6 Storytelling Principles to Hook & Retain Listeners (That Apply to Every Show)
So, Justin, there's this podcast marketing experiment that I've always wanted to run, but have never had the chance.
Justin:Ads. TikTok
Jeremy:ads. No. No. Not TikTok ads. It's actually a feed drop.
Jeremy:And so Okay. This is something that I have worked with a few people, some clients to help them facilitate it, but I've never actually done it for a show of my own. And so, for anybody who's who's not familiar with what a feed drop is, do you wanna give them the the lowdown on that since this is a show about podcast marketing?
Justin:Yeah. It's like when 2 shows that have kind of similar audiences decide to say, hey. I'll take one of your episodes and drop it in my feed, and you take one of my episodes and you drop it in your feed. And the idea is you're exposing each other's audiences to each other's shows with the hope of, you know, getting some people from their audience to come to your show and vice versa.
Jeremy:Yeah. And so, this is something I've always wanted to try. And so when one of our listeners actually, Elaine Appleton Grant, the host of the show Sound Judgment, She actually pitched me on this, and I said, okay. I'll, I'll check with Justin and and see what his thoughts are. And, I know
Justin:that you were a little
Jeremy:bit, skeptical to start out of it.
Justin:Yeah. Like, every time I get one of these pitches, I get nervous because the problem is often the show that's being pitched to me is not that good. Yeah. And so I just remember thinking, okay. Well, okay.
Justin:And then you got me to listen to the episode, and almost immediately, it was like, oh, wow. This show is like a 100 times better than our show. It's, like, not even close. She's, like, so much better than us. It is very excellent.
Justin:This episode that she shared with us is like a framework for designing and implementing a compelling podcast. Like, she it's like a course. Like, I would have paid money to take this as an audio course, and she's just giving it away for free. Super clear, super actionable. It's, like, really well
Jeremy:done. Yeah. And so, essentially, Elaine's show Sound Judgment, it's a podcast where in every episode, Elaine brings listeners inside the minds and actually inside the shows of some of the world's best podcast hosts and audio producers and storytellers and they kinda pull apart an episode kinda clip by clip, taking clips from an episode and talking through their creative decisions that went into this. And so this is a show about, like, making great quality podcast which is obviously a great fit for us because we kind of constantly are are hammering home this fact that, like, k. Before you get to the marketing side of things, like, the best marketing is creating a great show in the first place.
Jeremy:And, Elaine has just delivered a masterclass on this with this episode. So, Yeah. I am ex super excited for people to be able to to listen in on this. And, any kind of final notes or prompts that you wanna leave people with as they, we head into the episode?
Justin:You're gonna wanna take notes. So, like, get yourself somewhere where you can take some notes. This is actually where you're gonna learn how to create something compelling. So we're always telling you, like, you need to create something really great. She is going to teach you how to create something great.
Jeremy:Yeah. And, we're gonna follow this up at the end of the episode with some of our notes. I took a ton of notes as I was going through this, and I'm something of a a storytelling and audio nerd. And so, we're gonna break down some of our key takeaways at the end of the episode, so stay tuned for that. But, in the meantime, let's turn it over to Elaine.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Hey there, storytellers. A little origin story from me today. I started Sound Judgment because I was frustrated. There was so much advice floating around the Internet about how to market your podcast, but there was almost nothing about how to make something unforgettable, useful, emotionally moving, or entertaining in the first place. There was very little about the storytelling craft in audio, about how to make something that's worthy of listeners' time.
Elaine Appleton Grant:I've been studying storytelling for forever, first as a writer, then an editor, then a radio producer and reporter, even a book editor, and, of course, as a podcast producer and the CEO of a production company. I've always been fascinated with what it takes to become a beloved storyteller on just about any platform, including audio. And here's the thing. All the marketing in the world might get you new listeners, new readers, new audiences. But to hook them and keep them coming back, to create a relationship with them, that's a whole other thing.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Today on the show, a 6 part storytelling framework for making work that audiences cannot forget. The 6 strategies you're about to learn are drawn from the patterns I've seen across more than a 150 behind the scenes lessons, lessons learned from some of the best storytellers I've had on sound judgment. And you can put them to use right away in your studio, at your writing desk, or on the stage as a public speaker. So stay with me. We're gonna talk about structure, scenes, surprise, suspense, a sound vision, and specifics, and how to make storytelling magic.
Elaine Appleton Grant:This is sound judgment where we investigate just what it takes to become a beloved storyteller by pulling apart 1 episode at a time together. I'm Elaine Appleton Grant. Storytellers, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that we have a very short time to hook listeners into anything new, maybe a minute or 2, maybe less. I've talked about leads before on the show, and I'll do it again. But here's strategy number 1, which is something you may have never given any conscious thought to, and that is how you can use sound to create the feeling that will attract your ideal listener.
Elaine Appleton Grant:It's called sound division, and it includes everything from music and sound design or the lack thereof, to how you actually sound on the mic. You know, friendly, combative, sophisticated, conspiratorial, silly, fast paced, thoughtful, whatever it is that makes you, you. In audio, a sound division is all the things we do to take advantage of the cool stuff we can do when we're bringing information and stories to your ears. Sometimes the possibilities are so great that they convince us to tell a story in sound when we first thought it belonged on the page. Like Gilbert King, co host of the award winning podcast Bone Valley, about the wrongful conviction of Leo Schofield.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Leo Schofield has been in prison for well over 30 years for a murder he didn't commit. Before making Bone Valley, Gilbert thought he'd be writing a long article, maybe a book. Then he and his co host, Kelsey Decker, visited Leo in prison, and everything changed.
Justin:And I think after we interviewed a few people, the power of their voices and the power of their storytelling made us pivot. I love the way their voices break and crackle and and emote, and it's just it's something that's just more powerful in an audio experience. And as an author, I acknowledge that in this particular story.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Your sound vision is about creating a world that your listener wants to enter. In audio, it's how intentional you are about creating a tone, a mood, a feeling. This is how John Barth of Creative Media LLC explained the idea of a sound vision to me on the second episode of Sound Judgment. John was the founding producer of the public radio show marketplace. In this clip, he's referring to one of their hosts, David Brancaccio.
Elaine Appleton Grant:As I said, the unique sound of a show has a lot to do with the particular sound of the host, or in literary terms, it's about finding your voice.
Justin:You know, when you're hiring a host, the host really does imprint, their own sound voice style on the show. So it actually begins to define the brand that you're creating. So there was an editorial vision, but there also was primarily a sound vision and I guess I guess I owned that and it needed to be distinctive. I always imagined how the audience was listening to the show and the kind of listener I wanted to attract to the show, and so that had to be a certain sound. And so David embodies, the willingness to pretty much do anything behind a mic to tell a story and enthrall an audience.
