No. 022 What Craft Beer and Food Trucks Can Teach Us About the Power of Collaboration

Your fellow Showrunners, even those serving the very same niche(s) that you’re serving, are not your enemies. 95 percent of the world has no idea what you’re doing as a “podcaster,” so don’t turn a cold shoulder to the few who do.

We begin this week’s episode with a discussion about the value of meeting your listeners in person when you get the opportunity to do so, and we offer up a few actionable ideas on how to bring the topic up with your audience.

Then, for the final time, we harken back to our experience at Podcast Movement for inspiration.

This leads to a conversation about the power of cooperation, collaboration, and craft beer (yum!).

Seriously: there is a lot we can learn from how craft breweries have banded together in their battle for market share against the big, bad beer bullies. Similarly, we can learn from the lessons of how food trucks have joined forces to survive despite numerous forces working against them.

As Roman Mars said at Podcast Movement, “95 percent of the world doesn’t know what the ***k we do.” This is one reason why we must fight the urge to see competitors as threats, and instead see them as potential allies in working together to rise the tides of all boats in the ever-growing podcasting waters.

Then we turn to our listener question, which could have carried an entire episode. “What do we do when our podcasts start to lose traction?” We both have a lot to say about this, with Jerod concluding the section with something akin to a locker room speech for scuffling Showrunners everywhere. 🙂

Finally, we bring you this week’s podcast recommendation from the podcaster herself: Sonia Thompson explains why you should check out her new show, I Am The One.

Listen, learn, enjoy:

No. 022 What Craft Beer and Food Trucks Can Teach Us about the Power of Collaboration

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. This is episode number 22. I am your host, Jerod Morris, VP of Rainmaker.FM, and I’m joined as always by my co-host here on The Showrunner, Jonny Nastor, defender of humanity, host of Hack the Entrepreneur, and now freshly relaxed and ready to go from his vacation. How are you doing, Jonny?

Jonny Nastor: I’m doing excellent. I’m doing very well.

Jerod Morris: Good. I am, too.

Jonny Nastor: It was good to have what I called a ‘holiday from my vacation.’

Jerod Morris: A holiday from your vacation.

Jonny Nastor: See, because I’m on a vacation for the summer in Vancouver. Then we left here for a few days and took a further vacation from that. It’s been a stressful summer.

Jerod Morris: Yes, yes. It sounds very stressful.

Jonny Nastor: How was Florida?

Jerod Morris: Florida was phenomenal. It was absolutely incredible.

Jonny Nastor: I love that place.

Jerod Morris: Went kayaking, went snorkeling, went parasailing for the first time.

Jonny Nastor: Wow.

Jerod Morris: My eight-year-old nephew was with me. I’ve done a lot of those things before — not the parasailing, did that for the first time — but it’s fun. I don’t have kids yet, so doing all these things again almost for the first time, seeing them through the eyes of an eight-year-old, made it really exciting. It was really fun, and now I’m relaxed and ready to go again as well.

Jonny Nastor: Nice.

The Value of Meeting Your Listeners in Person (and How to Make It Happen)

Jerod Morris: There’s something I’ve been thinking about, and I was thinking about this before I left for vacation. I’m thinking about it now. After our experience at Podcast Movement, which we’re going to talk just a little bit more about in this episode, and just being here in Dallas and going to a few more meetups, that kind of thing, is the value of meeting with your listeners in person. This is actually something where I followed your lead, because I saw you doing this — making time to go have coffee with listeners, or on your travels, realizing that a listener lives in a city that you’re in and stopping and meeting them.

Obviously, the value of podcasting is being able to speak to many people at one time. Right now, I’m talking, and thousands of people will hear this at different times in different places on different dates in different moods for different reasons.

There is something really valuable, I am finding, in one-on-one conversations with listeners. I got to do this at Podcast Movement, again, have gotten to do it in other situations, and I really find it helps keep me in tune with the reason why I’m running the show. It keeps my enthusiasm up, and I always learn something really interesting about the audience, about the way they’re using the content, and about why it’s important to them.

