The Plus One Theory
The Plus One Theory Podcast explores how small, intentional actions can create big, lasting impacts in our personal and professional lives. Each episode features inspiring guests sharing their experiences with kindness, resilience, and the transformative power of doing just one more, The Plus One Theory in action.
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The Plus One Theory
Episode 32: The Art of Meaningful Conversation with Robert Plank!
Robert Plank shares how podcasting transforms from mere content creation to a powerful relationship-building tool when approached with authenticity and purpose. His experience with over 1,400 episodes demonstrates that meaningful conversations create lasting connections that benefit everyone involved.
• Start where you are with the equipment you have, content quality matters more than production value
• Avoid stockpiling episodes as it creates "productive procrastination" that eventually becomes self-sabotage
• Focus on the 20/80 principle: spend 20% creating content and 80% marketing it
• Use conversations to build relationships with guests through regular follow-up and promotion
• Embrace imperfect action rather than seeking perfection before publishing
• Utilize AI tools like ChatGPT to repurpose podcast content across multiple platforms
• Build your podcast with long-term relationship cultivation in mind, not just content creation
• Challenge yourself regularly to avoid boredom and keep improving your podcast
• Consider outsourcing technical aspects so you can focus on the relationships and conversations
If you're interested in having a team handle the technical aspects of your podcasting, check out Robert's Done For You Podcasting service at dfypodcast.com or listen to his podcast at marketeroftheday.com.
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There. Welcome back to the Plus One Theory podcast, where we believe small, intentional steps can lead to powerful transformation. I'm your host, pam Dwyer, speaker, author and founder of the Plus One Theory. And now Delay the Binge. Each week, we explore real stories and real strategies that help you turn past pain into purpose, finish stronger than you started and become someone else's plus one. Today, I am thrilled to introduce a guest who truly understands the power of conversation and connection. Robert Plank is the founder of Done For you Podcasting, where he helps thought leaders grow their business through one of the most powerful tools we have today podcasting. Robert makes it simple by removing the tech overwhelm and giving entrepreneurs the space to focus on what matters most building trust, deepening relationships and turning interviews into opportunities. Whether you're looking to connect with referral partners or reach new prospects, robert's approach helps you turn meaningful conversations into measurable impact. You're going to love hearing from him. Let's dive in, robert. Welcome to the show and let's start by telling everyone a little bit about yourself. Like what makes Robert Plank tick.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. What makes Robert Plank tick? Is solving problems, right? That's what you and me are all about, Ms Pam. We're entrepreneurs and you figure what's average, right? What's mediocre? What's playing it safe?
Speaker 2:That's someone that says I don't want to get in anyone's way, I don't want to ruffle any feathers, I just want to show up at 9 am and leave at5 pm and do just enough to not get fired. And what a miserable existence right In this day and age, with everything that's possible with you can go to any country, talk to any person, your infinity device in your pocket. I mean, you used to have like a computer that was the size of a house, that didn't even fit into this, and now we just have all these opportunities in front of us. But we can't squander it, right, and time is short and we have to push ourselves, and that's a combination of taking a risk, get outside of our comfort zone, put in the hard work ethic, and so I'm all about making those connections and growing a business and using podcasting to do all of it, because you start a podcast and you can demonstrate your authority.
Speaker 2:But the real exciting secret sauce is when you get other people on, just like how you and me are doing right this instant. Right, you have someone on your podcast, you make some new friends, you get some new content, you rank in the search engines and you just kind of everyone evolves in a way. Right, Like you make me think about. I have a bio that I use to introduce myself, but then what you just said there like I know you took it and you added to it I'm thinking like man, I need to like go and get the transcript of that and add a couple of sentences she said to my bio, or even just that clip on its own. I'm like I could pull just that out and put it right there on YouTube and that's an endorsement. And so, just by us interacting and little bits, that rising tide lifts all boats. So that's what I'm all about. Is that incremental progress, getting towards success by talking to people, which can be awkward, but it's necessary, it should be done.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. And the cool, cool thing about podcasting is, if you're going to interview someone, you go online, you start checking them out, right Because you want to know what you're talking about, what to ask and all that. So not only have I been a guest on your show, but, man, is it true that you have done over 1,200 episodes?
Speaker 2:As of today, it is 1,000. Well, it's 1,402 episodes total. So I think, as far as the subsection that's interviews, I think 1,200 is accurate.
Speaker 1:That just blows my mind because I'm 30 episodes in, I'm just starting out. But man, what you've met so many people and shared your story and, you know, heard theirs, that's got to be way amazing. I would love to hear every I'm going to hear every episode.
Speaker 2:If it's out there, ok, better get started right, because I'll be to hear every episode if it's out there. Okay, better get started right, because I'll be adding to it so you might fall behind.
Speaker 1:It's going to take a while, but from my own personal experience, man, you were. You really put me at ease because you know I am fairly new to this world and so doing being a guest on a podcast was a little I was a little nervous about it, but as soon as we started talking, you know, I was really comfortable and so you have a way of pulling that out in people.
Speaker 2:What do you think? I didn't realize, but it wasn't always that way, right, I used to be socially awkward I guess I can be sometimes, so it doesn't come naturally and I used to be a little envious when you meet someone and they just be real charismatic and real people. Wherever they go, they collect friends and I'm just like man, how do you do that? Right, like, I feel many times like I'm in that middle phase of like. I feel like I'm smart enough to know I'm awkward but not smart enough to overcome it, and I think that there's something to be said about the practice and the repetitions and that just this, this idea that when you get someone on a live podcast, it's a good filter for people, right, like we, like you, like you said, you can go on LinkedIn, you can go on YouTube, we can even go on their Amazon and get a pretty good idea of what they've accomplished, who they are, and then you meet them in person.
