Listenable: The Content to Set Your Podcast

INTRODUCTION:

Read This Book or Die Lonely!

There is great news and bad news when it comes to podcasting.

The great news? Anybody can start a podcast.

The bad news? Anybody can start a podcast.

As you know, there are so many incredibly gifted podcasters. After all, you’re aiming to be one of them if you’re reading this book. As of August 2021, research shows that there are more than two million podcasts and forty-eight million-plus episodes.¹ That’s a whole lot of people pumping out content.

But the bulk of podcasters have no entertainment or broadcasting background. Which, again, is a blessing and a curse. The blessing? No bad habits picked up from other mediums. The curse? Their podcasts are missing the basics to make them successful, connect, stand out, and make money.

Imagine walking onto the set of a TV show with zero experience and yelling to the crew: “Okay. Roll cameras. I got this.” Or a movie set: “Yo, DiCaprio, get out of my shot. This is my first day on set and I don’t want you screwing things up for me.”

It sounds ridiculous, but hundreds, if not thousands, of so-called podcasters are doing exactly this every day.

I get it. The beauty of podcasting is the freedom and space. And I’m not a rules guy. I hate rules. But we need to cover some basics if you’re going to connect with your listeners so they love you. And that’s the key—connecting. You don’t want to be liked. You want to be loved. You want your audience to be annoyed if your episode is late because they’ve been waiting for it all week. The loyalty and moneymaking opportunities come when your audience loves you. There are too many podcasts to just be “liked.” “Liked” is the friend zone.

Loved. That’s where we’re going to get you.

Who Am I and How Have I Been Gifted with So Much Knowledge?

This book shares observations of successful podcasters including Joe Rogan, Dax Shepherd, and many others. My story, though, stays pretty short because, frankly, I’m sick of me. I’ve talked about myself for an entire career in morning radio. “Morning radio?” you might say in a condescending tone. But the principles of producing a personality-driven morning show are only slightly different from effectively delivering a podcast.

Let’s sidebar here for a second. There seems to be an elitist divide between podcasters and radio personalities: “Radio is soooooooo limiting and old school.” “Podcasters are a bunch of amateurs who have no idea what they are doing.” Both are somewhat true. But, honestly, there is zero difference between the principles behind personality radio and the principles behind a strong podcast that truly connects with its audience. A Gen Zer said to me, “Radio feels like cable TV while podcasting feels like Netflix.” True.

But content is content, and this book is going to walk you through the steps of creating quality content so listeners will want to binge-listen to every single episode as if it were a Netflix series. There’s a reason the cliché “content is king” is true. But two podcasters delivering the same material can be vastly different. One delivers content. The other one feels and connects the content to the audience.

When I launched my podcasting consultancy, I needed a few case studies. In other words, I was leveraging my morning radio career to move into the podcasting space. So I reached out to a woman who had a strong concept for a podcast, but it needed some tweaks to be even better. I offered free consulting. She essentially said: “You know radio and I respect that. But you don’t really know anything about podcasting. So thanks, but no thanks. We kick butt already.” (Which they do, by the way.) It was my first potential consultancy, and she punched me right in my ego.

That’s when I fully realized that podcasters and radio broadcasters don’t want to acknowledge that the talent, formats, and scheduling are the same for both. My radio show is repurposed for a podcast, and it gets more than six million downloads a month as I write this. What does that say? It says the content, material, and delivery are transferable.

What Can You Expect from This Book?

You can expect this book to transform your life. Seriously. You can also expect the book to transform the lives of your listeners. Because with the lessons I’m sharing, you’ll be able to start a top-notch podcast from the ground up, avoiding the mistakes so many podcasters are still trying to untangle. We’ll talk about the possibilities of podcasting before discussing how to build a loyal audience (which will later turn into a cult following), and how to make any uncomfortable parts of podcasting completely comfortable. I’ll then walk you through the pros and cons of having co-hosts; building show schedules; and interview secrets. You’ll also learn how to outsource—a no-brainer in the world of podcasting that so many podcasters avoid because of ego, money, or inadequate resources. Trust me, these are all myths. It’s time you focused on the whole point of making an impact with your podcast: storytelling.

William Corbin oversees partnerships and revenue for Sound That Brands, one of the top agencies teaching podcasters how to make an impact, and he backs up this belief in the universal power of good storytelling. “One of our partners on the brand side comes from radio, and then became very successful at selling a lot of big podcasts—in the top ten charts at any given time,” says Corbin. “He knows how to do it. He knows all the big players, and he knows what makes a compelling audio story, how to script and then how to sell it in.”

Content and delivery are priority one for both radio personalities and podcasters. Without excellent content and excellent delivery, you’re wasting time, energy, and money. Great storytelling is the key to any form of entertainment, and that goes for radio, TV, podcasting, movies, books, and some dude holding court in the office.

Content + delivery = storytelling.

If you don’t buy into this, then you wasted your money on my book. Thanks for the cash. Move on. Nothing to see here.

If this makes sense to you and you read on, I will give you the keys to the kingdom. You will live a complete life of inner peace and contentment full of all the riches in the heavens. People will run 5Ks in your honor. Statues will be erected in your image. Puppies and babies will be named after you. You will never pay for another meal in your city because of your level of fame and no ill should ever befall you.

