BONUS: How "Being Consistent" Lost Me Hundreds of Listeners

Okay. So you're a podcaster, right? I want to ask you a question. I want some advice from you. If you were to give me a piece of advice, let's say that I'm about to launch a podcast for the first time and you've already done it. So I come to you and I say, what is the one thing that I have to do in order for my podcast to grow in order to have a successful podcast? What is the one thing? What's the golden rule? What would you answer? Odds are the word consistency or consistent, just floated through your mind. Am I right? Probably for most of you. That's because I would have given the same advice up until recently, because that's what the internet teaches us, right? All these marketing gurus, all these content blogs, all these courses, they say the number one rule is to be consistent. Pick a cadence and be consistent. Well, what I've learned over the past six months of helping the podcasters get up to 60% monthly audience growth to monetize immediately to land all their dream guests. And what I've learned after two and a half years of taking my own podcast, past 100,000 downloads and $100,000 monetized is that consistency is an ingredient, but it is not the end all be all. Now, this week I have the pleasure of being featured on Matthew Katozzi's podcast, How to Build an Audience. And in that episode, I tell the story of how being consistent actually cost me probably hundreds of listeners of my first podcast, Philly Who. And so during the conversation, I share what I learned, you must prioritize instead, and how it has totally changed my approach with Philly Who. We also talk at length about how I actually successfully launched Philly Who. So if you've listened to episode one of this podcast, you heard the story of how I took Philly Who passed 100,000 downloads and dollars, and you heard how at first things went really, really, really well, but then I hit a threshold and almost lost it all and was forced into a corner where I eventually learned how to actually grow a sustainable podcast business, which is why I created this podcast to help you do the same thing. But Matthew and I in this episode of How to Build an Audience talk a little bit more about that time right at the beginning of Philly Who when things were really working. And what's cool and what I really didn't fully understand until Matthew interviewed me was that I actually did do some stuff that could really help other podcasters today. Honestly, I look back at that time and I so often focus on the fact that I hit the threshold and that what I was doing stopped working, but I haven't really taken time to talk about what did work in those early days of Philly Who. And I'm really glad that Matthew asked me about it because there are some good lessons there that I think could really help you no matter what stage of your podcast and your podcasts growth you are in. So I'm really excited today to share this episode of How to Build an Audience not only because I want to share, you know, the conversation that Matthew and I had, but also because it's a really good show. So Matthew does a great job with this podcast. And so while you're listening to the lessons that he and I talk about about how to grow an audience, also listen for how he has taken the time to record amazing voiceovers that probably took him a decent amount of time, but really do an incredible, incredible job of holding your hand as the listener through the journey. Right? So the time that Matthew took to write and record these voiceovers instead of just straight up uploading the conversation that we had gets paid back tenfold when you get to hear Matthew's interpretation of the conversation and his takeaways through the voiceovers. So next week we will be back with a normal episode of the Grow the Show podcast. That's where we are going to talk about how you can save tons of time and money on editing your podcast so that you can focus that time and money on growing your podcast. But until then, it's with immense gratitude to Matthew Katosi and the Katosi Collective team that I share with you this episode of the How to Build and Audience podcast. Please enjoy. When creating content, people talk about staying consistent. There are two sides to consistency of any content. The first side is timing, meaning having a schedule of posting and sticking to the schedule over a long period of time. The other side of consistency is quality, meaning the format and the feeling the viewer or listener gets from your content is the same no matter the content. Most people talking about consistency are talking about the first side time. They build a schedule and post at the exact times they said they would each week. But the integrity of the schedule isn't the only thing that helps you grow an audience. I talked to 80 to 100 podcasters a month on discovery calls for my podcast accelerator and a vast majority of them, those who are earlier on, believe that I've had many people say, I don't understand why I'm not getting more listeners. I'm being so consistent. Consistency is an ingredient for sure. You should, if you set some sort of cadence weekly, biweekly, whatever it is, definitely have the discipline to stick to it because you don't want inconsistency to be the inconsistency can be the reason that your show fails. But consistency is not going to be the reason that it is a success. Consistency of a schedule is still important, but it is not the only element to successfully grow an audience. Kevin Schmidland has built a six-figure podcast and created a framework on building audiences for podcasts. Kevin looks beyond just consistently posting an episode each week and focuses on what makes people want to listen to this show. You are listening to how to build an audience. The podcast that tells the stories of how some of the top entrepreneurs, marketers and communicators, built a following around their businesses and brands. I'm your host, Matthew Katozi. Today, I am talking with Kevin Schmidland. Kevin went to Temple University in Philadelphia for computer science. Kevin was working as a software engineer when he started the Philly Who podcast in 