Find Your Authentic Podcast Approach – Nolan McCoy – Creating The Greatest Show – Episode # 051

by | Aug 30, 2023 | Creating The Greatest Show, Podcast Framework, Starting a Podcast

Our special guest today is a visionary storyteller, a cross-functional creative, and a podcast architect. Nolan McCoy is the mastermind behind the Demand Gen Chat Podcast and Head of Video & Creative Content at Chili Piper. 

Nolan joins Host Casey Cheshire to delve into how to create and repurpose authentic content, how to ensure your content resonates with the target audience, and the benefits of a podcast that expand beyond the boundaries of a single episode. Nolan explains what it takes to make a successful podcast, why the listener is the most important in a podcast, and how to be an active and intentional host.

Watch Nolan McCoy on Creating The Greatest Show!

Takeaways from this Episode

  • Before starting your podcast, ask why the world needs your podcast and what sets you apart. Authenticity comes from understanding your content’s value and differentiation.
  • Focusing on a unique niche or community is key to creating a successful podcast.
  • Engage your listeners by providing a clear journey or structure. Unclear content gets turned off quickly. Even casual conversations benefit from a planned structure that keeps listeners invested throughout the episode.
  • To achieve a lasting podcast impact, create content that extends beyond the episode’s boundaries. A strategic approach ensures valuable content that can be repurposed and shared using various tools, leading to long-term sustainability
  • Sharing engaging clips on social media and building a content foundation allows for broader reach and sustained audience interest.
  • Prioritize the audience’s experience. Hosting a podcast is about curating perspectives that resonate with your listeners.
  • As a host, actively guide the conversation to highlight key points. Natural callbacks and references to an earlier prep call for instance help to keep the discussion engaging and can help your guest discover even further details.

READ MORE: 11 Basic Ways to Repurpose Content from Your Podcast

READ MORE: Develop Your Podcast’s Mission Statement

Quote of The Show

“You can go down that rabbit hole, but make sure as the host, you’re actively driving the conversation back to where you want it to go for your audience.”

– Nolan McCoy

Connect with Nolan

Shoutouts

Clips from This Episode



Ways to Tune In



Transcript of This Episode

[00:00:00]

Casey Cheshire: One little click of the little pointy finger, and I have hit the record button. I am stoked to get this thing started. My guest today is an absolute badass. He is a badass behemoth podcast architect. He’s the guy in the space. He writes. Blogs that moves millions of people in different directions. Well, who is he?

Casey. Tell me more about him. Stop opining about nothing. He has helped launch massive B two B [00:01:00] podcasts. Over 2000 individual videos, almost 4 million organic video views. He’s the Mastermind behind the Demand Gen Chat podcast. Head of video creative content at Chili Piper Nolan McCoy. What is up dude?

Nolan McCoy: What’s up Casey? Thanks for, thanks for having me on. And wow, what a, what a setup. Uh, I feel like I have a lot of, uh, explaining to do to, to, to match setup.

Casey Cheshire: I know, right? The joke is you just clip that and then make that your wake up alarm

Nolan McCoy: Yeah, that’s right. It’s like the

Casey Cheshire: Let’s go.

Nolan McCoy: coming in saying, you’re gonna do it. You’re gonna do it today. Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: I got this, uh, it’s the, it’s like the opposite of the meditated podcast, you know, it’s like, you, you are calm. It’s like, no, you are Nolan McCoy. So anyways, man, I love to ask you this question where we start this thing out, pull back the curtain for us on your show and shows, and share your most important strategy for a great interview podcast.

Nolan McCoy: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and yeah, [00:02:00] so the podcast that I help produce is called Demand Gen Chat, and it’s a podcast for demand marketers from, uh, our branded account for Chili Piper, and it’s hosted by Tara Robertson. And, uh, first of all, props to Tara for the, the guest research that she does and all the work that she puts into, into the show.

Casey Cheshire: Hell yeah. Shout out to Tara.

Nolan McCoy: I just hide behind the scenes and pull levers and, and do things in the back end to make it, uh, you know, uh, work and, and go smoothly. But, um, yeah. The, the thing that I love to think about, just kind of the big thought that I like to cover is really what’s going to make a successful podcast is identifying a niche to talk about or to build a community around.

And so, um, I, I like to just, you know, ask the question Why does the world need another podcast? You know, like, why should you be creating another show? there’s thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other people who’ve said, I want to do a podcast. Right? [00:03:00] um, why, does the world need it?

Why, why do they need to hear you? And I think if you can answer that question, then you find yourself in a lot, like more of a authentic head space when you’re, approaching a conversation like that. And, um, You find yourself in a, in a more clear clarity, clarity space. Clarified

Casey Cheshire: Clarity space. You’ve heard it here. We’re gonna make that a new podcast called Clarity

Nolan McCoy: Clarity space. There you go. That’s a, that’s a whole spinoff show. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I feel like you get some clarity when, when you can answer that question. Um, because then, then you’re not just thinking about the action, you’re actually thinking about the, the content itself and, why you’re going to differentiate yourself.

So

Casey Cheshire: And what happens? I mean, why is so powerful, dude? What happens when, when people don’t consider this? Like, what, what do you see out there where, where you can just tell that this wasn’t no one thought? Like, why another

Nolan McCoy: mm-hmm.

Casey Cheshire: I.

Nolan McCoy: I mean, you can tell when [00:04:00] it’s, uh, just. Two people just decided to record a conversation. You know, like, and you could argue that that’s what we’re doing here, but you’re coming with these awesome questions. I know some of them, I don’t know all of them. So I’m really going on this journey of, um, going between things that I’ve kind of thought about and kind of formulated my thoughts around.

And then other things where I’m kind of giving you that hot take gut check. Just something that I haven’t a strong opinion about. And that’s what makes interesting conversation, right? That’s why you have, uh, presidential debates, right? That’s why we watch those types of things because there’s, there’s a format to it.

