In this month's "Question of the Month," I wanted to explore the discrepancy between Spotify's perceived dominance and the actual listening habits of podcasters. Despite frequent headlines touting Spotify as the number one streaming platform, my personal statistics and community feedback tell a different story. By surveying my audience about their platform preferences, I uncovered that Apple remains the top choice for most listeners, challenging the narrative often presented in media reports about Spotify's market leadership.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in!

Gear Review: HollyLand Lark M2s Wireless Lavalier System

Quick Take:

I was genuinely impressed by the Holly Land Lark M2s - this tiny microphone packs a surprisingly warm sound. At around $150, it's a solid investment for podcasters and content creators.

Key Features:

• Compact wireless lavalier microphone system
• Versatile receiver with USB-C and headphone jack connectivity
• Compatible with phones and recorders (I used my Rodecaster Duo)
• Built-in noise reduction app
• Option to record two mics on separate channels for post-production editing

Pro Tip: Grab this from Sweetwater. They offer:

• Extended warranties
• Killer customer service
• Competitive pricing
• Free shipping (often cheaper than Amazon)
• FREE CANDY<<<<<

Noise Reduction: The app's built-in feature is decent - not perfect, but definitely helpful. Pro move? Set up both mics on separate channels so you can fine-tune your audio in post-production.

Bottom Line: The Lark M2s is a compact, versatile mic system that punches above its weight. Definitely worth checking out for podcasters looking to upgrade their audio game.

Takeaways:

• The new Hollyland Lark M2S microphone sounds surprisingly warm, which totally blew my mind!
• Spotify claims to be the number one podcast platform, but the real stats tell a different tale.
• Charging guests to appear on your podcast? Brace yourself, the FTC has some rules you need to follow!
• Using music in your podcast? Be careful, because Spotify's bots don’t care about your permissions!
• It's always a good idea to double-check the facts you find online, especially from big companies!
• Exercise is tough, but once you get through it, you'll feel so proud of yourself, like you just conquered a mountain!

Links referenced in this episode:

• Hollyland Lark M2S Wireless Lavalier System
• schoolofpodcasting.com
• thehoodratrecap.com
• createartpodcast.com
• findapodcastabout.xyz
• passacls.com
• tkbpodcaststudios.com
• castahead.net
• Deal Casters Podcast
• Financially Confident Christian
• Grit and Growth Business
• Truth Unveiled with Ralph
• Because of My Podcast
• Akron Podcast
• Feeding My Faith
• Podcast Hot Seat
• Podcast Review Show
• Podcast Rodeo Show
• Podcast Website Tips
• Profit From Your Podcast
• Future of Podcasting
• Your Podcast Consultant
• Heartbeat Community Tool
• Circle Community Tool
• Switchy (Dave's favorite marketing tool)

Mentioned in this episode:

Live Appearances

I will be at the Empower Podcasting Conference in Charlotte NC September 26-28 This is going to be a great conference. I'll be speaking and I can't wait to see you there.

Where Will I Be?

Question of the Month

This month's question comes from Todd the Gator of the Gaurdian Downcast (guardiandowncast.com). He wants to know: How long did it take to go from idea to podcast? Also how long did it take to find your community? I need your answers by September 26th

Question of the Month

Check Out Dave's Newsletter With Behind the Scenes Content

In each issue of Podcasting Observations, I share my thoughts on what is happening in the podcasting space, my latest content, and things that have caught my eye. I also may ask for your opinion. Join the free community

Podcasting Observations

You Have A Message That Needs to Be Heard

You have a message that needs to be shared. Discover the art of podcasting at the School of Podcasting. We teach you to shine a light on your stories, inspiring others one episode at a time. Let your voice be your legacy. Go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/join

School of Podcasting

Today on episode number 990 of the school of Podcasting, we're going to take a look at the new Hollyland Lark M2S lavalier microphone. It's wireless and I actually just listened back to something I recorded. This sounds really good. I was surprised how warm it is.

And also it's question of the month. And I wanted to know. I keep hearing how Spotify is number one. It's so good and everybody's using Spotify.