2018. Philly Who is the podcast telling the stories of the doers, thinkers and performers of Philadelphia. Immediately the show took off and he has now created a six-figure podcast. He started Q9 Creative, which is a podcast production company. Clients include Comcast, NBC Universal, I Heart Radio and Lulu Lemon. Most recently, Kevin has launched Grow the Show. This is a podcast and program that helps podcasters grow their audience on command and monetize their show today while only spending four hours per week on the podcast. Kevin has always had an entrepreneurial bug in him, but podcasting was not his first idea as an entrepreneur. Kevin's love for audio started all the way back in freshman year of college at Temple University. My origins and audio go back to college when I was in Acapella. So when I was a freshman at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, when I joined, when I went to the university for the first time, there were two Acapella groups, and I helped found the first co-adcapella group. I had never sang with a group before, really in front of anybody much at all, but the summer before freshman year got obsessed with Acapella music. It was right when like pitch perfect was a thing and the sing off and everything. And so through, so we co-founded Acapella at Temple University. Now there's like eight or nine Acapella groups there, but that's what got me into audio. And it was my junior year that we recorded our first album and we spent an entire week in the studio and we spent a whole week making music with the human voice. And it was that week that I became obsessed with producing music. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I got really good at audio engineering the human voice because Acapella music is all the human voice. So every sound that we wanted for our music, we did it with the human voice. So the fast forwarded graduation, I graduated with a computer science degree, got a wonderful job at a big insurance company, loved the people that I worked with. It was a great early career program. But after like two or three years, I kind of looked around and while I, you know, the work was okay, I was a little bored. And there really wasn't anybody at the company that I wanted to be like. You know, there wasn't anybody that I said, oh, I want that job or I want to be him or her. And so I thought like, okay, maybe this corporate world isn't for me. So I had all kinds of side hustles over the course of those four years. Every time somebody caught up with me, they're like, okay, what is it this time? First, it was a recording studio, my basement, but I didn't like doing that. I didn't like making other people's music. Then it was a social media app that was geolocated digital pinatas, which was, that was a phase. After six, I built the iOS app and me and my co-founder got it. We had 500 users. We had a couple of businesses using it and then Snapchat, a month after we launched, Snapchat came out with Snapchat Mac Maps, which was essentially our app. And it was in 300 million people's pockets overnight. And so that plus the fact that we realized we weren't super passionate about geolocated digital pinatas, let us to give up on that one. The next one was a package lock box so you can get packages delivered safely when you're not home. I discovered that was going well and people really like the idea, but I discovered at that point, I was not equipped as a founder to solve that problem without tons of venture capital without experience in manufacturing. I was working with a design firm and they were, we were working with a manufacturing plant in China and I was just in over my head by the third prototype. It still wasn't working right and I was out of money and out of credit card limit to paper development. So I said, well, maybe this isn't the thing. And it was just after leave it that I discovered the podcast, how I built this with Guy Ross. It was just as I really got into podcasting, I got obsessed with the show startup, you know, the first show that Gimlett made and then how I built this with Guy Ross inspirational so many entrepreneurs. And I specifically was listening to the episode with Warby Parker. So the glasses brand and Warby Parker was founded here in Philadelphia when the founders attended Penn, you know, the University of Pennsylvania. And I was, I remember vividly it was a December morning in 2017. I was walking to work on, I was on the subway and I was listening to this episode of this podcast about what these people were able to achieve there in Philadelphia. And the combination of hearing a successful entrepreneurship story with hearing a successful story in Philadelphia just lit me up and I needed to hear more. I was like, I couldn't believe it. They were like, we were on Walnut Street and I looked and I was on Walnut Street. I was like, they did this here. That's amazing. So a passion for just hearing entrepreneurial stories and a passion for the successful folks of Philadelphia led me right then and there to the idea there should be a podcast like this kind of like how I built this, but not necessarily all for entrepreneurs and business folks, but for the amazing people of Philadelphia. What would it do for the city to be able to tell amazing Philadelphia stories? And right then I said, okay, I have some audio engineering experience from my Acapela days and messing around when I had a little recording studio. I have experience and technology, I have a degree in computer science, I'm a professional software developer and everybody at work always tells me I asked really good questions. So maybe I could start this podcast. And so I did and I set four months to go on YouTube University, learn how podcasts are made, set up my first interviews, which went surprisingly well given that they were my first ones and I quickly discovered that I was just way better at podcasting than at writing software or making geolocated digital piñatas or making lock boxes like I found this and was like, oh wow, this is this is going to be my thing. So you decide I'm going to jump into this podcasting thing and I think a lot of people want to start podcasts, right? A lot of