The Digital Content King, Episode #63

Episode Transcript

Carrie: Hello everybody! Welcome to officehoursfm episode #63. I am your host Carrie Dils and I found pretty much maybe the most awesome guest ever today.

Jerod Morris. How are you doing?

Jerod: I am doing very well. What a great introduction. Thank you. How are you doing?

Carrie: I am doing fine. Thank you. It is nice to see the sun shining and have an air conditioner that works.

Jerod: Yes.

Carrie: It might be shocking to some people that it’s already using an air conditioner. I have been using one since probably March.

Jerod: Well we do live in Texas after all.

Carrie: Yes. Well thanks everybody who’s joining us for the show today. I would very much like to thank our sponsors ManageWP and DreamPress 2. I’m going to give you a little bit more info on those later. If you’d like to ask Jerod questions you can do so on Twitter using the #officefm or you can head over to the Google hangout and click on the Q&A app and send in your questions there. All right. Let’s get rolling. So Jerod. You’re in Dallas?

Jerod: I am. Yep in Dallas.

Carrie: Are you in Dallas-Dallas or in like…

Jerod. I guess North Dallas. A little bit west of Plano a little bit east of Addison. Kind of in that area.

Carrie: OK. Well, this is my third week in a row to have a Texan as a guest and it was not on purpose. But I don’t mind it really.

Jerod: Can I be considered Texan even though I’m not from here? I’ve live here for seven years. Like at what point can I actually call myself a Texan?

Carrie: There is a Lyle Lovett song and it’s called That’s Right You’re Not From Texas, But Texas Wants You Anyway. Which sort of summarizes the sentiment of most Texans. Pretty much the moment you changed your address to Texas address, you’re a Texan.

Jerod: I’m a Texan? Ok. I’ll take that. Thank you. I have found that I slip in “Ya’lls” every know and then when I didn’t before. I feel like I’m slowly but surely assimilating.

Carrie: Where were you before Dallas?

Jerod: Indiana.

Carrie: Ah…ok.

Jerod: I’ll always be a Hoosier at heart. I really enjoy Texas so I don’t mind being a Texan.

Carrie: Awesome. What brought you to Texas?

Jerod: My family moved down here. And so I was in kind of a transition period in my career after college living in Indiana. And really just wanted to come down here for a few months to see my younger brother play basketball in high school. I was going to go to law school. I figured I’d be here for six months…that was April 2008. (laughing) Now it’s 2015 and here I am. You never know what kind of twists and turns life’s going to take.

Carrie: Very true. I moved here to go to…I was from Texas originally…moved up to the DFW area to go to college and then never, ever left. Yeah. That was a couple of decades ago.

Jerod: It’s a good place. It’s a good place to live.

Carrie: Well you are like the podcasters podcaster. So I want to talk about that in a moment. But for folks that…I don’t know who doesn’t know you…but for the folks that haven’t met you yet…give us the little rundown…who you are and what you do.

Jerod: Sure. I’m sure there’s plenty of people who don’t know me. I’m currently the VP of RainmakerFM with Robert Bruce. We’re co-running the RainmakerFM podcast network that we started. I’ve been with CopyBlogger now for more than two years. Came over I think officially January 2013 and started out in support over there with Synthesis. That’s how we became part of the CopyBloggger team and then just kind of slowly worked my way out of support, into editorial and fortunately working with guys like Brian, Robert and Sonia who believed in me and gave me a chance to do some things on the editorial side . So now I’m helping run RainmakerFM and then hosting the Showruner podcast which I’m a master and running that course. Which were are getting ready to relaunch.

Carrie: Relaunch? What’s that about?

Jerod: We launched the course…we did a pilot launch of the course four or five weeks ago. Got everybody in there you know. Finished up the course. Took some feedback. And so now we’re going to open it up for a week… actually starting Thursday, June 25^th. Open it up for a week to people who are on our list before we do kind of the full massive public launch sometime later this summer.

Carrie: So you guys are sort of the quintessential…just content authority. I feel really cheesy for using that word…that’s one of your all’s words…you planted it in my head. But Copyblogger really is the go to for all things content marketing. So RainmakerFM I guess is a pretty natural extension of that? Or is RainmakerFM sort of an adjunct to the rainmaker platform, if that makes sense.

Jerod: Yeah. I think it’s probably both. I think RainmakerFM was a natural direction for us to go in as podcasting and audio content started to reemerge. Because I think some people don’t realize that podcasting started a long time ago. It’s just that it got BIG…kind of a mainstream level over the past few years. I think we really saw it as the next step in the evolution of our content and it just happened to kind of fit perfectly with the platform. Because not only is what we built on RainmakerFM built on the platform so it’s a great example of kind of in practice. But we really found that audio was kind of a great centerpiece for content. Because you can do so much with audio content. Both in terms of  using transcripts to also have text content. So, I think for us it was a natural fit and we’re really fortunate at Copyblogger to have so many talented smart people who were capable of running their own shows. Obviously if you’re going to do a podcast network you have actual individuals running those shows. That was huge. To be able to have that…just that level of expertise and talent to be able to run the shows…which is what makes the network work.

Carrie: I was talking to Brian Gardner at the Authority Conference and I asked him if that was a rule. That all Copyblogger employees had to have a podcast over on RainmakerFM. All you guys are on board. It’s awesome.
Jerod: Yeah. It’s great and it’s been fun to see different people’s personalities come out and kind of evolve as they do the show and get more comfortable. It’s been really fun.

