TBF 79 | Podcast Success

 

Many people quit their podcasting journey even before they had begun for fear of producing something that isn’t perfect. However, many successful podcasters will attest that there is never a perfect first episode, or even the next ones right after. Showing the ups and downs of being a podcaster, Tracy Hazzard talks to Rick Jordan, a nationally recognized voice on cybersecurity business and ethics and the host of All In with Rick Jordan, to have his take and advice on why purposeful commitment is at the heart of podcast success. Rick shares his journey to podcasting, how he struggled with starting his show, and later on forming a team to do the essential things. He then discusses how he uses his show to purposefully serve his business and how he shows that professionalism that gets his listeners wanting to binge. Podcasting is an on-going journey that you can never perfect on the first try. What you can do is just go all in, offer the value you have to the world, and continually commit to growing one episode at a time.

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Why This Cyber Expert Knows Purposeful Commitment is the Heart of Podcast Success – Advice from All In with Rick Jordan

I am interviewing successful podcasters. This one that I have for you is someone that I’m in a mastermind group with. I couldn’t resist bringing him on because he’s got a tremendously impressive show. He’s got a great background in media already, and he’s built such an authoritative brand that you’ve got to check this out. I have Rick Jordan from All In with Rick Jordan. He is a nationally recognized voice on cybersecurity, business and ethics. He appears nationwide as an expert on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. He’s the Founder and CEO of ReachOut Technology, one of the best cybersecurity and IT management firms in the country. Also, he’s a consultant to the White House.

Rick and I have not been in person together. I’ve seen him at an event and I’ve been virtual, so we haven’t gotten this chance to connect. This is our first opportunity to do that. When there’s a shared history and connection of some kind or when you’ve met someone at an event, you’ve got to know the dynamic that happens between us. We had a 2 or 3-minute pre-call and then we got started. You’re going to know how that can work. When you go listen to All In with Rick Jordan, you’re going to know how he does it again with his interviews and the rapport that he builds with his guests. Let’s go to Rick Jordan.

About All In Podcast Host Rick Jordan

TBF 79 | Podcast SuccessRick Jordan is a nationally recognized voice on Cybersecurity, Business, and Ethics, appearing nationwide as an expert guest on ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX.

He is the Founder & CEO of ReachOut Technology, one of the best Cybersecurity and IT Management firms in the country, and a consultant to the White House.

 

Rick, welcome to the show. I’m glad to have you here.

It’s good to be here.

He’s got a great virtual setup going on, lots of color standing out. It looks good.

I’m a very visual person and even in business because my primary business is cybersecurity, but then I’m a podcast host that’s in 36 countries and it’s awesome. Even with cybersecurity or podcasting, it doesn’t matter. I’m a musician too. Everything is designed by intention. You have to make it look the part.

You’ve been podcasting for a while.

Two years in February 2021.

TBF 79 | Podcast Success

Podcast Success: It has nothing to do with not going back and has everything to do with going forward is where the fear starts.

 

How does it feel to get to that point?

It feels crazy because when we passed the 100th episode, I was like, “I didn’t feel much.” I started looking back and I was like, “How did we get here?” We even took a couple of months off during the first year to try to get the rhythm. When I started, it’s straight up, and I’m going to tell you exactly why. I hired a branding agency and I was telling them where I wanted to go and they’re like, “You need a podcast.” I was like, “I guess I need a podcast. Let’s go down this road.”

There are telltale signs that you hired a branding agency. That doesn’t surprise me.

That was the first one.

I could tell because there are three things that happen with branding agencies: short names that are very similar to lots of other podcasters, to the show, and your picture on your cover, that’s always a branding agency or adviser indicator. I’m wondering, did they advise you to start at number 21 instead of starting at number 1?

For the episodes? Are you talking about YouTube or a different platform? Because we didn’t start at 21.

Straight on the podcast. Your episode numbers start at number 21.

There must be a glitch or something somewhere because they were at number one.

That’s a thing I’ve heard from some brand agencies before, so that was my other telltale sign. It’s because they do this thing like, “We don’t want to appear like we’re new to this, so we’re going to number them.”

