Building Better Developers, the developer podcast

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of interviews. We're continuing our interview with Adam Adams and it all comes down to this. We've built up to this part. In this episode, we wrap up our discussion with him and get into the nitty gritty of building a podcast, selling a podcast, transitioning out of it. And what is it that you need to do if you're going to have a podcast in order to succeed? What do you need to look for? It's not just a matter of doing it to do so. This is when you're saying, I want to make this a thing. I want to make money off of it. I want to be able to do this not as just a hobby kind of thing, but actually as a side hustle. What's it going to take? What do I need to look for? What are some of the things I need to do? That is what we're going to cover. And I'm wasting his time. So let's get in there and get back to our conversation with Adam Adams. With Grow Your Show, you've shared a lot about what your view is of a podcast and how you step into it and that whole ready aim shoot. One of the things I noticed that you guys do is that you don't have a service where it's like, hey, just send us some money and we'll find a way to get you to the top, which is what a lot of people, that's just the marketing thing. It's like, you want to be number one, send us money, we'll make you that. And it does feel a little snake oil sales-ish in a lot of those cases because it's like, wait a minute. What if my competitor pays the same money? Who's number one? Stuff like that. But I noticed that it is a little different. And actually, which is very intriguing to me is that you guys do sort of a discovery call. You'll talk to somebody and you're not out there to sell them like a little ebook and say, hey, spend a weekend and boom, you've got a website and a podcast and you're off and running. This is, we are going to partner with you, sort of like you did in your prior podcast and say, we're going to partner with you and help you take this and build it to where you want to go with it. And so for somebody that's thinking, well, maybe especially now they're saying, well, wow, this is worth money if I can have some followers and some listeners and maybe this is something I want to do. What is that? So what is that discovery call like? What are some of the questions and some of maybe the key flags, which indicators you're looking for that either says this person is somebody that we want to work with that's going to grow a very big podcast into that top 10 or top 1% wherever you go with it. Or is this somebody that really needs to, you know, hey, this is more of a hobbyist thing or something where it's like, you're just, you're going to have to either make some changes or maybe put more sweat equity into it. Because sometimes people just, they don't realize how much work is going to go into it. Yeah. Well, many of times on discovery calls, I talk people out of having a podcast. I talk them out of working with us. And I think that's a good takeaway for anyone listening, whether it's about podcasting or not, like you've got a business, most likely if you're listening, you're you've got a side hustle, you want it to be a full hustle or you want to make money that's outside of just your thing. And discovery calls, I think should authentically be a time for the potential client and the potential company to vet out each other to see if they're right for working with each other. And it shouldn't be if you're the one who wants to make the money, you've got to come from a total authentic place to start those discovery calls by asking a lot of questions. What do you want this? What does this look like? What does perfect look like? What does a lot of money look like? What type of client? Who are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to help? The discovery call should have you learning about your potential client to ask, what are they looking for? What is good? What is bad? What will they get if this happens? How will they work with their team? Who do they work with? And some of the flags, red or green flags that come up, some of the flags are like, if somebody is on the discovery call with me and they're, for example, telling me that I'm going to go back to something you said, Rob, you mentioned that it can be beneficial to try out a podcast, even if it's 10 episodes. I don't disagree that it's not good for the human. I think that any of us learn and grow from trying new things and attempting things. But if they're asking to work with my company and they want to dabble and they want to try 10, we're not a fit. They got to go with some other company. If they're open to stopping at 10, we don't serve them. And so that's one of the first flags is I say, are you committed to doing this for three years? A, I make more money if they do it for three years, obviously, because they keep paying us to edit and publish and produce and even market their podcast for not just a year, but also two or three. So that is it's not actually a selfish thing, but it is a helpful thing. It does benefit me too. But I believe 100% wholeheartedly that if you're going to launch a thought leadership platform, that it's not for dabbling. If you want to try it so that you can learn and grow and practice and get confident talking to people, that's one thing. But when I serve somebody, I want to make sure that they're committed in for the long haul and that they see this as a long play, a long term game. So that's one question that I always ask. How long are you willing