Kris Emerson // Excel Still More

On today's episode of Podcasting in Real Life, I get to sit down with Kris Emerson, host of "Excel Still More."

Kris shares how he landed on the New & Noteworthy AND Apple Podcasts Top 200 lists within weeks of launching his podcast and how he launched a physical product to develop a deeper connection with his listeners.

If you want to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and get the most out of your life, make sure to check out “Excel Still More” at excelstillmore.life and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Transcript

Kris: 0:00

It was very key that this did not become a job for me to produce and sell a product. The job is to produce the podcast content. That's what makes the whole thing go. I'm not in this to make money. I'm in it to provide something and then also recoup enough that I can keep the program going, but if you're in this thinking, I'm going to come out with a product in six months from now, I'm going to Hawaii. Just stop

Travis: 0:37

Welcome to podcasting in real life, the bus sprout show where we dive into the real life stories of podcasts, yours in the middle of their podcasting journey. I'm your host Travis Hall Britain, head of content at Buzzsprout and you won't hear anyone famous on these podcasts episodes. Instead, you'll hear everyday podcasters just like you, share personal stories about how podcasting has impacted them and the things that they've learned and picked up along the way. Then today's conversation, I had the privilege of sitting down with the host of excel, still more Chris Emerson. Now Chris and I have been interacting, working alongside each other for the last several months. I first got in touch with him as he was launching his podcast and saw that he was doing a lot of things really well, especially for someone who was just getting started. And so in this interview we kind of talk about the first six months or so of his podcast, specifically how he landed his Christian podcast in the apple podcasts, new and noteworthy, and even landed in the top 200 for all religion and spirituality podcasts in the u s for a considerable amount of time, which was an incredible accomplishment, especially when you're first getting started. And then we also dove into his recent launch of his first physical products coming out with a daily planner and just the whole behind the scenes how he came up with that as an idea and how that went, how that launch went and the reception that he got from his audience. And so if you've been thinking about creating something like that, whether it's merchandise, you're coming out with a physical product, something that you can offer to give back and to help your audience, then I think this is a great interview to listen to. Now Chris's podcasting journey started when he turned 40 and one of the way to share what he had been learning in his daily life with others. How would

