Podcast Movement 2026 Reflections and Behind the Scenes of Two Other Events

I just got back from podcast movement, and I'm

going to be sharing some of the insights that I took away there.

And then I got to interview Mark Ronick, who just completed the

Empowered Podcasting Conference, and I talked to Dr. Brad Miller,

who is running the Pod Indie Conference, which is happening

in November. So today we're talking about podcast

conferences, what I learned, and then if you've ever thought of

starting your own, stick around, hit it, ladies. The

School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson,

Podcasting Sense 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, welcome aboard. I'm

glad you're here. This is where I help you plan, launch, and

grow your podcast. And one of the ways you can grow your show

is by networking with other podcasters. And we're going to

be hitting on that in a minute. My website is

schoolofpodcasting.com. That is courtesy of PodPage, and I'll be

telling you more about that a little later. But people have

been asking me, "Hey, podcast movement wasn't worth it because

it's under new ownership, new location, new lot of stuff new.

So let's talk about it. I thought what I would do is just

go down a list here, and so when it comes to podcast movement,

here's what it used to be: it was at Gaylord Hotels, and it

was moved around the country. Now Gaylord hotels are at least

$1,000 a night. It's like a whole city, and then you don't

have to go anywhere because everything from food to water

parks, everything you need is there in the hotel. But the

burgers are $30 a piece. So if we look at podcast movement

before versus podcast movement now, podcast movement now wins

because they didn't book it at a hotel. We'll talk about the

venue here in a minute, but it was BYOH, bring your own hotel,

and so I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. It was one of the

cheapest hotels we could find. I stayed for two nights. It was

$400 a night. Now that's still expensive, but it is nowhere

near the Gaylord, so point scored. New podcast movement.

Then there are things like parties, networking places where

you can go and meet people. So Pod Page held a small meetup,

had a great time. I walked over to the Buzzsprout meetup and got

to hang out with all sorts of people, and the other thing when

it came to networking, you got to do it, but it was weird, and

so that's going to lead me to the venue. So the venue, the

good news was it was I don't know a 10 minute walk from my

hotel, and the venue, if you've ever been to a house of blues or

just a small theater, it looked like that, and it looked like a

small theater that had a baby with a cruise ship, because

there were three floors, and so you could go up to the third

floor and still look down at the main stage. Now the main stage

compared to previous podcast movements, you would have a

giantly just 1000s of people all in one room, and this probably

held. Well, I know it held hundreds of people in a room,

but instead of being wide, the seats were not as wide.

Consequently, if you were in the back row, you were a lot further

away from the stage than you were before. Now, how do I know

this? Because the one thing I learned from podcast movement is

I need new glasses, and so the screen behind them was

ginormous, but they split it in two. Whereas if the screen had

been one big ginormous screen, I probably could have read the

slides, but I could not. So the venue was a little different,

and the other thing was how this worked, and this is not new, but

you had one stage. Well, the the main stage, like the big stage,

that where the keynotes were, were in some cases split in two,

and then you did these things with headphones. So if the

person on the right was on the yellow stage, you would pressure

headphones until they turned yellow, and you could hear what

was happening on the yellow stage. Now, if the person right

on the other side of this little makeshift wall was on the green

stage, same thing, turned to green, and so the speaker is

talking to their audience, and there's no problem. What's weird

about this, and it was just something you have to deal with,

and that is you can talk during some. One's, you know,

presentation, and that seems rude, and it just went against

everything in my body.

