Podcast Writing 101
Episode Show Notes
Welcome to PodOn, the podcast where we share stories from other podcasters and talk with them about the challenges we all face when beginning the podcasting journey. If you are a podcaster, we would love to hear your story and your feedback. If you love this podcast, please subscribe and share it with your friends.
On this PodOn episode, Julian and TJ bring in Jack Buehrer, to talk about a must in the podcasting world: storytelling. Listen to this episode to learn more about the process of translating an interesting text into a powerful narration, the secrets to engaging narrated podcasts, the power of podcasting in the B2B environment and how your brand can extract value from its very own podcast. In this field, it all comes down to meaningful collaboration, creative storytelling, problem-solving and true leadership!
Jump straight into:
(00:50) - The rise of podcasting in the B2B field - “We’re starting to hear a lot more companies interested in translating their written content into podcasts, and multimedia is something that companies are starting to come around to.”
(04:37) - The one-word answer guest: How to prepare your podcast for translation and spot the ideal narrator for the job - “Somebody who knows how to read with voice and nuance and flare, that’s the best way to describe it.”
(11:04) - Avoid rehashing: How to stand out and stay creative - “Don’t seize on the low hanging fruit, but the stuff that is more compelling to your listeners, that is more specific to your industry.”
(13:03) - Hard work and collaboration: The magic and teams behind your favorite narrated podcasts - “You’re writing something that someone else is going to be reading out loud, that’s an enormous shift in perspective.”
(20:04) - Key points to structure a script for an engaging narrated podcast - “You want to make sure the guest is heard, you don’t want to overuse the narrator and vice versa.”
(24:04) - The value of podcasting for companies to grow their network and brand’s presence - “Your story doesn’t have to be a hero's journey, it can just be a really smart person who’s an expert in a specific area that hundreds, maybe thousands of listeners will want to hear from.”
Resources
PodOn is hosted by TJ Bonaventura and Julian Lewis, founders of the full-service podcast company based in San Francisco, StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at info@studiopodsf.com or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodmedia.
Episode Transcript (via Rev.com)
Jack Bueher:
You can get something really, really compelling if you understand exactly who you're talking to, and exactly who you're communicating to, that your story doesn't have to be a hero's journey. It can just be a really smart person, who is an expert in your area, that hundreds maybe about of listeners will want to hear from.
TJ Bonaventura:
This is the PodOn Podcast, we're your host, TJ Bonaventura, that's me, and Julian Lewis-
Julian Lewis:
That's me. As founders of a podcast media company, we had to start a podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, join us each episode as we and our guest drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
TJ Bonaventura:
Welcome back to another episode of the PodOn Podcast. As always, I'm TJ Bonaventura co-founder of StudioPod, I'm with my other co-founder who here, Julian Lewis. Julian say, hi.
Julian Lewis:
What's up y'all, we're excited for this episode.
TJ Bonaventura:
We are very excited for this episode. Our guest today is Jack Bueher. I'm very excited about this, because Jack and I have worked on a couple different projects over the last 12 months, and we are going to be working on some more projects upcoming. So Jack, go ahead and say hello, and why don't you give us a little introduction about yourself?
Jack Bueher:
Sure. Thanks for having me, TJ and Julian. And as you said, you and I have been lucky enough to work with you and on a couple of different things and into your studio and I'm excited to be here.
TJ Bonaventura:
Thanks. I kind of want to just jump right into it. You named a couple different mediums of which you have written for specifically going into podcasting. How have you seen the industry in B2B marketing and content marketing rise over the past few years? Have you seen that there's been a need and a desire to create podcasts?
Jack Bueher:
Yes. We're starting to hear a lot more companies interested in translating their written work. The written content that they do, sort of see that translated into podcasts. We've had some interested in video stuff as well. Multimedia is something that companies are starting to come around to. And specifically with podcasting, we're getting asked about that a lot, and we are working on more podcasts, and therefore it's a new product that we're able to offer.
Julian Lewis:
And I guess in that vein, as people are asking more and more about podcasts, are there certain other mediums that they had done religiously before that you would say, as a low hanging fruit, you should start with this and try to convert it into a podcast. And for full disclosure, we always say to our clients, never read something that's been written as a podcast by translating it. But I'd love to understand if there are specific written pieces of content that you think easier translate to podcasting.
Jack Bueher:
Yeah, absolutely. We focus, I don't want to say exclusively, but we have a very heavy bent towards interview driven content, written content, almost a journalistic approach. And I mean, that's what you and I are doing right now, literally is, we're in a very journalistic situation. I'm, I'm answering questions that you're asking in hopes of getting information from me? And so, when I say that we work on eBooks and microsites and blog series, almost all of those are interview driven. So, that could mean we're talking to thought leaders inside a company who are experts in their segment or their product, and they're positioned as thought leaders or experts.
Jack Bueher:
We could also be talking to customers that are the CMO of a company that is the customer of the company that we're working with, because they know that that person has a great story to tell, or what have you. But it's sitting down, asking questions about whether it's their life, we're talking about their career arc, or it could be talking about their journey since they started at the company they're with now and sort of this great heroic heroes journey of how they took the company from X to Y in two years. Things like that.
Jack Bueher:
Interview based content translates into this format, the podcast, very well. And in fact, I mean, it can be multi-platform too. I mean, the interview that you do for a written piece can also be used for a small mini podcast. I mean, we're doing that now with a couple different customers, where the interview ends up being used in two or three different channels.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, I want to talk a little bit about that translation process. Because it's one thing to create a really compelling article or blog or microsite that tells a story of a hero's journey who started a company that brought it to a billion dollars in revenue. But with this, you have to deal with people's personalities. And you as a writer, could do a very good job of making someone's sell an interesting in the written form, but it's another thing to make them sound interesting audibly. When you're dealing with podcasting, you have to deal with this person actually being audibly heard as a guest, and that can create challenges around storytelling, because they may not be the most compelling personality. So, as a writer who's working with an audible medium, what can you do, or what do you think about when creating a narrative around that sort of challenge?