Justin:He has incredible humor. And when I worked with him, our goal was to laugh uproariously before we went into the studio to do the live show. But my job was to get him as a host not only loosened up, but comfortable with a real range of emotions. So by the time that mic went on, he could really bring his full self to whatever he had to do in those 30 minutes. I mean, it was so much fun.
Justin:It was great.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Once I wrapped my head around this term, sound vision, I started to become super aware of how it works when it's working really well. It helps, I think, to compare a couple of extremes. Listen to the difference between these next two clips. They come from podcasts that have one small thing in common. They're both about people trying to make big changes in their lives, but they have entirely different purposes and wildly different audiences.
Elaine Appleton Grant:And each employs a sound vision designed to attract their own very specific listeners. The first is an opening scene from the 13th step. That's an investigative series about sexual misconduct in the addiction treatment industry from New Hampshire Public Radio. It won the DuPont award widely considered the Pulitzer Broadcasting. I'll be delving into the 13th step creative process in a couple of upcoming episodes of Sound Judgment.
Elaine Appleton Grant:So if you haven't followed Sound Judgment yet, follow it now. The woman in the clip asking the question is reporter Lauren Children. So so you get there. What do you remember?
Sam Mullins:Green Mountain is a completely different vibe than I'm used to. Like, it didn't feel like treatment. But I remember I had my first, like, real god moment there because the view is incredible. Actually, it was really cool. One time, somebody was having a really tough time, and so, like, we all had the idea, like, hey, Mary Kate.
Sam Mullins:Can we go down to, the helicopter landing pad and watch the sunset? And she brought us down. We all screamed from the mountain, and it felt so good. It was like a movie. Like, we just sat there and screamed.
Sam Mullins:It was really cool. That was really cool. And I remember that moment. I was like, if there if if I didn't believe in God before watching the sunset in this view, I do now. It was like that.
Sam Mullins:Like, it hit me.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Hear how moody that is? How the music brings you right to that helicopter pad? It's almost dreamlike and fairly somber. Not quite threatening but not upbeat for sure. And the speaker's voice is untreated.
Elaine Appleton Grant:You can tell she's talking on the phone. It sounds honest without any artifice. Just what you want from a series produced by an investigative reporter who's going to tell you the truth. Now, let's listen to a clip from Daily Creative, a personal development podcast for people in creative professions. In this clip, host Todd Henry is realizing something about himself.
Todd Henry:And begin moving toward a listener supported model as we build this community.
Michael Osborne:You know, often the enemy of bravery isn't some oppositional force. It's just sheer inertia. It's comfort. It's that things are fine. And I realized, oh, I've got a vision of a way things could be better.
Michael Osborne:The thing that's keeping me where I am is is comfort. And then I realized and I have the capacity to do the thing that I I see in my head. But what's standing in my way really is the past. It's all of this stuff that I've been doing for 18 years and the way I've been doing it.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Now few people would ever actually make a choice between listening to these two podcasts. Well, no one but me and I love them both. But notice the way their creators, Lauren Shulgin and her team at NHPR and Todd Henry and his producer, Joshua Gutt, made very deliberate choices about how they sound. We already talked how moody and dramatic the 13th step sounds in contrast everything about daily creative is upbeat light. You know humor will play a role.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Todd Henry is affable, friendly, even while he's coming to an uncomfortable truth about himself. Yeah. He's gonna decide to throw out 18 years worth of work. The episode is titled The Curious Death of Todd Henry. But he'll do it willingly for the cause, and we will come along happily to improve ourselves as well.
Elaine Appleton Grant:I chose these two clips because they're both fairly highly produced, and they sound entirely different. I wanted to illustrate the concept of having a sound vision that appeals to your audience. You need to think about how you want them to feel while they listen. So why should you spend time on this, especially if you're hosting a fairly straightforward interview show? The truth is we all create some kind of sonic brand regardless of whether we plan carefully or fail to plan.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Without design, that sound is often subconsciously influenced by what we've been hearing for years. That's why this American Life sira glass is so widely mimicked or why so many of us still adopt the anchor voice. It's also why so many shows don't hook listeners. They're flat, bland, unemotional, frankly, boring. And they often lose listeners in the first 60 seconds.
Elaine Appleton Grant:A well thought out sound vision makes your audio memorable and differentiates it from the competition. But wait, what if you don't have a podcast? You're a writer, an author, or a public speaker. You can translate this idea to the page, the screen, or the stage. How will you use words, tone, mood, and even body language to attract your audience?
Elaine Appleton Grant:Same idea. Maybe your readers have little time. They want facts quickly, no fluff. Or maybe they like romance novels. They love detailed description and snappy dialogue.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Or you're giving a motivational speech to a roomful of corporate leaders, and you move energetically and speak dynamically from the heart. That's my idea of a sound vision translated to a different platform. The second s in my success framework is structure. Remember, all of these strategies are designed to help you not just hook your audience, but keep them with you. There's nothing like having a structure for your content to help you create more easily while also instilling habits in your audience.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Maybe your favorite host always asks the same lightning round questions, so you always stick around until the end because those answers are so much fun. That's structure. Structure also provides creative constraints. In other words, it gives us guardrails for what to include, when, and how, and equally important, what to leave out. In their show about dead celebrities, Famous and Gravy co hosts Amit Kapoor and Michael Osborne employ one of the most tightly built structures I've noticed in a podcast.
Elaine Appleton Grant:The result is a compelling blend of the profound and hilarious. In each episode, Amit and Michael ask each other the same twelve questions about each dead celebrity. They've drawn a blueprint that makes it easy for them to wrestle raw content into meaning that sticks. This blueprint, this creative constraint makes producing easier. They don't need to script the show because they always know where they're headed.
Elaine Appleton Grant:It's their answers that make it fun and illuminating. You never know what's coming. In fact, they barely talk to each other before they tape. They research the celebrity separately and draw their own conclusions. Their 11th question out of a dozen is always this, would you want this dead celebrity's life?
Elaine Appleton Grant:Regular listeners now are in the habit of listening to the end because they wanna hear how Michael and Amit will answer that interesting question and whether or not they'll agree. This question leads to some lively discussions.
Justin:Betty White.
Justin:What do you got? I mean, what's the what's the case against?
Amit Kapoor:Is is there such a thing as too much gratitude? And that's where I question it.
Justin:So that's the Based on everything we've talked about, Nick, the big question is, do you want Oliver Sacks' life?
Charles Duhigg:It's tough, but I I think I would take it. Because he had the influence he was always seeking. He got to do the thing that he was made for on this earth. The the reason why it's a qualified
Justin:Based on everything we've talked about, do you want this life?
Amit Kapoor:I like Leonard Cohen.
Justin:I don't think that the depths of pain he felt are familiar to me. But, man, that he found what looks like salvation, the hope that that represents not just to other people, but that that's that's something that comes from the inside out. So I'm a yes, man. I'm a yes. I want this life.