to do this? I always ask how many episodes are you going to do per week? And some people are like, oh, per week, I mean, like a quarter of one, because I only want to go every month. That's another flag. I'm not your person. Are the minimum it is to work with us is a weekly at the same time of the week, Monday at 6am every single week for the next three years. Our contract is only a year long, but I assume that you're going to do it for three years because I'm extracting that. And if you're not, I sometimes say, don't even start it, man or woman. Don't even start. Don't even try it. I mean, don't even start. If you're looking at this as a short term play, you want to get rich overnight, we're not your fit. We are here to add value to you over the next couple of years and help you. The other one being how many episodes a week? We want to do at least one up to seven or 14 episodes per week, which sounds crazy to some, but a minimum at least weekly at the same time. Another one is if the person is saying to us that they, let's say they're a real estate agent or a lender, but like the only people that they can serve is in like a city. So they're in like the West part of Denver or they might be able to serve all of Denver, Colorado, or maybe even a Denver Metro at most. And they're coming to us being like, oh yeah, I really want to start a podcast because I want to be like the number one real estate agent in Denver, Colorado. I always caution against it. I say if your market, I mean your avatar, the person that you can help, if they're in a small geographical area, and even Denver is a small geographical area, if that's who you serve, then there are many other ways for you to get in front of those people easier, cheaper, and faster. If for example, my company is called Grow Your Show at growyourshow.com, we serve podcasters. I honestly don't have anybody outside of the Northern continent of the US and Canada. I don't currently have somebody in Japan or Mexico or China or Australia even. All of my people are in, most of them are in the US and then I have one in Canada. I can serve people in Florida and Colorado and California and Alaska, and I could serve people in Australia as well because I know that I could serve all of these people. It makes a lot of sense for me to be able to have a podcast because now I'm getting in front of them. If I have somebody on and they're like, oh yeah, I only work with a 50 square mile radius, I say don't start a podcast. Don't waste your time doing that. Go and speak at events around your city. Do Facebook ads. Have a storefront on a certain busy block, but don't waste your time having a podcast. I'm basically saying the three main things that I tell people, don't start a podcast, but on the good side is for most of the other people, it's probably a good thing for them to start a podcast. Some of our favorite clients, some of the huge green flags, I don't know if red and green flags are opposites, but I'm going to pretend that these are green flags. I don't know if I'm even making sense, but the green flags are if you are a coach, a consultant, a mentor, if you have a coaching program, if you sell online courses, you can easily scale this and make stupid amounts of money. By stupid amounts, I mean easily, easily $3,000,000.25, $3,000,000.25 depending on what your business model is or even just let's call it 20 grand a month on the small end. If you're a coach, a consultant, a mentor, if you have an online course or something like that and you don't have a podcast, you are wasting money. You are losing money. You are essentially losing out on tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars each and every month or year if you want to call it a year. If that's what you do, you absolutely should have a podcast. It's nice to have that, sort of draw that line in the sand again to get back to that analogy a little bit of if you want to have a podcast and be a podcaster, I guess, to make money at it, to be a quote, professional podcaster or have it support you professionally and build your, grow your business as you grow your show, grow your business, then there's a certain amount of effort that needs to go into it. If you just want to do it as a hobbyist, then there's a whole different focus and bent and things like that. I do like how you mentioned that, hey, if you're going to do it for three years, we don't even want to talk to you because as you've already alluded to and we talked about, it takes a while. You're not going to turn your podcast on and suddenly it's going to be number one and everybody that turns on their iPhone, it just flashes up and says, hey, listen to this podcast and you get a million listeners that first time. Plus, you're not really serving your audience if it's just like, I'm going to come in, I'm going to do this for a week or something like that. Even if you look at like Dan Carlin that does once randomly that he does it, but he doesn't, it's not really a podcast. It is a history channel special. It's one of those things that there's so much that goes into it and people know it for what it is, but he had to start with something to say, okay, this is the kind of product I'm building and it's different from a typical podcast where it's more of a, they're like your traditional news show or TV show or something like that. When I was a kid, now it's different because you got cable and all that, but you would have your shows in the fall and the spring and then they'd go off air. You get reruns to the summer. It's always like, I'm missing my show. I