Jack Bueher:
Sometimes you have to get creative, and some episodes are going to warrant more liberal use of the device that is the narrator. I mean, and it's happened. I mean, it is definitely only happened where the company that you're working with on the podcast is excited to get a certain guest, and you show up for the interview and it's a dud. You know what I mean? That's when you have to punt and figure out, okay, well, this is not going to be as interview driven. The narrator is going to carry the load on this one, and then we'll let the guest tee up their best four or five lines and kind of lead the listener to that point. But yeah, you're not going to bet a thousand when it comes to somebody being a good audible guest, as opposed to just a good solid interview for a written piece. And that's where that writer muscle has to kick in, and you can't rely on, on the great oratory skills of the guest, of the speaker.
TJ Bonaventura:
And this is kind of why we always recommend. If you can, having some sort of like pre-interview interview or pre-recording interview, where you can really understand the personality of what you can expect from your guest, especially if you're going to contract a writer out there, you want to make their job as easy as possible to essentially make this individual interesting or the topic interesting. And if you don't do that, you're kind of now at the Liberty of, all right, well, how can I make this more or less interesting? I challenge everybody listening to, if you like How I Built This, is a great narrative driven podcast. I promise you everyone on there has done pre-interviews. But for the episodes that you tend to hear a lot more of Guy Ross's voice, or a lot more background noise, that's probably because they had to. They weren't dealing with the most compelling person as an individual, their story was compelling, but they had to do a little bit more production value to make it interesting.
Jack Bueher:
Sometimes you get the guest who is given to the one word answer. You try to coach them before, whether it's you as the writer or the company that's doing the podcast, or you yourself as the producer, TJ and Julian, you try to coach them, but that may not be their personality. And because we're not interviewing celebrities that we all kind of know, your role in that dice every single time. But yeah, I mean, How I Built This is a great example. There are some episodes that you want to say they write themselves and Guy doesn't have to do much at all. And others, you really see him shouldering the load.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. One of the things that I want to touch on as well is like, pre-interviews are definitely key. If you are reaching out to CMOs or executives at companies who you want to have on your podcast, it might be tough to get their time twice for the interview and a pre-interview. So, one tactic that we'd recommend is, do some homework. If they're that interesting of an individual, at least on paper, there's a good likelihood that they've been on other podcasts. So, do your homework to see, and listen. Does their energy fit the energy of your show? If not, then you can prepare.
Julian Lewis:
But I think exactly to what both you, TJ and Jack were talking about, if you're going through the interview and you hear that it doesn't feel like there's a lot of energy, you don't want to scrap the interview. Because you've asked this CMO of this large company to come on, but you lean into somebody like a Jack to be like, "Jack, you got to make this happen for us." And you got to make sure that that narrator is your Guy Ross or somebody who can bring that energy. So, that might be a good transition to understand who are narrators or what type of attributes do narrators have Jack that you like to write for that make your job a little bit easier.
Jack Bueher:
I suppose it's obvious to say a good voice, a voice for radio, so to speak. But they don't have to have been like a theater kid in high school, but it kind of helps if they know how to enunciate, if they can sense, and I don't want to oversell what we do, but if they can sense the drama building in a certain paragraph and they can kind of take you on a bit of a audible journey, they're reading lines essentially. And so, if they can pick up on the nuance, that's what I'm looking for. You don't want somebody who obviously is going to get up there and deliver a teleprompter speech. Somebody who kind of knows how to read with voice and nuance and flare, I guess, is the best way to describe it. Yeah.
Julian Lewis:
And when we're talking with clients about recruiting talent to help bring podcast to life, I think one of the prerequisites could be like, were you in theater in high school? You can ask that question.
Jack Bueher:
Absolutely.
Julian Lewis:
You have those culture carriers that are vocal within your company. And I think that's a great place for people to start to try to find somebody, or if you have the budget to do so, then you can look for some external voice talent, but why not give the shot to somebody internally first?
Jack Bueher:
Right. Exactly. Who's your go-to person to deliver a slide deck presentation? Who's your go-to person to give any sort of presentation really? Let's start with that person. You know what I mean? And see if, they're see if they're interested, seeing if the skill that they have in front of a group of 10 people translates into this format. Absolutely.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, one of the challenges, and Julian alluded to it a little bit, is that oftentimes, you can have a guest on who has been a guest on multiple different podcasts. And so, what that creates as you can imagine, is a lot of repetition in terms of the story that they're telling, and the narrative around their arc as a professional, from a young child, going into college, going into starting a business as an example. We've seen that arc time and time again. What do you, as a writer, try to accomplish when you're dealing with somebody, and we had to deal this with one of our shows and a couple different times, where we were dealing with like either CEOs or someone who had a book written about them, and it was a ESPN analyst. What can you do to be creative and really allow yourself to tell something that's a bit different from what's already been told?
Jack Bueher:
Well, you want to find the part that's different. I mean, keep in mind that if you're doing a podcast for a company, their lane is going to be pretty niche, as opposed to somebody who may have had a New Yorker profile written on them and they're on your show. So. A lot of the things that would be relevant to in one channel may not be relevant in another and vice versa, something that the New Yorker or who, whatever other show podcast they might have been on, or article that might have been written about them, they may not care about the nitty gritty about their business.
Jack Bueher:
So, you have to understand, what you, the company wants, or if you're an agency, what client wants. What's the overarching theme of the podcast in general. Find the areas where this person who, yes, there's been plenty written about them, or they've appeared on other podcasts, and that story has been told, their heroes journey has been told before, you downplay that a little bit. You got to tell it, but you then seize on the stuff that isn't the low hanging fruit, the stuff that is the more compelling to your listeners, that's more specific to your industry, or the reason why you had them on your show in the first place.
Julian Lewis:
One of my fears with somebody listening to this episode is that they're going to get really excited about creating a podcast with narration, which is phenomenal. I think How I Built This is phenomenal. The podcast that we've partnered with you on is very, very strong, but it's a lot of work. And so, I think it's important for us to disclose how much work goes into it, from not only booking the guests, but then all the way to where you're going back and retaking the parts of it to get that narration. We'd love for you to speak about that process a little bit. And TJ, since you and Jack have worked closest on that particular project, I'd love for you too, to kind of go back and forth and talk about that process, because I think it'll be really helpful to our listener.