Like I had a meeting with the people from Beehive, and I don't

know, 30 feet from me is James Cridlin doing the history of

podcasting, and I just I almost kept whispering because it just

seemed, but I get it that I wasn't disrupting James, his

audience that wanted to hear him could. It just so I would ask

people, Mike, how what do you think of the venue? And

everybody was like, I'm not sure yet, because it was a completely

different aspect. And in I think the only way that it was

different from previous versions is you had rooms that you could

listen, or like they had talks in the vendor hall, and there

really was no vendor hall this year, and so it was just

different. Where before, if you wanted to go talk to someone,

you would go out in the hallway. Hence, why we always talk about

hallway talks because they were quiet, and because you could

talk during people's presentations, there was a

never-ending murmuring that was pretty loud because again people

were networking. So on one hand, I was able to do everything I

wanted to do at the venue. It just took some mental. What

would it be? I don't know. Juggling to get used to talking

when somebody's on stage. But I was able to network there. I

will say this: the one thing that I was like, if I could

change it, I've played in clubs, I've played in theaters and

bars. There are things called house lights, and when it was

time for networking, I would have turned on the house lights

because you're like, oh look, we got 40 minutes to network, and

you look around and it's dark, and you can't see who's here

unless it's you know Rob Greenley, and that's because

he's six six, and you can see Rob from anywhere, and so that

was a little weird that I was having a hard time seeing it,

and there was only water on the first floor. That was something

else. It's a little thing, but I would change that. So the venue

I liked because it was a it was different, and in the end I

liked it because I remember just going to you know, lunch was

like a five mile walk in the hotel. Then this, yeah, you were

still going up and downstairs and things like that. But if you

wanted to walk the five miles, and I'm here to tell you, I

could have walked to my hotel and back to the venue, and it

still would have been shorter than a Gaylord hotel. So the

venue different, and it was kind of like it made you kind of tilt

your head, like, hmm, is this going to work? But in the end, I

was able to network, and I was able to hear presentations. I

didn't get to attend many, but here's the other cool thing

about new podcast movement. I don't know that they're there

now, but they will be very shortly. They are putting all of

the presentations online on their YouTube channel for free.

So, the other thing about the venue is, if we'll just throw in

ticket prices, ticket prices were much more expensive before

because they were paying for this Gaylord Hotel thing. Now

they're not, and the tickets were much cheaper. So that's one

where Podcast Movement new version wins. The flight isn't

really Podcast Movement's fault. I am going to miss going to

Dallas, going to Chicago, going to other places. From what I

understand, it's always going to be in New York, and from what I

understand, this is to attract people from other countries.

It's much easier to fly into New York City than to fly into you

know Denver or something of that nature. When it came to food,

this was one of the big wins. Is New York City? I know it's the

big city, but you could walk around the block three times.

And do you remember in the Flintstones when you know Fred

and Wilma are cruising along in their car, and then you'd see

the same two rocks, then a tree, and then something else, and a

palm branch, and it was the same scenery. They kept repeating.

It's kind of that way in New York. Every block has two pizza

places that say world's best pizza. There's a food truck.

There's a CVS and probably a bank, and then some little local

stores and such. And then the next block will have, you

guessed it, two pizzas, a food truck, a CVS, and a bank. It was

just the neighborhoods kept repeating, and so one night I

walked out and went up the street. I never felt unsafe. Now

we were in, I think, the west part of New York City. I saw

signs for Hell's Kitchen, and I did not feel unsafe. The

restaurants there are often, I think, designed for takeout.

Like I ate at some place called Cubbies, and it was just a bunch

of stools on a wall with kind of a little, I don't know, a little

bard type cover that you could put your food on and eat, and it

was great. It was no no big deal. I got to eat at McGee's,

which I didn't even realize till about halfway through, is where

the show How I Met Your Mother is either filmed there or was

based on that, but that was really cool. And so again, lots

of networking, a lot of food, and the food was not a 30-dollar

burger that was okay. So as I looked at that, I was like, you

know what? This was a better yet different event than the

previous versions, and so I thought the other thing I liked

about it is they clearly identified what the days were.