Kris: 2:24

say it began with all the preaching? I've been preaching full time since 2001 so I've worked with a lot of Christians and preached, I don't know how many hundreds, maybe in the thousands of sermons, you know, a lot of preaching and love to do it, love to study. And as I was going through the last, I'm gonna say maybe three years, I just started reading a lot of things to try to make myself a better person. You know, you can know exactly what the Bible says, but if you don't have some great strategy on how you're going to implement that, then Bible commands don't get done. So I started working on that a lot. You reading guys like how l rods, books. I love that guy reading James clear articles. Love that guy. You know, lots of them. I've got a whole list and I would put that into sermons. Sometimes I get excited about it and I'd say, all right guys, we're studying Philippians here. But let me tell you a little bit about like habit building and how it works. And I think it was pretty well received. But if you worship somewhere, here's what you've got. You've got a room full of people. Let's say you've got 300 people in the room and they're all there to worship God, but maybe they're not all there to get better. You know, you may only have a smaller percentage who are saying, I want to transform myself. I want to change. And I thought, man, what if I could put something together to draw those people where they would get these little 15 to 20 minute, you know, soundbite, these little power packaged ideas. And so I started thinking about a podcast. I had a friend say, man, you should do it. A lot of folks are doing it and it's, it's really easy. It's not very costly and hard. And I thought, well, Huh. You know, I think I've got a pretty good wealth of material. I've been studying a while on this. So in the last year I turned 40 that was my big deal, man. I turned 40 last December and I said, I'm 40 I'm going to make some changes and let some stuff go and try some stuff. So I started researching it. I think I found you around that time, got some information about Buzzsprout set up through the system. It was really easy and kicked out those first three episodes. I think January 24th of this year, 2019 I don't have much man. I've got the garage band going on the Mac book. I typically am in a little sound room with some, some draped, you know, cotton to help mitigate a bought this microphone here I think per your request or your suggestion I should say on Amazon and just jumped in and dropped some stuff on excel. Still more. First Thessalonians are just get better, but he was small and I don't know, it's just been a really fun journey since then. I've learned a lot a lot about this. I mean there's a whole podcast Travis' world out there and you know, cool people like you and learned a ton about it. Had to go through a lot of trial and error on how to build the episodes, how to edit the episodes, like do you stop every 30 seconds or do you record the whole thing and go back through it. A lot of that. But just getting the feedback along the way, people have been really patient with the sound quality and figuring out how I wanted to do it and the audiences, you know, grown over the last five or six months and you know, that's Kinda how it all got going. What were some of those early growing pains as you are learning new skills, when you jump into podcasting it's like trying to suck down a fire hose, right? It's overwhelming at times. So I'm curious like what were some of those early obstacles that you had overcome skills you had to acquire, things he had to hammer out. You mentioned a couple of those things like sound quality and editing your episodes and you know, trying to go for done versus perfect. Like, so just kind of take me some of those early lessons. Well, I would say this, anybody who preaches or teaches or speaks publicly in any way, you really should do this. It was incredibly valuable to the preaching to do this. When I'm preaching, I'm more repetitive because I'm trying to make sure I've got this person engaged and I want to say it a little differently. To get this other side of the room engaged and there's some speed that you use where you're accelerating your speech to energize the room. In podcasting, it's really about getting your face in front of that mic, being deliberate and concise and strong and just laying it out there and that was something that took a while to learn. Putting myself on the clock was the best thing ever. I don't know how long the guy preaches where you go to church, but where I preach there's really no clock set, but setting this thing to 18 minutes, I will not record more than 18 minutes on the topic has been ridiculously hard and awesome. Like I'll go back through and edit out. I'll think, no, this is the perfect 22 minute product. Like this is the best episode that's been recorded in the history of mankind and I go back and man, there were four minutes that just did not need to be there. And going back and editing in the sense of which content really matters versus just what you wanted to say. Sometimes the same thing in a different way has been so cool. So that's been really the neat part. I, I'm a guy when I'm preaching I'll walk all over the place, you know, I'm always that guy moving and I stopped doing that. I stand, I mean I move a little bit but I just noticed that a stand right there in front of that microphone in front of that room full of people and say, here we go. I learned that through podcasting. So that part's been really awesome. The learning curve on the podcast part is, yeah. Do you go back and edit out like all the lips smacking and the ums and some little weird background noise for the first 10 episodes? Yeah, I was that guy. You know, it took forever and I stopped doing that and that's felt really good. Part of it is make sure you've got the right room and sound set up and then you won't have a lot of those incidentals. So there's been some, some things that have really benefited the preaching and then you know, other things that it's just taken 10 or 20 episodes to figure out what matters. Yeah, nothing has quite stretched my podcasting discipline as doing the five minute Monday episodes for Buzzsprout where it's like in the title, right. So I can't, I can't even cheat it a little bit. Like what if it's like five minutes and 10 seconds? Nope, it's gotta be right on five minutes or less. Now when you launched your podcast, it was, it was like you just have this bottle rocket go off and you know, you had a lot of people listening to your podcast very early on, which is not normal. And so when we were talking kind of after you had launched it, you gave me some, some behind the scenes details that I think we're really illuminating and so I would love for you to dive into how you went about launching your podcast, how you reached out to people that were in your network to help you both to listen to it, but also to promote it to other people, to kind of give people an idea of what it actually takes to properly market your podcast and to have it be successful in the way that you hope that it is. Man, that's been neat. It was starting from ground zero. I didn't understand anything about this, so I was just devouring copious amounts of articles and reaching out to guys like you. And so I came up with a pretty standard approach in terms of the launch, which was to record three episodes, advertise that launch. We'll talk about how we did that in a minute and then dropped those three episodes and let them know right. Then here's how often episodes will be released. And I've just tried to stick with it like right on the minute, stick with it. You know, Monday 5:00 AM Thursday 5:00 AM but I knew that if nobody knew about it, it didn't matter how many episodes that were dropped. I've been on Facebook a long time. The the place where I preach and Lindale, we have a Facebook page with the, you know, some people who listen to the sermons and got quite a few friends. I've just been one of those Facebook nerds since like, I don't know, 2008 or something. So I created a page, the excel still more page and invited everybody to it. All of my friends invited to it. And of course your friends will kind of wear out after a while, like a few months in and they'll be like, all right dude, I'm on to something else. But in the beginning, your friends are your friends. So they all friended it. And then I would ask them, you know, do a little video and say, hey, would you mind maybe clicking here and inviting all your friends to it? And they did. It was so cool. Like a handful of them did. So by the time January 24th came like launch day, there was a Facebook page and I don't know how many, maybe 500 or a thousand people already. We're going to see that. And they shared it and it was just using your friend's energy in the first three months made all the difference in the world. I don't know how many of those friends still listen. I think quite a few do, but it was because of their work. And the other thing is the iTunes new and noteworthy. I'd read about, you know, if you really get people to rate and review, you know, I don't, I'll be honest Travis, you can jump in on this in a minute. I don't know that rate and reviewing makes any difference now personally. But at the beginning I was like, please go rate and review. So, you know, a couple hundred of them went and rated and reviewed and then boom, there we were. It was the coolest thing. Middle of February, I'm right there on iTunes, new and noteworthy, you know, religious section and it was there for eight weeks and I'm just telling you man, we got, you know, 50 people a day above what it was doing before we're checking it out. So it was a lot of early energy. I think this is one of those things unfortunately where if you don't do it right, you can correct me on this.

