Keeping it Real is Keeping it Really Boring

So I'm walking into an event and I see some guys and I'm like, hey, tell me about your show.

And he's like, oh, you know, we just throw up some mics.

It's me and my friends, and we just, you know, we talk it out, we do it Rogan style.

You know, we keep it real.

And so today we're going to talk about editing.

Not so much tools, but how do you decide what stays and what goes?

Because for me, keeping it real is keeping it real boring.

And if you saw me at podfest, yeah, this is the presentation I just did.

Hit it, ladies.

The school of podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson.

Thanking you so much for tuning in.

If you're new to the show, we help you plan, launch, grow.

If you want to monetize your show today, we're going to talk about growing it by not wasting your listeners time by cutting out the boring parts.

A lot of people go, well, a podcast is a conversation, and I agree with that, but it's a conversation with the boring parts removed.

I mean, I could have just recorded a phone call I had with a friend of mine that I've known since I was, I don't know, 10, and it would have been really boring.

A lot of inside jokes, things like that.

And so today, what do you mean when you say editing?

Because I want to keep it real, Dave.

And I'm not saying that you shouldn't be authentic.

In fact, you need to lean into being authentic.

You want to bring in your personal stories to explain a point and.

Yeah, because otherwise you're going to sound like ChatGPT.

You're going to sound like AI.

And so here's something just to why I'm so into editing.

And it's simple.

If you look at, I don't know, any statue, at one point that was a big rectangle or square or something of marble.

And then somebody did some editing.

In the United States, we have kind of a touristy attraction called Mount Rushmore.

It's got four presidents carved into the side of a mountain.

Well, where there was a time when that was just a mountain.

And then somebody did a little editing.

I know, but I want to keep it real.

Well, because think about it.

Authors have rough drafts.

When I did my book Profit from youm podcast, I was surprised that there were five different versions of that book before it saw the public.

Athletes have preseason actors and actresses, they have dress rehearsal.

If you think about it, there are Books and magazines and newspaper editors.

There are movie editors, there are editors on everything you watch on Netflix or Apple plus or any of that stuff, they all have editors.

But let me get this straight.

Your podcast is perfect.

There's not a single mistake anywhere in that episode.

And if I can make myself sound smarter, if I can make my content more concise and easy to consume, if I can make my podcast with less distractions, why wouldn't I?

Now, there are times when I will purposely take a tangent, and I announced those on the show.

If you're a regular listener to the show, you know what I'm talking about.

But to me, here's something to think about.

If you have 60 listeners per episode and you cut out a minute, you just save the hour or you save the world an hour.

I forget who said this.

The guy that behind in something invisibilia said this.

You're saving the world's time.

And what's funny about this is when people come to me and they're like, hey, Dave, I've been podcasting for, you know, I'm on episode 21.

It doesn't seem like it's growing.

And I dig into their show.

I often hear that they don't do any editing.

They're just keeping it real.

Now I realize that's whatever it is, causation by some things.

I'm just saying it's a quinky dink that the people that don't edit often come to me going, my show isn't growing.

And I know a lot of people love to talk about Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan.

Well, I'm here to tell you, I listen to Joe Rogan on the plane.

I don't normally listen to Joe.

I don't hate him.

I just don't have three hours to listen to something that could have been about an hour.

And I was amazed because I went over and I cherry picked, right?

He's got celebrities.

And one of those celebrities was Julian Lennon, and that is the son of John Lennon.

And being a big Beatles fan, I was like, I want to hear this.

Because it's always interesting when Julian is interviewed, because on one hand, we just want to talk about your dad, but that's kind of disrespectful because he's a photographer, he's a musician.

We don't want to just overlook who he is, but we kind of just want to talk about your dad.

And to make a long story short, I almost hit stop at the 55 minute mark.

Almost an hour.

And here's What I learned about Julian Lennon.

He knows where to get good spaghetti in Morocco.

Well, that's great, except I'm not going to Morocco.