Amit Kapoor:It's so important to have that and have people be vocal about that so others By
Elaine Appleton Grant:the way, if you're wondering what the 12th and final question is, you'll just have to follow Famous and Gravy. The 3rd s is the backbone of audience engagement, and that is scenes. Scenes transport listeners to another place and time. A few years ago, I was writing a script for Wondery Show American Scandal, a history podcast. As a former magazine journalist, I love description to a fault.
Elaine Appleton Grant:My producer kept getting rid of my description, so former New York governor Elliot Spitzer's family at his inauguration. Something has to happen every 2 minutes, Elaine, she'd say. I wasn't happy. But she was right. In plot driven work, the more action the better.
Elaine Appleton Grant:As one scene leads to the next, binge listeners are born. But scenes also make good interview shows great. We tend to call them anecdotes. They're the stories guests tell if we take pains to elicit them. They don't have to be high drama.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Guests don't have to run from a gunfight or dangle from a cliff. Scenes that convey our interior feelings are often gripping. It's human nature to wanna know what other people feel and it's often through a little story about our lives or the life of someone else that we get to be inside someone's head. This is where the emotion comes out. An emotion is what we connect to and what we remember.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Listen to this simple scene from the Rich Roll show. He's interviewing author Charles Duhigg about Duhigg's book, Supercommunicators. Duhigg tells this short story as a way of illustrating a premise of his book which is that 2 people can think they're having the same conversation, but in fact, they're not.
Emma Cortland:As I was driving over, I was thinking about, like, where does this book come from? And I remembered there's a there's a number of incidents, but there's this one that I've actually never talked about before, which is my wife and I were on vacation in Florida, which was weird because it's not like we like Florida or really go there very much. But we got into this screaming fight in a hallway about money, which again was, like, super strange because it's not like something we fight about. We don't we're we're not really fighters. And for some reason, I hadn't thought about this for years, and it just popped into my mind.
Emma Cortland:And I was like, you know, what we were really talking about were emotions. Like, we were talking about the fact that, like, Liz feels scared that she doesn't understand that's my wife. Doesn't feel feel scared that she doesn't understand money. I feel frustrated that I don't have someone to talk about money with. Mhmm.
Emma Cortland:If we had just started the conversation by saying kind of like what you just did, just saying, actually, like, let's talk about our emotions and our marriage and how we're relating to each other right now, it would have been so much better. But instead, we started talk we we were gonna have this emotional instead of having an emotional conversation, we had an emotional conversation that was disguised as a practical conversation, and it was disastrous. Yeah. There's a whole thing in the book
Elaine Appleton Grant:Scenes also help listeners take a sensory journey. As the narrator, you're taking us with you. And once humans are on a journey, we can't help but wanna see like the bear that went over the mountain, what's on the other side. We are engaged. And in the recounting of a scene, we get important information about a character's wants, needs, values, and emotions.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Here's a great example of a scene that shines because it calls on the senses. It's from Crime Show, a former Gimlet podcast hosted by Emma Cortland.
Steve Barnes:To anyone who knows Steve Barnes, it should come as no surprise that one of his earliest memories and certainly his most vivid memory is the day that his dad, Gerald, first introduced him to baseball.
Katie Culinary:He took me to my first game. I wasn't even 2 years old, and he carried me through the tunnel at Wrigley Field. And I remember seeing how beautiful and green it was at not even 2 years old. I have that memory planted in my mind 60 something years later where I I could tell you exactly what it looked at. It was the most beautiful, lush, gorgeous thing I ever saw in my life.
Steve Barnes:It wasn't just the beauty of the field that seared that day into Steve's memory. It was the fact that that beauty
Elaine Appleton Grant:That clip tells us that Steve will love baseball for the rest of his life. And it shows us, doesn't tell us, why. But also through the scene and the tone of his voice, it tells us something about how much he loves his dad. His dad, the con man whose actions killed at least one person that this crime show episode is about. Surprise.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Our 4th is in the success framework for hooking your audience and keeping them with you is surprise. It's the left turn when we're expecting a right hand one that makes us listen. It's the twists and turns of an involved high stakes plot that we love or the ending of the movie or the novel that we didn't predict. There's hardly a story or a conversation or a speech that doesn't need something surprising. Katie Culinary is the senior podcast editor at New Hampshire Public Radio.
Elaine Appleton Grant:She fields a lot of pitches for documentary series. She's got her eye out for something in particular.
Kelly Corrigan:What are they doing in the story, and what access do you have to them? What are the surprises or, like, as we like to call it, the holy shit moments? Every document story has several of them, Just the things that make you, oh my god, you're never gonna believe blah blah blah. The thing about this story is this. So we want people to start to think about what are the things that have surprised them that have either happened or about the people who are involved.
Kelly Corrigan:Is the story going to peel back a layer of something that maybe people thought that they understood before and explain it in a different kind of way.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Now you may not be making documentaries. Probably not. What if you're producing an interview show or doing a how to or writing a blog post about baseball or co hosting a show about the movies or giving a speech about supply chain management. For any content to be memorable, we have to learn something we didn't expect. The search for fresh, new information is a constant in the lives of good interviewers.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Kelly Corrigan, host of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders and the PBS show Tell Me More, worries about this a lot.
Jeremy:I mean, part of what I'm doing is trying to make your listening or viewing or reading minutes actually worth it. Like, the the thing that you and I are asking for when we put stuff out there is attention. And, like, what could be a more exquisite currency than attention. I mean, in this world where there is so much coming at you to ask for that is like asking for someone's soul. I mean, you are asking for the most precious thing that they've got.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Through that frame, it couldn't be more important to offer audiences something new. It's not easy. What's an example of one of your episodes that you just think of off the top of your head, just an intuitive hit, where somebody told you they hadn't said something before or you found yourself saying something you hadn't said before?
Jeremy:I mean, 90% of the time, something like that happens. Like, it's happening right now. I have never talked about this very specific problem that I often have before on a microphone. I've told my husband about it. You know, like, when I finish an interview, he's like, how'd you do?
Jeremy:I'm like, I couldn't I couldn't get them off their talking points. And, you know, the more professional they are Samantha Power is a great example. So Samantha Power is the head of USAID. She was the UN ambassador under Obama. She's a great thinker.
Jeremy:She won a Pulitzer for her writing. She's devoted to making the world a better place. She's one of the most impressive people I've ever met, and she's constricted by her job. Like, she has a big public job where there's people who work for her or who cover her press, and they wanna talk to me beforehand, and they wanna make sure it's gonna stay on the rails, and we're gonna cover this and cover that, and I I nod along. And, you know, I I will satisfy the requirements, but it doesn't mean I'm gonna stop there.
Elaine Appleton Grant:But as I learned from Kelly, you only need one moment, one surprise to create something that stands apart, that's different from what everyone else is doing. She did this in an interview with Bryan Stevenson, the world renowned criminal justice advocate and best selling author of Just Mercy.
