Creating The Greatest Show

[00:00:00] Ladies and Jens, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for a podcast. For podcasters, this is creating the greatest show, and I’m your host, Casey Cheshire. Join me as we interview podcast host. And investigate the ingredients of a successful interview podcast. We’ll talk mistakes, earned skills, powerful questions, and more.

This show is sponsored by Ringmaster, completely done for you B2B podcast production.

Casey Cheshire: My guest today, she is an absolutely amazing person. She is a badass, and she’s also literally in Alaska right now. And the power of the interwebs, we are just going to have a just amazing conversation. I can’t believe it.

Technology at its finest. And I want to introduce you to her. Who is she? Casey, stop. Stop rambling. Tell us who she is. She’s an entrepreneur. A serial entrepreneur, a marketing leader and thought leader, a speaker, a mentor, a coach, the [00:01:00] host of Finding Focus, really cool podcast, and also the host of the two Pizza Marketing podcast, co-founder and CMO at Gated.

Melissa Moody. Welcome to the show.

Melissa Moody: Thank you so much. It sounds like I do a lot of things, which actually I do. But having you list them all out like that is, is humbling and exciting. So thanks for having me, Casey. I’m glad to be here.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, I’m glad you’re here too. And you have two podcasts and you have that thing that I’ve fallen into as well, which is when you realize you can do one, you realize you can do more, and then it’s hard not to it’s like buying favorite items, right? It just, it’s hard not to have more podcasts.

So I want to just go ahead and pass you to Baton here.

Melissa Moody: Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: pull back the curtain for us on your shows plural, and share your most important strategy for a great interview. Podcast.

Melissa Moody: Oh, I love it. I, yeah, first I got a comment on your thought there. It reminds me of I was chatting with someone the other day. You have one, you want more. It reminds me of tattoos. Somebody told me you get one and then you’re like, I could get another. It’s [00:02:00] not a problem.

So

Casey Cheshire: are like tattoos.

Melissa Moody: Podcasts are like tattoos.

There’s the one liner. I’m excited to pull the curtain back because I came into podcasting probably in a very different way than a lot of people. I would say it was not originally intentional, it was accidental. One of the podcasts that I wrote that I. Host and Run is completely accidental, which I’ll get to in a second.

But the first one I’m finding focus is built for our brand, for the company. I work with the company, I’m a co-founder of Gated. We wanted to create a show that was really providing not just, valuable content that people think they need, but topics that they. Wouldn’t otherwise discuss. So there are a lot of, our target audience for GATE is the B2B marketer.

It’s someone who’s got a lot on their plate and they’re trying to get things done without all the crap in their life, right? All that noise that we deal with. Now, I could do a podcast for B2B marketers, but let’s all count how many of those there are online these [00:03:00] days. There’s plenty. And so what we did was we said, what we really want to do with that one is talk about something that isn’t always.

Appealed back isn’t always examined, which is how the heck we actually get these things done? How do we get things done in a noisy world? That’s the whole point of finding focus. so we, it was intentional in the sense we knew we wanted to create good content, and that’s really why we created it.

Not for regular listeners per se, but to have good meaty content that we could use as a company. But it was a little bit accidental because I right now am owning all of the marketing. So we are a small company. We do not have these resources where we’re already established all of our go-to-market and demand gen processes, and then we say, oh, let’s do a podcast.

No. It was kinda like, whoops, now we’re doing a podcast. And then we figured out how valuable it was. The other accidental podcast that I created, as you mentioned, is the two pizza marketing. And what that started as is as a small [00:04:00] marketing team leader, as someone who’s really loves working on small marketing teams throughout my history.

I realized that there’s not a lot of opportunity because you don’t have a team around you to riff and talk and vent and rant, right? And so what happened was we accidentally created a Slack community of small team marketers, and then we were having all these great conversations. One of my kind of team members in that small team marketing Slack group said, Hey, why don’t we just start hitting record on these things?

Let’s capture the conversations we’re having and share them with others. Because frankly, that’s the big challenge for anyone on a small team is you feel siloed. You feel like I don’t have anyone to talk to. No one else is out there to listen. No one else is going through what I’m going through. So we fell into podcasting and you and I can talk about how I retained that accidental approach and made it very Easy because really both of the efforts that I’m now hosting are to a certain extent, side hustles, right?