I guess I just wanted to open this episode up with this, because I think it’s going to fit the theme of what we’re going to talk about. For people listening to this who maybe have had a show go for a little while and who have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with the people who actually listen to you, I really encourage you to take those opportunities. I think it can really enrich what you’re doing as a showrunner, and I have to think, Jonny, that you agree with my stance on this.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, I absolutely agree with it. It actually used to frighten me, obviously, the idea of it.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: I am more introverted than extroverted, or at least I think I am, but I’m actually pretty good at going out and meeting people. It’s really easy, and it’s super rewarding, and it’s just a lot of fun getting to meet somebody who has listened to you over and over and over again. I say it’s ‘easy’ because they know so much about you already.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: They really do. Every time I meet one of my listeners now, it’s literally just me asking them a whole bunch of questions about themselves because they don’t have to ask me “What have you been up to?” or “What have you …?” They know what I’ve been doing for the last six months, because they’ve been listening to three episodes a week.

It’s shocking in that way. That actually put me off at the beginning the first time I met somebody because I was like, “Wow, it’s so weird.” She was like, “I feel like I know everything about you and you don’t know anything about me.” I was like, “That’s true, isn’t it?”

It makes the meeting easy, though. Then you just get to truly understand your audience and why they’re listening to you, what they’re up to, what they’re getting from it, what they’re not getting from it. You can’t, obviously, make a deeper connection, either.

It’s just the ultimate reward, I think, for sitting in your closet or your office or your basement or wherever you’re doing this from and actually getting real people. Downloads are one thing, but it’s just numbers on a screen. Emails are amazing, and Tweets are amazing, but sitting down and — I was going to say sharing a coffee, but you’re not sharing the coffee. We each have a coffee.

Jerod Morris: That would be an awkward first meeting.

Jonny Nastor: “I think we should share this coffee. We get two straws and …” You know what I mean. It’s amazing. It really truly is. To me, it’s the best connection, the best part of it, the best result of putting in this time.

Jerod Morris: I agree. I do find, as you described, that it’s a lot more asking questions and listening, which I really like. That’s the whole reason to do it is to get to really know the listener, because as you said, they know a lot about you, but they can also ask you specific questions that they have, and you can reveal additional, authentic parts of yourself that help them.

I will say, as we wrap up this part before we get to the main topic, people may be wondering, “Okay, how do I do that? How do I even start that process?” I would say to just make that a call to action. If you live in a certain city, say, “Hey, if any of you live in Dallas, let me know. Send me an email. Send me a Tweet. Let’s get together.” Or, “Hey, I’m going to be traveling, and I’m going to be in Vancouver. If any of you are in Vancouver, let me know. Let’s grab a coffee.”

It can be that simple. Then, let people come to you with it. If they’re really interested in it, they’ll let you know. They’ll reach out and let you know, and meet with them. It doesn’t have to be this pressure-filled thing. For people who do want to take us up on this advice, any other suggestions you would give people for how to actually make it happen?

Jonny Nastor: Just simply make that your call to action at the end. That’s literally what I did when I was heading across from Ontario to British Columbia through the northern United States, and I ended up meeting listeners across the US and then up in Vancouver.

I said it over about five episodes, just nonchalantly at the end, because like you’re probably thinking right now, listening, it’s just like, “There’s nobody out there listening that’s going to live there or want to meet.” That’s what I thought, too, so I thought, “I’m going to just put it out there without doing anything physical.” No links, nothing hard. Literally just say it at the end of a few shows. If nobody says or hears or cares, then that’s fine. I’ll just be like, “Whatever, I tried.” It was shocking. “Whoa, emails! Tweets! That’s amazing.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: It’s really just that. I didn’t think anybody would. I honestly didn’t think anybody would be living in those cities and that also wanted to meet me, and they did, and they will with you, too. That’s part of creating this content and this connection. Just make it your call to action at the end. It’s really not that hard, and it’s just totally, “I’ll take you out for coffee,” is all I said to people, or a beer if it was later in the evening.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, or maybe just an email with the subject line, “You, me, one coffee, two straws.”

Jonny Nastor: Just for you, Jerod. Just for you.

Jerod Morris: All right, let’s go to the main topic for this episode. We are going to break apart another quote from Podcast Movement. The quote involves a curse word, but we’re not going to use the curse word. Check out what the quote is next on the main topic of the Showrunner.

Why Cooperation – Not Competition – Is So Crucial within the Podcasting Community

Jerod Morris: Okay. We’ve spent a few episodes, Jonny, talking about lessons we learned at Podcast Movement. This will probably be the last episode where we do this, but frankly, there was a lot to learn. There were so many great speakers, so many great experiences there, that we took a lot away from it. We’ve got one more episode where we want to talk about something we learned from Podcast Movement. Do you want to introduce this quote that we’re going to talk about today?