And I was like, can we get a double check on that? So you told me how much of your audience is using Spotify.

I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is where I help you plan, launch and grow your podcast.

My website, schoolofpodcasting.com while you're there and you want to sign up for either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription, use the coupon code listener. Well, one of the things that can. Can we just admit I have a bias? And if you're a regular listener of the show, you're going to go, no, no.

And that is, I don't like, look, I love Spotify as a music service. I, I do not trust them as far as you can throw them as anything in podcasting. And so I'll give you an example.

A report just came out where Spotify was like, hey, look, we had these people come over and start using video on Spotify. Cause you know when you think video, you think you. I mean, Spotify. And so sure enough, these people came over and started having really good results.

And it just so happened that Spotify forgot to mention, oh, we gave them $5,000 worth of advertising to promote their show. Just a little detail that didn't come out. So I'm, I'm not a person that now I'm open. I'm open.

Like, hey, if you can say nope, here's where they did this and this and that's good. I'll be happy to do that. But you know, they're trying to bundle everything so they can pay authors and musicians less.

They just, they just do things that I go, oh. You know, and they add a lot of things that are only available in Spotify.

My favorite was thanks to whoever's been spamming the comments in Spotify, telling people to come learn how to podcast from you. Thanks, appreciate that. Because, you know, I got nothing else to do than, you know, delete spam from my Spotify listings.

I guess I could turn them off if I wanted to. But at any rate, if you're wondering why, Dave, because it's question of the month time. Why did I ask this question?

Because it was starting to come out over and over that Spotify was the number one place to find podcasts that everybody was using Spotify. Like, Spotify is the thing. And I'm like, I don't think so.

And so I asked you, hey, I'm not asking how many downloads you got, but how many percentage wise, what percentage of your audience is using Spotify? And so I'll start off, well, let's get you involved. And then I'll talk about what I found with my show, because I was surprised.

Again, I'm open to, you know, new data, but let's hear what you had to say.

Hey, Dave, this is Gasper from the Hood Rat recap podcast. We wanted to answer the question of the month. What percentage of our listenership comes from Spotify? So we pull about 22.4% from Spotify.

The lion's share of the rest of our listenership comes from Apple podcasts, which is 31.2%, and the remaining come from everywhere else you could pull a podcast from. We actually find these numbers kind of encouraging because we're not fans of Spotify these days. The. We had a bad run in with them.

A couple of our episodes got flagged for usage of music, music which we actually had permission to use. We're a podcast that covers a specific band, and we were using their music with their permission.

And the Spotify bots just flagged the episodes and pulled them from the platform. And there is just no means to contest that. You basically get an opportunity to contest it with the bots. There's no live human in the process.

And despite having the band and their organization looking to help us out to try to get episodes back up on the platform, there's just no recourse. It's. It's kind of crazy, especially with the idea of despite having permission to use that music.

I mean, there is the concept of fair use, which, I mean, I believed we were doing. I know that's a gray area, but that's for another argument. Anyway, to tell you a little bit about us, we are the Hood Rat recap podcast.

We cover a band called the Hold Steady. Dave, I know you know a lot about rock and roll. But I bet you don't know about these guys, so I challenge you to check them out.

They've been around for about 20 years. They're a lot of fun, huge cult following.

And you could find us@thehoodra recap.com or you can find us on our link tree at L I N K T R EE the hoodrat recap. Thanks, man. Bye.

Thank you. Gasper and yeah, 22%. Not a bad number. Not surprising. Have you ever noticed the bigger the company, the worse the customer service?

I know when I got kicked out of my Facebook group, I did eventually get back in, but there wasn't any kind of, you know, personalized, hey, can I talk to somebody? And they wouldn't tell me what I did wrong. I just broke the terms of service.

And someone at the school of podcasting just went through that where you broke the terms of service and you're like, well, yeah, but specifically, nope, we're not going to tell you. And then luckily they let him back into his group. But I'm a big fan of Heartbeat.

If you got the budget and you want to go circle, to me, Circle's just an overpriced version of Heartbeat. But be careful using other people's stuff. And yeah, Spotify is known.