Carrie: Ok. I was thinking is support like regardless of what you want to be when you grow up…in CopyBlogger. Is support where everybody starts? Like it’s the gateway job drug if you will

Jerod: It sure seems like it. You know? Certainly not everybody has started in support but a lot of people have. I really think that time was invaluable. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Support was always kind of difficult to me because I’ve always been a content guy. So even when we developed the hosting platform before we came over to Copyblogger…I was really in support more out of necessity than anything because we had such a small lean team. But I was the least technically savvy of the support people. So when it was kind of like my weekend to take the support desk everybody was like OK. Jerod is on the support desk. We need to be ready to help him out. But you know…not only the technical skills I was able learn but just that interaction with the customers on the one of one to one basis how they view things, what makes life difficult or easy for them you know? When you start thinking about things from a marketing perspective and then from a product development perspective, it’s absolutely invaluable experience…and just the people skills and the patience that you learn dealing with everything that goes on there. Um…it’s…Brian says it all the time that really our support team is the lifeblood of our company. They’re the ones doing the real work. That without them nothing else works. So I’m…again…I don’t think everybody has to go through that. But I think  if you can it’s an it’s an invaluable experience.

Carrie: I completely agree as an outsider looking in. I mean yes in any of… even jobs I’ve done in the past…kind of starting at that busboy level…and not to demean the support position at all. It’s just that kind of first incoming job. It’s fantastic to be able to have that perspective wherever you go in a company. Let’s give a large round of applause to the Copyblogger support team who I have sent many questions to.

Jerod: They are awesome.

Carrie: Andrea, Jen and the rest of you. So we’ve got a question here from Davinder. He is asking about video podcasting. Like what I’m doing now. Recording it live, doing a video and later on of course having it in both formats video and audio. He’s asking isn’t it more engaging and are there any plans to do that in the future with the podcast on RainmakerFM?

Jerod: I think it depends. I think it certainly can be more engaging to have video for people who want the video. Because obviously there’s a different level of interaction that you get with a video. Because people can see us. They can see us interact. The other thing is we actually have a different interaction on video because I can see you and you can see me. I know one of the other shows that I host, we do it the same way. We do it as Google Hangout before we post the audio. It’s a three person team. I think audio interviews are pretty simple one-to-one because it’s like talking on the phone. There’s a natural rhythm. When you get three people in on an audio interview…I think it creates a lot more opportunities for kind of like car crashes that happen in the middle…when people try to talk over each other. You can mitigate some of that when you have everybody on the video because they can see each other. It’s a little bit easier to find the natural flow of the conversation. I think for video there needs to be a reason to have a video. I don’t think every podcast needs to have a video. In terms of RainmakerFM we’ve certainly talked about doing that. So I think in the future we’ve talked about doing a show called RainMakerLIVE. Where we’ll get on…have people on for a live show to discuss you know a particularly important event…or to do a Q&A…whatever it might be. So we definitely do have plans to do that. I certainly think there’s a market for it. It’s really about I think figuring out why do you want the video? I think if there’s a good reason to do it. Do it. Because certainly from a technical standpoint it doesn’t…especially when you do a Google Hangout it doesn’t make it anymore difficult to produce.

Carrie: There you go. Well Davinder. I hope that answers your question.

Jerod: (laughing) Yeah I hope so. Sorry.

Carrie: Do you think that YouTube is the…I really don’t even know whatever platform you would use at this point…for hosting the video because you want the live aspect with the Hangout…but I don’t love it. It’s free so I can’t complain at all but there are definitely some things I don’t love about Hangouts and YouTube.

Jerod: I agree. But the thing to love about YouTube is it’s where everybody is, you know? If you do put content on YouTube it’s a massive content search engine. I think it’s even the number one or number two place for people to actually consume music and audio content? So we haven’t put our individual podcast episodes on YouTube but I know some people do. They just put them on YouTube without even a visual element. Just with some kind of title screen. That can work. I’ve some conflicting stats on how much actual engagement you get from doing that. So I don’t know if the effort is worth the return that you’ll get. But I think finding a way…if you can do it…finding a good way to get your content on YouTube simply because they’re so many people there can definitely have benefits.

Carrie: You know I hate it when I go to YouTube hoping to catch a Pat Benetar video and all I hear is the music playing and then like a picture of the beach or something.

Jerod: Yeah. The only benefit is that sometimes you get to the music without the ad. Because a lot of times the actual videos have to running beforehand. Sometimes when they just do the song with text or picture…you don’t have to listen to the ad. That’s the only benefit to it. But yeah, there will be like 20 different videos from the same song too.

Carrie: Yeah. It’s an interesting medium. I guess I won’t change anything for the time being. Paul is wanting to know what happened to the Allegorical Show?

Jerod: Well we all would love to have more episodes of Allegorical come out. That is something that Robert Bruce would have to address. I think really you know…Robert is really focusing on managing the entire RainmakerFM process. Working with hosts, developing new shows and like with anything else, with a small team like we have relative to the amount of work that we want to do…everybody’s got a make sometimes difficult decisions about priorities. I know  Robert would love to it but he’s also got to prioritize where do my efforts provide the greatest good for the company? So right now that’s with working with hosts, developing new shows…you know and all that. It’s a big hefty kind of complicated job…running a network like that. So that’s the answer but certainly there have been internal discussions that have asked the exact same question. Because we all love that show and we love it when Robert’s producing content. So, I’ll pass those thoughts along.

Carrie: Well…and tell him he has a voice like butter when you pass that along.

Jerod: He does. I will.

Carrie: So you mentioned running the network. Can you give me and the listeners a little bit of an idea of what the nuts and bolts of that look like from a technical perspective?

