AP 1156: How Do I Create a Podcast with a Friend as a Co-Host (But Make Sure it Works)?

AP 1156: How Do I Create a Podcast with a Friend as a Co-Host (But Make Sure it Works)?

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1156 of AskPat 2.0. What you're about to listen to is a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you, so consider this like a free coaching session. Except today, we're talking with Marjie Kemper, who is a mixed media artist, and she's interested in starting a podcast, but not just doing it on her own. She wants to do it with another person in the same space as her. However, there's a lot to consider when it comes to starting a podcast with another person, more than just scheduling and making sure you're both committed to it. There's a lot of things when you both have different products to offer. Who owns the email list? Who might you send people to and where? There's a lot to talk about. That's exactly what we're going to talk about today, talking about all the things that might happen so we can get things on paper and make it work. Here she is, Marjie Kemper from MarjieKemper.com. That's MarjieKemper.com. Here we go.

Marjie, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thank you so much for coming in today.

Marjie Kemper:
Thank you so much for the opportunity, Pat.

Pat:
I'm excited to help out, but first, and I'm sure the audience would love to know too, tell us about yourself, Marjie, and what it is that you do.

Marjie:
Sure. I live in New York and I'm a mixed media artist. I've been teaching classes online and nationwide for many years, but I switched this year to a membership model. With that, I'm looking into starting a podcast.

Pat:
Very cool. Exciting. Tell us, when did you get online and what's it been like to serve this worldwide audience through mixed media?

Marjie:
Well, I started blogging in 2011, and back then there were chat rooms and strange places to connect with people. I would participate in a lot of online art challenges where I would upload a project and participate in whatever manufacturer was having a contest basically. It led to starting the blog and that led to people saying, oh, this is good. I'd like to learn how to do this. I approached a couple of local stores, and at that time it was rubber stamp stores in Connecticut and Manhattan. I taught that way for a few years, and then I started traveling and got to teach at some big conventions and retreats. It just sort of skyrocketed. Then I was picked up by a company called Craftsy. They do probably over a thousand craft and cooking classes. That just kind of opened up the whole world to wow, I can reach so many more people doing it online. That was what I got very excited about.

Pat:
That's so incredible. What would you say, of all the different kinds of art that you do, would be your specialty? If we could only learn one type of art from you, what would it be?

Marjie:
It would be art journaling. It's working in a book. Sometimes people include words and sometimes it's just visual. It's usually a lot of different paints and inks and stencils and a lot of layers of colors. I'm kind of known for the blending of color. People like taking classes in that in particular because they get challenged on not making mud, so to speak.

Pat:
Yeah, right. Everything just turns to brown sometimes when you mix all these colors together, at least when my kids paint, because it looks good at the start and then they keep going. I tell them, just stop. They're like, no, more paint. Anyway, that's super cool. Did you happen to catch one of the latest episodes of the Smart Passive Income podcast with Sam and Joe about their mom and how she's helping people with stitching? It's a different form of artwork, but they built a membership site too. Did you happen to catch that one?

Marjie:
I didn't hear that one. I'll be sure to go back and listen.

Pat:
Cool. That might help with some membership related stuff. How long have you had your membership site for, and what's it like in there?

Marjie:
It's great. I've had it since May. I have about 300 people and they have helped inform how I'm going with it. I've tweaked one big part, which was our monthly Zoom call. At first it was very social, and then I realized they wanted more instruction and more demonstration from me, so now it's pretty - it's not formal, but it's more structured, whereas in the first 15 minutes I'll demonstrate something and we have a theme for the month. Then I open it up and they know ahead of time, they can ask questions in the Facebook group or they can ask them live on the call. That has been fantastic. It's listening to them and asking for their feedback, which is what you always talk about, ask what people want. I really love this membership model. I can't see going back to one-off classes after doing it, because I get to know everyone with that recurring contact. It's great.

Pat:
I love it. Well, great job. Tell us where to go to find it. What's the URL? How can we find your stuff?

Marjie:
Sure. It's Learning.MarjieKemper.com.

Pat:
Perfect. We'll have the links and all that stuff available and I'll make sure it's clear where people can go after listening to this show, but let's dig in. I'd love to know more about what you might need help with. You had said a key word that always perks my ears, and that's the word podcast. Is that in the realm of what we're going to talk about?

