TBF 112 | Media Attraction

 

What is the secret of getting huge engagement on your podcast episodes? What is the right approach to achieve high-power media attraction for your show? Reena Friedman Watts shares with Tracy Hazzard how she built a carefully structured podcast with someone close to her heart. Reena details her workflow for Better Call Daddy, the show she co-hosts with her father. She explains how she invites the best guests through in-depth research and a little bit of stalking. Reena also presents the important role of social media in building an amazing rapport with her dad and her entire audience, ultimately resulting in a handsome return on investment.

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Why A Carefully Structured Podcast Can Make High Power Media Attraction With Reena Friedman Watts Of Better Call Daddy

I had so much fun with this interview. Reena Friedman Watts, blew me away, and she’s so much fun. The show blew me away. Better Call Daddy, I love the name of the show. It’s ambitious and yet, she pulls it off in such a beautiful way. It’s so carefully structured. A structured show is hard to do. A structured podcast is difficult and she pulls it off tremendously, which just goes to her fabulous media chops. She’s got her dad on the show and she tackles these interesting topics that I’m not so sure I would be ready to talk to my dad about, and then she has a conversation with her dad, Wayne Friedman, at the end of the show and gets his take on things.

It’s beautiful but I’m going to let her tell you about why she decided to do it because that story is wonderful in and of itself. This is an episode you are going to want to dive into. Let me tell you a little bit more about her. There’s not much Reena Friedman Watts hasn’t done in her professional life. She’s scoured the NPR Newswire for stories. She’s combed through hundreds of small claims cases. She’s worked on reality TV shows like The Jerry Springer Show, Court TV, and Nanny 911. She’s worked in radio. She’s planned mega-events for the telecom and finance industries.

She secured sponsors and emceed. She’s booked sensational and hard-to-get guests, even on her own show, such as Howard Schultz, Barbara Corcoran, Ken Coleman, and Derek Sivers on Cathy Heller’s Don’t Keep Your Day Job Podcast and boosted the downloads from 4 million to nearly 15 million. She has a God-given talent for connecting people and building communities, and she bestows her magic in the most selfless and genuine way. Ideas for how people can achieve the fantastic flow out of her head as effortlessly as the breath flows into her lungs, and she is going to give that to you in this show.

TBF 112 | Media Attraction

Media Attraction: If you get a guest who’s very hard to reach or very unique, you always make room.

 

She coaches entrepreneurs on how to get unstuck and find their first clients and she gets blurbs from influencers for their best-selling books, and she even helps them grow communities of their own. She is a great interviewer, a story junkie, and she’s always scratching that itch on her highly anticipated next episode of Better Call Daddy. She’s telling the stories that haven’t been told and sprinkling them with wisdom from one of her most trusted advisors, her dad. Let’s learn from Reena about why she started this show.

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I love the format of your show. I have been having so much fun researching and listening to it. I have been packed with recordings, so I had to listen to five different shows because I’m banking up for some time off, and yours was the most fun I have had listening. I listened to way more episodes than I had time for, just because I was having fun. Your dad is hilarious. Better Call Daddy, totally fun show. How did you come up with the concept?

My dad is my best friend. That’s how I came up with it. I’m like, “Who is not going to back out on me?” I have been a co-host of another show, which is a little bit of a get-to-know-you process because you share responsibilities. My dad is somebody that I can always count on. I have pushed him pretty far. He has to listen to all of these episodes, too. I’m like, “Dad, I want to bank some episodes. I need you to react to 3 or 4 of them at one go.” I don’t have to twist his arm too much. He’s got my back.

I love that you have such a unique feature concept. I haven’t seen or heard anything quite like that before. My dad is my best friend, too. My dad and I have great conversations together and I wish I had thought of it. That’s how good your show is. I wish I had thought of it so I could spend time with my dad because my dad loves to give his opinion on everything. Your dad, did you have to push him to agree or was he eager to do it?

He was totally eager to do it, and he has been pushing me for years to come up with my own idea. I, like you, worked behind the scenes of a lot of great people for many years. I have worked for influencers, produced events, co-hosted a show, worked in radio, worked in TV, and I was like, “What better way for me to demonstrate my marketing abilities, my casting abilities, my running a team, and putting something together from start to finish than to do something like this?”

