No. 084 The Value of Meeting Your Audience in Person

As podcasters, can we get too comfortable hiding behind our microphones? It seems likely, but also avoidable.

Coming out from behind the microphone to meet with your audience in person is valuable to your audience and podcast — true — but it is also extremely useful to you as a Showrunner.

In this episode, Jonny and Jerod discuss:

• The hidden value Jerod discovered during a meetup with his audience
• Two ways to plan a meetup with your audience
• Why Jerod doesn’t like the topic Jon chose for today’s episode

Listen, learn, enjoy …

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

No. 084 The Value of Meeting Your Audience in Person

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 to The Showrunner, the podcast for people dedicated to creating remarkable audio experiences for their audience. This is episode No. 84. I am your host Jerod Morris, VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital, and I will be joined momentarily, as I always am, by my recovering-from-a-bad-night-of-sleep co-host Jonny Nastor, the host of Hack 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, wake up.

Jonny Nastor: Oh geeze, we’re here. Yeah, man, it’s been one of those days. I don’t know if it’s the snow or if it’s just the bad nights of sleep. Are you still not drinking coffee, Jerod?

Jerod Morris: No, I’m back to drinking. I do the half-caf coffee. I do drink that in the morning. I went back to that.

Jonny Nastor: Ah, I don’t think I’ve heard of that.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I like it.

Jonny Nastor: Okay, cool. I was thinking of that today because I think I had three cups, or four cups of coffee. It was just like, “This isn’t doing anything.” I was wondering, “I wonder if Jerod is? Because he’s not also sleeping very well because he has a young child at home, and he’s possibly not drinking coffee, too.”

Jerod Morris: I will say, thanks to my wife, I actually get to sleep pretty well. I can’t ask for any sympathy there because it would be false sympathy.

Jonny Nastor: Well, you weren’t getting it.

Jerod’s Awesome Meetup with The Assembly Call Audience

Jerod Morris: Hey, so by the way, I had another cool experience last weekend. I was actually up in Indiana for our second annual meetup for The Assembly Call. All of our hosts and our team got together. We got to meet up with the audience, go to a game. It was awesome. I tell you this to reiterate — which something, Jonny, I know that you will agree with this — any opportunity that you have to get out and meet your audience members in person, it is always, always, always worth it.

It was such a fantastic time. The coolest thing is, the entire trip for all of us was basically paid for with donations from people who listen to the podcast. It was pretty neat to be able to travel up there, stay for a couple nights, go out to this great dinner. It was awesome.

It’s obviously especially special when it’s your audience that believes enough in what you’re doing to fund you to go on such a trip. Then they come out and meet you. It was great. Any opportunity that you get to ever meet your audience, take it. Unquestionably.

Jonny Nastor: That’s interesting. You’re right. I totally agree with you. I think it’s nerve-racking, isn’t it, to go and have to meet your audience for the first time? It’s not nerve-racking to meet them. I think it’s nerve-racking to put yourself out there, to want to meet them, and thinking in the back of your head that nobody’s going to want to meet you.

Jerod Morris: Yes, that is a little bit nerve-racking. I guess for us, there would have been a benefit to going up there anyway, just because we all live in separate cities, so it’s cool for us just to get together, have dinner, be in the same room, and talk about the future of the show. Then, I guess, if we schedule the meetup and no one comes, we all just hangout. We kind of have that to fall back on as a benefit.

Fortunately, there were a lot of people who showed up. But yeah, any time you put yourself out there, you’re always risking something. Heck, you’re risking that exact same thing by putting yourself out there, putting a show out there that no one may listen to. To me, if you can get past that fear and put your show out there, then if you’ve developed that relationship with an audience, being able to take it to that next step of meeting people, it solidifies your connection with those individual people.

I think it further solidifies your connection with your entire audience because they see you taking that effort to meet, and I think that makes them appreciate you even more. It just lets you get to know your audience better by actually meeting the real people that are listening. It always raises my enthusiasm when I do it.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, I feel like we should do a whole episode on this.