Marjie:
I would love to. In the process of learning how to do the membership site, I reconnected with someone who I knew from back in that early 2000 time with the chat rooms. She also has a membership site, and so we have connected in the last six months and we're talking regularly and Zooming regularly. We love talking about art. She serves a different community. Hers is a bookbinding group. We have similar audiences, but we teach different things, and we both love all the behind the scenes things related to running a business, the email marketing and all of those kinds of things. We thought, wouldn't it be fun to get together and have these conversations recorded, make it a podcast, and talk about the things that excite us? For us, it's the creativity, the community, and the business side. That's what we're looking to do in quarter one of next year. One of the things that I was stuck on, and the reason I applied to you, is with two different people having different offers, will that get too confusing on a podcast?

Pat:
It can be. It can be for sure, but I think it's really important that we have a discussion with your co-host now about what the rules are going to be, or what the rhythm and concert is going to be between the two brands. That's not to say don't do this because it does add complication, but at the same time, when it's at least thought about ahead of time, then we can start to imagine and start having discussions now, before it starts to become a, well, I didn't know we were allowed to do that; okay, well then I'm going to do this. Then it starts to not go so well. You're having conversations already. This could be a topic of an upcoming conversation. What I would do is just pretend like you're building it now. I think that coming up with episode ideas now can help you prepare, and also just considering, okay, when we want to pitch our things, what's that going to be like? I don't know. What's comfortable for you? What's comfortable for you, right?

I can't tell you exactly what to do because you guys have a relationship and I'm on the outside, but I can just tell you that having those conversations early on is going to be really key. Coming up with all the different scenarios is going to be really key, much like when people form some sort of partnership in a business, right? What happens if a person wants to leave the business? That's best to be talked about up front, and I would have both of you talk about that too. What if one of you gets tired of the podcast? Are you going to be okay with that, or are you going to be upset at the person? Okay, let's talk about these things now. It's just like any relationship, right? You just want to make sure we talk about it up front. That's definitely something I would recommend.

I don't know about you, and you can tell me how you feel, but sometimes people get very scared to talk about these things. How are you feeling in terms of, okay, well, let's actually start planning and considering the scenarios and talk about what might happen. There's a lot of great, exciting things that can happen with having a co-host. It's a lot of fun, and we'll talk about some of those benefits in a minute, but sometimes you might worry about some things. Are there any particular things that you're just, well, I'm not sure about this, or you might be a little worried about?

Marjie:
Yes. I think one of the things that concerns us is sharing an employee. We've talked about sharing expenses, but we will be outsourcing some of the work-related to the behind the scenes post-production work. We're keeping track of expenses. We've already incurred some as we're getting ready, but there's that whole thing about who communicates with the person, and just sharing the workload, especially after we've rekindled this friendship. I really want everything to be spot on, and would hate to have some of the nitty gritty that's part of business get between us. I think that's a big concern.

Pat:
Yeah. I mean, that's very important to think about. Imagine you're growing an email list. Who owns that list? Who is allowed to send emails to that list? Again, these are rules that have to be figured out ahead of time and ideally put on paper, just so it's clear and it's known and should something go crazy later down the road, which I hope doesn't, you at least have some proof on this is what we discussed, this is what we talked about. Then having a clause in there that says whenever there's something that we hadn't talked about that happens, we're going to formally meet about it and discuss it and come to an agreement with both parties in mind and everybody's best interest at heart.

In terms of expenses, I definitely think that if there's sort of a 50-50 split on things, both parties understanding what needs to be done and for what, I think the idea of ... you could, if you wanted to, make it literally a separate business. That, on the tail end, could clean things up, right? Here's a separate business. We both put the same equal amount of money into it, or now the business expenses are from the business itself, and this gets treated like something separate, but that does also add a lot more costs and expense. It can become maybe too formalized, and it doesn't become fun anymore sometimes when it's done that way. There has to be definitely a balance.

The same thing happened with me and my partner, Caleb, on our little invention, the SwitchPod. Again, it was just communication, literally a formalized meeting where it was like, okay, who's going to do what? Who's going to answer questions when they come in? Then Caleb's like, okay, that'll be me. Okay, well, who's going to be in charge of the Amazon store? Okay, well, I'll own that since you're owning that other hard part. Okay. Then it's just going down the list.

