Today we have some lessons from fast food that apply to podcasting, and I talk about zagging when everyone is zigging,

Bernie's Greatest Hits

1:58 My cat is pretty popular on this show as he chimes in all the time. When I went to Pittsburgh last week apparently he got a record deal. He's releasing "Bernie sings the hits"

Someone Is Doing a Show Like Mine - So I Didn't Start my Show

3:07

One of the most frustrating parts of being a consultant is seeing someone who has the right stuff to create a podcast, but they are more skilled at finding reasons not to press record than actually pressing record. Today I have two points I want to make

Someone will come to me and say, “I want to do a podcast about ______” but someone is already doing a show like that. The first thing I say is to go to iTunes and see when their last episode was published. Many times the person has already hung up their microphone.

But what if they haven’t?

Let’s look at McDonald’s. Here are some interesting facts (well facts according to Wikipedia). McDonald’s was not the first hamburger chain. A&W was first in 1919 followed by White Castle in 1921. McDonald’s didn’t come about until 1940.

Fun facts:

McDonald’s started as a barbecue joint. They found that hamburgers were more profitable. So they started in one direction, and then followed what their audience wanted. I always say your podcast is a recipe not a statue. You can change it any time you want.

White Castle developed the supply chain and automation to have a nationwide food chain way before McDonald’s did. But when McDonald’s did, they didn’t recreate the wheel. They looked at what others were doing, and borrowed the best, and tweaked the rest.

Now when burger king came along in 1953 did they say, “I would open a restaurant but someone else is doing “Assembly line” hamburgers? No. They didn’t recreate the wheel, and they tweaked it (adding flame broiling and “have it your way” at Burger King).

What is the one thing that is common here? Well in the US apparently we can’t get enough of hamburgers. If you throw some meat on a bun and squirt some ketchup on it, we will eat it. In America I think if you put enough ketchup on anything we will eat it.

They saw their competition and looked at ways to innovate. Breakfast was introduced. Bigger hamburgers like the Big Mac were introduced in 1967. Later the innovation of the drive through window.

So if someone is doing a show like yours, WHO CARES! If you think it will be fun, if you think people will enjoy it, DO IT. The WORST thing you can do for yourself in podcasting is COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS.

Podcasting is like golf, while there is competition, you are really only competing against yourself.

Now to my second point, and this builds on innovation. Todd Cochrane recently launched a new Podcast Legends show and it is interviewing podcast pioneers (people from 2004 - sorry Chris Hardwick is not a Pioneer) and one of the things I forgot about (I started in 2005) was the WHACKY shows that just made you go WHOA!?!

Yeast Radio was by Madge Weinstein and was one of the most subscribed to podcast in 2005. Madge would say outrageous things about the government, about her hygiene (she was often bloated), and in general said things often people only think. She was an angry, jewish, fat, Lesbian. There was one other small twist.

Madge was a dude (Richard Bluestein ).

One other thing, if you could handle the language, Madge was pretty darn funny. Madge was the queen of tuning in because you didn’t know what to expect.

The really cool thing was there was NO WAY that this would EVER be on radio or TV. It’s kind of what made podcasting special, unique, and intimate. Madge is still going strong at...

School of Podcasting - Plan, Launch, Grow and Monetize Your Podcast

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