Jonny Nastor: Sure, I’d love to. It’s a quote about podcasting, but it goes greater than that, I think. It’s something that I’ve thought and a philosophy I’ve had for the last few years just working online and creating products and services. It’s a great extension, and it was used specifically for podcasting by a brilliant podcaster, Roman Mars.

He said it during his keynote, and I can’t remember exactly how he brought it up. It was something about how podcasting is getting really, really popular, and that’s what we all talk about as podcasters, about how 30 percent of the population in the US has now listened to a podcast, but that still 70 percent hasn’t, is the main thing. Us, as podcasters, we never talk about that. We only talk about the 30 percent.

And most of the world really doesn’t know what we do. They just don’t. And they don’t care about what we do as much as we do as podcasters, meaning that we should really focus on helping each other and helping podcasting as a medium grow larger and get exposed to more people who are not into podcasting rather than fighting amongst ourselves and trying to be the most popular podcaster right now.

Jerod Morris: To be specific he said, “Ninety-five percent of the world doesn’t know what the blank we do,” just for emphasis.

Jonny Nastor: He did. Okay, that’s exactly what he said. I didn’t know how far we wanted to go.

Jerod Morris: ‘Blank’ is okay.

Jonny Nastor: Sometimes our listeners don’t like that. They also don’t like us talking, but we have to talk. We were going to just play music but …

Jerod Morris: It’s very hard to host a show without talking.

Jonny Nastor: It’s an excellent thing, especially because there’s 1100 podcasters there. There’s John Lee Dumas, and there’s Pat Flynn, and there’s Marc Maron, — they’re all superstars, and you get this jealousy about, “They have all this success,” or “I want that,” or “I deserve that.” His whole thing was just like, “We are such a small community.”

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm.

Jonny Nastor: Literally, we’re just tiny. Most of the world does not know or care what we do, so let’s not fight amongst each other. Let’s just try and help each other and each other’s shows grow and build big audiences and expose podcasting and this new form of on-demand audio content to more people outside of us. Let’s help each other do that.

It’s not like if somebody listens to Pat Flynn’s podcast that they also can’t listen to my podcast, because they do. They listen to both. That’s just the way it is. People who listen to business or entrepreneurship podcasts, they listen to a lot of them. They don’t just listen to one. Somebody who listens to a podcast on podcasting even, they listen to numerous ones. That’s just the way it works. That’s how we devour content.

Even with magazines — if I’m into fishing, I don’t just buy one fishing magazine. I probably subscribe to three or five of them because I want all of it. I don’t want just one. That’s just how people are. When we get really passionate about stuff, we want more of it. There isn’t competition amongst us as podcasters, and we should all try and push each other forward.

Of course there’s going to be, “I wish I was as successful as that person.” That’s natural within us as humans. We should try and deal with it and be aware of it, but don’t make it stop us from trying to push all of us forward and the whole medium forward into more years.

Unlikely Parallels between the Craft Beer and Podcasting Communities (and What You Can Learn from Them)

Jerod Morris: We were going to record this episode about a week ago before we left on vacation, and we couldn’t because there were some audio issues. I firmly believe things happen for a reason, and I think it’s a good thing that those audio issues happened, because while I was on vacation, I actually read this really interesting article that is perfect for this topic. It illustrates exactly what you’re talking about, but actually outside the realm of podcasting. But it’s a perfect parallel. It’s with craft beer.

Look at the way that craft beer has grown in the United States, for example. Over the last six years, basically the demand for beer has stayed really stagnant. Yet craft beer has increased by 22 percent, so they continue to gain market share, which obviously isn’t good for the Anheuser-Busches of the world and the big guys.

What’s interesting about this is why the craft breweries have grown, and it’s because of the spirit of collaboration that they have. An example of this is how they deal with trademark issues. A lot of times, these breweries will come up with beers, and they all have unique names, but they’ll be similar names.

These two breweries both came out with a beer called ‘Salvation Ale,’ and instead of suing each other into the ground for the rights to the name, they just came out with a new beer called ‘Collaboration Not Litigation Ale.’ They turned it into a positive and they grew from it. This is how these craft breweries have grown. They basically train each other. An experienced craft brewery will train the staff of a new craft brewery to bring them up to speed.

