No. 008 The 3 Components of Podcast Profitability

Last week, Jerod gave a presentation at Authority Rainmaker entitled “Become a Showrunner: The 4 Essential Elements of a Remarkable Podcast.” One of those elements is profitability, which he and Jon break down this week’s episode of The Showrunner.

Jerod and Jon begin by sharing their biggest “Oh crap!” moments while recording, then dive into a discussion about podcast profitability.

Among the topics discussed:

• What the three components of podcast profitability are and how they work together
• Which of the three should come first in your initial thinking and planning
• The many possible tentacles of indirect profitability for a podcast
• An overview of different methods for direct and indirect profitability — including membership sites and donation models

And somewhere in there Jerod teaches a valuable lesson about how to avoid awkward conversational dismounts … by getting caught in an awkward conversational dismount. Go figure. 🙂

This week’s listener question comes from @SamarOwais, who posed the following question in the members-only group of The Showrunner Podcasting Course:

What do you guys do when you have a cold and you need to record an episode? I have interviews scheduled this week and I’ve come down with a cold that has me sounding like I’m speaking with my nose pinched.

We teased a secret method of Jon’s in last week’s episode. He reveals the secret this week.

This week’s podcast recommendations are:

• Jon: Anti-preneur: The world’s simplest marketing plan — by Ben Settle
• Jerod: How To Handle Rejection: A Story with Christina Canters

And here is the episode of HTE in which Jon interviewed Ben Settle.

Listen, learn, enjoy! (And make sure you stick around until the end … )

The 3 Components of Podcast Profitability

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.

You’re listening to The Showrunner, a podcast about podcasting that will teach you how to take your show from good to great. Ready?

Hi, Jon. We’re here recording, so I’m guessing we met at Authority Rainmaker, and everything went okay. We didn’t end up hating each other, so that’s good.

Jon Nastor: That is good. I agree. It was fun.

Jerod Morris: Yes. Should we tell people that we’re recording this before the event? I mean, I do.

Jon Nastor: We shouldn’t tell people that. No.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

Jon Nastor: No.

Jerod Morris: I’ll edit this out.

Jon Nastor: Pretend you never heard that.

Jerod Morris: I’ll edit this out. Yes. It would have been quite the ‘Oh, crap’ moment if we had met and things didn’t go well considering how close we work together, which got me thinking, and I’m curious: what is the most ‘Oh, crap’ moment that you’ve had during an interview? You think about yours, because I know things have been so golden and so great for you that it’s going to be really, really hard for you to come up with one, but I challenge you to find something.

To make you more comfortable, I will go first and say that my biggest ‘Oh, crap’ moment was, I was doing an interview with Sally Hogshead, who’s one of the speakers at Authority Rainmaker, actually. I was interviewing her for The Lede, and we were five to 10 minutes into the interview, and I looked over, and my microphone was not plugged in. The only thing that was picking up the audio was the computer, which was very terrifying, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Obviously, as soon as I saw it, I was so distracted, I couldn’t think about anything. I couldn’t formulate words. I was stumbling. I couldn’t think about my next question. I can’t even remember exactly what happened, but she had some kind of distraction on her end, too, so we both — almost at the same moment — admitted that it just wasn’t going quite as well as we wanted to: “Should we just do it like an hour later?”

It actually ended up working out okay because that time almost served as an icebreaker, and then we recorded again an hour or two later, and everything worked out better. I made sure that I had my microphone plugged in. To this day, that’s why I have a Post-it on my microphone that says, “Plug me in, you jack wagon,” so that I have to see that before I record. That could have turned out much, much worse. I got very lucky because that obviously would have been a huge bonehead moment with someone who’s very busy, and you never want that to happen with an interview. So I lucked out while learning a great lesson, which I’m forever grateful for.

Do you have a similar ‘Oh, crap’ moment in your otherwise pristine podcasting history?
Jon Nastor: I do. It was, I’m going to say two months ago, and it was Jeff Goins who was on. It was a week that I was really heads down creating videos for the course, and I also had, I believe, 14 interviews I did that week.