Anytime that his mom had remarried after she divorced John Lennon.

Yeah, I figured as much.

You know, nothing really, that you know.

And so I'm getting ready to hit stop.

And for whatever reason, I didn't.

And at an hour and seven minutes, Julian Lennon says, my father told me, if anything ever happened to me, I will let you know I'm okay.

Through the symbol of a white feather.

You're like, okay.

And then he proceeds to tell the story of how a white feather comes into his life.

That's absolutely amazing.

And I'm like, why did I have to wait an hour and seven minutes to get to something that I'm now telling you it's amazing?

And that's the kind of content you want.

Stuff that when people hear it, they go, oh, man, what?

Instead, I had to hear about Morocco and some grandma or homemade spaghetti recipe that I'm never going to Morocco, so I don't care about, you know, so.

And I'm sorry to hear that sometimes he didn't get a fair shake because he was the son of a beetle.

That was somewhat okay.

But when I get to the white feather thing, I'm like, why did I have to wait an hour and seven minutes?

But here's the thing.

You're like, yeah, Dave, but you listened.

You listen to Joe Rogan.

Well, again, I almost hit stop.

But the other thing about Joe is, if you think about it, Joe makes this look easy.

He just did an episode with Mike Rowe that again, I kind of fast forwarded through the boring parts.

And he mentioned how.

Why he thinks he's a good podcaster is he's very, very curious.

And it's not about Joe.

If you notice, Joe doesn't do what I call the me too.

Now, I don't mean me too.

In the 2021, me too.

But a lot of times somebody will say, oh, you know what?

My favorite pizza is pepperoni.

And the host will be like, me, too.

I love it.

My favorite pizza.

And they go on and they basically say the same point that the guest did.

And if the guest simply said, my favorite pizza is pepperoni, we understand that we don't need the host to reproduce that.

We can move on to the next subject.

And so Joe doesn't do that.

He's really, really, really intensely listening.

But the more I listen to Joe, and I'm studying Joe right now to kind of go, what is he doing?

And so far, it's like he's got big name guests.

Then he talks about stuff that maybe people don't talk about, but I was surprised that, in my opinion, he buried the lead on the Julian Lennon one.

But here's the thing you got to remember if you're trying to be like Joe Rogan.

Joe started back in 1988, and it took him years to get his first comedy album.

He was then on network TV on a show called News Radio.

He got involved with MMA fighting, and then he was the host of Fear Factor.

And that's decades of time.

And the first part of being like Joe Rogan is to be Joe Rogan.

So I ask you, dear listener, are you Joe Rogan?

Well, then stop trying to be like Joe Rogan.

It's not going to work.

And the other thing that is somewhat frustrating is if you look at Joe Rogan, if you look at Michael Jordan, if you look at Eddie Van Halen, if you look at Dave Chappelle, all these people are excellent in their field, the best in their field in many cases.

And yet they make it look so simple.

I remember once I saw a guy named Jeff Healy.

Love Jeff Healey.

He's this guitar player, but he's blind.

And Jeff put the guitar on his lap.

So instead of kind of holding it up so where you're seeing the guitar, he put it down on his lap, almost like it was a piano, and played it.

And I knew that, but I saw him probably in the 18th row at this stinky, smelly little club in Cleveland, Ohio, and he just made it look so simple.

So I went home and I threw the guitar on my lap, and I went to play it the same way Jeff did, which is cool, because then you can use five fingers, not just four.

And it sounded like I was torturing a cat.

It did not sound cool.

It did not sound good.

And I was like, wow, that is a whole lot harder than it looks.

So keep that in mind.

The people that do this, that sound amazing, probably have years of practice.

They've put in the reps, and they make it look easy.

Now, I mentioned pizza earlier, and I had an aunt of mine come into town.

And I always say, if you come to Akron, Ohio, let me know.

I will take you to Luigi's Pizza.

There's not much in Akron, Ohio.