Speaker 2:You can I don't know what it is, but you can somehow like subconsciously tell from the body language and the facial expressions and how much they're listening to you, or if they interrupt you or if, like, a big thing is like how much you mirror each other right, like if one person talks for five minutes and the other person just talks a little bit, and it's like a struggle.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of a back and forth dance and it's just a good way to just separate the. There's people that just aren't there yet, but there's also people that are kind of too mean and too bully, and so it's like you just you meet people and you figure them out and you think that that can then lead to sometimes making friends or making clients or referral partners, and so it's just it's a good way to overcome all the noise, all the data, all the AI stuff that's out there. It's that person to person connection, and so I feel like just the getting smoother and natural of it. I think you never quite get to a hundred percent, but just by being there and doing it hundreds of times, so that way you can do it in your sleep, I think it just becomes more natural, becomes a habit.
Speaker 1:It does and you really do. I don't know how you do it, but what do you think helps people open up so naturally to you? I mean, is it because of the way? Are you a natural at it, like you said? Is it just the experience of doing it over and over and over? I?
Speaker 2:think that I, as far as what I do, consciously, I try to be attentive and I, you know, a big thing with like zooming and podcasting is you look up at the camera, not down at the screen, and that took a lot of practice and I make sure to be like maybe like 20% more exaggerated, animated in what I do, just because that's like a stage presence thing. Right, if you're normal then you look 20% lower. Or if your normal facial expression look like you're frowning, right, they call that resting bee face. So you kind of have to be like 20% more alive. But then I'm also making an effort to listen and then, as far as that exaggeration, like kind of like nod and stuff like that which I used to resist when I was like a punk teenager, I'd be like, oh, I'll listen to someone and I'll be like this and they need to impress me, but like, if you give that little bit of feedback, then they can tell okay, I better wrap up this point or I'll go more down that path.
Speaker 2:But I think that I like to, especially these last few years, be more of an encouraging person, because there's not enough out there and that relates to your mission, how, just like a lot of us are insecure and projecting and wrapped up in our own stuff, and where does that really get you? It seems like a life of misery. And then you end up attracting and surrounding yourself with other miserable people and then you're all just sort of stuck together and what's the point of that? And I think that it's better to embrace that awkwardness and be a more positive person and be more encouraging, because, like you would say, like if we just can encourage one person per day, that's a lot more than a lot of the most people get. So I'm just, I'm just like hey, you did that thing, I'm really proud of you and I make a deliberate effort just to be that, that positive, sort of Mr Rogers type of force.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it is contagious. I mean, it not only helps other people to show kindness, but there is literally a dopamine rush in your brain when you are kind. I read a statistic about that the other day. Some doctor did a study and you get the same dopamine rush when you receive it, but when you give it as well. So it's very good for our brains to be kind.
Speaker 2:Yes, imagine that. And like my mind was blown when I heard about the Ben Franklin principle. Have you heard of this one?
Speaker 1:No, what is it?
Speaker 2:It's that if I give you a dollar, pam, you'd think that you would like me more, but it makes me like you more and it's one of these weird like when you give to someone, it makes me like you more. And it's one of these weird like when, when you give to someone, it makes you like them more. So and it busts out of this thinking that you're talking about right. We think that it's very like zero sum, transactional exchange of information, but it helps others and even, like we were saying before the call this idea of you you keep helping others and you keep putting little stuff out there and imagine the ripple effect at the end of your lifetime, what accumulates. And there's lots of people, especially with podcasting and content creation and your authoring, your speaking that you'll never meet, but you just help them through the ripple effect. So it's all good, it's all important.
Speaker 1:Man? It so is, and you know where I first learned that.
Speaker 1:It's all important, man, it so is, and you know where I first learned that, and I was going to ask about your childhood too, just real quick, just to see what built, what created you the way you are today, because our past does. It doesn't define us, but it definitely prepares us to do what we end up doing, and so so me growing up, I had a hand, just a handful of people that were very kind to me, and it's impacted me my entire life. So me growing up, I had a hand, just a handful of people that were very kind to me, and I it's impacted me my entire life, just those few seconds of someone seeing me and being kind, and it really impacted me forever. So I mean, what about you? I mean, how did you grow up? Did you grow up with a big family? Did you have both parents? Did you struggle? What's what happened there?
Speaker 2:Oh, now we're getting into the deep, scary stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, I had a small.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel I feel like I'm at the psychologist. But I had a sort of smallish family. You know, both parents had a sister, but I was just, I was surrounded with, with a lot of jerks, like. I grew up in this town called Tracy, california, and basically there's the Bay Area of California right, there's the coast, there's San Francisco and all that, and then that gets too crowded and what do they do? They build some other towns in the east or they build those up, and so we ended up with this town exploded from 20,000 to 70,000. I think it's like 100,000 now.