It’s this combination of A) taking this immense pride in creating a really good product. They all realize that the reason why people drink craft-brewed beer is because it’s higher quality, it’s locally based, and it’s unique. The thing is, if one craft brewer puts out a bad product, then the perception of all craft brews is going to suffer, and they realize that. Taking pride in having this humble attitude towards each other and helping each other out then helped all boats to rise.

I think there’s a real parallel there for podcasters. If you think about it, a lot of us, when it comes to podcasters, especially if we’re independent, are trying to get ear-share from radio and from music and even from the bigger, more established podcasts. We’re even trying to get, sometimes, share of entertainment time from television.

The nice niche for podcasting is that it can fill in gaps, and you can do it while you’re doing other things. Still, we’re competing with bigger, more established people to get the share of our audience’s attention. It doesn’t make sense for us to compete. It makes sense for us to collaborate, and all boats will rise. Not to, I don’t know, hoard our secrets. It makes a lot more sense to share and work together and expose each other to each other’s audiences.

You can see it working with craft brews. You can see it working with food trucks, where they’ve done the exact same things. In cities where restaurants have tried to push them out, food trucks have instead banded together to make sure they have a better product and to help not allow regulations to crowd them out, because they’ve got the power of this group.

I’ve seen it even just with some of the side projects I work on. I talked about The Assembly Call, my IU podcast. I could very easily look at all the other IU shows out there as my competitors, but instead, I partnered with one to host a new podcast for them, and I always Tweet out and share the other podcast. You could say, “Why are you doing that? That’s taking time away from what people could listen to you.” I don’t look at it that way.

That spirit of collaboration … they expose me to their audiences, I to them, and what it does is actually increase the overall reputation of the independent online sites and increase the overall awareness.

I love this. I love this topic. I love the big idea. I think too often we get into this competitive mindset, where I think if we take a more humble approach, and if we take a more collaborative approach, it really will help all boats rise, including our own. Obviously we’re not doing anything to sabotage ourselves. We’re doing this ultimately because it’s in our own best interest. It just happens to be that what’s in our best interest is also in the best interest of our other fellow showrunners out there.

Jonny Nastor: I love it. I love the craft beer link between the two, because it’s so true. I never actually thought of it in that way, but craft beer … they’re amazing at that.

There’s actually a real correlation back to where I come from, which is the WordPress, open-source software, open-source technology in general. Open-source software is massive. WordPress, you can do anything you want to it. It’s completely open. Anything built under it is supposed to be built under the licensing of the open license, and it’s amazing. There are 60 million sites that now run off it, and it’s a billion-dollar business that originally started WordPress based on free software. You can do anything you want. Rainmaker is built off WordPress because of that licensing that WordPress allows. A collaboration of thousands of people are always working on WordPress to make it more secure, make it safer, make it faster, make it more robust. Then things can be built, amazing things like Rainmaker, can be built on top of it. That’s so cool and so amazing that it’s done like that.

Then, craft beer is just doing the same thing. They’re getting rid of the Busches, and it’s cool. They’re taking them on. It’s not all about litigation. It’s about collaboration. I think especially us, as smaller markets, like podcasting, although it’s massive, and WordPress is massive, but it’s still small. It’s still not most of the Internet at all, but it’s a super, super vibrant community of people helping each other grow and do better. That’s really, really cool.

The Step You Can Take Right Now to Help the Podcasting Community

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Call to action for the main topic: everybody listening right now, get an image in your head. When I say, “Who is your podcast competitor?” Who’s the first person that comes to mind? Okay, now go share an episode of that person’s podcast. Go do it. See what happens. Something tells me it will be good. It will be positive. It’s not going to hurt you. It’s not going to take away from your own show. It will help. Put that person in the Tweet. Let them know that you’re sharing the show. I think this spirit of collaboration is going to help us all.

Jonny Nastor: Yes, exactly. That’s the main reason why we started podcast recommendations. The way we originally had it for the first 20 episodes was that we truly wanted to provide shows we really like. Some of them are in direct competition with my show in that way, if you think about it, but they’re not at all.

Internet Business Mastery — I’ve talked about that show so many times on here. It’s very much closely related to Hack the Entrepreneur, but I think that everybody should listen to it, and I think that lots of people already do and that there’s room for both of us. There’s room for all of us. I like that, and I just love that you want everybody to share. We don’t share it anymore, but now we have a new podcast recommendation that we should get to.