Travis: 11:54

If you don't do it right the first couple of months, it just may not work out. There's a lot of energy you have and your friends have that you really need to get going early that you may not have four months later. So that was kind of how we got going. Yeah. And thank you. Just for like diving into the specifics about setting up the page, not being shy about the fact that you're really excited about doing a podcast. I think that's one thing that a lot of podcasters can feel weird about is like promoting themselves and what they're doing. Right. And so you were, you were very upfront about like, this is a podcast I'm passionate about. You get your friends involved, we're able to kind of hack Facebook a little bit to get more people to jump onboard and then had a plan to, to launch it. And you did exceedingly well, like considerably better than most other podcast launches that I've seen. And it is easier to kind of harness that energy at the beginning. There are ways that you can do that even after you've been podcasting for awhile. One of those would be to go on a break and then to basically relaunch your podcast like a couple months later. So you're essentially, you know, simulating a new podcast launch even with an existing audience. But I think that all of those things that you did really set you up to be able to get into the new and noteworthy. That was another thing I wanted to ask you about because it's one of these things that you know, everyone kind of hopes happens, but not many people actually know somebody who is, who's been a new and noteworthy and so I'm curious like from your perspective, seeing your dashboard and you know like seeing all your stats, how it was affecting your stats, those kinds of things. What impact do you think being in the new and noteworthy hat on the longterm audience sustainability and and kind of keeping people around? Well, I did not know what to expect. I'd read all about it and was really fortunate that it all worked out and we got there. It was good. I would say it's good, but it's not like you have to do that to be successful. If I look at the audience who's listening now and I had to give you a percentage, how many of the audience listening now are either friends or friends of friends or people in the same belief system as me versus people that I picked up who were perusing the iTunes page looking for new stuff? I would say that's a pretty small piece of the Pie. I'm sure they're there. I think it's really cool that they're there. I ever once in a while I hear someone who, I don't know, I don't know them. I don't know anybody who knows them, but they found it through that. But I would say, you know, again, how many listeners, somebody getting will be different for everyone. But I felt like, well, let me put it this way, I'm what, six months in? And I'm constantly kind of tracking the first episode, like who is still listening to episode one? And it was probably three times as high during those eight weeks, three to four times as high, which was awesome. And then also depressing, right? So you know,