TJ Bonaventura:
Yeah, I think the one thing that was really interesting about this project, and we can name it, because it's live out there, it's called Ground Truth by Dogpatch Advisors, and they contracted StudioPod to be the production team. So, essentially, what we had done is we had some basic questions that Jack specifically had written up about a guest and this particular show was very focused on outbound sales. So, something that would, that was very niche as Jack mentioned, is we had to make this interesting and I wanted to do a How I Built This style podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, we had the different questions that we would ask, and we spend about an hour doing a recording with the particular guest, where two of the hosts are just going back and forth with them, getting the answers that they hope to get. And then afterwards, it's kind of like, here you go, Jack, here's all the audio let's transcribe it, let's create a podcast. And then it was off a Jack to make it interesting. And it was a challenge for you, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, because each person was different. We definitely had episodes where, wow, this is an amazing guest, we have something real here, and there were other times we were like shit, we got to put some legwork in.
Jack Bueher:
Exactly. Yeah. I think the biggest challenge when you get the transcript of that interview, it's the biggest difference from the type of writing you might be used to, any book or a blog post or a news article or whatever that may be. It's the biggest difference. And it's also the biggest challenge to overcome when you sit down to write a narrated podcast, is that you're writing something that someone else is going to be reading out loud. That's an enormous shift in perspective. As a writer, you're not writing for the eyes, you're writing for the ears. And it turns out that's a completely. When we're writing casually, and by that casually, I mean anything in a nonacademic or professional way. So, like a blog post or even a cold sales, email outreach.
Jack Bueher:
I mean, when you're writing casually, you often strive or want to try to write the way talk. But writing for a narrator forces you to think of what that really means. What does it mean to write how we talk? And even when you're thinking that you're writing how you talk, when you hear it back to you, we're still guilty of writing with using cliches that we don't necessarily say out loud but we read and writing, read and print all the time, stilted syntax, and turns of phrase, that look good on paper, but don't sound good out loud. It happens all the time. That's the biggest shift that you have to get your head around when you first see a transcript is, how is this going to sound, how am I going to make the narrator sound, like these words should be coming out of their mouth.
TJ Bonaventura:
And we were lucky enough to work with mercy bell, who was the Raider on that show Ground Truth. And she had a ton of experience. And she was exactly what you had mentioned earlier, where she had a great voice for radio, but she also provided input. If there was something that was written that didn't feel right to her, even though it was written as it was meant for her to speak it, she's like, "I'm going to switch this up. I'm going to cut this out."
Jack Bueher:
She'd let me know.
TJ Bonaventura:
Yeah, she let you know, she was interactive and we're there too, and the three of us. So, the narrator, the writer and the production team were all there like collaborating. And that's how you make one of these podcasts. And to be quite honest, you going back and you listen to How I Built This, or another narrative style podcast, they have the team that's double the size that's working on a show like that. So, we were pretty lean creating that type of series.
TJ Bonaventura:
The one thing I do want to hit on is that, the main focus of having a really good narrative driven episode or show is you stay within the topic and theme of what you want to talk about. Oftentimes, you want to tell, boil the ocean, an old sales term that we like to use. Boil the ocean with everything that we can just provide, bombard our audience with. But if you can just stay narrow, stay niche, it really helps the content rider, it really helps the production team. It really just helps the host really focus on what it is that you want to create. I mean, do you agree with that, Jack?
Jack Bueher:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can remember one episode that I worked on, and this woman had a great story to tell, and I mean, going all the way back to college and how she ended up in sales, and it was really, really interesting. But as a trained journalist, I was a journalist for 15 years before I did any of this, my first instinct is to seize on that and be like, oh, that's a great story. But it didn't necessarily stay in the lane that the client wanted to stay in. And so, I had to learn how to sort of realize at the entirety of the 45 minute conversation that we had was not going to make it onto the air. And that's part of the job of the narrator. The narrator is a device.
Jack Bueher:
We are all in the service of the guest, and the narrator is a device to keep the story moving, to keep us centered. And I can explain my process of how I break it down, what the narrator should say, and what the guest should say. But that is at the focus is, anytime we're not in the lane, but we still need to get from point A to point B, that's the narrator's job. That's when you write for the narrator to skip over 10 years of the person's life in 90 seconds.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I mean, we would love to get insight into that process. And one thing I'll just add, again, real quick, the production team, the writer, the narrator, they all need to be on the same page. It is helpful when you have a narrator that works at the company, because in this case, she has a pretty good idea of the focus of where they're trying to get. But in lieu of that, when you don't have that person, who's a part of the company but they just have a killer voice in their externally, we really lean on our clients to inform us with as much as they can about their business and what they're trying to accomplish, so that TJ, as the person in production, Jack, as the writer, Mercy as the narrator, they can know that okay, this is what the client wants, let's get there. And as you mentioned, we are in service of the guest and leveraging all three devices to then leverage the narrator as the device to really bring that together.
Jack Bueher:
Yeah, absolutely.
Julian Lewis:
But yeah, we'd love for you to highlight that process without giving away your secret sauce and then hopefully, get you some clients from this.
Jack Bueher:
Sure. Well, the first thing that I do once I get the raw audio from the interview is I get it transcribed. And I like to get it transcribed by a human. So, I have a transcript that I then just dump into a doc. And then I've got, I mean, and these things are not small. The 10 minute interview is thousands of words, way bigger than what you think it is. So, when you meet for 45 minutes, or in some cases, 90 minutes with a guest, I mean, you've got a monster, monster document on your hand, 20,000 words, 40,000 words. First thing I do is I sit down and I start to read it, and sometimes I'll go through it a couple of times. And then I start to color code it. And it's really simple. I mean, there's two colors, there's narrator and guest.
Jack Bueher:
And so, I first start with the guest. I go through and I look for what are those great moments? Hopefully I was involved in the recording of the interview, not always, but if I was, then it's going to be a lot easier, because I was able to take notes, I was able to timestamp stuff in real time and say, "That was a great line, that was a great anecdote," I can find that easily. If not, then again, I'm just going through looking for the 10 best moments for that person. That person's best spoken moments. I highlight those in green, and that means guest. And so, what's left, the white space on this monster document, it's probably going to end up being the narrator, but a lot of it's going to end up being cut.