Jerod Morris: We do, and we’re going to be getting to that soon. Don’t listen to any Rainmaker.FM shows besides Showrunner, Lede, and Hack the Entrepreneur.

Jonny Nastor: Right. Maybe the master feed. Just all the episodes from there.

Jerod Morris: Exactly. All right, you ready for a listener question?

As always, our listener question is sponsored by the Rainmaker Platform. Let me ask you all a question — you listening — is your podcast growing your digital business, or is it giving you headaches? If it’s the latter, there’s a good chance that a lot of those headaches are technical headaches.

I know in my experience hosting five shows right now concurrently and hosting 10, 11, 12, whatever the actual number is over time, most of the headaches I’ve had have been technical, because I’m just not that technical of a person. The reason why I got into podcasting, why I got into showrunning, why I like building shows, is to connect with audiences and then to eventually build businesses around them and actually drive results.

That’s what Rainmaker helps me do. It’s why I build all of my shows on Rainmaker and why I would even if Brian Clark fired me tomorrow, which hopefully that doesn’t happen. I would still continue to use Rainmaker and vouch for Rainmaker because it helps remove those headaches and helps me actually use my podcast to drive results.

If you are having any of those headaches, go to RainmakerPlatform.com. There’s a 14-day free trial. Give it a test drive, and see if it’s right for you. You have nothing to lose, but you have a lot to gain. I take that back. You do have something to lose: those technical headaches. Go to RainmakerPlatform.com. See if it’s the right fit for you, and maybe you can get rid of those headaches and focus on what you really want to be doing, which is creating on-demand audio content, getting it to your audience, and then building relationships with that audience.

Listener Question: What Do You Do If Your Podcast Is Losing Traction?

Jerod Morris: Actually, this goes really nicely into our listener question. I actually plucked this listener question out of the podcasters’ hangout Facebook group that I’m in. It’s by someone named Jonathan. I have no idea if he’s a listener, but hopefully he is. His question is a really good question. I wanted to bring it here because I thought it really fit. The question is, “What do you do if your podcast is losing traction? What ways are you guys marketing your podcast?”

I will say, I’ve seen a lot of people where their podcast loses traction because their enthusiasm wanes. Their enthusiasm wanes, in part, because they’re dealing with some of those technical headaches that I was talking about with the platform. Again, if you’re having any of those, that’s where having something like the Rainmaker Platform can really help.

Let’s say that you’ve got those technical headaches out of the way. Jonny, for you, obviously you’re past 100 episodes now with the show. You’ve, I’m sure, gone through dips where you’re really gaining steam, then you’re losing steam, and then you’re gaining steam back. What are some of the ways that you’ve marketed your podcast and just approached your podcast during those times when you’re losing traction to get the momentum back going again?

Jonny Nastor: I’ve stopped looking at all numbers and all metrics during those times. When I go back — I’m at episode 118 on Monday — and look through my LibSyn for the past, almost a year now, there are two massive dips. The first one lasted for almost three months, and if I would have thought about it too much, if I would have looked at the numbers too much, I would have quit. It’s shocking to me when I look back that I didn’t quit.

I had my first eight weeks, which went to 10 weeks, and then I dropped hard. Then it came back up two months later, and then it dropped even worse and went for months, and then it went way back up to higher than it ever was, and that’s where it is now. It’s amazing.

These things are coming, and I think that this is actually such a big question. I’ve been thinking that we need to do an episode on this. I’m getting a lot — I have, in the past — of emails from people with shows that are doing great right now. They’re one month, they’re six weeks into it. New and Noteworthy is being really, really, really good to them. The sky is the limit.

I’ve seen this so many times in the past year that it almost makes me want to cry, because people have shows that did so much better than my show did during New and Noteworthy, during that first 10 weeks, that it’s just shocking. Then this dip hits, and I haven’t seen one of them make it through that dip yet. They’ve all quit after that, every single one of them.

Always. I’m doing this email now to people, and that’s so awesome: “Push it as hard as you can right now, but then please stop looking at any metrics and just push. For the next six months, do every episode you say you’re going to do, and do not worry about that stuff because you will come out the other side stronger and better. It’s the only place that successful shows are is on the other side of that.”

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm.