'Burn the bridge when you go across it, that way you don't go back.' Click To Tweet

We started right at the beginning, right at number one. I remember episodes 2 or 3 was my Burn The Net episode. That’s still one of my favorite ones to this date. I’m going to have to go look back.

It’s missing because I didn’t see that. That one would have caught my eye and I would have checked that one out. Your 1 through 20 are missing. We’ll have to find them for you.

That’s my whole analogy of how I approach life. People say, “Burn the bridge when you go across it, that way you don’t go back.” The thing that I find, whether it’s an entrepreneur or anybody in general, is that there’s always the hesitation to take action in the first place. It has nothing to do with not going back, and it has everything to do with going forward is where the fear starts.

I take it you’ve got a little bit of media background, so you didn’t have much fear about doing the podcasting thing?

No, not at all. I’ve been speaking from stages for 20 to 25 years, even as a semi-pro musician in the church world. I’ve played in front of groups of 5,000 before. It’s nothing new to me to be in front of people. I’ll tell you what the difference though, because it started out just audio, and then we were recording video only to use for social clips, and everything was posted on audio. I started on YouTube months ago, right about episode 75 or something. In the very beginning, I was trying to pull from my experience speaking from the stage and everything else, and I found this out too when I was going on TV because I’ve been on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, every place you can imagine, top ten markets, and the same skillset you have to talk into this microphone here from the stage is not the same skillset as being in front of a TV camera, even in a podcast studio like this. It’s totally different. I looked back on my first TV appearance which was a few years go and I was like, “I sucked. Look at this.”

It’s different. People think that there’s a great transfer. With video, this is what I find is you’ve got the energy, the motion like we’re talking to each other, and it’s flipping back and forth between the two of us on the way the video is editing. All of that is there. There’s a dynamicness of that. With audio, you can’t have dead air, so you’ve got to have a good editor. It’s a little bit different. You’ve got to keep the energy in that voice and what you’re doing. It’s like trying to hold everybody’s attention on the stage when they all have their phones out.

No joke about that. There are tips and tricks they use on stage too. There are things you can incorporate in tools in your toolbox. You can use a camera. Even like what I did, I take up the whole frame with my hands. I’ve been around the block a little while, I’ve learned a few things, but now it’s all natural.

The stage has informed you well. We have to assume that their attention is elsewhere when we’re recording our podcast because many podcast listeners, the number was extremely high in the last study. Over 60% of people listen to podcasts from their home, which means that they’re doing something else like laundry, dishes. I had listened to you while I put my makeup on and fixed my hair. You’re multitasking when you’re doing it. The capturing of attention is very similar to trying to make sure that that audience is looking at you. How does that start? You’ve got a branding agency, brought them in and you’ve got started. Was there anything you found that tripped you up and made you hesitate thinking, “Is this for me?”

It was the rhythm, and this rhythm lasted for a while because I didn’t have the studio. Getting to a point to where I could still be comfortable because I don’t even monetize my podcast in a traditional sense, I don’t have sponsors. The reason why it still exists is for one, credibility and two, it’s fun. I get to meet many amazing people as I bring guests on. It’s caught on too, it steamrolled over the course of the past years, which is cool. The last part is to reach a specific target audience.

It evolves over the years, but that’s the reason why I’ve evolved my setup from the things that trip me up at the beginning. I would fly out to Vegas at first, Brad Lea dropping bombs. He’s a friend of mine. I started batching in his studios at LightSpeed VT. From there, I would go to my branding agency in Seattle, Washington where they had their offices and they built out a studio. I was traveling there once a month and it got to be a grind. Even back in this studio, when we first built it, my team was scheduling whenever. I felt like it’s like, “All I feel like I’m doing is dropping podcast episodes.”

You do two a week still.

We shifted to batching hardcore once a month. We do that two days, the 1st or 2nd week of the month. It’s back-to-back, five episodes a day.

Five is a lot, so you’ve got some salmon to go there.

I didn’t start that way.

You have to build up to that.