Jack Bueher:
And then I have to go through the white and decide which parts of this can we completely cut, which parts do need to gloss over quickly via narration, and what parts do we really have to explain? Because a lot of times the expert guest might under explain something, thinking that he's in a room full of like-minded people who understand whatever the topic is. There's three things that you have to do. You cut, you kind of quickly gloss over, and then you explain to sort of tee up the expertise.
Jack Bueher:
I try to get away from letting the speaker deliver too many nitty gritty facts, too much data. That can easily be done by the narrator, but you have to understand it. And so, in the moments where you're explaining, teeing up something so you can have the guest deliver the punctuation or the really great quote, the great analysis. A guest's job is to analyze, our job is to explain. If that makes sense.
Jack Bueher:
So, that's basically what I mean. And then it's just a whittling process. And throughout that process, once I start highlighting the yellow for the narrator, I might realize that's too much for the narrator. Let's see what else the guest said, and I look at it and say, okay, I can have that. I can extend that quote a little longer. You want to make sure the guest is heard. You don't want to overuse the narrator, and vice versa. I mean, you can also find that, well, there's way too much from the guest in here, I need to use the narrator, but it's a whittling down process from there.
Jack Bueher:
And then comes the writing, then comes, all right, so now I have got to take this chunk of yellow, that is all in the words of the guest, and paraphrase it, over explain it, in some cases, dumb it down, in some cases, make sure I really, really explain it until you get down to the bottom, and then it goes to production, and then you start cutting. It's probably going to be too long, and so then you start finding those areas where you can, where you can keep trimming at the margins.
TJ Bonaventura:
I love that. That's such a great inside baseball look into a writer's process, and kind of hopefully gives the audience an idea of what goes into it. Just the process of alone of transcribing it and getting these thousands and thousands of words from a very short podcast, and trying to make something compelling of it is hours and hours worth of work and not easily done. I have just one more question on my end for you Jack, before I hand it over to Julian.
TJ Bonaventura:
But let's say you have a company that comes to you and they're like, we love this podcast. It could be like, we love the Joe Rogan podcast, and we want to create our a style of our company that has to deal with something that's not the most compelling topic. Now, what recommendation would you give a company who's trying to do this for B2B purposes and gain clients for it. So, not maximum audience exposure, but really just have a targeted approach to that. What would you recommend to them if they want to get started with their podcast?
Jack Bueher:
I guess the biggest piece of advice is to understand that even if you have a concept of what you want it to be, and it's something that's a very well known podcast that we all know or lots of people know, it would be to understand though that your audience is still going to be niche, that you're not going to have broad appeal, nor should you seek it. And that translates then into expectations for the guests, for the interview, for what you're going to get out of the interview. I don't mean to say that you're setting them up so they're not surprised when they're disappointed. I mean that you can get something really, really compelling if you understand exactly who you're talking to and exactly who you're communicating to, that your story doesn't have to be a hero's journey. It can just be a really smart person who is an expert in your area, that hundreds, maybe thousands of listeners will want to hear from.
TJ Bonaventura:
And the benefit there too is while this, if you're an organization or someone from an organization, who's thinking about starting their podcast and you're listened to Julian and I and Jack talk about this process, the benefit here is while you are going to have a smaller audience, you're creating another arm of your business or brand awareness to drive those prospects through the funnel. So, perhaps you want to give someone this podcast or this episode to a client thinking about purchasing something similar to what an existing client had already purchased, or perhaps you're just trying to drive more down the top of the funnel.
TJ Bonaventura:
The resources and the time and the monetary investment that you make is very minimal compared to, let's say, a small event that you want to put together or a conference that you want to put together. So, the return that you're going to get is astronomical, especially if you come from the SaaS business that I worked in for 10 plus years. Making that investment into a podcast, all you need is one, maybe two clients to then make the podcast worth tenfold.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I'll add to that TJ in regards to exactly what you're talking about in terms of that return. So at the very beginning of this, Jack was talking about you're interviewing people anyway for a blog post, right? So, why not record it with a camera on and audio recording in the background? So, now out of the gates, you have the ability to have audio, you have the ability to have video, you have the ability to go back and write something as well. And so, I think that is something that's extremely important to touch on. And then, I guess, to take a step back and kind of lean a little bit more into that, Jack, when you talk about B2B and the value of it, and TJ hit on it in terms of the return you can have versus having a large conference, why is storytelling such an important piece of B2B marketer having a conversation with another business and getting them to potentially become a customer of theirs?
Jack Bueher:
I talk about this a lot with writers who they're stumped or they're worried about how to tackle a particular project that they're on, or maybe they filed a first draft and it didn't quite hit the mark. I tell them a lot that, so much of business to business selling is about problem solving. Most of the companies we're writing for sell products that literally call themselves solutions. So, it's about problem solving.
Jack Bueher:
So, content market have a built in narrative hook for anything that they're writing how to solve the problem. That is a story. That there's a beginning and a middle and an end, that there is a narrative arc. That's storytelling, and you're solving a problem, and you're showing a potential customer how your company can solve the problem, depending on how far down the funnel you are, or how far down the funnel you want the piece to be. Or just kind of alerting them to the fact that there is a problem that, maybe you don't even know it yet, and there is a solution that does exist and, oh, by the way, you happen to be on the website of a company that does that.
Jack Bueher:
But from a storytelling standpoint, I mean, it's a very common, dramatic device, whether it's a love story or a mystery or a murder, an action film, where there's a McGuffin somewhere, that they got to get to the thing. It's all about problem solving. And that's what I try to get writers to think about, is solve the problem and then unpack it for the reader. How the company discovered the problem, how they solved the problem. It can be, "I'm going to take you back to the beginning and explain how the problem was manifesting, and what it was doing to our company, and how we fixed it."