Monday and Tuesday were for people, kind of more the

business side and advertising and all that kind of stuff, and

then Thursday and Friday were for indie podcasters. So again,

helps you save on your hotel bill, and so I, I am definitely

going back. And the one thing I, I got to, if you only get to see

one talk, you always want to go to Tom Webster. And so Tom was

explaining kind of where podcasting is, and this is not

always good news. One was we're kind of flat, and what I mean by

that is every year podcasting has grown at least three to 5%

you know, and occasionally 7% But over the last year or so, it

hasn't grown like it's grown a little, but not really. It's

it's so little that it's almost it almost doesn't count, and so

that was somewhat disheartening. And then Tom mentioned that the

the top three places. Now they interviewed, I think it was 5000

people that you know consume podcasts, and the top places

were not Apple and Pocket Casts and overcast. No, it was

YouTube. It was Spotify. And the third one was Netflix. And Tom

had said that he was going to announce something that probably

wasn't going to go over well. And the one thing I was really

glad because I do not agree. While YouTube is free for anyone

to put their stuff on, it is not open in the way that something

like an RSS feed is. So I don't consider YouTube a podcast. It's

a it's a show, but for me, a podcast is an RSS feed that has

audio and video in it, so I understand. I got to see a

little bit of why people have been saying YouTube is a podcast

because you're open to put your stuff on there. Spotify, you're

open to put your stuff on there, and if you're a regular

listener, you know I am not a fan of Spotify as a media host,

I'll put a link to a show where I talked about the 8 million

reasons why they're not a great media host. But again, anybody

can put their stuff on there. They don't always syndicate it

the way we want them to, but they're open to that. So I kind

of I got a glimpse into why some of these people are saying no,

no, these are you know these are podcasts, but Netflix is not.

Netflix is not open. They have to choose you. There's no RSS

feed, so again, in my book, it's not a podcast. And Tom came up

with a great analogy. The next time you're in Walmart, go over

to say you know the electronics and look at their CD collection.

And their CDs, number one, it's a very small collection, and

it's only probably the top top pop people or something that was

really really popular, like Back in Black by AC/DC or Rumors by

Fleetwood Mac.

These, you know, endless classics kind of thing. You're

not going to get that kind of middle of the road artist that

you would get in a dedicated record store, and record stores

are hard to come by, and then so when he was saying, maybe we

should be promoting apps that are strictly podcast apps. Now

my favorite is Pocket Casts, and the reason I love that is number

one, it plays audio and video. Number two, it has bookmarks,

and you've heard me play clips of other people's shows on this

show, and I do that because I make bookmarks, and I go, "Ooh,

I want to talk about this later. And the fact that it has a

web-based version, it's got Android, it's got you know

Apple, it's I think I know it's on I think Apple TV. Now, if I

remember right, so I'm a big Pocket Cast fan. Apple Podcast

was that I've used Overcast in the past. I've used Podorama.

Right now, I'm using Pocket Cast. Now, one of the advantages

of these podcast-only apps is they are recommending only other

podcasters. Like Apple has a if you like this you might like

that and I got to sit in the podcast standards project

meeting and one of the things if your media host does not support

Podroll and what is Podroll Pod Roll is a feature from the

podcasting 2.0 spec, we're not going to get super nerdy on

that, but it's let's just put it this way: it's on the menu. The

technology has been worked out, and you need to go to your media

host and you know any other. If your media host doesn't support

Pod Roll, you should say, "Hey, I'd like to create a pod roll,

and so what a pod roll is? If there are shows that you like,

you're like, oh, I listen to this show and this show. It's

your personal recommendations. It comes from the old days of

blogging when you had a blog roll, but it's your personal

recommendations. Now here's the cool thing. Now, if everybody

had access to add this to their show, here's a page with my

favorite recommendations. Then that's in your feed, and the

feeds are public, and so all the nerds can go and look at all the

shows that have been recommended. And this is not

some sort of algorithm that we're all trying to figure out

how to trick. It's an actual recommendation from a human, and

you can see who is the most recommended. It's actually a

really cool feature, and so that is something that is coming down

the pike. The Podcast Standards Project is also looking to add

locations, so we could see, hey, what other podcasts are in my

area? There's a lot of new features coming down the pike,

so that was another advantage of the podcast movement meeting.

They've had them other way, another locations and such, and

it was great. This is the first time I got to sit in on that

meeting. So all in all, podcast movement was great. I am really

looking forward to checking out their YouTube channel because I

know I missed Lou Mangiello. I caught most of Rob Walsh's talk,

and there was the thing that was interesting is, and this is not

new, there are people that are still really putting out the

theme that you have to do video, you have to, otherwise you're

just an idiot, Roy. I don't know, but there are other people

that said not only do you not have to, but those that did

didn't really see much of a benefit besides more strain and

more work and more money and more time invested. But there

are some shows that were already pretty big that added video, and

those shows in Apple-we're talking Apple video here-got

spotlighted. Why? Because they're already big shows, and

so those that weren't either stayed the same except for an

extra load on their you know workflow, or in some cases they

actually went down a little bit, and so I'm looking forward to

seeing Rob's presentation because he was mentioning some

of that, and that's the kind of stuff you want to learn when

you're at a podcast conference: is what's working and what's

not.

