Setting Goals For Long-Term Podcasting Success

This episode, we start with a quick look at Apple’s new Creator Studio announcement and what it could mean for podcasters (plus some thoughts on GarageBand, Logic Pro, CapCut, and pricing across creator tools).

Then we dig into realistic, healthy podcasting goals. We asked listeners what success would look like for them in 2026, and the answers weren’t about chasing downloads or quitting day jobs. Instead, podcasters talked about consistency, letting go of perfection, building skills, listener engagement, and slowly working toward monetization.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Apple Creator Studio
• Alban's Podcast Goals Short Video
• Buzzcast: Top 5 Motivations To Keep Podcasting

Contact Buzzcast

• Send us a text message
• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Chapters

• 0:00 Apple Announces Creator Studio
• 7:35 Podcasting Goals vs Aspirations
• 13:59 Prioritizing Multiple Goals
• 18:47 Goal: Consistency
• 21:20 Goal: Letting Go of Perfectionism
• 25:34 Goal: Engagement Over Downloads
• 29:14 Goal: Skill Building
• 32:03 Goal: Moving Toward Monetization
• 38:35 Fan Mail
• 42:24 Post Show: Airline Inconveniences

Transcript

Jordan: 0:00

Did you see that?

Kevin: 0:02

Lights flicker?

Jordan: 0:03

Yeah.

Kevin: 0:04

Aliens.

Jordan: 0:06

Honestly, I've been really disappointed because I've hoped that one of these days in Jacksonville I'm gonna see a tic-tac or whatever and nothing. It's real disappointing.

Kevin: 0:16

Why in Jacksonville? Why are there gonna be tic-tacks in Jacksonville?

Jordan: 0:18

There's tons of UAP activity in Jacksonville.

Kevin: 0:21

No. There's tons of unstable people in Jacksonville. Like 50% plus.

Jordan: 0:26

Those Pentagon videos, those were Jacksonville.

Kevin: 0:30

Only because we have a bunch of naval bases and military activity here. Yes. And a higher percentage, like per capita, of unstable people live in Florida.

Jordan: 0:42

You're not gonna let me have this. Let me have it.

Alban: 0:46

I think it's that we have all the naval bases, so we've got lots of people filming because high security, you film a lot, and there's a lot of stuff up in the air, and there's a bunch of nutty people. That sounds like totally reasonable.

Kevin: 1:00

Well, you know what's not a conspiracy theory? It is the truth, and that is that Apple is announced today they are going to go head to head, toe-to-toe, with Adobe in like professional creator software.

Jordan: 1:13

Did they actually say this is it? We're throwing down our hat.

Kevin: 1:17

We're going toe or launching our toe against Adobe. No, they just launched uh Apple for a long time has had some professional creative software that years ago it did seem like they were very serious about. And over the past probably close to 10 years, they've really done very little to market it or push it or make it like a profit center for Apple, which I imagine it's hard to make anything a real profit center at Apple because they have such huge products. But evidently, somebody for the past couple years has been heading up a project to revitalize their professional level creative software. And today they announced the Apple Creator Studio, which includes some really nice apps for a pretty reasonable price.

Alban: 1:59

So which of these is would be good for audio? Logic Pro is really kind of like a professional garage band. Is that right?

Kevin: 2:06

And I imagine you could use that for for podcasting or audio in general, but I think it's really geared towards music creation, digital music creation.

Jordan: 2:15

I know a lot of our podcasters, like in the Buzzsprout community group, use Logic Pro, but it's it's usually the ones that have experience with audio editing. You know, it's definitely not a beginner sort of thing.

Alban: 2:26

Right. But besides that, is the best one to use still probably GarageBand and the Apple ecosystem? A lot of the ones I was seeing were mostly like images or video editing.

Kevin: 2:36

Yeah, I think you're right. So they have Final Cut Pro, which is their professional level video editing software. And then the simplified version of that is iMovie. Okay. And then they have the same thing on the audio side. So their professional level audio editing software is Logic Pro, and the simplified amateur version of that is GarageBand. So especially for beginning podcasters or somebody who doesn't have experience in the professional level software, like if you're not a musician, you've never used Logic Pro, jumping into that would be pretty intimidating and the learning curve would be pretty steep, but it does offer a lot more capabilities. But most of that stuff you probably don't ever need. Like most everything that you need as a podcaster is available in GarageBand. It's a lot faster for you to learn it. It is completely free. You don't need a subscription to use it. It does sound like Apple is going to add some additional features for people who are subscribers to this new Creator Studio subscription. I mean, but that sounds like they're mostly AI stuff, like prompting. So if you create a little jingle and you want it to make it a seamless loop, that can be pretty hard to do, just editing the waveform yourself. But now they have the AI tools so you can just prompt it and just say, I want this to be a seamless loop, and it will help you do that automatically without you having to do it.

Jordan: 3:49

Oh man, Adobe Audition has that. It's called remix and it says save me hours of editing.

Kevin: 3:56

Yeah. I think the big win here is the price.

Jordan: 3:59

Yes.

Kevin: 3:59

So Adobe software is pretty pricey. They're pretty proud of it. I think the whole creative studio now is up to almost $70 if you buy the full access thing. $70 a month. That's that's crazy.

Jordan: 4:10

It's a lot.

Kevin: 4:11

This is just $12.99 and they've got fantastic student pricing. So for anybody who is enrolled in I it said college students specifically. I'm sure that includes graduate work. And I'm sure as long as you have like an EDU email address or something, you could probably get it. So it does probably include high school students that have an EDU email address or something, but it's only $2.99 a month.

Jordan: 4:32

Yeah.