Jack Bueher:
That's one way of doing it. Another is, we talked to a company's customers. We told customer stories. "One of our customers had this problem, here's what it looked like, and here's how it was affecting their team, and here's how our product solved that problem." We're unpacking that problem and solving it, and in the process, we're telling a story with the beginning and the middle and an end. You can play with form, there's creative muscles you can flex, certainly depending on the brand voice. Or if you're an agency, the client that you're working with, but to narrow it down, to get it down to the screws, it's solve the problem. That's what storytelling does.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. So, if I could summarize storytelling equals problem solving, which in turn, equals thought leadership, which is a phrase that you used at the top of this. So, I mean, this has been absolutely phenomenal, Jack. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge with us. Hopefully, this acts as a storytelling tool or device that will allow for us both to get some customers out of it, because I think there's plenty of nuggets that will help the curious and scrappy podcasters. So, really appreciate you joining us.
Jack Bueher:
Cool.
TJ Bonaventura:
Go ahead and listen to Ground Truth, the podcast that was produced by StudioPod written by Jack. You'll get a taste of his capabilities and how we collaborate together. And of course, if you want to reach out to StudioPod, Julian and I, go to studiopodsf.com. PodOn.
TJ Bonaventura:
Every episode of the pod on podcast is produced and edited by StudioPod Media. For more information about our work and our clients, go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to Gary Oakland for the fire track. Gary O.
You can get something really, really compelling if you understand exactly who you're talking to, and exactly who you're communicating to, that your story doesn't have to be a hero's journey. It can just be a really smart person, who is an expert in your area, that hundreds maybe about of listeners will want to hear from.
TJ Bonaventura:
This is the PodOn Podcast, we're your host, TJ Bonaventura, that's me, and Julian Lewis-
Julian Lewis:
That's me. As founders of a podcast media company, we had to start a podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, join us each episode as we and our guest drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
TJ Bonaventura:
Welcome back to another episode of the PodOn Podcast. As always, I'm TJ Bonaventura co-founder of StudioPod, I'm with my other co-founder who here, Julian Lewis. Julian say, hi.
Julian Lewis:
What's up y'all, we're excited for this episode.
TJ Bonaventura:
We are very excited for this episode. Our guest today is Jack Bueher. I'm very excited about this, because Jack and I have worked on a couple different projects over the last 12 months, and we are going to be working on some more projects upcoming. So Jack, go ahead and say hello, and why don't you give us a little introduction about yourself?
Jack Bueher:
Sure. Thanks for having me, TJ and Julian. And as you said, you and I have been lucky enough to work with you and on a couple of different things and into your studio and I'm excited to be here.
TJ Bonaventura:
Thanks. I kind of want to just jump right into it. You named a couple different mediums of which you have written for specifically going into podcasting. How have you seen the industry in B2B marketing and content marketing rise over the past few years? Have you seen that there's been a need and a desire to create podcasts?
Jack Bueher:
Yes. We're starting to hear a lot more companies interested in translating their written work. The written content that they do, sort of see that translated into podcasts. We've had some interested in video stuff as well. Multimedia is something that companies are starting to come around to. And specifically with podcasting, we're getting asked about that a lot, and we are working on more podcasts, and therefore it's a new product that we're able to offer.
Julian Lewis:
And I guess in that vein, as people are asking more and more about podcasts, are there certain other mediums that they had done religiously before that you would say, as a low hanging fruit, you should start with this and try to convert it into a podcast. And for full disclosure, we always say to our clients, never read something that's been written as a podcast by translating it. But I'd love to understand if there are specific written pieces of content that you think easier translate to podcasting.
Jack Bueher:
Yeah, absolutely. We focus, I don't want to say exclusively, but we have a very heavy bent towards interview driven content, written content, almost a journalistic approach. And I mean, that's what you and I are doing right now, literally is, we're in a very journalistic situation. I'm, I'm answering questions that you're asking in hopes of getting information from me? And so, when I say that we work on eBooks and microsites and blog series, almost all of those are interview driven. So, that could mean we're talking to thought leaders inside a company who are experts in their segment or their product, and they're positioned as thought leaders or experts.
Jack Bueher:
We could also be talking to customers that are the CMO of a company that is the customer of the company that we're working with, because they know that that person has a great story to tell, or what have you. But it's sitting down, asking questions about whether it's their life, we're talking about their career arc, or it could be talking about their journey since they started at the company they're with now and sort of this great heroic heroes journey of how they took the company from X to Y in two years. Things like that.
Jack Bueher:
Interview based content translates into this format, the podcast, very well. And in fact, I mean, it can be multi-platform too. I mean, the interview that you do for a written piece can also be used for a small mini podcast. I mean, we're doing that now with a couple different customers, where the interview ends up being used in two or three different channels.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, I want to talk a little bit about that translation process. Because it's one thing to create a really compelling article or blog or microsite that tells a story of a hero's journey who started a company that brought it to a billion dollars in revenue. But with this, you have to deal with people's personalities. And you as a writer, could do a very good job of making someone's sell an interesting in the written form, but it's another thing to make them sound interesting audibly. When you're dealing with podcasting, you have to deal with this person actually being audibly heard as a guest, and that can create challenges around storytelling, because they may not be the most compelling personality. So, as a writer who's working with an audible medium, what can you do, or what do you think about when creating a narrative around that sort of challenge?
Jack Bueher:
Sometimes you have to get creative, and some episodes are going to warrant more liberal use of the device that is the narrator. I mean, and it's happened. I mean, it is definitely only happened where the company that you're working with on the podcast is excited to get a certain guest, and you show up for the interview and it's a dud. You know what I mean? That's when you have to punt and figure out, okay, well, this is not going to be as interview driven. The narrator is going to carry the load on this one, and then we'll let the guest tee up their best four or five lines and kind of lead the listener to that point. But yeah, you're not going to bet a thousand when it comes to somebody being a good audible guest, as opposed to just a good solid interview for a written piece. And that's where that writer muscle has to kick in, and you can't rely on, on the great oratory skills of the guest, of the speaker.
TJ Bonaventura:
And this is kind of why we always recommend. If you can, having some sort of like pre-interview interview or pre-recording interview, where you can really understand the personality of what you can expect from your guest, especially if you're going to contract a writer out there, you want to make their job as easy as possible to essentially make this individual interesting or the topic interesting. And if you don't do that, you're kind of now at the Liberty of, all right, well, how can I make this more or less interesting? I challenge everybody listening to, if you like How I Built This, is a great narrative driven podcast. I promise you everyone on there has done pre-interviews. But for the episodes that you tend to hear a lot more of Guy Ross's voice, or a lot more background noise, that's probably because they had to. They weren't dealing with the most compelling person as an individual, their story was compelling, but they had to do a little bit more production value to make it interesting.