Bunch of hospitals and a big school, but other than that, not much going on.

And so we all got together to go to Luigi's.

There were probably 11 people.

And so my aunt and my niece got the exact pizza they Want Why?

Because they are kitchen sink kind of pizza eaters.

If you got it, throw it on the pizza.

My brother and I looked at each other and it was me, my brother, my sister in law, like, what do you want on your pizza?

I'm like, well, pepperoni is good for me.

It's about as crazy I get.

And he said, what about pepperoni with extra cheese?

And I was like, yeah, I can do that.

That's fine.

And so the difference is I got a pizza that was good, but it wasn't the exact pizza I wanted.

My niece and my aunt had a great time and everybody else kind of had pizza that was good enough.

And when it comes to our podcast, we don't want to be good enough.

We don't want to be better than listening to nothing.

What we want is people to go, oh, man, a new episode is out and they run and they hit play.

We talk about our favorite podcast at the end of the year.

It's that one.

We want to be someone's favorite podcast, not just something that is, you know.

Oh, okay.

Well, there's nothing else to listen to.

I guess I'll listen to this.

So when we talk about editing, a lot of people, their first question is, well, should I use Descript, which is cool.

Should I use Audacity, which is free?

Should I use Riverside?

Should I use Hindenburg?

I love Hindenburg.

For audio stuff.

For some of my shows, I use Descript.

I love the way that it does filler word removal, but never, never tell it to remove all filler words for me, I just remove.

And.

Because when I'm live on a show, I am answering questions off the top of my head, and it sounds like it.

And I can become what I call an UM machine now.

We'll talk about ums in a minute.

And that show, by the way, is called Ask the Podcast Coach.

But it's not.

The.

The first question shouldn't be, what should I use?

Should I use Descript or Audacity or Hindenburg or Riverside or whatever?

No.

No.

We have to figure out who is our audience.

Everything in podcasting starts with who is this for?

And why are you doing?

But let's talk about who is this for?

So when you're listening to your episode and think about it this way, you're in the chair, your hand is on the mouse, and your target listener is standing right behind you, and they're going, yeah, right there.

That part where you read the person's LinkedIn bio, all four pages of it.

Yeah, cut that out.

Only put in the part that relates to what I want to know about this person.

And besides the fact that you let them on your show, I already trust that they're going to bring value.

So I don't need to Hear their entire LinkedIn bio read in a very boring voice.

Now, if you're new to podcasting like Dave, I don't.

I don't have an audience.

I don't know who my audience is.

Well, you.

You should probably figure that out, because if you say, well, my show's for men that are 25 to 55, I'm here to tell you that there's a big difference.

I am not the same person I was at 25 that I am now.

It's a big difference.

And so you need to figure that out.

But here's some things you can do to understand maybe what your audience is thinking, and that is buy someone else's, or I shouldn't say buy, borrow somebody else's audience.

So I went to YouTube and I typed in weight loss, and some guy named Dr.

Eric Berg D.C.

came up.

And then I went to the tab that says videos, and all of his videos came up.

The first one here is Stop the sugar.

And I clicked on the popular button.

So now I'm looking at, in theory, some of the most popular videos on YouTube about weight loss.

And yeah, I could watch that video if I wanted to.

But really what I'm looking for are the comments.

Because as much as everybody's going, you got to get on YouTube, you need to get on YouTube.

I'm like, hey, just so you know, before you go running over there, bring an extra set of skin.

Because people on YouTube are not nervous about just ripping you to shreds and saying, this is the dumbest thing ever.

I'm just, I'm just letting you know.

Now, you also get people that give you thumbs up and things like that.

But just so you know.

But that's an easy way to go over and see comments, because in theory, if your topic is the same topic, then you're good to go.

You'll get some feedback.

Now, keep in mind, this is not 100% foolproof because your audience may not be exactly the same as their audience, but it might be close.

Another thing you can do is go to Amazon and again, type in your subject for your show and look at four star and two star reviews.