Speaker 2:But when I was in high school, this town filled with everyone's kids' parents were from the Bay Area, where everyone's mean, but they were extra mean because they couldn't really afford to stay, and then they were mean times three because they were commuting an hour or two, and so it kind of raised all these just mean kids and people that didn't fit in but were insecure and were overcorrecting. And so it kind of raised all these just kind of just mean kids and people that didn't fit in but were insecure and were overcorrecting, and that's just, I guess. Maybe my excuses, but it was just a lot of. I grew up around a lot of liars. I mean I guess I came out okay, but I just there's a lot of just kind of mean friends, or if you had friends, they were only friends with you because they wanted something. And then they got to the point and they cut you loose and my dad was mean, my sister was mean, my mom was pretty nice but, and then I joined Boy Scouts and then it was like a lot of the dads were similar, like they'd say A and then they'd do B right, and they'd say, hey, you should do A, and then they'd do B right, and they'd say, hey, you should do A and then they would do B. So there was a lot of just like lip service, but I think. But then and so there was like 80, 90% bad, but then there was a couple of little good mentors and you hope that that sticks out because the human caveman brain is designed to pay more attention to danger, because it wants to keep you out of danger and ignore those little good things. So it's up to us to sort of flip it.
Speaker 2:And I feel like the sixth grade was peak childhood for me. It was like so many different things happened. It was like five years in one I had a really good teacher. He was just real charismatic and really nice and he told different stories and he wasn't one of these that, like you know, when someone, some old person or some adult, they kind of go on all these long stories, but he told like just the right ones and they some of them still stick with me every day. Like he told about this idea of like you don't have to go to college if that's not your path, and it was some some idea of like you go and you work some job and you come home sweaty and you take a shower and you're like you're ready to start your evening. And I don't even remember half of it, but it stuck with me. Or like there was a story of like some guy was stuck at the top of some smokestack in our small town like 100 years before. So he just he made it fun, right, and he mixed things up and it wasn't just teaching out of the textbook and we would do like group projects or and I think what out of all the stuff that really kind of still sticks with me is we would do the writing process.
Speaker 2:I know you're an author and the writing process can be fun. And he put out this calendar and he'd say, well, on monday you do your brainstorm and your outline, on tuesday you do your rough draft, on wednesday you do your peer review, on thursday you do your like final editing and polish, and on friday you do your cover. And it was only, like you know, one slice out of the the day. It was like you know, third period or something like that, but that was so much.
Speaker 2:It was this good, it was this combination of fun, structure, creativity, stress, and then by the time you get to the end result, then you've created and we ended up with these. I'm sure my mom has them somewhere. It's these little like tiny books, but they're like kind of hardcover and they're hand-drawn and they're written in and they've been polished and revised because they've gone through all these different steps and it just it opened the mind of what was possible if you have like a little bit of a structure and you make sure to like fulfill those tasks. And it was just, it was so much fun, right, it was the good old days. So there you go. As far as the mentoredness that sticks, that, that sticks out, as far as the, the good combination of fun, storytelling and just like as project management.
Speaker 1:Right and you know it does speak a lot about the way you are now because you know you, you figured out what you didn't like and you figured out what you liked and you ran with that. I also noticed you really helped me feel seen when you were interviewing me, you know. Do you think that podcasts have become a vehicle for that, you know, for people to feel empowered and maybe in a way they weren't expecting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess. So you always jump in and you think it'll go one way and it goes something else, because there's another brain involved. And I think that there was a recent aha, maybe about six months ago, when I was still trying to figure out AI, because we all are right, we're trying to figure out AI and chat, gpt, and well, I know the promise that I can just put out all this content and get all this traffic, but then when I do it, it puts out all this just not very good stuff. And so someone said this. They said well, what you should do is go on a podcast and just have a conversation and feed it through chat, gpt and have a breakdown like the questions and answers, and you can kind of see what you set the table with. And then take that and go and look on other podcasts, like kind of extract some keywords, do some searches, go on youtube, find some other similar shows and see what the questions and answers are there and then look at the answers and see like if you could come up with better answers. And that got the gears turning. That got me thinking like, hey, that's kind of a way to like continuously get better, right and up your game and say, okay, well, we'll have this conversation with Robert and Pam and we'll talk about all these things and we'll go in unexpected places and then we'll just kind of like, compare to what we did previously, compare to what's out there, and I think that that's more of what ai should be right.
Speaker 2:Instead of things being like completely hands-off, automated, you use it as this tool to say, well, what have I done, what have I said and how can I get that not depersonalized or ai enhanced, but like, more dialed in right, more of like like. There's that whole idea of if you have some argument and one of you is like standing on the staircase and then the argument's over and then you walk up the stairs you think, oh, I should have said just that exact thing. And when you have a podcast you'll have moments like that. But hey, you can save that in your back pocket for the next speaking gig or blog posts or, even better, for the next podcast that you're on. So there's a lot of fun there of your ability to read. I don't know if redo is a good way of saying it, but you can have these conversations and then have better ones as you go or go in unexpected places and get your messaging figured out, so it can be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think the key word that you that if people would look at AI as just a tool, right, instead of wanting it to do it all for them, because I mean that's, we're human and we're all guilty of utilizing tools Hoping that it's going to fix everything, right, but it doesn't. It's just a tool that's going to give you the space to be better, right, and so I don't. It's just like with bariatric surgery or other weight loss tools, those injections that people are taking, the GLP-1s. You know they think that that's the fix-all, and it's not. It's just a tool, right, that gives you the time to fix what's really broken while you're in that pickle in the first place. And so I think AI is in the same boat. It's definitely a great tool and I utilize it for you know a lot of things, but I don't let it do my work, I don't let it create for me. You know, I definitely have to keep on top of that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and I mean you and I, I think both use podcasting for a little bit selfish reasons, right, like there's, like you have, you have, I know I'm your first guest, right, or?
Speaker 1:have you had others? Okay, no, I've had others, but none that were as well as knowledgeable as you in podcasting, so I've challenged myself with that.