If you have music in your show to give you a bit of a headache and the fact that you mentioned fair use, just realize fair use is the defense you're using when you go to court.

Hey Dave, it's Chris Stone@castahead.net and I'm also the co host of Dealcasters and I'll give you our Dealcasters Spotify percentage.

But I also manage and produce podcasts for other podcasters and I do have their data so it would give you a larger sample size and they did not give me the permission to tell you who it was. So I will not be sharing that. I'll be giving you some general information but you know, hopefully a larger sample size for your question.

We have 14% of our downloads via, you know, looking at Captivate as our podcast host. 14% of our downloads are on Spotify.

What's interesting though is I did log into my Spotify for Creators account which, you know, they give us analytics there and it was more than double the amount. So what they consider a play on Spotify is obviously far shorter or, you know, who knows what exact metrics they use there. But, I mean, it was.

It was more than double the amount over there. And so there's that. And then, so for a few of the podcasts that I also sort of manage, one uses podbean went in there.

And this is a podcaster who's in a very, very niche industry and gets considerable more downloads, but has a very small amount. So he's at 8% of his listens are via Spotify. I have another one that uses Captivate. Their percentage is 6%.

That podcast is somewhat small, but also, you know, sort of a niche industry. That's 6%. And then finally another podcast that uses Blueberry as their host gets all like a. Just over 5% of their listens come via Spotify. It is a.

An entirely niche and regional podcast as well. So hopefully that helps in. In what you're trying to accomplish here in terms of, you know, Spotify and their downloads.

As always, thanks for everything, Dave. Love the school of podcasting. Love what you're doing and appreciate everything.

Thank you so much, Chris. Yeah, I know YouTube just had this big, like, look at all the plays we have, and they kind of went, oh, yeah, they forgot to mention that.

They just changed that. If you breathe, if you, if you sniff a YouTube short, it now counts as a play. So when they go, we have 500 billion gillion. Yeah, it's okay.

Hey, Dave, it's Ralph from Ask Ralph Media. I have two shows right now, actually three shows now that I think about it. I've got Financially Confident Christian. That's a daily show.

I've got a weekly grit and growth business show, and I just launched Truth Unveiled with Ralph. But you asked specifically about Spotify statistics.

So I pulled up my Spotify statistics here in Captivate, and it looks like for the last 90 days, 1.8% of my listeners are coming from Spotify. Now I get 64.9% from Overcast, which makes a lot of sense to me because I spent a great deal of money advertising there.

But if I look at the last 28 days, actually my Spotify statistics jumped to 5.8%. I don't know if that is a harbinger or something to come, but you ask about that. So that is the statistics I am seeing.

So I just want to thank you for the time today, Dave, and if anybody's interested in improving their finances from a Christian perspective. You can check out my daily Financially Confident Christian podcast.

Or if you're interested in improving your business, my weekly show is gritandgrowthbusiness.com and finally, if you're interested in understanding how today's cultural events, all the crazy things going on around you can be matched up with scripture, you can go to Truth Unveiled with Ralph. Hey Dave, great to catch up with you today and you have a great day, my friend.

Thank you, Ralph. I have links to Everybody shows out in the show notes but noticed 1.8% that does not seem to jive with the media.

We're hearing where, you know, Spotify is the place that people are going to consume podcasts. Let's toss it over to Tim.

Hey Dave, this is Timothy Kimo Brian, your head instigator for Create Art Podcast where I help my listeners create more than they consume and tame their inner critic.

You can find that podcast@createartpodcast.com My other podcast is Find a Podcast about and that's where I help those listeners find their next binge worthy podcast and outsmart the algorithm. You can find that one at Find a Podcast About Dot xyz.

So for Create Art Podcast and quite interestingly enough, I'm getting 0.5% on Spotify with Create Art Podcast. Now the interesting thing with that is I am a, you know, I'm a PC guy, I'm not a Mac guy, but I've got, you know, 16%, almost 17% on Apple Podcasts.