Kris: 14:52

one day you look in and you go back and track episode one. It's like, what happened? You know, did it iTunes forget me? Well they, they did, they moved on. And so it was, it was cool. But I really feel like if you don't get that, don't worry about that. It really is your circle and circles attached to your circle. That's where the audience grows. I'll give you a quick example, Travis. I got an email yesterday from a friend of a friend. I mean we know each other now, but we hadn't been close before. He's in another state. He likes the podcast. He's a Christian. He likes to listen. His father is not a Christian, doesn't listen to sermons. His father listens to the podcast. He said, I just want you to know my dad, whom I've almost never been able to talk to about the Bible, has first of all lost 25 pounds because he's put into place on this stuff you've talked about. He's a regular listener and we were just talking about baptism the other day for the first time in 10 years, man, that's what I'm talking about, Travis. That's a guy that would have never gone, listened to a sermon, a guy I may never meet, but he's a, he's a circle connected to a circle that was connected to a circle and I would just tell people to keep working on that. And you know, don't worry about some advertisement on apple to people that you know are outside of all that. Yeah. Those are some of my favorite stories when I hear about how listeners, right in saying, you don't know me, you'd never heard of me, we've never met, but you've had a profound impact on my life in some way, shape or form. I think that's just so cool to me. And it's always like one of those pinch yourself moments or you think, man, this is so cool that having a podcast is allowed me to, to connect with somebody in this very cool way. That's one of my favorite parts about podcasting personally. So since you've graduated from the new and noteworthy section, because you're neither, you're not new anymore, what has been kind of the continued marketing strategy for promoting new episodes? Cause I know you have the Facebook page, you know I've seen you doing some, some guest podcasts like going on other people's podcasts. What are some things that you do to continue to market and promote your podcast? So I think I can reveal a couple of things that I learned that you probably wouldn't know until you experienced it. First of all, doing things like videos, like I did videos and I was on the beach somewhere saying, hey, I'm about to go for this run. And in the early stages putting out videos and lots of content, drawing people to the podcast on Facebook was good at this point, it's really not a great usage of time. I've tracked, you know how many people listen to an episode. If I really do that, I really, I make a little video or a little teaser, it helps. But there are diminished returns on pushing social media after everyone's done being excited at that point. And this is what you told me early on, Travis, and lots of people have said, you just have to put out good content and be consistent at some point. All that early, you know, awareness and flag-waving is done and now it just becomes the methodical, keep it going, keep it moving to grow. So I've put less emphasis on social media, still do some and still put out the episodes on Facebook and Instagram each week. I know that helps, but I've tried a couple of weeks where I didn't do that and I still had the same almost audience, you know at this point. But I did invest in a product. Somebody told me once, they said, look, people who love your show love your show. Like they want to talk about it. And if they had a product in their hand that connected to it, they would feel more connected to you. Because as you know, Travis, there's something really awesome that happens in podcasting. They feel like they're sitting across the table sipping coffee with you and I'm sure you do this, but I try to use pronouns. I don't use collective pronouns and podcasting. It's me and you. They love that connection. So products feel like I reached across the table and handed it to them even though they may have paid me for that. So we created a journal, the Excel still more three month journal. I got some friends to really help out. I don't like make money and go spend it on fun stuff. I just use what comes in to reinvest into the program and advertising and other products and stuff. But that's been neat. You know, we had uh, somebody said, well, you know, if you do a product, only 1% of all your listeners are actually gonna pull out their credit card and purchase that product. Well that person was pessimistic and you know, needs to reevaluate his life goals because we did a lot better than that. We didn't do, you know, not everyone, but it just created another kind of buzz, you know. So now you've got people talking about the episodes, I hope, but also some of them are holding this book in their hand. And that's been a real neat tool for me. I've seen results from that, the journal. And I've even gone and done a couple of seminars where we gave everybody journals and work through them. And then you know, a couple weeks later you'll track your stats a little bit, which also took your advice and don't do very often. But you'll find that like that city, that city becomes a top 10 city now, you know, the product was helpful for that. That's really neat. And I want to ask you a little bit more about how you came up with the idea for the journal, how you put it together. Because that is kind of one of the more popular monetization strategies is selling your own stuff. And so, so I'd be curious for someone that's listening that to like, Oh I wonder what it's actually like working with somebody to come up with the concept for the journal. What's going to set it apart, designing it, working with a printer, figuring out a price, shipping fulfillment. So I would just love to hear kind of the behind the scenes of how you brought that journal to market to the point where you could actually ship it to people, will choosing what to do was important. Again, as a preacher, I have to be, you know, I'm not going to sell intellectual content like spoken word. I'm a preacher, I preach, I don't, I don't ask you to subscribe to hear me speak at, it feels strange to me, but a physical product felt like something they could use. I mean it, it has tangible value for them, but I wanted it to be something that connected with the program. Well, here's how this ought to work. I don't know, Travis, how would work for you? I mean there's so many things you know and you can help people with. But I started journaling based on the concepts of the podcast. I was taking the very lessons I was sharing with people and I was doing that and I thought, man, if I'm doing this, maybe other people would like to do it as well. So I reached out to a friend who's really good with software and he had designed my logo. Remember I had a really atrocious logo early on and he fixed that. I think that may have been an iTunes key as well that the, the logo didn't make you want to, you know, jump in the lake. But after that he made it and he was really cool. It took him awhile and he put it together and we edited it and then we actually had a friend who has a printing company and they printed it and shipped it for me. It was very key, Travis man. It was very key that this did not become a job for me to produce and sell a product. The job is to produce the podcast content. That's what makes the whole thing go. So he did a lot of the work and so did my friend at the printing company. You pay the guy to print it and ship it. You give some funds to your friend for building it to my brother for the webpage. I'm not in this to make money. I'm in it to provide something. And then also recoup enough that I can keep the program going. And then if one day you told me about the hockey stick, if one day, you know I'm on Jimmy Fallon or something, you know, and you sell a billion books, okay, well let's go on vacation. But if you're in this thinking I'm going to come out with a product and six months from now I'm going to Hawaii, just stop you know, you, you've got to do something that you believe in and that you think will help people. And then maybe the hockey stick happens. I don't know. Well, and it's so funny to see that people that start podcasts to make money rarely do. And then people that start podcasts because they have a message that they want to share end up finding a way to make money down the road. It's just kind of funny how that works out. So that's really cool. That's really cool. Hearing about your journal, it's a very creative idea. I don't think that's something that people normally associate with podcasts and then and also cool just to hear how it's helping people be more connected to you to the show and feel like more engaged and like they now have an outlet to actually apply the things that they're learning from your content. Let me add this to Travis. By the way, journaling may not have been the best choice because most people don't want to do that, so you had your real die hard. People come in and get that and men like men just think it's a pink diary that's going to show up in the mail. So I chose it because I am passionate about doing it. I would love to talk to other people who've been about okay,