There’s a, there’s a strategy, there’s a structure behind it. And the mistake I see with that, just starting a podcast is people just say, well, we’re interested in. I don’t know. Let’s say you’re interested in Legos, right? And you’re, you’re somebody who just loves building Legos and you’re in the Lego community and you’re doing all these things, right?

And you say, well, we’re two fans [00:05:00] of making stuff with Legos. Let’s start a podcast about it. And then they just start a podcast, right? And they just start talking about, they just start talking about like, yeah, man, I, you know, I saw this thing the other day on my feed and like it was cool. And so I try to do it.

And then what? And you just. Instead of like building some sort of niche or community around Lego, something that’s adjacent, it’s built upon the idea of it, but it isn’t necessarily just a chitchat about, and I think that’s kind of the differentiator, is you’re, you’re, you’re taking something that a lot of people relate with and you’re putting your spin on it.

You’re putting your take. So maybe the solution to that would be, you know, we do a show about rare Legos or rare Lego sets or something where it’s like, you know, this week on. I don’t know, brick by brick. There’s, there’s a freebie for you. But, uh, you know, this week on Brick by Brick, we found a $500,000 set of Legos that you won’t believe.

We’re gonna break it down. Who was, who was selling this? How’d they get it? We’re gonna bring them on. [00:06:00] Do this thing now. You have an interest of Lego, but you’re curating interesting stories attached to the thing rather than, Hey man, we just love Legos. Let’s just, let’s just nerd out about Legos. Nothing wrong with like nerding out on a podcast about something, but that’s not a sustainable show structure outside of one episode.

So that’s a long-winded answer to kind of give you, uh, maybe some, some handles on that to, for your audience to just think through, um, you know, how can you differentiate.

Casey Cheshire: Nolan nothing but handles here. And then there’s so many things to, to, uh, to grab onto here. The idea of a little bit of strategy and a little bit of structure to create interesting stories, actually interesting stories, I think. Yeah, people do think that you can just hit record. I think episode one of this pod, I listened to it like a week ago, you know, 300 plus later.

There’s a style. There’s a form. I just sat down with a friend, but you’re [00:07:00] totally right man. But what is it? We want authentic, but it’s gotta drive to a point or something. Right? There need, there needs to be some layer above just two people hanging out.

Nolan McCoy: Yeah. Your audience. And this goes more to show structure, and this goes to kind of broader strategy stuff with the podcast, but your audience is hitting play and it’s probably on an audio podcast. A lot of people watch a video podcast, but just think about the audio. ’cause that’s gonna help. But like they’re hitting play, they’re putting their AirPods in and they’re either doing something else or they’re going somewhere and we don’t do good.

If you’re driving to the grocery store, listening to something, You are going, the first thing that you’re going to turn off is the thing that’s kind of like not clear. It’s like when the radio, you know, when you’re lost, the first thing you do is you turn down the radio. I need to focus.

Casey Cheshire: Damn. Straight. Yeah.

Nolan McCoy: And if you have a podcast where there isn’t a journey [00:08:00] that you’ve given your audience to take them down, they’re going to get that sense.

Probably. Let’s say you record an hour long podcast, probably 15 to 20 minutes in, they’re going to go. I don’t really know where this is going. I feel a little bit lost. I don’t know what I’m committing to for the next 40 minutes. Right. And they’re probably not going to make it through the whole episode. And so it, it, it’s about we, we need something to plan on.

And that doesn’t mean you can’t riff and nerd out and kind of have chit chat within the episode to your point, but it has to roll up to something else. Come back to, come back to that main point, that main theme, that whatever, and or you could strategize a show where, Every third episode is a q and a and it is, that’s something that they’re expecting it, it’s built into your rhythm.

It’s built into your structure. it doesn’t mean you have to have this perfectly theatrical thing and you’re taking them on this journey. Every single episode. You can do that, but you can also have the chit chat part. Just build it into the structure, give it repetition, [00:09:00] and, for your audience to plan on.

Casey Cheshire: And without this it, so I let, let’s talk about the downside and then let’s loop back around. To how we do answer that why question. So the the downside, if you haven’t given this intentional thought, is it what, one or two episodes and then you’re pod fading because what do I talk about? And it’s just you and I just staring at each other and we’re like, how’s it going dude?

And you can only do say this so many times.

Nolan McCoy: Yeah. And you, and you think about like, you want your podcast to hopefully live on outside of the. The start and the finish of your episode, right? You want to be, you want your clips to do well on social. You want your community, like if you go back to that Lego analogy I used earlier, and you’re doing some show called Brick by Brick, or you’re uncovering all these crazy rare things, right, that people, other people can nerd out on.

If you have a great clip out of that show, that’s going to play really well in other communities. Or you’re going on the subreddit for that topic and that gets shared there like you’re, [00:10:00] you’re. You’re building a foundation for all of this content to come out of your show. So it’s not just let’s hit record check did an episode check.

We did a good structure and we did a good strategy we’re talking about now, but we’re also laying the foundation for this content to kick off other dependencies out of this other deliverables that that are going to come out of that. So it’s like the conversation that we’re having now is one of the most important moments of the whole thing, obviously.

But it’s the thing that’s going to also fill in the gaps between your episodes. Like especially now with ai, we have so many tools that can repurpose our podcast episodes for us. Right? Or you have an agency that you work with that helps you do this. Like, there’s so many different things, but you have to have the nutritional value in the meal to actually sustain it long-term And that’s, kind of, I think, the solution there.

Casey Cheshire: I [00:11:00] love that we’ve sort of, this, it’s almost like a little mini full circle here, because to create, to even think about what that structure might be, you have to have your original point, which you talked about is why this show and it not just another show, not just another conversation, and not just another podcast.

So how do you go about answering that? Why do you have to get creative? Like what? You, you have an idea, and before you hit go or before you create the thing, what, what is the, is there a why step? Like how, how do I accomplish that before I can move on, you know, and create the structure and all the things we’re talking about?