Jack Bueher:
Sometimes you get the guest who is given to the one word answer. You try to coach them before, whether it's you as the writer or the company that's doing the podcast, or you yourself as the producer, TJ and Julian, you try to coach them, but that may not be their personality. And because we're not interviewing celebrities that we all kind of know, your role in that dice every single time. But yeah, I mean, How I Built This is a great example. There are some episodes that you want to say they write themselves and Guy doesn't have to do much at all. And others, you really see him shouldering the load.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. One of the things that I want to touch on as well is like, pre-interviews are definitely key. If you are reaching out to CMOs or executives at companies who you want to have on your podcast, it might be tough to get their time twice for the interview and a pre-interview. So, one tactic that we'd recommend is, do some homework. If they're that interesting of an individual, at least on paper, there's a good likelihood that they've been on other podcasts. So, do your homework to see, and listen. Does their energy fit the energy of your show? If not, then you can prepare.
Julian Lewis:
But I think exactly to what both you, TJ and Jack were talking about, if you're going through the interview and you hear that it doesn't feel like there's a lot of energy, you don't want to scrap the interview. Because you've asked this CMO of this large company to come on, but you lean into somebody like a Jack to be like, "Jack, you got to make this happen for us." And you got to make sure that that narrator is your Guy Ross or somebody who can bring that energy. So, that might be a good transition to understand who are narrators or what type of attributes do narrators have Jack that you like to write for that make your job a little bit easier.
Jack Bueher:
I suppose it's obvious to say a good voice, a voice for radio, so to speak. But they don't have to have been like a theater kid in high school, but it kind of helps if they know how to enunciate, if they can sense, and I don't want to oversell what we do, but if they can sense the drama building in a certain paragraph and they can kind of take you on a bit of a audible journey, they're reading lines essentially. And so, if they can pick up on the nuance, that's what I'm looking for. You don't want somebody who obviously is going to get up there and deliver a teleprompter speech. Somebody who kind of knows how to read with voice and nuance and flare, I guess, is the best way to describe it. Yeah.
Julian Lewis:
And when we're talking with clients about recruiting talent to help bring podcast to life, I think one of the prerequisites could be like, were you in theater in high school? You can ask that question.
Jack Bueher:
Absolutely.
Julian Lewis:
You have those culture carriers that are vocal within your company. And I think that's a great place for people to start to try to find somebody, or if you have the budget to do so, then you can look for some external voice talent, but why not give the shot to somebody internally first?
Jack Bueher:
Right. Exactly. Who's your go-to person to deliver a slide deck presentation? Who's your go-to person to give any sort of presentation really? Let's start with that person. You know what I mean? And see if, they're see if they're interested, seeing if the skill that they have in front of a group of 10 people translates into this format. Absolutely.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, one of the challenges, and Julian alluded to it a little bit, is that oftentimes, you can have a guest on who has been a guest on multiple different podcasts. And so, what that creates as you can imagine, is a lot of repetition in terms of the story that they're telling, and the narrative around their arc as a professional, from a young child, going into college, going into starting a business as an example. We've seen that arc time and time again. What do you, as a writer, try to accomplish when you're dealing with somebody, and we had to deal this with one of our shows and a couple different times, where we were dealing with like either CEOs or someone who had a book written about them, and it was a ESPN analyst. What can you do to be creative and really allow yourself to tell something that's a bit different from what's already been told?
Jack Bueher:
Well, you want to find the part that's different. I mean, keep in mind that if you're doing a podcast for a company, their lane is going to be pretty niche, as opposed to somebody who may have had a New Yorker profile written on them and they're on your show. So. A lot of the things that would be relevant to in one channel may not be relevant in another and vice versa, something that the New Yorker or who, whatever other show podcast they might have been on, or article that might have been written about them, they may not care about the nitty gritty about their business.
Jack Bueher:
So, you have to understand, what you, the company wants, or if you're an agency, what client wants. What's the overarching theme of the podcast in general. Find the areas where this person who, yes, there's been plenty written about them, or they've appeared on other podcasts, and that story has been told, their heroes journey has been told before, you downplay that a little bit. You got to tell it, but you then seize on the stuff that isn't the low hanging fruit, the stuff that is the more compelling to your listeners, that's more specific to your industry, or the reason why you had them on your show in the first place.
Julian Lewis:
One of my fears with somebody listening to this episode is that they're going to get really excited about creating a podcast with narration, which is phenomenal. I think How I Built This is phenomenal. The podcast that we've partnered with you on is very, very strong, but it's a lot of work. And so, I think it's important for us to disclose how much work goes into it, from not only booking the guests, but then all the way to where you're going back and retaking the parts of it to get that narration. We'd love for you to speak about that process a little bit. And TJ, since you and Jack have worked closest on that particular project, I'd love for you too, to kind of go back and forth and talk about that process, because I think it'll be really helpful to our listener.
TJ Bonaventura:
Yeah, I think the one thing that was really interesting about this project, and we can name it, because it's live out there, it's called Ground Truth by Dogpatch Advisors, and they contracted StudioPod to be the production team. So, essentially, what we had done is we had some basic questions that Jack specifically had written up about a guest and this particular show was very focused on outbound sales. So, something that would, that was very niche as Jack mentioned, is we had to make this interesting and I wanted to do a How I Built This style podcast.
TJ Bonaventura:
So, we had the different questions that we would ask, and we spend about an hour doing a recording with the particular guest, where two of the hosts are just going back and forth with them, getting the answers that they hope to get. And then afterwards, it's kind of like, here you go, Jack, here's all the audio let's transcribe it, let's create a podcast. And then it was off a Jack to make it interesting. And it was a challenge for you, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, because each person was different. We definitely had episodes where, wow, this is an amazing guest, we have something real here, and there were other times we were like shit, we got to put some legwork in.