Jerod Morris: Maybe we should. Maybe we scrap what we were going to talk about and just talk about this.

Jonny Nastor: I was trying to say that on there — can we change this topic to this?

Jerod Morris: Sure.

Jonny Nastor: It would be interesting to know sort of what you went through the first time, if you used any tools. What are they called? EventBrite I see done because I think it’s free.

Jerod Morris: I didn’t. No, I kept it pretty casual. Obviously we’ve had a growing email list. We let people know what game we were coming up to. We emailed them the details. Will, who you’ve gotten to know, who works with us at Rainmaker Digital and has been helping us out with some Showrunner stuff, I met him as an intern at The Assembly Call. He was one of our first interns. He still does work with the show. Last year, he went around to some of the bars in Bloomington, worked it out with them, and found one that was willing to host.

We just kind of kept it informal and let people know where to meet up. Just sent out an email that said, “Hey, after the game, we’re all going to be there. Come meet us” — obviously sent out some Tweets about it, and people showed up.

This year, I was a little bit more formal by having a blog post. Then I had a form to fill out, so people could RSVP just so that I could let the bar know, kind of have an accurate number of how many people would be there. A bunch of people RSVP’ed. A few people had to email me at the last second to say they couldn’t come for this, that, or the other reason. But that was as formal as it got.

I think next year, actually, we’re talking about doing a live broadcast. We’re going to do it at the same bar for the third straight year, do a live broadcast, and probably get more organized with it. Probably have some T-shirts, some giveaways, and do some more like that. But we try to just keep it real casual so that it wasn’t a big burden on us to plan, so that it wasn’t a big burden on people to attend. I think that helped keep it manageable for us, and I think just kept it as a nice, casual, fun, relaxed atmosphere — which is what we wanted, and that’s what it turned out to be.

Formal or Informal? Identifying the Best Approach (for You) When Organizing Audience Meetups

Jonny Nastor: That’s interesting. It should be relaxed and casual. I like that aspect of it. I was leaning towards the EventBrite thing cause it tells you — people give you a commitment, for free, but they give you a commitment that they’re coming. Then you have an idea of how many are coming, so you can set it up so the bar knows and so you know.

Jerod Morris: We got that. Rainmaker has forms built into it, and The Assembly Call site is built on Rainmaker. I just used one of those forms and went through, had people list how many people were going to come, any comments. Then that gave me a good, accurate reflection of how many people would be there.

Jonny Nastor: Oh, so you did. Okay.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: I thought you were just emailing, but not even asking for responses or anything, just kind of like …

Jerod Morris: No, this year I did. Last year we really didn’t. I mean people responded and said like, “Yeah, we’re coming,” so we had a general idea. This year, I actually used a form to be a little bit more organized with it, which helped.

Jonny Nastor: That’s cool.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, okay. That’s cool. I need to run another one now that I’m in a new city. I need to run one here locally, and I’ve just been kind of putting it off. I guess because I was just trying to get my head around the logistics of it. Mostly because I don’t know the city, and I don’t know where to host it yet.

Jerod Morris: I will say this. There’s something to be said for being maybe a little bit more organized with it than we were. The bar that we went to, they had a whole section set up for us. People started trickling in after the game. The game was about, I don’t know, a mile away. Everybody’s going to get there at a little bit of a different time cause you get out, then you got to deal with traffic, different walking speeds, and all of that.

We actually, on our way out, did a Facebook Live video, like our normal postgame show. We had our interns hosting the actual show, but we did a quick little Facebook Live video, so we still were able to get some of our thoughts about the game in there.

One risk of doing a trip like this is you get so caught up with being there, and being with the people who are there in person, that you don’t share it with the people who aren’t there — which, let me hold that thought because it leads me to something else I’ll do different in the future.