And then again, looking at what Captivate is giving me, I've got 22% as unknown. So some of that could be Spotify, but I doubt it because it divvies it up pretty well. So that's just for Create Art Podcast.

Let's see how we're doing over at Find a Podcast About. We are seeing all time off of Captivate. 1.1% is using Spotify to go ahead and listen to that podcast. Now here's a crazy one for you, Dave.

Alexa is getting 77, I'm sorry, 72.7% and the world famous unknown is getting 5.6%. And Apple Podcasts is getting 3.8% just off of that podcast right there.

So the last podcast I want to talk about here, and this is one that I'm doing for a client of mine.

Yes, I have a client with TKB Podcast Studios and you can find that at TKB podcast studios.com anyhow, the name of my client's podcast is One Minute Can Save a Life and what that podcast is is it's a discussion on suicide prevention. Now for that one, Spotify is getting 7.6%, 7.6%, and Apple Podcast is getting 22.6%, 22.6.

And our good friends at Unknown and you should really, you know, get that to be a podcast player is at 8.9%. So as you can see, the majority of my stuff is below your 2% number, except for I have one outlier, which is my client's podcast, which is at 7.6%.

But I mean, even, even then for players. Well, that's the fourth largest for players. But anyhow, Dave, thanks for bringing up this question.

And maybe it is going to spark some different questions, like what is this unknown thing? And does Spotify count with, you know, Chrome being listed as the app that people are using? Not sure. I'm not smart enough to do that.

Dave, if anyone is smart enough, it would definitely be you and Daniel J. Lewis. So maybe that's something for your other podcast, the Future of Podcasting, which I am a subscriber to on Pocketcasts and good pods.

Anyhow, have a great day, Dave. Thank you for doing this and thank you for all that you do, and I will see you in September at Empowered Podcasting in North Carolina.

Thank you, Tim. Next up, we have Paul.

I'm Paul from the Pass ACLS Tip of the Day podcast. With my podcast, I help medical professionals prepare for their upcoming ACLS class.

Every Monday through Friday, I cover one of the core concepts needed to help students pass their written exam and megacode. Links to subscribe or follow can be found at passacls.com along with links to other medical podcasts that cover ACLS related topics.

Looking at my engagement stats on Captivate, it seems that the majority of people who listen to my show use Apple Podcast. The specific breakdown for the past 90 days is Apple Podcast in first with 51.6%, Spotify second with 24.8%.

I hope this helps with your data collection and provides information to help your other listeners. I can't wait to hear what you're going to do with this information. Thanks for everything you do, Dave.

Thank you, Paul. And just to do this quickly, I do a show creatively named Akron podcast for Akron, Ohio. 3.4%. The because of my podcast show that I do 4.5%.

Now this one and I'm not sure why, I do a show called Feeding My Faith. Actually, Spotify was the number one app there, 52% where Apple was only 15. The podcast Hot Seat show where I audit people's show.

Again, Spotify was number one at 19% with Apple being six. I have no idea why that is, because the rest were kind of the normal. The podcast review show that I do with eric K. Johnson, 4%.

Now, the podcast rodeo show, which was the precursor to. To the podcast hot seat Again, I don't know why. Maybe because younger people like to hear audits. I don't know. But 38% was Spotify and 8% was Apple.

The podcast website tips. Spotify was 21% where Apple was 35. Profit from your podcast again, Spotify was number one. 39% to Apple's 18.

This show that you're listening to right now, and for the record, I realize listening to numbers is. Wow. Is this just wow. You're riveted. You're on the edge of your seat right now. We're almost done. This show, 8% compared to Apple's 40.

Now, I don't know if that has to do with the fact that this show's been going on for 20 years. And back in the day, you know, Apple was the top. I remember when Apple had like, 80% of the market, and now they're down.

The future of podcasting, which Tim mentioned, 8%. Spotify again, not a huge chunk of that. And your podcast consultant was very close, where Spotify had 20% and Apple had 22. So why did I do this?

Why do we care? Dave?