So, in a second here, we're going to hear about if you've

ever thought of starting your own podcast because I've been to

this one. This one had probably over 1000 people, and the

Empowered Podcasting Conference probably had I don't know a

little over 100 people, and the Pod Indie again will be

somewhere between probably 50 and 100 people. It's a smaller

event. Podfest is usually a couple 1000, so you have the

different ones. And for me, my favorite, my favorite type of

event is a single track. So that means everybody's in the same

room consuming the same content, and it's either one day or two

days. But that way, everybody has heard the same thing. So

when you do go into the quiet hallway, you can all talk about

the thing that you just heard. One last thing I want to

I mentioned parties at podcast. Movement. The

networking parties I went to were actually, and I know this

is a novel idea. If you've heard me talk about this before, it

really made a great place to network. There was no in the in

the fog and Paris Hilton and all that other stuff. I did not go

to the Spreaker meetup. That might have been the no. That

might have been that meeting, but I didn't see one here, and

that's always the dumbest thing. And I've talked to Dan Franks,

who helps plan podcast movement, and he says we tell every

company that that throws a party these people do not want loud

music so that it makes their ears bleed, they want to talk to

each other, and yet every marketing team from the company

that's hosting the party is like, "We're going to make this

the biggest blowout everybody's ever heard. So it was nice that

the networking parties I went to were not the biggest blowout

thing that everybody's ever heard. And again, normally you

don't explain to your audience how the sausage is made, but

this is a podcast about podcasting, and so I'm just

going to explain here what I'm doing. Normally, I split an

interview somewhere in the middle and put the little school

of podcasting advertisements and things like that. I'm just

letting you know I'm going to run them all here, and so this

may or may not be a detriment to my advertising. But I want to

make a better experience for you as you listen to this great

interview. If you've ever thought of starting your own

event, these are guys that have done it. They have lots of

experience, and they give you some great lessons. So here

comes some dynamic content. The

School of Podcasting, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, joining me via Streamyard, we are going to

be talking about hosting a podcast event. If you've ever

thought about it, we got two guys who have done it. We have

Mark Ronick from empoweredpodcasting.com, which

his conference just ended, and coming up in November we have

Dr. Brad Miller who is doing podindy.com. So, gentlemen,

thanks for coming on the show. Thank

you, Dave.

Dr. Brad Miller: Thanks for having us, Dave. Appreciate it.

Good to see you, Mark, as well.

Yeah, good to see you both.

So let's start off with the first question,

Brad. We'll let you start. What inspired you to bring a podcast

conference into your life?

Dr. Brad Miller: Oh well, pain, suffering, agony is part of it.

But just because I'm a glut for that, no, really, I spent 43

years as a pastor, and so every week, every Sunday was an event

of some sort. And then I also did these gigantic youth

ministry, and I used to be a Christian concert promoter and

things like this. And I saw the power of bringing people

together in live events. When I got involved with podcasting, I

felt the need, the urge to get connected in community. I got

connected initially in my local podcasting group here in

Indianapolis. An idea came up to host a podcasting conference.

I'd been to several. I thought, well, I can do this, and so I

put it together. And I knew some of the parameters I wanted to

do. I wanted to keep it kind of small and manageable. And so

four years ago, we launched it in 2023, and I got some guy

named Dave Jackson to come and kind of keynote my my first one,

and now we got our fourth one coming up. And it's that

personal connection, interpersonally, that makes all

the difference for me.

I know, Mark. I can't remember if it was Podfest

or Podcast Movement, but that was the first time I met you.

What inspired you to Start empowered podcasting

for me. You know, I've been podcasting about as long as

you have, Dave, and I never stepped foot in a conference

until maybe the past five years or so. And I think that was a

little bit of ego. I think for a while I thought I don't need

these things. I I know what I'm doing, and you know, one thing

specifically that I think really inspired me was that although I

made some amazing connections going to these different

conferences, I personally felt a little out of place. I felt a

little left out. I felt like there were a lot of established

friendships and relationships that I just felt a little

uncomfortable trying to squeeze my way into. And fast forward, I

can tell you that that was all me in my own head. I don't, I

don't blame the conferences. I don't blame the people. I

recognize that I just felt out of place for probably many

reasons, and that's a whole other show. That was what really

inspired me. I decided I wanted to start my own conference so

that I could feel more comfortable in those spaces. So

that's what I did, and I think initially my vision was to be

another pod fest or another podcast movement in the sense

that I thought I wanted to grow this thing. To 1000s of people,

I thought that would mean success. But after my first

event, empowered podcasting, the very first one in 2024, I

recognized. You know what? Having the smaller group, we had

under 100 people for that one, but I recognized something.

