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7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
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Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
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The Digital Entrepreneur
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The Showrunner
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Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
The Showrunner
hosted by Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor

No. 085 One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic (Two Attempts)

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Previous Episode:No. 084 The Value of Meeting Your Audience in Person More Episodes Next Episode:No. 086 10 Tips for a Better Show in 2017

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September 27, 2017

No. 107 Is Podcasting a Good Way to Reach My Target Audience?

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No. 101 Showrunner 101 (Back to Basics)

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No. 100 We Answer Your Questions (and Celebrate 100 Episodes)

May 3, 2017

No. 099 3 Powerful Reasons to Produce More Evergreen Episodes

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No. 089 Podcasting: The Stand-Up Comedy of Content Creation

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No. 086 10 Tips for a Better Show in 2017

January 25, 2017

No. 085 One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic (Two Attempts)

January 18, 2017

No. 084 The Value of Meeting Your Audience in Person

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No. 083 How to Rekindle Your Focus on the Other End of the Headphones

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No. 082 How to Stop Listening to Podcasts and Start Your Own Show

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No. 080 Quick! What Can You Systematize Before 2017?

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November 23, 2016

No. 078 Should You Still Start a Podcast? (Ask Yourself These 3 Questions)

November 16, 2016

[Rebroadcast] No. 077 The Right Way to Approach Branding Your Podcast

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No. 074 The Brilliant Strategy and Backstory Behind Zero to Book

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No. 073 Empathy Maps: A Podcaster’s Guide

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No. 072 How to Create a MVP (Minimum Viable Podcast)

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No. 070 3 Important Lessons About Sponsorships That Will Make You More Money

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No. 068 The Showrunner’s Dilemma

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No. 064 Listener Life Cycles: A Podcaster’s Guide

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No. 056 How to Book Engaging Podcast Interviews

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No. 053 How to Find the Perfect Ratio of Creation vs. Promotion

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No. 052 How Jerod Grew Revenue by 1200% and Doubled Subscribers to The Assembly Call

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No. 043 Setting Yourself Up for Success in iTunes: Part Two

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No. 042 How to Execute a Successful iTunes Launch: Part One

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No. 039 Exciting News and New Years Resolutions for 2016

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No. 034 Next-Level Tips for Building Your Show’s Email List

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[Rebroadcast] No. 033 Why Email Is Your Show’s Mandatory Companion

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No. 032 How (and Why) to Submit Your Show to Podcast Directories

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No. 031 Jonny Rants His Sinuses Clear About Social Media Strategy

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No. 030 What Role Should Twitter Play in Your Show Promotion Strategy?

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No. 029 How to Reach More Listeners in Less Time

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No. 028 Good, Good, Good Advice for Recording Interview Guests and Co-Hosts

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No. 027 To Script or Not to Script (That Is The Question)

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No. 026 Sonia Simone on How a Podcast Fits Into a Content Marketing Strategy

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No. 025 How to Easily Find and Schedule Guests for Your Podcast

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No. 024 Essential Audio Tips from the Official Audio Engineer of Rainmaker.FM

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No. 012 Best Practices for Recording Interview Guests and Co-Hosts

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No. 006 Podcast Interview Best Practices from a Guy Who Publishes 3 Per Week

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Showrunner Short: Why Color Psychology Matters for Your Branding

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No. 003 The Right Way to Approach Branding Your Podcast

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No. 002 How to Decide What Topic to Podcast About

April 1, 2015

No. 001 Why Right Now is the Perfect Time to Start Your Podcast

January 25, 2017

No. 085 One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic (Two Attempts)

What is your anchor? Is it the podcast you’re creating, the audience you’re serving, or the topic you’re focused on? In this episode of The Showrunner, we discuss the importance of knowing the answer to this question.

We begin with a bit of small talk — about Jonny’s recent interview with Brian Clark on Unemployable, as well as the story behind this picture:

ac-yogis

Then we dive into the main topic, which was inspired by this interview Jonny did with Justin Jackson on Hack the Entrepreneur.

And, as so often happens on this show, Jonny and Jerod both have epiphanies about their own shows and their journeys as Showrunners.

Listen, learn, enjoy …

Listen to The Showrunner below ...

No. 085 One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic (Two Attempts)Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor
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What Could Happen if You Launch a Podcast in the Next 30 Days?

The Beginner’s Guide to Launching a Remarkable Podcast is a simple, no-frills, 9-step plan to get your podcast off the ground..