I just wanted to see, as we saw in most cases here, that as much as they can tell me how great Spotify is, and there are 8 billion people over there doing everything is great and wonderful, and there are butterflies and rainbows and puppies that at least in this circle of podcaster creators and podcast listeners, for the most part, no. And by that I mean, yeah, no. So just anytime. I'm not saying that Spotify is a bunch of liars, I'm saying they don't always come full reveal.

Yeah, this is coming out great. They don't come out full reveal with their information. Sometimes they don't tell you all the truth. How's that? It's not that they're lying.

They're just not always telling you the rest of the story. So that was my whole point of that exercise. Cause I just got tired of hearing how great Spotify was, and I was like, all right, let's see if it is.

And from what I just heard, no, I got two more quick stats, and these are from Libsyn and Buzzsprout. So Buzzsprout has Spotify at the number two spot at 34%. And Libsyn has them also at the number two spot, which is a. There's a big gap.

There's not that much of a gap between Apple and Spotify on Buzzsprout. There is on Libsyn. Libsyn has them at number two at 21%. So the one thing we want to get out of this is if you put a button on your website.

Not like, click my pod or something like that. No, no. Put these on your website and reinforce your brand.

If you have Apple and Spotify because you're feeling lazy, you could get those two and probably have 60 to 80% of the market. I personally, I love Pocket Cast mainly because they have a bookmark feature. So I'm always hearing something.

I'm like, oh, I want to talk about this so I can set a bookmark. I've used Overcast in the past. I like Cast O Matic. If you're doing the whole podcasting 2.0 thing. I know Tim.

Tim mentioned he really likes good pods because he's actually creating a community over there. They have comments and things like that. So Tom Tim really likes good pods. But again, my main point is a. And this.

This goes with any kind of news from anybody. Question everything, boys and girls, because when it's a press release, they're not always, you know, forthright as they should be.

Maybe in just a second, I'm going to be tapping into the Hollyland Lark Mark 2 lavalier microphone. For those of you especially that are doing video, it's a pretty cool little piece of kit. And you'll hear it right after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey, this is Doug from King's X. And if you like what you hear, go tell someone and may the groove be with you.

Thank you, Doug. And what you're listening to right now is me holding The Hollyland Lark Mark 2s, if we want to get super specific.

And right now I'm holding this about, I don't know, a thumbs way from my mouth. It's not tacked onto my shirt. The actual microphone part is the size of my pinky fingernail. It's very tiny. It's very, very small.

And so you'll notice that if I say my S's and T's now, you know, seashell, seashells down by the seashore. Everything is very clear. But it's not going to be if I. I'm going to mute this. And now go back to. This is the Rode podmic usb.

So no matter what you do, it's not going to sound as good as, you know, an actual dynamic microphone, but it's also, I don't know, 1.1 millionth of the size. So if you're worried about video or what's cool about this is you basically just tap it on.

Let me turn off this mic and turn this one back on, and I'll try to make this a little louder. There we go. And it's. It's super easy. You can just tap this on. I have the.

The kind of the package deal where you have the two microphones and a receiver. So how I'm using this right now as the receiver is I'm taking the headphone out and putting it into a converter to stick it into my Rodecaster duo.

But let me now clip this onto my shirt, which is super simple. So here we go. And now, so it's right underneath my chin.

And you'll notice that CCL C cells, not quite as clear, which is why there's like a thing now of people doing the. Where they're holding their little microphone.

But what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this channel and I'm going to put it on its own channel and tweak it. So realize it doesn't matter as much as I.

You know, I love people that love tech, but in the end, I can make this microphone sound good in what they call post production, which means, you know, after everything is over, I can come in here and add some S's and T's to it and a little treble, little, little, you know, just sprinkle some. Some clarity to it.

Now.

Now, this goes for about $150 on Sweetwater, which is my favorite place to buy stuff. Nothing against Amazon, but a.

Their price is typically the same, and they add another year of warranty to it, and they give you candy, and their customer service is almost annoying. It's so good. So, again, if you're looking for an easy microphone, it comes with its own little case that you charge the case.