Why?

Because they're more objective.

A one star review will be like, you suck.

And a five star review will be like, best book ever.

We need a little more detail.

So a Four star review might, hey, I would have given you five, but you didn't do this.

A two star review will be like, I would have given you a one star, but at least you did this.

So you'll get a little more objectivity doing that.

And there are tons of websites.

There's Reddit, there's Quora, there's all sorts of places if you don't have an audience to get feedback.

But you have to figure out who your audience is.

So I play the guitar and let's say I want to do a podcast about guitar.

Well, there's one person that's learning the names of the strings.

So every aardvark does good.

But Ernie, that's E, A, D, G, B, E, that's the name of the strings.

And I could also show you how to shred a pentatonic scale.

All right, well, I can't do both of those.

So who's it for?

And then focus on that.

And when you understand who your audience is, then you can figure out what stays and what goes.

And the more you move forward, you will fine tune and fine tune.

So the first place we're going to talk about interviews, because in my opinion, this is something that you can really make a okay interview great with some editing.

And so the first thing we have to ask ourselves is, what is the question?

That's where you start.

Now, for me, I often cut out a huge amount of background because I'm trying to let the guests know why I'm asking this question.

So I'll be like, hey, I know in the past you did this and that's why you did this and this happened and blah blah, blah, and yada yada, yada.

And then I finally, why did you blah, blah.

I finally asked them the question.

Well, the audience doesn't need to hear all that background information.

I was doing that so that the guest would kind of have a clue on why I was asking the question.

So I will cut that out, Makes me sound smarter, gets to the point quicker, sounds like a win.

So what is the question?

And then the thing you want to really listen for is, did they answer the question?

And I don't want to get political.

We will fire at both sides for this, but politicians are the kings and queens of not answering a question but giving you an answer.

So you could ask somebody, are we better than we were four years ago?

And when they start their answer with, I was raised in a middle class family, that's not an answer.

Yes, you answered the question, but you didn't answer the question, and then you can look at another person and go, hey, if this came on your desk, would you veto it?

And they say, oh, I'm not going to have to veto it because yada yada.

Okay, Both of those are yes, no questions.

And both of those.

You didn't answer the question.

You gave me an answer, but you didn't answer the question.

I asked you what your favorite food is and you said blue or you said 3:00.

You gave me an answer, but you did not answer the question.

And so what happens if somebody gives you an answer and they didn't answer the question?

Well, guess what?

Does that deliver value to your audience?

No.

So both the question and the answer go away.

Yeah, you can do that.

Now, if they do answer the question, does it deliver value?

So if you ask them a question, hey, what was it like when you did such and such?

And they say, I don't know, I never really thought about it.

It really wasn't that big of a deal.

Now, depending on the guest and the situation, that question and answer may not deliver a ton of value unless everybody was surprised that this particular guest didn't think it was any big deal.

But if it doesn't deliver value, cut it out.

And in some cases, we'll get to this.

There is value, but it's surrounded in fat.

It's surrounded in fat.

So let me explain.

This is from an actual interview I did, and this is originally how it sounded.

Okay.

I said, that's good.

Anything that brings people into the feeling, anything that's deeper, that you can describe, then what do you want?

And so I'm going to play you.

What am I going to play?

I'm going to recreate here an interview I did with someone.

And this is what my guest said.

And I'm going to explain a little before and after.

So I was talking about something, how I felt.

We're doing kind of a conversation again, and my guest said, oh, that's good.

Anything that brings people into the feeling, anything that's deeper that you can describe than what you want to do is take your audience on a journey.

Now, that middle line, anything that's deeper that you can describe, then is that person opening their mouth before they figured out what they were going to say.

This is something I do a lot of.

And so if you saw that in print, you'd be like, hey, that second little blurb there, like somebody didn't finish their thought.

That's kind of confusing.

And you would remove it.

So if you would remove it in a Text, Right.

