Take It or Leave It?

Sherri: Welcome to Cahoots Commentary, where we share our comments about what to do and, most importantly, what not to do in your nonprofit communications. Thanks for joining us.

In this episode, we’re joined by a special guest, Paul Hastings. Paul is a podcaster, author, and entrepreneur and has consulted extensively in film marketing and political arenas. And, most importantly for this commentary, he is the host of Compelled, a podcast and radio show, which uses gripping immersive storytelling to bring Christian testimonies to life.

The Compelled podcast and radio program reaches 500,000 listeners weekly, so he’s been around the block when it comes to podcasting. He has also produced several award-winning short films and commercials, his work has been featured by Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk World Magazine, the Gospel Coalition, American Family Association, Christianity Today, the Blaze, CBN News, and WND and more. Paul and his wife and their, yes, four children live near Austin, Texas. Paul, welcome.

Paul: Thanks for having me on the show, I’m glad to be here.

Sherri: Our theme for today is: Take It or Leave It? Is producing a podcast necessary for nonprofits and ministries in today’s digital world?

You know, we put this one in as a question because everybody feels like they need to jump on the bandwagon and don’t realize that you have to have something worth listening to and what the ins and outs are, and that’s why we’ve asked Paul to join us because he’s been down the road on this and has done it and has been successful at it, and can address these as well. So let’s start with asking you: what criteria do you believe nonprofits and ministries should use if they wanna take the opportunity and produce a podcast?

Paul: As a ministry, as you’re pondering out should you start a podcast or should you not, the first question you wanna ask yourself is, is this on mission? Does my actual ministry have some kind of perspective that we could bring forth either to our donors or to our client base that we are serving? Is there something that we can bring to them that is, has to be two things: One, it has to be a unique perspective that other people are not fulfilling. Number two, you have to be able to present it in a compelling way. And if you’re not able to do both of those things at the same time, then I have bad news for you, you should not take that opportunity because your podcast is gonna end up in the podcast graveyard.

Sherri: Couldn’t agree with you more in the sense, can you do this? I remember one of our clients, we were actually creating a radio program, which by the way, turns into a podcast, right? They kind of synonymous with each other. And we were producing a radio program and one of these great opportunities that they had, it was a gentleman who had this incredible story and we wanted him on the program.

And we were doing this in a professional sound studio. And we were thrilled because this guy was, first of all, an incredible executive, very well known, just unbelievably passionate. And then we got him in the studio in front of a mic and he fell apart. And all of a sudden he was talking monotone all the way through it. We were stunned. It’s like, how does this guy get up live in front of people and literally own the room?

He got in front of a mic and just literally fell apart. He could not do it. And we find this all the time too. And he goes, oh, let’s do a podcast. It’s more than just buying a mic. It has to do too, do you know how to do this? Do you know how to write just a basic script so you can make sure you start getting some continuity in it?

It sounds a lot easier than it is to actually do, and there’s some giftedness that’s involved in it. You really have to be able to command your voice or the people and it goes a step further. And who’s gonna be your host? Most of the time they go, “Oh, it’s gotta be the executive director or the senior pastor.” And then you hear it and you just go, “Well, not so much.”You might wanna see if you can’t find somebody who’s actually got that giftedness.

I appreciate very much too, Paul, that you just said you had to go, “What kind of assets do we have to be able to bring to the table? Is that something that you can actually do?” Or “Who’s gonna be the person that’s going to be your voice?” Because people will make value judgements based on how someone sounds and how they talk and, frankly, you can only edit so much. There’s a point where you can’t cover all sins, so to speak. You’ve really gotta make sure you’ve got some capacity as well.

Paul: That’s right. AI has not reached that point yet. Being able to doctor up all our voices quite yet.

Sherri: Other things that you would recommend for people to check off and be confident about before they proceed in the sense of their capacities and what they’re actually able to do versus what they hope to do?

