Daniel J. Lewis is a Christian; father; podcasting educator, advocate, and innovator; multi-award, Hall of Fame podcaster; host of The Audacity to Podcast, Podgagement inventor, and International Podcast Day cofounder.

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Guest Resources

Podgagement – Supercharge Your Podcast Engagement and Grow Your Audience!

Daniel’s X – Follow Daniel on X.

The Audacity to Podcast – Award-winning podcast about podcasting and podcasting resources created by Daniel J. Lewis.

3 Value Bombs

1) True success comes from following God’s principles and the Bible.

2) One of the most rewarding aspect of doing a podcast is connection with your audience and that comes through engagement.

3) Humans should be the one creating content and not AI. Content is analysed by AI but we are still the ones who process the content.

Show Notes

**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.

Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: Pivoting Life and a Podcasting Business

[1:12] – Daniel shares something that he believes about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

True success comes from following God’s principles and the Bible. You don’t have to be a Christian to be successful but the people who are successful are following those principles that work.

[2:08] – Daniel talks about rebuilding a life and business after catastrophe strikes.

There were 2 challenges in his professional life that resulted from changes in his personal life. The latest was an unwanted divorce that shook him to his core and made him question so many things in his life and his business and changed his focus.
He refocus on his business and look on what he can do now that his life has significantly changed.
He started saying “no” and focus on where he can grow the most and that would still enabke him to have the life for him and his son.

[6:02] – Daniel talks about how he handled being a full-time single dad while running a podcasting business.

It was a struggle because he doesn’t have a teammate, there is an emotional pressure. If its possible, save your marriage even if it means giving up yourself. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t able to save his so he had that emotional weight plus the professional weight of perfection that he can’t do anymore because he is struggling to be a full time dad and trying to run his business.
Saying “no” and changing his expectations for himself, he realize that he doesn’t have the capacity to make certain things to the same level anymore. It doesn’t mean compromising quality but changing expectations.
Instead of recording long podcast conversation, he narrow it to 10-15 minutes that is still valuable but will not take him much time to prepare, edit and produce.
He become creative with his tim, energy and focus. He make himself interruptible in his work when his son is awake and needs his attention. His son is his top priority and his business exist so he can be a dad to his son. He does the work that is lower priority when his son is awake and the work that needs his focus when his son is asleep or before he wakes up in the morning.

[11:26] – A timeout to thank our sponsors!

HubSpot: Breeze is HubSpot’s collection of AI tools that helps you turn one piece of content into a whole suite of assets. Visit HubSpot.com/marketers to learn more!
Shopify: Upgrade your business today with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/onfire!
Author100: A 100-day program where I will personally guide you 1-on-1 to create, write, publish and market your book! If you want daily guidance and mentorship from me, JLD, then head over to Author100.com to sign up for a free call to chat about the details!

[13:56] – Daniel talks about the revolution of “My Podcast Reviews” to Podgagement.

“My Podcast Reviews” needs a a branding change because the word “my” is confusing.
The product needed to grow since it started 10 years ago. It was the first service of its kind to gather podcast reviews from nearly 200 places but can only see the review and ratings from your country and not from other countries and vice versa.

[15:27] – Daniel talks about Podgagement.

Ratings and reviews don’t affect your ranking in Apple podcast and other apps but they are fantastic for the value that you can learn and improve what you deliver to your audience and so it is really about engagement and thus the branding shift to Podgagement which is short for podcast and engagement.
He wants to build a product that will help podcasters engage with their audiences in more ways like collecting feedback from their audiences as written or voice mail feedback because it is fun to include your audience literal voice in your podcast and share that to your audience and other audiences can involve too.
One of the most rewarding aspect of doing a podcast is connection with your audience and that comes through engagement.
He rebuild the product “My Podcast Reviews” since 2019. He learned how to code instead of hiring overseas help because he wants to build it himself. He made a system to track all the charts, 33,000 charts every hourfor 5 years and along the way he discovered other data, other things and other products.
When he launched Podgagement, its not only about ratings and reviews but about all the different ways you can engage with your audience and track that engagement.
Podgagement can fill the gap for podcasters who want to see where they position in the charts, see that data and other tools in engaging to their audience now that Chartable is closed. It will help them to grow their podcast and build relationship with their audience.

[19:17] – Daniel talks about how to increase engagement with listeners.

Whatever engagement you have right now, use it, even if it is just a simple message. Share it to your audience because it is viral in way when someone else hears another being mentioned, thanked or praised. Its inspirational for other people to get engage too. That desire factor that gets them interested to engage.
Some of the tools he build is to make it easier for someone to engage in something else while listening to the podcast.

[20:58] – Daniel talks about Podcasting 2.0.

It is build on top of what podcasting has already been and ties so well in the idea of engaging your podcast audience.
Podcasting 2.0 has all new features that help audiences to engage with the episodes more and help the podcaster better monetized in different ways.
Podcasting 2.0 put the chapters into a cloud so you can edit episodes that had already been downloaded or change images for certain promotions.
Other exciting things in development is cross app comments where they can comment while using a different app so you can get more community engagement.
It also helps podcast to be more accessible and discoverable.
Podcasting 2.0 is the next generation of what podcasting can do.

[24:42] – Daniel talks about how AI is going to factor into podcasting.

There are 2 ways, the good and the bad way.
The bad way is AI slop coined by Adam Curry, they guy who created podcasting. AI slop is basically the stuff that AI generated for you. It’s review videos using an AI generated voice promoting affiliated links to top 10 products in Amazon but is not a real review. This kind of content doesn’t really engage the audience.

[26:15] – Daniel talks about Notebook LM recording.

Letting AI create an outline and content for you, like voicing a podcast.
There is an actual place where it can be legitimate where the content is real and AI will make it into written form. Using Notebook LM to turn their written content into audio content.
The good use of AI is it can help you create something new and not remixing ideas .
Reusing and repurposing content is a great way to use AI. Also AI suggesting where to improve or enhanced the audio. AI is good for giving momentum and ideas for repurposing.
Humans should be the one creating content and not AI. Content is analysed by AI but we are still the ones who process the content.

[29:13] – Daniel gives his take away.

No matter what happens or where you are in life, focus on the goal that you want to achieve for you , your family , your business and your self-development. Make that plan and work toward it and most of all do not give up. Failure happens when you give up.

[29:53] – Call to action.

Podgagement – Supercharge Your Podcast Engagement and Grow Your Audience!
Daniel’s X – Follow Daniel on X.
The Audacity to Podcast – Award-winning podcast about podcasting and podcasting resources created by Daniel J. Lewis.

[32:32] – Thank you to our Sponsors!

HubSpot: Breeze is HubSpot’s collection of AI tools that helps you turn one piece of content into a whole suite of assets. Visit HubSpot.com/marketers to learn more!
Shopify: Upgrade your business today with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/onfire!

Killer Resources!

1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!

2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!

3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!