In some sort of book, in some sort of report, on some sort of website.

Why would you not delete it from the audio?

Now, I realize we'll get to video here in a bit, but I realize if you cut out that in video, you're going to create a jump cut and we'll get there.

Hang on.

But think about this.

The original one was, that's good.

Anything that brings people into the feeling, anything that's deeper that you can describe than what you want to do is take your audience on a journey.

I then change that to, that's good.

Anything that brings people into the feeling.

What you want to do is take your audience on a journey.

Makes sense, not confusing.

The audience doesn't have to go, wait, what was that middle thing part?

Right.

If I can make myself or my guest sound smarter, why wouldn't I do that?

Here's another one.

Now, what I want you to do is listen here, because sometimes, again, people will give you an answer and some of it isn't really answering the question.

I asked someone in an interview, I said, when did you start tracking that?

I think we're talking about some sort of stats or something like that.

And the person said, oh, man, it's been.

Man, it's been so long.

I used to do it and then my assistant would do it.

I think for a while we used Excel before I think we switched to Google Sheets.

Now it's probably been three years now.

And I'm so glad we started because of that information, blah, blah, blah.

So where did she actually or he start answering that question?

The question was, when did you start tracking that?

Oh, man, it's been so long.

Nope.

I used to do it and then my assistant would do it.

Nope.

When did you start tracking that?

I think for a while we used Excel.

Nope.

Then we used Google Sheets.

Nope.

It's been probably three years now.

Ah, that's the answer.

So I cut out all that stuff.

So instead of, when did you start tracking that?

Oh, man, it's been so long.

You just get, when did you start tracking that?

And the person answers, it's been probably three years now.

And I'm so glad we started doing that because the information, yada, yada, yada, we don't need that fat.

And I realize podcasting it is a conversation.

The end result sounds like a conversation, but it's a conversation with the boring parts removed.

And so many times we think it's just a conversation.

We have a great conversation with the guest, but you have to remember this isn't A zoom meeting that is intended to be heard by the people who are in the zoom meeting.

This is a podcast and it's a conversation that is designed to be heard by people worldwide.

And if I can make myself sound smarter, if I can make my guest sound smarter, why wouldn't you?

And I get it, you're like, hey, Dave, it takes time.

Totally does.

Absolutely.

If you can picture a seesaw.

For those of you that remember seesaws in your head.

On one side, more planning, on the other side, less editing.

So the more planning you do, and yes, that takes time, the less editing you have to do.

I hear so many people start off an interview with, tell me a little bit about yourself and tell the listeners about ourself.

And I think that I'm going to say 50% of those people don't know who they're talking to and they're trying to figure out, what should I talk to this person about?

And the person gives them their entire life history, which we don't need.

If you've done your homework, you can start off the question with, you know, if you're doing the pygmy pony show and you could say, hey, thanks so much, Gina, for coming on the show.

When did you first encounter a pygmy pony?

That's going to lead to a story, something of that nature.

But the more time you put into planning the interview or your show, the less editing.

Keep that in mind.

Since we're talking about planning and time.

How long should my podcast be?

I think it's silly when people take content and they go, well, my show's an hour long, so I'm going to cut it down to an hour.

Now, there is a good side of that because you will trim the fat, but sometimes you trim stuff that's not fat to fit a, you know, your preconceived idea.

It's not radio.

You know, Binky and the Wiz are not coming into the studio next and you have to leave.

That kind of makes me scratch my head like, well, we're out of time.

How are you out of time?

It's a podcast.

And so I always quote Valerie Geller from the book Beyond Powerful Radio.

She says, there is no such thing as too long, only too boring.

I like to say, and this is true.

I've listened to five minute podcast that felt like an hour, and I've listened to an hour long podcast that felt like five minutes.

Again, the kind of the bottom line here is don't be boring.

And how do you know if things are Boring.

Well, when it comes to wondering if your audience likes it or not, here are some things I went into and here's the address Podcasts with an S podcastconnect.apple.com and you can go in and see how far people listen.