Paul: I can’t overemphasize how important it is that you have a unique perspective to offer. Because if you’re simply just reiterating something that other podcasts are already iterating, then there’s no need for your podcast to exist. And frankly, because the other podcasts already exist, they have preexisting audiences, you’re not gonna have any traction. You might have a handful of listeners who might tune in simply outta courtesy or because they personally know you, if there’s nothing unique that you can offer, trust me, there is a multitude of other podcasts for consumers out there to listen to.

And when they have choices, they’re gonna simply gravitate to the podcasts that are the most pleasing to listen to or that have the most unique perspectives or that are produced in the best ways. And so then the second point that I mentioned also is how you present something in a compelling way. Because even if you have the most unique takeaways, if you present everything sounding like you are bored outta your mind, or your CEO is the host of the podcast but he’s a terrible presenter, well, guess what? People don’t wanna listen to that either.

I would challenge anyone listening to this right now, if they think through what are the podcasts that they choose to consume out of joy, right? That they are choosing to listen to because they wanna listen to. They’re gravitating to the things that are unique and compelling at the same time.

The other thing I’d toss out here also is, think about the price to create a podcast versus the price of creating a video. And you would be surprised perhaps, to realize that actually, depending on the type of podcast and the type of video, a general rule of thumb, at least from our experience, was to create a really highly produced podcast episode is about 10 times less than the equivalent cost is to create a highly produced video piece of content for the exact same length. And, obviously, they can have different objectives. You’re not really gonna encounter a three minute podcast episode where you will encounter a three minute video. So they have different objectives. But if you’re trying to convey something in long form format, you wanna be continually coming back to your listeners and pressing upon them some particular idea or reminding them of your authority in this particular domain or sphere or the work that you’re doing. A podcast is going to be the perfect vehicle for you to do that through.

Sherri: Well, and I think too, just from the good old fashioned human standpoint, most people are happy to talk to you, but they’re not always happy to let you film them. And especially if we’re talking about faith-based, which of course is where our emphasis and our sweet spot is, that if you’re working with people and engaging them around the world, you’ve got limitations there. And when you’re working with audio, it gives you a greater capacity to go global then if you’re working with needing to have the visuals that go along with it as well.

So we would have to agree with you too in that regard. It is, from a budget standpoint, far more economical to be able to do a podcast, but that should not be the only reason you think you’re qualified because there’s some things, like you said, producing a quality podcast, even understanding what kind of editing applications and things that you’re going to need to be able to do that well, presentation is everything, and that’s how people will perceive your brand of ministry or nonprofit as well. You can’t do something that is excellent.

And I think the other thing that you shared is important too, is that to make it uniquely qualified for yourself is one of the criteria we throw in with that is, are you going to be able to leave people better than you found them? And that means they’ve learned something, that it’s inspired them to think about something else. And typically when it’s something that you uniquely are really qualified at or you’ve been uniquely gifted at, that’s what makes them come back.

Paul: I totally agree with you, Sherri. And one of the things that we discovered when we were first starting Compelled is every episode that we would create before we would publish it, we would actually send it to about 20 beta listers ahead of time. We would send it out to them, 20 people who would then listen to it and then give us feedback and say, “Hey, this part here was boring.” In fact, I would have a handful of questions I would always ask, and the questions assumed that there was a part that must be boring. “What is the part that we must cut out?” And then I also ask another question like, “Hey, we are gonna cut a lot out of this episode, but what are the parts that you definitely want us to keep in there?”

And so just those two questions right there. Like, “Hey, we need to cut out five minutes. What do you think we should cut out?” And then, “Hey, as we’re cutting out, what do you wanna make sure that we leave in?” And by just asking those simple questions, we would look for patterns of what people were saying. And if several people came back and said, “Oh, this part was boring,” or “I started to zone out,” or “This part was confusing”, well that was like a red flag to us right away. Like, okay, cut that out right away.

And then we also had a philosophy as we were editing the episodes together that shorter is better. If we could cut something out and the podcast episode would still make sense, that was probably the right move to make. Because we needed to make the assumption from the beginning that we were probably being too verbose in what we were communicating. And by doing those simple actions, I believe we made a much stronger product.