people are like, yes, this is great and they jump on these podcasts, they start chatting with people and you know, it's a good time and then they post it up and then they realize, wait, not only was that a ton of work to produce the whole thing, get the interview, edit everything, show notes, all that, they realize like dang like not as many people are listening to this. How did you, because you had quick success from what I, from what I've researched, you had pretty good quick success. What, how did you get those first, like few hundred like subscribers or people really listening to you? How are you able to build that audience around the podcast? Because it's like, this is such a great idea, but you're still working as a software engineer. It's not like, you know, you were some famous person in Philadelphia who started this Philly podcast. It's just another guy going to work. So how did you kind of capture kind of the excitement and the fervor of the city to go and get behind your podcast? Yeah, great question. So it's funny. I didn't realize at the time how hard it is to build an audience from scratch. It's probably a good thing that I didn't realize that because I just was like, all right, let's do this, you know, but you're right. I had maybe 300 Instagram followers at the time. I wasn't really well known around the city because my entire software team was based in Portland, Oregon and I actually spent tons of time out there working with them. So I didn't have much of a presence at all in Philadelphia, but what I did and it just based on instinct, I wish I would have known more, you know, I wish I would have known then what I know now, but just sort of based on instinct, I kind of thought, okay, where are these people? Where are the people who would be passionate about hearing Philly stories and about Philly success stories? Where are they now? Where are they congregating? Where are they going to stoke that passion, right? And so the very, very first episode of the show, it wasn't the first interview that I did, but it was the first episode that I released was with a very, very well known startup founder in Philadelphia. His name is Rick Nucci. He founded a startup called Boomi, which got purchased by Dell and now his latest one, Guru, has raised tens of millions of dollars. And he is also very active in the Philly startup community and at the time, he might have been in charge of the board or at the very least, he had a strong hand in founding an organization called Philly startup leaders, called Philly startup leaders. And Philly startup leaders had a list serve, an email list serve. And so even though Rick was my third interview, I knew that I knew where his audience was. I knew that on this list serve, there was a bunch of people who love Rick Nucci. And I also was a member of that list serve. And I had posted a couple times for the, you know, get a digital pinata thing. And actually got some great, made some friends, got some great feedback because, I don't know if you're, if you're familiar with the startup world, but you see crazy or things than geolocated digital pinatas. Yeah, you see there's some interesting things that get even ventured back, which is surprising, but exactly. And we had, we took a couple meetings of people who reached out and said, hey, we think this is the next thing. And I was like, that's crazy. So anyway, so I had some rapport there on this list serve. I wasn't just some random dude. Some people would recognize my name, but I knew very well that people knew Rick Nucci. And so, I very intentionally made that the first episode of the show. And on the day that the show launched posted within the list serve and said, hey, everybody, I've just launched a new show to tell Philly stories. And episode one is with none other than our Philly startup godfather Rick Nucci. And the show got 250 downloads in its first day. And, and then we were off. And the next episode was, episode two was with the, the found was about the founder of a local nonprofit called Alex's Lemonade stand, which is fairly well known nationwide, but they're based in Philadelphia. The next one was with a legendary NCAA basketball coach who I had as a professor when I was at Temple University. And, and he everybody in the Philly sports scene recognized his name. And then the fourth was a very well known local rapper. So, I, I, a combination of luck in having in leveraging some pre existing relationships in terms of guests, but also I didn't even realize that it at the time, but being really savvy and thinking about where is this audience already hanging out? And how can I get this show in front of them there? And so, you obviously the first one is, is very much more startup worlds. But those, those three that you just said, the, you know, episode two to four, they're not like in the startup world. So, did you try to like post it on like a Philadelphia subreddit or like, you know, where you, where else were you posting? And where else were you kind of, you know, what did you have an email newsletter after the first one? Like, what were you doing in terms of tactics to get out those first few episodes to get the momentum to keep going? Because everybody has a really high first episode, but how'd you keep that momentum going? Moving forward. Now, what I did now isn't always necessarily what I recommend people do today, but, or what I did then, I should say, but at that point, two year point, episode two, which in my opinion is one of the best episodes of the show, 70 plus episodes in, still has one of the lowest download rates because for that one, I didn't have a place to go, right? I didn't really have a place to share it. And in fact, I will be re-airing that episode, Philly Who is off season now, it's going to return to 2021. And when it comes time for the show to return, I'll be re-airing a few episodes and, and you can bet that I'm going to re-air that one so that the much larger audience now can actually hear that incredible story. But, with, with Fran Dunphy, who is the legendary basketball coach, I think I sent it around to a few, a few sports writers, and I think I posted it in like a sprily sports