Are you ready to start a remarkable podcast?

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The Show Notes

  • Begin your free, 14-day trial of the Rainmaker Platform and start building your own digital marketing and sales platform today at Rainmaker.FM/Platform
  • Follow Jerod on Twitter: @jerodmorris
  • Follow Jonny on Twitter: @jonnastor
  • Showrunner FM

The Transcript

No. 085 One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic (Two Attempts)

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

Jerod Morris: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Welcome to The Showrunner, where we have one goal: teach you how to develop, launch, and run a remarkable show. Ready?

Welcome back to The Showrunner, the podcast for people dedicated to creating remarkable audio experiences for their audience. This is episode No. 85. I am your host Jerod Morris, VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital. I will be joined momentarily, as I always am, by my killed-it-on-his-interview-with-Brian-Clark-on-Unemployable co-host, Jonny Nastor, the host of Hack of the Entrepreneur.

This episode of The Showrunner is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. I will tell you more about this complete solution for digital marketing and sales later. But you can check it out and take a free spin for yourself at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Jonny’s Recent Interview with Brian Clark on Unemployable

Jerod Morris: All right, Jonny, all I’m going to say as a preface to this episode is just to reiterate folks need to go listen to your interview on Unemployable with Brian Clark. It was a great interview. You guys talk about podcasting the entire time, so it’s well worth listening to for everybody. That’s it.

Last time I hijacked the entire episode by telling a story here in the beginning, and I’m not going to do that because you have a great episode topic prepared. Here is attempt number two for us to get at that episode topic.

Jonny Nastor: It’s a good preface. I like this. I know if I just sit here long enough, you’ll take over this episode, too.

Jerod Morris: Just silence for a minute until I can’t stand it and start telling a story.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. This Unemployable interview, it is about podcasting. You seemed really into it. This isn’t trying to toot my own horn, but why, besides podcasting, do you think it went well? Or why should people listen?

Jerod Morris: I liked it because obviously you and I talk a lot. We talk every week. I feel like I have a pretty good gauge on when you’re just enthusiastic about a topic and when you’re extra enthusiastic. I just sensed an extra level of enthusiasm in you talking about what you were talking about. I don’t know if it was the different forum, if it was getting to go back and tell your origin story for Hack the Entrepreneur now with 300 episodes under your belt. Obviously, Brian had some of his own insights, and I thought that you guys fed off of each other well.

As we know, sometimes in conversations there’s a magic that happens, and you hit it off. You guys even had that inside joke going where he was getting on you for giving the hack away too early. It was one of those conversations that I thought just came together in a very organic way. I like hearing that extra little bit of enthusiasm in your voice as your co-host now, for what, two plus years, almost two years, or however long it’s been? We’re like podcasting family, Jonny, so it’s nice to hear.

Jonny Nastor: We are.

Jerod Morris: We are.

Jonny Nastor: That’s cool. And you’ve been on this end of the mic with Brian and myself numerous times. I guess there’s that, too, but yeah, that’s cool. It was a fun conversation. My enthusiasm for podcasting, I don’t know if it was waning at all, but I went through some of that issues with sponsorships and stuff. I sorted all that out. I feel confident and good. Then it was a conversation all about that. I was like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” It was fun, so that’s cool.

Jerod Morris: You had a lot to share, too. I thought that was one of the more engaging parts of the conversation is when you talked about that and spoke candidly about your experience with who you had been with before and now what you’re doing taking back control of it. I thought there was a real enthusiasm there. Plus, I listen to podcasts at 1.5 times speed, so I got to hear you talking a lot faster than you normally do. That might have had something to do with it also.

Jonny Nastor: That’s helpful, too. On to today’s topic. Last week we covered the value of meeting your audience in person. You had gone back to Indiana and met your listeners for the second time. This time I think more in an official capacity, or formal capacity maybe.

Jerod Morris: By the way, can I add one quick aside to this?

Jonny Nastor: Of course.

The Story Behind the Picture

Jerod Morris: I don’t remember if we talked about this in the last episode. So the bar that we were at, Yogi’s, where we hosted our meetup, they’re now broadcasting our show on their big screen, live during the show, and doing the audio in the restaurant. After the last game this weekend, the bartender, who is the one who really liked the show — her dad’s a big fan of the show, so she convinced her manager to play the show — she sent me a picture.