It's pretty cool.

But I will tell you right now, this can also be absolutely soul crushing because I can see where the episode the podcast mindset has an average consumption of 303%.

So people aren't just listening to this once, they're listening to it three times.

You know, to care or not to care.

168%.

Interview with Dan Kuykendall of Pod Press.

That's very old.

That's from 2652%.

However, if we look at my episode, the correct way to launch your podcast, 51%.

Now, I'm an old teacher, right?

60% is a D.

50% is not good.

And so I'm shooting for 80s and 90s, and I had a couple here reflections on 100 shows of podcasting tips.

So it must have been episode 152%.

And it's up to you.

You pick what's good, what you're willing to.

Now, If I'm in YouTube land, 50%.

Amazing.

Absolutely amazing.

But this will show you how far people are listening.

You can also get this in Spotify, not so much if they're a media host, although you can do that there as well.

But if you can go in when you claim your show on Spotify, you can go and see how far people listen.

Apple, as they always do, have a much prettier interface.

And you can actually go in like I can see I'm gonna play an ad here in a minute for me and I can see when I look at my stats exactly where I put that ad.

Because there are a lot of you guys hitting the 32nd skip button because you know about the school of podcasting and I get that.

But there's something you can do to figure out is this resonating?

Because again, we want to be someone's favorite episode.

We want them to be the favorite show.

And one way that you can find out if you're resonating with your audience is to ask them.

We did a bunch of things at the beginning of last year when we talked about surveys, and I am baffled why people don't do an audience survey.

I'm doing one right now.

If you go to schoolofpodcasting.com survey, the number two, the number five.

So survey 25, you can give me feedback on this audience, on this audience, on this show.

And that's an example right there.

Did you hear me mess up?

Yeah, I messed up.

You know what?

That was perfectly normal.

I'm not worried about that.

Let's.

Let's talk about arms and let's talk about video.

As we start to kind of wrap this up a bit, people say, I did, I don't know, about five minutes ago.

And I was like, there's an.

And I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to leave that in.

Why?

Because people say, however, I have a client, and he is like.

He makes.

When I say I'm an um machine, I.

I am dwarfed by his umness.

And I've.

I've mentioned this to him.

I'm not throwing him under the bus, but he also has a regular returning guest.

And what I'm talking about here is in the span of about 30 to 40 minutes, 300 ums, to the point where.

And this is.

When do you know to cut out ums?

When they become distracting.

When they just become distracting and people notice that you're saying a lot.

That gets.

Yeah, you get the point.

That's when I start to cut them out.

Because it's one of those things that once you notice, then you can't stop.

They just are amplified in your head.

So keep that in mind.

But ask your audience, yes, you can look at Apple and Spotify.

Ask your audience.

Get their feedback.

And I think part of it is that we are worried that people are just going to rip us to shreds.

And let's say they do.

That's a good thing.

I know it hurts.

Look, I'm not going to say that wouldn't hurt, but at least I can stop doing stuff that is not resonating with my audience.

And most of the time, they don't rip you to shreds.

They will say, oh, I really like this.

I really like this.

But, you know, that Question of the Month thing gets a little old because it's the same thing over and over.

It's the same question for three weeks in a row.

It's a good point.

I also found out, in fact, you'll hear in this week's Question of the Month that if I don't remind you every week to fill them out, if I just tell you once and, hey, I need this by the end of the month, you kind of forget.

And that's my fault.

That's something I learned by talking to my audience.

So the first step of editing is knowing who your audience is.

And what they want to hear.

Because if you know what they want to hear, it's really easy to identify the parts that are boring so that you can remove them out.

And if you go, it takes too much time, then maybe spend more time planning an interview, planning your episode so you're not doing things that you have to cut out.

Remember that People do say.

And the thing that I saw, I asked the audience there, it was great.

I left a lot of time for questions, and I was so glad I did.