And to your point, Sherri, we were trying to make something that every time a listener tuned in, they were gonna walk away wishing that there was more, instead of regretting that they wasted their time listening to the episode and wished it had been shorter.

Sherri: Right? The adageof “less is more” is relevant. And it’s really hard when you’re doing the production yourself. And I know that this is true again, of the ministries that we serve, they’re so often overwhelmed and thrilled with what God is doing through their ministry and in their everyday work that what excites them and thrills them.

You have to remember, you’re now talking to someone else and you’re sharing it with someone else. Is that going to be the same for them? And are you presenting it in a way that is going to, which is why we love Compelled, what’s gonna compel them to go, “yeah, that’s me too”. And I do relate to that. And that is a great story. It’s easy to be enthralled with your own take and your own story, but you’ve gotta remember that you’re sharing this story. And the purpose of a podcast is to share it.

One of the other things that we say, number two on our list. First, it’s gotta be missional. Number two, who’s your audience? Who do you think you’re talking to? And you gotta remember when you’re producing it, as you know, you’re talking to people, they’re listening to you, real live human beings. So who is your audience? And as an ad agency, that’s where we always start. Who are we talking to? How do we reach those? You know, as a professional agency, we’re the ones that say, here’s all the different channels you can use to reach that specific audience group. Here’s how you can talk to them.

But if you don’t start with the production of your podcast of saying who you think you’re gonna talk to, who is your audience? It’s real easy to get so lost in the weeds and really not have a goal because your audience is gonna take you to what your goals are gonna be outta your podcast as well.

So, that’s what you think that they should consider to take the opportunity. Give us some insight from your perspective: when should they leave the opportunity of producing a podcast? What, to you, are the red flags where you go, “you know, lots of other ways that you can communicate that other than a podcast?” What would you share to tell them, “Hey, podcasts are maybe an opportunity you should not consider and just leave it alone.”

Paul: First off, I would say, again, there’s a large number of podcasts out there. Last count I heard it was about 4.6 million podcasts are currently out there for people to consume. But the vast majority of those are no longer being published because there’s this epic graveyard of podcasts that were started with great intentions, but are left to die.

And so I have a couple observations. I love to share maybe six particular points, what I think are key indicators that your podcast is also going to end up in the podcast graveyard. Let me save you time. I’m gonna mention these six things. And if you think any of these things are true, then don’t pursue a podcast or look for a way to resolve this before you launch your podcast.

The first thing is, if you’re making a podcast simply for the sake of missing out, maybe you’ve got a board member who’s just pressing like, “Oh guys, we gotta have a podcast.”

Sherri: It’s always a board member, isn’t it?

Paul: Exactly! Because you as the executive director, have this weird feeling that you’ve gotta please the board member or whatever, but you don’t have a particular vision for it. And maybe your board member has this particular vision for it, but guess what? Your board member is not the one making the podcast. You are the one who’s gonna make the podcast. And if you don’t have the vision for it, you shouldn’t do it.

I’ve said this so many times, but I’m gonna say it again. Consumers have choices. And it’s true, maybe you might be able to have this great big launch, you might be able to spend a ton of money advertising your podcast, and you might be able to get a lot of people to tune in one time, right? An infinite amount of money can get people to try out one episode. You know, a killer ad could make people listen to one episode of your podcast.

But then at that point, will people come back for more episodes? And at that point, it’s gotta be all about the show. Was the show itself compelling? Was it presented in a compelling way? And did it have a unique perspective that made people think and wonder?

And if you can’t do that, so again, this is my big red flag. Red flag number one: if you’re making a podcast simply for the sake of missing out, don’t do it. Red flag number two: if you don’t listen to podcasts as a consumer yourself, you probably should not be making a podcast.

And when I say this, you know, if you’re the executive director and you’re listening to this, let’s say that your board has said “No, you need to make one.” Well then look around in your staff and find who, if anybody, on the team listens to podcasts. Well then they’re gonna become the podcast hero. But you as the executive director, you need to actually start changing your media habits. If you are going to make a podcast, you need to consume podcasts as a consumer yourself.