Travis: 23:46

what it maybe, this is my big question for you for the bonus content, Travis, what if I produce something for advertisement that everybody would like, like a coffee cup or a sticker for their car or something? I may do that next just because there are people who love the show in La and want people to know about it, but they don't want to journal. So I chose something, I don't know if this is something you'll agree with or not. I chose a product that I was passionate about using, not a product that I thought the most people would purchase. And that's just part of this journey. This is about helping people. It's not about sales. Yeah. I think that's the decision every person has to make for themselves. Right. And it comes back to what your goals are, what your values are, how you want people to have a relationship with you and your podcast, you know? And so, so I think that going with the journal, especially as your first thing was a great idea. Like I've done stickers before. I don't sell the stickers. I give them out as like free swag, which ends up ending up on the back of cars of friends that drive around. So it's always fun like pulling up to my friend's house and seeing two or three cars with my podcast sticker on the back. But yeah, no, I think the journal was a really cool idea and it was cool kind of as someone who journals and understands the value of it. Seeing that you're able to kind of share that, that knowledge with others. One thing I wanted to ask you about, because, and you've alluded to this several times already, that you're not, you're not trying to become a professional podcaster. That's not why you started it. What are your longterm goals for the podcast? Like what do you hope it becomes? What are you building it into? Like imagine yourself five years down the road. If this podcast is still here, what does it look like? I think I'm just going to keep doing it until no one is getting helped. You know? If you go a month and it doesn't seem like it's helped anyone, people are saying, you know, I'm just not using it anymore. I think that that would kind of be the, maybe that'll never happen, Travis. Maybe there'll always be somebody who gets something out of it. I'm just saying that when there's no change, then maybe keeping it going won't have a purpose. Maybe that's it. So I guess I'm just working from the effects. I don't know[inaudible] and how it's helping people maybe. Yeah. I know for me, the, the thing that I always come back to is I have to enjoy doing it. Like it has to be selfishly beneficial for me and that it's making a positive impact in people's lives. Right? I don't want to do anything that's, I don't want to call it a waste of time, but not the best use of my time. Maybe there's a better way to think about it. So, so I think we're, I think we're similar in a lot of ways and kind of our motivations for sure. I would like to ask you this. What I'm trying to do is put a couple of checks and balances in the future, some options in the future to keep from that first thing happening. What I don't want to happen is, hey, we're still helping people but I don't want to do this anymore. So I've thought about go to one episode a week instead of two at least for a period of time. Or you mentioned earlier about taking a hight, it's like a season and then relaunching because look guys, get ready for this. If you're new at podcasting and I'm new, I started in January, you will not get as much listenership and feedback in the summer. Like in the summer. Everybody I talked to, they were like, look, I'm just gonna be honest with you. I'm eight episodes behind. It's summer. There are periods of time during the year where people are out of their routine. Podcasting, if nothing else is something people do as a routine. So maybe you know it put in the option of taking the summer off or something and launching in the fall, like a school season where you think about that. Yeah, I think that's wise. That's something that I do for Buzzsprout. For instance, we have had to start a podcast. We did a season of episodes and then, and then we stopped him. You know, we got season two in the works and that'll come out later this year, you know? But that was designed to have space in between. And I've had other podcasts where even though they were weekly shows or where I put out multiple episodes a week, after several months, I'd say, all right, I'm taking a two month break. And the fear is always, I'm going to sabotage my audience, right? That if I stop, they're going to unsubscribe and not listen anymore. But all you really have to do is say, hey guys, it's been a lot of fun. I'm going on a two month break, but I'll be back on this day. So make sure you stay subscribed and this is why it's going to be even better when I come back. And then you don't have to worry about that. And after you do it once and you kind of break that anxiety and you realize, oh, there's actually more people listening to it after the break than before the break, because people continue to discover old episodes, right? It's like, oh, it's not that big a deal. I can take a break and it's okay. It's okay. Yeah. That's cool man. Give people time to catch up. Right. That sounds like a neat idea. Yeah, and even even changing your, your publishing frequency, that's another thing you can do. I've run the gamut of doing a daily show where literally every single day, seven days a week publishing episode, I've done weekly shows, I've done biweekly shows, three times a week, the whole spectrum and in one podcast went from every day to week, days to three times a week, and then it's on a break and when it comes back, it'll be twice a week. So you know, you can make it whatever you want and as long as people like your episodes, they'll keep listening to it. I'll tell you one other thing that's kept me motivated. I don't know if this will work for everybody, Travis, but the episodes and the podcast are not a standalone thing, isolated from other things in my life. For instance, sermons, which is what I do just work. My family is minister work sermons, become podcasts and podcasts become sermons. Well that's pretty cool. Now they're, they're serving something else. Books that I read become podcasts