It’s a pro show. Sometimes, I will be highlighting people here. I try to highlight and be nice about it, and highlight the great aspect of it but there isn’t a part of your show that is not a pro show. I’m super impressed by that, and it takes a lot to impress me after all the shows I have heard, so great job on that. The thing that impressed me the most and what I want to talk about is your guesting.I want to dive into our three things right away because I want to hit on them. As you called it casting, which I love because you are curating a show. You are featuring someone. They need to be cast, and so you are casting great guests. You have worked behind the scenes, what are some pro tips for how you do that?

This is a secret tip that has worked well for me, and it involves stalking. I watch people’s Instagram lives. I might take twenty pictures and wait to get the perfect shot of them smiling or looking animated, and I will take notes from things that they are saying, and then I will put that in the text of the screenshot, then I will @ sign them and share that in my story to see if they then look at my story and if I can start a conversation like that about what they care about.

A lot of work, mind you. It shows what dedication and works you are putting into your show but so great if you want the attention of someone. I was interviewing a couple of people on the show, The Secret Life of Weddings, and they had stalked Kevin James so that they could get him on their show on Twitter and it worked. This does work, such a great idea and tip on how to do that.You are choosing interesting people too so there’s got to be a method to your madness about who you are inviting on the show. You have quite the variety. I don’t know that I would want to talk to my dad about all these people that you are having on the show but they are interesting. Tell the audience a little bit about why you are so intrigued and why you choose the people you choose.

I do like to push boundaries a little bit, so I want to talk to my dad about things that we have never had a conversation about. What’s interesting is my last guest had seen a post that I did about a 40-year-old virgin that came on my show anonymously and he was like, “That’s a great story.” I looked up who said that because he had never interacted with me before, and then I noticed that this guy was a sperm donor to 21 children.I was like, “Talking about a great story, you’ve got one. I want you to come on,” and he was like, “Let’s do it.” When somebody like that says, “Let’s do it,” you make that happen the next day, and I did that because sometimes people react, and then you lose track of them. If it’s something like a 40-year-old virgin or a sperm donor to 21 people, you make room.

Stop sticking to your, “I’m booked out until December.

”That’s one tip right there. If you get somebody that’s hard to reach or unique, you make room. When I send people their thumbnail and the audiogram, I’m like, “I loved your story. My dad loved you. Who do you know that’s controversial? Who do you think would be a good guest on this show?” I ask every email. For any guests that I have loved, I asked for referrals.I’m constantly getting reached out to by the controversial guests that I have had but I do that. From the Sperm Donor, again, I had some guy reach out to me that’s like, “I have been on his show. I’m the London version of that.” He had a Muslim name. I was like, “I have never had a Muslim on, especially one that gives sperm.”

It sounds like something interesting in there. That story I can talk to my dad about. I love that. You have a lot of fun with your dad in that show. You are like, “Let’s see if I can shock them with the sex addict or dominatrix. Let’s see if it will work,” and it doesn’t. Your dad is unflappable.

The Sperm Donor got him worked up. What else is funny is some of the questions, I always say, “Is there anything that you would like to ask my dad? It can be something unrelated to your story or it can be the meaning of life. It can be something that you weren’t ever able to ask your dad.” One of my guests talked about products that they used in bed, and my dad is like, “I tried that.” I was like, “Okay dad, I’m not including that. That was a little too far.” I even messaged my editor. I was like, “That little detail about what my dad shared that he tried from one of my guests? No.”

Always aim for your podcasting career to be able to provide you with profit that could replace your current salary. Click To Tweet

Although it had probably made a better show if you left it in, so your editor was like, “I don’t want to cut it.”

She was like, “I have put it aside unless you want to use it for a promo.” That’s another thing too that I have now pivoted to. If there’s something that happens like sidebar because I always make sure I’m recording from the beginning of the conversation until the very end because the good stuff always happens behind-the-scenes, I might use it for a promo, and then not include it in the show if it doesn’t go with the rest of the story.I interviewed this guy, Dragon, and he said that his daughter is ducky and the wife is chicken, and I was like, “You have a daddy’s girl, too. Let’s have her intro you.” The rest of his story didn’t mention the daughter at all but she’s cute and sassy. They are going through the adoption process now, and she was game. That’s a perfect promo but I’m not going to include it in the story.