Even in that case, there’s an opportunity because I’ve made movies now and even possibly being on Joe Rogan. That’s out there along with BlazeTV but those can be longer shows too. It’s like, “I can do those,” because I’m already going for about nine hours a day with doing five episodes. Mine is not short for me either. It’s not like the 5 or 10 minutes. It’s anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. Sometimes, the good ones will go 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes. It doesn’t matter much to me as far as the length now.

It doesn’t matter to you listeners either. You hit that right.

It’s interesting you were talking about the people that are doing something else. I switched branding agencies, and now it’s more of a larger PR firm that we’re using. They’re incredible but they listened to my show, All In. Five of them in the company listened to it and they play it in the background like they listen to any other show, and then they try to track when they check out. I remember them saying this, “We checked out in one episode about twelve minutes in and another one was about 25 minutes in.” There have been changes that have been made since then.

I want it to be the best possible for real. At first, I’m doing this because my branding agency told me I needed it, and then I caught onto it. I started loving it and then it ends up grabbing a purpose to it after that point. It was this transition about not knowing why I’m doing it except somebody told me I needed to. Going into where it started to become something fun for me. It transitioned into having an actual purpose. Now, it’s in the process of being extremely polished. That way, we can reach many.

There’s an interesting dynamic you have between your core businesses, which is cool by the way. You’re a cybersecurity IT expert, you’ve got all that going on in your core business. The podcast, All In, is much more general, more entrepreneurial. This is a hesitation for a lot of podcasters out there. They feel like they either need to do one that’s completely within their niche or they’re doing completely one that’s only personal brand, authority speaking building. It sounds like your speaking career is going great. Maybe you don’t need to put that much work into your podcast. Was there a dovetail between the two pieces?

A little bit, and I fell into a trap early on too, especially when I hired the branding agency. Even though my core is cybersecurity, I’m also a philanthropic and motivational guy when I speak from the stage. I love seeing people go from point A to B. This is the self-motivation part of it. I was broke. I’ve told this story on the show a couple of times too and from the stage all the time. I don’t want to see other people have those struggles, or if they’re having those struggles, I want to help them get out of it. That’s where the All In mentality came from because I’ve never been anything but that, and that’s why the show is that. I’ll go for five episodes a day, it doesn’t matter, I get it done whatever I have to do. We’re in the midst of cybersecurity companies going public here in about 60 days. It’s been a fourteen-month process.

You can still fit podcasting in, that’s amazing. I’m in awe because I can’t tell you how many podcasters when something big in the business like that trips them up, and you’ve got it still going. Good for you.

Thank you. This is where I think some other podcasts would probably get tripped up because I didn’t go into this thinking I’m going to be this internet guy, this coach guru or this Instagram god. That came about because I enjoy calling a real business. The podcast part of it is funny because you are like, “You’re a little broad.” What I fell into at first is I let my branding agency tell me everything, and their background was in this internet guy, coach, Instagram guru area, and that’s how it went for a year or so until I started asking questions and it’s like, “I had this other stuff but there isn’t allure to it.”

That’s another place where I got tripped up at the beginning because you start to see, for me, the allure was I can go out and help a lot of people. It doesn’t matter about my industry that I’m in. I can help anybody because I see the strategy. It’s a gift that I have and I can dive in. I’ve talked to many amazing people, and I’ve picked up all this other knowledge. I can pour it into them like, “Let’s go do it.” It’s like, “That’s not making me any money because of the other deal over here.” That was the second year of the show. We are trying to figure out how to meld all these things. We’re going to do a relaunch because we’re doing two episodes a week now. One of them is going to be completely broad, entrepreneurial, motivational aspects of that and business-related, and the other one is going to be completely cybersecurity.

I’m glad to know that because I was like, “I want to know more about this.” I’m curious. There are many documentaries, I want to know from someone that I trust. Because I know you from a group that we belong to together, I’m like, “I want to know what Rick has to say about this.” This is such a good time for you to pivot the show because you’ve got so much under your belt already, there’s so much credibility built in that you’re shifting it now to make it continue to work for you, but to work for your audience too.

It has to fit into the grand scheme of things. We’ve had the discussions internally. I’m being raw. I hope you don’t mind.

That’s what we want here.