subredder or something like that. That one didn't get too, too, as much, but I did actually know, you know what? I sent it around Temple, my, my temple community, Temple University, because Fran Dunphy is beloved there. So that helped, but it still wasn't as much as Rick Nucci. And then the fourth one, I got a ton because Chill Moody had tens of thousands of followers, has tens of thousands of followers. He's the rapper on social media. He did a great job. I gave him social media content that very much matched his aesthetic on Instagram and Twitter. And so he was excited, very happy to share that stuff, and still actually re-shares those pieces of content to this day. But I'm also a member of a local Philadelphia creative community called Rick Philly with tons of musicians and music producers. Chill Moody's also a member there. And so we leveraged that community to get the word out on the podcast as well. So it was, I mean, it's funny. In retrospect, I didn't even realize that I had such a good plan. I just kind of was like, oh, let's get the word out. But now I'm like, wow, that actually was pretty smart. I didn't realize it. But it's all about, at the very beginning, understanding, like you said, one episode one's going to get a lot, and a lot of your initial listeners are going to be your friends and family. And that's great. And they're supporting you. But you have to be careful not to take that as a false positive that, you know, the show is good, that the show, you know, has listeners, that kind of thing. And so yes, every podcaster is going to see what I call the friends and family bump at the beginning when they first launched. And so you got to power through that and keep pushing and not get comfortable because it's after episodes five and six when your friends and family are like, okay, maybe I'm not interested in, you know, this. So you know, my friends and family that live across the country, maybe aren't interested in Philadelphia. That's when we started to see, okay, our strangers tuning in and enjoying the show. That's the true test. Kevin early on had this innate understanding of where his audience was and how to reach them. Over time, Kevin has been able to repeat the success for himself and other shows that he has produced. I want to know what are the tactics on getting people hooked to a show beyond just the first episode when there are a lot of family and friends listening to support you. The thing about Philly who is for the first really six months of the show, a lot of folks thought it was a business success podcast. And so, you know, at while I never wanted the show to be specifically about business folks and entrepreneurs, I think even retrospect, I would have leaned into that a little bit more. And, you know, what have embraced that? And I see a tons of podcasters today want so badly to reach a wide variety of people to interview a wide variety of people. And I was the same way, still in the same way everybody wants to, right? I mean, we all want to interview artists and entrepreneurs and musicians and business folks that like, of course we do. But what I kind of resisted at the beginning of Philly who and but despite my resistance, it's still worked out this way, almost in spite of me. You got to embrace that early core group that the show is really working for. Even if you have designs on making the show, you know, reach a wider variety of people in the future, because if you make it work for that core group people, it's going to work for other people. And you're going to collect other people along the way. And you can point to literally any podcast that today gets to interview and feature a wide variety of people. And every single one of them still to this day is aimed at a very specific group of people. And it works very hard to make it work for that group of people. But it's still, again, works for a much wider variety of people. So the show wound up being, you know, a great success. It's taken me into my career today as, you know, a podcaster who's I can pay my mortgage and feed my dog off of the income that I get from my podcast, which not not a lot of people have gotten there. And the fact that I can now help other people get there is because of the show's success. But if I would go back, I would have told myself, Hey, you know, don't be afraid of this idea that there's this community of business folks and entrepreneurs that are really passionate about passionate about this show. The show will grow beyond just business owners and entrepreneurs. And that's okay. But if you know, with every episode that you put out there now for the sake of being broad, that doesn't land with those people that's actually hurting your momentum a little bit. So just lean into it. Get that momentum. Once you get the thing in orbit and get it rocking and rolling, then you can start to experiment outwards and start to bring in more people. And you'll reach not only is it going to be easier for your show to reach more people because it already has a bigger audience, but you're just going to be a little bit more confident when you do finally get to those people that are outside of that initial zone. Whenever you are building not just the show, but a business personal brand, anything, you need to target audience, a core group of people that you serve. I wanted to know what questions Kevin tries to ask to find his core audience or to help others find their audience for their podcasts. So my first question is always, who would it excite you the most to help? Always to every single podcaster. Who would it excite you the most to help? That almost takes us all the way there. The second piece, and you know, it's not so much, you know, who do you think it would be lucrative to help? Or, you know, I don't know, some other type of question that gets you in a certain way, you know, gets you to answer something that gives you the biggest audience possible. It's just very, very simply what very specific group of people would you be excited to help? And then the second piece of that is then how do you want to impact those people, right? What value do you want your show to provide to them? The value could be in the