Like they are [00:05:00] outside of my day-to-day job, which is grow the users for gated. That’s, that’s really a core job. However, both of them provide huge amounts of value. So how do you balance? The need to create these podcasts, which have so much value, but also with the fact that it can be a lot of work.

That’s, I think, where my secret sauce lies. When it comes to podcasting.

Casey Cheshire: All right let’s get that sauce going. Stir the pot. I, we can’t not talk about that. If so you have brought up this sauce. Yeah. So many times the podcast is all these. Measurable amazing and sometimes measurable amazing things. But yet the core job is like drive that funnel or the conversion drive that acquisition side.

So how do you balance the two?

Melissa Moody: The first thing I think is always to start with the why. Like, why are we doing something? And when you’re clear with that, why, it becomes very easy to see the things that you don’t need to do. That’s the theme of finding focus as a podcast in itself. But if you know the why, [00:06:00] so the why for, let’s focus on two beats in marketing for now.

The why for two Pizza marketing is we want to expose. Other op, other small team marketers who feel siloed and feel alone to the fact that there are others of us going through the exact same things. And it’s not pretty and it’s crazy and sometimes it’s funny. But we wanted to expose each other to more and more of those stories, so it didn’t become as isolating and strange.

Now what that allowed us to do was to say, are we. Do we have to roll things out every week in order to keep up a pipeline of revenue? No, we don’t. So our pacing is, once a week, we only do follow up clips twice a week basically. It’s very low pacing. The other thing, and this is a great story, my co-host on that, Ashley McGovern she is leading marketing over at Stra right now.

She,

Shout out to Ashley. She brings so much energy, awesome energy, and I love this comment she had when we were [00:07:00] starting. She said, I’m a content marketer at heart, so if we capture video, I’m going to spend hours. Clipping the video and editing the video and making it into social templates. She looked at me and said, we don’t have time for that.

Our mission is not to have the most robust set of social media clips for two beats of marketing. It’s just to share those conversations. So we specifically decided, We are only doing audio. There will only be audio for this. And there’s also, if you listen to it, a very low level of editing. We don’t, do super high editing.

We start the conversation if we’ve got to grab something outta the middle because it was awkward or weird. Fine. But it’s very honest and candid and not over manufactured. I personally tend to prefer podcasts that are on the low end of. Overproduced, I guess you might say. I think you can really tell even from the first, notes of a music that starts playing when you’re on a podcast.

I think you can tell the [00:08:00] level of production now. Depending on what someone’s trying to achieve, they may really want high production quality. For us, with that one we specifically said we’re going to go lower production quality and we’re going to use for right now, we use entirely free tools because it is just a side gig for us.

Casey Cheshire: You mentioned the why. Was to expose marketers for what to these stories and experiences in each other. And I definitely had, have an affinity to that small marketing group. And you’re right, you may be the only marketer there too.

And so no one speaks your language. So you’d love to hear someone else have the same challenge you do. But I would say one question. Why do that? Like, why do this nice gift, this side hustle? What do you get out of it? What’s your why for that pizza pod?

Melissa Moody: Great question. The why for me is the reason why it started in the first place. I love. Having those conversations with other marketers and I was doing them anyway I probably meet three to five times a week with other small team marketers. Either I’m giving them help or they’re [00:09:00] giving me help, or sometimes it goes both way.

One of one of my favorite people, Zoe Hartsfield, she is an incredible community marketer and I have turned to her for community building advice and growth for a long time. Now she’s heading up marketing at Swan Tide and she’s Hey, can I get. Some of your time back around, all the kind of the leadership components that she’s working on and putting into place there.

So there’s such a give and take between small marketers. For me, I was having those conversations anyway and they were a value to me doing my job better. The podcast, all I had to do was hit record.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah,

Melissa Moody: so the value was already there for me. I figured why not hit record and get the value to more

Casey Cheshire: why not share that? If you and I were just having a Zoom meeting right now,

We’d be kicking ourselves saying oh my gosh, don’t I wish somebody else had heard that or, and it’s I’m never going to explain it as well as you just did. And it’s ah, I wish we had hit record.