Getting back to the point I was making. We all got there, and we had this section kind of sectioned off for us. There was a group of folks that were sitting over in the corner. I wasn’t quite sure if they were part of the meetup or not, and then I got caught up meeting with other people, talking with other people. There wasn’t like an official greeter there really.

It was almost too casual because it turned out they were there for the meetup, but were a little bit shy to come say anything, and kind of said something at the end as they were leaving. Like, “Hey, really like your guys’ show.” But it was kind of in passing. I couldn’t get over to them quick enough to talk to them and found out later from one of the bartenders who was working there that, that was actually her dad, and he’s a big fan of the show.

She was like, “Yeah, he’s kind of shy, so he didn’t make it over there to talk to you.” That was kind of disappointing. But I got his address. We made these little coasters, these Assembly Call coasters, so I’m going to send him one and just kind of let him know I wish we’d talked and hope he comes to the next one.

I think it probably would make sense to be a little bit more organized, have a little bit more structure next year. It can be intimidating on both sides. It’s intimidating for you. I mean it’s even intimidating for me kind of meeting these people. You know that they’re going to have expectations for you having listened, and now they’re meeting you in person. You want to come across well and make a good first impression.

I think also it can be intimidating for the folks who come because they’re with a whole bunch of different people that they don’t know. If there isn’t kind of a built-in way to break the ice or to grease conversation, you can have some situations like that. That was probably the biggest lesson that I learned from this one and is a good reason to be a little bit more organized with it moving forward, as hopefully it continues to grow. That’s certainly the goal.

Jonny Nastor: Right, exactly. I wonder if it’s sort of inherently a little … you wouldn’t have that issue that you had if you have a solo show. They’re there to see you. They’re there to see Jerod, or they’re there to see me or whoever’s the host. You know what I mean? You guys have multiple hosts, so you could be like, “Well, maybe they already talked to someone else.”

It seems like it’s innately going to be a little bit more formal, even though it can be casual, if it’s one person. Obviously, somebody gets there and they’re going want to at least hi to you I would think. They probably wouldn’t stay out of the group as much.

My thinking then was like, to take it even another step further, should we … or should ‘I’ is the way I’m thinking about it, should I create some sort of conversation around this that can help people in some way? Should we talk about their businesses each for 10 minutes?

But then I was like, “Ah, I hate sometimes getting to one of those, and it’s like I don’t have anything ready. I don’t want to talk, but now I have to.” I don’t want to put somebody in that position. This is all the stuff that goes through my head. It’s like, “I want to run one of these,” but they’re also not the easiest thing sometimes.

The Value of Audience Meetups and Building a Community

Jerod Morris: No, they’re not, and of course, it’s going to depend on the numbers. Obviously, if 100 people are there to meet you, it may be hard to have a small-group conversation, and you’re going to want to address everybody obviously as a group. It can kind of depend.

I didn’t want it to just be conversation … obviously, the topic of our show, for those of you who don’t know, it’s a show about Indiana basketball. I didn’t want it to just be kind of talk about the game, talk about the team. I really tried, as I met people, as I talked with people, to start the conversation talking about them. I wanted to learn about them. Obviously, they wanted to learn about us, talk with us, let us know things about the show that they liked, or get our opinions on this, that, or the other.

But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to talk about them. Especially in a situation like that, which can be a little bit intimidating — again, on both sides — but looking at it from the perspective of an audience member who’s there. A lot of them will come and say nice things about you obviously if they’re coming to your show, tell you something they like about your show, or a favorite episode they had, this, that, or the other. That’s all great.

But don’t use it as just an opportunity to hear great things about yourself. Make sure that you’re really having conversations. That’s what I really wanted to do was have conversations to learn. What makes these people tick? Why do they listen to the show? Why do they care enough to stay up after an eight o’clock game and listen to the show and come to this meetup?

It’s interesting because I actually came up with a bunch of really good ideas for off-season episodes and other stuff we can do based on really digging in and finding what was really at the core of everybody’s interest. I’ll tell you the biggest thing that I learned is that, yes, we’re doing a show talking about a basketball game after it happens. That’s great. That’s the subject of our show, but I think what we’re really ‘selling’ with the show is community.