You do great promos. We will talk about that in a little bit. Let’s talk engagement and with your listenership. I check out everybody’s social media and your social media is fantastic. Your Instagram is good. You get engagement and you are getting comments. What are you doing that’s different that’s working for you? That’s a big struggle for a lot of podcasters. They put an episode out there but no one has listened to it yet, so the engagement is difficult.

I have a Facebook group that I started. Honestly, I pretty much know every single person in there. I have only got 650 people. I post in there daily and I respond to every single person, and I care about the people in that group, so that’s my tribe. Those people follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and I engage with them everywhere.

It’s your tribe helping out your other social channels too from one place. That’s so great. I was talking to my coaching call for my clients and we were talking about that. If that’s what you need to, in a sense, juice your social media, get some of your tribe to help you out and give them something. Give them a free coaching lesson. Whatever it is that they need, give them something in exchange for it. You would be surprised how far that goes, and you are getting that because you are serving your community so well.

It is about that. At the beginning of starting a Facebook group, I didn’t know what I was doing but I had worked for an influencer that I saw her doing that and I was like, “I could be unedited. I can bounce oddball ideas off of a little group of people, and then those ideas, the ones that are the most engaged, I can do a show about.” I literally ask questions like, “What are your thoughts on this subject? What are your thoughts on this one?” Sometimes, out of 650 people, I will get over 100 comments. I’m like, “There’s a hot topic.”

You also must have talkers in your group. People are willing to comment, so you’ve got the right audience. There’s a good synergy between your show and the people you are cultivating on social media, that there’s such a good match for it, too.

You talk about monetizing, growing, and having systems in place, so much of what I have done has been winging it.

Let’s talk about that because that’s the third question that we get to. Monetization return on investment. You are putting in a lot of time, and I want to talk about the time you are putting in as a separate section because I would like to talk about your workflow and your process. People can learn from that. As a result of it, I can hear the work that went into it. Are you thinking about how you want to monetize it? You obviously haven’t yet. There are no ads in it, I don’t see a ton of business models except that you are an expert and you have services that you provide but I don’t hear it being offered on the show.

I haven’t done that. Here’s the thing though, in the beginning, I was reaching out to sponsors that I had relationships with because I had put on events and booked speakers, and I know brands that pay for play. I reached out to MANSCAPED because I knew one of the VPs there and was like, “I know you are a controversial brand. I’m going to do a controversial show.Here are some of the guests that I have lined up. Some of them are pretty big. I have a big following. “Do you want to take a risk on me pre-launch?” I told them. I have a Jeffrey Epstein survivor. I have Evan Carmichael for episode one. Here are some of the relationships that I have. Here’s the direction of the show,” and they went for it.

They sponsored my first ten episodes but as you know, if you have no downloads, you have no following and you are just building, the amount that they pay you doesn’t cover costs. I have a professional editor. It did cover costs for the first ten but I didn’t make anything from it. Having a sponsor pre-launch then led to another sponsor that sponsored 25 episodes.She was a client of mine though but she was like, “That’s cool. You have a sponsor. You did good work for me. I will sponsor 25 of them.” That got me started and I was thinking, “That might be a good model,” but here’s the thing, instead of going that route, which barely covers costs, you want to make money that can replace your salary, right?

You want to make it worth the while.

$500 here, $100 here, $100 here and you are like, “That’s not worth it.” I decided to start helping other people with their shows like what you do. I was like, “I can help you from start to finish. Tell you the equipment that you need, help you find guests because I’m good at that, pre-interview your guests, script the guests, be on the call with you, supervise the edit, quality control the edit, and give it to you in a nice pretty package.” That pays a lot more.

I bet it does. You are going to build million-dollar businesses that way.

I’m doing that for 3 or 4 shows and that’s totally paying for my podcasts, and all the fun I’m having.

It’s very aligned with what you did before. You have used your podcast as the showcase for how good it can be and you set the bar high.

I can have all the fun I want and be as unfiltered and as crazy as I want with the guests and the topics because it has nothing to do with their show.