Kevin: 4:32

And so I love that. Apple's always been really good about great discounts for students.

Alban: 4:38

You know what I've been using is CapCut. I'm playing with it on desktop. And my daughter was telling me she's like, oh, she'd done some projects on CapCut. I was like, all right, you got to show me what to do. But it's kind of approaching video editing from a totally different direction rather than you having all these fine-tuned controls. It's tons of AI features. And there's filters and transitions and audio cleanup and video editing and lip sync. And there's so many features. I don't know how good all of them are, but it's very AI forward. And at least what I was using it for was pretty impressive. Like you could simulate having new lights after you shot the video, like new lighting on the video. And it like it looked pretty good.

Kevin: 5:27

I do think that is good software. It's it's definitely super popular software. So if you know about CapCut, CapCut is owned by ByteDance, which is the company that owns TikTok. And so depending on how comfortable you are with that, like a lot of people I know don't love TikTok. They're concerned about uploading their content to TikTok or whatever.

Alban: 5:47

Yeah.

Kevin: 5:48

Not a world that I live in or worry about, but I have heard great things about CapCut. I definitely know a lot of younger people use CapCut because it is so similar to, I think they have taken a subset of the CapCut functionality and they've just gone ahead and put it into TikTok. So if you just create shorts directly in the TikTok app, it's very similar. If you're saying, oh, I want to do more advanced things now, you can go over to CapCut and you have a starting point, a reference point.

Alban: 6:10

Well, that's how it feels. It feels like it's the Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, like all those kind of features are in there, but it's like a step or two towards a normal video editor. It's been nice for me so far. I do assume anything that I'm putting into in here or any files that it's exposed to, like I'm just imagining those have gone out to anybody in the world. I'm not uh imagining any of this is private, but this is all stuff that I'm trying to get out to the world. I'm posting some things on YouTube. I made for this episode, I made a YouTube short promoting this episode and I put it up on YouTube. I'm hoping this gets leaked to the Chinese government and that they start becoming listeners of BuzzCast.

Kevin: 6:50

So that's the goal.

Jordan: 6:53

Yeah.

Kevin: 6:53

So I mean, I think the big takeaway, I don't know how like how successful this is going to be for Apple, but I I'm excited to see Apple stepping back into the world of taking some of their software products more seriously, specifically their like professional creator software. Apple had been uh a leader in this area for many years, and it's been many years since they've kind of held that title. And so I'm I think it's fantastic that they're moving in that direction again. And I I think competition is great. Like you can see what happens when Adobe starts to dominate, the prices get astronomical. And so Figma's nipping at the toes of Adobe. Now Apple's coming in. Competition is great for everyone. It's gonna make software better, it's gonna make everything more affordable. So great job, Apple. Keep it up.

Jordan: 7:34

Here we go. Welcome back to BuzzCast, the podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. In our last episode, we talked through how to start a podcast if we were to do that today. And in this episode, we're kind of like transitioning into what might be the next thing that you run into as a podcaster, which is well, I've started my podcast, or I've been podcasting for, you know, however many years. Now what? How will I know if my podcast is successful? Or how do I start actually moving towards what my vision of success is? For this episode, we asked our listeners and some of the members of the community to let us know what their goals were for 2026, what they would feel proud of at the end of the year, looking back on and feel like their podcast had reached success. And I kind of took all these answers and I compiled them into groups. So we have like five themes that we're gonna go through in this episode. But one of the things that really surprised me was we actually didn't have a lot of podcasters focusing on downloads and monetization. So I thought we were gonna get a lot of responses about that, but we didn't.

Alban: 8:47

I think we probably framed it a little bit around what are your goals. And they probably, if they listen to this podcast, they know the reality is that only 15% of podcasters will ever make money on the show. And it's something like 1% will make it their full time, the way they make all their money. It's actually their income. So I think we talk about that enough that the reality for the people who write in is probably this isn't going to become my full-time job, but they're probably they have other purposes for podcasting. And we got really interesting ones. And a lot of them to me felt very healthy. And I actually went and made a short little video about this because I we had so many good answers.

Jordan: 9:29

Yeah, I think one of the things that everyone probably sees it, you know, in the podcasting space is people start their podcast or they will write in and be like, I want to start making money from a podcast. Like, where do I start podcasting? And it's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're putting the cart before the horse a little bit there. I think that there's a big difference between goals and aspirations. Like aspirations are great to have. It's good to have a vision board. It's good to visualize yourself being successful in the space, but it's also good to have sort of stepping stones or mile markers to get you on the way there in that journey because it is a process. It is a journey. You're not gonna, you know, shoot to number one right off the bat.

Alban: 10:08

One of our programmers, John, will often ask people, like, what does a perfect day look like for you? And he'll get people to try to describe a perfect day. And what I always notice is people describe a day that's actually pretty similar to something they can live with a few modifications. Very few people describe like, oh, I've just won the Golden Globe for podcasting. I'm just hit 17 million downloads because those are aspirations. We'd like to maybe hit some of those milestones, but you kind of have to enjoy the day-to-day life of getting there. And I think there's a lot of people who are famous. There's a lot of people I look up to that when they describe their lives or you read their biographies, it does not sound fun to be them and to do the day-to-day work that they do. Or they get so into music that they end up stop kind of enjoying the act of creation. And so I think sometimes those big aspirations, it's nice to have it out there and just say, oh, it'd be cool to do this, but you can end up chasing, hey, I'm gonna see a number turn over from 99, 999 to 1 million. That's not going to make up for hundreds of hours if you did not enjoy all that process uh leading up to the big number ticking over.