Jonny Nastor: No one wants to listen, because they’re in this amazing growth period. You, Jonathan, hopefully if you’re listening, you are not in this amazing growth period anymore, and you’re looking for traction. Ignore that stuff. Do what you do best, which is create really, really good content, and don’t stop. Don’t stop creating that content.

Because it doesn’t happen before 100 episodes. It doesn’t happen before 200, sometimes before 300 episodes, where the real true success and the actual show-making begins. You can’t get there if you stop. You just can’t.

Those numbers are horrible to look at. They suck. I know. I’ve been there. I will be there again, I’m sure. The higher you rise, the farther it falls into these dips, and I don’t know why it happens. It’s just the nature of the beast. The other side of the dip is always bigger than it has ever been for your show.

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm.

Jonny Nastor: I don’t know where it comes from or why it works. The numbers and the graphs looking back are shocking. You just have to stick it out. Just know that what you’re doing is creating content to build a listener. Build one listener at a time. We don’t have to build 1,000 at a time. We can’t. Literally one person — make that connection. Then go to the next one. Then go to the next one. That’s just through making good content that connects with your audience.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I have two things to add to this. Number one is, I would say, make sure that your mindset is right. A lot of times, we look at our shows as losing traction because the numbers aren’t growing. We forget that we have this audience that has developed, but we have to engage them.

If we just constantly have this cycle where we get new listeners and they leave, and we get new listeners and they leave, that’s going to make it feel like we’re not gaining any new people. It’s going to make it feel like we’re not losing traction because we never really gain traction with people, and they never become long-term listeners. If you feel like you’re losing traction because you’re not getting that next 200 listeners, maybe go back and reengage the 200 that you have, and learn from them, and figure out what it’s going to take to turn someone from a listener to a subscriber to a true audience member so that you know how to build moving forward.

Here’s the other thing that I will say, and this hearkens back to how we started this episode, talking about meeting with people in person. I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with a lady named Lena, who has listened to The Showrunner, and she’s listened to my new show, PRIMILITY Primer, and reached out and wanted to get together. She’s got a new show idea that she’s working on and I had so much fun talking with her and asking her questions about this new project that she has. She was so enthusiastic, so excited, but so afraid and had so much trepidation. There was just all this energy happening. Some of it really positive, some of it she had to get over, but it was all this energy.

If you feel like you’re losing traction, try to tap back into the fear and the enthusiasm and the excitement and the emotion that you had at the beginning. Sometimes when these dips occur, or just as a function of time, we lose a little bit of that. I think a great way to get it, for me, was meeting with Lena in person. Try to figure out a way for you that will work to get that back, that fear, that enthusiasm, that excitement. If you’ve lost it, then I think it’s going to be hard to transfer that enthusiasm onto your audience, and that can then lead to the losing of traction.

I think that’s part of why new shows gain so much traction — they’re new, we’re new, our approach is fresh, and it’s new for the audience. As soon as it becomes stagnant, like a relationship, a lot of that fades away. There is a difference between a new show and a mature show, but there can still be genuine enthusiasm and excitement, and there should be some fear every now and then. You’re trying something a little bit new.

We had that a couple of episodes ago when we did that weird episode where everything was jumbled, and we recorded it weird, and we were trying something new. I was afraid when we published that. We had some positive comments, and we had some negative comments. I think that spirit of trying something new — the fear, the enthusiasm — it was all there. I think it keeps you moving forward.

That’s what I would say is really look inward, not at the topic, not at the audience, not at any of that stuff — look at yourself. Maybe you’re lacking some of the enthusiasm, some of that fear, that you had in the beginning. A lot of times, that’s the energy that drives your show forward, and find a way to tap back into it. When you do, I think it can really turbocharge your show and get the momentum going back in a positive direction.

Jonny Nastor: Damn, that was good.

Jerod Morris: Thank you. Now I’m ready to go.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: I’m all fired up.

Jonny Nastor: That was really good. Yeah. It was good clarification on the engagement of your audience that exists. I didn’t mean to just say, “Just keep creating content.” I meant, “Just keep doing what you were doing,” which you then went to with your second part: “really keep doing what you were doing when you originally felt like you were getting traction.”