Kris: 29:43

and things that I share in podcast find their way into articles that I write or things that I post for social media content, keeping. All those things crossed over. And I guess what we're saying is if you want to become a podcaster, choose something that is in some way integral to your life. It is in some way woven into the tapestry of who you are. You know, I, I like podcast by dads about being dads man. How cool is that? Like you go be a dad and then you talk about being a dad or you talk about being a dad and then you go and be one, you know the overlap. I just don't think I could do it if I had to shut off everything else that was going on in my life and do this other thing in this box by itself. And I think that's what's helped to keep it going. I was talking the other day to someone about taking some time off or going down to one episode and I thought, I don't know man, like doing these, keeps my fire lit for sermon illustrations or stuff like that. So I don't know if everybody can do that. But that's just been something that's kept that fire burning. Yeah. And the more that you can make your podcast an extension of who you are, like your authentic self, the easier it is to stick with it and continue to make new episodes. Right. Because it's, you're not trying to pretend to be something or you know, put on your, your stage act, right. You just turn on a microphone and talking. And when you're just doing that, you know, all of a sudden it's not super overwhelming anymore. So how has your podcast changed from episode one two? You just recently crossed episode 50 so what was the difference between episode 50 and episode one with the content, the structure, how you edited it? Cause I'm always curious like how people refine their processes over time. Yeah. Well it's Kinda neat. You know, you ever watch Seinfeld? Yeah. Okay. So you know, I'm guessing that when they came out with season one of Seinfeld, they knew pretty much some of the stuff they wanted to talk about. You know, this is what we're about. This is the kind of characters that we have and you know, this is the story we want to tell. And then I did that with my podcast in the first 15 episodes. I knew the excel still more concepts that just get better stuff. The Bible verses the whole thing. But you know, when you get Seinfeld in like how many seasons where they're like ten eight at a point about midway, they just find humor in everything. Like the way a door closes is a whole episode. Now, you know, there's no way in season one they thought, let's do a season on the creaking sound of a door closing or whatever. But I think with this, you keep your impetus, your theme, your, your drive. You know, in my case it's, it's, let's get better. But I see stuff everywhere. I'm just like driving down the road and I see a FedEx truck and I noticed that little Arrow, if you haven't noticed that before in the FedEx sign. And I'm like, what? I never would've seen that. How many things do we look at in life? And we don't see the obvious until somebody points it out to us and then you can't unsee it. I thought episode Bam,