You know how at a bar there’s like four TVs? One TV had a soccer game, another one had a basketball game going on, and there’s my goofy face just talking into my microphone, like right there above the bar. It was a really, really cool moment, I have to say, to see that picture. It was really cool.

Jonny Nastor: Wow. Is that going to affect your performance at all if you think about that as you’re doing it live now?

Jerod Morris: I don’t know because we had been talking about potentially getting rid of the video. Having to do video kind of complicates things. It would actually be a lot easier for us if we didn’t have to broadcast video. We wouldn’t have to use Google Hangouts, which can be a little bit finicky. There’s some other things that would make it easier, but now that we are doing video, obviously, we have to stick with it. It was one of those things I was kind of like, “Drat, I’ve got to scrap those plans.” The ability to reach the audience in that new way, obviously, is well worth the hassle of Hangouts.

I don’t think it will affect the performance in any way because we were on video already. But my co-host, he was kind of ill, so he showed up wearing a hoodie and had his hoodie on the entire time. We were like, “Real nice, the first time we’re on video at the bar, and you’ve got a hoodie on.” We got to have a couple good inside jokes from that. Maybe just be a little bit more presentable and have some better lighting I think is the biggest key. I don’t think it will affect anything else. It’s still just me talking in front of my computer.

Jonny Nastor: That’s true. It’s the reason why we’re not doing video right now because … yeah.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, so you don’t have to look presentable.

‘One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic’: The Interview That Started It All

Jonny Nastor: Let’s move onto today’s topic because we tried to do this last week, and this was an idea that I’d like to expand on. I interviewed a Canadian entrepreneur named Justin Jackson from the MegaMaker podcast right before the end of 2016, so in December sometime.

He’d spent eight years blogging and podcasting, doing a whole bunch of things on the side while he worked and raised four kids, I believe he has. Him and his wife had made a point of he would get to go into his entrepreneurial endeavors, start a business again, I think they said 10 years, 12 years, or something, from the time the first kid was born. They had made this deal. During that time, he podcasted and blogged like crazy, built up quite a big audience.

My question was, are you going to stick within this realm of what you’re in, which is startups, making things, and marketing, or would you ever think of branching out? His answer was, “I’m going to have one podcast, one audience, or one topic.” I was like, “That’s cool.”

You and I, Jerod, have discussed this a lot. We got an email last week from a listener and a member of The Showrunner Podcasting Course. He was talking mostly to Jerod about how the excitement from starting his one show has led him to want to start others.

It’s a discussion that comes up a lot. I thought if we could put this into your mind — this one podcast, one audience, one topic — to answer these questions as they come up, or these urges or feelings of wanting to do other things, or even starting your first show based around what you’re doing. I think it’s going to be a fun topic. We don’t have it completely mapped out. Yeah, I think we should jump into it and see where it goes.

Jerod Morris: Quick question to clarify. Is this one podcast for one audience about one topic, or are we talking about one podcast or one audience or one topic that you serve in different ways?

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. I’m taking it as one podcast or one audience or one topic, but that’s really awkward to say.

Jerod Morris: I get what you’re saying, though. I have to say, listening to you recount Justin’s story and this idea of just focusing on one thing, I spend a lot of time envious of people who can do this and wondering how I can do it myself. Look, I have lots of different shows. I love serving different audiences, but there is a drawback, which is that I sometimes wonder how great could I actually make one show or what kind of relationship could I build with one audience if that’s all that I was focused on?

If I just did The Assembly Call and just focused on the IU basketball audience, how big could I make that? If I was just doing The Showrunner and focused 100 percent on helping people with podcasts, what could that do? If it was just Digital Entrepreneur and only focused on the Rainmaker Platform and digital commerce, what could I do there?

You start to see how all these efforts get split. Obviously, there are realities of when you have a podcast maybe that you’re doing for your job, then if you have one that you’re doing for a hobby, and then if you have a potential passion project, like for me, which Primility is, which doesn’t even have a show right now.

So there’s all of these, and I don’t know how to get rid of any of them. I love them all. They all sit there, and I try to do as best I can. But I do spend time thinking about how can I simplify, and really, in a way, kind of fantasizing about how big could I build something if I just focused in one area?

To me, it’s one of those cases where you really need a reason to split your attention because there’s so much that can be gained from focusing in just one area. Now, sometimes things can complement each other, don’t get me wrong. It’s always interesting when I hear people who talk in that way, of really focusing on one. There’s so much that you can do when all of your efforts are going in the same direction.