You must have been working on an email list. You must have been engaging them. You must have been on social media engaging your audience and having that excitement. You have to keep that stuff going. It’s not that that part’s necessarily stopped. It’s just that you hit this dip with it. You know that worked, what you were doing, so keep doing that, and then think of new ways you can also engage further. New ways even in marketing. The result can’t be that you’re doing that other stuff, because you made more time by stopping to create new shows or stopping to engage your audience, because you have to do that stuff. It’s essential.

Jerod Morris: I should relay some advice from my aunt. She’s a very wise woman. She once gave me great relationship advice that I think applies here, which is, she said, “You know, Jerod, how you feel and what you do when you first meet a girl and you’re really excited, all those little things that you do, and how much you pay attention, and all of that enthusiasm you bring to it?”

I’m like, “Yes.”

All that that you do for the first six months to the year. She’s like, “The key is to not lose that, to keep doing it. Keep doing the little things. That’s what will make the relationship last.”

I think it’s the exact same thing when you’re building a show, because your audience comes to expect it. That’s the reason why they connect, and when we lose that, when we stop doing it, when we take it for granted, that’s a big reason why shows lose traction. Follow the advice of my Aunt Nene, because she’s always right.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, exactly.

Podcast Recommendation of the Week

Jerod Morris: All right. Ready for some podcast recommendations?

Jonny Nastor: We’re ready [crosstalk 00:32:05]

Jerod Morris: Yes, that’s coming now. All right, this week’s podcast recommendation, again, we’ve shifted this some. Instead of us recommending shows, we are allowing showrunners themselves, showrunners just like you, to recommend their own shows. These are shows that, Jonny, you and I have vetted. We worked with these folks inside of The Showrunner Podcasting Course, so they do certainly have our stamp of approval. Instead of us telling you why you should listen to these shows, we are going to let the showrunners themselves pitch you.

All I will say to preface this one, this show by Sonia Thompson, is that I had the good fortune, the privilege, of being featured on her show. That episode will come out at some point. I don’t know when it will come out. Her very last question, she asked me to state my favorite line from a movie, and I panicked on the spot, and I started singing.

Jonny Nastor: Wow.

Jerod Morris: She tells me that it’s okay and that it turned out well. I don’t know that I believe her. I guess we’ll have to wait and see when that episode comes out. Anyway, here is Sonia telling you why you should listen to her new show, I Am the One.

Sonia Thompson: Hey there, it’s Sonia Thompson, and my recommendation for you this week is my new show, I Am the One, Entrepreneur Edition. On each episode, I talk to entrepreneurs at various stages within their journey about why they decided to be the one to make life better for the people they serve.

Because deciding to be the one is just the beginning of the story, we explore the ups, the downs, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. In this show, you can expect a diverse group of guests with varying levels of success, backgrounds, and industries. There’s also an intense focus on application, so you can apply the lessons directly to growing your business. Of course, we have lots of fun along the way.

Because you are the one, you should totally come on over and check this show out. That way, you can get inspiration, important lessons, and insider info to help you build your dream business. Talk soon.

Jerod Morris: All right. Check out Sonia’s show. It’s excellent, and Sonia absolutely rocks. In fact, you’ve heard her on here before. We had her on back when we did the launch of The Showrunner Podcasting Course, and she told you about it. Sonia’s great. Her show will be as well.

That’s it. I think we’re about ready to wrap up here. Mr. Nastor, any final closing thoughts on this episode?

Jonny Nastor: No, this has been a good one. I’m going to think further about maybe expanding that listener question out a little bit more. We’ll see. I think we could really go a lot of places and it’s a huge, huge topic.

Jerod Morris: It could be its own mini-course, really. There’s so many places you can take that. We talk about developing a show and launching a show, but the running part is so important.

Jonny Nastor: Mm-hmm.

Jerod Morris: There’s so many different layers of running it and different time periods that we all go through, the dips and the post-dips. There’s a lot more meat on that bone.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, I agree. For now we should get to the call to action.

Jerod Morris: We should get to the call to action. The call to action is to go to Showrunner.FM and sign up for the email list if you’re not already on it. You will learn the four essential elements of a remarkable show. That content series will be sent to you via email and you will also get updates on new Showrunner episodes, which you absolutely won’t want to miss.

Jonny just might email you asking if you want to share a cup of coffee with him, because he likes sharing cups of coffee.

Jonny Nastor: He definitely will.

Jerod Morris: All right, everybody, we will talk to you next week on another brand new episode of The Showrunner.