So it sounds, it makes sense. You are doing these things anyways. You love that, the conversations, the connections. So why not share that with other people? And [00:10:00] it’s been worth that side hustle, extra work on your part to make that happen. That’s really giving, actually it’s very caring.

Melissa Moody: Yeah, and the other value for me besides just the conversations themselves is obviously the networking. I think any podcast podcast host, the ones listening to this show One of the huge benefits for the host is you build this absolutely incredible network not only with people that you may already know and want to connect deeper with, but it gives you a reason to reach out to people to say, wow, I’ve always seen what you do.

Would you mind sharing? So it’s an amazing mechanism for personal network growth for sure.

Casey Cheshire: Got it. So there are those intangibles that also reward you for that, somewhat selfless act of just getting those great content pieces out to other people. What’s the why for the finding Focus pod?

Melissa Moody: Ooh, great question. So the why for finding focus is really content. I wanted we did a lot with gated around a A lot of our external marketing is around showing. People who use gated and how awesome they [00:11:00] are. So our brand is built around up-leveling other people, giving them the tools to succeed better in this noisy world.

So a lot of our marketing was very testimonial driven and I was looking for what is something that we could. Create that is very value driven. That gives our target audience something that they, that would actually go back into helping them uplevel, right? We’re saying, oh, look at these people. They’re so great.

Let’s also give those people more inspiration, more ideas for how to continue to uplevel themselves. So for us, the why was content, which means do I care how many followers I have or how many like, Listeners I have of the show or like weekly returning listeners. No, I don’t. Do, I care that we’re getting really cool snackable nuggets and ideas that I can write about or do little videos about or share on social.

Yes. So by having a clear why it. it Changes what I do with the podcast and how I [00:12:00] use the podcast and frankly, how I sell the podcast to into, leadership. Right now it’s just my co-founder, but like how I tell him this is why we’re doing this. This is the value behind it. It’s not, oh, we’re driving more users necessarily, right?

It’s, we are providing value to the people that follow us and therefore building this relationship base.

Casey Cheshire: That makes sense, and especially mentioning content being the play. It sounds like it’s that standard content roi, which is, it’s not a, we’re investing in good content if the content’s good. We’ll bring people in, we’ll create engagement. Content doesn’t necessarily have a an initial direct roi, click paper click type of thing.

So by tying the podcast to content, you’re able to do all your content efforts can then be justified by your, by the work. Makes sense. That’s really cool. This all came out from me asking the secret sauce about balancing the value versus getting what you want and. I love that the very first thing you did, was ask, what is the purpose?

[00:13:00] Why are we doing this? first of all, that’s I. In my opinion the most badass answer because that is the right thing. Anyone really super savvy and smart is strategic. When asked what do I do here? They go, why are we doing this? And then that helps shape that shape everything.

I wonder if that was something that you’ve just, you do or experience or if maybe that was habits or strategy you picked up on the finding Focus pod.

Melissa Moody: We definitely talk about it a lot on the Finding Focus Pod. I’d like to think it’s also a little bit of the reason why I. I am able to function and succeed on a small team because anybody who’s on a small team knows there is always more to do than you could ever possibly do.

My list, if you gave me a to-do list, it would stretch from here to Timbuktu. So my daily challenge is, what am I not doing? That is really the daily challenge that I face. And so I think. The only way to do that and keep your sanity is to [00:14:00] have your purpose, your focus, right? To say this is the why.

So therefore, if that’s the why, it’s much easier to say, I should do this, or I should not do this. I think without the why, what are you deciding a month, right? Are you deciding on the last thing that fell into your lap or the last idea you had? Because that may not be the best idea or the most.

Currently valuable idea. It may just be the freshest thing, and that’s a challenge that we all have. That’s just like a human challenge, right? How do I focus on, not the pretty shiny thing, but the thing that really matters. It’s definitely something I’ve always strived for. I’ve learned a lot more from my own podcast guests, as you said, but I think it’s also just a mechanism of survival on a small team.