So if for some reason, the batteries last really long in these microphones, but if for some reason you run out of batteries and you're out in the middle of the woods, because, you know, we all record podcasts out in the middle of the woods, you could put the microphones back into the case. It would recharge them and the receiver and then keep going on.

So it's the size, it fits in the palm of your hand, the little case, and it comes with a bag and Some other things, I'll put a link to it out in the show notes, but I'm going to be playing with this and I keep telling myself I'm going to be doing more videos. And what's so funny right now is I actually just positioned myself because this is me. I'm moving my head around here.

So this is me kind of with my mouth a little closer to the microphone where it is. And now if I look completely the other way.

So you're going to get a little of that because again, it's a lavalier microphone and you're also going to pick up some room noise, probably because it's meant to kind of pick up in a multi direction. But if you're a gear head, it's a pretty cool piece of kit. And as you can hear, you can make it sound like anything.

The other thing is I'm using post production here, but I could have also gone into the Rodecaster and just tweaked the microphone and added a little extra treble, maybe cut out some of this or that just to make it sound a little better. I could have done that and avoided doing it after I recorded it. Just tweak it to the way you want it and then when you record, you're done.

All right, here's another thing we want to test and I got to tell you, this is really cool. Right now I have this plugged into my phone and via USB C and I've also got it plugged into my receiver is going again back out to the Rodecaster.

Now there's a noise canceling option here and that's why you'll hear a fan in the background if I just shut up. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn on this noise canceling level and you have an option of low. So let's turn that on in 3, 2, 1.

And I'm still here in the fan. All right, now I'm going to switch it to high in 3, 2. All right. That greatly reduced the fan noise in the background. So that's kind of handy.

And it's a tool. You have a volume adjustment. I could turn it up. So here's the loudest it can go and here's the quietest it'll go. Or maybe I have that backwards.

Maybe one is the loud. Nope. I can see here the. There's a little meter here. So I can see that.

And then if I want it in mobile and mobile man, I can't read today if I wanted to in mono. So If I have two microphones clicked in, I could do that and mix them into one channel. Or I could have two microphones in stereo.

But I would say I'm not overly impressed with the. Let me turn it back off here. I'll turn off the noise canceling level. Well, actually that does a pretty decent job. Let me go back down to low.

But this is why again, having separate tracks, you could easily clean that out in my good friend post production. But I am impressed the fact that I have this plugged into my phone via usb. The. The receiver.

And the receiver is also sending out via the headphone out into the Rodecaster. So it's going into the phone and it's going into the Rodecaster at the same time. So versatile as well.

And as I said, I'm back on the road and it's around $150. The thing I actually just did one and I like this. The receiver has a USB C out.

So I'm able to just like I have to take my phone out of the case if I want to use their built in receiver. Or I can take the actual receiver, kind of made more for a camera and take the USB C out of that and put it into my phone, which is kind of handy.

There's an option there that says, hey, use the speaker on the phone so that when you hit playback, you can hear your video. And I gotta tell you, I was pretty impressed with the audio. It's actually normally lavs are kind of tinny and there's not a lot of warmth to them.

There's actually a fair amount of warmth to the point where you're like, hey, can we throw in a little treble? But I was impressed with how it sounded just plugging the mic directly into my phone and recording a quick short.

And I like the fact that that receiver can export both USB C to your phone and a headphone jack out to either your camera or in my case, the Rodecaster Duo.

But right now, my stack, my stack, that's what the kids are calling it, is I'm still using my Rodecaster USB as my main microphone that is going into a Rodecaster Duo and that is then being recorded directly into Hindenburg. Oh, yeah, it's time to unearth some of the classics because, you know, there are some things that are really, really worth repeating.

And so at this point, we're going to bring out some podcast classics. The first one is I hate the sound of my voice. And this is actually science.

It's because when you hear yourself, you hear yourself through your ears, duh. And through your skull. It's called Bone Conduction, which I still think is a great name for a band.

And so what happens is you hear yourself talk and that skull makes it sound nice and warm and bassy. And when you listen back, it's like somebody turned off the subwoofer. It's like, where's all the bass?

Because you're just listening through your ears. And so consequently, you hear yourself and go, ugh. So how do you get over this?