Speaker 2:But I'm sure you've learned you always pick up tidbits, no matter who it is. And one guy I talked to early on about AI, I'm like, well, like, how would you explain it? How do I get my head about it? And he said, well, think of it like a pocket calculator, but for language. And it's like you know you don't want to depend on the. You still want to know how to say two plus two, but if you're calculating the square root of 500, maybe you should dial that in. And so it's like you get those little tidbits from doing podcasting. And then you think about the. I don't know that much about weight loss, but like there's all, there's all these new, like crazy drugs out there, right?
Speaker 2:And then the little things that you hear is you're like, well, long-term it might cause, like, pancreas damage. Or they say, like these the big thing you hear is that, well, they're designed to be taken for life. Like, you take it, you lose the weight. You get off it, you gain the weight back. And it's like there's always a tradeoff, right, there's never like a magic medicine of like, hey, this solves it. There's like there's always some price to be paid. So it's like when you look at the tradeoff, it's like wouldn't it be more healthy, sustainable, just a better approach to just like kind of change some habits, right?
Speaker 1:And just you know, try to do it without the shortcut. Yeah, definitely, and it's like any medication, right? If you read all the side effects, you're like I'm not taking this pill.
Speaker 2:It's going to make things worse.
Speaker 1:But sometimes people have to choose the side effects over the long-term effect of what's happening with them. Like cholesterol, high cholesterol. There's a lot of side effects on that. My husband takes it and he's like I'm not taking this. I said, yeah, it's either that those symptoms, those side effects, or you have a stroke. I don't know, you pick, you pick one.
Speaker 2:So it's a balancing act.
Speaker 1:It is a balancing act. If we could if I could figure out balance, I'd be the happiest human being on the earth.
Speaker 2:But I worry about that term, balance right Because it's like you think balance does that mean like one foot in, one foot out? Does that mean that I'm kind of putting half on my business and half in my personal life? I kind of worry about that too. I feel like it is. I love having the hyper focus. I love having a little bit of the controlled chaos for momentum right, like just enough healthy stress, just enough of the deadlines and the urgency to get things done. So that idea of balance, I'm always concerned about that term personally.
Speaker 1:Well, let me tell you, let me give you a little helpful tidbit, and this is straight from my grandmother, bless her heart. Let me tell you, let me give you a little helpful tidbit, and this is straight from my grandmother, bless her heart. But I used to talk to her about balancing and her philosophy was um, it was like cooking, right. So, and that's where I mean, she's the one that you know, showed me what all about the plus one. You know doing your best, plus one more mediocrity, forget about it. But she said, with cooking, you want to give it your all with preparing the meal, but it's not the meal. The process is not the meal. The meal is sitting at a table with your family enjoying them. But you had to do all this plus one work in preparing it, planning it, you know, getting it ready, that's the work, but the result the result is is the balance. So I don't know, I just always look at it like that and no one ever appreciates it.
Speaker 2:Right, it's like you think of there's how many movies have been made throughout human history, like how many thousands and every single movie it took. How many months, years, millions of dollars, hundreds, thousands of people. And here you and I are like all right, well, this 90 minutes, this better be good. And it's like that. That took someone's life savings. This movie might have bankrupted some company. It was so expensive. And here we are just looking at the end result and saying like, oh well, that movie could have been better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's. That's the hard part, especially in the creative world. Because, you know, even even like my book from the Piney Woods, it's a memoir Not everybody reads those, right, it's not everybody's bag. So I just had to accept that people don't read that sort of book. It's not anything against my craft or my writing or the story, it's just that that's not their thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the beauty of the internet is all the obscure media, right? Or maybe I don't know if obscure is the right word, but there's all these, just like. Sometimes there's some youtubers they follow with like 30 subscribers, with like 100 subscribers, or they're not the mainstream. And there was this one youtuber where he put out 100 videos and they were all good, of just filming this intersection. He's he was in santa monica, california, and he there was just the intersection not built very well and all these like cars coming in five different ways and they'd almost get in accidents and he'd provide commentary and I watched all these videos and he only got he barely got 100 views per video.