If you don’t know, Your why. You’re going to do all of the things and you are going to sink because it is. It’s too much. It’s too much.

Casey Cheshire: So talk to me about how you then balance that side hustle and don’t jump [00:15:00] in too quickly. And, you mentioned the idea of you can, you accidentally got into this, but you also were smart in a way to not accidentally get into too much. Like you recognized there was a cost associated with these things.

Can you talk to me about the progression of how you figure out how not to go too fast, too soon?

Melissa Moody: Totally, and I’m probably going to focus more on two pizza marketing because, finding focus is fundamentally for my job. So the real side hustle is two, pizza marketing and and by side hustle, just for the record, no one’s getting paid anything here. Side hustle in the time spent, not in the money coming in.

There is none. So I will say, First is pace for me? Are we going to go out like chasing out of the gates? And then fall flat? Like you said, what, I don’t even know the stats you probably do on how many people don’t even get to 20 episodes, right? There’s, it’s something like only 2% of podcasts that are started ever even make 20 episodes, which is crazy.

Like 20. That’s not that much. [00:16:00] But if you go out and you say, Every episode, I am going to do a full episode and I’m going to publish it on YouTube and I’m going to cut clips of it for social and I’m going to put it on four different social platforms, and then I’m going to do three posts a week about it and I’m going to get my users to listen.

And if you’re, and I’m going to get advertisers if you do all of that, good God, I can see why nobody would make it to 20 episodes. That’s so much work. It’s so much work. So Pace is a big one for me. We went out of the gate and we said, I’m going to press record. I’m not going to even find a fancy platform. We’re using Zoom and we still are.

Not that. I don’t know. The other ones work great, but like I just pushed record on a Zoom call. That’s it.

Casey Cheshire: You’re probably already paying

for it, right?

Melissa Moody: Yep. Already paying for it. We have a couple of tools that are like dumb, easy to use. We say we’re going to publish one a week so that nobody’s overdone. Oh, and here’s a big one for, I guess it’s not really pacing.

This is my second trick. Get [00:17:00] yourself a co-host, folks, because it’s immediately dividing the work into two. If I had to record a session every single week and produce the session and deliver it, huge amounts of work. But even the fact that, so I do most of the production right now, but even the fact that Ashley will just deliver me.

Her episodes whenever she records them and it’s easy-peasy. Boom. Immediately less work. So the pacing piece, like I, I think I mentioned this already. We don’t record video, we just record audio. So immediately I’m saying, okay, let’s not go crazy out of the gate with these long videos to edit and put in fancy platforms.

Nope, a lot easier because it’s only audio. You know, for me right now, we have so many great guests that we’re not, that are already in our network. I’m also not spending a lot of time chasing other guests. I’m just meeting with people that are ones that are easy to secure. So there’s I’m saving a lot of effort in the idea that if we pace ourselves, it will be great.

I also [00:18:00] recognize that at some point I’ll probably have more time for it. If one role, if I’m in transition between roles or if some space in my life opens up, I could add video or we could record two a week or we, there’s all sorts of ways to go up later, but if you start too fast, you’re going to burn out.

you know, I’ve been an athlete in different ways over the course of my life, and it’s this idea that You shouldn’t sprint right out of the gate, you should hit a pace.

I remember my coach always used to say, hit a pace that you can hold all day. And then once you start seeing the finish line, you bring it up and you bring it up. And so it is a, marathon not a sprint, I guess is the opposite. And if you see it as a sprint, podcasting can eat you alive.

So

Casey Cheshire: Totally. Have you ever done any triathlons?

Melissa Moody: only for fun.

Casey Cheshire: Same. But I definitely recall being in this boat, but also watching other people just completely burn all their energy on the swim at the very beginning. then they are just like, [00:19:00] I got to go bike. Like just used it all.

Melissa Moody: That’s a perfect initiative. When I took a, it was just a for fun like training course and we were learning how like swim technique for triathlons and he literally was like, do not use your legs. I don’t want to see you use your legs while you swim. Like you should not be using your legs while you swim.

