to your podcast. Now you're going to notice that this is a shorter episode of Grow the Show than we usually have when we have guests on the show. And the reason is that John does really short interviews. John has been somebody who prioritizes volume over a link. So the episodes of his show are not as long as most other interview episodes. And he does the same thing for guest appearances. So John appears on tons of different podcasts because as you'll hear him say, it's a great way to grow your show. And he limits those interviews to 15 minutes. So this was certainly an interviewing challenge for me. This is definitely the shortest time the lot man I've ever had for an interview. But I really, really am proud of this conversation. And I really think that you're going to get a lot out of it. And so what I invite you to do is to listen to what John's saying about volume as he's saying, try not to get overwhelmed with what he's saying. Because he's going to tell you that you should be publishing your podcast more often than you are. But don't get overwhelmed. Just listen to the why behind what he's saying, listen to how he has managed to be such a prolific publisher, meaning he puts out so much content. But he's going to share with you how he does it by spending only four hours a week on his show. So there's a lot that you're going to get out of this quick conversation with John Lee Dumas. And so without further ado, let's hear what JLD has to share with us here on Grow the Show. John, welcome to Grow the Show. I would love for you to kick us off by giving us a little insight into what podcasting is like today versus what it was like 10 years ago. Now, I know you were often asked a lot about what you would do differently if you were starting a podcast today as compared to 2012 when you originally launched. What I'd love to start with is what would you do the same today if you were launching a podcast? So this is what I would do the same. I would get up every day and I would put in the reps. And that's why I did a daily show, brother, because I was a bad podcaster. I was a bad communicator, facilitator of conversations, all of those things. I was not good and I was not going to get good at that thing and doing it four days per month, which everybody was doing a weekly show. And I'm like, I'm never going to get good. And if I'm not good, the show is not going to get good. So I had to just put in the reps, wake up every day and work on my craft day in, day out. That's what I would do the same. Listen, back in 2012, podcasting was kind of this little geeky thing that some people were starting to catch up on, like the iPhones were kind of starting to put them out there a little bit in the world. But you know, this is before cereal, this is before other shows kind of blew things up. There's just not many people doing the podcasting thing or consuming podcasting content on a consistent basis. So I was like, you know what, it's an interesting platform. Let's get ahead of the curve. Let's see where this wave takes us and might take us right into crashing into the rocks on the beach, or it might take us to this lovely paradise island called Puerto Rico, or I've been for seven years and I will never leave period. That's awesome. So I know when some people hear that, they're going to think, oh, well, okay, I'm doing podcasting. It's not early anymore. And it's actually kind of saturated. So how can a podcaster today actually stand out and, you know, make a show work given that it's not 2012 where things are kind of early and you can think around a little bit. Listen, there's pros and cons to everything. There's pros to back in 2012 because there wasn't that many people doing it. So it wasn't that saturated. So you could get an audience by making some mistakes and just kind of being okay. But the cons were there weren't that many people paying attention. So you couldn't have that big in audience where in 2023, 2024 beyond, it's like, man, podcasting is everywhere in a good way. You know, people are podcasting and they're consuming the content and they're creating the content. So there's just a lot of talk around that. You're listening to any show, you know, on streaming and people are making, you know, cracks about podcasting and about this and that. I mean, it's just now part of the culture and there's, again, pros and cons to that. So it's just very critical to sit down and say this, if I'm going to succeed in this world, and this is for your listeners that are all about podcasting, which I know is the focus. But if it's going to be with a product or a service or content creation, which of course is what podcasting is, you need to be able to look in the mirror and answer one simple question. Am I creating the number one solution to a real problem in this world? 95% of people cannot say yes to that and that's why they are failing and will fail because people will beat a path to the door of the number one solution to a real problem that they will have and they will ignore all of the rest of the problems. The second best solutions on to eternity because they want the best solution to their real problem. So podcast, if your content, if your product or service is actually doing that is creating the number one solution to a real problem in this world, you are going to win. It's only a matter of time. And if you're not, you're never going to win the level that I know you want to win at. So become the number one solution. But how the heck do you know if your podcast is the number one solution? As you look around, you do some actual research and you look at the other shows that are creating similar solutions and you say, can I be better than