Jerod: Sure. I mean right now we have…I don’t even know what the number is…what the total number is. But we basically have got every single day…four or five new podcast episodes coming out. So for anybody who has produced a podcast, you know if you think about the amount of work it takes you just to produce one episode…you’ve got your preparation time as a host, you’ve got the actual production time when you’re recording and then you got the post production time of editing, coming up with the show notes uploading the audio file, getting the transcript ready, getting a social image ready. So now multiply that over 20 shows that are coming out every single day. And so this isn’t the way that we run this because obviously like you said a lot of the people who work for us are hosting shows and they have so many other responsibilities they don’t have the time nor the inclination to edit and do all the production stuff. So we’re fortunate to have the resources, to have a production team that can handle a lot of the editing and then we’ve got an incredible small lean mean internal production team that handles the transcripts and the social images and the scheduling. But that all requires organization and you know I think it’s so important when you have a podcast and when you have a schedule that everybody sticks to that schedule. And so making sure that all runs smoothly and that host…getting their audio files in at different times of the week and hey this show has to go up on Wednesday…we just got the audio file and its Monday night…there’s a lot of different moving parts and pieces. So running a big podcast network is not for the faint of heart nor is it for the disorganized. That’s why I think especially with Robert kind of managing that production side of it…there’s just a lot of moving pieces and even now with it in a pretty good rhythm…it just requires so much daily management and attention to detail to really do it right.

Carrie: No doubt. A lot of work involved. You just said all of that. Multiply it by 20 a day…I got sweaty….that made me nervous.

Jerod: Yeah. (laughing)

Carrie: I’m thinking though…man I want to hire out your production team for a little external work. You should package that and sell it as a service.

Jerod: Yeah. And Toby Lyles manages our editing 24sound.com really does a great job. Actually he and I and John..we do for inside the ShowRunner course we do what we call a show runner huddle. So every other week we do some kind of live event for the people in the course. We’ve done Q&A’s. This is when we actually bring Toby in. He’s going to basically give everybody some basic editing techniques to…you know like when you’re recording on Skype and you get that white noise that’s so annoying…and you can’t predict when it’s going to happen. How to get rid of that. Some other basic type stuff. And again that’s the kind of stuff that a lot of our hosts… they can’t and don’t want to spend time messing with that. So it’s really  kind of the evolution of a podcast or show runners. Everybody should…kind of like what we talked about with support…it’s great if you can start out in support and learn that perspective. When you’re a podcaster you really want to start out doing everything yourself. You know do the production. Do the editing so that you know it but for a lot of people there comes a time where if your business is growing, if your podcast is developing the audience that you want it to…well now you’ve got more demands on your time. How do you outsource this? And so it’s a good spot to get to because it means now that you’ve created additional demands on your time based on the audience that you’re developing. For us that was really necessary for us to make the network work to be able to have something like that in place.

Carrie: So you said something that I thought was interesting. You see a lot of people and I’m guessing the person I’m about to describe would be a Rainmaker customer – Rainmaker platform for folks listening differentiating from RainmakerFM the podcast network. People who have that…they’re either content marketers or they’re speakers or they’re authors…or they’re… who knows what they’re doing? But they’re not tech heads. So in Rainmaker there’s a way for them to publish and get out there without having to know how all the nuts and bolts work. Excuse me. I’m getting verklept just talking about this. But then when it comes to the podcasting side, Rainmaker has a way to display the podcast and kind of organize them and whatnot. But then on the end of what you’re talking, all that production, the know-how of how to get it into iTunes..it’s not like it’s rocket science but it’s still something that the average human does not care about knowing that information. So I do wonder if there’s an opportunity for services around kind of as a web developer would be to a Rainmaker customer and helping them get set up on the platform. Somebody to…a podcast facilitator maybe?

Jerod: Certainly. Because I think you know RainMaker really helps you. Once you have the MP3 file then Rainmaker really helps you. Because it makes the actual posting of it simple, it makes the integration with iTunes simple and your distribution part but you still have to get that good quality MP3 file. There’s a lot that goes into that. All the way from the planning…you know like…let’s say that you do an interview show like Jon Naster does with Hack the Entrepreneur. You know he’s scheduling a lot of his own interviews but he’s doing three episodes a week. You and I both know how difficult it can be to just schedule. Just to find times that work for people. And so from that piece all the way to having a good set up and being able to facilitate a good quality recording… to then editing, to then show notes, to then you know the transcription part…getting all of that together to then bring it into the platform…there’s a lot of work that’s done you know in that part right there. Certainly I think there are people who have either graduated out of needing to do that themselves or they’re getting into podcasting already having a platform and an audience. And for those people who are a little bit more advanced they may want to get on the podcast and talk and interview people they may not care about the editing which is totally fine. So yeah I think there’s a big opportunity for people who can help with that production part and take those kind of the more difficult or time-consuming parts to get that final content ready for publishing. There’s a big opportunity out there depending on who it is that you’re working with.

Carrie: Well all right listeners. If you’ve got the freelance bug, a little entrepreneurial spirit and you have an inclination for working with audio…think of a solution that you can you can sell those folks because I think there’s probably a ready audience.

Jerod: Yes. Especially more and more people get into podcasting too who aren’t natural. People who just want to get into that. Get out there and try the technical part. A lot of the people who podcast now probably have some sort of technical know-how, curiosity, time or just a lack of fear to try new things. And I think now we’ll start seeing more people who are more advanced in terms of their career but again don’t have the time to try and do all this other stuff. So I think there will be more people entering who want to start shows that need that producer who can actually make it happen for them.

Carrie: Do you have an idea off the top your head what percentage of your Rainmaker customers are actually taking advantage of that podcast piece?