Jack Bueher:
Exactly. Yeah. I think the biggest challenge when you get the transcript of that interview, it's the biggest difference from the type of writing you might be used to, any book or a blog post or a news article or whatever that may be. It's the biggest difference. And it's also the biggest challenge to overcome when you sit down to write a narrated podcast, is that you're writing something that someone else is going to be reading out loud. That's an enormous shift in perspective. As a writer, you're not writing for the eyes, you're writing for the ears. And it turns out that's a completely. When we're writing casually, and by that casually, I mean anything in a nonacademic or professional way. So, like a blog post or even a cold sales, email outreach.
Jack Bueher:
I mean, when you're writing casually, you often strive or want to try to write the way talk. But writing for a narrator forces you to think of what that really means. What does it mean to write how we talk? And even when you're thinking that you're writing how you talk, when you hear it back to you, we're still guilty of writing with using cliches that we don't necessarily say out loud but we read and writing, read and print all the time, stilted syntax, and turns of phrase, that look good on paper, but don't sound good out loud. It happens all the time. That's the biggest shift that you have to get your head around when you first see a transcript is, how is this going to sound, how am I going to make the narrator sound, like these words should be coming out of their mouth.
TJ Bonaventura:
And we were lucky enough to work with mercy bell, who was the Raider on that show Ground Truth. And she had a ton of experience. And she was exactly what you had mentioned earlier, where she had a great voice for radio, but she also provided input. If there was something that was written that didn't feel right to her, even though it was written as it was meant for her to speak it, she's like, "I'm going to switch this up. I'm going to cut this out."
Jack Bueher:
She'd let me know.
TJ Bonaventura:
Yeah, she let you know, she was interactive and we're there too, and the three of us. So, the narrator, the writer and the production team were all there like collaborating. And that's how you make one of these podcasts. And to be quite honest, you going back and you listen to How I Built This, or another narrative style podcast, they have the team that's double the size that's working on a show like that. So, we were pretty lean creating that type of series.
TJ Bonaventura:
The one thing I do want to hit on is that, the main focus of having a really good narrative driven episode or show is you stay within the topic and theme of what you want to talk about. Oftentimes, you want to tell, boil the ocean, an old sales term that we like to use. Boil the ocean with everything that we can just provide, bombard our audience with. But if you can just stay narrow, stay niche, it really helps the content rider, it really helps the production team. It really just helps the host really focus on what it is that you want to create. I mean, do you agree with that, Jack?
Jack Bueher:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can remember one episode that I worked on, and this woman had a great story to tell, and I mean, going all the way back to college and how she ended up in sales, and it was really, really interesting. But as a trained journalist, I was a journalist for 15 years before I did any of this, my first instinct is to seize on that and be like, oh, that's a great story. But it didn't necessarily stay in the lane that the client wanted to stay in. And so, I had to learn how to sort of realize at the entirety of the 45 minute conversation that we had was not going to make it onto the air. And that's part of the job of the narrator. The narrator is a device.
Jack Bueher:
We are all in the service of the guest, and the narrator is a device to keep the story moving, to keep us centered. And I can explain my process of how I break it down, what the narrator should say, and what the guest should say. But that is at the focus is, anytime we're not in the lane, but we still need to get from point A to point B, that's the narrator's job. That's when you write for the narrator to skip over 10 years of the person's life in 90 seconds.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I mean, we would love to get insight into that process. And one thing I'll just add, again, real quick, the production team, the writer, the narrator, they all need to be on the same page. It is helpful when you have a narrator that works at the company, because in this case, she has a pretty good idea of the focus of where they're trying to get. But in lieu of that, when you don't have that person, who's a part of the company but they just have a killer voice in their externally, we really lean on our clients to inform us with as much as they can about their business and what they're trying to accomplish, so that TJ, as the person in production, Jack, as the writer, Mercy as the narrator, they can know that okay, this is what the client wants, let's get there. And as you mentioned, we are in service of the guest and leveraging all three devices to then leverage the narrator as the device to really bring that together.
Jack Bueher:
Yeah, absolutely.
Julian Lewis:
But yeah, we'd love for you to highlight that process without giving away your secret sauce and then hopefully, get you some clients from this.
Jack Bueher:
Sure. Well, the first thing that I do once I get the raw audio from the interview is I get it transcribed. And I like to get it transcribed by a human. So, I have a transcript that I then just dump into a doc. And then I've got, I mean, and these things are not small. The 10 minute interview is thousands of words, way bigger than what you think it is. So, when you meet for 45 minutes, or in some cases, 90 minutes with a guest, I mean, you've got a monster, monster document on your hand, 20,000 words, 40,000 words. First thing I do is I sit down and I start to read it, and sometimes I'll go through it a couple of times. And then I start to color code it. And it's really simple. I mean, there's two colors, there's narrator and guest.
Jack Bueher:
And so, I first start with the guest. I go through and I look for what are those great moments? Hopefully I was involved in the recording of the interview, not always, but if I was, then it's going to be a lot easier, because I was able to take notes, I was able to timestamp stuff in real time and say, "That was a great line, that was a great anecdote," I can find that easily. If not, then again, I'm just going through looking for the 10 best moments for that person. That person's best spoken moments. I highlight those in green, and that means guest. And so, what's left, the white space on this monster document, it's probably going to end up being the narrator, but a lot of it's going to end up being cut.
Jack Bueher:
And then I have to go through the white and decide which parts of this can we completely cut, which parts do need to gloss over quickly via narration, and what parts do we really have to explain? Because a lot of times the expert guest might under explain something, thinking that he's in a room full of like-minded people who understand whatever the topic is. There's three things that you have to do. You cut, you kind of quickly gloss over, and then you explain to sort of tee up the expertise.
Jack Bueher:
I try to get away from letting the speaker deliver too many nitty gritty facts, too much data. That can easily be done by the narrator, but you have to understand it. And so, in the moments where you're explaining, teeing up something so you can have the guest deliver the punctuation or the really great quote, the great analysis. A guest's job is to analyze, our job is to explain. If that makes sense.
Jack Bueher:
So, that's basically what I mean. And then it's just a whittling process. And throughout that process, once I start highlighting the yellow for the narrator, I might realize that's too much for the narrator. Let's see what else the guest said, and I look at it and say, okay, I can have that. I can extend that quote a little longer. You want to make sure the guest is heard. You don't want to overuse the narrator, and vice versa. I mean, you can also find that, well, there's way too much from the guest in here, I need to use the narrator, but it's a whittling down process from there.