them from basically day one or very soon after that? The answer is no. Think guess what? You're not niche down enough. You need to have a big idea in this world and then discover the niche within that big idea that is not being fulfilled. A void that needs solving and that's where you need to go. And if it takes you going down three or four or five niches until it really hurts because you're like, man, I'm really niche down. I mean, is there even a big enough audience? Then you've got something because you can either A be the only solution to that problem day one or B, blow the other competitors out of the water because they're not focused on that niche or they're just not doing it that well. Right. How do you currently define the niche of ELF? So back in 2012, I was the first daily podcast interviewing the world's most successful entrepreneurs that meant that I was the best daily podcast interviewing the world's most successful entrepreneurs. I was the worst. I was the only. I was providing the number one solution out of one solution, but the number one solution to a real problem in this world was for people like me before I created the show that I wanted an episode of an entrepreneur that was talking about their successes and failures and struggles and opportunities every single day, seven days a week as they were driving to work, hitting the gym, doing any number of things that they were doing. I saw that problem. I filled a void that was not being previously filled. And I'm still doing it 11 years later, 4,164 episodes later, I'm still doing that thing. And I've had the first movers advantage and I've never given it up. And if I was to hit the reset button, start over today, I would never launch entrepreneurs on fire to be a completely different show, frankly, probably about something to do with sweep, which is a huge focus and passion of mine right now, but really niche down into a certain area of that or maybe breathing or something along those lines that's so much more niche that I could become so expert on one area of that that I would become the best solution to that real problem that plagues so many people in this world. Fascinating. Here at Grow the Show, we say that basically in order to achieve what we're talking about achieving, you want to aim to have what we call a cat one premise, category of one, which it sounds like that's what you're saying. You want to put yourself in a category of one to where you're either the only one, so it's like you're the best on the worst or there's just truly very, very few competition. When we say you have a cat one premise when it is truly unique, what your show does, who it does it for, and how it goes about doing it. I'm curious. Would you add or change anything about the way that we say that because I'll be honest man. I mean, I speak with dozens of podcasts every single week and this is the thing that is so hard to grasp for folks to grasp because everybody wants to be like you and have the show that just interviews all kinds of entrepreneurs through all walks of life. What do you think about that? Do you think that's a good way to describe that? Would you change anything about that? That's exactly what I'm saying because, listen, nobody wants a pale week imitation of somebody else. Nobody wants a pale week imitation of entrepreneurs on fire, a water down imitation of Grow the Show. What people want is an authentic true version of the content and the value that you're providing into this world if it is the number one solution to that real problem that they're experiencing on a day-to-day week-to-week basis. Yeah. I recently heard you talk about this with Pat Flynn in an episode of SPI that released a few months ago and one of the things that you both said was, you know, a lot of people look at what we're doing but they forget to like work hard for 10 years part, right? So what I'd like to know, looking back and from where you are now, can you talk about the longevity piece? Because I know, as an entrepreneur, like, after three years, you're like, what else can I do? Like, there's got to be something you kind of get, we have shiny objects syndrome. You get bored. But you've been crushing this show for 10 years now, you're getting compound returns. Have you felt any urge to do something else? Was it hard for you to stay doing one show for 10 years? And if so, how did you stay on track? I've just done a lot of things. I mean, I've launched podcasters paradise, which is the number one podcast in community in the world. I've, you know, created four journals written one, traditionally, published book, you know, like, I speak on stage, I travel the world, like, I do a lot of different things. This is not entrepreneurs on fire. I run masterminds. I coach people, like, I'm able to do a lot of really cool, fun things. This not specifically entrepreneurs on fire because I have created the systems in the team and the processes where I have one day per week and in that day, by the way, it's a five hour block where I interview seven entrepreneurs and I'm done. Me, JLD, I am done for the week. Now, my team takes over from there and does the editing and uploads of sponsorships and adds it to the media host and creates our show notes page and promotes the show and does all the things that looks like it's a lot of work because it is a lot of work and over time, I was doing all of that work until I was able to build what I just shared to take that over. So I am able to do what I do have a daily podcast that makes millions of dollars a year, living on a Caribbean island called Puerto Rico. So I'm only paying a total of four percent tax while I'm doing it, it's working five hours one day per