Jonny Nastor: Right. There’s a couple things I think that you mention here. Obviously, if part of the audience, the podcast, or the topic is for your work, then that’s just separate, unless you don’t want it to be.

In Justin’s case, he wasn’t doing those things necessarily that were tied to his work. He was doing them on the side. He’s had several podcasts. He started 2016 when he first went solo, and he was going to make 50 different things, was his goal — just little products, big products, podcasts, or whatever it was. It wasn’t like he was just super honing in, but he said, “I’m going to always stick to the one podcast, the one audience, or the one topic.”

So far he’s stuck just to the one audience. He’s done several podcasts. He’s covered many topics within this audience to see what fits with him and with the audience the best, but he’s keeping that one thing constant. Some of us will keep the one podcast constant and maybe try to get a new audience out of it or try and cover new topics, which is new formats, etc. The way he’s doing it is, unlike most people, he didn’t just work his job and think that, “Once I get to go out on my own, then I’ll start.” He started and worked his butt off on the side and built up an audience.

Jerod Morris: Which is the smart way to do it.

Jonny Nastor: Exactly. That’s what he said: “That’s my one thing. I spent the last 10 years building an audience before I could even start a business.”

Jerod Morris: Where have we heard that before?

Jonny Nastor: Exactly. With your case, you have multiple things, but I think it can tie back to that idea still and obviously the focus helps, but you obviously can’t determine what your job is going to tell you to do. That’s a different thing. You know what I mean?

Jerod Morris: It probably is wise to separate those two things, especially in your own mind.

Jonny Nastor: Exactly.

Jerod Morris: You wouldn’t want to say, “Well, I can’t start a side project because I need to focus all on this work thing.” Maybe you don’t want to split your side project focus too much because you have a limited amount of time, but I think you’re right. It’s smart to keep those two things separate in your mind.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. I think that’s what I was trying to get at for you — separate those two right there. Like, “This is my work, so I’m doing this stuff.” But then your side project is basketball. The shows you built around there and that audience is what you’re focusing on. You did Primility, too, but it seems like you made the connection that was stealing away from the other things you were doing on the side.

Jerod Morris: It was, yeah. It was. I still want to get back to it. I guess that’s the question. I could have kept doing that, could have kept doing The Assembly Call, everything for work, but just the side projects wouldn’t have gone as far along. It’s like, can you get further with one show, one audience, or one podcast really focusing on it, or could you get less far along with one but further along in total doing two at the same time? You have to make that determination on your own and figure out what your goals are, which is what I did there.

Jonny Nastor: Right, exactly. But then you can also use this one podcast, one audience, one topic … if you are going to focus on the topic or the audience, when you start to get that urge, like, “Maybe I should try a new format, or maybe I should start doing a solo show or an interview show,” whatever the opposite is of what you do now. But this is where you can be like, “Maybe it will actually help me build that one audience or that one topic more if I just started a new show.” That means you don’t have to stick to one podcast, necessarily, as long as you’re sticking to one audience. That’s why I love this.

Jerod Morris: Pick one of those, yes.

Jonny Nastor: Exactly. I honestly believe that sometimes you just started the wrong podcast. The right audience, the right topic perhaps, but maybe something’s not congruent with you. Maybe you just don’t want to be an interviewer. But you listen to interview shows, so you just naturally went to that. Now you’re having apprehensions about it, and that’s holding you back from really building up that one audience or that one topic.

Then, to me, you shouldn’t just try and flog a dead horse. You should get rid of the one podcast and actually start a second podcast or a third. This is where I think you need to be self-aware enough and really be like, “Okay, no, I tried that. I tried that one podcast, but I’m still passionate about this audience or about this topic.”

It doesn’t mean you should scrap all three of them altogether and like, “Well, what audience do I deal with now or what topic?” That’s why I like this. I think that we’ll all be self-aware enough and think enough, like, “No, my audience is right. It’s fairly small, and it didn’t quite catch because something was wrong about the podcast but not about the audience that I chose, that audience of one or that topic.” Do you know what I mean? I don’t know.

That’s why this seems really like the thing that we should all default back to when we’re not getting far enough ahead fast enough or when we’re starting to go through one of those dips where you’re losing interest in maybe your audience, your topic, or your podcast, think about which one of these three is the one that’s really inspiring you and motivating you the most to work.

Jerod Morris: Let that be your anchor.