Let’s talk a little bit about your workflow because there are a lot of work in here. If you are doing all these services for your clients and for yourself, this is daunting to a lot of people and more work than I even recommend for some of my clients. We don’t recommend it being that complex sometimes but what is your workflow?

For the Better Call Daddy show, what does it look like from start to finish? I signed a sperm donor that has a good story. I see if he can record in an evening and spend an hour doing that. I send the episode to my editor. She cuts it down between 30 minutes to 1 hour. I have had very few that I don’t cut down, it has to be a good guest to not get snipped. I send the edited version to my dad. He listens to it, then he and I have a 5 to 10-minute conversation, that’s cut down, and then I record the intro.After the whole audio version is done, we create one audio file and a couple of thumbnails. I had a couple of interns that were helping with the summaries that are ending because they are going back to school so I need another intern. That’s great to have some young Millennials add their voice to the description. I have 2 or 3 interns. I’m very sad that they are going back to school or have graduated.

They have been with me for a while. I have them work on the summary. If they don’t do it, I do it. Another thing that I know that you do is turn them into a blog post. If I didn’t have 3 to 4 other shows that I was working on, I would want to add that because I know that could help me grow my audience, as well as an email list. I haven’t focused on that because I, myself, don’t like receiving newsletters.

I’m not an email girl either. Don’t get me wrong, I spent a ton of time on email, which is why I’m not a fan of emails.

Those are ways in which I know that I could grow, and I do that for my clients. For one of my clients, I book his guests, I pre-interview them, I decide who is worth being on the show, then I write the script, book the shoot date, it’s a three-camera in-person shoot so it’s a video series and an audio series, then I manage the web team. Somebody else writes the summary, someone else posts it to YouTube, someone else posts it to all the podcatchers, so I don’t have to do that piece for them. I’m just managing it but since I do it for myself, I know how to manage.

When you interview your own guests, do you do a pre-interview with them or because you already found them, you have an idea of their story, so you don’t need to do that?

Depending on who. If somebody has been on a bunch of other shows and I can do that research myself, I will do that. In the beginning, I didn’t do as much research as I do now but I have noticed like you listened to my show before this, the more research you do, the deeper in the conversation you can go. I like to listen to 2 or 3 other places that person has spoken.

TBF 112 | Media Attraction

Media Attraction: Do not post video segments on social media that are more than three minutes. When it comes to teasers, no one has a very long attention span.

 

You can pick a different angle that interests you, that maybe somebody because they didn’t want to go for the controversy, left hanging. You can go like, “You mentioned this. I want to now know what that means.”

I had a guest, I’m a huge fan of hers. She’s all over the place. She dropped a bomb 50 minutes in. I messaged her afterward and was like, “We have to do a follow-up. I need a part two with you.” There have been a couple of those. A couple of guests that are phenomenal that I’m like, “We’ve got to do two because there are so many layers,” but very rare.

You have pivoted your show a little bit over time. I can see it’s just a little bit and how you do it. You have a great way of interviewing. You are dropping what you want to talk about and then you let them talk. It’s not a question, it’s like, “Tell us the story,” and then they go. In your picking of guests, you know people who are going to tell a good story anyway but you let them run with it, which I admire but then you have added some twists like your kids all of a sudden got involved on the intros and outros. You have the most fun intro and outro. It was fun before your kids joined but I liked your kids on there, too.

My dad, in the beginning, was always like, “We need a song.” I’m like, “What should that song be, daddy?”

It’s always been my favorite thing that I love about podcasts. When I sit there and I listen to it, some story happens and I go, “That’s me.” Right from your trailer, your dad says, “I had a song for you and when you all go out and listen to Reena’s show, Better Call Daddy, you are going to hear this on it where there’s a song that he used to sing her when she was little that she put her name in the words.” My dad used to sing songs to us and he didn’t know the words. They were made-up words. We think that the words to Oh Christmas Tree are I long to eat your branches.

My children do not know the real words because as you go through grandchildren, it lives on. My dad is the same way, and so instant rapport happens. That’s a cool thing. That’s what you are doing. That, in essence for you, is your Binge Factor because it is this rapport you are building with your audience, the rapport you have with your dad, and the rapport you are building with this guest who’s trusting you with some controversial and very tough stories to tell sometimes. That is an incredible dynamic that makes me connect with you on a deeper level than I do on a lot of other shows, which hits the surface.