Speaker 2:But I was one of them and then a few years ago I was in los angeles, like I took the journey to like stand in this intersection just because it wasn't world famous but it was important to me and that's that's kind of interesting to think about. Right Is it doesn't have to be the most mass market sort of stuff. Like one of my favorite shows growing up was mystery science theater 3000, right, you know that where they make fun of the bad movies and it's like you turn a bad into a good and you have your own unique personal preferences.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, and that's how you build your tribe or your community, and that's what I've really been focusing on is just trying to build a community of people that get what I'm saying and can grow from it and thrive from it. But the key to remember and if anybody's listening to this is that let Robert know how much you enjoyed an episode. You know, just reach out and just say, hey, man, that really touched my heart and I just thank you for that, because I'm still not getting, you know, hardly any feedback on anything that I do. And that's what fuels us right, that's what keeps us going and keeps us creating, is the feedback. Are we making a difference? Are we doing this right? And so I just hope people reach out and let you know. You know how much your work is affecting them, impacting them.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's very rare and it's easy to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just takes seconds, you know, just like the kindness thing. But, um, which brings me to a question I really wanted to ask you is like what are some of the biggest misconceptions you see people having when they launch a podcast? You know, when they first start, because they're learning, they're wearing many. When they first start because they're learning, they're wearing many hats, of course, because usually it's just one person trying to do it right. They don't have a team of people.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think that the big one is the equipment right. People, they overthink it and you start where you're at and you I mean you start with your phone right Start filming in your car. The content matters more than the production quality, which will evolve over time anyway. So if you buy all these different microphones, all these different lights, all these different backgrounds, you're going to just distract yourself and give yourself a big old to-do list and then you'll be just spending all these weeks seeking perfection and trying to start it out right. But I think you should start where you are and I have a lot of fun going back and anyone that you follow who is famous now. You go back and look at the early Mel Robbins or Tim Ferriss or Gary Vaynerchuk, anyone. You go back 15 years ago, to when YouTube started. You look at the earliest videos they put out and they're so young and they have a bad put out and they're so young and they have a bad haircut and they're so awkward and the lighting's bad and that's where they started at. And if they try to start where they're at now, back then, then they would have seen like, maybe like an imposter, or they would have done 52 takes without doing one. So I think that's the biggest is you have to just start where you're at. And I am jealous about these people that have the in-person podcast studios. Like, don't they look so slick with like the? They've got like neon signs on the walls and, yeah, they got the headphones or they got the couches or they have like the, the kind of the, the microphones hanging down in front of the couches and it looks like a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:And I do need to get on an in-person podcast one of these days. But it's just a prospecting thing, right, you figure out who will take you and then where you'll be and you'll show up. But I think that you don't have to start there and it's even. It's just it's less ways to go wrong. Like, I've even recorded interviews where I had the person in person, but I just went in the other room because I was like, well, we're picking each other up or it's echoey, or we're going to have to share a mic and that's awkward. So it's like the Zoom world we live in, or Riverside, where there's side-by-side conversation.
Speaker 2:It's good enough to get the content out there that you want and you don't need to overthink it. You don't need to have the fancy podcast studio or the fancy mic and you don't need to pile up a lot of episodes. I've seen that too, of like just kind of recording a bunch of stuff and filling up a folder and saying, okay, well, I'll record five, I'll record 25, I'll record 50. And then you're focused on the recording but not on the putting it out and the marketing, and I really think that you should be spending 20% creating and 80% marketing, right? You should be looking every day into who do I want to reach? Where am I going to post at? What new channel am I going to put it out right? Am I going to send an email blast? Do a LinkedIn post? Put out a YouTube short? There's so many things to put out there. And that's I mean. That's the first step is just to post more frequently.
Speaker 2:And so when you pile up 20, 30, 50 episodes and then you feel good at first because you're like, hey, I'm making progress, but then it becomes that productive procrastination and then, a few months later, then it morphs into self-sabotage, because you look at this folder full of stuff and you're like there's this mix of like well, this stuff's out of date now. Now it's a year old. And then I now I don't even want to follow up with these guests because they'll hate me, because they'll be like what? The episode isn't out yet. So you're just tying yourself in knots and the better way is to just proceed with imperfect action right, they call it a ready fire aim and put out an episode or two.
Speaker 2:And every podcast platform is really good about migrating. So I really recommend Buzzsprout. But if you ever say later like, oh well, I want to move to Spotify for podcasts or I want to move to Libsyn or one of these other and they're all named so weird. But you can pick up and you can transfer all your podcasts to some other platform if you really want to. But what's really important is you get a podcast, get it started, get established on these social media platforms and start posting, because if you do want to have guests of any kind, they're going to do that. 30 seconds of research on you, right? And if they see that your last post was three years ago, or if they see that you only have 10 followers, well then they'll hesitate and you have to start somewhere. And you have to start by creating the episodes, putting it out there and then iterating and promoting the old stuff and contacting the old guests.
Speaker 2:So don't do the buildup right. You say you're all about delaying the binge. Well, don't delay the binge of oh, I've got to put 20 podcasts out there. Instead, make this habit of saying, well, I'll put out, and to say I'll put out one this week or every week. It's too scary, too daunting. But you say I'll put out four this month. Right, and so it's. And so you don't have to make a forever commitment. Just say like, hey, this coming 30 days, 90 days, I'll put out X amount and then I'll reassess and I'll see where I'm at. And so it's like you. Just, you have to put it out there, you have to take some action, you have to publish.
Speaker 1:Well, and I love that, because all the research of course I did my due diligence and I was studying other podcasters and trying to figure out what equipment to get. Did I really need to invest a lot? And I did find that my phone, just like you said, was really and I got this little lapel mic that connects with the phone, so it gave me pretty good sound and so I started just doing podcasts like that, just on a walk or whenever I was out, because I have another real job that pays the mortgage and puts food on the table. So, you know, then I didn't, and then they kept telling everyone was saying, get a stack those episodes so that you have a whole stack of them. But what I found is like, after this episode, you know, I'm excited about what we talked about and so I don't want to lose that momentum, so I immediately start editing or doing whatever I need to do and, by the way, I do use Buzzsprout. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:They have an AI feature on there. I paid a little extra, but it's so worth it. It saves me a lot of time.
Speaker 2:Put your Buzzsprout affiliate link in the comments right. Officially sponsored by Buzzsprout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I can definitely do that and they are wonderful. They make it very easy for the person like me that doesn't know a whole lot of technical stuff about editing and all the important things that need to be done as far as publishing it.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's important to separate the creativity from the technicalities, like sure you should. I guess you should have control over what you want to write and be able to choose, like the titles and the graphics and things like that. But there's definitely a danger in falling into the rabbit hole of saying, well, I don't even have time to podcast because I'm editing all these podcasts and that's why the stack can be scary, right, because now you have a stack. A stack sounds good at first, but then does anyone like a stack of papers? And so if you have a stack of all these episodes, you have to edit and schedule and put out there.