Jack Bueher:
And then comes the writing, then comes, all right, so now I have got to take this chunk of yellow, that is all in the words of the guest, and paraphrase it, over explain it, in some cases, dumb it down, in some cases, make sure I really, really explain it until you get down to the bottom, and then it goes to production, and then you start cutting. It's probably going to be too long, and so then you start finding those areas where you can, where you can keep trimming at the margins.
TJ Bonaventura:
I love that. That's such a great inside baseball look into a writer's process, and kind of hopefully gives the audience an idea of what goes into it. Just the process of alone of transcribing it and getting these thousands and thousands of words from a very short podcast, and trying to make something compelling of it is hours and hours worth of work and not easily done. I have just one more question on my end for you Jack, before I hand it over to Julian.
TJ Bonaventura:
But let's say you have a company that comes to you and they're like, we love this podcast. It could be like, we love the Joe Rogan podcast, and we want to create our a style of our company that has to deal with something that's not the most compelling topic. Now, what recommendation would you give a company who's trying to do this for B2B purposes and gain clients for it. So, not maximum audience exposure, but really just have a targeted approach to that. What would you recommend to them if they want to get started with their podcast?
Jack Bueher:
I guess the biggest piece of advice is to understand that even if you have a concept of what you want it to be, and it's something that's a very well known podcast that we all know or lots of people know, it would be to understand though that your audience is still going to be niche, that you're not going to have broad appeal, nor should you seek it. And that translates then into expectations for the guests, for the interview, for what you're going to get out of the interview. I don't mean to say that you're setting them up so they're not surprised when they're disappointed. I mean that you can get something really, really compelling if you understand exactly who you're talking to and exactly who you're communicating to, that your story doesn't have to be a hero's journey. It can just be a really smart person who is an expert in your area, that hundreds, maybe thousands of listeners will want to hear from.
TJ Bonaventura:
And the benefit there too is while this, if you're an organization or someone from an organization, who's thinking about starting their podcast and you're listened to Julian and I and Jack talk about this process, the benefit here is while you are going to have a smaller audience, you're creating another arm of your business or brand awareness to drive those prospects through the funnel. So, perhaps you want to give someone this podcast or this episode to a client thinking about purchasing something similar to what an existing client had already purchased, or perhaps you're just trying to drive more down the top of the funnel.
TJ Bonaventura:
The resources and the time and the monetary investment that you make is very minimal compared to, let's say, a small event that you want to put together or a conference that you want to put together. So, the return that you're going to get is astronomical, especially if you come from the SaaS business that I worked in for 10 plus years. Making that investment into a podcast, all you need is one, maybe two clients to then make the podcast worth tenfold.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I'll add to that TJ in regards to exactly what you're talking about in terms of that return. So at the very beginning of this, Jack was talking about you're interviewing people anyway for a blog post, right? So, why not record it with a camera on and audio recording in the background? So, now out of the gates, you have the ability to have audio, you have the ability to have video, you have the ability to go back and write something as well. And so, I think that is something that's extremely important to touch on. And then, I guess, to take a step back and kind of lean a little bit more into that, Jack, when you talk about B2B and the value of it, and TJ hit on it in terms of the return you can have versus having a large conference, why is storytelling such an important piece of B2B marketer having a conversation with another business and getting them to potentially become a customer of theirs?
Jack Bueher:
I talk about this a lot with writers who they're stumped or they're worried about how to tackle a particular project that they're on, or maybe they filed a first draft and it didn't quite hit the mark. I tell them a lot that, so much of business to business selling is about problem solving. Most of the companies we're writing for sell products that literally call themselves solutions. So, it's about problem solving.
Jack Bueher:
So, content market have a built in narrative hook for anything that they're writing how to solve the problem. That is a story. That there's a beginning and a middle and an end, that there is a narrative arc. That's storytelling, and you're solving a problem, and you're showing a potential customer how your company can solve the problem, depending on how far down the funnel you are, or how far down the funnel you want the piece to be. Or just kind of alerting them to the fact that there is a problem that, maybe you don't even know it yet, and there is a solution that does exist and, oh, by the way, you happen to be on the website of a company that does that.
Jack Bueher:
But from a storytelling standpoint, I mean, it's a very common, dramatic device, whether it's a love story or a mystery or a murder, an action film, where there's a McGuffin somewhere, that they got to get to the thing. It's all about problem solving. And that's what I try to get writers to think about, is solve the problem and then unpack it for the reader. How the company discovered the problem, how they solved the problem. It can be, "I'm going to take you back to the beginning and explain how the problem was manifesting, and what it was doing to our company, and how we fixed it."
Jack Bueher:
That's one way of doing it. Another is, we talked to a company's customers. We told customer stories. "One of our customers had this problem, here's what it looked like, and here's how it was affecting their team, and here's how our product solved that problem." We're unpacking that problem and solving it, and in the process, we're telling a story with the beginning and the middle and an end. You can play with form, there's creative muscles you can flex, certainly depending on the brand voice. Or if you're an agency, the client that you're working with, but to narrow it down, to get it down to the screws, it's solve the problem. That's what storytelling does.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. So, if I could summarize storytelling equals problem solving, which in turn, equals thought leadership, which is a phrase that you used at the top of this. So, I mean, this has been absolutely phenomenal, Jack. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge with us. Hopefully, this acts as a storytelling tool or device that will allow for us both to get some customers out of it, because I think there's plenty of nuggets that will help the curious and scrappy podcasters. So, really appreciate you joining us.
Jack Bueher:
Cool.
TJ Bonaventura:
Go ahead and listen to Ground Truth, the podcast that was produced by StudioPod written by Jack. You'll get a taste of his capabilities and how we collaborate together. And of course, if you want to reach out to StudioPod, Julian and I, go to studiopodsf.com. PodOn.
TJ Bonaventura:
Every episode of the pod on podcast is produced and edited by StudioPod Media. For more information about our work and our clients, go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to Gary Oakland for the fire track. Gary O.