That’s so sweet of you. I need to playback what you said and put that on my website.

Don’t worry because that’s the clip we save for you and we give you in your video means, so that’s what you will get from us. That’s how I do it here. Usually, your Binge Factor, unless there was something else, and I make notes while I’m talking to you. If you said something great at some point and I’m like, “She said to record all the way through your whole conversation because you never know what you might want to use. You might want to use it for promo.” That’s a great tip. I’m going to have that clip used as your tip of the day thing. The Binge Factor that I analyzed for you is for you to use on your channel. That’s how we look at a show in terms of making sure that we are serving our guests in the process.

Another thing that I feel has evolved from the show is I interviewed the CEO of Yum! Brands and Taco Bell. When I shared that on LinkedIn, his daughter liked the post, so then I reached out to her and was like, “Is that your daddy? I would love to connect with you.” What I have done on several of my episodes is if a guest is like, “My wife is named chicken. She’s a sex therapist.” I’m like, “Obviously, I need to connect with her too,” and that’s another layer. I have interviewed wives, kids, and people that were mentioned in the story.

A girl that I went to college with, I interviewed. She was one of my first guests. We caught up after twenty years, then she ends up six months later after having 3 kids by 3 different guys, marrying some guy that was her boyfriend in fourth grade who just got out of prison. I’m like, “I obviously need to interview him now, too.”

This is what you do well. It’s got a structure of bingeability. First off, I don’t want to miss what it’s going to be on next because I know it’s going to be crazy and I want to hear what’s coming next. That’s in there. That’s the bingeable process of a feature the way you do it but you are also creating this crossing back to older episodes.

You are creating this cross-functional like, “I’ve got to listen to this show, and then I’m going to jump around to that show because I heard about this there,” and then I was like, “There are a bunch of ones on this subject. Let me jump around here and see what it is.” We may not go in a linear order in your show, which does typically happen on what I would call the edutainment style shows because yours is more topic-based and totally interesting story-based. We might jump around more but we are going to get through it because you are leading us through it. That’s a great model.

Another thing that I had a question about that I didn’t know how to categorize myself, in the beginning, was because I wanted to do some film interviews. I watched Indian Matchmaking with my daughter and I was like, “How cool would it be if I’ve got some of those reality stars to come on and tell me what wasn’t filmed?” I ended up doing a week-long takeover of Indian Matchmaking. I will be honest, I reached out to everyone on the show and four of them agreed to come on. I made a week out of that.

It was cool because I and my daughter watched the series, and then she wanted to intro some of them. Some of them connected with me on Facebook and one of them is coming out with a book, so maybe she said no before but now she has something to promote so she will say yes now. Her co-stars were already on. That has given me some credibility. I categorized myself in the beginning as film interviews but I’m wondering, has any shows ever recategorized themselves? Do you think that that would affect my numbers? I feel like I’m rating pretty decently in that field.

You can rechange your category at any time. When you are in the beginning, you have an eight-week boost of being in the new and noteworthy section, and your category does matter where you want to rank and where you want to be. Film interviews were a logical place for you at the beginning but as a show matures, you may very well want to change it because you want to focus on where the audience is and what you are discovering, and you just want to be in the category where they are.There are also fifteen new categories on Apple that weren’t there. They were there when you started your show but for some of us who started a show several years ago, these options weren’t there for us. You can pick as many as you want, too, to add to. You can change your main category and you can move film interviews to your secondary and sub-categories below that.

You can choose a bunch of them to go into. There’s one that’s on social commentary. That’s the one that’s right for you. I don’t remember exactly what it’s called but something that’s got the word social in it. That’s what I remember about it. That one would be the right category for your main category. There aren’t a ton of shows in there, so that’s also better for you from a ranking standpoint.

The film interview one, I have been ranking pretty decently in. That’s why I was like, “Should I?”

Nothing will change because even if you move it to your secondary category, you are still ranking in it. It’s not like the Amazon book rating where it’s what you choose as your top, you are stuck in it, you move out of it and you are in trouble. It doesn’t work like that on Apple.