Jeremy:I didn't know that Bryan Stevenson played the piano until, like, the morning of the shoot, and and him playing the piano is such an important part of every day of his life. Here's another thing I didn't know that came up the morning of the shoot. 150 guys on death row have his cell phone number. That's who they call. He's like their family.
Jeremy:He's their brother. He's their priest. He's their father. He's their son, if they're really old. So you think about what it would feel like to be carrying a 150 people's fate, and then you think about how much you would need to play piano.
Jeremy:Like, to step away from all that and to make something beautiful and to be alone inside, like, a cloud of music. And it it just was to me, it was like this incredible unlock of these 2 disparate pieces of information that to me seems so related.
Elaine Appleton Grant:So what did you do?
Jeremy:I went right there. I brought it right up with him. And then amazingly on the set where we were shooting, there was a baby grand piano. And between shots he went over. And I was like, would you like to play piano?
Jeremy:Like, would that be relaxing for you? And he's like, I would love to. So, he's playing the piano, then all the cameramen are like turning towards him. And so it's actually a beautiful part of the episode is when I'm asking him about it, we cut to the b roll of him playing piano on a break.
Maya Angelou:When I play the piano, it's the one thing that takes me out of my head. It's just fully engaging, so I love being a kind of just step out of my life into this world of music. And I'm curious about every piano I see. It's a bad, bad habit, but I wanna know, well, what what does that one sound like? And what does that one sound like?
Jeremy:You just have to touch every piano
Maya Angelou:You just I just feel like it's saying something. I wanna hear what it's saying. Ryan. Ryan.
Justin:Come over.
Jeremy:And Tell me more. You know, it was like the most special thing that happened, and and it's not in any other Bryan Stevenson interview. And that, you know, that's how you differentiate from 60 minutes or CBS Sunday Morning or whoever else has, you know, interviewed Bryan Stevenson, which is pretty much everybody. I mean, I'm sure he's been interviewed 1,000 times.
Elaine Appleton Grant:As listeners, we are just as surprised as Kelly. And so we won't only remember these human moments, we'll share them with our friends. In fact, maybe I should retitle this section on surprise, how to generate word-of-mouth and grow your show. Surprise goes hand in hand with the 5th SNR framework for hooking and keeping your audience, suspense. Now most of us are not producing true crime.
Elaine Appleton Grant:We're making podcasts that support our business, or we're interviewing celebrities in our field, or we're teaching people how to do something. So why would I even use the word suspense for podcasts or speeches that aren't about serial killers or rescues from disasters? Here's why. No matter the medium, any good story, speech, or interview poses a question and a promise, explicitly or implicitly. A big question hooks us.
Elaine Appleton Grant:I call it a driving question because a driving question moves the story or the issue forward. It's the overarching one for your whole podcast, radio show, your substack even. It's a big enough question that you can answer it again and again in each episode differently. For instance, the driving question in Good Life Project is obvious, what makes a good life? Or how I built this?
Elaine Appleton Grant:Well, how did she? Or in a whodunit like Bone Valley, the question is almost always, who hurt someone else and why? In this case, it's who killed leo schofield's wife the promise we're making to our listeners is you will learn the answers but not yet, or there's no suspense. I'm going back to Famous and Gravy for the clever way they found to create suspense to start every episode, the quiz show. This is Amit Kapoor.
Amit Kapoor:This is Famous and Gravy, a conversation about quality of life as we see it, 1 dead celebrity at a time. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.
Justin:This person died 2014, age 86. She was a Tony nominated stage actress. After her first marriage, she embarked on a career as a calypso dancer. Good grief.
Sam Mullins:No idea. Alright. Keep going.
Justin:She was a college professor and a ubiquitous presence on the lecture circuit. She also made several appearances on Sesame Street. Oh,
Jeremy:man. Toni Morrison?
Justin:Not Toni Morrison. In 2011, she was awarded the presidential medal of freedom.
Sam Mullins:Now that I should know. Although I was busy. I was busy in 2,011.
Justin:I missed it. That whole year?
Sam Mullins:I missed the entire year.
Justin:What an excuse. Throughout her writing, she explored the concepts of personal identity and resilience through the multifaceted lens of race, sex, family, community, and the collective past.
Sam Mullins:It's not Maya Angelou. Angelo. Maya Angelo? Not Maya Angelo, is it?
Emma Cortland:Maya Angelo.
Justin:Today's dead celebrity is Maya Angelo.
Sam Mullins:I didn't even say it right. Maya Angelou.
Justin:I've been saying Angelou my whole life, and it's actually Angelo.
Amit Kapoor:Love you.
Sam Mullins:I love you, babe. She does not know her beauty. She thinks
Amit Kapoor:her brown body has no glory. If she could dance
Sam Mullins:naked on the palm trees and see her image in the river,
Amit Kapoor:she would know. But there are no palm trees on the street.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Here's a different kind of great example from This American Life. A funny thing happened on the way to the quorum is a story about a classic, dreaded task for early career journalists covering town meeting. Is there anything that is usually more boring? Well, in the hands of NHPR reporter Sarah Gibson, this one kept me on the edge of my seat. She employs 2 devices really well, the function of time and the inner feelings of our main characters who are underdogs.
Elaine Appleton Grant:In the next passage, 2 sisters in the small town of Croydon, New Hampshire are fighting to keep their school budget from being sliced in half. Here, I'm discussing it with editor Katie Connery. 83 people to come to a revote. Mhmm. And if they don't reach 283 people, and remember the whole town is only 800 people, then they're gonna fail.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Amy and Angie are driving from house to house trying to convince people to come to the revote. They've never done a campaign like this before. We're mad at this. They they say, we're not registered voters. Okay.
Elaine Appleton Grant:That's fine.
Sam Mullins:Okay. Angie and Amy grew up in Croydon.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Their car has an American flag tinted on the back window. And and they The reason I wanted to play this is because the entire rest of the piece is suspense. This could be practically the same setup that you use for true crime. What's gonna happen? All along the way, every single reporting and editorial decision is made to to make it more suspenseful.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Are they gonna make it? Are they gonna get this person to come to the meeting? Are they not? Is someone gonna run out the clock at the meeting? What are the votes going to be?
Elaine Appleton Grant:Etcetera, etcetera. When you are What's a creative way that you could add suspense? And how could you insert new questions and conflicts along the way to keep that curiosity going? That's my challenge to you. Finally, the more specific we can make our language, the more sparkling and memorable it is.
Elaine Appleton Grant:In the last 18 months of speaking with incredible storytellers for this podcast, no one has been better at this than Sam Mullins. In 2023, Sam won the best podcast of the year award at the Ambeez, the podcast academy's attempt to rival the Oscars. Sam won it for his documentary series, Wild Boys from Campside Media. It's about 2 strange teenagers who mysteriously appear in Sam's hometown of Vernon in British Columbia. Here's how he introduces us to Vernon.