Then a month goes by and something new comes up or like, hey, we hadn't discussed this. Okay, well, I'll volunteer and do that. Or, hey, if you wanted to do that, I'll pick up this instead. Or the next time this happens, I'll get it. It's going to be hard to predict everything that can happen, but again, just having a understanding from both sides of we're going to figure this out together, and remembering why you're doing this is going to be important too. Sometimes when we partner with somebody like that, we forget about what got us excited about it in the first place. I think that if we could always tie that back into these conversations, or when you meet on your podcast and chat, as long as you're having fun and you're still enjoying it, then that's what's most important.

Marjie:
Absolutely. I think one of the things that I picked up from one of your prior episodes was you were coaching someone who was a little bit nervous about getting started. You said to her, "it could be a series." We've been thinking of it that way. We could just do 13 episodes, and then if that works out well, we do another 13, and we've done half the year. It doesn't have to be that forever commitment to it. We can still keep the fun and the excitement of it. If it doesn't work out, we had an experiment and that's great.

Pat:
Exactly. I love that. Maybe more of a seasonal approach, right? Season one, 13 episodes, you record it, you love it, you have fun. You work out all the kinks, you make a bunch of mistakes. You figure out the thing you forgot to talk about and then come together and decide, all right, can we do this on the second half of the year like we did the first half of the year, or however often you want to do that. I think that's really smart. For the audience's purpose, let's keep them informed up front that there is seasonality. Let them know that, hey, we're going to go 13 episodes. Whether you do a Netflix approach and come out with all of them at the same time, which I actually wouldn't recommend, but you could still let people know, hey, we're going to go weekly until this date. We're going to have a big, final episode to wrap all this together, so make sure you hit subscribe now. You lead into it and you get people excited.

Then the big finale, and then, of course, making sure people know when the next one might be coming, Hey, we're going to work together to improve the show. We'll let you know in between seasons what's happening. You might come out with, after you decide to do it again, an episode that says, hey guys, we've come together and here's what's happening next month when the next season comes out. We just wanted to give you a little teaser for it. Or you can just say, do you know what? We're taking a pause for now, but we appreciate your feedback and we'll come back when we can. We'll let you know. That way you have options.

Marjie:
I love that. That sounds great. Can I ask your opinion about the content, about the three different categories we're thinking of? These are the things that we talk about all the time. It's the creativity and the community, and that ties into both of our memberships. With that, we could have members on occasionally as guests to interview and that sort of thing, but then that business part of it, I feel like it's such a limited audience. It's our kind of people, right? It's the people who juggle all these different things. I think it's okay as part of it, and I think other people who are not business owners but who are into art would be interested. But I wonder if we're stretching too much with the three categories.

Pat:
What I would recommend is in your first season, have an episode about that and be honest and ask if this is something they want to learn more of for the audiences that are there. Instead of just guessing, we're not going to know until you do it. I just say, do it, do it well, do it in the way you want to, and then just gauge what the reaction is going to be and see what it's like. You might find that you're going to have a majority of the people say, do you know what? That's not really why we're here and we want more of this. Okay, great. You set it up without expectation that this was going to be, again, a forever thing, and you're learning and growing as you go, just like you're learning in your community and your audience is offering you feedback in the same way. I would have that same sort of approach.

On the other hand, you might find that people didn't know they wanted this information, and they're going to want more, in which case you can go the opposite way. Maybe it might not fit perfectly in there, but maybe you have a separate bonus series or something in the membership specifically for people, or something different just for those people. You could begin to understand the different pockets of people, but when your podcast comes out, you're not going to really know. Just go full on as if it was going to be there in the way that you would want to do it so you can get actual, real feedback on it.

Marjie:
Okay. That sounds great.

Pat:
What's the name of the show going to be? I'm curious.

Marjie:
It's called Real Talk about Creativity.

Pat:
Nice. I love it. And your co-host's name?

Marjie:
Her name is Ali Manning. Her specialty is vintage bookbinding. She teaches all kinds of bookbinding techniques.

Pat:
You know, I could see a scenario where the podcast is up and you develop these really amazing super fans who are listening to every episode. They love it. Then season two comes out, and at the end of season two, you release a bound book with art supplies, bound from her perspective, art from yours, and you have your own product. I can imagine that happening.

Marjie:
Wow.

Pat:
That just came to mind. I don't want you to get squirrel syndrome and go down that direction too soon, but just wow, there's so many cool things that you can both do together. I think those things compliment each other very well.