Jerod: Boy that’s a really good question. I don’t know. Although now I’m curious to find out. Um..I don’t know.

Carrie: Um…all right.

Jerod: It’s a really good question. I don’t. My inclination is that it’s probably not as high as we would think. It would be my guess. Because I still think you know podcasting is growing but there’s still a pretty small percentage of people that are actually doing it and that actually have you know shows that are ongoing. But certainly with the Showrunner we want to increase that percentage you know. And help empower more people to get out there and start getting their shows out there.

Carrie: Cool. I think…going off topic a little bit…you guys sent out an email this morning with a…you know some updates to Rainmaker that were essentially…Hey look at our documentation. I know it was an update but I was reading between the lines… oh my gosh….most of this is been here the whole time. They’re just making it easier to get to. I think that’s great. You’ve got these incredible resources like a Showrunner teaching you how to be a better podcaster. You have all this wonderful documentation. It’s just a matter of getting people to actually notice that it exists and take advantage of it.

Jerod: Yeah. Well you know it’s funny that you mention that because when I was developing the Showrunner course…when Jon and I were developing it and I was kind of putting the pieces together in the backend of Rainmaker, it was first time that I’d used the new LMS features. I’m not always great at reading instructions. I kind of like to just dive in and start doing stuff and so if something doesn’t immediately make intuitive sense it can put up some roadblocks. With the LMS for example you know as soon as I got in there just looking at it having never developed a course before and not having used ours I didn’t know where to start. I was like ok. I don’t want to go like pester everybody and start asking questions. Let me go actually go use the knowledge base and see how the documentation is.  It was like…I won’t say I was surprised because I had a feeling it would be good but it made working through it so simple. It was step by step by step and it made everything makes sense. I think sometimes you can overlook how important that is. To just have the good documentation and step-by-step to walk people through how to do things. Because Rainmaker certainly does alleviate a lot of the technical issues and headaches that people can have. But rainmaker itself still requires a little bit of learning because it’s its own system and not everything is going to make immediate sense to everybody depending on your experience with WordPress or with Premise…whatever it is. Especially with some of what we added with the walk throughs and some of the videos, it really takes that to the next step of really basically taking you by the hand and saying Oh you want to create a course? Here’s the steps that you need to do that. So they can really really helpful for everybody you know regardless of how they learn for the first time or whether they’re like me and just dive right in. Or if they really want to spend time reading and getting all the exact steps down.

Carrie: I hear you. Let me pause for a moment. Anybody who is tuning in midway through the show you can ask Jerod questions on Twitter by tagging it with #officefm or if you’re over on Google+ watching via the Hangout and can use the Q&A Hangout app to submit a question. Jerod? I’ve got a sponsor today who is a web host whispers…(and it’s not Synthesis).

Jerod: (laughing) I’m going to cover my ears.

Carrie: Yeah. Cover your ears for this next part.

Jerod: Although I’m wearing ear buds so covering my ears actually just makes the sound more acute.

Carrie: (laughing) Well in that case you’re going to have to listen We have got DreamHost who is introduced DreamPress 2 the upgrade from rom the original DreamPress. It’s basically managed WordPress hosting for the nerdy folks who really like to get in and maybe use some WP CLI or play with HHVM and the really cool thing about it is that they have unlimited traffic and all of that at a price that is most affordable managed WordPress host on the market. So please check them out @DreamHost.com/officehours. And then we’ve got ManageWP. Jerod I don’t know if you’ve had any experience? You probably don’t need a service like ManageWP.

Jerod: I’ve heard of it. I never actually used it myself.

Carrie: It’s a big timesaver is basically what it is. You can add their plug-in to all of the WordPress sites that you manage and then see all of the sites from a single dashboard. So you can run all your updates, manage your comments, do all that stuff. If you’re managing a bunch of websites it makes that super easy and you can check them out at ManageWP.com. Let’s get to some questions here. Let’s see. Jackie’s asking what type of research….this is a great question…what type of research goes into selecting a podcast program?

Jerod: Interesting. Do you mean like a platform to host a podcast on? Or like a…

Carrie: No. Like a show. You’re thinking ok this is going to be a hit. Or uh..you think it’s going to be a hit but it actually flops. Are you just throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks?

Jerod: Ok. From a RainMakerFM perspective like how we get new shows?

Carrie: Yep.

Jerod: You know I think the first thing is to really clearly define what your market is for the network and what the goal is. Obviously for us with RainMakerFM the ultimate goal is to create RainMakerFM platform customers. So what that means that every single show on RainmakerFM in some way needs to teach people the big picture concepts that the platform helps you achieve. So like with the new show Authorpreneur that we have out with Jim Krukal. He is talking with authors about how to use books as basically a means to drive their business. So not you know getting outside of the business model of here sell books and drive book sales but how do you most almost use books is a business card to build a platform, increase speaking engagements. And then of course the Rainmaker fits and helps you do that by building the platform. So for us all the roads of the concepts that the shows teach need to lead to the platform. So that’s the base. That’s the foundation. Then after that it’s about the person because for a podcast to work there’s got be a connection with an audience. Otherwise there’s no real point in having a podcast. That’s the next step is…does this person have the topic area knowledge? Do they have the commitment to actually show up every week or like Demian…every day Monday through Thursday to keep their schedule so that they actually develop the connection with the audience that then leads to the audience actually kind of following them along the path that you want to take them. I think those are the two things that we really look at and then you’ve just got put it out there. Because there are some shows that you think are to be hits that flop because for whatever reason the authentic connection between the host and the audience doesn’t happen. And then there are shows that you think…I don’t know really what this show’s going to do but it connects with an audience. I think TV executives find that same thing. They think it shows to be a hit and it just doesn’t find an audience for whatever reason. And sometimes there’s a magic there that I don’t think you can describe or plan for but I think at a foundational level you’ve got to make sure that you’re being smart. That the shows and the content that your putting out are in line with the overall business goals.