Nolan McCoy: Yeah. I think it is like a, it needs to come from an authentic place, right? The why, why do I want to host and curate intimate conversations that people intimately listen to, right? That’s. You’re, you’re, I think podcasting is one of the most intimate mediums of content because [00:12:00] you’re literally putting something into your ears and listening to it, and someone’s voice is talking right there.

Right. And it’s like, it’s consuming, it’s blocking out the rest of the world. And this is the world right now. So I think that’s just something to think about, It needs to be authentic. It needs to be from a place of, of realness. Because you, you, you’re basically having a one-on-one conversation or.

Letting someone be a fly on the wall for, a conversation. And so it needs to be meaningful and that comes from an authentic place. But I also think it’s, you know, back to the, why does the world need another podcast? If you ask that question and you take a topic, like that example, I keep going back to, it helps you layer down of like, okay, there’s probably plenty of podcasts about Lego, but there aren’t any that do this.

There aren’t any to do that, and this is a topic I’m passionate about, but the world probably doesn’t need another version of this, but I have this interesting perspective on that and we could do something around that that [00:13:00] nobody else is doing. Another example of this is, um, it’s not a podcast, but it’s a similar ideation process where, I like to ride a one wheel, which is an electric skateboard.

It’s got the one. Yes,

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, I know about one Wheels man. That’s crazy.

Nolan McCoy: yeah. So for anybody who doesn’t know it’s a electric skateboard, it’s got a big go-kart wheel in the middle and it kind of acts like a skateboard, snowboard kind of experience. Right. And I like riding that. As I was in the process of buying one, I wanted to watch other people ride.

I wanted to kind of live vicariously through these other people to know the experience and understand it and all that. Well, the thing that would always frustrate me is people would, you know, go on like a trail and they’d be out in these mountains and this beautiful, and they would put this terrible music over the top of it and there, or there’s a voiceover and there’s this and there’s that.

And what I was looking for was literally like I wanted to put myself in their shoes.

And I wanted to hear the sound of the tire [00:14:00] on the rocks and the branches and the crunching and the, I wanted to hear the motor spinning up and like kind of like doing all that kind of stuff. And I got really frustrated.

So when I got my board, I started doing these like silent rides, almost like a S M R one wheel ride video.

Casey Cheshire: A point of view too, like you, you like what you would see if you’re writing?

Nolan McCoy: Yeah. You put a little GoPro on a stick, put it behind you, so you’re kind of looking down the side. And then I’d go and I’d. Do like a 20 minute ride from my house to downtown and like do this thing and it’s kinda like a ride along thing.

And people would comment and they’re like, I love that this is just chill. Or, I love that the, and it resonated. ’cause I’m like, there has to be other people out there that are looking for something where people don’t put this garbage stock music on top of it. Right. And it’s not, I’m gonna start another one wheel channel, be an influencer on one wheels.

It was, let me do this little like, Other adjacent thing that’s attached to One Wheels. ’cause there’s gotta be other people like me who want to like hear this and experience this in this way. [00:15:00] And it was true. People were commenting like, I love this, that it’s just raw, real. I think I called them like silent shreds or something like that.

Like just some sort of term around that.

Casey Cheshire: You weren’t trying to be like, let me go be an influencer. It sounds like you were creating content for yourself,

Nolan McCoy: Mm-hmm.

Casey Cheshire: like the content you wish you could have found.

Nolan McCoy: Exactly, and that’s, that goes back to why does the world need another podcast? Well, why does the world need another channel about electric, you know, personal vehicles like pvs. Like why does someone need another channel? You don’t, but are there any channels that are doing this kind of like relaxing, experiential p o V videos?

Some, but some of them put this garbage stuff on top and it’s not this like, it was almost like to like elevate the experience of it and like curate that. So back to how did that applies to podcasting? It’s, it’s taking that idea, that thing that you want to talk about, and it’s moving it into a space of, it’s, it’s still attached to the idea, but it’s it’s your own, [00:16:00] it’s your own thing.

It’s authentic to you.

Casey Cheshire: It’s the thing that you want, that you want, you would

Nolan McCoy: Mm-hmm.

Casey Cheshire: But you haven’t found it anywhere else, potentially. And what if you, what if you do find it elsewhere? Does that mean by, by what we’re talking about, you shouldn’t create it.

Nolan McCoy: No, I think because at the end of the day, you’re a unique person. You’re not the same person as that other person doing that thing. So you have your own thoughts, opinions, perspectives and ideas around that similar thing. And so I think naturally, unless you’re intentionally trying to copy and paste someone else’s idea, You’re gonna have your own spin on it.

You’re gonna have your own flare on it. You may, I don’t know, you’re just going to, I think naturally you’re gonna put your own flavor into it.

Casey Cheshire: See, and that’s really, that’s, that’s really helpful. ’cause I, I think some people. Oh man, this already exists, but you [00:17:00] don’t exist

Nolan McCoy: Mm-hmm.

Casey Cheshire: And just by being, being yourself, and not just copycatting, you’re gonna have certain things you care more about than they do. And if you just go with that, you, you mentioned it several times.

Authentic. Authentic. If you stick to your authentic. You, then you’re gonna almost, by its nature, create something special. But it does also sound like you in particular have some creative flares where you’re like, huh. And there’s that sort of aha. And maybe that’s just straight out creativity, where you just decide you want to have that different, know, p o v, like uh, rec silent recording, and then. Or other shows, you’ve twisted the Lego that twist. Tell me about that, that twist, right? We’ve got that authentic self, but then there’s that little twist at the end. Are there any things that people can do to try to find those things or just maybe like a sweat lodge in a, in a long, hot afternoon.

Nolan McCoy: [00:18:00] Yeah. Yeah. Pick your poison right to, to get there. But, um, I think, I honestly think like, you can look at what, you know, if you’re talking about a B two B environment, look at B two C.