Marjie:
That is fascinating. We've talked a lot about different collaborations and possibilities, but I like your big picture thinking. That's what I love about listening to your podcasts. You always come up with something, and people are like, wow.

Pat:
Well, I'm not afraid to share dumb ideas. Honestly, some of the ideas I come up with are absolutely ridiculous, but every once in a while, I can come up with a good one. We don't know if it's going to work or not, and in a very similar way, maybe you can launch it in a controlled manner, just like your podcast, right? Hey, we'll try it and see what happens. Maybe you take a pre-order for it to see if anybody even is interested in it. If not, then no worries, no need to build it. If people are interested, then you can take those next steps too. I love this theme of micro testing. I love this theme of listening and getting feedback. Then also, on top of that, thinking big and seeing what the possibilities might be, all while remaining - having fun and being friends and just enjoying the process along the way.

Marjie:
Sounds terrific. May I ask you one more question?

Pat:
You can ask me as many as you'd like for the next 10 minutes.

Marjie:
Okay. Going back to that whole call to action idea and not overwhelming people: I've heard a couple of people, podcasts like Amy Porterfield will often have "this podcast is sponsored by," and then she'll name one of her courses. Do you feel like that's something where we could insert the idea of our memberships? Maybe we would alternate. I think the main call to action is always subscribe and leave a review, right? For working in our own memberships, maybe we alternate, and one week it's the vintage book club is sponsoring this, and one week it's mixed media art membership group is sponsoring this.

Pat:
Yeah. You can take a couple of different approaches. I would say that within every episode you have at least the subscribe call to action. Just make that a usual thing. It's okay if people have heard it before. People are used to just hearing that and people who are new, you're giving them the right call to action. Subscribe so you can listen to more. The reviews one I would actually save, because maybe every once in a while popping it in there, but there's a lot of friction to go and leave a review for a show. Sometimes asking when a person just subscribes for the first time is a lot to ask for. I often recommend trying to get a more organic approach and also a more direct approach to getting reviews.

My favorite strategy is to, on social media or through my email list, to have people first reply to say what their favorite part about the latest episode was, or had they listened to the latest episode. Then I can reach out to them individually, personally, and then they get a message from the host of the show going, "Hey, thank you for listening. By the way, if you have a quick minute, might you leave a review?" That always gets a much better response, and now I'm not blasting an additional call to action that doesn't actually get a lot when it's broadcasted on the show in that way. Just a little tip for you when collecting reviews later. The more personal route does go a long way, and it feels special to hear from a podcast host. I know, because when I've heard back from hosts that I reach out to, it's always an incredible feeling for sure.

Beyond that, there are some approaches that you can take with the product. Number one, you can take this, hey, this episode is brought to you by, insert name of your own product here, right? That works, and you and your partner could switch back and forth, or you can have episodes that are more toward your spectrum, have that product be featured there. Then maybe other episodes that are more toward your partner's spectrum, maybe the product is more mentioned there. It's not necessarily a ABABAB situation, but maybe it's A for the A episodes and B for the B episodes. You can take that approach.

Here's the third approach that I would take that honestly has worked really well for me and for many other people for promoting things on a podcast: Inviting students or members onto the show and showing off their transformation, making them look like the hero of the story. This is something that's very powerful. Our podcasting platform is a great place to showcase story. When you can combine the transformation, the story, the lessons learned, the experience, the wisdom, whatever it might be from a member of the community, now people from the outside of the community are like, oh my gosh, this is like the caliber of people that are here. Or wow, look at what the membership did for this person and how they went from A to Z with just three months of membership. I want to join now, right?

You can have selling happen without actually selling, because honestly, when you bring your members on and your students on and the success stories come through, they're going to do a way better job of selling your stuff than we ever could, because we're pitching our own stuff. When you have this person come on - and it's not a testimonial. You don't bring them on to say, hey, tell me why my membership is awesome. You bring them on and go, how did you get started with this? What were some of the big struggles that you had? What were the biggest challenges? How did you overcome that?

Naturally through the conversation, your program, your partner's program, or whoever, is going to just come up as the solution, and then everybody on the outside, is like, wow, okay. All the things that I thought about that were doubts are not true because this person is obviously somebody who's just like me. That's how I would approach every once in a while the platform, the podcast. It's not just a platform for you and your co-host, it's also a platform for your members and students as well.