Carrie: So like say a podcast that focused on the NBA would never make it onto RainmakerFM.

Jerod: No. We wouldn’t want to do that. Although I would love to host a show like that. That would be a lot of fun. (laughing) But I don’t think it would be a great fit for RainmakerFM.

Carrie: There may be one. Check out the Assembly call podcast?

Jerod: Yes. Assembly call. Although we are college basketball as opposed to the NBA. But you being from Texas, which is really football country I wouldn’t necessarily expect you know the differences between basketball. Unless you’re a big basketball fan.

Carrie: You know? No. I like the sport but it’s probably been five years since I’ve been to an NBA game.

Jerod: Yeah.

Carrie: It’s been more years than that since I showed up at a college game.

Jerod: Like in Indiana College basketball and high school basketball are the same. Like that is…those the biggest games in town. And here it is the complete opposite. Pro football and college and high school football.

Carrie: Hoosiers. Is that Pistol Pete?

Jerod: Pistol Pete actually went to LSU. So he’s kind of got that Hoosier vibe about him you know, the wiry guy with floppy hair that shoots really well. But not actually a Hoosier.

Carrie: Well. Man. We’ve just exposed my lack of sports knowledge on the air. See that? I couldn’t run that podcast. I’d really suck at it. We’ve got a couple of questions about equipment. Paul wants to know what’s the minimum equipment for a good quality podcast. Not necessarily all out Pro but not awful.

Jerod: That’s a good question. Which is a good time to say that I think I’ve talked with a lot of people who want to get into podcasting that get really hung up on equipment. And it actually proves to be a barrier to them not starting. And so I think there’s a minimum level of audio quality as this question notes. There’s a minimum level of audio quality that you need and once you reach that, get out there and just start doing it. You don’t need kind of analysis/paralysis trying to figure out the mic. The one that I use right here is called the Road Podcaster. And really I use this… we just had it for four or five years. You’re using…yep you’ve got the exact same one.

Carrie: Yep.

Jerod: It’s a really high quality mic. You know Derick Schaefer back when I was working with him…we bought this mic when we were going to start doing some audio stuff…some podcasts back in the Midwest sports fans days. It’s still really good so I keep using it. I’ve also got an H6 microphone that I use. But a lot of the hosts at RainmakerFM for example use the Blue Yeti microphone. Which I think you can get for a $100 – $125. It’s not terribly expensive and it plugs in via USB. And is that perfect? No. Is that going to get you just perfectly clean audio every single time? No. But it’s probably good enough. That’s about the investment level that I think you should expect to get a microphone that’s good enough. Then of course the next step then is the room that you’re recording in, which can actually make a pretty big difference. This is…I’m currently recording in the office at our new house which is not perfect for audio recording because it has high ceilings and bare walls. I’m doing some work to try and make this better. We actually just did an episode about  kind of low-cost/no-cost ways that you can improve your audio quality. So having a good mic is certainly the first step. But then you know there’s little booths that you can build yourself with crates and you know the little foam that will help deaden your sound. You can record from the closet which I’ve done before. There’s a lot of different creative ways you can actually get good quality sound but  I would earmark a $100 to $125 bucks. Get yourself a good quality mic. That’s really the first step. And then if you really get serious about it and you really want to take it to the next level after 50 or a 100 episodes and the audience is there and you can justify it, by all means go nuts with the audio. I don’t think you need to spend an arm and a leg just to get going with it.

Carrie: Great advice. Especially to not let it get in the way of getting started. My very first episode…which was awful…it should’ve  been episode 00 and I shouldn’t have trial and errored on my first episode. I was recording with the built-in mic on my laptop. Of course the audio quality is what you might expect find on YouTube. Somebody recording out of their home. Not professional at all.

Jerod: But look at that. You started and you’ve kept going and you’re here. It’s the biggest thing that we try and stress to people who are in the course or who are not in the course and just listening to the show and are thinking about going. You’ve just got to start somewhere and understand that the first episode..you’re going to look back on it and think it’s horrible. Like just understand that. Get used to it. You know…it’s going to be bad. It’s probably not as bad as you think because objectively your audio may not have been bad but I’m sure your content was good because you’re smart and you have a good personality…

Carrie: Oh no. It was bad.

Jerod: That’s what I mean. To us it always seems like that. I actually went back and was listening to some of my old old episodes when I  first started podcasting. I could tell I’m reading off a script. I’ve got a shake voice. I’m talking too fast. It’s just awful but yet without that episode we’d never get to episode 13 of the Showrunner where we get to release a really successful course. So I mean there’s a lot of work that has to go in between there. You know the difference I think between the people who never get going and who we sometimes look at Oh well. They must be a natural behind the mic.  They’re just good at it. No. They’ve probably just done 500 episodes and just built confidence episode by episode over time. So that’s I’m glad you shared that story because you just…as imperfect as it’s going to be just embrace it and hug that first episode and love it because it gets you started on the road to where you want to go.

Carrie: Nice. Well there’s the tip for the day. Launch now. Perfect later

Jerod: Yes exactly.

Carrie: So a bit of a business question for new Rainmaker. Other than using possibly converting RainmakerFM listeners over into Rainmaker platform customers are there other any monetization plans you can share?