There have been discussions three times over 2020. It’s like, “Do we keep doing the show?” Inside of me is like, “I love doing it.” Everybody that’s listening, I almost feel an obligation to them now because there are many to keep things going, but it’s got to fit what I’m doing too. How do we connect all the dots?

It’s a hard choice, but I’m glad you asked yourself that question frequently because that, in and of itself, keeps the show on point. It keeps it going within the right direction if you’re constantly asking yourself that. After this stage of your show, your listeners are there because they want you. They want to see where you’re going to go and when they hear your company is going public, they’re going to want to know more and want to dive into space with you.

That’s exciting to me too. I appreciate the encouragement on that also. The way that we’re going public is we’re going to acquire other IT and cybersecurity firms. That’s the whole reason for going public. In business, it’s called a roll-up.

We’re doing a roll-up strategy. I love it. We’re not doing it in a public forum though.

I love the public side of this too because it’s almost like “for the people, by the people” thing. I’m a little patriotic that way.

It fits your industry better than it does mine.

That’s the other reason for re-skinning the show as well. It’s because we want to appeal to that audience. Even though there’s a lot in my industry that listen now, I still want to make something that’s a little more targeted because in the business world, I’m building a huge company now. Everything that I do has to tie together somehow. There can’t be any orphaned projects that exist.

That’s true because your time is valuable and you have a whole lot of people expecting you to make sure that every hour you spend is valuable, so you’ve got that pressure. You also have a spokesperson pressure. You have to be careful of what you’re saying out there, how you’re curating that. Being in control of that is a whole lot easier than having it out there in the media. Controlling the media yourself is a better way to go. Have you considered that you have binge listeners? This is The Binge Factor after all, I want to make sure we touch on that.

I have. That’s another thing that’s interesting to me too because even in the last two batches of shows because we batch with the new PR firm. We batch about two months in advance and sometimes three months. Then we’ll shift the publishing schedule around sometimes. I had a huge Bitcoin expert on, of course that’s crazy and relevant now.

We want to hear about that now, not three months from now.

The bubble burst. If it is a bubble and people are speculating whether it is or not, but that happens next week, all of a sudden we don’t want to trash the episode either. It has to be relevant immediately. Even in the past twenty or so episodes, and I say twenty episodes because that’s like a year for some people. For me, it’s like ten weeks. Now that I think about it, it’s cool because we publish frequently, we can pivot fast too. If something needs to be changed, we can shift it and it happens next to immediately or relatively soon.

TBF 79 | Podcast Success

Podcast Success: Learning to interview takes time. You get better at the conversation as you keep doing it. Don’t stop at episode seven.

 

As far as a binge scenario, I started looking at other podcasts. I always used to take my intros a little bit softer when I started talking to the guests because I’m such a personable dude. I love getting into the personal side of things and trying to find questions and making the individual human. I had Sir Ronald Cohen on the show, who ran finances for the UK while he was President of the G8. The guy is a noble, he’s a Knight in Great Britain. I’m talking to him like, “What’s the human side of you? Let’s make this relatable.” That’s the question I always ask to these huge experts. Now I’m introducing everybody with a bio at the very beginning of the show because it’s trying to capture the listeners, especially for the binge listeners to say, “This is what you’re going to hear.” I never go back because it’s so tight in time for how much I produce, and I’m sure you know this too. I usually don’t go back to try to record an intro after anything like that. It’s like, “What we drop is what we drop.”

I spot listen through because I’ve got to prep for our interview here. I can’t listen to every episode. For some of the ones that I listened to, you introduce the guests with them while they are on the air. Is that still your process, even though you’re doing a much longer bio?

Yeah, it is. I’ve done a lot of TV appearances and I look at that for inspiration too on how they work. We’re producing this as a top-quality show. You can see the studio and everything. There’s nothing that we’re skimping on as far as quality, but I’ll even turn it aside because it’s three cameras in here. I’ll look at a different camera with a prompter and I’ll read the bio like they would on Today Show or the Tonight Show. That’s exactly how I’m doing it.

