Episodes

Did you know that Netflix is also a gaming platform now? That Apple make TV shows? That Disney own a number of YouTube channels without the Disney branding? It’s because they know what Steve Woodruff knows. 

If you’re a podcaster, you might think the competition is other podcasters. If you make movies, you might think the competition is another movie. You’d be wrong. 

See, what Netflix, Apple, Disney, and Steve know, is that the competition is everything. People are assaulted every day by stimuli, and if you want to cut through all of the noise, you need to stand out by being an effective communication designer. And there’s no better person to tell us how to do that than the King of Clarity himself. 

Plus, in the PRO show, we talk about using AI to write books, and Steve’s process for writing his latest book, The Point.

Imagine running a high 7-figure business with over 300,000 followers on social media, then launching a podcast. How many downloads would you expect? 100,000? 150,000? What about…10?

We’ve all been there: we spend a TON of time pouring blood, sweat, and tears into a project just to have it launch to crickets. That’s exactly what happened to Yong-Soo Chung with his podcast. Despite the social following, no one cared about his show.

But instead of wallowing in self-pity or shutting the show down, Yong-Soo took action. He reactivated his 12-year dormant Twitter account, and started basically from scratch, growing to 20,000 followers in less than a year.

Now he has a great process for getting people from Twitter to his newsletter, to his podcast.

We’ll cover his entire journey and more. Plus, in the PRO show, we exchange notes on our production processes!

Cohort-based courses are on the decline, if the tastemakers are to be believed. And it makes sense. Now that people aren’t stuck at home, they probably don’t want to spend time interacting online when they can interact IRL. But that doesn’t mean that CBCs have no utility.

In-fact, I think that there’s a great way we can make CBCs even better, by employing a tactic that has been explored in the K12 and higher education settings: the flipped classroom.

I love Hibachi. I love the food. I love the experience. That seems a lot like building in public, right? After all, the chef is literally cooking in front of us, building our meal. But according to Kevon Cheung – a guy who’s built his entire community by building in public – Hibachi is entertainment. 

In order to build in public, you need to take your audience on a journey with you. That’s why he believes building in public is more like Omakase. This is where the chef will choose the foods for you, involve you in the process, and tell you a story about the food you’re eating. 

That’s what Building in Public truly is, and today, we’re going to learn how to leverage it to build great communities and better products.

You need to tell a good story, no matter what kind of content you create. This is obvious in fiction, but it’s just as important in non-fiction. Don’t believe me? Take it from Emmy Award-winning producer, Cody Sheehy. He creates documentaries, and today he tells us why storytelling has been crucial to his work, and is crucial to yours too. In the PRO show, I couldn’t resist: I asked what it was like to win an Emmy. 

If you think about social networks as people, LinkedIn is TikTok’s dorky older, more professional sister…that the younger, more hip sister needs to borrow money from. That’s how Kathleen Celmins sees it, and she’s very effective at selling on LinkedIn. In fact, she says that if you’re just trying to grow your follower count on LinkedIn, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, it’s all about the connections. How do you convert those connections into clients? That’s what we get into during this call. Plus, in the PRO show we talk about the danger of creating tools that rely on social media. 

I used to think that promoting my podcast was a matter of tweeting it (Xeeting it?) and hoping for the best. And while I’ve learned a TON over the years about what to do, and what not to do, Deirdre Tshien still blew my mind as we talked about her traffic pyramid. As the co-founder and CEO of Capsho (an AI tool to help create promotional assets), she knows a thing or two about how to market and grow your podcast. We’ll get into that, plus podcast discoverability tips that change my approach to this very show, and my audits. Plus, in the PRO show, we talk about what it’s like building niche commercial AI tools. 

It’s the summer and I just came off a ton of travel, so this episode is a mishmash of things and a little rambly. Strap in! We’ll talk about a contract position I have, plus some new partnerships I’m excited about. Then we’ll move to my summer of travel and how I’m managing the workload before moving onto the main event: 5 tools I’m trying out this summer. 

In the pro show, I talk about what I’m using Notion for, more about my new position, Luma, and seeing a therapist.

“I don’t need to write it down because I’ll remember” is hopelessly naive. Sorry if that stung, but it’s true. You need to write things down, as Andy Ayim MBE learned when he started his digital journal.  He’s a father, husband, creator, thinker, investor, and founder of The Angel Investing School. He has invested in over 17 gap-closing startups. And he would be completely lost without what he calls his “Tracker” – a digital journal he keeps in Notion. In fact, he believes his Tracker is so crucial, that he considers it DIY coaching and counseling too. So let’s dive into why YOU need to keep a digital journal, and how to make it happen. Plus, in the PRO show, we talk about investing, single-vs-multi-focus, and how Andy invented Spotify, and I invented Facebook…