How can you put a B two C spin on B two B? That’s like probably an example as old as time, but I think that, you know, it still rings true because B two B still feels like B two B sometimes.

And so, uh, but if, you know, if you’re, just look at what I mean. Just, just study the people who are doing it really well. Study if you’re, if the, you know, if the audience here is about podcasting and all things podcasting. Go study Joe Rogan. Go study all these people that are curating if, if, like why, why are like, why are they successful?

What makes that show? What are those things? And like, you have to go out of the driver’s seat into almost the passenger seat of like, you’re starting a show, but you need to be your worst critic. Right? And you need to go like, [00:19:00] or like going from consumer. To actually like analyst, like when you’re watching these things, you need to go, why did they make that cut?

Or why did they change topics at that point? Or why did they, you know, choose to spend this much time on this thing, um, in the realm of podcasting, right? It’s like how long do you let your guest ramble before you interrupt them and bring it back to the original question, right? Um,

Casey Cheshire: Do you have an answer for that? Is there an answer for that?

Nolan McCoy: This is a great point.

See, you just, this is great. ’cause like you just interjected, right? And like you wanna dive deeper. That’s the attributes of a good host. You are not sitting there just sitting, this is a mistake. I see. So often with hosts, they just sit there and they’re just like, wow, that’s good. Yeah, yeah,

Casey Cheshire: I love that.

Nolan McCoy: I

love that.

That’s so good. Yeah. Yeah. And they just wait until their guest runs out of content to then go to the next question. Right.

Casey Cheshire: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Or they end and they end it. No. Yeah. Uh, thanks for your answer. My next question,

Nolan McCoy: Where like, [00:20:00] okay, so now I’m gonna answer your, your question about, you know, when do you kind of take the reins? I think like, it, it’s being a balance and this is some sort of probably like mental state you need to get to right. Of like, like, uh, intentionality meets mindfulness meets strategy. Right. And it’s like, Being in the listener’s chair while being in the host chair, and that’s probably a lot harder than it sounds, right?

But it’s like sitting there going, okay, we asked this question two minutes ago. He’s answering this question. He just unlocked these three new topics. I really would like to explore two of those, but I want him to answer this first. Therefore I’ll ask that question and then we’ll loop back later in the episode.

’cause that relates to my question on page two of my notes. So I’ll wait. You know what I mean? Like you as the host are curating the experience. Be on on behalf of the guest. You know what [00:21:00] your audience wants to hear and what they’re coming to the table looking for. You have to, you have to. Take that control when you need it to be controlled so that you get to where you want the episode to go.

And it’s like going from passive to active host mode. Right? But you wanna be listening ’cause you don’t also wanna like, let your guest take the reins of the show. I also see that, right? They invite someone on, they let ’em talk for 15 minutes and they’re like, well, and that reminds me too, you know, I, I, you know, I really think, and then there’s another 10 minute tangent, right?

Casey Cheshire: Yeah. Yeah.

Nolan McCoy: And so it’s, it’s that balance of, okay, we’re going down this road. That’s good. But we need, I want to bring it back to the original question. I feel like we’re kind of rabbit trailing a little bit and then like, but I want them to expand on that. So I’ll ask a clarifying question. I’ll do this or do that.

Um, I just, I think it’s, it’s this kind of mindfulness state of active and passive listening at the same time and, and knowing when, when, and where to interject. [00:22:00] Um, it’s almost like. Counterintuitive, like you need to know when to be a good interrupter.

Casey Cheshire: It is not easy. Uh, but I’ve definitely heard like the Rogans and the Tim Ferriss of the world. I, I don’t know who I can attribute this quote to, but some might have been Rogan where he said sometimes. You just gotta ask the question and, and like, shut the fuck up, kind of thing. Like, you just need to, but also have the humility to just listen.

Like stop talking and listen. But to your point, at some point you may need to hop in. And I, I, I thought back, I do, there’s at least one podcast that comes to mind where I didn’t do that. I didn’t step in. My guest started boring me and I tried to go deeper. It wasn’t this podcast, just so you

Nolan McCoy: Okay.

Casey Cheshire: and and I tried to go deeper with the guest, but he was kind of this sort of surface level, almost like a car salesman type thing where just, this is what all I got.

And I tried to go deeper, go deeper ’cause I’m interested. [00:23:00] But it kept being like, I don’t have anything deeper. I don’t have anything deeper. And I was like, what are we talking about here? And so I, I kind of mentally checked out for a little bit and that was such a mistake because like, I’m like, I was kinda like, screw this guy, man.

Like, yeah. And I, and I didn’t know whether to call him out or like, whatever, and it was really frustrating. But I, I, I do remember being like, man, I can’t just surrender the show to the person, you know?

Nolan McCoy: Right, right. I think the best, probably most recent example would be, uh, Sean Evans on Hot Ones, which that’s a multi-layered approach. Back to what we were talking about with the spin. There’s a spin of a podcast instead of sitting on across the table and just talking. We’re not only gonna do that, but we’re gonna eat increasingly hot wings with increasingly

hot questions.

Casey Cheshire: Right, Right,

Nolan McCoy: So there’s a spin. There’s a great example of a spin of like, why does the world need another podcast? We don’t need another celebrity press circuit interview playlist, which is what that show is. But we love it because it’s a new format. It’s [00:24:00] a new way of getting that information. So anyways, to that point, but he does such a great job of completely, I think sometimes we feel bad if like we asked a question as a host.

And we got a really meaningful answer and then we don’t like, almost like affirm that answer for a bit. You know what I mean? Like I feel like, okay, we got the good answer. You know, mentally you’re like, okay, we got the good answer. But wow. They really poured their heart and soul into that. And so I’m just gonna sit here and really go, wow, that is so, that is so good.

Like, and there’s a time and a place for like, I know Joe Rogan sits there and he goes, wow, wow, wow. You know, he does that, right? Yeah. Wow. No way. Wow. You know? Um, And he does that. And like you said, there’s a time and place, but Sean Evans does such a good thing where he asked a question, they got the soundbite, and he goes, changing gears.