I think that’s an interesting way to go about it. When I looked at your binge factor, analyzing this and looking at a show and say, “This has binge-able features.” When it has binge-able features, what that means simply is that people are going to listen to most of your episodes. They’re going to go through it. There are going to be a few they skipped, it always happens. Someone they didn’t like who you have as a guest or an irrelevant topic to them. For the most part, they’re going to want to consume and hear where you’re going, hear who you’ve got on next and keep going. There has to be some reason that they say, “I want more.” What is that? What is that binge factor that keeps people wanting more? The way that you introduced those guests with an energy that is out of the gate sharp, you’ve got this power energy at the beginning, that sets a tone. Many of them have a slow-roll beginning. This hits them right into it and rolls them into it.

You don’t always do the whole bio. You do little bits and pieces, you welcome them in, then you do a little more bio. That, in a way, is what draws them in. Once they’re in, it is your professional style, the way you ask questions and your relate-ability. I do this for a living and I’ve done thousands of interviews myself. I can tell that there are some people where you don’t know when you’ve gone to interview them, but it is hard to tell that you’re not friends with them. That’s why I believe people are bingeing on your show.

We need to find the stuff that's going to cause listeners to want to hang on to every single word. Click To Tweet

Thanks. I have to make it that way. I love meeting people anyways in person or on a remote show. I do miss the in-person guests. We’re set up in a pro studio, but at the same time because the studio that we built here has four different sets, we can attach right over here and I can have a fantastic conversation. The last in-person that I did was with a pastor on Christmas day for a Christmas episode of 2020. I’m feeling the energy in the room.

You’re lucky you can do a live one then because everything shut down all over the place.

I was excited, “There’s another person in here.”

That is getting hard. I want to touch on the five things because the way you interact with your guest ties into our five things that we ask every podcaster who comes on the show. The first of the five things is, how do you get great guests? In your case, I know you’re using a firm, so how do you decide that they’re going to be a great guest?

I have nothing to do with that personally. Isn’t that fun?

Did you give them criteria because they seem to fit your mission?

They do, and we did not even start using the PR firm for guests until a month ago. That’s all done internally too. I have a number one, she’s the first officer. Her name is Ashley and she goes out and invites all of these guests.

Ashley’s got your number because she’s got it down right for you. Not everyone has name recognition.

They’re interesting people.

They’ve got that All In mentality that you’re trying to talk about. You’re doing something right there. Let’s tie into the second part of the question. How do you prep for that interview?

There’s a process internally that we’ve developed over the past year. There are some sheets that are handed to me. We’ve gotten better at getting to me about a week in advance, but there are always bios that they submit, there’s an intake form. They submit their own PR stuff. A lot of times, we even have assistants that will go out and scour the internet for more information from them. When you bring on guests, they have the nice, polished stuff that they think is interesting that they submit to you in their bio. It’s not the stuff at all. I had a guest and I was talking like, “What happened when you were seventeen when you had this life-altering experience when you almost die?” He was like, “That’s not in my bio.” I’m like, “I know.”

TBF 79 | Podcast Success

Podcast Success: That atmosphere in the show has to be conducive to getting your message across to everyone that’s watching or listening.

 

That happened to me. I got to interview someone and I got to ask him about when his partner was killed by the mob. He’s like, “How did you know that?” I was like, “Your son told me because I pre-interviewed him.” It was one of those things.

There’s a whole team, there are about six people that go into every single episode from production and research. When I put it out there, I’m like, “I want to know this stuff that people are going to be interested in.” I need three questions that I can ask all the time that they did not give us anywhere in their bio or any in the media sheet of their press kit. We need to find the stuff that’s going to cause listeners to want to hang on to every single word.

Readers and podcasters out there, you have to know this because when you hear his show, when you hear Rick do All In and do his interviews, you’re hearing that professionalism come through. You’re also doing a great job of flowing that. It’s not like you look down at your sheet and go, “What was my next question?” It doesn’t happen like that at all because you spent the time to read this information, get to know them, understand why those questions are there, and then as you’re talking, you’re great on the fly. You know when that next question is appropriate when you can get into that one they haven’t heard before.

