Dave Jackson is the Head of Podcasting at Podpage and a podcast consultant at the School of Podcasting. With a career spanning almost two decades in podcasting, he launched his first podcast in 2005, and his show about podcasting has been downloaded over 3.1 million times. Dave has helped hundreds of people launch their podcasts and is the author of Profit from Your Podcast. With a bachelor’s degree in education specializing in technical education, he stands out not only for his technical expertise but also for his ability to explain complex concepts in simple, ‘geek-speak-free’ language. He was named the Director of Podcasting for the New Media Expo in 2014, and in 2018, he was inducted into the Academy of Podcasters Hall of Fame.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:45] How childhood experiences with electronics and audio sparked Dave Jackson’s passion for sound
- [8:02] What led Dave to discover the podcasting industry
- [10:05] The early days of podcasting and its global potential
- [15:25] The evolution of podcasting and the challenges faced by podcast networks
- [20.01] Video podcasting versus audio podcasting and how YouTube is impacting the podcast world
- [27:03] Is public speaking essential for podcasting, or can introverts find success?
- [29:15] Monetization strategies: What works best for podcasters and how to avoid common traps
- [34:37] Tips for growing an audience for a podcast and the importance of networking
- [38:33] Why embracing competition can lead to unexpected opportunities in podcasting
In this episode…
Podcasting has exploded in popularity, but starting and succeeding in this crowded marketplace can feel overwhelming. Many aspiring podcasters struggle with figuring out where to begin, how to grow their audience, and what mistakes to avoid. As the medium evolves, the pressures of creating content, promoting it, and navigating technical hurdles can leave even the most passionate creators feeling stuck.
Dave Jackson, a podcasting consultant, shares his wealth of experience to help podcasters overcome these challenges. With over two decades in the industry, he emphasizes the importance of staying authentic and knowing your audience deeply. He offers practical strategies for avoiding common podcasting pitfalls, like trying to monetize too early, focusing on the wrong platforms, and overcomplicating production. Instead, Dave advises concentrating on growing a dedicated audience first, exploring alternative revenue streams, and leaning into your unique voice as a creator.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Dave Jackson, Head of Podcasting at Podpage, about mastering the art of podcasting in today’s competitive landscape. They explore key strategies for building a successful podcast, including how to stand out, why embracing authenticity is essential, choosing the right monetization approach, and how embracing your peers in the industry results in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Dave Jackson on LinkedIn
- Podpage
- The School of Podcasting
- Power of Podcasting
- Profit from Your Podcast: Proven Strategies to Turn Listeners into a Livelihood by Dave Jackson
Quotable Moments:
- “You do not monetize a podcast. You monetize an audience.”
- “It’s your podcast. If you want to switch styles mid-episode, do whatever you want, as long as you’re delivering value.”
- “Podcasting is a great way to meet thousands of people without meeting thousands of people.”
- “To make education fun and somewhat entertaining, people don’t realize they’re learning.”
- “If you can make a show that’s so good that listeners can’t help but tell a friend about it, that’s when you’ve succeeded.”
Action Steps:
- Focus on creating a podcast that genuinely engages and provides value to your audience: This ensures that your content naturally encourages listeners to become advocates, leading to organic growth.
- Use cross-promotion and collaborations with other podcasters to expand your reach: Leveraging the audiences of others in your niche can result in exponential exposure and growth opportunities.
- Consistently collect listener email addresses and maintain an informative newsletter: Direct communication with your audience nurtures relationships and boosts engagement, leading to committed listeners.
- Explore and combine different revenue streams such as affiliate marketing, merchandise, and premium subscriptions: Diversifying your income sources stabilizes your financial success and provides multiple touchpoints for audience support.
- Continuously adapt and refine your podcasting approach based on feedback and changing industry trends: Staying flexible and responsive to the evolving landscape establishes longevity and keeps your content relevant.
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create a copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
John Corcoran 0:00
All right, today we’re talking about how to get started and really excel at podcasting in today’s crowded marketplace and avoid common pitfalls and best practices for being successful at podcasting. Today, my guest is Dave Jackson. I’ll tell you all about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro 0:17
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders and thought leaders, and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show. All right.