But if you are thinking, oh, I can't really cut this out because I've already cut out one question and I cut out another question.

And if the guest comes back and listens to this, they're going to notice that, hey, you know, three weeks ago, when we did this interview, there were 12 questions, and now there's only nine.

And I can only speak for myself, But I did ask some people in the room.

Most of us don't come back to listen to the interview because, well, we were there.

I personally come back to hear how I was introduced, and then I listened to see, did they make me sound smart?

Because if you did, I'll share it, and if you didn't, I won't share it as much.

And then we typically don't come back and we're not going to notice that.

Wait, wait, where's those three.

Where are the three questions that you asked me?

No, no, nobody's doing that.

And if somebody has a great answer and it's 18 minutes into the episode, there's no rule that says you can't move that to the very beginning of the interview.

Don't do a Joe Rogan and have the white feather story at an hour and seven minutes.

Put that at the front.

As long as you're not making your guest say something they didn't.

So when you ask them, how often do you exercise?

And they go, five days a week, I get up every morning and start.

And then later you change the question to, so how often do you beat your spouse?

Yeah, that's not going to work.

But you can move things around.

This is where I love the creativity.

And I honestly, truly believe your audience will thank you.

They may not actually send you an email and go, hey, that whole thing that used to do where.

I don't know.

Here's one of my favorites.

Oh, wait, the microphone isn't working.

Wait, do your.

Do the thing with the.

Can you tap on that?

Can you.

That's so weird.

There's nothing more absolutely riveting than listening to a Podcaster troubleshoot their technology.

In the episode, I know you're keeping it real, but you're keeping it real boring.

The school of podcasting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, Dave, what about video?

You didn't mention video.

Well, I said I would, and now I am.

Here's the thing.

Obviously, if you cut out.

If somebody's doing hundreds of ums in a 20 minute segment, if you cut out all the m's, they're gonna look really weird.

So that's a problem, really.

Remember, the goal is to make myself or my guest sound smarter or better or make it flow better.

In the book Storyworthy by Matthew Dix, it's my favorite book on storytelling, he talks about, does the content move the story forward?

Is a detail that you've added?

Is it needed?

And he talks about this one story that happens in a car.

And then later in the book, he says, oh, by the way, there was somebody else in the front seat.

I didn't add that because it's not needed.

It's distracting and we don't need it.

I watched the movie Beetlejuice 2, so whatever.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

And there's a whole lot of extra characters in there that add nothing to the plot.

But if you have an answer and a question that don't fit, right?

You ask a question, you get your answer.

They don't answer the question.

There's no value.

Cut it out.

And for me, it looks like that's what half the kids are doing.

The youngins.

The.

The youngins with their jump cuts.

You know, all of a sudden, oh, look, I'm over here now.

Okay, So I don't think it's that big a deal.

I tend to add an ever so slight transition to kind of show.

Hey, there was an edit here.

I've never seen a YouTube comment that was like, how dare you have a transition?

And I've never had somebody go, too many jump cuts.

If the content's good, I'm not sure they care.

They might actually.

Thank you for shortening down something.

That's three hours.

That could probably get by with 45 minutes.

It's just something.

So video is different.

You can't edit as strictly maybe in a way because it will become distracting.

And again, how do you know when there are too many ums or stammers or whatever?

Well, because it becomes distracting.

So if you start cutting out too many things in video and there's just too many jump cuts, that's going to be distracting.

So people will stop paying attention to what you're saying, and they will pay attention to how you're saying it.

And so that goes in audio and video.

When the delivery becomes distracting, that's a problem.

There are two great things in a presentation, content and delivery.

And if you have great content but it's delivered in a way that's distracting, that's not going to work.

And if you have, you know, meh kind of content, but it's delivered pristine, that's really not going to work as much either.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Couple quick things here.

Everybody I met at podfest, thank you so much.

Thanks to everybody.

Especially thanks to Scoobs.