form of tips and tricks and actionable items. The value can be in the form of a feeling and spoiler alert, most podcast listeners choose a podcast, choose the podcast that they're going to listen to right then and there in what I call the moment of choice. Based on how that podcast is going to make them feel for the next 30 minutes, regardless of what actionable items or tools and tricks that they're going to get because podcasting is a companion medium, meaning people are driving, commuting, working out, they're busy when they're listening, almost always the immediate value that they're getting from a show is a feeling. So how do you want to make those people feel? Those two questions, almost always take us 90% of the way there. And then the next, the last 10% is simply, okay, with your answer, the people who you said you want to, you know, it would excite you to help? How can we make this more specific? And for that to help people do that, I say, you know, I generally say, let's think of an audience group where you can say, I'm trying to reach blanks who blank. And the first word can't be people or anyone. So it can't be people who or anyone who, it has to be a specific group of people who want to want something, need something, like something, whatever that is. And your final destination of your targeting for your audience may not be in the form of blanks who blank, but it almost always gets you to that point where now you have a very clear understanding of who it is you're trying to reach. And from there, you can tailor your show's content specifically for those people. And more importantly, you can start to think, where are those people hanging out now in person and online? Where are they currently going to get the feeling that my show is going to give them? It doesn't always have to be podcasts. It can be a Twitter profile. It can be on Instagram. It can be a subreddit, a Facebook group. Where are those people going to get that feeling now? Now that I'm going to give them that feeling, then I can go find them. And from there, it's just about execution. So a lot of people tend to not do a lot of podcast episodes. There's like that whole idea of the concept of pod fading. It's like seven episodes is the average. And then most people end up kind of stopping. You have actually done multiple seasons. And you started it while you were still working a full-time job, which I think is really awesome. So I want to understand how much does discipline, but especially consistency play a part in building an audience, especially in the beginning when you're starting. Consistency is a very important ingredient. But I think one of the biggest mistakes that folks make is that they think that consistency is everything. I've talked to 80 to 100 podcasters a month on Discovery calls for my podcast accelerator and a vast majority of them, those who are earlier on believe that I've had many people say, I don't understand why I'm not getting more listeners. I'm being so consistent. Consistency is an ingredient for sure. You should, if you set some sort of cadence weekly, biweekly, whatever it is, definitely have the discipline to stick to it because you don't want inconsistency to be the inconsistency can be the reason that your show fails. But consistency is not going to be the reason that it is a success. Consistency is an ingredient. So consistency is a part, but one thing that I learned with Philly Hu, Philly Hu was a very, very, is a very, very heavily produced show. And at the gate, I had the luxury of having a bunch of savings. So I started the show in May of 2018. In July of 2018, I left my full-time job to do podcasting full-time. I had the luxury to have enough savings where I could just produce Philly Hu full-time. It was my full-time job to make the show. Well, I allowed the actual production of the show. So the editing of each episode and the content generation for all the social media promotional material to eat up most of my time. And that was one lesson was I almost experienced pod fade because I burnt myself out so bad just on that. But the other lesson that I learned was there were many times where I released a subpar podcast episode in the name of consistency. So in my head, I thought the same thing that the internet teaches us, which is consistency is king. And so I prioritized being consistent and meeting my weekly cadence over maintaining the highest quality in my episodes. And so there were a handful of episodes that were released on the show. And of course, not going to name them, but that just did not meet the quality standards in terms of storytelling that I had set for the show. And in the end, they wound up hurting the show a lot because every single time you put out a subpar episode and a listener listens to it, if they say, oh, this isn't so good, there's a very good chance they're going to never come back. And that sounds extreme, but it's true podcast listeners. There's a lot of options on the shelf right now. And podcast listeners are narcissistic. They are only going to pick a show that they think is going to deliver massive value right now. That's it. So if you release a show that doesn't do that, you're going to lose a lot of listeners. And then the other piece where this killed me was in early 2019, I released an episode of the show that I did not want to release. I interviewed somebody. It was not a good interview. It was not an interesting story because there really was no conflict in the person's journey. The person's fine. They're successful. They're nice. I'm grateful that they were on the show, but it just wasn't a good story. And I held on to the interview for a while and knew in my heart that it should not be on the feed that this is not going to please my listeners. But I still at that time subscribed to the idea that I need to be consistent and I need to keep my weekly cadence. I would later learn that I was releasing too much and my audience couldn't keep up, which was a problem. So I was putting too many stories out there and then people got overwhelmed and stopped listening. But in this particular case, I released this the worst episode that we made on a Monday and on Tuesday, we