want my show to come back. It was always big when you come back and get the seasons and start back up. It's the same thing with podcast. And as a listener, I've had that where I know people will go, they'll be like, okay, I'm going to take some time. And it always bothers me when I, it's like, that's a consideration when I will take time off and say, okay, I'm going to take a month and I'm going to reset and we're going to go into another season because I know if it was me, I want to, I want to keep getting that because I have a routine where I'm listening to that person. I'm listening to that podcast. I'm getting information out of it. And I like, I'm a person of routine. I like to have that. I like to continue to have it available. Like you said, every Monday at 6 AM, I know when I get up at seven or whatever and I'm going for a walk, it's there. Yep. A hundred percent. I love everything that you mentioned is so beneficial for the listener. In wrapping up, because we're sort of getting to that time, I want to appreciate so much your time taking your time and talking to me. This has been as always, like I said, I think I started out before saying that I get a lot out of the interviews out of doing these, these interview related kind of podcasts and have, this has not been, you have not left me hanging short on this one either. I've got plenty of notes and things that have come up through all of this. But with what you've said now, you're obviously an interesting person and you have somebody wants to go see what you look like because you're such a great looking guy. What are some of the best ways for somebody to get a hold of you, to contact you, to reach out for you? Yeah. I'll, I'll mention two things and one is a free resource. It's called the podcast on podcasting and wherever they hear this show, we're there too. And so you can just jump on over. It's free. You could type in either Adam Adams. That's my real name or go to the podcast on podcasting either way you'll find it. And it's completely free and easy. And if you do want to maybe hire us, work with us, help, let us help you launch a show, it's grow your show at grow your show.com and you can literally just click on the discovery call button. And from what we mentioned earlier, you'll know, I'll ask you some questions. And if I don't think it's a fit, I will tell you, I've told so many people that it's not a fit, but if it is a fit, I'll tell you exactly how we can help you and what it looks like. So those are the two ways. Just on podcasting or grow your show.com. Excellent. And back to your original point, it's a perfect names that reach out. If this is what you're looking at, if I want to grow my show, boom, there you go. If I need a podcast on podcasting, there you go. So again, it goes back to that, you know, get the right brand, look to the right, you know, make sure you're using the right words and reaching the people that are looking for that. It's almost it's practically a Google search in itself. Boom, you come up right away. That's the best way to go about it. All right. All right. Well, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for hanging out with us for a while. Appreciate if you can hear it. I'm sure you can hear it in your head. All of that applause in the background, a big standing. Oh, thanks, Rob. All right. Thanks. Thanks for your time. Yeah. Go back. Hope you can get your other 20% of your workout. See you later, man. Have a good night. Nice to meet you, Adam. You too. And that will wrap it up. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Adam. I had a great time. We covered a lot of great topics. I think it was a very different perspective than I have brought several times when we have talked about podcast creation and doing one and how you do it because it's a very different clientele, very different customer that he has. I'm not in this to go retire early or something like that. I'm in it because, hey, it's a fun thing to do. I like serving people. It's a little different from his point of view, but there is definitely a lot to be learned about that, about how you approach, how you are intentional about what you do. In particular, the conversations that we had around the avatars and the audience and who are you serving and what are you doing because he had that drift. He had that drift early on where he started off doing something and he had sort of a goal maybe loosely defined, but he got away from it because it's like, hey, here's some cool stuff to do. We have that problem. That dog from the movie Up where it's just like squirrel and you're off and running. We do that too often and it's not just podcasters. It's all of us and particularly I think developers. We get into problems and solving them sometimes that we really don't need to. We get a little too enamored with the technology, but that is a story for another conversation, another episode. For now, I'm going to wrap this up. We're not done. We've got plenty of conversations ahead. A lot of great people, a lot of great discussions. I hope you're here for the rest of them and I hope you maybe go out and get yourself a couple extra notepads and pencils because there's a lot of value bombs are going to be dropped along the way. That being said, get out there and drop your own value bombs today. Go out and have yourself a great day, a great week and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.developanor.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer and we're putting it there. 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