Jonny Nastor: Exactly. Everything else can go from there. The other two can be anything as long as that’s your anchor, and you keep that work around that. I think that that’s how you’re really going to elevate yourself to where you want to be and to that level of excitement and enthusiasm for you, your audience, and your topic.

Jerod Morris: All right, let’s keep this conversation going. Real quick, The Showrunner is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete solution for digital marketing and sales. Grow your audience and email list faster, build profitable marketing automation, killer landing page, and membership programs, plus sell online courses, digital products, and much more.

The Rainmaker platform helps you focus on your business and stop worrying about the technology that you need to succeed. Start building your own digital marketing and sales platform today. Begin your free 14-day trial at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Examples of Having One Anchor

Jerod Morris: I’m thinking, Jonny, maybe it will help to provide a few concrete examples for folks, so they can understand what we mean by this. Let’s take Hack the Entrepreneur. Hack the Entrepreneur could be your one podcast for you. Let’s say Hack the Entrepreneur’s your one podcast. That anchors you.

Now, look at things you’ve done around Hack the Entrepreneur. You’ve built a book around it. You’ve got an email list around it. You’ve got the 1,000 Maniacs, which serves that audience. Everything goes back to Hack the Entrepreneur.

Now, you could also say that your audience is your anchor. Entrepreneurs, those are going to be your anchor. You know that you’re going to serve entrepreneurs. Let’s say that your podcast, Hack the Entrepreneur, wasn’t quite connecting as much as you wanted with entrepreneurs. You can still keep serving those entrepreneurs, but maybe you start a different podcast. So you try and serve them kind of in a different way. Instead of doing a show about the mindset to succeed, you actually just do a show about tactics. You take the other route and go that way.

Or maybe if it was one topic … so you would take in one area of entrepreneurship, like Digital Entrepreneur would be one example of that, where it’s entrepreneurship for people focused on digital marketing and sales. Then around that, then, you might try this podcast, and you might actually try some different audiences within that. Maybe you try entrepreneurs who are women. Okay, you can’t really connect there. You try entrepreneurs who are men. Okay, maybe that doesn’t connect. The topic is what’s anchoring you.

That’s what we’re talking about when we mean anchor — you have this one thing around which everything else orbits. You exhaust that and see if there’s something there. And if you’re really not getting any traction, you really can’t get any enthusiasm, and you’re just really struggling, maybe then you make a fundamental change about what that one thing is. I think it’s smart to pick one, let it anchor you for a good long while.

Like you said, Jonny, maybe you just started the wrong podcast. Maybe you’ve got the right topic, but you just picked the wrong audience. Like with The Assembly Call, our audience, we wanted to go for a little bit of an older audience, the supportive fans who don’t knee jerk, get negative, call the coach clowns, and all of that stuff. But if we never built an audience, all right, well, maybe we go down in the sewer and we start serving that audience. Not that we would do that.

Now, if you start thinking about that, it makes your skin crawl, and you’re like, “No, no, I can’t serve that audience,” okay, fine. You’re still anchored to the one area, and then you see what else out there will work for you if you need to change and make a pivot. I think that’s the big idea here.

Again, hopefully you don’t have to change what anchors you, but maybe at some point you do. I think it’s good to understand what your anchor is so that, when you start making your changes, you change the right thing instead of just bouncing too far all over the place.

Jonny’s Epiphany About Hack the Entrepreneur

Jonny Nastor: This is really interesting how you mention this. Actually, I’m going to anchor this back to me with Brian on Unemployable. My excitement and confidence came from the fact that, in December, after having this conversation with Justin, going through the stuff with sponsors, all that, landing new sponsors for the whole first quarter, I had realized I was always before creating content in the content marketing sense of ‘building an audience.’ My anchor was my audience, I thought. It made me fundamentally undermine what the podcast was, maybe, and how I felt about the show.

Jerod Morris: How so?

Jonny Nastor: I don’t know. It’s interesting. Or did I just get that backwards? Yeah, sorry. I was focusing on the podcast. I was thinking that the podcast was the anchor.

HacktheEntrepreneur.com, I put up 300 episodes, and I hardly blogged on the site because it was all about the podcast. You’re right. This whole mindset thing, that’s what brought everybody there. My thing was, “Focus on the podcast because that’s what everything you’ve accomplished up till now is because of that podcast, so keep doing that.”