And I was like, that’s crazy. Talk. Absolutely not because you, your swim is all the upper body, so when you get out, you have got fresh legs. And it was, if you’re just a swimmer, it doesn’t make sense. But if you’re a triathlete and you’re building for the whole race, yeah, totally. I’m with you.

Yes.

Casey Cheshire: I was watch I joined this group just to hang out with them and they were like practicing for Ironman. They’re all in the pool and they had a coach with them. I hopped in, did some laps. A guy gave me some pointers. I. And I remember telling him, man, I w I can’t wait till I’m in better shape so I can just do more swimming and do a better job of it.

And he was like, you know what, swimming is like 80% technique.

Fitness. Like you just need to do it the right way. [00:20:00]

Melissa Moody: Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: the time, I thought it was bs, but as I learned, to be in the right position. So I wasn’t fighting against myself. I really, it was really true, and all these things can really apply

Melissa Moody: Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: and they can apply to all these people.

You, you could be, recording all the audio. You could be recording 4K video, but guess what? Now your file sizes are like gigantic and your whole work effort just doubled and tripled and quadrupled.

Melissa Moody: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. We could do triathlon podcast metaphors all day. I

think.

Casey Cheshire: There’s just so many, we don’t need to try. So tell me about the co-host. I’ve never done the co-host thing, and what’s interesting is I heard you talk about dividing and conquering the work. Have you ever been on together?

Melissa Moody: So we added something in. I’ll tell you a little bit about that. I just have to go back to the fact that with two pizza marketing in particular, half of these learnings were accidental, not incidental. So the accidental part came out with one of the members in our two pizza marketing Slack community.

Somebody said we should, you should record these and turn ’em [00:21:00] into a podcast. And I said ha. Yeah, no, don’t have the time. And another woman in there, Ashley said, I would love to do that too, but I also don’t have the time. And I looked at her and I said if neither of us really has the time, we could just try it.

We could just go. So it was this accidental if you want to do it, oh well, if you want to do, it was like we accidentally talked each other into it. Now I have to say fascinating story. She and I. Barely knew each other at all when we decided to do it. It was a shared excitement around the idea.

It was a general knowledge of the other person’s skillset. So knowing that she has this content marketing background, I’ve talked with her, I know she’s well spoken, I. It was a bit of a leap to jump into it. I think if you have a confidence in it it’s well worth going, but it was a bit of a leap.

Lucky for us that was all it took was enthusiasm and a willingness to spend a little bit of our side hustle on it and an alignment, right? If she was all about turning this into some massive thing and I wasn’t, wouldn’t work so well. But for both of us, [00:22:00] we’re really happy to be doing it at the pace and speed we are.

And,

Casey Cheshire: and so

You’re separately recording, right? So

she records her episodes, you record yours. That’s fascinating. And then that way you’re able to keep up.

Melissa Moody: yeah, we have a shared flow. So there is a pre-baked intro and outro that we wrote and we recorded there is a shared approach which is conversational in nature. Making sure that you follow the conversation, not just scripting, question, answer, question, answer. I can talk about that more later.

I feel very passionately about that. And then a couple of key things in the interviews that we always do. So one of our, probably our main must-do element of any recorded conversation is we ask our guests to talk about the marvelous mass that they have experienced. The idea being. We all go through absolutely chaotic, crazy times as small team marketers.

That’s the mess. But there’s always something fun or silly, or at least a learning that comes out of it. have them talk.

Casey Cheshire: didn’t make it dirty.

Melissa Moody: No, it’s a hot mess. I would love it. [00:23:00] Yeah. So we have a couple of questions. We do always sneak in. We have a very clear guest profile that we invite and we have a shared a couple of shared resources that make it super easy.

So we literally use Google Sheets to track who our guests are going to be, who we’re chasing, who we’ve confirmed. We’ve recorded who’s upcoming, and we schedule them with the sheets. We have a Google Drive into which we drop the audio files. I use Canva to just crank out the templates in terms of the cover art and all of that.

And we prob she and I chat over Slack. Every few days and we meet in, in person over zoom probably every other week for half an hour. That’s it. Besides that, it’s up to her kind of what guest she gets and how many she books and when she records. Oh, and here’s, so here’s the fun thing you ask.