Travis: 32:40

I keep notepads and the notes app with me everywhere and I just see things, I dunno how to explain that, you know? And a lot of the episodes at this point are just life happening and how in many cases, how I think God is saying, Hey Chris, she said you want to grow, check this out. And it's changed in that way. I think it's become more, I don't know if the words like organic or something, it's just the things that are happening around me I guess. Well you become much more observant, that's for sure. Especially when it comes to the content of your podcast. Right? So like when I'm having conversations with people about podcasting, I always have this like sub routine running in the back of my brain thinking is this going to make a good podcast episode or good blog article? And then sometimes that thing fires often said you found something you should go deeper on this or you should figure out how would you teach this to somebody else. And so it's true, like once you, once you start exercising that muscle and figuring out what am I going to talk about and how am I gonna come up with new episode topics, it's just something that goes into the background, right? So even if you're first starting and you have 10 episode ideas, that's all you really need. Cause you're going to discover new ones as you continue to put out episodes. So I think, I think that's totally a podcast symptom symptom of being a podcasters. You start observing things and think that would make a good podcast episode. That's right. That's right. Which I've always done with sermons, but it's just, it's different in this. I kind of have a question for you about that. At some point, going back through a lot of the same concepts is important. Some of the feedback that I get is, okay, Chris like this stuff twice a week, but it's something new twice a week and it's almost like it's too much. I can't process it all, you know, and, and so I've thought about, well do I introduce something new and unique and perhaps interesting every time? Or should I go back and pick up a concept from episode 10 and give it a couple of episodes? What I'm struggling with right now, I don't know if you're going to ask about things we're struggling with is do I keep letting those new lights that come on and revelation turn into check out all this cool stuff or at some point is it TMI for people and there needs to be more consistency on a tighter collection of topics. I'm kind of working on that right now. Not Real sure about that. What do you think? I'm not sure if there's a rule or like a vow shout do this or that's about it. I can share things that I've experimented with that have worked out that I've gotten positive feedback on. One of those would be doing like a mini series, like a series of episodes, right? So like five episodes that all revolve around a similar topic. Maybe it's attacking it from different angles and that's helpful for me not only breaking up the content so I can go deeper, but then also from the perspective of trying to come up with new things to talk about, like there was one where I did a 10 episode series on a book and so like each episode was like a cliff notes of the chapter in like applying it, you know, that ended up being almost, you know, a month and a half of episodes. So there's things you can do that are both self-serving and that they make your job easier with coming up with original ideas. But then most of the feedback I get with those series is that people are able to follow along a little bit better like you were mentioning because not only are they coming to your podcast with a particular mindset of this is what I'm expecting to listen to, but when you pair that with doing several episodes in a row around a similar topic or theme, then I think that does have the potential to help people absorb the information better and apply it. Especially if you're a podcast where you're teaching someone how to do something. If you're just like reviewing a TV show or talking about politics or whatever, you know, I'm not sure that the supplies, so it's definitely case by case, but it's something that I have experimented with and have gotten positive feedback about, so you might try doing something like that. I may look into that. I get concerned about if I say the next six episodes are going to be on this and people who love it, you're going to eat that up. People who are like, Eh, that's not my favorite topic, or going to take three weeks off in preaching. I think you kind of hide it. Like let's say you want to talk about unity among brothers and you don't do six sermons called unity men, brother and part one unity, part two. You preach six sermons spread out over about three months, like hidden and you title it. Interesting things like unity or togetherness or love or overcoming obstacles or building something amazing and I think that's been my strategy. I would say an excel still more. It's really only a small collection of topics excelling in your faith and your finances and your friendships and with your fitness. We just spread them out and word them differently and yet I think they all kind of come back to the same small collection of four to 10 topics, but I've just been thinking about whether to kind of reveal that or just let people randomly encounter variations of it weekend and week out. Yeah, that actually brought something to mind, which is something that I learned since kind of diving deeper into the world of podcasting that I don't think is common knowledge or that you don't normally necessarily assume, which is that a majority of people that have subscribed to your podcast don't listen to every episode. So when you see episodes that do well versus some that are kind of more average, that's because that episode resonated with people that are just kind of scrolling through the show they're subscribed to and they say, oh, that looks interesting. I'll click on that. I would encourage you to not make episodes for those people and here's why. Because the strongest connection you have is with people that listen to your podcast every single episode, right? They've committed to it. You're a part of their routine, a part of their schedule, and they look forward to hearing from you. Those are the people that are going to be your greatest ambassadors, your greatest spokespeople and marketers, and you know, if your focus is trying to help more people, they're going to be the ones empower and equip. It's the same thing as you know, trying to get somebody to always go and check the Wall Street Journal for new articles versus somebody who happens to click on a buzzfeed article and Facebook cause it had a catchy title. That's the difference. And so I'd encourage you, if your goal is to develop a longterm relationship with your audience, you want to serve people that are coming in, they're listening to every episode instead of trying to go for the one off success that won't necessarily lead to longevity.