There's a guy named Scoobs that stopped by the podpage booth, and I was getting slammed with a bunch of people.

The podpage booth was busy the whole time I was there.

And at one point, a customer named Scoobs came by and kind of just started talking to customers.

There's nothing better than.

I mean, when I first started, they released the hounds and all these people came over, and I'm standing at the booth and there's one person in front of me and two people on each side of that person and two people behind them.

And the first person is like, so, what's a podpage?

And I went to answer, and the two people standing next to him or her, whatever, right to that person started going, oh, I've been there.

I've been with PodPage for years.

It's the best thing ever.

It's so much time saving.

I love it.

It's powerful.

So my customers sat there and sold my future customers.

It was great.

And one of those guys was Scoobs, and he was really, really helpful there.

But it was a fun time.

I had a great time inducting Tom Webster and George Robb into the hall of Fame.

I did the presentation that you just heard and answered a lot of questions.

And the last thing I'm going to point out, and if you're a regular listener, you probably already know this, I'm sick again.

Yeah.

I battled Covid, kicked it to the curb, went to Pod Fest, thought it was great, went probably, I don't know, three, four days, and I'm like, yay.

I got on a plane and came home and didn't get sick.

And then until I wasn't.

Yeah.

But notice I did not start the episode going, hey, I'm so sorry that I'm sick.

I know I'm sick, and it's hard to listen.

No, it's not.

Can you.

Can you understand the words that are Coming out of my mouth.

Right.

Wasn't that one of the Jackie Chan movies?

Right.

As long as you can understand me, you know, I don't think I'm hard to listen to.

I may not.

The thing that bothers me is I have no upper end.

So if I want to see if I want to get excited about.

So I turn into.

Nobody wants to be a Charlie in the box.

Right.

I can't do.

I can't get excited because I've just got my lower end of my voice.

But I'm okay.

So that's going to be one of my pet peeves.

If you heard the question of the month, at least for February 2025, what's your pet peeve?

I'm not making this up.

I heard somebody do a 17 minute apology.

They started off their show with a 17 minute apology.

And they were talking about how I didn't realize this.

See, I don't do.

I'm on season one.

This is episode 900 and something something of season one.

And they were talking about their season finale.

And I was like, oh, is this something else that people are doing when they do seasons?

I have to have a big finale like you're Seinfeld.

And they didn't do a season finale, apparently, and they spent 17 minutes apologizing.

And on one hand, that's a beautiful thing.

It really is.

It's so good because you care about your audience and you feel like you let them down.

That part.

Hmm, Beautiful.

But no, not a good way to start the show because three months from now, when that new listener finds your show and they click on play and have to sit through 17 minutes of an apology, they're gonna go, you know, this, this is not one I'm gonna be saving in the bookmark.

So keep that in mind.

That, you know, that's the thing.

Just move it to the end.

Don't know that you need to spend 17 minutes explaining that I have a cold.

But yeah, so keep that in mind.

Put it towards the end so the super fans can hear you say, hey, I'm so sorry that I didn't do whatever you thought you were going to do, but don't do it at the front because that's just a horrible first impression.

And if you have a pet peeve and it's, you know, at the In February of 2025, go over and answer the question of the month@schoolofpodcasting.com?

if it's not because again, you know, people, months from now, let's just go to school podcasting.com?

and see what the question is now.

And I will say thank you so much for listening.

I'm always open to feedback or if I triggered more questions, don't hesitate to reach out.

Everything you need is at School of Podcasting.

While you're out there, click on the join button and use the coupon code.

Listener that website again, schoolofpodcasting.com until next week.

Take care.

God bless.

Class is dismissed.

If you like what you hear, then go tell somebody.

If you like what you hear, then go tell friends.

And if I can make me sound better, if I can, say, make my audience sound or my audience, if I can make oh, geez Louise, this is not 100% foolproof because your audience may be different than your audience.

And I'm so focused right now on my throat, I don't know what I'm saying.