Jerod: Yeah. I think that’s a really good question too. Because monetization with podcasts is something where I think sometimes people either don’t think of it all or they get a little bit too rigid with it. And a lot of people think ok for my podcast to be successful I’ve got a profit directly. Like I need to sell sponsorships or l’ve got to sell access to my archive or whatever it is. And there is a very infinitesimally small number of people who can actually do that. And a lot of times they’re people who bring audiences from other avenues to a podcast. For most people that’s not going to happen. For most people thinking indirectly about podcast profitability is the smartest way to go. So with RainmakerFM as an example, obviously I talked earlier about how it’s really geared toward moving people toward the platform. So obviously the business goal is the platform and that’s making money but none of the actual episodes are generating revenue directly. Another model is the course model. So the Showrunner has never made a dime. We don’t sell any advertising on it but it led to a course that you know went out with its first pilot launch at $295 and then we raised it to $395 and the price will go up again when we put it back out there. But that generated really significant revenue all because of the podcast. So I think you’ll see with RainmakerFM that the Showrunner was really the first in a new line of education products and courses that will be developed based around those concepts that we talked about earlier. And that’s a model that you see a lot of successful podcasts follow whether it’s sending people to a service, sending people to a product, whether it’s to promote you know your own consulting services. Whatever it is…you’re using that podcast as another cog…an important cog in your content marketing strategy to build trust build you know I can trust and then get people to become ready. You’re giving them the education they need to take the next step to engage in that business relationship with you.

Carrie: I just got really distracted by a Brian Gardner tweet. He said I’m not getting better podcasting. I’m just getting better at editing. (laughing)

Jerod: That’s interesting.

Carrie: Sorry to totally derail. On the topic of monetization those intangibles are so valuable and also a part of your overall content marketing strategy. It’s the same with blogging. I don’t profit in any way from writing blog posts but it goes back to building a community, building authority, becoming a trusted resource…all of those things that you cannot buy.

Jerod: Absolutely.

Carrie: So let’s see. I have a troll on Twitter. His name is Mike Hale and he wants to know when Jerod Morris and the Spongebobs will be on their US tour.

Jerod: Did he say Spongebobs or Spongebags.

Carrie: Spongebags. Oh Wow! Sorry.

Jerod: See this is the kind of stuff that you can get into on a podcast that doesn’t come out in blog posts. This is from the Lede with Demian that he was doing this example of me having a band to show how you can repurpose content. How bands go across the nation and they’re doing the same songs everyplace which is similar to you syndicating content at LinkedIn and different places. So the name of the band that he came up with was Jerod Morris and the Spongebags which I didn’t know was a Spongebag was, but it’s almost like a kind of pair of pants, like a formal pair of pants I think that people wear. Anyway…so yeah…what was the question? When will we be launching our US tour? Um…well Demian actually wrote a song for a recent episode and he is trying to get me to record it. So far I’ve balked at this request because as much as I love singing, I can’t get it to sound even remotely good. I don’t want totally turn our listeners off by forcing them to listen to me sing. So the US tour is currently on hold to answer that question.

Carrie: Ok. Well I’m glad to learn what a Spongebag is. I thought it might be a cross between Spongebob and a douch bag. All right. Well on that note we have a question from Brad. He asked if Rainmaker is actually a Genesis child theme or is it totally different? In other words does it run on the Genesis framework?

Jerod: That’s a good question. So it’s different. The designs inside of the Rainmaker platform are all Genesis designs. So if you go to the Studiopress.com/themes I think it shows all the themes. All the new pro themes are inside of Rainmaker and you have 30 or so in there I think. Don’t quote me on the number but something like that. You have your choice of any of those themes. And some of the themes actually incorporate with Design Pallet Pro in there so it so you can actually go in and edit …you know make pretty simple edits. The platform itself is not a theme. It’s a fully hosted platform all on its own. And if you’re looking for just a Genesis theme that stuff is all over on the Studio Press side. I hope I answered that question adequately. I think you’re muted Carrie. (laughing)

Carrie: I do that…I do that frequently.

Jerod: I know that because when I host the Assembly call it’s the same thing. Someone will have a bad connection. We try to mute while the other person’s talking then there’s always that moment when someone forgets to un mute and they hop in..yeah.

Carrie: I want you to know I just said something amazing and profound while I was muted. But I can’t…the world’s just missed out on that. Ok. So you mentioned LinkedIn a little bit. I want to talk about that. It’s been mentioned on your podcast recently. Of course LinkedIn has been in headlines quite a bit recently with their acquisition of Lynda.com. In my experience LinkedIn has historically been just the neglected stepchild of social media. Like I never update my profile. I’m not interacting on there. It’s just not a place where I traditionally found value. However, it seems like there’s a little up tic or trend toward leveraging LinkedIn more. What’s your thoughts there?

Jerod: Yeah. There certainly is that trend. I’m the same way. I’ve never been a LinkedIn person. I’ve tried but I don’t know if it’s that I just…I’m not…I don’t like the interface or it’s too…LinkedIn is kind of complicated. There’s a lot there. The thing that we realized is like ok but this is where a lot of business people are. And a lot of people we’re actually targeting with our products like they are here. So instead of finding all the excuses for why not to use LinkedIn let’s figure out how to get this can actually work for us. So I think having a discussion group in LinkedIn to get a presence there. Sean Jackson now actually just started new podcast on RainmakerFM called the Missing Link where he is exploring all of these different ideas. OK. How do you leverage LinkedIn? You know we always talk about Twitter and Facebook. But how do you leverage LinkedIn in the same way? So I think for people interested in that topic certainly listen to that show. Because he’s going to provide a lot of good useful insight. And the other thing is with LinkedIn publishing. It’s another place now to where if you’re smart about it to build an audience. Not to build an audience but to at least get new eyeballs on your content and then of course if you’re smart about it hopefully drive them back to your own platform because we don’t want to be digital sharecropping. But there are…it seems like there are a lot more opportunities to leverage it in that way then there were before.