Here’s a great analogy: if you’re someone who does not like to read, you don’t read books, and you have no intention of reading books, should you really become an author? Same thing with a movie, right? If you don’t watch movies, you don’t enjoy movies, but then you’re tasked with making a feature film and being their director, your movie’s gonna be a flop. No one’s gonna watch that thing. ’cause it’s gonna be horrible, right?

So same thing about a podcast. If you have the audacity to believe like, “Oh,” you know, “we’ve got money, we’ve got a whatever.” But you don’t actually consume and listen to podcasts yourself. “Oh, how hard can it be? It’s just talking heads.” No, it’s a lot more than that, it’s so much more than that. It’s like the same thing about someone sending out about writing a book. “Oh, how hard can it be? It’s just writing.” No, that’s arrogance. That’s massive arrogance. So you need to listen to podcasts. I recommend that people listen if they’re thinking seriously considering like, should we start a podcast?

Or, what I recommend is that people go and sample at least 15 different shows. Just listen to a full episode of 15 different shows to just kind of get a feel like, okay, this is what it’s like, you know, this is what it is. And you’ll start to notice things or patterns. I would just recommend doing that. So be a person who consumes podcasts.

Me personally, I’m constantly sampling podcasts and understanding what are they doing. Oh, that was really interesting entry. And you know, I had never heard that technique before. I’m always sampling and consuming these and trying to understand how I could do this better.

Sherri: Well, you’re becoming a student. You’re becoming a student of it. And that just like you would not put someone up in front of your church as the senior pastor to preach who has never done it and has no experience and has not studied it and is not a student of it, it’s the same thing.

Paul: Third red flag I’d say is, if you’re gonna be posting your podcast on an inconsistent schedule. So if you know as a team, like, “Hey, we can only do this sort of like sporadically,” I would  rethink things and say, okay, can we batch create a whole bunch of content and then we’ll release it as a limited season? Because the worst thing that you want as a consumer, is a consumer knowing like, well, an episode comes out here, but then the next one might be, I don’t know, three weeks from now. The next one might be two months from now, and the next one like a week later. That’s very inconsistent. As consumers, they’re not gonna enjoy that, and they’re gonna simply find other things to listen to, and then they’re gonna forget that you’re show even exists. So you’ve gotta be able to post consistently. And if you can’t create consistently, that’s okay. You need to create everything upfront ahead of time and then release on a consistent basis just for a limited season.

The fourth thing is being inconsistent about your topic. So if you’re thinking to yourself, “well, you know what? So and so famous celebrity person, they have a podcast and they talk about whatever random thing they wanna talk, and they’re talking about sports and blah blah”. Well, guess what? You’re not a celebrity person. You’re not a famous person. The reason people tune in is because the celebrity is the consistent thing for them. But people are not tuning into your show because you’re a celebrity, right? They wanna tune into your show because of what you’re gonna be talking about every single week. They wanna hear the same exact content. And people will self-identify. If they’re not really into ministry for the homeless, they’re not gonna listen to your podcast if it’s about ministry for the homeless. And that’s okay. That’s okay. So don’t be talking about sports. If your ministry is all about ministry to the homeless, then make sure your podcast is about ministry to the homeless and only talk about ministry to the homeless. And don’t be throwing in these personal aside, “oh, this week I was cooking,” unless there’s some kind of greater good that this connects you.

Sherri: You have to remember who your audience is.

Paul: Last two red flags. Red flag number five is your team needs to have a specific point person for this podcast. So they’ll be like, okay, it’s all three of us, all four of us, whatever. And this is really true of any initiative, not just podcasts. Any initiative that you have in any company or any ministry, someone has to be the point person at the end of the day, the buck stops with them. They are the reason the episode did not get out and they need to know that ahead of time. You are the reason. And it’s up to you to make sure this thing gets off the ground or gets out the door. There needs to be a single point person. Can that point person work with other people? Of course. But one person at the end of the day needs to make the final decisions.