It’s a topic of conversation that people feel comfortable with, they’re excited about, they’re enthusiastic about. They love it, and they come back because there’s a community of other people that share that interest. This is the watering hole to talk about it.

Both of these meetups have reinforced that. Not only does it give me more enthusiasm knowing that there’s a higher purpose above and beyond what we’re doing just breaking down this basketball game. It gives that meaning and makes sure that we don’t lose sight of what the real reason is that people are there. We’ve got to always make sure that we are fostering that community.

Again, I think there’s some things that you’re going to learn from in person. I know it’s not possible for everybody to do that like we’ve been able to do it. But, man, if you get the opportunity, it is so rewarding, so worth it.

Jonny Nastor: It’s really interesting that you found out or made that sort of connection now, that it’s so much about community. You’re right. You wouldn’t necessarily think that. You would think that people want a summary and to hear other people talking about this basketball game they just watched.

Jerod Morris: And they do, don’t get me wrong, they do.

Jonny Nastor: Of course.

Jerod Morris: That has to be on point. And there are some people for whom that’s all they care about, but those also aren’t the people who are donating. Those aren’t the people who are sharing. Those aren’t the people who are coming back episode after episode. Those people are there for the something more. Those are the people that you want to pay the most attention to, care the most about, and try and usher people into that area.

Jonny Nastor: Right. It’s really cool. You’re right. Those aren’t the people that would come out after a game, though — the people who want the community aspect of it and to know that they belong to this group. It’s probably why … well, it is actually why your merchandise, when you launched it last Christmas, sold really well.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: You were like, “Wow, I didn’t expect people to buy this much stuff.” It’s their way of identifying now, in public especially, that they belong to this group that most people don’t know exists. It’s true. You know what I mean?

It’s one of those things that where … it’s, to me, like liking small bands that most people aren’t into. When I go out somewhere and there’s 10,000 people there, and I see one lady wearing that band’s shirt, instantly I’m like, “That’s cool. You are my type of person.” I just know that.

The whole goal isn’t that, “Well maybe we can convert all these people to like that band.” No, that would actually ruin it. It’s right there, that now that’s the connection. If there was an Assembly Call T-shirt, hat, or coffee mug across the bar from someone and you were there randomly, that would be like, “There they are.” You could literally just go up to them and start talking to them, and you have that common bond. That’s impressive.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, and hopefully it says something about them because our brand stands for something. That’s what we want. It’s funny because there were people at the meetup, one guy’s wearing a sweatshirt. Some people had some of their stuff on, which was really cool. For us, we’ve always tried to be very specific.

Obviously, we love the university. Most of us are graduates of the university. Our show is always very supportive in spirit. We will critique and talk about things that went wrong, but always in a constructive manner to where you’re never questioning, “Do these guys actually like the team or not?” Sometimes you listen to fans talk about their team and you wonder because it sounds like they just hate them.

I think there’s a level of kindness. There’s a respectfulness, just as human being, that you have when you are like that. It’s funny because you meet all these people, and it’s like everybody kind of shares these same ideals. Whether they share them all the time or they’re putting them on display in the group, either way, I have really appreciated seeing that.

It’s like, “Okay, this is what we stand for. All of the people who we are attracting, these are our people.” It’s not like there was someone there who was just staunchly against or the opposite of what we were. That’s cool to see, and that’s part of how I know that we’ve been on the right track with how we’ve been presenting ourselves, how we present our content.

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The Hidden Value Jerod Discovered During a Meetup with His Audience

Jerod Morris: Here’s the other cool thing that came out of the meetup, Jonny, which is that when you get around your people and when you kind of get out in this social space, opportunities sometimes will present themselves that you never think of.