Just remember, have you ever been in the middle of a normal conversation on your phone and the other person on the phone is like, oh, I can't take it. And they just hang up on you? Yeah, me neither. So your voice is fine. It's different, but it's fine.

The next one heard someone talking about this on a podcast. In fact, they were going to be speaking about it at Podcast Movement. And that is charging your guest to be on your show.

And this gets a big from me now you be you.

But there is one thing you really need to be aware of, because the ftc, which is a governing board here, that find the crap out of Kim Kardashian because she kept holding up stuff and going, oh, I love this, it's great. And not telling her audience, oh, they paid me lots of money to hold this up and say it's great.

And so if you charge somebody to be on your show, if you ever listen to, especially on Sundays, you know, these kind of off peak hours of radio. Yeah. If you actually listen still to the radio and it'll say the following program is a paid blah blah for Dr. So and so.

And the gift of gold or whatever it is. Right. You have to disclose that stuff up front. You can't at the end go, oh, by the way, you know, Jim and Cheryl paid me 200 bucks to be on the show.

No, no, no, no, no. Gotta do that up front. And what's interesting about this is the FTC made a video specifically for influencers, which is you.

And so if you're like, ah, no, no, no, they're watching, they're watching us and they're ready to swoop in. And so keep that in mind. And my biggest fear is, look, I've. There's, there's poor, there's broke, and then there's bankrupt.

And in my late 20s, I had to file for bankruptcy after going through lots and lots of trying to have a baby treatments. And you just got to keep in mind that when, let's say you charge somebody 300 bucks to be on your show.

And I'm just pulling that right out of my, my buttocks. And if that's the case, you're like, look at this, honey, we got an extra 300 bucks this month.

Well, fast forward, because I've been there three months and that 300 bucks is now going towards the new car payment, Susie's braces and oopsie, we need, you know, shingles on the house again. All of a sudden, that extra money is an extra.

And consequently, you may, you may take anybody with a pulse, which means the content is no good, which means your audience leaves. And that's the reason people were paying to be on your show, was to get in front of your audience. I just think it's a very, very slippery slope.

And for me, the biggest benefit of being on a show is the relationship you build with the other hosts. So that when somebody says, do you guys know anybody that's like, could help me with my podcast? They go, oh, Dave Jackson.

So those are things I haven't said in a while, but especially the one with charging your guests.

That needs to be repeated and that needs to be common knowledge, because I've never heard anybody who's like, the easiest way to make money with your podcast is to charge a gas. Now here. Yeah, see, and I never hear them say, now be sure to tell the FCC up front. No, never hear that line. So keep that in mind.

Those people may be going, look, just with three easy payments, you can buy my course and I will tell you how to charge people for to be on your show. And they never tell you how to do it, like legally. All right, and the last thing I want to leave you with is somewhat of a tangent. Oh, I know.

So lovely. Here comes another 10 second tangent from Dave. Brilliant. Such absolute rubbish. No, this isn't rubbish.

First of all, I've been trying to get a little more healthy. You know, I'm not getting, I'm not getting any younger.

And I've noticed that I never want to get on a treadmill, but I'm always happy when I get off because I feel kind of proud of myself. And so I've noticed that some of us are trying to grow our podcast. See, I told you I'd bring this into podcasting.

But we're doing things, and they're not bad.

Like, walking around the block is activity, but at least for me, and because we're talking about exercise, always consult your doctor before attempting any exercise.

But for me, walking around the block, even though I live on a big hill, it's not really, you know, I'm not wheezing when I'm done, but so I'm at the gym and I, you know, I get on the treadmill and do this and that, nothing really crazy. And I said, all right, well, I've heard about these high interval, intense training, basically. And this is what I did. This is for me.

So I walk for two minutes and then I basically jog for one. And I, and I just keep repeating two off, two on. And even the off is like a decent clip. And so the first time I do it, I was like, oh, okay.

Second time I do it, I'm like, look at my watch. And my heart rate's going, hey, look at you trying to do something, you know, some actual exercise.