And finally, the sixth point, and related to that, is that particular point person must have the bandwidth. If you’re, you know, you’re the executive director or you’re the marketing guru whatever on the team, and you are now the point person and you’re “okay, I should do this. I am the point person, I’ve got the vision.” But if you do not have the bandwidth for it, well then think about is that really gonna work out? Of course not, right?

And that can lead to another question. How, how much time do you think it’s gonna take you to make this podcast? I’ll give you a rough rule of thumb to determine if you have the bandwidth or not. Rough rule of thumb is you sit down, you take out a piece of paper and you kind of think through, okay, how much time am I gonna need to allocate for a recording? Am I gonna need to allocate for editing, for research, preparing for the interviews? If we’re doing interviews or writing time, how much time was that really gonna take? Write down that number.

Maybe it’s like eight hours for an episode, 10 hours for an episode. Write that number down and then multiply by three. That’s the honest truth. It’s gonna take you around three times more than you really think it is gonna be in your best case scenario. Because in your best case scenario, yeah, maybe it really will take only that eight or 10 hours. But when you’re first starting a podcast, you are not in your best case scenario. You are in your very worst case scenario. You will never be a worst podcaster than you are right now, this moment, right? You are the worst podcaster you will ever be. So, when you wrote down those numbers, thinking how much time it was gonna take, that was your kind of human nature thinking like that’s the best it’s gonna be. That is the best it’s gonna be. But right now, in your worst, it’s gonna be three times worse than what you think it is. And I’m saying that based on my personal experience as well as others that I’ve helped through with podcasting. Because that’s a huge mistake so many people make. I’ve seen so many folks launch their podcast and then it withered and died because they didn’t have the time bandwidth to commit to that.

Sherri: And it does take that much time. For the most part, the podcasts that we’ve produced for clients, you make it look so easy that, that they’re going, “oh, well, that’s not just not a big deal.” And you go, “that just took us 30 hours.” To be able to accomplish all that and make it look easy takes a lot of time. But I agree with you. And again, if you’re using good formulas for your production, that alone, that framework can make a huge difference. So that you can be consistent. So when someone hears it, they go, “oh, I hear their music. Oh, that’s their host. I know what their call to action is gonna be, ‘Hey, join us next week’.” Or like you said, you better have a next week. If you’re gonna tell them to join you next week, or go onto our website and get some more information, what’s your call to action gonna be?

How does it start? How does it stop? It’s even some of those old basics that we’ve all grown up with, like why you use jingles in commercials. And it’s because it’s a hook. Your mind remembers it. And that can be exactly the same thing that you’ve got with your podcast. So yeah, it does take a lot of time to make it look really easy. And you go, “oh, it’s only 20 minutes”. And we go, “well take 20 minutes and understand that every word was listened to again. Every breath, every ‘um’ that was in there. All of that different stuff that just takes a lot of time.”

And you know, you mentioned it earlier, but I think it’s absolutely worth repeating, is the cost. Because most of the folks we’re working with are faith-based organizations. A good deal of the team are volunteers. And we hear this all the time, and it breaks our heart when they go, “oh, don’t worry about what it costs. They’re volunteers, it doesn’t cost anything.” And you go, that volunteer’s time is as valuable to them as their talent and their treasure. And so really what does it cost? Just because a volunteer is giving their time to do it does not mean, or a studio allows someone to come and record and they give it to them as a gift, an in kind gift of studio time. All of those different things have absolute value because if one of them stops and they’re not gonna donate it anymore, all of a sudden you’re in the middle of producing podcasts.

And so really understanding what goes into it and how much time is it, again, time, talent, and treasure. Because all three components of it are active, well in anything that you’re producing, but certainly it’s applicable in podcasting.

Let’s just say, all systems are go and everything. You’re getting green lights on absolutely everything. You’re confident about it. You go into production, you’re producing it. We find a lot of times if folks get the cart before the horse, they don’t look at the end run of how are you gonna distribute it? How are you gonna promote it? Because if you think putting the podcast together was difficult or was going to require a lot of resources, you’ve only gotten started. And if you haven’t thought about the end run on that, you could end up with the world’s best podcast and absolutely no resources or capacity or knowledge of how do you take that show on the road? Are you going to just host it on your own website? Are you gonna use a hosting network promotion? Like you said, people are not gonna just stumble onto it and go, “oh, I found this amazing.”