We announced that we were going to do the meetup at this bar, and a bartender and a server at this bar happened to see that. She’s on our email list. She really likes the show. She emailed me and said, “Hey, I’ll be there. I’ll try and be the server for your section, so I can say hi.” She ended up not being the server in our section, but she was the bartender that night, so I went over and said hi to her. She ended up telling her manager that they should broadcast our show live at the bar after games.

They get a big audience for the game, and she’s like, “I love this show. It’s an awesome show. We should do this.” Had a conversation with the manager, and next thing I know, not the show that’s going to happen the night we’re recording this, but our next show, the next time she’s working because she’s going to set it all up, they’re going to broadcast it at the bar.

Then she emailed me again today, and she was like, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about this, how we can even further promote it with the show on there. We could make T-shirts with the bar name on the front, your logo on the back, and all of the servers can wear them during the games and during the show afterwards.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s awesome.”

None of this would have happened if we hadn’t put ourselves in that situation to go out, meet, and just be in kind of this different environment. Now there’s this cool thing happening, and it looks like next year we’re going to have the event at the same place and actually try to do a live broadcast from there — which is going to be awesome.

I just think, again — I sound like a broken record — you may not be able to do a big meetup like what we did. Even if it’s just coffee with one audience member, which I’ve done on behalf of The Showrunner, The Digital Entrepreneur, and all the shows that I host. I’ve never regretted it. I’ve never not gotten something out of it. It’s never not exceeded my expectations. If that’s the one thing that you take from this episode, make it that, if and when you can.

I know everybody’s schedules are different. Everyone’s situations are different. Everyone’s comfort level with this kind of thing is different. If you can make yourself available for these times of opportunities, it can be a huge benefit to you, a huge benefit to the audience, and have unintended positive results that you can’t even predict — which we’re experiencing right now, and it’s awesome.

Jonny Nastor: Right. Maybe we can predict it, I wonder. As you were explaining this, and then how you built this audience who are loyal to you, loyal to the brand of it, and wanting to be part of the community, it made me think back to the whole four pillars of being a showrunner — which is what you guys have at The Assembly Call. Authenticity, usefulness, sustainability — obviously after four, or five, six seasons, whatever it is now — and profitability, which you just discovered in season five, wasn’t it?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jonny Nastor: You did that because you guys stuck it out. You were absolutely authentic to yourselves, to the team, to the brand, and to the fans — and obviously useful. Actually, as you were explaining that, I went to the sales page for The Showrunner course.

Under “Authenticity. Usefulness. Sustainability. Profitability,” it says, “The loyal audience you develop, and your commitment to serving your listeners, will become your unfair business advantage” — which is cool. If another show had come up even in the last year or two and tried to approach that same bar to do what you now get to do, they wouldn’t get to do it because you’ve built up this loyal audience following those four pillars.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, and it gave us an advocate there that we never could have anticipated, but who proved irresistible. Her recommendation to the manager of the bar was like, “Oh yeah. Okay, we’ll do this. Yeah, let’s do it.”

Like you said, if we had just gone in there and said that, they would have been like, “Eh, well, you know. Probably not.” But because we had that loyal audience member who was saying it, that goes so far — those individual recommendations, that social proof. That stuff just all builds on itself and starts to snowball in a really positive way.

Two Ways to Plan a Meetup with Your Audience

Jonny Nastor: Exactly, and that whole sustainability thing. When Jerod and I are talking about getting to meet your audience member, whether it’s in a big meeting like Jerod got to do or it’s coffee, these things take a long time. Jerod did his first one at season five of his show. This wasn’t like he started and two months later like, “Hey, I want to have a meetup at a bar, and 50 people are going to come.” That’s not how it worked.

Jerod Morris: Part of that was just logistics. I lived in Dallas, Andy’s in Cincinnati, Ryan’s in San Diego. Trying to get all of us in Bloomington at the same time was difficult. If we had lived closer, we might have been able to do it sooner. Everybody’s going to have different givens, different logistical situations that might make it easier or harder. We certainly would have liked to do it sooner than that, but that was just the earliest that we were able to do it.