And by the third time I do it, I'm starting to feel some sweat. By the fourth time I do it, I'm like, wow, okay, my shirt's getting a little ripe here.

And the thing is, probably after the third one, my brain starts telling me, are you sure you should be doing this? Like, it starts to try to talk me out of it. Did I just feel you pull a muscle? No. Are you sure? Can you double check? No or. Good.

And my brain is trying to talk me out of it. And even after a while I was like, man, I'm really like, I'm sweating like a pig now. And I just said, you can do this.

It's because, plus by the time the treadmill actually speeds up to the speed I'm going at, it's not really a minute, it's like 50 seconds because it takes a while. And so I just told myself, you can do this. Like you physically, you can do this.

The only thing that's going to stop you, because your legs not, you know, there's nothing like, my kneebs are wobbly. Like, you can do this. Not fun, but you can do this. And so I did.

And what was interesting is a, when I got done again, I was really proud of myself because I was now like, wow, look at me, all sweaty and gooey. But when I stepped on the scale the next day, especially if I did that a couple days in a row, lo and behold, the weight started to go down.

And so my message here to you is, just like me, there are times when you're like, ah, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that. There's no way.

And it's our brain, because I don't know if we're nervous or what's going on, but maybe the brain is like, oh, is he really trying to exercise? He's trying. Look at this. He's trying to exercise. Quick, talk him out of it.

I don't know what's going on, but I'm just here to say if you're thinking of starting a podcast, you know, yeah, you can do this. You keep talking yourself out of it. I know people that have been thinking about starting a podcast for years, and that is not an exaggeration.

I'm here to tell you, you can do it. Nobody's gonna punch you in the face. You're not gonna sound stupid. You can edit out the stupid parts. That's what I do.

Although I put mine at the end so you can hear that. You know what? I am human, and so are you. And it's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect.

But as I was getting off the treadmill, I was like, I need to share this, because I just. There are a lot of things we think we can't do, and we can.

And then when you do them and you push through on the other side, there's a better life waiting for you.

And I just was like, okay, I got to somehow work this into the podcast just to kind of give you a get out there and win one for the Gipper whatever inspirational speech. But just, look, I didn't think. I was like, I'm not sure, you know? And then I did.

And then I did it again the next day, and then I did it again the next day, and the more number one, I tried something different, because I could have said, I've tried everything to lose weight. Well, I didn't try this. And so when you're trying to grow your show and you're like, I've tried everything. Oh, really?

Have you hung up flyers in the cafeteria yet? I know that's old school, but who knows? That might be the thing that really, it's in the right place at the right time. Okay, have you done this?

Have you done that? Keep trying. Because you never know what's going to work.

And all of a sudden, you step on the scale and you're like, whoa, look at that kind of results. Which means you podcasters, are you measuring your results? And I mean more than downloads. Are you going in and looking at your completion rates?

And are you using something like Switchy, which is my favorite link shortener, so you can track and see what are people clicking on? Do it with purpose. Do it with an idea and an actual strategy, not just like, well, let's throw it on the wall.

Well, yeah, you're throwing it on the wall. But let's see if it works or not. Because you can do this. Just have to work at it.

Maybe a little smarter because you find out there is a difference between being active and exercising. And there's a difference between kind of just throwing things out there and actual marketing your podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So today we learned to always double check the facts that you find on the Internet, which is kind of a duh kind of thing. But, you know, not all companies reveal all of the facts when talking about their company. So keep that in mind.

Keep in mind the FTC wants you to disclose that up front if you're charging your guests.

And you never really want to get on a treadmill, but boy, do you feel good about it when you get off and you're all gooey and sweaty and realize if you've been looking at that podcast going, not sure if I could do it. Yeah, you can. In the future, we're going to be talking about podcasting and the crazy cycle.

I'll explain what that is when we get there as well as I got some interviews already lined up. If you haven't followed the show in your favorite podcast app, it's super simple.

Just go to schoolofpodcasting.com follow and never miss an episode and get it as soon as it's ready. I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do. Been doing it for 20 years now and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together.

And until next week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.

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