Jerod Morris: Fourteen in one week?

Jon Nastor: Yes. It was insane. They weren’t just all for my show.

Jerod Morris: Geez.

Jon Nastor: They were also other shows I was on. But there was, I think, 12 for my show.

Jerod Morris: That’s kind of an ‘Oh, crap’ moment in and of itself.

Jon Nastor: Totally. Except for the point that Jeff Goins and I had never talked to each other, and it was going great, the conversation. We really hit it off. It was awesome.

Then, at the end where I normally end, before I went to my last question, Jeff took it into this different direction, and it was really cool. Except right as he started turning around this question to me, and he was just really engaged in this thing, this weird error popped up on my screen. I was like, “Uh, I’m just going to ignore that because there’s nothing I can do.” He’s talking, and we kept going. Then, he said all this cool stuff, said all these nice things about me, and my show. It was great. Finished the call. Got off. I realized my hard drive was completely full, and that it had stopped recording at that point.

Jerod Morris: Oh no. Oh no. ‘Oh, crap,’ indeed.

Jon Nastor: Yes. It was weird. It didn’t say, “Oh, your hard drive is full, Jon.” It just said some weird error number, and I was like, “Okay. I’m going to just hope that that’s nothing,” but yes. My hard drive was completely full of content I had created that week. I almost wanted to call him back and be like, “Man, could we like …?” but there was no way we could recreate what had happened. It was spontaneous.

Jerod Morris: “Hey, Jeff. All those nice things you said about me, would you mind saying them again?”

Jon Nastor: “Could you just say those again for me?”

Jerod Morris: Wow. Okay.

Jon Nastor: Yes. I ended up releasing the episode, and it cuts off. There’s no even us saying, like, “Bye.”

Jerod Morris: Yes. I remember that. It was kind of abrupt.

Jon Nastor: I said something about it quickly there, but I wanted to use the conversation anyways.

Jerod Morris: The lesson is always, “Make sure your microphone is plugged in, and make sure you have enough room on your hard drive to record your file.”

Jon Nastor: Yes.

Jerod Morris: Take it from us, because those moments both could have turned out much worse for us than they did. We got lucky.

Jon Nastor: Of course. Yes.

Jerod Morris: We got very lucky. Okay. Let’s move on to today’s topic, Jon. Today, we are going to talk about something that I actually talked about last week at Authority Rainmaker. It is one of the four essential elements of a remarkable podcast or remarkable show, and that is profitability. We are going to talk about what we mean when we say ‘profitability’ with a show, because it’s much more than just about money, it’s much more than just about sponsorships, that kind of thing, so we will get into that here in just a minute on this episode of The Showrunner.
Jon Nastor: I like this new transition music.

Jerod Morris: Yes. Maybe we’ll keep it. Some people didn’t like the other transition music anyway, so here’s the alternative.

What the Three Components of Podcast Profitability Are and How They Work Together

Jerod Morris: All right, Jon. Let’s discuss this concept of profitability. Again, I talked about this in my presentation at Authority Rainmaker, and there are really three different pillars of profitability that I see. There is direct profitability, which I think is pretty obvious. That’s making money off of your show, so selling sponsorships or selling the show itself.

Some people — comedians — I think Marc Maron does this, where he sells access to his archives. Obviously, you make money off of your show directly with FreshBooks. There’s also indirect profitability. Maybe there’s a little bit of a grey area here that we’ll get into, but if your podcast is used for lead generation, for products or services that you sell, or if it leads into a course, say, like The Showrunner does for The Showrunner Podcasting Course, you could argue if that’s direct or indirect. It’s not making money off the podcast itself like actual sponsorships in the podcast, but it’s another way to profit from the podcast.

Then there’s also intrinsic profitability, which I think people too often overlook but is very important. That is just, “What do you get out of it? Does it inspire you? Does it excite you? Do you have fun with it?” This is for you as the podcast creator: “Are you getting more out of it intrinsically than you’re putting in?” Because I think you have to, in the long term, for your show to be sustainable, just like you have to make more money than you put in for your show to be sustainable. It’s another essential element of a remarkable and lasting podcast.