Kevin: 11:22

It makes me wonder, you guys have probably seen stats about like people who win the lottery and then how many of them it ends up being destructive to their life in one way or another. Like they end up squandering the money or getting in a lot of trouble, or I don't know, blowing it all and then you know reverting back to a similar or worse lifestyle five years later or something like that. And there's probably a million reasons why that could happen. But one of the things that could be a leader of this is like when you're just given something, like you're not you don't work hard for it. There's an appreciation that hasn't had time to develop. If you have kids, you know this principle well because we give our kids a lot of things. And then we start to see that, oh, they're not appreciating it, they're not taking care of it. Well, they didn't earn it. And so then we move into a phase of parenting where we're like, okay, well, we're gonna set a goal and we're gonna work towards a goal. And if they achieve the goal, then they're gonna get the thing. And sometimes they fall a little short and we give grace and then, oh, now they didn't appreciate it again. Anyway, it's a big parenting thing, but you're trying to help people appreciate the journey so that when they get the reward at the end of the journey, they really appreciate it. Like you don't really see anybody who wins the lottery talk about, I worked so hard for this. Like it's just been years and years of buying tickets every week and trying to figure out the right numbers to guess. You have no idea all the algorithms I drew up and the math I was doing to be able to predict these numbers. Like that doesn't happen. It's just you just played something, you had dumb luck, and one day you won it. And it could have been the first time, it could have been the thousand time, who knows? But there's no effort involved in it, and so you don't appreciate the thing at the end, and so you're not as careful with it or something, or like i if we went out tomorrow and I won the Super Bowl, there's no way I'd have the same level of appreciation that like if uh let's say the Jags just lost, but let's say they made it. Like after years and years of losing seasons and Trevor Lawrence and all the criticism that he's got of he's supposed to be this franchise quarterback and can he really do it? And is he the guy? And not like what if he made it this year and won? He's gonna pre have such a massive level of appreciation. I would certainly have fun going out and playing on a Super Bowl team and getting my butt smeared and then getting a Super Bowl ring, but I'm not gonna really appreciate it. Like, I would just be like, Yeah, it was I can't believe they let me go on the field. That was crazy of them. I I don't I don't know if I get exactly how this connects to podcasts. It really doesn't. But it it just makes me think that like, don't skip over the journey. The journey is like when you get to the goal, right? You're not gonna appreciate it if it was just handed to you. So appreciate that process, whether whether you ultimately achieve your highest aspirations or not, finding joy in the journey is valuable in and of itself.

Jordan: 13:58

We actually got a message from a listener in Ohio that I think is a really good example of someone who enjoys the process so much that they have a ton of goals. And so they say that for me, success looks like being content with saying less and everything and being okay with episodes that are good enough, creating a podcast episode every week, being efficient and um fear and nervousness kept in their proper place. And then something I say in every episode helps at least one person. So that's one, two, three, four, five really, really good goals for their podcast, really good success markers.

Alban: 14:36

I honestly, when I saw this, those five to me looked like I thought that was like the structure of the whole outline because those are five out of five that I agree with.

Jordan: 14:46

Yeah.

Alban: 14:47

And reading them, I'm like, oh, that's a really good one. That's a really good number one priority. But once I got to the end, I was like, it feels actually kind of like a lot, even though I agree with every one of them. Um having kind of five priorities, at some point you've got enough goals that it can almost feel a little bit overwhelming to want to do so much in one period.

Jordan: 15:09

Yeah, it's like that saying goes, there's one way to eat an elephant.

Alban: 15:12

It's just yeah, one bite at a time.

Jordan: 15:14

One bite at a time. So I think that, you know, if you do want to accomplish all these things at the end of the year, something that you could do is just implement one and say, okay, I'm going to focus solely on editing a podcast every week for like the next month. And I'm going to make it into a habit. I'm going to build it into my routine. And then when I do that, I'm going to be good with getting more efficient. I'm going to, I'm going to focus the next month or the next two months on just getting more efficient, watching YouTube videos, learning everything I can. And slowly throughout the year, you can just focus on that one thing, make it your goal, make it your priority. And then it builds into like a habit and a routine for you in podcasting.

Kevin: 15:54

Yeah, I can definitely see a way to how I would personally, and it's going to be different for everybody, but personally, I love these five things and I could see how I would prioritize them. So just to talk through the exercise real quick, for me, I would start probably with the efficiency stuff. So being that podcasting when most people start is probably more on the hobby side than on the business side or monetization or marketing growth channel side, it probably needs to be kept in its proper spot. And so you have to be efficient with it, right? Whatever your hobby is, whether it be lawn darts or podcasting, if it starts to consume too much of your life, it's going to be disruptive and destructive. So if podcasting for you falls in that category of hobby, something I enjoy, and I'd like to be able to do more. Maybe one day I'll be able to get there. But for now, I have to keep it in this time block or else it's going to start to take away too much of the other things that are necessary and require me to invest in to be able to keep my life together. We can't let hobbies destroy our lives. So for me, I'd put those types of things at the beginning. I need to be more efficient. Um, I don't need this thing consuming all my mental cycles about, oh, I shouldn't have said that. That sounded dumb. I can't believe I released that to the world. Like, how do you get in the healthy space with podcasting first? I'd prioritize those at the top. And then as you feel like you're making pretty good progress on those, like, oh, I got my edit down to two hours for you know a 30-minute episode. I feel good about that. That's sustainable. Now I want to take something else on. Like now I'm being more critical of my episodes. Did I say something valuable in the last episode? Let me go back and listen. And what were some good takeaways? Oh, I'm proud of that. That felt good. I want to do more of that type of stuff. So you're moving through this list slowly. It is five things, but you have a year to do it. But I do think there's a lot of value in not saying, oh, every episode right out of the gate in January of 2026, I'm going to hit all five of these things every week. That could be hard.