Speaker 19:The boys couldn't have known it, but they showed up in the right place at the right time. In a sense, this only could have happened in Vernon. You need to know about my hometown. Vernon's located in the Okanagan, a region in the interior of British Columbia, sort of halfway between Vancouver and Calgary. Historically, it's been a middle class place.
Speaker 19:But the whole region has sort of been transformed into an outdoor playground for the wealthy. The Okanagan is known for its vineyards, golf courses, ski resorts, its lakes, and the mythological beast, the Ogopogo, who lives in one of said lakes, allegedly. Vernon's a white town. It's a hockey town. There's lots of churches.
Speaker 19:There's lots of retired folks. There's a winter carnival parade every year, and the city has never once held a gay pride parade. The crown jewel of Vernon, and in my opinion, the whole Okanagan, is Kalamalka Lake. It deserves a Google image search. Seriously, do that now.
Elaine Appleton Grant:Sam never uses the word conservative to describe the townspeople. Instead, he notes that Vernon has never held a gay pride parade. If he'd called the residents conservative, listeners might have glossed over the story entirely. Worse, they may have begun to silently argue with the narrator over the stereotype. How do you know?
Elaine Appleton Grant:What do you mean by that? Who are you? And can I trust you? By recounting a tiny fact though, Sam has offered us an indisputable piece of history. He allows us to make of it what we will.
Elaine Appleton Grant:How does he do this? Sam doesn't have some secret inborn trait that makes him excel at specifics. He's a comedy writer. He says, I'm obsessed with lists. In this case, he and his wife played a list making game.
Elaine Appleton Grant:The object was to write 1 sentence morsels to describe Vernon. He gave the resulting long list to his story editor Karen Duffin Karen helped him choose the best morsels to include in the script we all need a good editor Even more interesting is the specific way he describes a family in a story he told for The Moth, a live storytelling event series and also a radio show and podcast.
Todd Henry:Sprinting around when I'm set at a table of 4. So, I go up to the table with water glasses to greet them and something about these people immediately put me at ease. They they just seem like really calm and present, and just like good people. And and right away, the the, it it was, like, 2 parents and 2, grown up kids about my age. And, right away the father shook my hand.
Todd Henry:He's like, what's your name? I'm like, Sam. He's like, you look like a Sam. And, we started talking and having banter and they were really into the fact that I was a struggling slash failed actor and writer. And, they kind of became my number one priority, and they were my oasis in the mayhem.
Todd Henry:And and they really knew how to dine. Like, they had a lot of nice appetizers and and fine wines. I I
Speaker 19:I cleared all that away, and
Todd Henry:I got them set up for entrees.
Elaine Appleton Grant:What elevates this writing to be so noteworthy, to be so unforgettable, are the words he uses to tell us not what these people looked like, we never learned that, but how they made Sam feel. They were my oasis in the mayhem, he says. And that's the 6 S's. All of the stories I referenced are linked in the show notes. Go listen to them with an ear out for what I have showed you here.
Elaine Appleton Grant:That's a wrap on my 6 s storytelling framework. As a quick reminder, the 6 s's are sound division, structure, scenes, surprise, suspense, and specifics. And one other thing, in narrative, they all wrap around characters who take the audience on some kind of journey. In conversations and interviews, characters still matter a lot, but ideas might be the star.
Jeremy:All right. Welcome back, everyone. After that pretty amazing, pretty enlightening episode that Alain put on with Sound Judgment, Justin, I want to throw it over to you for your reactions and some of your hometown actually gets a mention here in the episode. I didn't know that it was the most flattering, but,
Justin:did
Jeremy:get a mention.
Justin:Yeah. It's from Wild Boys, my hometown of Vernon, BC. Yeah. I thought it was great. I just in most communities, there's, like, these evergreen keystone pieces of content that get shared as, like, this is the de facto guide on this topic, and I feel like she has done that with storytelling.
Justin:Like, she just has this great framework. I I mean, you just heard it, and it'll be fun to talk about it. Like, now we have a framework for discussing it, you and I, and then with the listener, we're all gonna trade notes here. And, I mean, if you geek out about this stuff, this is, like, the stuff that gets you kinda fired up.
Jeremy:Yeah. And like I mentioned at the start of the the episode here, I am something of a, self identifying storytelling nerd. Every day when I sit down to eat lunch, I put on a YouTube video by a guy. His name is Brandon McNulty. And he talks about screenwriting and storytelling and all these stuff for both novelists and screenwriting.
Jeremy:And I watched the 20 minute video and I think about and learn about all these different, like, dialogue writing types of things. And, like, I'm not a screenwriter or a novelist or anything, but I just love the craft of storytelling. And so I'm pretty, you know, steeped in this. I just finished a book on storytelling the other week.
Maya Angelou:I've subscribed to a bunch of storytelling newsletters. And after
Jeremy:this 30 minute episode, I subscribed to a bunch of storytelling newsletters. And after this 30 minute episode, I have tons of notes here that I was like, Mhmm. I have never thought about it in this way and specifically applying it to podcasting. Yeah. So I've got a bunch of notes here that we can go through, but I'm curious about what stood out to you, some of the key takeaways, or maybe how you're thinking about podcasting differently after listening to this episode.
Justin:I mean, she just set up such a great framework for thinking through your show and how to make it better. Starting with sound vision, I loved that idea of sound vision. And often with storytelling, when people say, oh, you gotta do storytelling, or oh, you gotta do sound design. I always kinda roll my eyes a bit. It's like, oh, we're gonna get super precious or super general about, like, storytelling is just, like, thrown around as this trope that you need to somehow sprinkle on top of your show.
Jeremy:Yeah.
Justin:But I liked the examples she gave. It's a clear example of how you can, like, pull in examples and create this vivid imagery where she goes, like, listen to the difference between these two clips. And then, like, one is like this untreated on the phone interview. And she's like, that sounds honest and vulnerable. And you're like, yeah.
Justin:And then there's another one that was more produced, upbeat, humorous, friendly, light, and you could hear it with the example. She had a lot of show, don't tell. You know?
Jeremy:Yes.
Justin:And, again, like, you and I will often say, like, don't be flat, bland, unemotional, or boring. We're telling people that, but she's actually showing people how they can not do that. And I I especially love that she started there because this is audio. Right? This is, like, what we do is we craft these audio experiences.
Jeremy:Well and, like, this is something that I think about this a lot for in terms of visual design and copywriting, some things like that. But and I'm a sound engineer too and and, you know, I have a background in record production and all these things that play a role in that that I have thought about in podcasting, but something as simple as I never thought about the untreated phone call. I Yeah. As a almost like as a sound engineer, my default is to make it the absolute best highest quality audio all the time. And Yeah.