To me, I think all three of those elements, they’re there, and they’re also in different degrees essential elements of the profitability of a show. That’s the overview. Do you have any of those specific areas that you want to jump in on and offer some insight?

Jon Nastor: I have to say that I loved your presentation last week. It was really good.

Jerod Morris: You’re putting a lot of pressure on me now. I can’t bomb.

Jon Nastor: I like the intrinsic one, and I do think it’s overlooked. It’s funny because when I started Hack the Entrepreneur, I was only looking for intrinsic. I was literally thinking it was going to last for a few months, I was going to get to talk to some really cool, smart people about some interesting things, and it was going to help put my name out there a bit. Then, it rolled into the direct and the indirect now. I think that takes us back to how we’re even teaching people, how to think about profitability of a show.

Which of the Three Should Come First in Your Initial Thinking and Planning

Jon Nastor: We tell people to focus on the audience first. It’s more important to worry about building that audience and building that relationship with the audience than it is to worry about directly or indirectly profiting. Now that I’m saying it out loud, it seems like you should be focusing on the intrinsic before the indirect and the direct, because there’s an endless array of ways. The more creative you get, the more ways there are to indirectly and directly profit from a successful show with an engaged audience, but you have to first focus on the engaged audience.

Jerod Morris: That seems to be trap that a lot of people fall into, where before they even start, before they even build an audience, they’re already worried about how they’re going to monetize it. Again, there is a big difference between monetizing and making a profitable podcast. Right?

A lot of times, we hear ‘monetization’ — and shoot, even the module inside is called ‘Monetization’ — and it is important. You want to understand it. But you can’t put the cart before the horse, and you just hit the nail on the head right there. You’ve got to focus on the audience engagement and building that relationship with the audience to, number one, build an audience big enough to where a sponsorship would matter, and certainly, to ever build the know, like, and trust factor that you need to indirectly profit off your podcast. Because if you take the podcasting course example, obviously, we had to build the relationship with the audience first to even make that possible.

I think the fact that through the podcast, we were able to allow people to get to know us a little bit, get to like us, get to trust us, that’s what allowed them to say, “Okay. We’ll pay $295 or $395 for this course,” which, again, was indirect profit off of the podcast, but we both started this show for intrinsic reasons first. I never had an inkling about the course when I told Brian and Robert, “I want to start a podcast about podcasting.” I just want to talk about it, and I think the same thing was probably true for you when we first started talking about doing the show together. I think you really hit the nail on the head there that that’s really where you’ve got to start, because everything is going to be a function of your ability to build that audience.

Jon Nastor: Well said.

Jerod Morris: Man. There really wasn’t much of a question. See. Now, here’s a teaching moment right here.

Jon Nastor: Oh. You’re asking me a question?

Jerod Morris: See, that’s why it is a teaching moment, because yes, I was leaving that out there for you, but I left it out there awkwardly.

Jon Nastor: I thought you were leaving it out there, but then I also wonder if we’re trying to keep them shorter, and I have a tendency to really ramble on, so I’m trying to not as much. I could talk for hours about this stuff.

Jerod Morris: Yes, but I think here’s the lesson though. In any type of podcast, one person has control of the microphone at any given time.

Jon Nastor: Yes.

Jerod Morris: If you don’t transition it to the other person, you’re going to be left with this awkward moment where the person either has to jump in, or they wait for you to ask a question, so that was a really poor dismount there by me. I apologize. I should have led it into you with a question.

So, Jon, when we talk about this idea of intrinsic profitability, when you started Hack the Entrepreneur, you said that when you started it, it was much more about the intrinsic part for you. When did it shift?

Jon Nastor: It started to shift, I would say, surprisingly, about six weeks into it when I realized that there was this audience there now that wasn’t there before. I realized I had the engagement, the engagement I’d been asking for for the first six weeks from my audience in calls to action and in various spots throughout the show.