Do we ever do it together? So we’ve recently started doing what we call pizza bites, which are five to seven minute episodes of the two of us talking to [00:24:00] each other. So we have our normal episodes, which is one of us hosts a guest, and we talk about The Marvelous Mess. And then our pizza bites are Ashley and Melissa coming together talking about, we take one little subject for five to seven minutes.

It could be something that our podcast guests brought up. One of the ones we did at the end of last year was, what are five things we’ve learned about? Hosting podcasts from, from doing so. I think we’re doing one coming up on, we’re going to start season two and what does it look like and why is it different and what’s the same?

And just, five to seven minutes of the two of us chatting. I don’t know. I haven’t done a bunch of, analytics around whether those are more to or not. But I always there’s one podcast in general it’s Glennon Doyle’s podcast. I forget the current name of it. We can do hard things.

But she does those little mini episodes, so she’s got the long, like hour long ones and then she has five to seven minute ones. And I find that as a listener, I really like that. because sometimes I just don’t have. For that an hour, our two pizza marketing, we usually keep around [00:25:00] 30 minutes if we can.

But I sometimes still am like, oh, I don’t have time for 30 minutes. But I would love a quick bite from those hosts that I love. I’d love to hear a little more.

Casey Cheshire: Wow.

And oftentimes I find the kind of podcast you love to consume is the kind that you tend to love to create because you just, it feels right for you. Love the name Pizza Bites Too. Love the metaphor so much you can do with that. It’s fun too, right? It’s not just like a cold, serious business name and it has some fun to it.

Melissa Moody: Yeah. I think if anyone knows a marketer who’s on a small team, we’re probably some of the people who go out and party the hardest because we’re just like, oh my God. It’s crazy. If you aren’t able to scream into the void with your other marketing friends, like you’re not going to make it. So you need to have a little fun.

You need to have a little crazy, I have to call out one thing that I love when other podcasts do, and Ashley and I are going to pump it into ours pretty for season two, let’s talk ads for, and we don’t have any paid ads on either of my shows [00:26:00] right now but. When there is an advertisement, the ones that I actually look forward to are the ones that the host delivers.

So one of my other favorite all-time podcasts, it’s a huge one, is Smartless with Jason Bateman Will Arnette and Sean Hayes, and they take these ads for whatever, like cer like purple mattresses or some big brand. But they deliver the ads. It’s literally the host saying why they like it and what it means.

And I get the sense, and this may be totally wrong, that they actually like the product and that they don’t say yes unless they like the products. And so I listen to the ads and I like the ads. Whenever there’s an ad on another podcast that’s just shoved up in there, I get a bad taste in my mouth. I sometimes skip and I sometimes stop the episode.

If you’re making money off of ads, good for you. But my recommendation would be, can you do something to make those ads actually enjoyable for your listeners? Because [00:27:00] it can be a really unpleasant experience just to have an ad shoved in the, especially in the middle of an episode. Oh, even worse ads at the beginning.

Have you heard those where sorry I’m

like, sorry to anyone out there who’s listening that you do this, but if I turn on a podcast and the first thing I get is an advertisement Nope. It’s a note for me.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, and for me, I, I’ve boiled that down to in, we do this in marketing as well, but what’s the time to value? What is the time I hit play? Okay, you got your jazzy intro, you get, but like, when do I get. That thing I’m looking for, whether it’s a good tidbit, something I can learn, a cool story, whatever.

But like how soon can I get that? And you’re right, I’m not waiting. I will skip sometimes if people have a lot, but man, get me that. Gimme something worth staying. Otherwise why? I’ll just leave.

Melissa Moody: Yeah, and I don’t think it’s too much to ask. You see this in newsletters as well, in email newsletters [00:28:00] from good marketers. They don’t just slap an ad in there. They take the ad and they say, this is why it’s a great product. Here’s why it’s interesting. So one thing we’re going to do, Not again, unpaid.

But what I’ve started doing is for every pizza two pizza marketing ad, I actually ask the guest to talk about one of their favorite tools. And why gimme 20 seconds of your very favorite tool and I want to hear Casey go off about squad cast or whatever, right? And then I’ve been recording that and we’re going to start doing basically what I call, like unpaid ads.