Marjie:
That sounds wonderful. I think, especially now with people being at home for the most part, I'm finding that when they join the community, they are so happy to have art friends. I'm sure it's like that no matter what your niche is, but I've been overwhelmed by how isolated people are feeling, how much this means to them. They're saying things like what you're saying, I would hope that if I had them on the show they would say, about how it's changed their lives to have this be a part of it. That sounds terrific. What do you think about mentioning COVID in general? I mean, this could be going for, unfortunately-

Pat:
Quite a while.

Marjie:
Yeah.

Pat:
Yeah, here in the U.S. at least. I think taking an honest, authentic, and empathetic approach is really the answer. I know some people in the online marketing space who I really don't want to hang out with, who say things like, "yo, this pandemic is crazy. You better do this now, or else it might get even worse. Now's your chance. You can get rich during this time." That's not making me feel good when they talk about it in that way. But it is here, and it is on everybody's mind. If we can share how what we are creating or what we're doing, or the information that we have can actually provide an opportunity or have positive possibilities during this time, then I think it would behoove you to do that. It would actually be irresponsible for you not to share how the solution you have is actually something that could support them during this time.

Very similarly, we launched SPI Pro, our membership community, mid 2020, similar to you and your membership. We've been seeing a lot of the same stuff. Everybody wants to hang out with other weird people like them. We're business entrepreneurs, we're weird, and all these people are now in SPI Pro. Artists often are weird, but hey, we could all be weird together here. Sports people, they don't have sports now, but they're hanging out in other groups and communities online and different places too. That's just what we're creating, and when you step up to create that and facilitate that, that's awesome. I think in regards to COVID, like you said, it's here, it's unfortunate, but let's make the best of it together, right?

Marjie:
I think that's great advice, and it's helpful to acknowledge it. It's not the elephant in the room. We all know it's here. I love what you're saying about the community that we're providing for people.

Pat:
Yeah, and I think empathy is just the big thing. What are people thinking? Let's just have an honest discussion about it. There's some people who have come and said, do you know what? COVID's crazy. I can't afford your courses right now. It's just like, do you know what? These courses aren't going anywhere. Here's some free things that can help you right now and get you going. Maybe down the road, it might make sense. Every once in a while, there's some special circumstances where a person's really having a tough time, and then we might help them out a little bit. In most cases, people do appreciate that. There's no pressure right now, and they obviously have some things to take care of, but we're going to be here when they need us kind of situation. Yeah, I think you're asking all the right questions. I'm really excited, Marjie, for the future of your brand and your business and this partnership that you have. I'm really excited. What's the name of the podcast one more time, just in case it's live at the time people listen to this and they can go check it out.

Marjie:
Yes. It's Real Talk about Creativity.

Pat:
Real Talk about Creativity. Thank you. Then one more time, the URL to your homepage.

Marjie:
It's MarjieKemper.com.

Pat:
MarjieKemper.com. Excellent. Well, this was amazing, Marjie. Thank you so much for coming in today and asking great questions. I hope this helps the listeners too. I'm sure it will. I look forward to connecting with you again to seeing how it all turns out.

Marjie:
Thank you so much, Pat. I really appreciate your time.

Pat:
Yours as well.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that coaching call with Marjie. Again, you can find her and her website, and hopefully her podcast soon, at MarjieKemper.com, Marjie Kemper. I want to thank you again for listening, seriously. We're here at the start of the new year, and I'm just incredibly grateful for you and your time and attention. That means so much to me. If you happen to leave a review, that's just a bonus. You don't have to, but it is very, very valuable. It helps out the show. It helps us out on the team, and it means a lot. Thank you in advance for any reviews that come in. We get them every single week and we appreciate them so, so much. I just can't wait until the next episode, and I hope that you can't either.

We also, this year, if you hadn't heard already, we're going to come up with these Where Are They Now? episodes, which we usually wait till the end of the year to do. We're going to do them at the end of each month, so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss those. You can see the progress that people like Marjie are making when they take action, and hopefully this encourages you to take action. Speaking of taking action, if you'd also like to potentially get coached here on the show here on Ask Pat, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com. You can just click on the application button and send in your info, and I may select you. I might not. There's a lot of people, but it's not going to happen unless you do it. AskPat.com, plus you can listen to and check out the archive of other episodes there too.

I appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming in today. I appreciate you, and we'll talk soon. Peace out. Cheers. Team Flynn for the win. All the good things. I'm just saying all the things I usually say. Anyway, take care. Crush the day, you got it.