Jonny Nastor: Right, and it could also be argued or discussed around the fact that maybe it’s ‘easier’ for you because you guys have a geographically specific show. It’s not just a random city in the middle of America, and hopefully I have 20 listeners in this one spot.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Jonny Nastor: That’s still irrelevant, right? I met my first listeners, it was just over a year. My show had been publishing three days a week, and I did that drive across the country. I announced it on my show a few times, and I had coffee with three different listeners in different cities. But there was one listener in Seattle. There was one listener here. That’s totally cool. That’s perfectly fine.

If you’re close enough to a big enough city and you’ve been doing it for a year at three episodes a week, or you’ve been doing it for five years, you’ll probably start getting enough to have coffee with somebody or coffee with two people or three people. I just don’t want people to be like turned away at the fact that it sounds implausible that I could meet a bar with 50 people or 75 people.

Jerod Morris: No, and let’s also point out the power of leveraging other people’s meetups for your own, which we did for The Showrunner when we went to Podcast Movement. We didn’t organize that, Podcast Movement, but we met there with a lot of Showrunner listeners at the time.

Also, realizing that as great as an in-person meeting is — and it is, and there is something different about sitting across the table from someone and being in the same room with them — again, even if that’s not possible, Skype and Zoom, well I guess not Blab anymore, but all of these different technologies that allow you to even do it online, but just being able to have that one-on-one conversation.

Not from microphone through headphones at some random time in the future, but across from each other right now, you and me, or me and several of you. I can see you, and I can see this interaction. We’re having a real conversation. Whatever level you go to, or whatever level you can go to, it’s all beneficial. It’s all beneficial.

I can’t think of a better way to take that next step in terms of the relationship with your audience and the engagement with your audience than those interpersonal opportunities. Whether they are online, offline, however they come, they’re just so valuable.

Why Jerod Doesn’t Like the Topic Jon Chose for Today’s Episode

Jonny Nastor: I love it. So this intro turned into a whole episode.

Jerod Morris: So what’s the headline for this one going to be? The ad-libbed episode? The one where we scrap everything? You know what the irony is? Here’s the great irony. The headline for this one, and I assume this would be the headline for next week’s is, “One Podcast, One Audience, One Topic.” We had that one topic heading into this episode, and we just totally scrapped it.

Jonny Nastor: We did.

Jerod Morris: But that’s okay. The reason we can ad-lib is because The Showrunner is one podcast geared to one audience, and we hone in on this topic of showrunning. It’s easy to have a passionate, engaged conversation about this topic, or about any topic, when the opportunity presents itself. The timing worked out for this one.

Jonny Nastor: But coming up next week, tune in for episode 85, One Podcast, One Audience, or One Topic. Or Jerod might have another intro that leads into a whole show. Either way …

Jerod Morris: You won’t know unless you tune in.

Hey, so we have a new call to action, and I want you to explain this because you have been, and so has Will, kudos to Will … you guys have been hard at working putting this together. I’m really excited about it, and I know you are, too.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, we have a new, I’m going to say tool or two to help you with your showrunning experience. You can get it at ShowRunner.FM/Report. We created a report called, “The …” I’m lost.

Jerod Morris: The Beginner’s Guide to Launching Your Remarkable Podcast, I think

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, so maybe we need to rewrite this.

Jerod Morris: We will, but finish the call to action for this episode, unless we want to edit it.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, we kind of do, I think. That was terrible. I was just worried …

Jerod Morris: We never edit for the audience.

Jonny Nastor: Oh geeze.

Jerod Morris: Here’s the lesson. We didn’t write our …

Jonny Nastor: We didn’t write any of this.

Jerod Morris: Right. We didn’t write any of this, but particularly the call to action. Even when you’re experienced and have done this for a while … we can obviously ad-lib the episode because there’s just two guys talking. That’s why you tune into this Showrunner. That’s what we want this to be. That’s why sometimes we just run with a topic when it’s good.