Too much?

The decision is yours.

Now, Back to Me

Anyway, I didn’t search out personality radio. I really wanted to be a sportscaster, so after I got a job in country radio at KSON San Diego, I used the station letterhead and invented my own job title: Sports Director. All the pro leagues gave me press passes, but the backstage access was a complete letdown. Most of the athletes were entitled jerks, and I decided I didn’t want to deal with that nonsense my entire life. If anything, I wanted to be the entitled jerk!

So I accidentally slipped into morning radio. The morning guy at the country radio station let me get coffee for him. He put me on the air one morning to talk about some wild party I attended that weekend. It was intoxicating.

From there it was phone screening, producing morning shows, writing, co-hosting, and finally hosting my own syndicated show based out of Atlanta.

That’s the short story. The point is I hustled and learned how to do personality-based shows from the ground up. I’m proud to have been inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame because it shows success over a super long period of time.

During my twenty-year career, I’ve had a ton of wins and a ton of losses. But I only had success by discovering what doesn’t work and learning from my mistakes. There are no shortcuts except one: reading this book and applying everything I tell you.

And I’m passing this on to you because neither of my kids wants anything to do with podcasting. One is an oboe-playing soccer player, and the other is a theater junkie who thinks he’s way too good for podcasting. Neither of them cares about my broadcast career, and I’m determined to pass this knowledge on to anyone who will listen.

I do one thing great. Content. I have a dream team of experts I lean on for anything that has to do with podcasting outside of the content. Want to know what’s the best mic to use? Heck if I know. But I have the best guy in the podcasting industry who knows, and he’s available for you. Want to know the best editing equipment to use for your podcast? You might as well ask me for the meaning of life—I don’t know the answer to either of those. But I do know an expert in editing who can help you find the best equipment. (I’m still waiting to find the one who can answer that meaning of life question.). All are important but only one makes the others relevant: content.

So You’re Ready to Start a Podcast Tomorrow?

I mean, technically, yes. You could. But it would probably suck. Like, bad. So let’s start working on taking it from sucking enormously to The Greatest Podcast in the History of Podcasting.

You and I are going to be hyper focused on your content, your delivery, your connection, and the sound of your podcast. Without those things, the rest doesn’t matter anyway. Why spend time, money, and energy on a podcast that can’t retain an audience? An expensive mic will only make your crappy podcast sound crappy with crystal clarity. If your show isn’t connecting, you’re wasting your time. Content is king! Everything else is secondary. That’s your mantra. “Content is king. Content is king.”

Podcasting networks are everywhere these days. What’s rare is the opportunity to get legitimate talent coaching to maximize your potential.

Welcome to Listenable.

The Only Two Things You Really Need for an Amazing Podcast

A super expensive mic that looks shiny and Instagrammable and sounds like I’m speaking right next to you? No!

A humongous and well-strategized marketing budget that gets your podcast in front of an audience of bazillions, growing exponentially and making Joe Rogan’s audience look like a grain of sand on an entire beach! No. That is actually ridiculous. You’ll waste monstrous amounts of money, lose all your savings, end up homeless and a deep embarrassment to your family.

Once again, the only two things you really need as a foundation for an amazing podcast are

1. Content
2. Delivery

You can spend thousands of dollars on the latest hardware, software, mics, and editing equipment and it won’t matter if your content and delivery suck. Why would you want a product that makes your crappy content sound crystal clear? You can find three hundred Ivy League–educated “marketing experts” to help you attract more listeners to your show. But why would you want to attract one listener to a show that sucks? In fact, you should hire people to keep listeners away from your show if it sucks. OMG. I just invented a new marketing industry: “How to make sure no one hears my podcast.” No money in it, though, ’cause most podcasts are heard once or twice and lose their audience anyway. But not yours!

But together we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen. Within these magical pages are the hidden truths of how to create a show that people truly love. I searched the least traveled and darkest corners of the world like Indiana Jones determined to find the lost podcasting scrolls. My sheer grit and dedication took me all the way back to 2004 to selflessly deliver these treasures to you. (Fun fact: one of MTV’s original DJs, Adam Curry, is credited with the first podcast).

We’re going to build an engaged and loyal audience through a podcast worth promoting far and wide. But you have to commit to following every single rule to the letter or you are destined to fail. (Not true. There is plenty of wiggle room.)

Start Ugly

My first advice to someone who has never been behind a mic is … (ready for this grain of genius?) “Get behind a mic.” That’s it. Get behind a mic, have a blueprint for ten minutes of content, and start recording. Listen to it. Then delete it because it’s really, really bad. Or save it to play back as an outtake when you’re good. Do this a few times. Don’t shoot for an hour of content. Shoot for five to ten minutes of content and stop! Because you don’t want more than ten minutes of this travesty. It really is to just start to get used to how you sound and the seeds of what it takes to plan out a show and transition through your content. You will most likely hate your voice. Get over it. In time you’ll come to hate it less. Not love it. I’ve been doing this a long time and still hate the sound of my voice.