Carrie: Yeah. My dad who’s in the tech industry…we were hanging out on LinkedIn. I mean how…I don’t know how nerdy that sounds…what my family does for fun…but we were observing that like you said that the publishing capabilities. So in the past you could do things with status updates and that sort of thing but now you can actually publish posts. WordPress style. It’s not nearly as sophisticated an interface or maybe it’s a really simplified interface. The thing I learned was people don’t have to be your connection in order to follow your posts or keep up with your content. I really like that distinction because I was thinking I don’t want to be… don’t want to have to exchange a connection just for you to get eyeballs on my content. LinkedIn is sort of sacred ground when it comes to who you connect with. I was wondering and I haven’t been able to find good documentation on this yet…whether or not if you republish something that you published on your WordPress site if you republished it on LinkedIn if you would take a duplicate content hit or how that works. Or maybe you…

Jerod: Yeah. I’m trying to think about that too. I don’t think so. Um… and I don’t know if they allow you to actually put in the canonical url in LinkedIn when you publish. I haven’t actually published there myself. But I know Demian’s had success with it and he will use the example Gregory Ciotti from HelpScout who really had huge success doing it. It’s posting content that’s already been posted elsewhere. So I have to think that the answer to that would be no. I just don’t know the exact mechanics of how you do it.

Carrie: Interesting. To my knowledge there is no plug-in that automatically pushes a post to LinkedIn. You can push a post as a status update to LinkedIn but not push it as the LinkedIn’s post format. I found it terribly confusing. Anyway somebody go write that plugin, If you could have that to me by Friday that would be great. Yes. So back on the…we jump all over the place… that’s kind of the style of officehoursfm. So we had another question about Rainmaker . Where did it go? Ok. So DesignTLC asked so when switching from a custom Genesis theme or website to Rainmaker you’re essentially building a new site. Is there any way to import or convert?

Jared: There is a custom theme approval process that we’re working to get more streamlined than it is right now but there is a way to do that. And not all you know that process is looking for certain parts of the theme that it can’t use just based on you know whatever. If it’s a security hole or whatever the reason might be. There are ways to do that. That process will actually be getting simpler as we move forward.
Carrie: Cool. I know Daisy’s probably sick of taking my email requests or my theme submissions. Bing da bing.

Jared: Daisy is amazing.

Carrie: Yes she is. A woman of great patience. If you are listening live anyone ask Jerod a question you about 10 more minutes to get that in #office and we’l do our best to it on the air. So question for you since you’re a local.

Jared: Yes.

Carrie: Have you heard of the Podcast Movement?

Jerod: I have heard of the Podcast Movement. And I’m very much looking forward to being there. Are you going?

Carrie: I am. Are you speaking?

Jerod: I am. Yes I was actually just e-mailing with Dan earlier…one of the guys running the conference about what the topical will be. But yeah I am. I’m really looking forward to it.

Carrie: Sweet. Yeah. I saw the information about the conference and I as like…oh wow! That looks really awesome. And then I saw it’s in frigging downtown Fort Worth. Ten miles away. I was like. Ok. I’m there.

Jerod: I can’t wait. Actually there’s a lot of people from the Showrunner course that are going to be there. We’ll probably do like a fun little show runner huddle…we call our meetups, huddles. We’ll probably do a fun showrunner huddle the day before. Which is really fun because then you actually get a chance to meet people who are in the course and that you’ve only known through tweets. They listen to your show. So it’s actually fun to meet people live and in person. That conference is going to be….from everything I heard last year it was really good. The lineup of keynote speakers that they have is kind of mind-boggling. They just keep adding new people to the list. It’s crazy.

Carrie: Yeah. I’ve seen that. I’m like what? Each timeslot you have like 80,000 speakers you can choose from. Yeah so much talent there. If you’re tuning in, which obviously you are even hearing me say this. Look forward to the quality getting better circa August 2015 after I attend this conference. Okey dokey. So I’m going to call you out on something right here on national podcasting.

Jerod: Oh. Ok let’s do it.

Carrie: So you, who are the digital content king have a defunct blog at JerodMorris.com.

Jerod: Oh yeah. I do. I’ve really struggled with what to do with that domain and with that site. Probably what I want to do with it is just turn it into like an online business card with just contact information. But I’ve really gone back and forth. Do I use it to post content that doesn’t fit anywhere? So I don’t…with a side project like the Assembly Call I’ve got a very clear strategy and it’s so easy to move forward with it and with other sites. But that one I’ve never had a clear strategy with it which is why it goes a little bit and falls off. So yeah now it’s sitting out there as a horrible example of what I like to teach people how to do.

Carrie: (laughing) Do as I say. Not as I do.

Jerod: It’s interesting that you say that. It’s probably a good lesson that I should probably take it down. Sitting up there like it is you know kind of just dormant… hasn’t had post a while and I think the last couple of posts were about fantasy football. It does nothing really except get me called out on national podcasts. But it’s an important lesson that everything that you have out there can be seen by people so you probably need do make sure that it’s worth seeing and that it’s not counterproductive to what you’re trying to do.

Carrie: Well you know I’m just giving you a hard time because you are certainly producing a ton of content. It just doesn’t happen to be at that domain.

Jerod: Yeah. I know.

Carrie: If you just throw a domain redirect to one of your podcasts…you’ll have it.

Jerod: That’s probably what I’ll do. It’s a good idea.