Although it doesn’t seem like sometimes it’s working, because I started without an audience at that point, so it seems like you’re just echoing out into nowhere, but all of a sudden, this snowball builds and builds and builds, and all of a sudden, there’s a lot of engagement. All of a sudden, my inbox went from empty to a good trickle of people coming and emailing me and asking me questions, and I knew that it was there. Now, it’s growing to where it’s almost unwieldy, but it’s awesome. It’s amazing. I love it, so please keep them coming. But I think it was because I was only focusing on the engagement of my audience.

The interviews I was doing, the show I was making, was only a vehicle for me to try and find people with similar interests to me and similar thoughts and similar ideas, and that we could engage on a different level outside of the podcast, which is what I was focusing on doing, and it’s worked. I’ve found those people, and now in different ways, you can put a fence around them, if you will, either in private Facebook groups or on email lists, or just directly to my email or on Twitter, and it’s amazing. I can have these conversations with people at any time that I want right now, people that I had no contact with when I started the show.

The Many Possible Tentacles of Indirect Profitability for a Podcast

Jon Nastor: Once that group of them starts to get big enough, you start to realize that, “Okay. Now, there is a chance that I can directly or indirectly start to monetize off this,” and not just so that I can make money, because you’re right. Monetization is a long ways away from actually being profitable with this show.

I’m not profitable with my show yet, but I have been able to hire an assistant, I have been able to hire people to help with graphics, I have been able to get an editor to do my shows. That makes my job — so I can focus now on my audience that is growing — to focus more time on them and on my show specifically, but not on the nitty-gritty of it. That was just something. Then, you mentioned how we both didn’t think of it with The Showrunner, and we have that know, like, and trust.

We can’t deny the fact that both you and I, Jerod, brought that from our other shows, and those people do follow us. Right? People who were interested in podcasting from Hack the Entrepreneur or from The Lede definitely followed us into The Showrunner. That’s another whole indirect aspect of my show or your show, that then you can lead off into another show if you want about a different topic, and you can pull those people, and they bring that know, like, and trust with them if they already had it at that point, which is interesting.

It gets even more indirect and weird, because now it’s like, “Am I indirectly profiting from my show, Hack the Entrepreneur with The Showrunner Podcasting Course?” It’s like, “Yes. I wouldn’t have it without it, but they’re so unrelated, yet so related because I’m the person on both of them.” Does that make sense to you?

Jerod Morris: Totally.

Jon Nastor: Yes.

Jerod Morris: I think it’s a great point, and I think the reason why — and here’s also a subtle shift that’s necessary when thinking about profitability — we’ve been able to build other audiences and start to build this audience is because we’ve created profitable experiences for the audience.

What I mean by that is your audience has to get more out of your show than they’re putting into it, so the investment of their time, which is valuable, has to lead to something. It’s got to be some level of usefulness, which is a combination of education, inspiration, and entertainment. It’s got to give some combination of those three that is greater than the investment of time. I think that’s what you’ve always got to be thinking about when you are creating this audience-focused content: “How do I make this experience profitable for the audience?” Because it’s got to be profitable for them, first, before it can ever be profitable directly or indirectly for me. That’s another area of this that I think not enough people think about but is also important.

An Overview of Different Methods for Direct and Indirect Profitability — Including Membership Sites and Donation Models

Jerod Morris: When you do that, then you have opportunities to profit in the sense that we all think of it, in terms of money. To close up here, let’s just throw out some of the different ways that you can earn money off a podcast. We’ll probably forget a few, but let’s just throw some out. Obviously, we talked about selling sponsorships, selling actual access to your archives, a course, products, services. What other ones am I forgetting — ways that people can profit either directly or indirectly off of their show?

Jon Nastor: Consulting?

Jerod Morris: Consulting is a big one.

Jon Nastor: Big one? Yes. If you started a podcast based around a business already, obviously, that can be VIP for certain customers if you wish, or to sell your business up even more and branch out to new people, and then membership sites.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Jon Nastor: It’s a big one, and it’s getting bigger, the ease of being able to put up a membership site. That gets easier with things like Rainmaker Platform. It’s a way to find the audience that will be interested in what you’re trying to do, but really, there’s endless amounts of them, but I think that’s the big ones right there.