But I’ve realized that the audience is coming to my site, and they’re wanting more things. Yes, mindset interviews brought them there, but they possibly want something else and something deeper. I’ve actually started — and I started it this week, I think we’re publishing it in two weeks, the first one — a new interview series, but it’s a text-based interview called How I Started.

Jerod Morris: Oh, nice.

Jonny Nastor: It’s based off of Kelton Reid’s Here’s How ________ Writes that he used to do on Copyblogger, and Lifehacker does one, How I Work. This one’s called, How I Started. It’s 21 questions from the person about how they decided on this business, how they started it, how they got their first customer, all that sort of stuff. I think it’s going to be really valuable. Anybody I’ve talked to about it is like, “Wow, that makes so much sense.” Now I’ve moved my anchor to the audience, which I think has reinvigorated me about my podcast because I have the proper anchor now.

Jerod Morris: Can I ask you real quick why you chose to do that as a text-based interview as opposed to maybe a second podcast? Is there something inherent about publishing that as text that you needed because these are people that you couldn’t get on an audio podcast but they’ll do text? Did you just want something different? Why did you make that decision?

Jonny Nastor: It would have been easier to do via audio. It’s harder to get people to fill out 20 questions online. The reason why I’m doing it is because I want to remove the focus on that anchor being the podcast, or a podcast.

Jerod Morris: Got you.

Jonny Nastor: I want to move it to the audience. Now the audience is coming from a podcast to the site, and there’s only other podcasts there, for the most part. I’m trying to create a whole new thing in a different format to see if focusing on the audience but creating different kinds of content will deepen that relationship or make it grow even in a way. It’s a test, and I don’t know. I’m planning to do at least 25 of them as a test to see what it actually does. It could, I guess, fail. But I think it’s going to be cool.

Because of the way the questions are, I really like Kelton’s on Copyblogger and like the one on Lifehacker. I love reading them. They’re the same questions answered by different people about how they’re thinking of what it is they do, and to me, that’s fascinating. It’s not really written it out.

It’s just literally point form-ish. It allows you to get a lot of information to move yourself to the next step really quickly. Then you can go through three, four, or five entrepreneurs or writers all at once. It fascinates me, and I think that my focus now on that audience anchor is what has given me that confidence and that excitement about the whole thing again.

Jerod’s Epiphany About The Assembly Call

Jerod Morris: I love this. You know what I realized as you were talking about this? You just shared how you went from the podcast anchoring you to the audience anchoring you. With The Assembly Call, for example, I’ve always been the same way. The podcast anchored that show. It’s a postgame show. Everything needs to serve that. There’s been different topics that we’ve tried. Obviously, we do the postgame show.

Prior to this season, I would always write previews for the games and do some analysis and commentary-type articles. They would drive some traffic, but it never really felt exactly right. This season there’s a guy on Twitter, it’s @IUArtifacts. He would always Tweet out these pictures of these really old artifacts of stuff from the 1920s and these jerseys from the ’60s. He’s just this crazy collector guy.

I reached out to him, and I was like, “Hey, would you like to write a series of articles on AssemblyCall.com because I think our audience would really like this?” When I did, it was so natural. I didn’t think about this before I emailed this to him, but after that I realized, you know what? What we’re doing, it’s not necessarily about a postgame show. It’s about the audience, but it’s really the topic. Our site celebrates the history of IU basketball.

All the other sites out there do it. They’re doing previews, and they’re doing recruiting information and all of this. We celebrate the history. With the postgame show, we celebrate the micro-history by literally breaking down what we just saw all the way to this IU Artifacts series, which talks about jerseys this guy found from the 1920s.

It’s given me a new direction for the content. When I was in Bloomington, we talked about creating an online course about the history of IU Basketball. Why do we wear candy-stripe pants? What’s the deal with script Indiana shooting shirts? All of these different traditions, educating people on them and getting this clarity of the fact that it’s actually the topic that is the anchor. Then you serve the audience — and you serve the podcast, too — but it’s based around the topic.

Getting that clarity helped me understand what our unique show proposition is, what our unique site proposition is, and gave me a lot of clarity for moving forward. This is one of those things … sometimes you don’t even realize that you’ve made the determination until you’ve just explored a lot of avenues.

If you’re thinking about this and it’s like, “Well, crap, I don’t really know yet if it’s my podcast, my audience, or my topic” — Jonny, tell me if you agree with this — I would say sit down, do some thinking about it, and come up with what you think it is. Let that be your guiding light for a little while, your anchor, but be open to the fact that you may realize later, “Oh man, all along, I thought it was the podcast that was my anchor, but it’s really the topic,” or, “It’s really the audience.”