I’ll probably come up with something wittier for it, but I want to stick these in there because for my audience, Hearing about good tools is actually very valuable, right? Hearing this is a tool that another marketer loves so much. They would talk about it for free. That’s valuable. So we’re not like accepting like formal ads yet, but I’m going to start creating ads that aren’t even ads.

Casey Cheshire: Have value, right?

​You’re giving your listener value, practicing the [00:29:00] ad reads and creating cool, interactive user content. There’s a lot too that I really like that.

Melissa Moody: Yeah, and who knows, maybe someday we’ll actually get someone just asking if they can pay us for it, but I’m not looking for that right now.

Casey Cheshire: What you just, you reach out and you say, Hey, by the way, I already have an ad running for you. You might as well get in on this. In true meta fashion like we like to do on this show, could you give me tell me your favorite podcasting tool you use in 20 seconds Less. Why? It’s amazing.

Melissa Moody: I have two. Can I

Casey Cheshire: Yes, you can do two. Cause it’s 20 seconds. What are we going to Over 20 seconds? Yeah.

Melissa Moody: 20 seconds. They work like hand in hand beautifully. Descript is my number one I absolutely love. I can drop the video recording into descript. I can remove the ums and probably all the likes that you just heard me saying.

And create smooth. Easy videos that I can export. It makes it incredibly easy to clip and do snackable videos. So I can just highlight and create a new shorter video out of the main one. And I can export transcripts. So I can have quick [00:30:00] use of transcript in word format. I love descript.

It’s massively helpful for me. And then the second is Canva, the ability to create one beautiful template pretty easily for a non-designer like me. And then replicate that so that every little quick clip I use, every cover art I use is in seconds. Huge amounts of value. Yeah, and both of them, I’m basically on a basic level plan, like a very low level plan, and it’s more than enough.

And they’re incredibly powerful tools, both of which are really enjoying the benefits of generative ai.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, for sure. And getting free podcast ads in my show. And yours?

Melissa Moody: I can’t live without scripting Canva.

Casey Cheshire: There’s the clip.

Melissa Moody: Here it is.

Casey Cheshire: One thing I wanted to get back to before we run out of time, because eventually things turn into pumpkins around here, Talk to me about that question. To answer flow. You said let’s not script everything out. Let’s, there’s a flow you like to get into.

[00:31:00] Talk to me about that.

Melissa Moody: Yeah, might be the one intentional thing I have done with my podcast hosting was I sat down, actually, maybe the ads fall into that too, but I sat down and said, what are the podcasts that I actually love to listen to, and what do they all have that is similar? And probably the The number one thing is a host who.

Takes the conversation that they are given and moves the conversation as a whole along based on what they just heard. I cannot stand podcasts where it’s the same question every time, and it feels so over formatted and it feels so stilted, like you can actually perceive. In some podcasts that they weren’t listening to the answer they got, they were just nervously moving down their list and saying the next question on the list.

And the conversation that we are having now, you’re taking what I say and you’re having fun with it and we’re laughing and we’re going back and forth. That’s something that [00:32:00] humans want to listen to. And so I really did strive to recreate that. I think the number one thing is ask questions.

Or give them potential questions of your guest first, but don’t use that as a script. With finding focus, I use Typeform to send them some early questions that they can get a sense of what we’re going to cover. But then I say, before we hit record, I say, okay, those are questions we may touch on, but if you give me something interesting, we’re going to go down that rat hole and we’re going to follow that thread.

I just fundamentally think. Humans, like listening to humans and human conversation is not overly structured. It is linear, and it is, serendipitous it is not linear and it is serendipitous and it is sparked by the back and forth, not by the planned, question and response pattern.

Casey Cheshire: Almost all the time, even doing like marketing, buyer persona interviews and different things like that, it’s never the initial answer that is the [00:33:00] revealing one, right? It’s always that follow up that tells you the nugget, and so you cut yourself so short on a podcast. Asking a question, accepting the answer and moving on.

And I love how you brought up the fact that it really sends a signal. It makes you look like you don’t care, like you’re not listening. And maybe you do care, maybe you are listening. But by skipping to that next question, you look like the jerk who d, who didn’t even listen to what they had to say.