Jerod Morris: Yes. One more I’ll add, too, is the donation model, which is actually something I will probably try on The Assembly Call this year, because after spending four years of pretty much focusing entirely on the audience, people actually came to us last year and asked how they can support the show and wanted us to set something up so they could donate. A few people already have even without us having an infrastructure to really do it. That’s another model, too.

Obviously, we can’t go into depth about all of these here on the show although I’m sure in the future episodes, we do. That’s just an overview of the opportunities that are there, but more importantly, the mindset and the understanding of what profitability truly means in the sense of creating a show so that you can ultimately get there. But it’s important to start from the right place.

That’s it, Jon. Let’s transition into our listener question for the day. Before we do that, our listener question is sponsored once again by The Rainmaker Platform. Jon, you mentioned The Rainmaker Platform just a minute ago in terms of membership sites, and as a way to profit off of a podcast, and we used the Rainmaker Platform to set up the Showrunner Podcasting Course using the learning management system, the marketing automation, and obviously the membership features. We set up the course using all of those native, standard, and pro Rainmaker Platform features to do this, and you’ve obviously had experience using the platform yourself with Hack the Entrepreneur.

Jon Nastor: I have, and I’m loving it.

Jerod Morris: Yes. You see what I did there? It was kind of another awkward dismount.

Jon Nastor: No.

Jerod Morris: That was better?

Jon Nastor: I like that one. Yes. That one.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

Jon Nastor: I don’t know why it seemed like it was going to me.

Jerod Morris: Okay. We’re good. Good.

Jon Nastor: I was playing with my hand.

Jerod Morris: I don’t want to know.

If you want to see if the Rainmaker Platform is for you obviously, Jon, and I like it, it certainly fits for the business goals that we have, if you want to see if it’s for you, go to RainmakerPlatform.com. You get 14 days to try it out. Kick the tires. Take it for a test drive. See if it works. I would definitely recommend if you get in there and get a chance to use the learning management features, the marketing automation, and the membership stuff. Those are great features that, if you’re thinking about profiting indirectly or even directly from a podcast in the long term, those are all ways that will help you do that.

All right. Now, let’s end the suspense. I know that everybody has been listening to the show waiting for what we teased last week. What we teased last week, Jon, came after you coughed on the show a few times. We mentioned that Summer, who is a member of our podcasting course, had posed a question in the members-only group, and that question was, “What do you guys do when you have a cold and you need to record an episode? I have interview scheduled this week, and I’ve come down with a cold that has me sounding like I’m speaking with my nose pinched.” You have a secret, Jon, and now, you are going to reveal that secret.
Jon Nastor: Da, da, da, daaaa.

Jerod Morris: Wait. Why the foreboding music? This should be triumphant music: “Da, da, da, da! The secret.” And the secret is?

Jon’s Secret Weapon to Fight a Cold Before Recording

Jon Nastor: For me, I used a neti pot. Does anybody know what a neti pot is? A neti pot is like a specific teapot thing you can buy from the local drugstore, and you put water in it with salt and some kosher salt, but salt and baking soda. You pour it in one of your nostrils, and you tilt your head over, and it comes out the other nostril. It’s the weirdest thing in the world the first time you do it, but then, it’s addicting.
I had to do it. I had bronchitis. When we started the show, I have bronchitis for like two months. It was crazy. My head was all congested, and I had to do that twice a day, and I still do it once a day because it’s just addicting, but it’s what gives me that nice Canadian accent that everybody comments on.

Jerod Morris: Yes. I just found out about the neti pot earlier this year actually. Heather was telling me about it when I had a cold.

Jon Nastor: Yes.

Jerod Morris: It did seem to work pretty well.

Jon Nastor: It’s amazing. I don’t use an actual neti pot. I used, literally, a teapot we had in our cupboard. It works great, but I swear by it.