There was something. There was some magic in the air to having

a smaller, more intimate group. People were really getting to

know each other, not just getting to know each other, but

learning from one another outside of the presentations and

workshops. They were just embracing each other and

empowering one another. And I decided in that moment after the

first one. This is what I want. I want a small, more intimate

gathering. So, in my mind, as of right now, you know, this past

one we had 150 people attend. I don't think I want to go past

more than 200. I think at that point we're going to cap it and

say, okay, we're sold out. But that's just to me then a sign

that we're going to do more of these in other areas of the

country, maybe other areas of the world one day. But I think I

want to keep them intimate because there is something

really special about people gathering in small groups and

and learning from one another.

Dr. Brad Miller: They serve different purposes, I think. And

the big conference has its kind of a little bit of a big vibe.

You got all these different options and so on, and you got a

little corporate entities kind of thing going on. The smaller

conferences offer intimacy, and I think there's some value in

that. And in our case at Hot Indy, we go one track too. We go

deep on one track.

Mark, I know last year when it started, you had

gone through a week, if not a couple months, and things like

that. What's the biggest surprise? You know, if somebody

goes, you know what, I might try holding a little meetup or a

conference or something like that. What was the big thing

that surprised you? That you're like, oh, nobody told me this

was going to happen.

I really thought I could do this mostly all by

myself. I had volunteers. I had some people that work with me in

my other business, Ironic Media, that helped me. But ultimately,

I was making all the decisions. I was carrying the burden

financially, emotionally, professionally, and it really

got the best of me. It burned me out. I didn't think I was going

to possibly do another one of these after the second one last

year. But what I did recognize was there were certain people

that were going above and beyond to help me put together EPC two,

and specifically Jason Circon and Rich Perry, they really they

saw me struggling and said, "Mark, we're not going to let

this happen. We're not going to let you burn out. This event's

going to go on. Asterisk here. I was going to cancel it probably

three different times because I didn't think we'd have enough

people even attending. But they stepped up and said, "We're

going to we're going to make this happen with you. And after

that, after they showed me what they were capable of, I knew

that moving forward, I needed a I needed some business partners,

and I asked Rich and Jason to to do that to step into that role,

and they gladly, emphatically accepted, and I think that led

to the tremendous success we had this past weekend,

are you doing the thing? I know some of the bigger

conferences. They, you know, they have a kind of a dedicated

hotel. And what a lot of people don't realize is, you buy a

bunch of rooms, and then they give you a discount. And then

the fun part is, if you don't get enough people to buy those

rooms, you get to pay for them anyway. Yeah,

we did that for the first time this year. Actually,

they gave us a different kind. They packaged it differently in

the first two years, but we we were having trouble in the first

two years offering enough rooms the way we were doing it

previously. This way, they yeah they did exactly how you

described it for this past year, but we had no problem with that

because every speaker we knew, for the most part, most of them

were going to get a hotel room. Then we knew maybe at least half

the attendees would get hotel rooms. So, and and they gave us

a very generous window as to how many rooms we had to fill to

meet that obligation. So that was a piece of cake.

Brad, how about you? What's what are some of the

biggest surprises that when you do this, you're like, "Oh, wait,

this isn't going according to plan, or something went left and

center, or

Dr. Brad Miller: the first time I did it, be honest with you,

and I brought you on on board, Dave. I did it in about three

months ahead of lead time, and that just wasn't enough time. We

had a good time, everything, but it was just kind of getting

things started. I bit off bit off more than than I could chew.

You might remember we had a comedy show that same night and

things like that. But so I knew kind of the stay in my lane

after that. I knew I didn't want to do the hotel thing, for

instance. We make it a very affordable on time frame and

financially. We just do it one day. We have a recommended.

Hotel, but we don't make any hotel arrangements. We have it

in a in my own local church where I have my own podcast

studio. You know, we had we had it in a business center at one

time, and that just costs. You know, I I went in the red on

that personally and financially. I didn't want to do that again.