The more research you do for a podcast episode, the deeper in the conversation you can go. Click To Tweet

That’s good to know. I helped my daughter publish a book with one of the guests that were on my show. COVID changed a lot of things for people. There was this entrepreneur and she wanted to teach kids a love for reading and writing because when she was bullied, she turned to books. I was like, “My kids are stuck at home. I have four kids. I would be supporting an entrepreneur and this would be great for my kids.” I ended up paying for tutoring for my two kids for a year. My daughter took to it.I had her on the show and ended up getting her 3 or 4 more clients talking about how my kids loved her, and for her to tell that story about bullying and starting this business around tutoring kids to have a love for reading and expressing themselves. My daughter ended up writing a book, so I used my cartoonist from Better Call Daddy that did the art for my show.

It’s one of the better-colored arts out there, so all of you needed to go check that out. That’s why I want you to go to your app and search for Better Call Daddy because it’s so bright and colorful and you have a great cartoonist who you let sign and it was nice. You gave her or him credit.

It was another mompreneur. She got laid off during the pandemic and I was able to support her. I support this other lady and entrepreneur friend, and then I’ve got to learn how to self-publish a book and how to format one, and what all went into that. My daughter had something to be proud of, I’ve got to support two entrepreneurs. Everybody in the family and some friends bought the book.

What’s the book called?

Scarlett, The Singer Who Couldn’t Hear Music. What else is cool about that is the CEO of Yum! and Taco Bell, who was on my show, is a champion for women and diversity inclusion. I was like, “I can send him a personalized gift that he can read to his grandkids” I gave him that as a thank you. Other people that have brought up diversity and inclusion, I feel like it’s a nice way to support her, and then it’s very personalized thank you.

That does so great and it sounds like you are having so much fun getting the whole family involved, not just daddy.

My daughter and also my son, love doing the intro. Even my teenager doesn’t want to be associated with mommy as of now. A few of the guests have sparked his interest. I interviewed an NFL player and then Zion Clark, who is hopefully going to go to the Paralympics in 2024. My son is starting to want to work out, be strong, and into fitness, so he wanted to ask those two a few questions. I was like, “Perfect opportunity. Let’s get them on.”

Let’s talk a little bit about what you are seeing for your clients because this is a big struggle for a lot of people who want to start a show, there’s so much work in it. They have big aspirations for how it will run. Not everybody needs that heavy detail handholding on the whole process but some people do. How do you know if that’s right for you?

Most people need handholding, to be honest. I had somebody reach out and he’s like, “I have a great idea. I have tons of clients. I have so many interviews I want to do.” I’m like, “Have you trademarked that idea? Have you bought a mic? Do you know how to have a hardwired connection? Do you know the hosting platforms?” There’s so much to think about even from the very beginning. I don’t even think I trademarked my show until I was six months in and I was serious, and I was putting some money into this.

Tom and I have tons of trademarks and patents between the two of us, and we don’t recommend you do it at the beginning either. Do it once you are sure. You can copyright right away. It’s super cheap, it costs you $50. You can do that.

This guy works with many CEOs of big companies and he wants to talk about possibly some secrets and classified things. I was like, “You are probably going to have to get script approvals.” I work on a healthcare show. You wouldn’t even know that I’m associated with it. I have a prep call with them, we go through all the questions. All the questions have to go through compliance, have to be approved down to the intros, the outros, the sponsored message, everything. Some people need that level of detail.

I had another CEO who was interviewed on a show that I was working on and he was like, “I work in healthcare. I want to inspire my team internally but I also want to share these video segments on my LinkedIn. I want to use it for internal communications and I also want to use it for brand building.” I’m like, “Awesome idea. You can do that in 2 to 3-minute segments. You don’t need 30-minutes segments. Nobody has an attention span.”

The format needs to change based on what they have. Your show was shorter in the beginning and got a little bit longer. It’s a good format that it got longer. 17, 18 minutes was a little short and as you get to the 30 to 50-minute ones, those are so much better because you have that time to get into the depth. It’s right for your audience. I always joke those marketers have the attention span of a gnat, so if you are trying to get attention from marketers, don’t do a 30-minute show. It’s not going to make sense.

In the beginning, I and my editor were getting to know each other. One thing I liked about her was the quickness but I’ve got feedback from my audience. They are like, “We want you to go deeper.” I was like, “What? That was a promo.”