Jerod Morris: I will say something else too. Another tip for this, because you can’t always reschedule an interview, and sometimes, you have to record it at 75 percent or 80 percent. It’s funny, because the day that Summer left that message, I was listening to an episode at The B.S. Report, which is Bill Simmons’ podcast that he does for Grantland, and he opened up the show — you could tell he had a cold, he was really nasally — and he basically said, “I’m not a hundred percent, but I’m playing through a little bit of a cold,” kind of a funny little sports reference. It’s a sports show and kind of a self-deprecating moment.

It’s funny because he said that, and it was an hour-long show, and I never again thought about how he sounded weird. I didn’t even think about it again until Summer mentioned something, and so I think in this weird way, it’s this opportunity to create a little mini-connection with your audience.

Be self-deprecating. Hey, look, you’re human. You’re not a hundred percent every time you step up to the mic, but you still are because you’re committed to giving your audience content. You don’t want to make a big deal about it like you’re some wounded soldier on a battlefield fighting through it, but you can just use it as a little moment to open up, be human, and I think those little moments help the audience connect with you. They’re certainly not reasons to not record, so yes. Obviously try to prevent it as much as you can with things like neti pots or Jon’s MacGyver contraption that he created at home, but also address it with your audience and make that connection real.

That is our listener question. Thank you, Summer, very much for posing it. Let’s now move on to everybody’s favorite new feature of The Showrunner, which is The Podcast Recommendations. Jon, if you would like to lead off.

Jon Nastor: I would love to. My recommendation of the week is Ben Settle’s Antipreneur Podcast. The one I did not last week, but the week before, I have to give a warning. There’s some explicit nature to it sometimes, and Ben Settle is definitely a person who every episode is marked with that big, red E, but it’s a great show. I was listening to one specific one yesterday, BSA61. That’s Ben Settle Antipreneur 61. ‘The World’s Simplest Marketing Plan’ was what it was called. I discovered Ben Settle on the Copyblogger Internet Marketing for Smart People so long ago, and I’ve been a fan of his.
I think he’s about the 20th guest on my show, or 30th, and he was awesome. I like him because he is what I feel is really important in a podcast host — he’s himself. You either like him, or you don’t like him kind of quickly, and if you like him, you really like him. If you don’t like him, you really don’t like him, which is great. You don’t want everybody to like you. You can’t. You just want your audience to like you.

He’s really opinionated. He’s a great marketer, a great copywriter. It’s short. It’s like 22 minutes, I think this episode was, and it’s just some good quick lessons. It’s him in a monologue. There’s one guy that joins him on the show, but he doesn’t say too much. It’s just Ben doing his thing, and that’s my recommendation for the week.
Jerod Morris: I recommend the episode of Hack the Entrepreneur that Ben Settle was on. That was a really good episode, actually.

Jon Nastor: Nice.

Jerod Morris: I do recommend that. My recommendation is Christina Canters ,who you can find at TheCMethod.com. There are a couple of notable things about Christina. One, and we’re going to have to talk about this both on the show and in the course in the future because, Jon, you do something special when you go to interview people, and you have your whole process with your email and a video. She does the same thing, but actually creates a ukulele song for the person that she sends to them when she’s requesting an interview. It’s the coolest thing.

She’s doing this to get guests, but it’s almost like you want to just do something cool enough to get a ukulele video from her. It’s like this cool little Jedi mind trick that she’s pulled. The episode in question, or that I want to recommend, is the one that she did on a recommendation. I think it’s episode eight of her show. I’ll put it in the show notes, but it is such a great example of authenticity, and revealing a part of yourself but not everything.

Authenticity is not revealing all of yourself. It’s about revealing the part of yourself that helps your audience, that helps them along on their journey. She told a story about rejection and how she was rejected by this guy, like made the first move on the guy, was rejected. I mean, it’s called ‘Rejection,’ so I’m not really giving up the ending here, because I think you know how it ends when you see the title. The way she tells the story is great and just the authenticity that’s there. I highly recommend that episode, and her entire show is really good as well. That’s Christina Canters, and it’s TheCMethod.com.

Those are this week’s podcast recommendations. Jon, would you like to take us home?