I wanna know, da da, da da da da. And he brings the energy back up after this really deep thought. And it’s, it’s a retention thing. They’re thinking about the YouTube algorithm. They’re thinking about retention [00:25:00] metrics. It’s bringing that energy up because even if like that was a mind blowing answer. The audience got what they needed.

And so it’s that. That balance of like, when do you interrupt? When do you not like it’s about what you’re trying to achieve. They’re trying to achieve a lot in 18 minutes, right? And so they’re, they’re going, he, he’s not afraid to jump in and go, alright, well that was good. Next up we’re, I just wanted blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he just starts the next kind of, it’s completely 180, but great.

Casey Cheshire: know, it’s interesting you bring that up. I want, I remember this one time and I thought I did it right, but on the recording it may or may not sound like I did. Someone shared one of those like, god dang, like personal stories when people are dying and. Probably suicide and all these things, you’re just like, oh man.

And you’re just like, what heavy? Wow.

Nolan McCoy: Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: And then I wanted to wait, but I didn’t wait nearly as long as I guess you could have, because then it sounds like, okay, cool, so [00:26:00] like, what? But I guess it, you know, and, and it, my team laughed at me after they’re like, they’re like, wow, just right to the next question, Casey, like, no.

In my mind, I waited like two. Seconds longer than I normally would’ve, but, but I hear you. To bring the energy back up because, we’ll, we gonna go lower.

Nolan McCoy: Right.

Casey Cheshire: you go from there?

Nolan McCoy: Right. And that’s where, again, like hosting is no easy job because in that situation you needed to match the energy, mirror them, make them feel heard, match the tone, and like, you know, You could probably go back and listen and go, oh, well, there’s two other like segue questions I could have asked that could have like got where, and it goes back to where do you want to take it?

Right. You know your show structure, you know the questions you prepped ahead of time. You could, well maybe if we skip this one, I could bring up this next one after that and it would naturally bring, we went this way. Sometimes it’s just unavoidable though. Like sometimes you’re just like in a corner, the conversation’s gone a certain way and you’re just like, [00:27:00] Well, I don’t know a better way to say this, but, um, next question.

You know?

Casey Cheshire: What’s your Oh, oh, oh really? Your dog died. What’s your favorite book?

Nolan McCoy: Yeah. Like sometimes I just, sometimes he’s just like, I don’t know, but

Casey Cheshire: Do you like ice cream?

Nolan McCoy: Right. He is like, oh, yeah.

Casey Cheshire: Uh, but you know, it’s funny you mention, um, affirming a good answer. I’ve definitely heard this mistake podcasters make where. And I try to avoid this where they summarize what the guest just said

Nolan McCoy: Mm.

Casey Cheshire: as a response instead of asking a follow up or going onto the next question, they paraphrase what they just said. And, and I’ve had someone, I’ve had a host do this to me when I was a guest, and they did it better than I did it, right? So they, them saying it back to me sounded way better than how I originally got to that point. And it was definitely, uh, energy and conversation killer. Because what does, what do I say to that as a guest?

Like, well, damn, [00:28:00] next time you answer the question.

Nolan McCoy: I feel like that probably comes also from just like the blend of, um, like the tips around just like networking, just like people skills when in conversational people skills, that’s a really great mirroring technique when you don’t. When you’re dealing with like, let’s say, somebody who’s very difficult or like strong-headed or like they’re very elevated.

That’s a really great technique to like, make someone feel heard is to repeat what they’re saying back. Right. But again, you’re curating a conversation for the audience. You, you could, you can summarize a little bit, but you, again, to your point, you don’t wanna be verbatim repeating their answer and now you’ve doubled the length of your podcast episode just repeating what they just said.

And you may make them look. Like an idiot because they, you’re saying it better than they did. Right? Um, I think you have to give your audience a certain level of intelligence that if they’re actively listening to this podcast, they’re gonna get it. [00:29:00] And that’s going out of the consumer chair. If you’re the consumer as a host, you’re gonna repeat that back.

’cause you’re, you’re, hopefully your audience is, you know, driving in their car or doing their thing and they’re internalizing what that person just said and kind of frameworking it and unpacking it into kind of the takeaways. I think we do that subconsciously, but as a host you have to, again, it’s a balance of like audience member versus host, right?

Like

Casey Cheshire: Well, yeah, I mean, let’s talk about that, right? Like who, who’s the most important that

Nolan McCoy: it’s your guest, your guest in the audience. I mean, hmm, maybe I take that back. It might be the audience that’s who you’re serving with the content.

Casey Cheshire: Sure.

Nolan McCoy: I, I, I officially redact what I just said. Uh, I think that the audience member is, is the most important in a podcast, and I think that’s again, where this conversation, here, you and I, we kind of almost eat our own dog [00:30:00] food or drink our own champagne to the point where, you know, we had a good time, but two people can have a good time in a public setting and nobody else thinks it was a good time.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, we could just be drinking beard, saying

Nolan McCoy: And we can walk

away going, man, that was so good. I had such a great time hanging out with you. That was awesome. And the rest of the party that you didn’t take into account or read the room or take any, like, they’re kinda like, dude, those guys hung out all night. They just talked about themselves.

They didn’t interact. Like, and that’s, that’s a little bit of a adjacent analogy, but.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah.

Nolan McCoy: the audience, it’s you as a host, you’re inviting this person on for a reason to get some sort of perspective or thing out of them that you want to curate for your audience because you know what your audience wants to hear.

And that’s kind of this stewardship thing of, as a host, you’re stewarding this guest for your audience. And, um, it’s pretty quick. When you watch like a interview, somebody’s interviewing a celebrity. You can tell when the [00:31:00] interviewer is just fan. F just, just going nuts. ’cause this is their favorite celebrity.