On the fly stuff doesn’t come right off the bat either. That’s another thing I’d love to tell the listeners too. That takes time. You get better at the conversation as you keep doing it. Don’t stop at episode seven, like I hear most podcasters do. We’re into 120-something after two years. It sounds way different now than it did at episode three.

That’s why I went to your beginning. I hit your episode 21 because I wanted to hit from the beginning to check that out. The next one that we do is increase listeners. What are you and your team doing to increase the listenership? You’ve got a decent base here.

Guesting on other shows is probably the biggest thing that you can do. We’ve become a little more selective because of time. At the beginning, especially in year two, I would take an invitation to guest on any show. I didn’t even care if it was a brand-new show. I would do it because I’ve been through it and I want to help others too. Now, I have to be a little more selective on time because I’m crunched in a lot of areas but still, if there’s an opportunity, I’ll sit down and I’ll talk to anybody.

I’m glad to get you on my show. I feel privileged.

My team knows that too, who schedule these things for me. They understand it and put into action my mindset on these things because I’d love to. They’re good with the guests, the same as the guests, they are good at me guesting on other shows as far as getting those as well. I’ve done some shows that are like, “Meh,” but then there are other ones that you might think might be a little more controversial or not with me. I remember one from July 4, 2020, and I was in the middle of producing Liberty Lockdown. It’s a documentary on government overreach during the pandemic. It could be considered conservative-leaning, but I went on a podcast that there was an awesome black and Hispanic dude that were on there. Their show is as big as mine is. We had a real talk about whatever. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever been on because it was straight up. It’s like, “I’ll go on anybody’s show for the most part.”

That’s a great strategy out there for all of you, readers, that is one of my top go-to advice that I give to people. You produce this like a pro already. You’ve got this TV background. From your background, what helped you set up this professional production? What do you think is the most key?

Consistency trusts everything in this industry. Click To Tweet

Completely my church media experience because being a musician and being a semi-pro musician, my mind always goes to designing everything first. It’s what we design first when it comes to audio or whatever it is, but the visual is huge. You have to have that sketched out where you want to be ahead of time and put all of your efforts into that. I would always get a little bit anal in a live venue that I was going to perform, in about lighting, sound quality, and everything else because I believe in creating an atmosphere. That atmosphere has to be conducive to getting your message across to everyone that’s watching or listening.

You didn’t get caught up in the perfectionist model because you’ve said you’ve honed it over time.

That should not stop you from going out and doing it either. You’re right on about that. You can upgrade all that. We’ve got new cameras coming in because these are great. I know that they look good, but there’s better stuff that’s like, “We can do this too.” This would up the show another notch. You get a little geeky over that stuff but still, the main goal is to create that atmosphere where listeners will be able to latch on and take something from that. I call it the one thing in some segments. It’s a recurring segment in the show, “If you have one thing to take out of the show, here’s what it is.” I give them one thing when I do that, but I always ask the listeners too, “Pick out one thing that you can take from today.” That’s what I would say, even an answer to this question, is trying to create the atmosphere so that it can produce that one thing.

Do you encourage engagement? Are you working personally on the engagement of your community and your listeners?

Personally, I do go to my DMs, I’d go on Instagram. I do almost what anybody does. The answer is yes, I do have a team that also works on engagement because there’s way too much for me to handle on my own. When we started doing celebrity collaborations and also doing giveaways of our own on Instagram specifically, we give away $100 every single week on a contest. I’ll go on there. I’ll reply to the comments, answer DMs, add to my Stories.

I love doing that, and this is about the creating atmosphere. The messages that I get sometimes, especially from these giveaways, “You have no idea how much this helps. My mom got a medical bill last week that she couldn’t pay. This $100 that you gifted to me because I won the contest is going to cover that bill.” That’s why I do this. Who cares? It’s $100 every single week. It has a business purpose behind it. Why can’t it also help people at the same time? It can.

I prefer that kind of engagement. We’re connected on social media but I’ve noticed that your engagement is purposeful. That’s a great way to hone that social media presence over time. You said before, you don’t really monetize your show, but let’s not look at it as you’re not making ad dollars, but you’re profiting from the professionalism, authority and influence that you’ve created by having this show. What are some things that have turned into that for you on some opportunities?