I think you and I, that happened to both of us without us really trying to do it. It’s just we’ve had so many reps with our shows, with our audience, and with our topic that we’ve gotten some of that clarity, but it really, really, really helps to get that clarity. I think you don’t want to force it, but I think you do want to be intentional about getting there.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. I honestly just want to give it to Justin for just having these three buckets. Just to visually think about it and think that all of us are fitting into one of those, the way we’re trying to do things. Even trying it in one, and then seeing if that helps you, reinvigorates you or helps build that audience or that podcast. To me, that’s what it is. It’s the way to go back to it every time and do it.

Jerod Morris: I love it. We need to expand this inside the course, like add this to the course, this idea.

Jonny Nastor: We do, yeah

Jerod Morris: I think this is pretty fundamental.

Jonny Nastor: You’ve been at it, what, five years with your show, I’ve been at it now two and a half and 300 episodes, and we’re both just figuring this out now.

Jerod Morris: It’s actually six years.

Jonny Nastor: Oh, six. So yeah, we should actually try and hopefully save … that’s eight years total between the two of us. We should try and at least cut that down to maybe 12 months for people to figure that out.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. People are going to look at this, “Oh, great. Your 18-month Guide to Figuring Out Your One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic. Thanks, Jerod and Jonny.” Hey, at least we’re not going to over-promise and under-deliver, right?

Jonny Nastor: That’s true.

How to Take Your Showrunning to the Next Level

Jerod Morris: That’s right. Hey, so we want to tell some folks about something exciting, which is over at Showrunner.FM/Report. Look, we do these episodes because we want you to become a showrunner. We want you to deliver a remarkable experience to your audience, and we want to teach you how for free. That’s why we do these episodes, and that’s why we do what we do with The Showrunner email list and why we’ve put together this incredible guide that we want to give you.

If you go to Showrunner.FM/Report and enter your email address, we are going to send you the Beginner’s Guide to Launching a Remarkable Podcast. It’s a comprehensive report. It includes why right now is the perfect time to start a podcast, your 15-step launch plan, six podcast monetization methods, and much more. Again, we want to send that to you for free. Go to Showrunner.FM/Report. Get that free guide, and take the next step with your show. Take the next step with your audience. Take the next step toward determining what your anchor is.

Will it be one podcast? One audience? One topic? The only way to get there is to start putting out shows, and we want to help you do that as good as possible from the beginning or from wherever you are right now. Go to Showrunner.FM/Report. Get that free report. Then continue coming back here every week for brand-new episodes of The Showrunner, so we can continue going on that journey with you.

Jonny Nastor: This has been fun.

Jerod Morris: It has been fun. Hey, so we are doing video here, just so we can see each other. Your cap, was that inspired by Stan from South Park?

Jonny Nastor: Funny story, yes. About, I’m going to say five years ago or something, my band was playing at a Halloween concert. There was four of us in the band, so we each dressed up like one of the South Park people. My mom, who’s a knitter, knit me the tuque.

Jerod Morris: That is awesome.

Jonny Nastor: It was pretty funny. Separately, it was just like, “Who’s the guy with the orange jacket? Who’s the guy with the blue tuque?” Then all four of us, it’s like, “Wow. That’s impressive, guys.”

Jerod Morris: Did the Kenny guy get real in character and not talk or talk muffled all night long?

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, he was our bass player. He was supposed to actually sing back up, but he just sang muffled through this jacket thing.

Jerod Morris: That’s awesome. That is great. All right, everybody, thanks for being here. We will talk to you next week on another brand-new episode of The Showrunner.

Jonny Nastor: Take care.

Jerod Morris: I keep saying ‘everybody.’

Jonny Nastor: You’ve got to stop doing that.

Jerod Morris: I know. It’s a bad habit. Do as we say, not as we do. Don’t address your audience as everybody. You.

Jonny Nastor: One podcast, one audience, one topic, one person.

Jerod Morris: One person. You, dear listener, that are listening right now, that have given us 30-plus valuable minutes of your time, we really appreciate it. Please join us next week on another brand-new episode of The Showrunner. Thank you. We’ll talk to you.

Jonny Nastor: Take care, everyone. I ruined it, sorry.

Jerod Morris: No, it’s all good.

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