Speaker 2:And I think what and you and I think there's something interesting as far as like figuring out your message in marketing is is thinking about what are people's ahas, right, what are their turning points. And I knew a guy a bunch of years ago and he was kind of, he was really smart, but he was kind of shy. So I related to him Because on the inside I am too and then he embraced podcasting and what got him to do it was he said imagine if you had 100 people rooting for you and working for you and promoting you. Well, you can by having 100 guests on your podcast, right, it's like the John Rockefeller says, instead of me, john Rockefeller says, instead of me doing a hundred percent, I'd rather have a hundred people doing 1%. And so and I was like, hey, so it's about the people, right, it's not just about the content. So if you think, if you had that stack of episodes that you've been sitting on, versus if you say, after a year you had a hundred podcast guests and that's all these opportunities to follow up and to remind them to post, and to go and boost up their social media and like their stuff or to post about them, even though the episode was three, six months ago, post about them again and tag them again and post a reel again.
Speaker 2:And so by stacking too much, you're losing out on all the follow-up time of building the relationship and you could end up with a funnel or a path of someone who's been on your podcast and there's, like I mean with me, there's some of these people with like five, 10 years of history where you can go back and see like all the times I've tweeted or X them or whatever they call it these days and any platform there's.
Speaker 2:Just like all this follow up. I can go and search my email and there's all this kind of reminding them of like, hey, here's this link, do you want to come back on the show? And so there's just all these deep in relationships where you can't build a relationship instantly. Right? Warren Buffett says you can't get nine ladies pregnant in one month. Right? If you're baking a cake, like your grandma was, and you're like I only have five minutes to finish baking this cake, you can't just crank up the heat, right? Some of these things take time, and so you need to have your delays and give these people the gift of missing you and for them to see that you're in it for the long haul and that you've been promoting them every couple of weeks for the last six months or a year, not just barfing a bunch of stuff out there in the podcast world.
Speaker 1:I love that barfing it out, man. My granny must be on this call because I have another. She has always said it reminds me of this. She said the road to hell is paved with good intentions, pamela.
Speaker 1:Yes, a hundred percent, and so your intention is to, you know, build up all these episodes or just do all this stuff, and pretty soon you're going to be burned out. Have you ever felt that way Like, uh, since you've done so many, how long has a 1200 episode, or 1400 episodes? How long have you been doing this? How long does it take to do that many?
Speaker 2:Uh, it has it's taken 13 years. I started it it and I was 28 and I was just recording one episode per week and I had all these hangups. I told myself a podcast had to be a whole hour long. It didn't. 20 minutes is better and I would fit my best stuff in there and I would have a whole episode about copywriting and a whole episode about WordPress and a whole episode about programming and I would start to run out of content and after even like 20 episodes I was like how can I keep going? How is this sustainable? How will I keep going?
Speaker 2:And then I found someone who I honestly I didn't really like. His name's Joel Calm. I really don't like him as a person, like at all, but sometimes I see some of the cool stuff he does and he put out a podcast like years ago and he like ended his podcast. I thought, hey, that's what I'll do, I'll get to. I'll say the podcast is ending at 100 episodes and every episode I'll announce that the podcast is ending and people will be like, oh my gosh, but don't worry, it ends at podcast number 100. And so that was my goal and by the time I got to like 50 solo episodes, I was really running out of content.
Speaker 2:And then, here and there I would sprinkle in maybe like one every 10 episodes I would have a guest. And so what I would do is, if I met someone at a conference or something and we would exchange business cards usually to barely see each other ever again I'd follow up. And what do you do if you meet someone and you exchange business cards and you follow up? Oh well, is it? I'll buy your stuff, you'll buy my stuff. But that's too much of a gap to leap over. So it turned into let's get on a Skype back then, and now Skype's even gone. But that's how we meet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're out of business now, just like ICQ and the rest, right, even though MySpace and AOL are still online somehow. But anyway, we'd go on Skype, we'd have this conversation and there was just some magic there, right, and you could talk the other person up and so, just for fun, the other person up, and so, just for fun, I took, I think just like six of those interviews and I put them into book format and it was just, we've all been there where you discover Amazon and Kindle and you're like, okay, let me just put out a book just for fun. And I put out and this was before ChatGPT could clean stuff up, so it was literally a transcript. It was Robert colon says this, and Ryan Healy colon said that it was literally a book of just a transcript. And then that outsold my other books that I spent a lot more time on and I got like really good feedback about people saying like, hey, I picked this up and I couldn't put it down.
Speaker 2:No-transcript, choose a slot in my calendar and put in your bio and answer these questions and then, boom, now they're on your calendar and then all that's on you is you have to make sure to show up. But you think, well, like a doctor or a lawyer or a therapist, like they have to show up for their appointments, so you take that seriously, you show up and you have a conversation like this and then you follow up. And so once you do that, then you can have unlimited content, right, because you're not always struggling for the next thing to say. Then you can have unlimited content, right, because you're not always struggling for the next thing to say. And then I think, as the host I mean I guess there's like a yin and the yang, right, as the host, you have it pretty easy, because if you wanted to, you could just ask the same five or six questions. But if you're a good podcast host, like you are, then you listen closely and you pick up the thread and you're just meeting interesting people, and so that's how, then.