Without a doubt, clients target for acquisition when we go public, influence within my industry space, and influence within outside my industry space. It’s because of my presence and my brand that I was in the White House. Specifically for my industry, even when I was in the White House because I was there to lay the SmackDown, NSA, CIA, and all the other guys in the room to bring it from the human aspect that I was talking about. I started out my speech there after I heard all this BS. If you look on my Instagram, it’s Cybersecurity, Motivation, No BS. That’s in the bio. I’m just a guy that goes on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, speaks at Harvard, NASDAQ, has a podcast in 36 countries, that’s why I’m in the room. When you talk about I haven’t monetized it directly, not quite directly but very much so indirectly in a lot of ways.

There’s a lot of built-in good authority that way. That’s absolutely for sure. I also think that in your particular industry, and especially with your model of acquisitions that are coming forward, it’s essential that you’re trustworthy. By showing up for people week-after-week, that’s an example of being trustworthy.

Consistency trumps everything. That is everything in this industry.

If someone is starting a podcast, what’s the one thing that they should consider to do?

Start publishing your episodes. I talk to people all the time that are saying, “I’m going to wait until I have six in the can.” I’m like, “Screw that. Do it as soon as you have a recording. Get that crap out.”

Build them up though.

I was at a restaurant with someone, they’re college students. They started a podcast and they’re like, “I recorded six of them. You know that, Rick.” I’m like, “I know that. Where are they?”

They’re going to be irrelevant by the time you put them out.

They think, “I want them to sound perfect.” I was like, “They’re never going to sound perfect. Even when you’ve done 100-something episodes like mine, it’s never going to sound perfect. It can sound professional but it will never sound perfect.”

I want to touch on something on your All In title. All In is a big part of who you are and your mission. All In isn’t just a temporary thing. What’s your version of All In in podcasting now?

TBF 79 | Podcast Success

Podcast Success: Your podcasts are never going to sound perfect, even when you’ve done a hundred episodes. It can sound professional but it will never sound perfect.

 

As it relates to the podcasting, it’s some of what we talked about but then it’s also not stopping. As we talked about before a little bit about having that internal conversation, and this happened where we had another one like, “Should we stop because we got a lot going on right now? Should we stop until we relaunch?” The team came back to me and blasted me almost because I asked the question like, “That’s not All In, Rick, is it?” The conversation was over that quickly.

When you start something, you have to see it through to the end. That’s the thing, if the show doesn’t have an end yet, will it have at some points? I don’t know. I could see it maybe transitioning into something else but that could be next month. It could be ten years from now. I have no idea but All In mentalities that we’re talking about, you see it through until it’s done, until it’s fulfilled its purpose. That doesn’t have to be a finite amount of time either. It can be something that’s ever-evolving that you don’t even know while you’re in the process of it, and that’s also okay.

When you start something, you have to see it through to the end. Click To Tweet

All of you out there, you have read some of the great reasons why you should pick up your phone, your device, log into your favorite podcast app and select Rick Jordan All In.

Thanks for having me on.

Wasn’t that a lot of fun? Rick has some great insights to how hard it is to be a podcaster, how fun it is, how dedicated you need to be, and how professional you may need to grow to make your show work for you and your brand. I love that he’s raw and honest about all of that with you because it is the case for so many. Many who try to do it themselves process. In the do-it-yourself process, you discover that you’re falling short on various things, that it’s hard to find the right guests or to prep enough for those guests. You don’t have time to do that all. To have assembled a team to do the essential professional things like Rick has done, is going to help you stay podcasting, be consistent with it, go all-in with your podcast, and it’s also going to help your brand shine. 

You get to do the things that you do best. Whatever you can do to start to structure those things or only take on bits and pieces and start to make it more professional as you go, that was great advice from Rick. He goes all-in whenever he can, but that didn’t mean it hung them up so that he didn’t get started. Go ahead, go all-in on podcasting, and go check out All In with Rick Jordan, the podcast. Thanks, everyone, for reading. I’ll be back next time. I’m looking forward to featuring your show right here on The Binge Factor.

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