That’s exactly what my audience said to us in the beginning, too. The episodes should be longer. A lot of people took the advice that was out there early on in the podcasting industry and still prevails, even though it’s totally debunked but it should be the length of a commute. How many of us commute nowadays? I walk downstairs and my show would not be long enough.

It’s not going to be the right format anymore, so twenty minutes is not the right size anymore. A lot of people listen to 1.5 times speed, 2 times speed, so the show does gets shortened up anyway. By the way, I do have to admit that I listen to iPod fast and listen to shows 1.5 times, I don’t do double speed. Your dad has such an awesome voice at regular speed but at 1.5, it’s still so good. That doesn’t happen to everybody but her daddy has such a great voice at 1.5, still.

I’m going to tell you a secret too about my dad. He needs a microphone but I do what works for him. When we started the podcast, my dad didn’t even know how to get on Zoom. I have had to tell him about background noise, and he goes once a month to help with his mother in Florida, and I’m like, “Dad, you’ve got to shut off her TV. You’ve got to go in a quiet place.” Earbuds and Zoom work for him. If it were up to me like with one of my clients, I use Riverside.fm. It’s much better sound quality.

I have a demographic that if I send them to Riverside.fm, they would be so overwhelmed but Zoom is fine. They are comfortable there, especially in 2020 almost everybody has gotten used to it. I agree before that it was Skype, and Skype was always iffy. I was so glad to get rid of Skype when it was done and move on to Zoom as a minimum. Sometimes it was not good, and you had to remember to have a backup recorder, and then turn that on. That was not fun. How many times did I forget that? I’m grateful to Zoom now, but Riverside.fm is a great option if you want to go for the higher quality sound level.

It can be difficult with some guests, too. That’s the one reason why we don’t make it a normal part of what we teach our clients, and because you get some guests on there, you had Stephen Covey as your 100th episode, which is great. All generations should be appealing to his advice and what he talks about but it might not be easy for him to handle Riverside.fm. It might not be his thing, and it would be a shame if you had him on your show and he got flustered, and then couldn’t deliver such a great show, which he did.

I read every page of that book before I interviewed him. I loved him. After that interview, I was like, “I need to lean more into people who love their dads,” so that has come from that interview.

I can see that because you do have a thread running through in your more recent episodes, especially of people who are raving about their dads, too.

They have a big struggle with their dads. The daddy issue thing or the following in daddy’s footsteps, that hasn’t been so tapped into. Even David Meltzer said that to me. He was like, “You stole my idea for the greatest podcast. Daddy parent issues.”

My dad always said that he thought we weren’t listening when we were kids, and then every so often, something will come out of my mouth in front of him and he will go, “You did listen to me. You now say that.” I’m like, “Yes.” His getting to read my blog is his way of understanding that I did listen to all those years. I pretended as I ignored them. With your son there, he may be pretending to ignore you now but you never know. It’s going to turn around.

I hope you are right. I also heard you mentioned that when you started blogging, your dad read those, too.

I had a whole blog before blogging was popular. I had a blog about going green like sustainability. My dad was the only person who read it, and the thing was is that he worked in the oil industry so everything I wrote was diametrically opposed to what earned us a living and allowed me to go to college. He was like, “You’ve got to stop writing this stuff,” but he was the only one who read it. That’s what I discovered.

I didn’t know how to blog and promote the blog. Spending all that time getting people when blogging wasn’t such a big thing was so hard, and the podcast made all of a sudden, my blogs are getting shared and copied. It was amazing how my world changed by adding the podcast component to my blog. It was that simple.

TBF 112 | Media Attraction

Scarlet, The Singer Who Couldn’t Hear Music

You can listen at 1.5 speed. You can listen while you are running. It’s no longer the commute for me. Twenty minutes is all I can exercise. 20 to 30 minutes, that’s a podcast but getting to know people that way feels so personal. It’s essential for thought leaders.

Advice for aspiring podcasters who haven’t quite made the leap yet, what do you say?

This will give you opportunities that you have never even thought imaginable. By having a platform, you have a reason to reach out and have a conversation with people you admire. I don’t see any reason why not to. Technology makes it so easy. There are cost affordable ways to do it. It will make you a better speaker. It will give you confidence. It will help you connect with new people. Do it.