I have a financial advisor called my wife who keeps me in

track that way as well. So I tried to learn to stay in my

lane. To know this is a year-round thing. Keep promoting

it. Make some decisions early on, and bring in some great

people. And that you can do things, but just kind of keep

within a certain kind of a framework that works for me

personally. And I was able to bring on some partners, not like

Mark did here, but just some a team that I have here locally

that help me do it both in my church and our local podcasting

community.

Now, Mark, you've it's it's been a week, I guess,

pretty much since yeah your conference was over. How long do

you go before you start working on empowered podcasting for my

my business partners will tell you about a week, and I'm saying

that because they've already slapped my wrist a few times

because I've already started talking about next year and and

even tying some loose ends from this past year. But yeah, I'd

say about a week as far as the planning goes for the next

event. Yeah,

yeah, because I remember you announced the the

date and everything at the end, which is something I've seen

other events do. Which is just a you know, it's actually a great

idea because people like this was amazing, and then you're

like, well, if you'd like more of it, you know, here's a

discount. Buy your tickets early. What percentage of your

tickets happened the last week,

in year two, the bulk, the majority, didn't happen

until the month of the event. I mean, I that's why when I told

you I was going to cancel, I was not kidding. I mean, we had

maybe maybe 20 tickets sold prior to the month of the event,

and and I was just like, I don't think we can do this. But then

we had a big surge. So, but I think this year it was a lot

more smooth. I think we were getting it really consistently,

getting ticket sales through several months leading up to the

event, starting with kicking off some early bird specials to to

our community directly, which I think that helped catapult some

sales too. So yeah, this year much more smooth as far as

ticket sales go. But it it's still a grind, Dave. It is not

easy, even though people love the idea. They know they want to

be there for some reason. It takes them a while to pull the

trigger, and that's what's given me a lot of these gray hairs

now.

How about you, Brad? What percentage of people

wait till the last minute?

Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, a lot. I would say I would say a word

about Marcus shared there. You build credibility over time. You

know, Mark, this was the third year of empowered podcasting.

I'm coming off my fourth year at my event, and so this year I've

had more pre-ticket sales than I've ever had before, and I'm

glad for that. That has hard to do with the lineup of people

coming in, but also we build credibility over time. But we

weigh the last month, two thirds of the tickets come in easily,

and in my case, in my first three years of doing this, and

that's just you got to live. You got to live with that, or plan

accordingly with your finances and everything else.

Yeah, I guess you have to start with okay. What's

the most amount of money I can lose on this? Yes, and that is

up off the ledge.

Dr. Brad Miller: That's actually where I started. Be honest with

you. I said, here's a here's my first year, second year. What

can I afford to lose or invest, if you will? Hey, the first year

I managed to do that, I managed to lose that and invest.

I'm not going to lie; I didn't do it that way for the

first two years. This year we did, but the first two years I

was a little, I guess, irresponsible financially. Yeah,

I just wanted to create the vision, and I am not saying I

was right for this, but I just really did whatever it took. And

yeah, I created a little bit of debt because of that. So I'm not

proud of that, but I just want to be transparent that for me it

was just yeah, I wasn't stupid with my money, but at the same

time I wasn't worrying about it either, and that came back to

bite me after year two.

Yeah, I forget it might have been the second year

of podcast movement, and they did all sorts of stuff. They

bust us to a piano bar or something like, and all and

there was all sorts of stuff. And people don't realize that a

gallon of coffee runs insane amounts of money in my hotel.

Yeah, yeah, and they lost their shirt. They lost a ton of money,

and now it was an amazing event. We're all going home, going, I

can't wait to go back. And they're like, Well, next year

the tickets are going to be a little more because they just

flushed a bunch of money. And you know, as you mentioned,

Brad, and I'm sure Mark, Amy's not thrilled when you lose a

bunch of money. So I can I can only imagine Jared easily going

back to his wife, going, "Hey, you know how I just about killed

myself for six months promoting this thing? We didn't make a

dime. In fact, we lost money.