Jon Nastor: Sure. I would love to?

Jerod Morris: I like putting you on the spot for some reason.

Jon Nastor: Yes, I was totally writing down ‘The C Method,’ the episode. I was like, “I got to listen to this. This is really cool.”

Jerod Morris: It’s good. Yes, it’s really good.

Jon Nastor: I was just going to say how I really love the recommendations because I get your recommendations, and it’s great because I get new shows to listen to.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Jon Nastor: This must be so hard, to edit out my laughing.

Jerod Morris: I’m not editing any of those out. This is all going in there. Go on. Now, I want to see you get us to the end without some awkward transition moment. Can you do it?

Jon Nastor: Yes. Sure. Thank you so much for stopping by and spending the time with us at The Showrunner. We appreciate it. It’s really cool. You take the time, and we hope that we are providing the value that you want.
If you could help us out, we would love this. iTunes ratings and reviews — they’re one of the biggest things to help a show out. If you could, go there to iTunes, look up The Showrunner, and leave us a rating and a review. We would absolutely appreciate it, and if you can drop in your Twitter handle, that would be great, because iTunes unfortunately doesn’t give us the ability to tell who you are otherwise, and so we can’t respond to you. We can’t thank you for taking the time to do that.
Yes. It takes two minutes and it would help so much, so that would be great. Other than that, I don’t know what else to say.

Jerod Morris: You know what’s ironic? That we started out this episode talking about ‘Oh, crap’ moments, and we’ve had a few inside of the episode totally were not planned.

Jon Nastor: No. These are all planned, completely scripted. This script is very well written.

Jerod Morris: This would be a hell of a script if we had scripted this episode.

Jon Nastor: Please identify. Plus, it’s a great way to pay it forward in fact. Okay. Thank you for listening. Good luck with any and all shows you are running this week, and we’ll talk to you next Wednesday.

Jerod Morris: Yes. Talk to you all next Wednesday.

Jon Nastor: You’ve always done those parts.

Jerod Morris: That’s why I thought it would be fun to kick it over to you. You did a great job.

Jon Nastor: Yes. I guess that will probably help the show in general where you stop talking. It’s not your fault that I don’t just pick it up, but definitely for the first four or five episodes, it was like you were completely in control, and it was like I was here, and you’d ask me a question, otherwise I wouldn’t speak. I was like a good kid.

Jerod Morris: Yes. It’s funny. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, because I usually host shows that I’m on, and especially with The Assembly Call, I’m so used to starting it and being the air traffic controller of directing where questions are going, so I get into that mindset, and when I’m not, I become completely passive to where I won’t even jump in unless someone else kicks it over to me, like if I’ve lost the ‘control.’ It’s weird. Do you find that, as someone who does a lot of interviews?

Jon Nastor: Yes. This is the first time I’ve really been fully on a show like this.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Jon Nastor: Yes. I think the more we find the balance between the two, it’s going to be better.

Jerod Morris: Yes. I agree.

Jon Nastor: You doing these things to me, and putting me on the spot is good because it makes me constantly aware of the need to be engaged with it at all times, not just like, “Okay. I’ll wait until I know there was a question coming up.” Right?

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Jon Nastor: It’s good, man. It’s great.

Jerod Morris: Okay. You can do that to me, too, anytime.

Jon Nastor: Cool. Yes. It’s interesting how people like the way we deal with each other and the relationship that we have. It’s cool on air.

Jerod Morris: It is cool.

Jon Nastor: We’ve never met and stuff, and it’s just neat, man. It’s cool. It’s interesting.

Jerod Morris: I’ve been recording this by the way. I think I’m going to keep it in. It was good stuff. People like the secret moments.

Jon Nastor: You doing that stuff! People just love that stuff. Crazy, man. It’s crazy, the whole thing.

Jerod Morris: This unscripted moment of The Showrunner has been brought to you by The Rainmaker Platform, your complete digital and sales online … Wait. What is it? Go to RainmakerPlatform.com, 14-day trial. It’s awesome. We’ll talk to you next week.