The founder of Podfest, an annual event that brings together some of the world’s top podcasting talent, Chris Krimitsos has one piece of advice for anyone embarking on a new show: start ugly. (It’s also the name of his book, which is full of advice about how to stop thinking and start doing.) “The philosophy is not to start ugly and stay ugly,” he says. “It’s to find a balance if you’re ready to start. ‘Ugly’ because every start is ugly compared to where you’re going to be, but it starts ugly, and then you perfectly execute from that start with constant, never-ending improvement. It’s about constantly improving fractionally every day to create a better product.”

So start ugly! Motivational speaker Les Brown says, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly, until you get it right.” He’s 100 percent correct: 99 percent of us will start ugly with any new challenge. With experience you get better and more comfortable. So don’t be afraid to straight-up suck at first. Don’t be defeated. You will suck less each time. I mean, you’ll get better each time.

I was helping my friend Dolvett Quince launch his new podcast. Before he even opened a mic, he was asking if the background in his podcast studio would look good on video. He was way ahead of himself. The only thing you should be concerned with initially is opening the mic and “starting ugly.”

You have creative freedom right now. It’s what any creative person wants. And it’s precious. Nobody is looking over your shoulder telling you what to do or not to do. You get to pioneer your own way and learn from your own mistakes without any pressure.

For a decade I was part of the support staff on morning shows. I finally got hired in Atlanta, stepped into that studio, cracked the mic, and realized I had no idea what I was doing. It was so bad that I actually ran into my program director’s office, sat down, and informed him he had made the biggest mistake of his life hiring me. True story. I was that freaked out. He said: “Bert, go in the studio, and do whatever you want for the next six weeks. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Do the show you’ve always wanted. We’ll meet in six weeks and talk about what’s working and what’s not.”

I looked at him with the same tilted head a dog has when it hears a high pitch. What Brian Philips did for me that day empowered me to fail without consequence. In all my years of entertaining, I never felt so free. Sure, we sucked. But we sucked less every day ’cause I was confident I wasn’t going to get fired. My program director understood I had talent. Just no experience. Guess what? You can’t teach talent. You’re in the same position right now. You have talent. You do have talent, right? All you need is experience. But you have zero pressure. Things might change in the future when you create an audience. But as far as freedom goes, it never gets better than when you first start. Enjoy it!

“Alexa, What’s the Best Car?”

From moms, dads, singles, couples, kids and even companies like Audi, Volkswagen, Apple, and even Zoom, it seems like everybody has a podcast these days. It’s critical to their marketing campaigns, as William Corbin of Sound That Brands explains. “My biggest fear as a marketer, if I’m working for a client like BMW, is that they don’t have a podcast and somebody asks Alexa, ‘What’s the best car?’” he says. “Alexa might start playing the Audi podcast. It’s just like the World Wide Web was in the late nineties. You had to have a website; you just had to put your stake in that space to claim it. Today, if you’re not putting a stake in the audio website, which is a podcast, you’re going to be behind the eight ball or you’re going to get knocked out of the whole space.”

Chances are you’re reading this book for reasons other than launching a BMW podcast; you’ve got your own show about DIY car hacks, for example. But getting your “brand,” your unique topic, out into the world in the right way is the only way to give it leverage. This book will show you how to have your podcast be the answer to somebody asking Alexa or Siri for knowledge.

Why Read This Book?

Unless you’re part of the 0.000001 percent of people who do this instinctively, if you don’t read my book and apply what you learn to produce a show that people actually want to listen to you, you are destined to fail at podcasting because the content and delivery will be awful.⁵ And when you fail, you self-loathe. And when you self-loathe, people don’t want to be around you. And you’ll be lonely. Which will force you to isolate and invite stray cats into your home for companionship, but they will eventually try to snack on you as you lie on the floor because your medical alert device didn’t notify an ambulance that you were distressed. And this all could have been avoided if you had just read this book and put in place a few small tweaks to make your show listenable.

You Ready?

This is a “how-to guide” for people who hate how-to guides. I despise how-to guides, actually. Hard yawn. When I decided I was going to write a helping guide that was strictly focused on the content and delivery of your podcast, I wanted to make sure it was fun. This is no formal, uber-professional podcast bible. I never even learned how to tie my own tie, so let’s throw out formality and have a good time making your podcast stand out from the competition.

We’re ready to take the next step, right? I’ve dedicated the first part of this book to sharing the big picture of podcasting: how you connect with your audience, how to make money, and how to deal with the sound of your own voice. Then we’ll move on to the other people who help make a podcast successful, from a co-host to outsourced editors and consultants (including me). Finally, I’ll reveal some interview secrets from the podcasting superstars and give you inside tips on how to addict people to you and your personality.

So let’s start working on the most important piece of your podcast: the thumbnail picture!

No. Not the thumbnail picture. Not your main logo or website or even social channels.

I’m talking about content and delivery. If all you do well is content and delivery your show will grow and build a cult-like audience.

If you remember two words from this book, make them content and delivery.

Content. Delivery.

Content.

Delivery.

Everything else is secondary.

Let’s get this party started!