Alban: 17:43

Yeah. One of my favorite blogs that I've ever read is called Speed Matters. And I want to read a quote because it's right on point with what Kevin's saying. The prescription must be that if there's something you want to do a lot of and get good at, like write, fix bugs, or podcasting, you should try to do it faster. That doesn't mean be sloppy, but it does mean push yourself to go faster than you think is healthy. That's because the task will come to cost less in your mind. You'll have low activation energy. So you'll do it more. And as you do it more, as long as you're doing it deliberately, you'll get better. Eventually you'll be fast and good. And there's something too, like when you first start, if you try to be perfect, it's slow and it's painful the whole way. And nothing ever gets published. And it's never, you just like the malaise of like re-editing and re-shooting and redoing things kind of seeps in. And you just need to like be fast, get stuff out there and keep moving. And that will make you efficient, but it'll also make you really good.

Jordan: 18:44

I love that. And it won't burn you out. All right. So I talked earlier about how I took all of our listener and community member goals and put them into five different categories. So let's just start going down through those categories and discussing them. So the first one that I have is consistency. This is a theme that cropped up a lot. And I think it sounds really easy when you're starting up a podcast to be like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna consistently, you know, post an episode every day or twice a week. Consistency can be one of the hardest things to really master as you're podcasting because life happens. Things come up, you get burned out, and staying consistent is a huge commitment. And so uh Ben from a gluten-free podcast wrote in and said that success for me in 2026 will be continually showing up and continuing to listen to my audience as much as possible via email and in our podcast Facebook group, ultimately to just keep podcasting.

Kevin: 19:42

I like that. Another one in the same theme of consistency was uh from Matthew from Girl Dad Nation. I am currently at 75 episodes. My goal for 2026 is to get to my hundredth episode published. Totally achievable, especially as you're at 75 under your belt. And first of all, big shout out to Matthew. We got Your uh holiday card at the office yesterday. Alban and I opened it together. Beautiful picture. Thank you so much for sending us a holiday card. That was super sweet.

Jordan: 20:07

So fun.

Alban: 20:08

Uh, we got another one that I saw that's it's I think it's in the same vein. Damien, the dungeon master, uh wrote in and said, My podcasting goal is simple and it might sound silly coming from someone who's so deep in the podcasting sphere, and it's to release more episodes than we have in the last two years. And in general, getting more consistent again. We moved at the end of 2023 and the show took a big hit, only releasing four total episodes since the move. Yeah. Our first of 2026 will hopefully be out by the end of January. Damien, I love the bringing yourself back and making it consistent again in 2026. We all hit bumps in the road, and it's really the difference is who comes back to it and is able to keep going.

Jordan: 20:50

And I like that this is stepping it up a bit because Damien's talking about actually releasing more episodes than we have in the last two years. So this is something that you can look at, you know, if you're releasing bi-weekly like we were for a long time, and then you go, you know what? Maybe I'll do a bonus episode every now and then, or maybe I'll just step it up and we'll we'll do weekly or bi-weekly if you're moving from monthly. So there's little ways that you can actually improve your consistency to become more consistent for your listeners too. Let's move into letting go of perfection. This was a theme that I saw crop up a bit, and I was actually really happy to see it because I think a lot of creators struggle with this, especially putting things out into the ethos and having everyone judge you, you know, just putting your work out there. It's really scary. And so letting go of perfection is a really hard thing to do. The school psych podcast wrote in and said, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed your how to start a podcast episode with Megan, and I benefited from it, even though I'm not at the stage because it put me back into a done is better than perfect mindset. I've been really feeling burned out and discouraged at the end of the year, but listening to the episode inspired me to avoid overthinking things and hearing how much fun it was for all of you to go through that exercise together remind me of the reasons why I started podcasting in the first place. So, to answer your question about what podcasting success feels like to me for 2026, it is to keep releasing weekly episodes for parents and teachers and to get over the mental block around interviewing guests remotely.

Kevin: 22:22

Yeah, that is really good. One of the things that I think I don't know, I've I wanted to say that all like really great athletes do. And like, who am I to say that? I'm not a really great athlete, but I am someone who enjoys athletics. Okay. And I have noticed a pattern in hanging out with people who engage in athletics a lot and are a lot better than I am, and I aspire to be like them.

Jordan: 22:43

Uh-huh.

Kevin: 22:43

They have a healthy mindset, and most of the time, they whatever they're doing athletically, they're doing really good. Once in a while, they do something bad and they can get frustrated for a moment, but they quickly snap back. It's like they have a short-term memory. And I've heard I've heard athletic coaches say this all the time like the best athletes have the memory of a goldfish. Like that one ball that you hit that just went off, like you have to be able to forget that, or else it's going to start to deteriorate the rest of your game. And I think the same can be true in podcasting, is that we might have an off week. We might have a couple episodes back to back that are bad. But if we say, oh, we're terrible at this, we're terrible podcasters, that's not healthy. That's just like reinforcing a lie. That's not true. The truth is that you're getting better. And sometimes on the journey of getting better, that means that you're going to have a few back steps, right? A couple steps forward, a couple steps back, one, you know, three forward, two back, four forward, one back. I don't know, however many forward and backs you have. But that's part of the journey. And not beating yourself up over that, not saying every episode has to be the best episode ever, um, releasing yourself from that pressure allows you to stay on that journey longer. If you beat yourself up every time you make a mistake, that will compound to the point where you're probably just going to walk away. You'll never be a really successful podcaster or anything, really. If you short circuit your mindset so that while you're in the learning process, while you're getting better, you keep beating yourself up and discouraging yourself. You have to remember that stuff has compounding effects, just like positive self-talk has compounding effects. Like, oh, I just hit this shot and that wasn't a really good shot, but I learned something from that, right? And I'm gonna try it again. I don't know. Now I I feel like a bit of a motivational speaker, and I'm not trying to be like that.