Speaker 2:And so probably maybe every like two or three hundred episodes or episodes, which is probably like maybe once a year, I would doubt myself, I would be about to give up and I would have to find some new way of adding the difficulty, the challenge to it, and I think I would get bored because it would get become too much of the routine of adding the difficulty, the challenge to it, and I think I would get bored because it would become too much of the routine, it would become too easy and I would think, okay, it's easy, now I need to go find something harder. And that's your opportunity to up your podcast game. That's when it's time to then get the better lights or the better microphone or to maybe pursue some better guests, or you get on other shows. Or there was finally, at one point the technology existed where video became more reasonable to store and record and do so.
Speaker 2:I switched from audio only to video and then that opened up posting on YouTube for me, on YouTube for me, and then, you know, then switch from Zoom to Riverside and then sometimes focus more on the SEO and coming up with better titles and focusing on the follow-up and focusing on the chat, gpt and like turning a podcast into like a LinkedIn post and an infographic. And so I think that if you start to get so, I guess one obstacle is being deliberate, being diligent, and I think that might be like a mindfulness thing of just like properly preparing yourself and taking things seriously, knowing your purpose, knowing what the podcast will lead to. So that way you start the excitement. But then, in order to sustain the excitement, you do need to see some results, and that can be like your mission of helping others, or, if that turns into like clients way you keep all of that excitement working, keep all of that excitement working Well.
Speaker 1:you just described the plus one theory right there. You just keep improving you know, because if you just stay stuck, you'll you'll get uninspired, right You'll you'll get bored, like you said. And if that does happen I mean, has that I'm sure that's happened with you where you realize, okay, I need to up my game because I'm starting to be feel stuck or bored, and so you, you, you reignite your momentum by by adding new challenges.
Speaker 2:Correct, correct. All the time you take a different route when you're driving to your destination. If things are still in your relationship, you go on a hot date, like, of course there's always. You have awareness of when. When it's just, it's too routine. You have to change things up.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and we talked about some of the tools. Are there any other tools that you would recommend people look into? I mean, what are your favorites?
Speaker 2:I know Buzzsprout's one Like especially for if I need to jump into the transcripts and I need to do some little editing and pull up the clips. And then I've also had fun with Opus, which is just like just for clips and you can upload the podcast. You can upload any podcast, you can even steal a podcast. You upload your own and then it gives you the reels, the shorts and, like ChatGBT is an all-in-one tool, upload your own and then it gives you the, the reels, the shorts and I've had, and like g chat, gbt is a, you know, all-in-one tool. I pay the 200 a month version because I use it so much and that's just kind of like you can use that for anything, right. You and especially, you upload the transcript of your podcast and you can just turn it into you.
Speaker 2:You say, well, can, can you create a LinkedIn post for me? Can you create a LinkedIn recommendation for me? That's a fun one where, like, a lot of people don't know that on your LinkedIn page there's like your resume and the way you can post, but people can leave reviews about you and they're called recommendations and so and a lot of them are real shallow, right, because that's how it is, but you, as a podcaster, have an opportunity to leave a really thoughtful recommendation and you can kind of cheat because you use ChatGPT, but you sort of didn't cheat because their original content came from your conversation, right? So you and me, pam, we've been talking for almost an hour and we've said all kinds of amazing personal things to each other and you feed that into ChatGBT and you say give me a really good LinkedIn recommendation for Robert, following all the best practices you know and you did put in the work. You just didn't put in that last bit of work of like writing it, but you can refine it and then you end up with the end result is a way more thoughtful linkedin recommendation than others. So chat gbt is a really fun all-in-one tool for for all those sorts of things. Right, you use chat gbt to follow up with your guests and, uh, and you know, refine your the titles of your podcast. You go back and forth like anything else. So it's like there's, there's not, I don't, and then and in canva is huge too right, as far as it's a like an, online.
Speaker 2:I love canva big time yeah, and a lot of people don't even know how you can just kind of bust something out right, all the, all these youtube thumbnails where the person's going like like that or something. You can just, you know, uh, take a picture yourself doing that, slap on some graphics, and then also, and you combine these things together, you combine these, say, with like ChatGPT, right, and you can make your thumbnail graphic. And if you're not sure about it, you take a screenshot of it. I think on Windows it's like Windows key shift S and you draw a box and you paste it right in ChatGPT. And you say a box and you paste it right in chat GPT and you say how would you change this thumbnail?
Speaker 2:It gives you suggestions and you switch back to Canva and you say, oh, it told me to have a green background instead of a blue one. Well, I'll follow its suggestion. And then the end result is you don't want to get too techie, right At some point. You do want to like, delegate and outsource the stuff. That's monotonous and time consuming. But for the little quick fixes, chat GPT is great to have a little buddy to, to write, to refine, to look at how things came out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like having a college professor in your room because I will take like a pitch on something I'm doing, like a pitch on something I'm doing. I'll write up a pitch and then I'll stick it into chat GPT and ask say, what do you think about this pitch? Where can I improve it? And they're like Pam, you really need to have a beginning, a middle and an end of your story format, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you know, I'm like oh, I didn't know that. So then it helps me structure it so much better so that the reader, you know it's more effective for the reader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have that visual lately when I do it too. It's like the asymptotes, like the Zeno's paradox of like you shoot an arrow and does it really hit the target? Well, no, it gets halfway, gets halfway, it gets closer and closer. And so like, yeah, there's so many like marketing tasks, of like I use it for landing pages and sales letters a lot. Right, I'll be like, well, I want to sell this service or this product and I've got this YouTube video where I talk about sort of what it mostly should be. So write me the sales letter. Well, I don't like that. We'll add this and that to the offer, change the headline. You don't have it, just write it for you, sight unseen. You tell it what to change, you have it, give suggestions and you kind of navigate and you get closer and closer to what it should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's all kinds of details that are critical, even like with YouTube on Buzzsprout, it will automatically upload it your podcast to YouTube. But I've never done video before because I just didn't have the equipment before and so it was just uploading my audio. But I found out that YouTube ignores those. They don't like it, they want video and they want awesome thumbnails. So in order to rank you well, you've got to have both the audio and video for YouTube, but that's not necessarily true for other platforms you know, yeah, and there's always just so much to navigate.