You probably don’t want to leave your call to action to chance, and you just heard why. It comes out as a jumbled, garbled, incoherent, not-able-to-be-acted-upon mess. Please forgive our mess. We will clean it up in the future, and write out this call to action better. We can at least use that as a teaching tool.

Jonny Nastor: All right, that’s true. This is kind of a teaching tool, too. I have been busy with Will because I was frustrated with our call to action. It had been repetitive, and the same, and not actionable enough.

Jerod Morris: We were going through the motions saying it, too, which was … you know.

Jonny Nastor: Right, and I wanted to make something that was more useful to you to take action on showrunning. We put together what we had, and we created some more things. There’s two reasons why you could join this, but I’ll get to those in just a second.

How to Take Your Showrunning to the Next Level

Jonny Nastor: First, here’s the call to action.

Go to Showrunner.FM/Report. To become a showrunner, you need to deliver a remarkable audio experience. We want to teach you how for free. Join The Showrunner email list today, and immediately receive your step-by-step guide to becoming a showrunner with The Beginner’s Guide to Launching a Remarkable Podcast, a comprehensive report that includes why right now is the perfect time to start a podcast, your 15-step launch plan, and six podcast monetization methods you can act on today. Go to Showrunner.FM/Report, and sign up today.

Jerod Morris: Perfect.

Jonny Nastor: If you are looking to start a show or to take your show to the next level, go to Showrunner.FM/Report. If you’ve already happened to have read this report, but you want to see how an email funnel can work, we set up a whole brand-new email funnel. This is the second kind of teaching part, which I think we should do probably a whole episode on this.

Jerod Morris: We should.

Jonny Nastor: This is actually a 22-day email sequence behind this now, where Jerod and I kind of give our stories to you and then also teach you in a short video series about how to launch a remarkable show. Then we might have something special at the end of that.

To check out all of that, and to see how we do it, how we do it with the Rainmaker Platform and with the RainMail directly entwined in it, then how we do that to not only build our email list, but also to teach you and to deepen the relationship with you as an email funnel from a podcast call to action. If either of those fit you, then go to Showrunner.FM/Report.

Jerod Morris: I have to say, you recovered very well and delivered a great call to action.

Jonny Nastor: Thanks. I’ll make it shorter next time.

Jerod Morris: That’s okay. There was a lot to explain. It’s new, and people are used to the same call to action over and over again. They’re probably as bored with it as we are. This is a good time to spend a little bit more time, explain it. This is something really good.

You’re going to want this report. I put together one of these videos. You put together a couple of them. I just got done reading the email that you wrote where you tell your story. I know you were a little bit scared that it was too long. It wasn’t. It was great. That’s part of that funnel. I think folks who listen to this show are really going to get a lot out of it. I really recommend it, Showrunner.FM/Report.

Again, kudos to Will, who’s done a lot of work on this. Maybe at some point when we talk about putting this all together, which we use Rainmaker for, we’ll bring Will on and get some of his insight, too.

Will has also built his own audience, and I think will have some interesting insights that he’s learned from that experience, too. He’s a showrunner. Glad that he’s helping us out with this now. Thank you, Will. Thank you, Jonny. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Showrunner. We’ll talk to you next week.

Jonny Nastor: Take care.

Jonny Nastor: I’ll be better-rested next week.

Jerod Morris: I was trying to see how low I can get my voice.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, it’s hard to know sometimes. I don’t know. I don’t know if I can go lower, or just if I’m going slower.

Jerod Morris: Sometimes I just like to hear my voice low because now with a new baby I spend so much time with a high-pitched voice.

Jonny Nastor: “Hey, how’s it going?” It’s good to know that I can still talk like this.

Jerod Morris: Yes, yes. Good, I can still do this.

Jonny Nastor: So that was the longest intro ever. Now, for the main topic …

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I was trying to see how low I can get my voice.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah, it’s hard to know sometimes. I don’t know if I can go lower, or just if I’m going slower.