Right? And you as the audience, you’re like, okay, well this is their moment. They didn’t try to like use that opportunity to get Tom Cruise’s opinion about whatever that I I’m interested in. Right. It’s just this person’s self-serving their fandom for this person, you know?

Casey Cheshire: You, dude, a great example of that just happened, uh, I think it was Conan’s podcast. I didn’t even ha know he had a podcast, but I saw a video clip of it where he had Harrison Ford on and. Harrison do, do you see this

thing?

Nolan McCoy: I did.

Casey Cheshire: Oh, okay. Harrison Ford randomly, I think he’s like 80. He looked over at one of the many people gather around the, the podcast table, and he points at him.

He goes, you haven’t said anything this whole time. I think it was his producer, right? And, and so then the guy starts talking and he starts talking about what he’s wearing and how he likes to dress up for, for the podcast. [00:32:00] Just like Harrison Ford. But it, it was, and then they all made fun of him. They’re like, this was your moment to talk to Harrison Ford and you, and you talked about what you’re wearing.

Nolan McCoy: Wow.

Casey Cheshire: then Harrison Ford actually told him to shut the fuck up, which was, I don’t know if that’s a life de de firming, uh, thing that happens. Uh, but yeah. Yeah. I, I think that’s your point, crystal clear. You have this moment. Did you make it about yourself or about somebody

Nolan McCoy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like if I was wearing a plaid shirt and I’m like, Casey, look, look we match. Like, this is great. Right? Instead of, yeah. Instead of like just having a meaningful conversation. Right. That’s why we’re here. Why are we here? Why are we doing this podcast? Why are, yeah.

Casey Cheshire: Where does preparation fit into the shows that you’ve created? Are there prep calls? Is there research done beforehand? How do you prepare? I.

Nolan McCoy: Yeah, so I mean, I think after I, probably a second after the recording and like [00:33:00] the curating the conversation for your audience, I think the prep is probably the thing that, um, is the number two. Most important and probably most overlooked part of a podcast. Um, because again, you think, well, this person’s interesting.

I’m gonna have ’em on. So they’re gonna say interesting things and we’ll have an interesting conversation that our audience will find interesting. Newsflash, just recording a conversation isn’t gonna be interesting. Right. And we just, we already talked about that. But, um, preparation, at least for demand gen chat.

Um, Tara Robertson, because she’s the host, she’ll conduct the, the kind of interview call or the kind of pre-call similar to like how you and I got on a call and, and you, um, had, had me kind of prepped with some, some questions. But, uh, what that looks like is we’ll have a doc that the host has kind of done a little bit of intelligence reconnaissance, mission, going through socials, going through blog posts.

Basically you’re doing. You [00:34:00] know, your best F b I research about this person, right? Um, and the deeper you can go the better, because the, the more surface level information you find about that person, the more likely they’ve already talked about that on another show or in another piece of content. And so, um, that’s just a tip is like when you’re conducting that research, like you can acknowledge the the things, but what’s gonna really help your audience is when you uncover the things.

That no one else has uncovered or you’ve asked a question in a way. Um, again, go back and study Sean Evans and how he does Hot Ones questions. The research they do is probably, they probably spend more time researching that guest than they do filming, editing and distributing the episode. Um,

and it

shows.

Casey Cheshire: those questions are, are perfectly zeroed in on aspects they haven’t been asked

Nolan McCoy: And if you go on to to YouTube and you search Sean Evans question compilation, Videos, you’ll see [00:35:00] somebody’s like, cut together these things where the, where the guests are going, how did you know that? Or, wow, that is a really good question. Or, wow, I’ve never been asked that before. Or like, and they, all these sound bites of them just being like totally caught off guard.

And a lot of them will even leave at the end. There’s always like a little tag at the end of the, you know, the episode, uh, after the credits. And um, and a lot of the times he’ll be like, man, I’ve done a lot of these. I’ve done a lot of. You know, if it’s for a movie or for a book or for a thing or whatever, like, man, I’ve never done a a press thing like this.

This was amazing experience. Like, they’re walking away just like you just took them on a journey, right. That they’re not used to. So that, that, but that all came from the preparation. That whole experience that was outworked in physical form on this interview was done in this pre-research. Um, and so the.

The more time that you can afford to, to pre-planning and researching your guests, the better. Um, back to like how we do that, again, a doc kind of gets created. Maybe there’s a show structure. [00:36:00] Hopefully you have a show structure that you replicate certain questions, maybe you ask every week. That goes back to what we talked about earlier with giving your guests something they can count on.

Um, so Tara always has a question at the start of the episode where she’ll ask, you know, Uh, what’s your one, maybe marketing hot take right now that’s relevant or, um, what’s one thing that you know you disagree with that most people agree with? Just something that gets it breaks the ice. It. Gets them to answer something from a point of passion and authenticity.

So it really kind of gets them in the groove for the rest of the episode. Um, and then towards the end also, she’ll ask maybe the same something, you know, the same. We always ask, you know, what’s, where can everybody find, obviously you ask where can people find you? But like, you know, what’s, um, what’s something that’s exciting you right now?

Or what’s something that’s, um, maybe changing your perspective right now? Again, gets out of the flow, gets out of the structure, and that’s all built out in a dock. But then there’s all these holes that need to be filled, and that’s where, you know, you do that research, you can plug those in, [00:37:00] and then once you’ve built that, you send it to ’em and they can kind of riff on that and, oh, I’m not comfortable talking about that.

Or, you know, you, you give them that opportunity to kind of do a little edit and then, um, you bring that to the interview and you use that as your guide, but you be ready to, you know, Deviate from that plan a little bit. Back to again, the point of you have your structure, but they said something that’s unlocked.

Three new questions that you have, be okay with going off script, going down that path, and then coming back. The important things that you come back, that you don’t leave the plan that you said at the beginning, right. Because then you, you’ll get lost in rambling. Um, but yeah.

Casey Cheshire: Uh, what are the five things you need to do to launch this podcast? And you cover three,

Nolan McCoy: Mm-hmm.