Jeremy:That was a a interesting takeaway from me. I was like, oh, interesting. You might not actually want that because the brand that you're trying to create of the show, the experience actually calls for something else. And the the other funny thing is, like, as a sound designer as well, if I wanna make it sound like a phone call, I would take a recorded audio file and then put it through some processing to make it sound like a phone call. And it's like, you you do lose something in that process.
Jeremy:And so Yeah. This was something that as soon as I I heard that, then I started thinking about our show. And for sake of time savings and and ease, we're running everything through Descript using studio sound. And I'm like, okay. Like, this it sounds kind of generic.
Jeremy:Like, a lot of shows have that sound, and that isn't really a core part of our show right now. And so Yeah. I don't really care about that, but it it highlighted this gap where I was like, Yeah. That is an interesting decision about we might in the future want to actually make some more intentional choices about how we're processing our audio and things like that. And right now, it doesn't matter and it won't matter for everyone, But that is a lever that everybody can choose to pull and dial in one way or the other.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, I think this goes back to, like, what are you trying to accomplish with the show? Mhmm. And but I think this made me think about our conversation about serial versus episodic shows. And again, in this case, like, this episode on storytelling can live forever.
Justin:It's evergreen, and it's designed. It's got structure. It has lots of sound design in it, and they can put in the extra work because it's going to live for a long time. And I think you can think about episodes that way. It's like, okay.
Justin:Doing an episode this way is gonna take way more effort, but Mhmm. We're doing that because we believe this is evergreen, keystone content that's going to kinda live on for a long time. It's worth putting in the effort. Whereas, a different type of show format, you might need to scale it back.
Maya Angelou:Mhmm.
Justin:I mean, even our intro music has a feel and
Maya Angelou:Mhmm.
Justin:You pull a clip, and then there's some emotion to that. And so I think people can use a little bit of this, like, craft a little bit of this into their show even if it's just, you know, 2 guys getting together every week.
Jeremy:Yeah. The other thing that just popped into my mind as you were talking there was we've talked about in the roast as well, especially with cover art and the role of the photo and how important that photo is of shaping a listener's perception of the show. And it makes me think that we have both listened to many shows that maybe the content, like, the actual information inside the episode is good. But a lot of times, if the audio quality isn't great, and this isn't to say that it needs to be Elaine's level sound design and pulling in clips and everything, but if you're just using your laptop mic or a cheap mic or the mic isn't positioned close to your mouth, Yeah. There is something that is communicated there that lowers the feeling of connection or intimacy or trust and I think that this is something that there is so much talk and podcasting of, like, oh, you don't need to spend a lot of money on a microphone or and and it's true.
Jeremy:You don't. But I think that you do need to spend enough and care enough about how you are coming across because just like the cover art conveys something about whether we should trust you or not and whether maybe we want to keep listening or sign up for a product or service that you're offering. The audio quality plays a huge role in that as well. And so this is something I think people should be certainly spending some time thinking about at least.
Justin:Agreed. Alright. So let's move on to the next s in her framework structure. I just love this line. I wanted to make sure we covered it.
Justin:So she says, okay. This show has discovered a blueprint that helps them wrestle raw content into meaning that sticks. Mhmm. I just loved that line, this idea of, like, a structure helps you wrestle. This is always the problem creative people have is, okay, I've got all this inspiration and ideas, and we could do this and this and this.
Justin:And then it's like, what does structure help you do? It helps you wrestle all of that raw material into content that has meaning and sticks. Yeah. And she has such a way with words. You can tell that this is all just it's very well written.
Justin:And some of these can be simple, like, about deciding what do you include and what do you leave out. But just making a decision, for example, to, you know, we always answer this question at the end of the episode, so the listener is gonna wait until the end of the episode Mhmm. To hear them talk about that question that they always answer, you know. So you're setting up a pace and a format that listeners can follow, and they're expecting, I can't wait till they get to this bit that they always
Jeremy:do. Yeah. I feel like one of the things with structure and yeah. People creative people rail against it. I am certainly have been one of those people, but also have kind of seen the light now and and love structure.
Jeremy:And one of the things that that I think a solid structure that is well communicated in the show's packaging and messaging and and copy and show description everything as well can do is it makes the value seem more reliable that you're going to deliver on it. And so Yeah. Shows with a great structure. Partly, I think it just communicates that thought has gone into this. And that's not something that listeners will think to themselves, but it's something that they will intuit.
Jeremy:And then I also think it helps with the pacing of the episode where you kind of there's this cadence that you kind of stick to as the host because you know, oh we've got these 3 sections to go through and so it kind of keeps you moving and there's momentum to it. And you can define those different out aspects of a show to be able to kinda build on each other. And so one thing that I've been kind of experimenting with, and this actually plays into this next s of scenes
Sam Mullins:Yeah.
Jeremy:Recently as we've been mapping out the episodes, I've been thinking about, okay, I wanna have 3 scenes per episode. And so first we're gonna talk about this, then we're gonna talk about this, then we're gonna talk about this. And so this isn't something that we explicitly communicate necessarily through any kind of sound design or like, okay. Now we're wrapping up scene 1 and we're moving to scene 2 but it does guide the conversation and this one line here in the scenes section, something needs to happen every 2 minutes. This is something that I think this is a high bar for almost every show and it was something that I was like, whew.
Jeremy:Yeah. That I mean, the great shows, you can feel as a listener, like, stuff is constantly developing. And this is something, you know, I mentioned I watch a lot of, screenwriting content and I just finished this book called The Story Grid and, fantastic book. I think everybody should read it who makes any kind of content, especially written content. But one of the things they talk about, and this is kind of screenwriting 101 that essentially like every scene, something needs to happen.
Jeremy:The story needs to be moved forward. And I think that this is something that in a film or a novel, like a scene might take quite a bit of time. But I think in a podcast, it's much smaller typically. But I I think that everybody should be thinking about like, okay, with each question that I'm asking, what job is that question doing to move this interview forward? Like, we have a goal that we're trying to get somewhere.
Jeremy:Every question should be in service of that goal and there's forward progress. Like we're moving forward and there's a reason that this question should be here. So I thought this was fantastic, and she talks again about the show, don't tell. And I also like this note that she had about eliciting anecdotes from people that was was really great.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I the the idea of scenes has been helpful for us in this show even if it's just, like, 3 scenes. It helps
Jeremy:kind
Justin:of set again some framework for the show. And I I think also setting up even in a show like we do, which is nonfiction, very, like, educational content, you can still give it a format that helps you as the creator and the listener move through each episode.
Jeremy:Yeah. Okay. So what about, s number 4 here? Surprise. This is something I have thought a lot about in writing and a little bit in podcasting as well.
Jeremy:What were your kinda takeaways on that one?
Justin:Yeah. I I mean, this is something I think about a lot, and it's, like, hard to build into a show. The whole time I was listening, I'm like, okay. How could Jeremy and I apply this to this show? And one thing I think we've learned is one way to introduce surprise in a show with cohosts is anytime either of us go, well, actually, I don't agree with you.