John Corcoran 0:33
Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here, I’m the host of this show, and you know you’ve listened before that each week I get to talk to interesting CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs and thought leaders from all kinds of walks of life and companies we’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, lots of great past experts on this show. Check out the archives, and you can look at those different shows that we’ve done. And of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25 our help our company, where we help BtoB businesses to get clients, referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you, podcasting, content marketing, and you can learn more about what we do by visiting our website at Rise25.com
All right, I’m excited to have our guests here today. It’s Dave Jackson. He’s the head of podcasting at Podpage, and he’s a podcasting consultant at School of Podcasting. But most importantly, he’s been involved in podcasting since way before I even started back in 2005 when he launched his first podcast and founded the School of Podcasting. He’s also the author of Profit From Your Podcast, proven strategies to turn listeners into a livelihood, and was inducted into the Academy of Podcasters Hall of Fame back in 2018 and he’s a long time educator. He’s got degrees in education and technical education, and so that’s kind of his background. Spent a bunch of time doing that also at Libsyn, one of the top podcast hosts out there, and Dave, I’m so excited to talk to you here.
You know, there’s a lot of people that have a great reputation in this industry, but you stand above so many of them, and just from your depth of experience in this industry, and really contributions, giving back. And, you know, you don’t know this, but I see you out there, visible all the time on different platforms, helping people, just being helpful like and it’s really nice to see that, because, you know, it can be hard to do that when there’s this industry has seen a lot of interest, a lot of new people coming into it, and so I just want to salute you for that. But I always start by going back to getting to know our guests a little bit first. And when you were a kid, you got into electronics, and you had a dad who was a bit of a temper, and you kind of got into learning that stuff, and that was a bit of an entree into the field that you got into now. So tell us a little bit about that. You are a kid tinkering on little different projects, electronics.
Dave Jackson 2:52
Yeah, it was, this is back in the days of tube testers, like when TVs had tubes and stuff, and if your TV broke you it we literally, it was funny, my dad, I think, had 14 TVs in the basement waiting for him to fix them, because he’d become a truck driver, so he wasn’t home. But I remember once we had a reel to reel tape and tape deck that wasn’t working anymore, and he’d been sitting there forever, and all I did was take it apart and clean it and put it back together. And I went upstairs, and this is where I learned the power of audio. I went upstairs, and I hit play, and my mom happened to be cooking dinner, and she absolutely lost it, just rusted into tears and I was like, What? What? What I do, what I do, what I do.
And she’s like, that’s my dad’s voice. I haven’t heard that in like so many years. And I was like, Whoa, that’s kind of wild. But yeah, I was always, you know, tweaking stuff and whether it was audio. And then later I went through the whole transition, I started my own, like, recording stuff. I used to take a cassette deck into the bathroom with another cassette deck. And I remember somewhere in this house a tape of me singing the Beatles yesterday, and then playing it and recording it on the other one, and I would sing the harmony, so, you know.
And it’s funny, because if I were to find it, half of it would just, you know, be technology. But eventually I got a four track re cassette deck, and then that led to a four track reel to reel, you know, and then an eight track cassette. So all through the years as a musician, I was always tinkering with technology.
John Corcoran 4:26
The technology’s just definitely evolved a lot during that period of time. And I want to get to how that came to play. I know you were in rock bands for many years, and so dealing with audio there as well, but in sixth grade, you wrote a poem for your church, which got a reaction out of people, much like that audio did out of your mom, and that also kind of little fire under you and helped you guide you towards the career that you ended up in.
Dave Jackson 4:56
Yeah, it was kind of funny, because it was about reading the Bible and. Bathroom. And so everybody thought that was, you know, somewhat outrageous, and yet kind of funny. And these cute little kids talking about this, and blah, blah, blah. And I just remember somebody saying, you’re kind of funny, like, you should do more of this stuff. And I didn’t quite believe them, you know, but I was like, hmm, what would you know, they said you should be a writer. And I’m like, what does a writer do? And back then, I just thought, I guess you work for a newspaper or something, or whatever.
John Corcoran 5:25
And I did eventually, well, it was limited back then, right? There’s, there’s Indian flavors of writing.
Dave Jackson 5:29
Now,yeah, yeah, that’s true. Back then it was like a newspaper or, I guess, a screenwriter or a book, yeah, journalist, yeah, yeah.