Jordan: 24:25

I'm feeling motivated.

Alban: 24:29

I really like the way that the listener in Ohio put this one. Uh, we edited down the full bit, but I want to read the whole section on perfection. Their success looks like my fear and nervousness are kept in their proper place because there is a place for fear and nervousness, but it's the proper place. I don't spin out worrying about mistakes and how weird I sound and what people might think, specifically those not in my intended audience. That was me when I first started podcasting. I had this whole story written in my head that I was gonna start sharing all the podcast episodes on Facebook. And then people from high school would listen to it and go, What an idiot. I don't know why, because I wasn't sharing them on Facebook anyway. And anybody who thought, oh, what an idiot, they weren't gonna listen to the episode to begin with. So it was a totally manufactured fear around people who weren't in the intended audience and how they would judge me. Uh, once I started publishing, I realized, oh, it's hard to get anyone to listen to it, let alone haters. So I don't have to worry about this.

Jordan: 25:32

Right. Okay, let's move on to our third theme that we have, which is engagement over downloads. At first, I was a little surprised to see this come up so much more than downloads. And then I remembered our currency of connection episode that we did. And I was like, it doesn't actually surprise me that our podcasters aren't so focused on downloads and they're actually more focused on connecting with their listeners. David John Clark from Late Bloomer Actors said, I've had great growth in downloads and for data analysis when I do it. It seems to be good retention data too. I'd like to see more audience engagement in 2026. So hopefully I can encourage my audience to reach out, to interact, and perhaps even to subscribe for a small monthly outlay.

Kevin: 26:19

For sure. I think a lot for me personally, engagement is much more motivating than numbers. Now, there might be people who fall on the other side of that spectrum. Yeah. But for me, I'm more with David. And we had another person write in, Dave, who said success for me would be for more feedback from my listeners so that I can improve. And I love that too. Uh we're all our own worst critics, but it can also be challenging to figure out am I just being overly critical here or is this something I really need to improve? And so getting other people to give you feedback is important. And ideally, it wouldn't just be people who aren't in your target audience. Like, I mean, you're sure you have people in your life who would be happy to give you feedback, but they just might be friends or family or kids or spouses. And first of all, you have to say, like, well, is this honest feedback? Are they just being nice because they know me? Like, there's nothing that is a substitute for the authentic thing, which is the real target audience interacting with you and engaging with you and letting you know, I love this segment. I didn't, this one didn't resonate as much. I feel like you're rambling too much. We get that stuff all the time. Now, you get to do with it what you want. Like, people tell us you guys ramble too much, you should stay on topic.

Jordan: 27:25

Yeah.

Kevin: 27:25

Okay, but it's our show also. So, like sometimes we'll do better at that than others, but at least we know there is a portion of our audience that likes our content but thinks we ramble too much.

Alban: 27:34

And they're they're they're not wrong. No, they're not uh a big part of the joy for us. Uh Justin wrote in on this in this vein and said, I'd love to increase listenership and downloads, but I'd really like to build a community around the podcast.

Jordan: 27:48

Yeah.

Alban: 27:49

And I totally agree with Kevin. A fan mail message comes in, I go, Oh, cool. Another one comes in, I go, Oh, that's a really nice comment. And I read all of those, and I couldn't tell you within, I don't know, 10% of how many downloads our last five episodes have gotten. I have a hard time really guessing to even be that close at all. But I have a good idea of how many fan mail messages came in. And I recognize a lot of the names on here because they're people who write in, they're part of the community. It matters a lot more to me. The other thing is, every once in a while we find a bot and we go, oh, we just shut off this bot. And if it does impact the numbers, you go, Oh, you know, a little bit of a dip on that last episode. Oh, that was bot traffic. That's never happened with fan mail messages. We've never had someone write in and Tom goes, yeah, that was actually a bot giving you a compliment.

Jordan: 28:41

Listenership and downloads, they're fun. It's great, but it's one of those things like if you have a hundred thousand downloads on your podcast and no one's reaching out to you, you're you're going to feel like you're just shouting into the void and it's gonna be like, Man, is anyone there? Is anyone even listening? So just having like a handful of people that are in a community with you are actually, you know, sending you famous messages, writing back when you're asking for people to, you know, give listener submissions or feedback on your podcast. It's so much more meaningful than any downloads. All right, next up, skill building. So some podcasters, they feel that podcasting is actually going to be more of a long-term investment in themselves. And they're viewing it as an opportunity to improve their skills. They're viewing it as an opportunity to continue their education. And I think that that is so cool. So Anthony Seeley said, with podcasting, I have learned to record, edit, interview, network, among other skills, things I can add to my resume and hopefully lead to a new and better career.

Alban: 29:45

That's what uh worked for Jordan. Yeah. You were podcasting and you were in our Facebook community. And so we went, wait, we need a new podcast editor. We knew who to go to because you'd already shown through your podcast, all right, you have the skills to do this job. Uh Shirley wrote in the same thing. I want to learn a ton at Podfest and use it to build on what I've started. So we are headed down to Podfest a couple days from now. We'll be there when this episode drops. Yep. And hopefully we'll be learning alongside of Shirley.