Dr. Brad Miller: Yay! Yeah, you know,

Dave. At the same time, I will say yes. Of course, there

was probably you know she wasn't thrilled, and I think she really

believed in the vision. I think she saw my passion for this. She

saw that I was attracting people that were really passionate

about this. And you know, she, yeah, again, it was a little bit

of a dagger to the heart, but at the same time, she pulled out

the dagger and said, "No, let's keep going because I know you've

got something special here.

That's why you keep her around. That is why.

Yes,

Dr. Brad Miller: and I've just concurred, Debbie, my wife,

helps me co-host my event, and it's overall a very, very good,

good, good thing.

Yeah, I know both your wives, and they're both

amazing people. So, thank you. Kudos for you guys for finding

good ones. It took me

a couple tries. Yeah. If

you if somebody is here thinking, well, you know

what, I might try to have maybe not a conference or a meetup or

whatever. Is any advice for somebody who's who's got this

little voice in their head that goes, maybe I should try that?

Any any advice for that person? Mark, we'll let you go first.

I think that one thing would be to be okay with it if

you're going to move forward with it. To be okay with no

matter how many people end up showing up or buying those

tickets. Certainly, I had a small following. It's what

prompted empowered podcasting. I had a small following from my

podcast that were clamoring to do a meetup similar to what what

Brad's talking about, and before I knew it, I wanted it to be

bigger. I wanted it to be more special than just a meetup. Not

that that's a problem, but I just wanted more from it. And

what I'm learning is that all you have to do is start with a

couple of people that believe in your message, believe in what

you're putting together. Because if they believe in you, and you

are able to put together something that they deem as

successful, they're going to come back. And not only are they

going to come back, they're going to be your advocates.

They're going to be the ones talking it up. And when they

come back and new people arrive, those new people see how the old

people respond to me. They, you know, they know that this is our

for not to sound egotistical, but this is our leader. This is

the guy, and we all believe in him. And and that becomes

contagious. Those new people buy into that. So my point is, you

got to start small sometimes. Don't be shy about about a small

group, like I was worried about for empowered podcasting too.

Take what you get and build from that. I think that's the best

advice I could give.

Brad had mentioned John Lee Dumas. Jared

Easley was part of John Lee Dumas's first meetup, and he

said there were like five people at an In-N-Out Burger. He goes,

"That was it. And then the guy just, you know, took off and

went crazy. So, Brad, any advice for for somebody thinking of

dipping their toe in there? Because, like you said, you've

got experience with all sorts of promotion and events behind you.

Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. Well, I would just say let let's kind of

start with the basics of what makes for a transformative

relationship, and that is you've got to make a personal

connection, and that starts one on one basically, and one on

then a few, and then a few together collaborating and just

enjoying one another, and so you know we had our local little

group here in Annapolis area of about half a dozen to a dozen.

We enjoyed one another, and that became part of the emphasis to

get get things going. So, if a person's going to start this,

you start with just a few. You start with making a connection.

It could be online, it could be in your community, but just put

the word out. Meet at a local restaurant or something, and

just have a get together and see what kind of energy you got. You

have different decisions to make if you really want to do more of

a formal event, like a day-long event, like I do, or several-day

event, like like Empowered Podcasting does, or the bigger

events. You start by building transformative relationships,

which I think is the heart of podcasting. Anyhow, so go have

lunch with somebody, go have coffee with somebody locally, or

if you're online, somebody around the world. You know, get

in some sort of an online chat, or or or a group like yours, a

day school of podcasting, something like that as well.

I think that since COVID, we've all become not all

of us, but a lot of us have become really reliant on the

virtual hangouts and meetups and meetings, and those are great.

And I used to believe like I don't need in person. Like I get

what I I can connect with people this way, and I can to a degree.

But there is nothing like being around like-minded people that

are passionate about the same things that you are that you can

collaborate with, learn from. It's just there. There's nothing

like it,

Mark. Anything somebody that wants to be a

speaker at an event is there anything like what's what's best

practices? What's the thing that makes you go all right? And

you're not talking like what's the the the

big thing for me is when it's it's glaringly obvious

that it's all the submission is all AI. It's all written by AI.

I mean, and I love using AI, so this is not me bashing AI. This

is more bashing the users of AI when you know they simply what I

the way I interpret it is they simply said I want to do a talk

about X, Y, and Z. Apply for me to empowered podcasting, and you

get that generically written AI. And I, it just, I get why

they're doing that, and they may be great speakers, but to me,

it's just a lazy move, and I don't know that I want a lazy

speaker on one of my stages.