John Corcoran 5:38
So, yeah, it’s funny. My father was a journalist, and so, yeah, I mean, I thought of it very, you know, there weren’t as many different flavors of sharing your wisdom. It wasn’t as easy to publish the way that it is now. And you ended up in rock bands also. So that gave you further exposure to the world of audio.
Dave Jackson 5:58
Yeah, it was just one of those things where I tried to play the guitar when I was five, and my fingers were too small, and when I could finally play, I was left handed, and all the books were written for right handed people. And I remember being in either first or second grade, and I just said, I’m done with this. I can’t find any scissors, I can’t get a baseball mitt, like nothing was made for left handed people. And I just said, All right, I’m going to be right-handed. I’m going to be right handed. So which actually helps when you’re a guitar player, because most of the fun stuff is on your left hand.
But yeah, so I just started playing, and then my brother played the guitar, and he said the best phrase I’ve ever heard, which was, don’t play my guitar while I’m at work. Well, that’s the worst thing you want to say to your little brother. So while he was a perk, I was playing the guitar. And that just eventually led to a bunch of friends of mine. And then you get in a couple bands, and, you know, 20 years later, at one point, I opened up because I was in a It was weird. I was in a blues band opening up for the band, Blue Oyster Cult. So I’m assuming somebody thought that word of them, yeah, but playing in front of a couple 1000 people at a, you know, fair kind of thing.
So that was not a good run. It was fun. Now I’m the old guy that, like, I want to call on an ad they’ll if I ever see when it’s like, you know, band looking for, you know, guitar player playing electric Blues. I’m like, oh, that’s me. And then you see ages 23 to, you know, 42 and I’m like, 50 something, no, okay, never mind.
John Corcoran 7:22
And you were a Beatles fan, you didn’t consider taking the guitar and flipping it over like Paul McCartney did not, because there weren’t any guitars.
Dave Jackson 7:27
You know what? I mean. It’s like, I don’t know where Paul got his, but left handed guitars were hard to come by, and it was just, I just, especially, I think was the scissors thing that just drove me nuts, that I was just like, Okay, enough of this. I’m just going to be right handed.
John Corcoran 7:42
So how do rock bands lead to podcasting? And how did you first discover podcasting in the first place? We’re talking 2005 2004 2005 you know, this is pre iPod. This is way before the iPod. No, sorry. the iPod came out in 2001 so the iPod is out. But what was the state of the industry at that point?
Dave Jackson 8:02
Yeah, so how rock bands led to this was I knew a little bit from running the PA system of my band, and I sat in one week with the guy that was running the sound system in my church, and literally, three days later, he dropped dead. And they went, Well, you know how to run this thing. So I’d always kind of been working in audio. And so a friend of mine at the time, I was teaching a lot of Microsoft Office, and back then, there was a program called Microsoft front page where you could teach people how to make a website. And it’s, it’s weird to say I used to teach people how to send email because they didn’t know what it was, but it was a thing back then.
John Corcoran 8:39
And you’re, you’re, you got your degree in technical education. So this is what you’re drawn to.
Dave Jackson 8:45
Yeah, I actually, uh, during those days, it was funny, my original degree was in electronic engineering, going back to wanting to play with stuff. And that was a two year degree. I got that. And to make a long story short, I was a copier technician who fell into the training department. They said, We want you to go out and train people how to run their equipment, but more importantly, show them how to not run the equipment. And that worked really well. And then they threw me into software. So I’d done that for a long time.
Lost my job, I got downsized, and then I needed to go get a degree to prove that I knew what I’d been doing for 15 years, which was kind of weird, but yeah, so I taught a lot of Microsoft Office in QuickBooks, but I was also doing stuff like time management and customer service and things like that. And so when I had created a website for musicians, and my very first book was called, get your band out of the basement and keep them out of the asylum, and I had a bunch of people, I had a blog and a newsletter, and they said, you know, you should turn this into a podcast. And I’m like, What the heck is a podcast? And this friend of mine came back, and I said, Oh yeah, this is gonna. It’s like radio on the internet. And I Googled it, and there were one and a half pages. And I was just like, Wait, how do you spell that again?
John Corcoran 10:00
Yeah, you know. And I go and have pages of information on what a podcast was, yeah, that was it. And I was like, I think we broke the internet.