Kevin: 30:15

I think podcasting right now, anyway, still falls in this category for me as somebody who, you know, worked in the business world for a while and owned a business for a while, of people who know podcasting, like on the creator side, know how to create one, have created their own personal ones. I immediately don't like I whether we need another podcasting role at the company or not, I'm immediately tuned into the fact that they are somebody who is self-motivated and figures stuff out.

Jordan: 30:41

Yes.

Kevin: 30:42

Because nobody went to a four-year university and majored in podcasting. Like you weren't taught this, you didn't aspire to be a podcaster for like maybe in the next couple of years we'll start to see people who are coming up who are aspiring to be the I was gonna say Harvard has some classes now.

Jordan: 30:54

Yeah.

Kevin: 30:55

But that's that's all relatively new.

Jordan: 30:56

Yeah.

Kevin: 30:57

So if you meet a 40-year-old who's like created a couple podcasts on their own and enjoys it or whatever, you're like, they are a tinkerer, they are self-motivated, they can they can start something and see it through. If they don't know how to do it, that doesn't intimidate them, they can figure it out. So I I love all that stuff. And I'm also surely excited about Podfest and all the stuff that we're gonna get to learn at the end of this week.

Alban: 31:16

It really is true. When you're hiring somebody, resumes can be faked or at least embellished to look, you know, more impressive than they really were. Everyone takes credit for the big projects they worked on. They were a piece of the project, but they kind of act like they did the whole project themselves. But with things that you build and publish online, it's proof that you can actually do it. Yeah. And if it's a YouTube video or a podcast or blog, or you wrote for a magazine, like as long as it's out there in the world, people search your name when you're applying for a job and they go, Oh, you can actually do this. And it's very quick to be able to judge. So I really want to hear, Anthony, maybe check in with us a year from now. I want to hear how growing in podcasting has helped improve your career.

Jordan: 32:02

Yeah. Finally, we have moving toward monetization. So not necessarily, you know, coming out the gate with money in your pockets, but actually taking the steps toward monetizing your podcast. So um, there's really nothing wrong with wanting to support your hobby. And the podcasters that did discuss monetization, they only discussed it in a way of like, I'm not gonna quit my day job over this, but it'd be nice. It'd be nice to, you know, help fund this. Uh, Sparkling D said, My healthy podcast goals for 2026, this year I'm focusing on monetizing my podcast. I'm not looking to replace my day job. I'd simply love for it to cover its own costs.

Alban: 32:42

We started by talking about how uh monetization can't be the only goal. It's a red flag when I hear I'm getting into podcasting because I want to be big. I'm getting into podcasting because I want to monetize. There's nothing wrong with wanting to monetize, but if it's the primary goal, the best way to monetize your time is just to get a job. But I think with D, when I read, I'm focusing on monetizing my podcast. I'm really hearing that as all right, I've put in all this work and now I would like to see some financial return. And it seems like a pretty healthy amount. I'm not looking to replace my day job. I'm simply would love for it to cover its own costs. So we have seen her focus on the podcast, grow the podcast. She's super invested in just getting better and better or craft. I think I have to give an exception for D on this one.

Kevin: 33:36

I agree with you, Alban. I would say generally, my advice would be to someone who says, I'd like for my podcast to generate enough money to cover like the pay for its own costs. I would say, like, what other hobby in your life does that? Hobbies cost money. And hopefully the the return on the investment is the enjoyment you get from it. That's the return. It's not dollar for dollar, it's enjoyment for dollars. And a lot of our life, that's the economics of how things work. We work to make money. The work, yeah, some days are better than others, but I need money. And then we take the money to enjoy things. And if one of those things you enjoy is podcasting, then that's what you spend some money on. But I do understand we know Dee well. She knows podcasting well. And I do think it's reasonable with the quality of the content that she's putting out that she could work towards at least covering the cost of her. I would also say though, Dee's teetering on not being a hobbyist anymore. She's teetering on the fact that she's been doing this long enough and creates good enough content and it's like a marketing channel for her coaching business and stuff like that. I think it's starting to shift out of hobby world for her. But if it's a hobby world for you, I don't think you should worry about, you know, spending whatever, $20 a month on hosting or a $15 creative subscription so that you can do editing and stuff like that. Like, are you enjoying this? Are you having fun? I hope so. And is for $35 a month a good price to be able to have some hours of entertainment and putting out content that you're hoping is helping people in the world and that makes you feel good, then that's the return. Yeah. Soapbox over.

Jordan: 35:01

All right. Well, I have another podcaster who is an example of, you know, putting forth the hard work, paving the way. And Michelle from our Facebook community group said, I want to use my podcast content as a launch pad to write a book. And I was asking her, I said, Are you using your podcast as like a marketing funnel for your book? Or like, what's your plan with that? And she said, No, no, no. I'm gonna take all the podcast content that I've made over the years and I'm going to distill that into a book. And I think that that is really clever because yeah, you can use your podcast as a marketing funnel for that. But I think it's it's really cool that she put in all this work and she says, you know what? I'm gonna see if I can take all this content that I have created and put it into a new format and maybe, maybe I'll sell some copies of it.

Kevin: 35:51

Heck yeah. I love this. Uh I have a pastor friend of mine is wanting to do the same thing. He wants to write a book, but he is very uh intimidated or has a like writer's block. I guess there's a there is a very common term for this, writer's block. When every time he sits down in front of the computer with the white screen and he's like, I just don't know where to begin. I've tried doing outlines and then coming back and flushing it out. Like he's like, it's just very hard and very intimidating. But he's a preacher, he preaches every Sunday. And I was like, what about if we just go a different route and we start with a podcast? Like you're great at talking out ideas, you're great about creating sermon outlines and then flushing them out in real time in front of a lot of people. So a podcast is a beautiful format to do that. Talk all these things out, get transcripts, and then you're editing transcripts down and tightening them up into instead of looking at a blank page and writing. And so I think I can work for a lot of people and I love it.