Justin:It's like, what? Yeah. Like, there's some surprise and suspense, which is her next s. It's like, okay. Wow.
Justin:We got we've just introduced some tension
Justin:here,
Justin:and I wasn't expecting that. You know, you expect people to just agree. And so I think you can learn as a co host what are the things I can do to kind of trigger some of that surprise. Sometimes you'll be like, hey, Justin. I found something that you probably won't guess.
Justin:Can you guess it? And it's like, oh, okay. Like and then there's some surprising fact or Mhmm. So to keep these little nuggets or to have a burst of inspiration as you're talking and the inclination to be, like, oh, I'm gonna introduce a little little right hand turn here, left hand turn where people weren't expecting it.
Jeremy:Yeah. I think with cohosts, like, one of the things, we we map out our episodes that we have some rough points, but a lot of times we're talking through them and we're like, actually, let's not talk about too that too much. I'm gonna save that for the episode. And so there's this kind of like, okay, we've got a structure, but we're gonna withhold some of specifics because we wanna get the actual reaction to it. And then there's been some episodes as well.
Jeremy:Like, this actually on the fly when we were recording our episode on podcast budgets. And you kinda started off the episode with this question of what do you think we could do if we had some budget? Do you think you'd be able to grow it? And this wasn't actually something we'd mapped out in advance. We had our structure, but we didn't know how we're gonna get into it.
Jeremy:And so I was like, okay. That's an interesting question. And then as soon as you prompted me with that, I was like, oh, actually, this is gonna be a good closer to the episode because we'll talk through our 3 kind of budget tiers. And then I'm gonna come back to Justin and say, okay. So you actually posed this question to me at the start about what if we had no budget.
Jeremy:And this is kind of a surprise that wasn't worked into the script that I was like, okay. I'm actually excited to turn it around on him here and open up this this conversation that we haven't discussed based on everything that we did. So I think with cohosts, you can kinda do a bit of that. And I think with interviews with standard types of guests where you you don't really know the guest maybe that well, a lot of it comes down to intuition, I think. And you have to kind of follow your own nose for surprise and there's this great Robert Frost quote, no surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
Amit Kapoor:Mhmm.
Jeremy:And I think that this is something that a lot of times hosts wanna come across, especially people who are for their business. They would wanna come across as almost knowing everything already, knowing all the answers. And I think that this is a recipe for a boring podcast because if it's if you're not following your own curiosity and finding things that are really fascinating to you and asking specific follow-up questions and getting people to go deeper and pushing the guest a little bit on that, or a lot on their answers. I think that's where you get to surprising insights because every guest by nature is going to give the top of mind easiest response which is going to be the most boring. And so I think you necessarily need to push people to get more specific, to go deeper, to give you stories and most of us are too polite to do this but in my experience as a listener, these are the absolute best podcast to listen to or at least the best interview style shows when the host is willing to push the guest.
Jeremy:And the few times when somebody has done that to me, they've been my favorite interviews as a guest as well because they made me think about things in new ways and come up with surprising conclusions. So a couple of notes there depending on your show type of maybe where you can kind of take that.
Justin:And I think for both of these, surprise and suspense, I like to look at it through the lens of play. Like, I just wanna play here, and it's there's almost, like, something a little mischievous, but fun and cheeky about being in a conversation and going, I'm gonna ask Jeremy this question and see how he reacts. There's some playfulness to that that works for me. That's kind of, like, what draws me into creating a sense of surprise or suspense. I think the other thing with suspense, which is the next one, is I was thinking about this in terms of you can create suspense, in a single episode, but also over a whole series.
Justin:And so Yeah. Like, the show John and I did while we were building transistor was a show about building the business, and there was suspense for all of us because we didn't know how it was gonna turn out. It's like, we're trying to do this, and we were sharing our revenue numbers and all of our struggles. And it created the sense in real time of what's going to happen. Are they going to make it?
Justin:So I think you can think of shows like that as well. Like, how can we create suspense over the arc of the show, and how can we create suspense within an episode. And that could be this episode, John and I are gonna try to solve this problem on the episode. We don't know how we're gonna do it. We're gonna talk it out.
Justin:Come along, and it's like, oh, wow. Okay. Are they gonna be able to resolve this? You know, are they gonna quit? There's all these, like, answers that people want, and I I love this idea of a big question that hooks us.
Justin:Like, what's a driving question that just drives and moves the whole story forward?
Jeremy:Yeah. And I think the other thing that where this plays into the suspense with interviews is it's again going back to that same point of you look at some of the best, especially, like, public radio style host or you think of somebody on, like, a show that comes to mind for me is the New York Times, The Daily Show. And this is a show where the hosts know all the answers. And this is true for most highly produced public radio style shows. The host knows all the answers what the guest is gonna say going in, but they feign ignorance.
Jeremy:And Yeah. They don't let you know. They don't have the urge to to make sure that you as the listener know that, hey. I know where this is going and I know all the answers already. They are facilitating bringing it out of the guest, and they're actually building tension in by playing dumb to some extent.
Jeremy:And this is something that I think you start to listen to these great hosts and it's clear, like, they're guiding the the episode so well because they already know where this is going. They know mostly what the guest is going to say, but they are going to, like, create that tension by asking some of the kind of quote unquote dumb questions that the listener might have in their mind to be able to play into some of these things and maybe like hint at some wrong turns and play devil's advocate a little bit. And I think that these are all things that it's delaying that gratification of getting to the answer by kind of, like, they know where they're going, but they're gonna lead us down a few rabbit trails that are ultimately gonna give us some red herrings maybe that then make the payoff much sweeter in the end.
Justin:Yeah. I think when people do their intros for guests, they're often too polite. It's like Robert Frost was a great American writer and that that that it's, like, give us something that's gonna pull us in. And Marc Maron is good at this. He'll be like, oh, I had this person in the garage, and, wow, we kinda got into it.
Justin:And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, wow. Okay. I'm gonna stick around to see what happened. Was there some sort of conflict or something? So give the listener something from the interview that they can look forward to.
Justin:Like, introduce some suspense right off the bat. Like, I've heard so many interviews with this person, but I asked them this one question, and it totally stumped them. And they ended up revealing some things. It's like, oh, okay. I gotta I gotta listen to this.
Justin:You know?
Jeremy:Yeah. Alright. And so then we got the final SCR specifics. We kinda talked about this a little bit. We've actually talked a lot about this in the the roast episodes.
Jeremy:And specifically, when it comes to the the copywriting and the messaging and episode titles, all these places where, like, the, Lay mentioned in the episode here, you know, the more specific detail you can give somebody, the more it builds the scene out in their mind during the show. This is great for storytelling, but it's also great for teaching. And so I think one of the things that I often tell people when I'm, like, auditing their shows or or doing something along those lines, as educators, we tend to want to, I think, speak in concepts so that it is as broadly applicable to everybody as possible. And we don't wanna say, like, give one very ultra specific example because like, oh, well, what if that doesn't apply to everyone? But there's this other great quote that I love.