announced a live taping of the podcast to happen a few months later with two very, very famous chefs in Philadelphia. And so what happened? There was a bunch of press around this live show announcement. It was featured in the local newspapers. It was all over the internet. It was the concert venue centered on their email list, the restaurant group centered on their email list. And the podcast was flooded with tons of new listeners. And guess what episode was at the top of the feed? The worst one we had ever made. And I know for a fact that there are hundreds of people who heard that episode and never came back. Because they're like, wow, this isn't that great. And I've spoken to a few of them. And it broke my heart. A few months later that year, I was at a networking event. And I spoke to a couple of pretty well-known figures in the Philadelphia area. And they said, yeah, I've heard of the show, but I listened to an app. And one of them is particularly for lack of a better word, candid. He's going to tell you how he's feeling, which I admire so much. Very forward with his communication. And he literally said to me, he's like, yeah, I heard an episode, but I didn't think it was that good. And I said, was it the insert name here episode? And the person said, yeah, how'd you know? Said because I know for a while that is not a good episode of the show. Here's why this person was that was featured is not very passionate about Philadelphia. It was arrogant. And it wasn't a good story. XYZ. And the person said, oh, wow, okay, I'll give it another shot. So that was great that I got to salvage that relationship. But how many other people are is at the case? And so the lesson there was I put out a subpar episode for the sake of consistency. Before I learned that I was overwhelming my listeners by being too consistent with weekly episodes for over a year. But more importantly, so many people discovered that episode as the first one listened to the first five minutes thought this is crap and never came back again. So a long way to answer to your question, consistency is absolutely consistency is absolutely an ingredient to success. You should absolutely figure out a good cadence that works for you and works for your show, right? That doesn't overwhelm your audience. Figure out a cadence that allows you to add massive value with every single episode you release and then stick to it. But do not let that be the reason you put out subpar content consistency is an ingredient, not the end I'll be on. I want to know if he has not posted interviews since they didn't meet a standard of quality for himself. Yep, I have. And that's one of the hardest things to do. And I advise my clients all the time, if you do an interview and in your gut, you know when it's subpar, there's no tests, you're going to know. And if you know, you have two pains to choose. You're going to feel pain. And you have a choice. You can either feel pain in not releasing the episode and potentially damaging the relationship in some way, shape or form, pain that can be mitigated in some way. Or you're going to feel the pain in releasing a subpar episode that pain you might not even feel because you may not notice that you're losing tons of listeners because they listen to this episode that isn't good. So most people choose the latter, right? And they choose the one that isn't more immediately painful. But it's always, always better to hold off. It's hard to do. I'm not going to say I'm any better at it now. It's hard to do. I often like to either give a chance say why and give a chance to redo it and say, listen, I'm sorry. And I put the onus on me, like listen, as an interviewer, I didn't nail this. And what we got in this recording, we can't use. So I totally understand if you don't have time to do this again, if you don't, I apologize. But, you know, could we rework it and focus on this that or the other thing? Because odds are the person that you chose still can deliver value, right? It's just, you know, we didn't do it. And so sometimes it's the person's storytelling and interviewing skills as a guest on the show, which doesn't work, which means it's up to you as an interviewer. If they give you a second chance to do better, other times it really is you. And maybe you weren't well rested enough and you weren't on your game. But and I'll be all you can't release bad content. What did you learn from the before like that mistake that you made to now make you feel like, okay, now I know what I'm looking for. And if it's not there, I'm not publishing it. Filihoo particularly is a storytelling show. And I'll be launching a new show later this month slash early next month called Grow the Show, which is to help to have these conversations to help podcasters have a better podcast. And what I'm learning in those interviews is that it's a totally different arc, right? When you're doing a show that's supposed to provide tools, tips, tricks, values and stuff like that, you're still telling stories, but it's a different arc. So I will say that it is not one size fits all. And in a way, I'm relearning a lot of this as I'm launching my second show. But for Filihoo, and this really applies to any storytelling podcast, which most podcasts are storytelling. But either way, I look for a couple of things. One, I look for an overall story, an overall story arc. So is there something that the person wants? Is there is there a conflict that's keeping them from what they want? Are they able to overcome that conflict? Sometimes the conflict is internal, sometimes it's external. Is there a twist? Oh my gosh, if there's a twist, sold. I'm in, right? But that one episode that I talked about, there was no conflict. The person's story was fairly easy. And obviously, I'm jealous, great for that person. Happy that they've found such easy success. But it's not a good story to listen to. You don't want to hear that. You want to hear what obstacles they overcame, how they overcame them, what lessons they learned from overcoming the obstacles. And then any surprises that come from it are even better. And really, you know, there's this famous concept called the hero's journey. And it's