I cannot thank you enough for putting such a great example of a podcast out on the market. I know it’s so much work. I want to give you lots of love and credit for the incredible hard work that you are putting into the show because that’s not always the case there. There are a lot of junk books, junk podcasts out there. When I find one that’s such quality, I just want to shout it from the rooftops. Thank you for giving me that opportunity to do that with yours. Better Call Daddy, please, thank your dad, Wayne, for being a part of the show because the wrap-up at the end is great with his voice and his view on the world is interesting. Thank him for me.

Do you and your daddy want to be on?

We might have to have both of us, right?

That would be so much fun. Has your dad ever been on a podcast?

My dad is more of a behind-the-scenes writer. I tried to get him to say, “If I’ve got one of my daughters to interview you, dad, so you could tell all family stories and we recorded it.” He was like, “No.” He didn’t want to do that.

My mom’s parents are like that. I would love to include my grandparents. Coming up, my dad found a tape of his father that has since passed and it had a lesson on there that’s pretty audible. I interviewed my grandmother and we are going to put that on the tail end, my dad’s dad, and we are going to do a whole family episode. I wish I could do that on both sides of my family. One thing that I love about my show is the intergenerational play.

I’m so glad you are doing that. If I could make a suggestion of something that I want like you have covered lots of topics. I would never interfere and say anything but I would love to have all of your family. I would love to find out more about your kids. They have such cute energy and we get little snippets of them. You should do a whole episode on it, so I’m so glad you are going to do that.

My daughter would play into that, maybe have her interview me. One that would be hard is my mom. I wish I could talk her into it.

I can hardly get my mom to come on Zoom with the kids on camera when we couldn’t see them every day. She wouldn’t do that. I so appreciate you. I’m glad you are a part of the podcasting community. Great job on your show. Better Call Daddy, Reena Friedman Watts, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

—

I love this episode. I had so much fun with Reena. It was great to get to know the way she structured, the thought she put in, and the process she put through in starting Better Call Daddy. The connection she’s made with her dad over time inspired me. I picked up the phone after our interview and immediately called my dad and said, “Dad, would you have been interested if I would come to you and asked if you want us to do a show with me?” I could hear my mom in the background and my mom goes, “Not me. Don’t ask me.” I thought that was classic.

My dad was like, “I don’t know. I’m not sure I would be all that interested in talking about the kinds of things that you talk about on your show.” I was like, “I would have to structure a totally different show for us to communicate.” He goes, “Maybe I would do it once or twice.” It’s brave and ambitious of her to get her whole family involved in the show in some way, shape or form. It has turned into a fun show, eye-opening, fun, and worth listening to.

Every time it pops up on my Goodpods that she’s got a new episode, I’ve got to go in and check it out because I’ve got to hear who she’s going to interview next, what they are going to say. The fact that her unflappable father never reacts but gives his very serious advice about everything is beautiful. I love them. I hope I get to meet them in person sometime soon because I would love to have dinner with Reena and Wayne. Reena and Wayne, if you are reading, I totally want to have you over, so if you are in California, you give me a call and we’ ae going to have dinner together at my house.

A podcasting platform will give you unimaginable opportunities, as well as a reason to reach out and talk with people you admire. Click To Tweet

I totally want to hang out with them. Isn’t that the beauty of a great podcast? When you find someone that you want to hang out with, you are going to listen to every word they say and check out all their episodes. It makes it more fun, and you are getting educated and learning something, and being exposed to something new. She has done a beautiful job and she has demonstrated her skill of, which she has to the nth degree.

If someone wanted to hire her, they can see that her podcast is a showcase. Many that I see out there selling services and other things, their podcast is like a stepchild, it isn’t working. It isn’t doing what they would do for a client, so it’s not a great showpiece, and hers is. Reena Friedman Watts, Better Call Daddy, fabulous show.

Thanks, everyone for reading, and thank you for checking out all the podcasts, going in, subscribing, and checking them out over time. I hear from all of our podcasters that there’s a little boost after coming on this show, which means that all of you are out there are checking them out, so thank you for that. I appreciate you. I will be back next time with another successful podcaster and an interview on things that you might be able to apply to your show.  

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