Carrie: We’ve got a great question here. If you’re thinking about starting a podcast any tips on what not to do? Any common pitfalls?

Jerod: Oh boy. That’s a great question. You know I think the first thing would be to not judge yourself harshly early on. Give yourself some time to get comfortable. I saw a stat that I think 90%…don’t quote me on the number…it’s a very high percentage of podcasts do not make it past Episode 7. They call it pod fade. I think that’s probably the biggest pit fall. Is that people a) judge themselves too harshly early on and think well I can’t do this, the audience won’t be there OR their expectations get out of whack. They think that after 7  Episodes they should have 50 iTunes reviews and a thousand people on their email list and that it should be driving all this business. Podcasting is not a short-term solution for anything. It is a long-term solution to build a really meaningful connection with an audience. So I think if you go into it with any mindset other than that; you’re setting yourself up for failure. Because I think of the elements of a remarkable show that we talk about on the Showrunner…the simplest one to explain and hardest one to be able to actually do is sustainability. You’ve to show up. You’ve got to show up for the first time. You’ve got to show up reliably which means that people expect your show on Wednesday at 10 o’clock you want it to be posted on Wednesday at 10 o’clock. Then you got to do it over time. And you don’t know anything after 7 episodes. I don’t know if you really know anything after 15 or 20 episodes. I think you’re just starting to learn about what format you’re comfortable with and what your audience likes. So it just takes time. Don’t expect everything to happen all once. Be really patient with yourself and your audience. Because it can take time to develop but then once you do… then the snowball starts to roll and starts to really starts to pick up steam.That’s what’s really beautiful about it. Those efforts that you made early on that seem like they weren’t going anywhere…those episodes are still out there. That’s still valuable concept for new people that are finding you. So give it the time to really start building up and getting that exponential growth ,which you will get if you’re committed to it over time.

Carrie: That’s fantastic advice and sort of follows…I started this originally to be a true Office Hours. Just a live Q&A with me and a guest to answer questions about the Genesis Framework. I thought it was going to be a technical show. I quickly learned that of the guests I had on, the questions people were asking were not technical they were about business. So whatever the listener wants…Carrie Dils is going to deliver. I shifted format to be focusing more on the business of things. Eventually earlier this year, I even dropped the Genesis to just become officehoursfm so we’re not limited to just talking about that platform. Especially since were talking so much that’s not technical or Genesis specific anyway. Interesting and thank you for saying that it’s ok to evolve and switch gears. Because certainly you know I didn’t anticipate this a year and a half ago.

Jerod: Yeah I think you should expect to evolve and shift gears. I mean we all go out the door with hunches about what we think the audience is going to like. It’s like the Assembly Call. That originally started as a call in show. So we wanted to go live immediately after the games…after IU games…and then we did it on blog talk radio so people would call in. But then we found that really the audience wanted to hear us talk. They didn’t want us fumbling around with phone calls and kind of having the show get derailed by calls. That was ok but they really wanted the show to be more about us. So we kind of switched it. It’s just… you’re never really to know that until put out there and make sure that your open to the feedback from the audience. That takes time.

Carrie: Truth. Well if you are interested in starting a podcast definitely go check out Jerod’s Showrunner show over at Rainmaker.FM. Believe it or not Jerod we have almost used up an entire hour.

Jerod: That was a fast hour.

Carrie: Do you watch…or have you ever listened to the car talk show on NPR?

Jerod: Once. Yes.

Carrie: It’s two goofy brothers that are mechanics. One of them recently passed and the show’s no longer….it’s just on a syndication…but they always end the show by saying well you’ve wasted another perfectly good hour of your life. (laughing) So anyways I hope that’s not really the case.

Jerod: No. The was a lot of fun.

Carrie: Sweet. Well you’re welcome back anytime. Before we go I would like to thank our sponsors ManageWP . You can check them out at ManageWP.com. And DreamPress 2 brought to you by our friends over at DreamHost. You can check them out at DreamHost.com/officehours. Jerod… how do you… let’s see how do self-servingly say on your show go like me on iTunes. Go leave me five-star review?

Jerod: That’s interesting. Typically we’ll say something like you know if you’re enjoying these episodes…if you’re finding them useful…we’d really appreciate it if you would go over iTunes and leave a review. Because they really do make a big difference. Actually on the Showrunner we’ve gone  away from using the iTunes review as the call to action. We’re going more toward getting people on an email list. Because we think it converts a little bit better. It actually allows you to take the next step in the relationship before you request the review. We’re kind of trying it out to see what works. If I were going to request an iTunes review, that’s kind of what I would say. If the value is there, you’re getting something out of it plant that seed in their head and then Hey here’s something that we would appreciate you doing for us. That helps out.

Carrie: Sweet. All right. Since you mentioned newsletters I do have one of those too over at officehours.fm/subscribe. That just lands a weekly reminder of the show in your inbox. Well now that I’ve wasted a perfectly good hour of you’re time, Jerod where can people follow up with you and say hello online?

Jerod: Certainly on Twitter is a great place. At JerodMorris a place that is not good…clearly…. jerodmorris.com…so don’t go there. (laughing) And then if you want to engage more about podcasting Showrunner.fm is the url and there’s an email sign up right there. Which puts you on our email list and you get updates about the show and more importantly if you are really thinking about starting a podcast and want more, the course will be open just to the people on the email list between June 25th and July 2^nd. So if you want to get that information , you have 30 days to try it out and see if it’s for you. That would be the place to do that. We will be reopening that up next week.

Carrie: Awesome. I will definitely check that out. Well all right sir and thank you to everyone who tuned in. I appreciate my listeners very much. Until next week…have a fantastic weekend. Bye.