one of those things that I almost don't recommend everybody check out because once you see it, you can't unsee it. And all you do is you see it in every movie that's ever made, every podcast episode, like everything is a story and everything is the hero's journey. So if you want, if you're a creator and you want to really know the formula behind this kind of stuff, just google the hero's journey. And there's like several different versions of it, some more complex than others. But if you don't, if you want to just happily consume stories and always be surprised by them, don't look that up. But I really, I became a student of storytelling after a while with Philly Ho, because I had good instincts in the show worked at first, but there, there came a point where I wanted to get better at it. And that's really it. Is there a character? Is there a conflict? Does the character overcome that conflict? Is there some sort of resolution? And ideally, if there's a twist, even better. And that's kind of it. If I can find a way to make the story fit that, then I'm in great shape. And I'm discovering as well that for grow the show, which is not as specifically a storytelling show, it's the same formula. After the break, Kevin talks about building out his podcast accelerator and these similarities of building audiences for different businesses. This show is created by Katozi Collective. Beyond our weekly podcast, we have a weekly newsletter that comes out every Thursday called The Marketing Memo. We have some marketing tips to help you build your audience and we curate amazing examples of great content that other brands are producing. It is free and you can sign up on our website and it is linked in their show notes. Now let's get back to the show. Kevin has a new podcast and accelerator called Grow the Show that helps podcasters grow their audience on command and monetize their show today while only spending four hours per week on the podcast. I wanted to know if he got people that listen to Philly Hood to transfer over to his audience, teaching podcasting or if there was a different factor to get people over to his new business venture. All of my success right now can be mapped back to Philly Hood, for sure. Many, really, I think almost every single one of Q9's major clients came from somebody who was a listener of Philly Hood. Even like, religion of sports, which is based in Santa Monica, California, they're a co-executive producer of podcasts is based in Philadelphia and became a fan of the show and reached out and then I helped them develop four or five different shows. When it comes to starting the accelerator, all of my initial accelerator clients came through, either they knew me from being the Philly Hood guy, like one of my clients Anna went to college with somebody that I know in Philadelphia who is a listener of Philly Hood and when I announced that I was doing the accelerator, she reached out and said, oh my gosh, you should do this. Another one of my great clients, Ena, I met at a podcasting conference a year ago. It all comes from Philly Hood and it was definitely the seed to this for sure, no question. Now, really, as I talk to more and more podcasters every day, I just kind of talk about Philly Hood. They're not necessarily as familiar with it, but I just talk about the fact that I have a local show and have taken it past $100,000 downloads, passed $100,000 monetized and then they're like, whoa, and then they go check it out and listen to it and see that it's like the real deal and I'm not just blowing some up. So yeah, it all comes back to Philly Hood, although I think my aim is that by the end of the, I mean, now I'm focusing very much on growing my personal audience and my personal brand to help as many podcasters as possible because I feel the Philly audience is just very different. A local audience is very different from a virtual audience and so it takes very different tools and tactics very hopefully, but I'm pretty sure that very soon more people are going to know me as the podcast guy than as the Philly guy, but yeah, it is, but it all comes back to Philly Hood and I owe all of my success and everything, all that I am now to that show for sure. What are some similarities in what you're doing with your accelerator in Q9 and how you're building that audience? How is it similar to then how you built at first Philly Hood and that audience? Like what are some of those tactics that are like similar that kind of overlap or transcend no matter what the industry or the project is? A coaching business is very different than a podcast business and it's funny because while I'm building out this business to help more people do the podcasting business, I have to learn how to do the coaching business, which is nuts, but what I've discovered is essentially the same as a couple things. One is that regardless of what type of audience you're trying to reach and what you're trying to offer them, whether that's a coaching service or production services or just a podcast to listen to, the key is to understand where they're hanging out now. Find the watering holes. That's it. It's the same tenant. You want to build an audience, you find the watering holes, you build trust and actually add value in those watering holes where people are going on the internet to hang out or in the case of Philly Hood in person, it very worked very well in person, but just go be present and add value there and dig the well before you're thirsty, same type of thing, and likewise storytelling is everything. Whether you're creating a podcast literally about telling stories, that tells stories or you're trying to sell a product or sell a service, it's all about stories. That's how we humans are programmed to understand things. So those are definitely the biggest similarities and I'm curious if there are any more. They might stop there because it has been very different, but yeah, I mean, it's all story-based and it's all just a matter of finding the watering holes and just helping people adding value, expecting nothing in return in those watering holes as early as you possibly can. I finished off the podcast with the segment called Open