Don’t we wish? That would just be, you know, extraordinary. Unless you’re a celebrity. And I mean, certainly they’ve got that kind of stuff where somebody’s gonna follow ’em just because, but they’ve already got the stage, they’ve already got the audience and they’re able to promote all the time. But if you are a nonprofit, faith-based organization, you just don’t have that kind of promotional stage. So that’s the other thing that we know is really important. And I know that that’s also been part of the focus that you’ve had as well. Now what are you gonna do with it? Where do you take it? How do you keep it there? Do you find other people to come alongside and partner it? Part of that process is if all systems are go, where can you take it and how do you do that?

Paul: A couple thoughts there. You know, when we first started our podcast Compelled, I guess that was almost eight years ago when we first launched. And so over the years I’ve kind of found things that worked and things that didn’t work. We tried a lot of different experiments like, say, how could we help people find our show? So we did various things, either buying ad space or trading for ad space. We bought or traded for email newsletters, so there might be an email newsletter going out. That was someone that we knew and we’d have a promotion for Compelled in there. We tried advertising on other podcasts, we tried advertising in podcast apps. The app itself, we tried advertising in in-person events, a whole bunch of different things.

And by and large, what we discovered was interesting because first off, only about half of American consumers actually consume podcasts in the first place. So if you buy ad space in someone’s email newsletter, and again, every email newsletters gonna be different, but roughly speaking about half of the people opening up that email newsletter do not listen to podcasts. And so they may hear about your podcast, that might be intriguing, you might have a really intriguing tagline, but if they don’t listen to podcasts already, they’re gonna be very, very, very reticent to clicking something and diving into a brand new experience.

Because for whatever reasons in life, they’ve already made these kind of subtle subliminal decisions not to be a podcast consumer. I don’t know why that is, and they don’t know about why that is. It was a subconscious decision. But your podcast, I can guarantee you, is not going to become the reason why now they’re gonna suddenly start listening to podcasts, right? And so again, if you buy an email newsletter blast or you buy ad space on someone’s website, about half of the people seeing that, total waste of money, complete waste of money. So don’t do that. And that was what we discovered also. So what we did discover though, was that if you wanted to get someone to listen to your podcast, you should probably go to where they are already listening already. Find someone that’s already listening to a podcast. So if you buy Ad Space on another podcast, that’s actually the best place to advertise.

Sherri: That’s where your audience is. Exactly.

Paul: That’s where your audience is.

Sherri: So, in closing, what would you really want to share with these faith-based nonprofits who are wondering whether or not they should take or leave the opportunity of creating a podcast?

Paul: I would say deeply consider, first off, does your podcast need to exist? Because if there are other podcasts already out there filling in X, Y, Z, then your podcast, you don’t wanna launch that podcast. You don’t need to be another X, Y, Z. So either don’t launch a podcast or go back to the drawing board and rethink what can we do? What can we share uniquely? It’s a unique perspective, it’s a unique audience, it’s a unique group of stories or collection of experiences that we can share through audio that people have not heard before. Can we share a unique perspective on this and can we do it in a compelling way? And if we can do both of those things, that’s what you should make your podcast about. But if you can’t do that, then don’t. Don’t create another podcast that’s already out there. There’s no need for that. You’ll end up in the podcast graveyard.

Sherri: It’s our hope and prayer that we’ve provided some commentary in this episode that can provide you with some insight into whether your organization, ministry, or church should create a podcast. Paul, thanks so much for joining us for this Commentary. You can find out how to connect with Paul in his various ministries on this Commentary’s page on our website. And if you’d like to learn how you can produce a purposeful podcast, we have a cahoots training course for that. Check it out on our website at CahootsCommunications.com. Thanks for listening.