Jordan: 36:39

Yeah. Okay.

Kevin: 36:40

Belinda wrote in and said, I'd love to crack that elusive 1,000 downloads per month and maybe land a sponsor. And so I love the spirit of this because moving your podcast, marketing your podcast in a way that you, you know, unlock new functionality in Buzzsprout is fun for me. I hope it could be a fun journey for you as well. But I want to give you a little bit of information. Um, first of all, you do not need to hit a thousand downloads per month to unlock a sponsor. What you're unlocking then is Buzzsprout ads, which is like a programmatic ad system. Those ads are going to pay you around a penny or less per download. And so even if you monetized every single one of your thousand downloads, you're talking $10 a month. And that's nothing to scoff at. I'm not saying that's not worthwhile doing, but it's just not a lot. I mean, you said this word sponsor, and I think that is something I want to talk about for a second, is that you can unlock a sponsor today. Like I don't know what your podcast is about, but I imagine that there's probably some businesses or services, and you might actually know some people in the space that might be interested in you talking about their product or service on your podcast. And you don't have to charge a whole lot. You could just charge $15 an episode. Uh, and I want to I I use your service, I like your service, I want to talk about it. Hopefully it would be valuable to you. I get 500 downloads an episode, I get 250 downloads an episode. Would you pay me $15 every time I mention it or talk about it? I'll talk about you for 30 or 60 seconds. And look, right now you could do that and you'd be making more than even if you had a thousand downloads. Yeah. So just think about that. I'm not forcing anything on you, but it might be an opportunity that you could step into right away instead of waiting for the thousand download unlock.

Jordan: 38:11

Fully agree. All right. Well, I think that this was really fun. It was awesome to go through independent podcaster goals. I love that the people in our community are really focusing on consistency and getting it done, getting listener engagement, building skills, and you know, just kind of like working towards the monetization aspect. I love it. All right, let's get into fan mail. I do need to mention that we have gotten so many requests for feedback after our listener feedback episode. And so I don't know if you guys would be down for it, but we might have to do a listener feedback episode again.

Kevin: 38:56

Yeah. I love those episodes. They're fun.

Jordan: 38:57

It is fun. Yeah. And then we also got some messages from our Aussie fans letting us know that they would love for us to come visit. Um, if you didn't listen to our last episode where we kind of went behind the scenes on the Buzzsprout playbacks 2025, Kevin posed the question do Australians like our accents? And I said, No, absolutely not. But it sounds like they actually do think we have cool accents. So there you go.

Alban: 39:21

Yeah. I I like that Anthony said we sound cool, and then sent us a cowboy emoji. So we barely have cowboys. But I think what he meant is y'all come visit now.

Jordan: 39:31

You hear? Yeah.

Alban: 39:34

Uh, we got another one that is kind of in that vein of a request for feedback. Vanessa from Free to Be Mindful sent us a message. Texting in desperation, five years, 294 episodes, but I'm only at twenty seven average listeners a week. I love it, but it's so time consuming with almost no direct return on investment. I'm wondering if I should keep going. Thanks for all you do. And there's a crying emoji in there.

Jordan: 40:01

That's sad.

Alban: 40:02

But first, I just want to say 294 episodes is incredible. Sticking with anything for five years. That's you doing it almost more than an episode every week for five years. That's incredibly impressive. So I hope you just hear that. 27 listeners, average listeners a week is about average. So it's not um the biggest podcast, but I'd like to hear that you're saying you love doing it. I would like to figure out ways that we could help you cut down on what's making it so time consuming. And then maybe what the ROI could be.

Jordan: 40:39

Yeah. And Vanessa, I actually have an episode recommendation for you if you haven't already listened to it. We um a while back we did an episode about what motivates our podcasters to keep podcasting. And it is one of my favorite episodes about how to keep the mindset of keeping podcasting, like focusing on what's important for your podcast. So I'll put that episode in the show notes for you too.

Alban: 41:04

I think what would be good is talking about how to make podcasting fun. Is that it? Is it sound effects? That's it. Tip number one is sound effects. You need more, 100% more sound effects. Podcasting can just feel like if you're just doing it day in, day out, it could become routine. Maybe it could even become boring. It can become drudgery. Um, it could be, as Vanessa said, so time consuming, even though you love it. Yeah. So we've often gone back to how do we make what we do fun? So let's hear from you. What are you doing to make podcasting fun? We'll put together all of our stuff. And we're just gonna have one big episode where we're having a great time, but we're also celebrating everything that you've done. So give us your tips. How do you make prep fun? How do you make the episode recording fun? How do you enjoy the process with your co-hosts? You enjoy watching the stats. What is fun about podcasting for you? And we'll put together one big episode to hopefully inspire you as we move in to 2026.

Jordan: 42:09

I love it. So if you want to participate in our fun episode, tap the Texas show link in the show notes to send in your response. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. I've flown to Jacksonville a a handful of times at this point. And for the first time ever on both of my flights, there was no one sitting in the middle seat.

Kevin: 42:36

Ooh. Are you an aisle or a window person?

Jordan: 42:38

I used to be a window person. And then I realized that a four-hour flight, you have to go to the bathroom pretty often. And so now I'm an aisle person.

Alban: 42:47

The question is, do you are you more comfortable with other people inconveniencing you or you inconveniencing other people?