Jeremy:I got this from, the On Being podcast. I think it was from one of the guests but I've heard them use it a lot. And it's the universal is in the particular. And as soon as I heard that quote, I was like, oh, that is so true that it's actually by sharing these very ultra specific examples that people actually extrapolate into their own lives. And this is something that I think is great for exploring stories that like any story that's ever resonated with you.
Jeremy:It wasn't this broad generic story. It was the story of 1 person in a very specific scenario that you were able to intuit some of the lessons from that and the experiences and saw how it aligned with your own life. And so I think that this is something at every level from like getting a guest to share their story and articulate like what's going on in the scene? What was the smells? What were you you seeing down to, like, the guest just shared something.
Jeremy:You're like, okay. Can you give me a specific example of, like, how this would apply in this ultra niche scenario that you know is relevant to at least a portion of your audience? And actually, the whole rest of your audience, even if they're not in that specific narrow segment, they're going to understand the concept better in action as well.
Justin:Yeah. My friend Adam Wadden is really good at this. He'll be have a guest, and they'll say something like a general concept or, you know, a principle. And he'll say, can you give me a specific example of how that works in your business or in your work or whatever? And it really pushes the guest to come up with something real, tangible.
Justin:And then Adam keeps driving more and more into that example to get more and more specifics out of the guest. It's very compelling. Because as a listener, you're like, yeah. Like, I had the same question. Like, let's get to the bottom of this.
Justin:Let's figure out what's going on here.
Jeremy:Yeah. And that's another example of, like, that adds tension and suspense because we don't know. This is where it gets into almost this kind of dialogue writing where there's this push and pull and this, like, this dance that goes on where, like, you as the host now apply some pressure, and now they have to react. And I think that this is the whole appeal of sports is that we don't know what's going to happen where one player or one team does something and now the other team has to react to it, and it takes place in conversation too If we are willing to put some pressure on our guests and make them be more specific and follow those, those rabbit trails and kind of define the things they're talking about. As a listener, you feel that and it's like, oh, yeah.
Jeremy:I guess that wasn't that great an answer initially. And getting them to get more specific with it is a a great way to do that.
Justin:Yes. Absolutely.
Jeremy:So we've covered the s's here. The last thing that I wanna talk about here was the pitch. And so I mentioned at the top of the episode that Elaine reached out to me with this pitch pitch for this episode. You're a little bit skeptical at the start, but Yeah. I want to know from your perspective, like, what are the keys to making a great pitch for a kinda collaboration like this?
Justin:I mean, it helped that she was listening to the show. Yep. It helped that she already had a relationship with you. It helped that there's a connection there where you could say, like, you know, I know this person. I trust this person.
Justin:And then it really helped that they had a show that was, like like I said, a 100 times better than our show. It just made it a no brainer that it was such an excellent product. It felt like us sharing this with our listeners is like doing our listeners a great service. It's like, wow. We found something amazing, and now we're just gonna give it to you.
Justin:Where often fee drops feel very promotional and self serving.
Jeremy:Yeah. And so for for context here, so Elaine actually went through one of my accelerator 6 week live cohort programs 2 years ago or something like that. So we've known each other for a while, and I know that she has a background in public radio. She has collaborated with other members from my community in the past who we also know and like. So there's all this kind of network.
Jeremy:Like, she has been a part of my personal network and I've known her and I had listened to her show before. And so I knew, like, she had the chops. And then when she reached out, I was like, oh, yeah. Like, of course, this is the perfect fit. And so then I brought it to you and was kind of like, you know, I kind of vouch for Elaine, but you just listened to the episode and we're like, oh, yeah.
Jeremy:Of course. Like, how could how could we not do this? So I think there's there's so many things here, and I think pitching it as well with this angle where this show about storytelling and even the title of this episode, how she's titled it in her feed, which is storytelling principles to hook and keep your listeners, which is something, you know, we talk about a lot. And so Yeah. She is a reader of my newsletter.
Jeremy:She'd shared our podcast. She cites the stuff that we're talking about. And so she was able to say, like, oh, this aligns very closely with all the stuff you talk about. And it was, like, just a no brainer for
Justin:us. Yeah. And I I think the other answer is don't do the bullshit. Like, there's so much bullshit pitches where they're like, hey. I listened to your latest episode, and I think this episode would be a great fit for your audience.
Justin:And it's like, fuck off. You are not good for our audience. You're lying to me. It's just bullshit. But in this case, I think she could be reasonably confident that she had produced something great Yeah.
Justin:That it would be beneficial for our audience, and it was just, like, that clear. So if you're confident about it, if you're not just making shit up, if this is actually, like, you know no. This is gonna be good for your audience. I have something of value to bring to your audience, And I think maybe that's what makes pitches difficult is because there's so much bullshit in people's inboxes, so many people lying or being disingenuous. So it's almost gonna require that you build relationships, you build connections, you build up trust, and then you earn the right to say, oh, hey.
Justin:Listen, Jeremy. I've made something great. I think it'd be great for your audience, and then go from there.
Jeremy:Yeah. And, I mean, I think we all wanna take the shortest path to success, and we've all taken shortcuts at times. But what I have learned after making many mistakes in that regard is that you should basically operate with the assumption that if you know that that you're trying to cut a corner, assume that everybody else can see that as well because they a 100% can. And once you start to think about it like that way, you're like, because we know when we're trying to shortcut the process. Like, there's no lying to yourself.
Jeremy:And so if you take the assumption that, like, okay, what if everybody else could see me do this? That will limit the types of activities you engage with for the better. Like yeah. Because they weren't gonna work anyway. And so you're saving yourself the time.
Jeremy:You're saving yourself the reputation, which the harm to your reputation in the long term is a much bigger downside than any potential small gains in the short term. And so Yeah. That's the the heuristic that I go by, and, I wish more people would do that as well.
Justin:Yeah. Me too. Me too. But this was this was just incredible. I'm I'm so glad.
Justin:I feel, like, thankful that she shared it with us because I got so much out of it.
Jeremy:Yeah. Me too. So if you enjoyed this episode from Elaine and want more of Sound Judgment, you can find the show wherever you are listening to this podcast.
Justin:And, we'd love for this to become a conversation with our listeners. So if you have things, takeaways you wanna talk about, reach out to us on social media. Let's start a conversation around this framework that Elaine, introduced and see how we can implement it in the shows that we're producing.
Jeremy:Yeah. And we're gonna be doing a write up on some of the takeaways from how this feed drop actually performed in terms of listener growth and cross promotion and our kind of process behind it. So stay tuned for that as well. And we will be sharing that in the
Sam Mullins:future.
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