Kris: 39:17

Yeah, makes sense.

Travis: 39:18

So just to kind of like start wrapping up, I'm curious as you have interacted with other podcasters, jumped in different groups and connect to the people and got on other people's podcasts. What is something that you've learned from another podcast or that you ended up applying to your podcast?

Kris: 39:35

I've learned that I do not have Mike Rose voice nor ever will. People are naturally able to do things that I cannot do. They have abilities that I don't have and I've decided to appreciate that. I love Mike Rowe's podcast the way I heard it ridiculously good. And I take things from it I can use and grow in, but I don't get down about the things that I can't, I can't sound like him, but I like his brevity. I like the way he teases and misdirects a bit. And so I thought, Hey, I think I've got a couple of topics on my could do that with. So I like listening to things that I like. In other words, I don't listen to podcasts just because I think they'll teach me something. I listened to ones that I like and then I think, man, why do I like this? Like what is it about this that I really enjoy? And then that comes down to two categories. Things he does or she does, I cannot do fine or things that they do that, you know what I think maybe I could do that. And just kind of learning. And of course people like you and some others have just been really kind and helpful along the way. But I think by the time you've been doing it, three or four months, you kind of have your way, you know you don't go and asking for a lot of help after that. Mainly it's just, it's just learning from listening and if you like something or the way someone does something, others probably will too. And that's been really helpful.

Travis: 41:01

Yes. Well Chris has been a blast having you on. I've appreciated US building an intranet friendship, a long distance and getting connect to every once in a while. But I've got one last question for you before we wrap up. If you had a time machine that could go back in time to January 23rd the day before you launched your podcast and offer yourself one piece of advice, what would that be?

Kris: 41:23

You baited me with this question because the answer is something you've told me that I didn't listen to right off the bat. So you're so self-serving. This Travis. Well, I would say if I could give you two, the one big one is just don't live and die by those numbers, man. Just do what you love and give it some time. I'm reading a hell rod book right now where he says, look, you got to give something 18 months to really see if it's a creature that can live in this habitat man. Be in two or three weeks in and like trying to figure out the algorithm for listeners and where you guys at Buzzsprout or coming up with that stuff. Don't do that to yourself man. Just do something that you love and try not to worry about. So you've told me that all along. Listen everybody, I would message Travis and be like, I think there's something wrong with your system because I'm only reporting this many listeners today and Travis is like, dude, you just sure lax, it's going to be okay. The other thing probably, Ooh, I gotta take this one cause this is big. Don't get too excited and record episode one like in a closet with your kids microphone or something. Like I was so excited to start that. I ran into my little closet and I recorded the episode and it sounds pretty terrible and it's edited pretty poorly. But I just wanted to get going. Well a lot of people have listened to episode one, you know it's still there and episode one doesn't sound real great and you're hoping that people, I mean, look, I don't know what your math is Travis, but 50% of the people who have listened to episode one listened to episode two. There are twice as many listens historically in episode one. So okay, I lost half of them, but could it have been a little better if I would have spent a bit more time on the recording side? So anyway, those are a couple things I'd probably tell myself.

Travis: 43:14

If you want to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and get the most out of your life, then make sure to check out excel still more at excel, still more. Dot Life and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Do you wish that you could be featured as a guest on a future episode of podcasting in real life? Well you can. All you have to do is click on the link in the show notes and submit your application. And if today's episode inspired you or resonated with you, I would love to hear back from you. The easiest way to do that is to leave a review on apple podcast to let me know what your thoughts are or jump into the Buzzsprout podcast community on Facebook and make sure to stick around, as always, for a bonus episode this coming Friday where I answer Chris's number one question about podcasting. That's it for today. Thanks for listening, and as always, keep podcasting inaudible].