Jordan: 42:54

I'm way more comfortable when someone else inconveniences me because I'm so worried that I'm gonna inconvenience them by not, you know, catering to their needs. And so I'm I'm such a people pleaser that I will go out of my way to like be like, yeah, yeah, absolutely, get anything you want. And then uh if I have to go to the bathroom, I'm just like apologizing all over myself as I like make them get up from their seats.

Alban: 43:16

Actually, you know what I've done before is I on long flights will kind of like see there's a big line to go to the bathroom and then I'll get up because then I get to stand there in line for a while, and that's like really nice. You just get to stand and it feels so much better than sitting. And then it feels like it's legit. If you just stand in the aisle, people are gonna ask you, sir, can you please sit down? But if you're waiting in line for a bathroom, even if you don't have to go, it's like you got a freebie.

Kevin: 43:42

That's a good strategy. You have to be at the back to do that, though. They won't let you form a line at the front. Really?

Jordan: 43:48

Oh, yeah.

Kevin: 43:48

Kevin, first class problem. Yeah, and those are the bathrooms you want to use because they all have bidets. Oh, I actually had uh we were just talking about something that wrong of this because I traveled this weekend as well. I was on a couple flights, and it was one of those bummer flights where they couldn't get the um air conditioning running on the plane because the generator was down on the plane, so they also couldn't start the engine, so they're waiting for the jump vehicle to come start the engines. And you know, the people I'm traveling with, my wife is saying, like, it how how is this safe? Like, you can't start the engine. So if the engine somehow cut off in the air, you can't start them. And there was this principle like that came to mind like I don't really know this is true, but as long as I say it with confidence, it will put her at ease. And so I'm going for this. So I said something to the effect of as long as one engine is going, even if one shuts down, they can use the power from the one engine to start the other engine. So it's perfectly safe, we're gonna be fine. And she's like, Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I have no idea if that's true or not. I feel like I might have heard that at some point, but I have no idea. Did you look this up since then, Kevin? No, I didn't. I think I'm also living in the state of happy bliss that like that sounds reasonable. I'm just gonna believe it for the rest of my life.

Alban: 44:57

There's supposed to be something like there's three different uh setups for all the electrical systems on the airplane. And so if any one of them goes down, there should still are like two more available. I wonder if it's just like all three have to be good to go. Right, what else the airplane on the ground?

Kevin: 45:13

Evidently, one of those systems was a service truck driving up to the front of the plane yesterday and hooking up jumper cables.

Jordan: 45:19

They just like slap the side and you take off.

Kevin: 45:22

It's fun. There's always, you know, who does air travel nowadays without having something silly happen?

Jordan: 45:27

Right.

Kevin: 45:28

Um, Podfest, though, that's why you're here, Jordan. We're going to Podfest this Friday.

Jordan: 45:33

So excited.

Alban: 45:33

Well, we're glad that you're here, Jordan. We're gonna have a great time. We got some parties set up.

Jordan: 45:37

Oh, yeah. Kevin's big birthday party.

Alban: 45:42

Well, we yes, that is uh, but we also have a podfest party because of everybody who listens to buscasts.

Jordan: 45:50

The work party, yeah.

Alban: 45:52

That's kind of a uh party faux pas right there, Jordan. You can't invite people to the party that they're not invited to, or you don't want to tell them about a party they haven't been invited to.

Kevin: 46:00

Oops. Uh well, actually you can. That that happens all the time. It happened this morning. I am actually having a birthday party this weekend, and I invited a bunch of people, and one of the people I invited texted me and said, I invited somebody else to your party. Is that okay?

Jordan: 46:11

I'm like, what?

Kevin: 46:13

How is this okay? Uh but sure. It is it is fine. And it seems like it just happened again. So listen, any BuzzCast listeners, if you want to come to my party, you happen to be in the Jacksonville area Saturday night, we're gonna be partying. Go ahead and smash that text the show link and I'll I'll I'll figure out how to contact you and I'll get you invited to the party.

Jordan: 46:32

Yeah. Well, uh, for our like non-personal birthday party for the actual BuzzRoute meetup party at Podfest, do we have any details on that if they want to come and they're gonna be a Podfest?

Alban: 46:44

It's Friday night. We are going to be uh meeting at the bar in the center of the hotel at Podfest, and we're gonna have a whole area that we kind of section off and we'll all hang out, we'll be getting lots of drinks and food, and I'll get to play bartender a little bit and walk around and hand out all sorts of stuff. But it's always a blast. Community is much better, the numbers, and this is our chance to connect with our community. So if you listen to Buzzcast and you're gonna be at Podfest, we really like for you to be there and make sure you tell us uh when you recognize our voices that you listen to Buzzcast because it means so much to us when we see you there.

Kevin: 47:21

Yeah. Let me ask you if you're not coming to Podfest, can they still come to the BuzzBropped meetup Friday night?

Alban: 47:27

Yeah, I mean it's just in a hotel. So it's just in the lobby of the hotel.

Kevin: 47:31

So you could just walk in.

Alban: 47:32

Yeah. So you could just walk in and you could hang out, but you could also just go to Podfest. I think we probably can still get people a ticket. So, you know, smash the text button for that as well.

Kevin: 47:42

Right. But if you can't take off work Thursday and Friday and you're in the Orlando area, just want to come out and hang out with the Bud Sprout team and other Bud Sprout podcasters and the Buzzcast crew, we'll be available Friday night in the lobby of whatever.

Jordan: 47:56

Renaissance SeaWorld.

Kevin: 47:58

Renaissance SeaWorld.

Jordan: 47:59

Yeah.