Casey Cheshire: you’ve you’ve built in some like permanent anxiety for everyone listening who now need to know what the, the last two are. So yeah, there, I do like ordered lists for that reason. As long as you make sure you, you accomplish that.

Nolan McCoy: Yep, exactly. Oh, [00:38:00] you can go down that rabbit hole a little bit, but make sure as the host, again, you’re coming back, you’re actively driving the conversation back to where you want it to go for your audience.

Casey Cheshire: It is powerful hearing. You talk about the, the endless returns on the research investment. You know, like the fact that you should put more time into it and a lot of people don’t, and I also find the more famous someone is I. Famous with quotes, the less likely they are to wanna do a prep. How do you handle that with your show?

Do you get those people that I’m an author and I don’t, and I’m busy and they just don’t wanna do a prep.

Nolan McCoy: I don’t think we, we haven’t run into that with Dimension Chat specifically. Um, ’cause we are, we’re trying to. Maybe tap peers or influencers in kind of our persona of like demand gen marketers. So people are looking forward to the people that are coming on. We we’re not just, um, maybe inviting big names to invite big names, right.

Um, but um, [00:39:00] I think that you can do that work Async also you do your research again as the host. Like I said, as much time as you can afford to research and do that, build out your intelligence stock. I mean, even now with. AI and chat G B T and all the things that you could just grab all these different things, plug it in and say, Hey, summarize all this information about this person.

Right? Like, you can work smarter, like with, with your research. Right? Um, and you could do that work as inc. I I, I think for the people who don’t wanna hop on a call and don’t make it long, like if you are gonna hop on a call, make it 10 minutes, people, it’s pretty hard to say no to 10 minutes. And by doing that, if you have a 30 minute call or even.

God forbid, a 45 minute or, you know, prep call, you’re gonna, you’re gonna prep them with things and they’re gonna start thinking about stuff and they’re gonna start giving their answers to you. One, ’cause the pressure’s off. We’re not recording. This is off the record, right? Like and two, I. Because it’s, they’re, they’re starting to ideate and verbally process these things that [00:40:00] you’re, you know, bringing these questions that are about them and about these things, like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And at, and at, you know, at this conference we did this and this was so cool, and they, and they start to give that energy away that you want your audience to experience. So keep it short, keep it simple. Just make sure you’re on the same page. Make sure the guest knows your audience, what they’re looking for, what they’re about.

And where you hope kind of this conversation, you know, goes, or it achieves or solves this question or whatever.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, you definitely gotta cut ’em off. Right. I, I’ve, I’ve heard prep calls that we’ve, we, where we’ve helped people out and also I’ve been on prep calls where the guest has a great story and it’s just like, please don’t tell me now. Um, in my mind, it, it’s like, one, I don’t wanna pretend I tell people I don’t wanna pretend like I have, I’ve already heard this, you know, but, but also I, I found that sometimes people.

They like psych psychologically, they feel like they’ve already told you the story. So if they do tell it to you again, they leave out [00:41:00] details the second time. ’cause it’s almost like, I don’t wanna be rude and tell you all these details you already know, but it’s like, yeah, but the people listening who we just said were the most important, they haven’t heard any of the details, so, ah, you know, like hold it for the, for the show, you know.

Oh, cool. Cool idea. We’ll definitely talk about that.

Nolan McCoy: And I think that will happen naturally. I think it’s unavoidable to a certain extent, and that goes back to being that active, intentional host of you’re holding the keys to unlocking that, that conversation you really hope your audience hears. And so, There’s no shame in calling back to Yeah. And when we talked about, you know, on our prep call, you, mentioned this, we just talked about that, but you also mentioned this detail about this, and I thought that was really interesting.

And there’s ways to naturally plug back into that stuff. Right. But, um, yeah, it’s just being an active host to know that emotional intelligence of how long should this call be? How much should I call back to, how much detail are we gonna give now versus later?[00:42:00]

Casey Cheshire: And, and I. I love the meta of this pod because you, you were talking about calling back to the prep and pulling something in and I thought, wouldn’t this be a great time to call back to the prep and bring in the fact that we had chatted just briefly in this school? So meta, we had talked so briefly about AI tools and using those into podcasts, and I know you’ve experimented with a bunch.

There’s a lot of hot air I think out there, but there’s some. Really cool ones like especially with Kerry’s blog posts and things like that.

Nolan McCoy: Mm-hmm.

Casey Cheshire: are you seeing out there?

Nolan McCoy: Yeah, there’s, there’s three really I think, tools that are gonna stand, at least the test of time with this kind of AI revolution we’re experiencing. It’s really exciting. Um, but I agree there’s a lot of kind of buzz and, um, tools that you’re gonna maybe invest into and they won’t be around forever.

And you’ll be like,

Casey Cheshire: Yeah,

right.

Nolan McCoy: it, you know? Um, but.

Casey Cheshire: Don’t buy a lifetime subscription just in case.

Nolan McCoy: yeah, yeah. Just to stay on that monthly, uh, just in case, but yeah. [00:43:00] Um, yeah, the first one would be, um, we’ve, we’ve implemented Opus Clips or Opus, the website’s Opus Pro. And, um, it’s an AI clip cutting tool. So you either can upload a file or you can drop a YouTube link to any video.

And then, uh, depending on the usage of. How many people are trying to do the same thing at the same time? You’ll get your clips out maybe in 5, 10, 15 minutes. Um, and if it finds enough content, it’ll cut up to 15 clips for you. Um, and it’s cutting the, um, the, it’ll look at the content. It’ll take the content.

And if you asked a question and I answered it, and then I answered it a little bit more later, It’ll contextually sometimes pull that answer over and condense down stuff, right? It’ll make its own cuts. It’s not just like beginning and end clips. Sometimes it’s a curated clip throughout the interview [00:44:00] and it’s cutting the framing.