Speaker 2:There's all these platforms. They all do it differently and they all have all these little things to fill in, right? Even like with YouTube, it's like oh, I forgot the. I have to upload the subtitles. Oh, I forgot that there's the tags. Oh, I forgot that my channel itself has keywords. Oh, maybe I should go and refine the title of my channel. There's always just other things to set and ChatGBT is great about. Like if I just say, well, what should I fill on this field based on here's my podcast transcript what should the title, what should the tags, what should the thumbnail be? If I should leave a comment under my own video, just like, what should I say? It just helps you fill in the empty boxes.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's why, Robert, a lot of people like me look for people like you for done for you podcasting. Someone that is an expert and that knows what the heck they're doing. Yeah, and someone. If you don't want to half-ass your podcast, then you hire someone like Robert that knows how to do all these things and has figured it all out for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whole-ass your podcast, don't half-ass it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whole-ass. Hey, there's your new slogan Whole-ass, your podcast with Robert Plank. I like it. And you're done for you with podcasting. Yeah, and you're done for you with podcasting, yeah. Well, with that I am going to have to end our conversation, because you know people get bored when they're too long. Of course that's what you taught me you taught me on this episode that a 20-minute episode is much better than an hour-long one. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's also your rules. So it's your show, you do what you want. Yeah, your rules. So it's your show, you do what you want. And then you also can meet people where they're at, because we've been saying many times in this discussion that there are different types of people and there are different types of platforms. Right, there's Instagram, there's TikToks, and you figure, like the personality type that goes and scrolls, tiktok is probably different than like a Facebook or LinkedIn person, and so I have this done for you.
Speaker 2:Podcasting service it's dfypodcastcom, and the vision, the dream, is that you just give us your episodes, right, you give us that stack and we clear the stack for you. And so that way, when you say, hey, I'm Pam and I just had this amazing conversation with Robert, here's the video my team goes and makes that thumbnail, makes the title, makes the show notes, makes the reels, so that way you can post to TikTok and to LinkedIn. We take the best quotes that you said and we use Canva and we put up a picture of you or your guest and put the quote right on there. And we've all seen those social posts where usually it's a motivational quote. Right, there'll be like a Mel Robbins or a Thomas Jefferson. But hey, what if there was a quote that was said by you or said by your guests and we make those two and post those to Instagram. And so that way I found that, at least for me and everyone I've met that we all, like the successful business, people use social media, but our brains only really like one or two, and I think that there's only so much time in the day and I think there might be like an age, demographic plus a personality thing.
Speaker 2:A lot of us are well, I just like YouTube, I just like LinkedIn, and you should be everywhere. You should at least have like accounts on some platforms, you should at least be posting sometimes. And so this is your chance to just focus on one or two of the social platforms you like, but then the Facebook and the X also gets posted to. Or if there's some new platform like threads, you can just say, hey, can I post to threads as well? And so that way you just have this kind of continuous machine of all these different things posting, yeah, and it posts everywhere, and you kind of focus your energy and your time where it should be right On the 20% of the relationship building and the big picture and the growing your business and working on your guests and your people and helping them out with their mission.
Speaker 2:And then me and my team does all that extra busy work of making sure that that Canva graphic and the text is aligned here instead of being aligned there. So we do all that time consuming busy work and you do the fun, important stuff of having these podcasting conversations. That way you don't burn out, that way you can find the new ways to challenge yourself and you can think about your big picture, your mission. You can figure out just over time you will grow and evolve as a person and that bio of what you say about yourself or that branding or the kind of the premise of your show all those things will grow over time and you won't have the brain capacity to do all the busy work plus focus on the boss, ceo, high-level executive tasks of growing your podcast and your business. So you need to have a team eventually to do it and that team is dfypodcastcom.
Speaker 1:There you go, perfect. And if I know, if, personally, I would listen to every single minute of this podcast, of this episode, because I would be taking notes, because anyone that's interested in podcasting you know we're trying to glean all we can from whatever information is out there. So you've shared a lot for us today, robert. Thank you so much. I think I've learned so much, so much. So thanks for your time and again, tell us how to find you. Can you tell us one more time?
Speaker 2:Yes, Thanks for your time and again, tell us how to find you. Can you tell us one more time? Yes, that service is at dfypodcastcom. And then the podcast that has 1,400 episodes it's marketerofthedaycom and I interview business owners and entrepreneurs, including yourself, Ms Pam Dwyer, to talk about their struggle stories, their breakthroughs, their ahas, their uniqueness. It's always good to listen to a podcast like that because there's only like you get bored with the learning, the how to step by step, but you hear about stories, you hear about other people's perspectives and you still do learn and you get encouragement from others, and so it's just great to listen to a podcast like with entrepreneurs on it talking about their stories. And that podcast is marketerofthedaycom and I'm Robert Plank.
Speaker 1:Thank you, robert, so much and thanks everyone for listening in today and remember there's always room to do one more.