week on this show, like that took 11 years, like that took 11 years to get to that point. The initial waking up in the morning back in 2012 and being like, oh my God, I'm so bad at podcasting, but I'm going to interview seven more people today and get a little bit better. And then I'm going to do all the editing myself and learn the systems, learn how bad I was on certain things and make micro improvements. And then over time, hire one person and two people, then three people and build this team on and train them correctly and do all the things and all that takes time. For me, I'm reaping the benefits 11 years in and I've actually honestly been reaping the benefits, you know, for really seven, six, five years now that we've had all these systems in place for a really long time. And are we on cruise control in a way? Am I still trying to personally improve and try and taste new things in some ways? But in the day, like we've hit our groove and we're really happy with that and that can happen when you're willing to get up and put in the reps on that consistent basis. And again, I just took an early lead when it came to what I do and I've never really pushed it. Have you systemized the growth and really maintenance of audience because with the podcast, you got to keep people coming back. You know, you have to, I would imagine at your size work to get people who might have, they might have listened to EOF in 2016, you got to keep bringing them back into the fold, right? Like do you have systems for that? Yeah, you know, it's a process and you know, that's why, you know, we integrate every part of our system, whether it be our email or social media, all the facets of what we've grown over the years, we try to continue to keep people excited about, you know, remaining listeners as well as grow and get new listeners too because people are always going to cycle and cycle out. And you know, people are going to get a lot out of entrepreneurs on fire for a certain time frame of their life and then maybe they've gone on to something more niche or they've graduated to another level or maybe they've gone back to something that's not entrepreneurship. So that's one of the reasons why I was a node brainer back in 2021, for us to join the HubSpot podcast network and, you know, join all these great podcasts like Jenna Koocher, Amy Porterfield, Donald Miller, John Jants and just be able to co-promote each other shows because that's one of the things that we do in the HubSpot podcast network is I have pre-rolls every day that's promoting another show in the network telling my audience about their shows and their telling their audiences about my shows and that co-promotion is really cool to get involved in getting in front of other newer audiences because it is that it's always looking to say, how can I just expand the brand, expand the reach if a thousand people can hear about the show, you know, maybe five, maybe 50 of those thousand people will give it a listen and maybe two, maybe 30 of those, you know, 50 are actually going to become subscribers and data listeners, but it all adds up. The growth of the show community across the board when I said, hey, friends, what do you want to hear from JLD, like what do you want to learn? I was a little surprised by this, but everybody wants to ask you about what you think about video and what I translate that to mean is that podcasters who are doing video right now are all asking themselves, should we do a video, do I need to do video, like is this something I have to do? So what is your take on that in the current state? I think video is fantastic. I think it's a great way to get on some incredibly meaningful platforms and to have a lot more visibility when it comes to YouTube, when it comes to LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, video, those are video platforms and there's a great audience on there that you're missing out if you're doing an audio only show. What I have been able to do 11 years and 4,164 episodes if I was doing a video podcast, absolutely not. I would not have been able to do it, it's just so much more energy and bandwidth to do a video show. If I was doing a show one day a week, two days a week, I would absolutely be doing video. And if I launch a second show and I'm actually thinking of some concepts right now, it will be a video show because it won't be a daily show. So it would be a video show because I would want to leverage those amazing platforms that I mentioned. So I love video. I think it's great. Not everybody is as good looking as you, but still we can do it. So do you think that then somebody who decides I'm not doing video? Like it sounds like you're saying they should consider doing daily, is that what you're saying? I mean, listen, did Kobe Bryant practice basketball four days a month? I don't want to keep using basketball examples, but like, did Tiger Woods get out and play golf like 50 times a year? No, people that became great at something got up every day and did that thing. They put in the reps. That's the only way that I got good at podcasting, good at communicating, good at speaking, good at facilitating conversations was because I got up every day and put in the reps. So if you want to create a craft and become good at your craft, then you got to put in the work. I'm not saying you need to do a daily podcast, but you better be working in your craft every single day. Like for me, I'm trying to become better at cornhole. I don't go and play a cornhole game every single day, but I like to get out and throw some bags every single day to practice. So think about that. Awesome. John, thank you so much for joining us here. I'll grab the show.