So if. You know, you’re, you’ve got two people in the same frame, it’ll stack ’em on top of each other. So you got your host on the top, guests on the bottom, and dynamically the captions will go into the middle so you’re not blocking a face. Um, and it’s doing the captions, it’s adding emojis that are contextual to, you know, if I’m saying don’t do this, it’ll put it like a red X up, you know, at the bottom.

Or if I’m saying strategy, it may do the bullseye or, you know, just stuff like that. Um, It’s not perfect. No AI tool is perfect and it requires human intervention and that’s the important point. It’s not, it’s not autopilot, it’s copilot. Right. And, um, and it’s, it’s absolutely just helped us scale and be able to release like daily clips on our YouTube channel, like on our YouTube shorts.

Um, it’s fueling our kind of short strategy. Um, And it goes back to laying that foundation. You put all this work into an episode and then you publish the episode, and a lot of times that’s where the episode lives and [00:45:00] dies. But you can fill and feed your community with. More of these clips. Like you may not have, you may have followers that don’t listen to your whole podcast, but they’ll listen to three YouTube shorts or whatever.

And that’s still engagement and that’s still driving awareness and feeding the algorithm. Um, so that’s one tool that we love. Uh, we were manually clipping stuff in the past, and so, um, and you can go in there and change stuff too. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty. It’s pretty great though. It’s, it’s uh, it’s just awesome.

And then, um, uh, DS Script is an editor. Uh, it has, it’s not fully AI powered, but they have a lot of AI tools built in Now. Um, including, uh, my secret sauce, which is studio sound, and it’s like a little flip of the switch and it takes your audio and processes it in an AI model and makes, makes it sound like you’re using one of these mics that, that we’re currently using now, but could be AirPods in your living room with an echoey ceiling or

that it’s Yeah, yeah.

Uh, it’s pretty [00:46:00] incredible and sometimes I’ll. You know, if I’m not even editing a podcast, sometimes I’ll edit a video in another program, bring it over there just to use that tool to sweeten the audio a little bit. Um, or vice versa. I’ll process the raw footage in that and bring it over and finish the editing somewhere else.

But, um, it’s just a great editor. It’s, it’s just got a bunch of smart tools. And then, um, and then another one’s called Decipher, and that’s, uh, You can upload either an audio clip, a video clip, or like a transcript, um, that you got somewhere else, and it will write content for you. So it’ll create a summary.

It’ll create the show notes. It’ll do chapters with timestamps. It’ll write the article for you, um, based on the content of the podcast episode. So it’s not, it’s not only summarizing into like, here’s your show summary. But it’s actually writing. Here’s a thought leadership title with sections and subheadings, inline quotes, you know, in quotations, Nolan said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then you can [00:47:00] format that in your, in your blog post or your landing page, spitting out a transcript. So it’s just, I’m a one man show and I, podcasting isn’t the only thing that I do at Chili Piper. And, you know, it’s, it’s probably, you know, these three tools have probably doubled, if not tripled my.

Productivity when it comes to producing our show and being able to move a lot quicker, um, with all the other priorities I have going on.

Casey Cheshire: And like you said, work, work smarter, not harder,

Nolan McCoy: right. That’s right. And, and knowing that AI isn’t the autopilot, it’s, it’s a copilot. There’s a lot of intervention with those tools. I’m still editing that, that blog post. It spits out. Google, s e o still sees that as AI written content, so I need to go in there and actually do a lot of customization to make it feel more human and natural.

But it’s still doing 85% of the work.

Casey Cheshire: Right. Right. And it’s, it can be a lot easier to tweak things than to just create

from scratch.

Nolan McCoy: Exactly.

Casey Cheshire: Dude, where, where can people connect with you? Where do you want ’em to [00:48:00] connect with you? Reach out you Chili Piper, the show. Throw out all the URLs, the links, all that.

Nolan McCoy: So, I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn. That’s where I’m the most active. It’s just Nolan McCoy. Um, I’ve done a little experimenting on TikTok. Not sure if that’s the, uh, place where, where my audience lives, but done this little, little, uh, segment called 62nd Marketing. We’ll do just like a little marketing tip or trick or something that helps you be a more effective, uh, marketer in under 60 seconds.

And then, um, you can find chili piper chili pepper.com if you’re, uh, A marketer and you wanna listen to our show, demand Gen Chat, you can get that wherever you get your podcasts. Um, and if you want more content around Demand Gen Chat, we do all the things that I just mentioned in practice. You can go to chili piper.com, go to our little resource tab, click on podcast, demand Gen chat will come up, and you can see one of these landing pages, um, where we put the written content, these show notes, um, the transcript, all the things that, that we pull out of an episode.

Casey Cheshire: [00:49:00] Sick. Sick man. Nolan, we did it. Time warped. We just literally hopped in an hour long time warp and had this like badass conversation. Thank you so much for coming on here. It’s awesome to have someone, your experience to, to riff with you and, and learn and, and distill that strategy down to some first principles.

Nolan McCoy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and thank you for, um, doing the host work that you do. Um, I, I, I’m over here seeing you take notes and being a great active host and, um, so just thanks for not only having me on, but you know, having this awesome conversation, uh, that your audience will hopefully find valuable.

Casey Cheshire: Hell yeah. And speaking of which, those listening, if you learn something, and I freaking know you did, because I literally have two pages of notes over here, front and back. I’m in the margins. Uh, then share this with someone else. One person is cool, just share it. Someone that needs to hear this, someone needs to think about their why.

Before launching that show. Someone tells you, Hey, I wanna launch a show. Cool. [00:50:00] Why does the world need your pod? We do need it, but let’s just think about what is that thing we’re gonna do? What are those twists? What are those? What’s that niche you’re gonna create? Uh, and with that, Nolan, thanks again, dude.

Nolan McCoy: Yep. Thanks again, Casey.

Casey Cheshire: Everyone, this is it. This has been another crazy episode of Creating the Greatest Show. We will catch you all next time.

[00:51:00]

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