My favorite line about AI is, "If you can't take

the time to write it or produce it or record it, why should I

take the time to consume it? Right. I heard that, and I was

like, "Ooh, I'm going to use that.

I like that.

Now, Brad, you go a different direction. You've

kind of always had, you know, keynote speakers that are. It's

pretty much like this year. Cliff Ravenscraft, the podcast

dancer man, that's another guy that's been around forever. Yep,

and he's talking about taking your podcast to the next level.

How do you figure out what topic you're going to hit?

Dr. Brad Miller: I have chosen my keynoteers and my speakers

based on my personal relationships and the

credibility of the content that they have brought to into my

life. We've had three going deep themes of our pot indie events.

The one we did three years ago was you talked about podcasting

as a business, how to make money for your podcast. So you did

three or four sessions on that. We went deep there. Why? Because

I knew you, and we went deep on that area last year. AI, I knew

Craig Ventslike. I knew his work, I knew that he would bring

credibility to that to go deep. And this year, I have been in

masterminds in the past with Cliff Ravenscraft and been to

his house for his workshops and so on. And I knew he would bring

value, and we got reconnected. And he was able to come in, and

he's going to be talking about taking your podcast, your life

to the next level. Then I supplement that based with other

speakers. You're going to be speaking at my event as well, as

well as John Lee Dumas is going to be doing a video, all about

taking your your podcast to the next level, as well as Craig's

going to be talking about AI. But we'll have one going deep.

So I haven't had an application process. I've had a kind of a

recruitment process where, based on my relationship, I've reached

out directly to people and brought them in. I anticipate

that'll be the case moving forward until and unless we grow

to a bigger a bigger level than we're at right now. Well,

gentlemen, thank you so much for more

information. If you want to connect with Brad, go to

podi.com. Mark has empoweredpodcasting.com, and of

course, if you want more of his information, because again,

Mark's been doing this for 20 years. Go to ironicmedia.com,

and I'll have links to that in the show notes, gentlemen. Thank

you so much.

Thank you, Dave. Always good to hang out with you.

Dr. Brad Miller: Good to be with you, Dave. It's pod indy p o d i

n d y.oh.

and Brad, I think you brought a gift, didn't you?

Dr. Brad Miller: Oh, I did. For people, first of all, I just

want to say pottyindy.com is november 7, 2026, in Whiteland,

Indiana. That's suburban Indianapolis. Love to see in

person, but we also emphasize live stream. Everything we do is

live stream, so we have a live stream ticket and a live

in-person ticket. The in-person ticket is $37. The live stream

ticket is $27. We make it affordable. That's one of the

values we have. It's one day nine a.m. to 4p.m. And then also

we have a code SOP for School of Podcasting that's $5 off. So

we'd love to see people podnd.com.

The School of Podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thanks to both Mark and Brad for sharing their

experience, and we kind of heard some things that I thought would

kind of be common. And number one was, if you try to start

with 1000 people, you're just going to burn up into a tiny

little crisp. Start with what you got, where you are, doing

the best with what you can, and go from there. I mentioned it in

the interview that John Lee Dumas, who made so much money,

had to move to Puerto Rico. His first meetup had like five

people, and now he's you know a millionaire, a legit

millionaire, really great guy as well. You'll be hearing from him

at Pod Indy, and if you've ever thought of starting some sort of

event, either in person or online, well, then my job is

done here. And if you've ever thought about it and went, "Man,

I'm never doing it, then my job is done here as well. And I

know, as I was listening to this, I actually thought, you

know, I could probably pull this off in Cleveland or Akron. I

live in Ohio, and then I thought about all the work and went,

well, not now. Realize no is not always no. No is often not now.

But if you're thinking I want to start a podcast, well, then

check out schoolofpodcasting.com. Use the

coupon code Listener when you sign up for either a monthly,

quarterly, or yearly subscription, and that comes

with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Until next week, take

care. God bless. Class is dismissed. And if you're looking

at the website, that's courtesy of PodPage.com. Is School of

Podcast? That doesn't work. That just doesn't. It's too many .dot

coms back to back, it's confusing. Not gonna say that

anymore.

Yeah.