Mike. This is a chance for my guests to share anything they want. A lot of times I feel like people get stuck behind the industry that they are in, but we are all human and have other interests outside of that. So this is a space for my guests to say whatever they want to say. So I think the biggest, I'm just going to tell you my biggest takeaway from this year so far because it's been freaking hard. This year has been so hard for a lot of people for a number of different reasons. For me, the hardest part and I'm grateful that this has been for the most part the hardest part. I've lost people to COVID. Obviously there's been a lot of trouble and strife behind that and I hope everybody is healthy and safe. But for me, the hardest part has been starting this new business. Starting the coach's business, the discomfort of doing that, of finding how to be a coach and that type of thing. So there's two things that my biggest learnings from this year is one, not that you should hire me, but you should absolutely hire a coach. I discovered that in all of my pursuits and I do a lot more than I do more than podcasting. I'm a singer. I'm, you know, produce music. I love electronic music. I'm a home DIY or just I love, I just love doing stuff. I always did, I was always the lone wolf. I always did stuff by myself. So my biggest takeaway from this year, the two of them is one, hire a coach or at least find a mentor who's done the thing that you want to do. There's always somebody who has done the thing that you want to do. Reach out, say hello, just learn from them and model after them. And I learned this actually from Tony Robbins, which a lot of people have learned from Tony Robbins. But it's been probably one of the biggest insights because I don't know why, but for me and I see I see this in a lot of people now in my life is that people think that they have to figure everything out on their own. And almost everything that you want to do, somebody else has figured it out. And it's way easier to just ask them and draw from there 20 years, 25 years, 30 years of experience with the thing, then to just spend your own 20 years figuring out what they could tell you. So that's number one, like that's not me plugging my coaching business. But please, you know, find a coach, find a mentor, goodness gracious, that is so key. And then the second piece is with podcasters and with business owners. Many people seem to think that when it comes to getting more listeners, getting more clients, getting more customers, that the internet is just going to do it for them. And I specifically get this with podcasters. One of the first questions I ask every podcaster when I am on a discovery call with them is how are people finding out about your show? How are new listeners finding out about your show for the first time, which is very specifically phrased instead of saying, how are you getting new listeners? I ask how are new listeners discovering your show for the first time? Half of the people say, hmm, I don't know. And the other half simply just answer the question is if I had asked, how do you get more listeners? And what they almost always say is, well, we're on iTunes and Spotify and we post on social media. And I see the same thing with businesses, right? Which is basically saying, we're in the phone book. That's what like I'm in iTunes and Spotify is like saying, I'm in the phone book. So why isn't anybody calling me? My number's been in the phone book for as long as I've been alive and nobody's ever called me randomly, right? So whether you're trying to get more listeners for your podcast, get more customers, you have to go get them. You have to go get more listeners. Most podcasters are simply hoping for more listeners. They're hoping that Instagram is going to do the work for them that they'll post on Instagram and then Instagram will go find all these people. But it doesn't work that way. Instagram, I mean, if you have a thousand followers, your organic posts are only going to reach, you know, 10 to 100 of those people, one to 10% of your followers organically, 10%. If you have the best Instagram account in the world, you're going to still only reach 10% of the people that follow you. And those people have already heard about your show because they follow you. Same thing with your business. So if the other major lesson I've learned this year is to not be afraid to just spread the word and just go out there and tell people what you're up to. The worst thing that happens is nothing. You're not going to piss people off. You're not going to annoy people. People are not going to be like, never talk to me again. And if they do, you just don't talk to them again. But that would be my biggest takeaway from this year is, and I learned that through both in the coaching business and in growing Philly Ho, and just talking to many podcasters, the internet's not going to do the work for you. It's going, it can be an amazing tool to help you do the work for sure. It makes it way easier, but it's not going to do the work for you. So go and get your listeners. This conversation with Kevin taught me to understand where my audience hangs out and contribute to that community to help grow a show, business, or brand. I also learned that there should be a filter of what makes a great episode and maybe you shouldn't post something in the name of consistency. And instead, hold on to quality. You can follow Kevin on Twitter. You can also listen to his podcast Philly Ho, or his new show, Grow the Show, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. All the links to find Kevin will be in the show notes. Last week, we ran a contest giving away one copy of the tying NBA by our guest Alex Hillman to one lucky listener if he wrote a review on the show. The winner is Michaela Cantu. If you did not win and you are listening to this episode at a later date, you can get 20% off a copy of the tiny NBA using our code How To Show and All Caps. Thank you, Kevin, for being on the show. If you'd like the show, tweet me at Matthew Zuby Tozzy and if you really love this show, drop a rating on Apple Podcasts or your podcasts in the app and I will talk to you next week.