So powerful.

Melissa Moody: It is. I think a lot of it sometimes is nerves. People are worried. I got to get something stuck in, I got to make sure I hit a topic or I. I need to make sure I’m ready with the next question cuz there is that awkward moment where if you’re really listening, you may not say, great, then, there may be some where you go, wow, interesting.

And you actually need to think about it. I think my advice to host would be, don’t shy away from that if there’s a moment where you’re not. Immediately responding. That’s okay. The other thing is I always have a list of here’s all the topics that I would want to talk about with a [00:34:00] person. So if they answer something and you don’t have a quick follow up, I can take that and bring them over into a topic I do want to talk about into.

There’s definitely some art to it. It’s not an easy skill and I, I can see why. Some people might lean on the crutch of, I have my questions, I’m going to come back to them. It’s not, I’m not blaming anyone for that. I just, I don’t like to listen to it. And so I’ve tried to create podcasts that don’t follow that model.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah. There’s a little bit of that nervous moment when you’re departing the script. And it’s like a choice you can make in the moment to either interrupt and bring them back if you must, or just go with it. And I think to your point about the nervousness and the confidence, the more I’ve done this, the more off script I’ve been able to get to, and arguably maybe the better conversations and the better answers.

Melissa Moody: Yeah. And not being afraid of if you go down a rat hole and you get to a dead end going, [00:35:00] wow, we just went way off, off the deep end. Let’s bring it on back. What is that phrase that you have where it’s rewind back to the topic at hand,

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, blueberry cobbler. How did we get here?

Melissa Moody: But everybody, listening in their cars on the way to pick up their kids is I know, I’ve been looking for a blueberry cobbler recipe.

Casey Cheshire: Now, do you, now the question, do you put ice cream with that? Is that like a, do you warm it up and put some ice cream with it? Or

Melissa Moody: oh, see I’m not a sweet baker. I bake bread. Yeah. I’m a sourdough gal, pre covid, I will say.

But,

Casey Cheshire: killed your sourdough? This just in covid killed sourdough. What? No more

Melissa Moody: No, COVID got everybody started baking in Covid and so I like to badge of honor myself and say I was baking sourdough before the Covid

Casey Cheshire: Yes.

I’m not a Yankees fan, just cuz they’re in the World Series. I’ve been one the whole time.

Melissa Moody: no bandwagon sourdough for this chick. No.

Casey Cheshire: that’s the title of the episode, bandwagon Sourdough. People are like, what? What the hell? Yeah. Actually, that’d be a cool brand for bread, wouldn’t it?

Melissa Moody: Yeah,

Casey Cheshire: [00:36:00] Bandwagons.

Melissa Moody: the bandwagon. Get your sourdough. I

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, bandwagon side sourdough the things we create. I have one final question for you, a bit of a futuristic visioning question. We get a chance to chat again, and I hope it is sooner than this, but let’s say we chat 50 episodes from now, like a full year worth of podcasting.

What do you want pizza to look like? What do you want focus to look like? If you could picture, have the shows changed, have the guests changed? What do the shows feel like?

Melissa Moody: I can tell you what I’d like focus, finding, focus to start with. I, finding focus has been about the challenge of finding focus in a digital busy, increasingly noisy digital world. What season two is, as we moving into season two, probably in the next month or so, is.

Instead of focusing on necessarily how people do that, I’m going to focus a little bit more on the story of a specific person and what they are focused on. So instead of just talking about a really interesting person in all the ways they see challenges and successes, I actually want to get into, I. What are you [00:37:00] focused on and why, and what are the barriers to that specific focus?

So I want to get a little bit more storytelling with finding focus. I think with two pizza marketing, I’m going to have to check with Ashley before I give you a formal answer. But that’s one where I hope it actually might become more one that people want to tune into regularly.

This idea of I’m going through my week. You know what would make my week better is to hear a story of another person in the same situation. So whereas finding focus, I usually use it to cut up and have pieces of content. I’m not looking for kind of serialization or people listening to lots of episodes necessarily.

I would love to see two pizza marketing be one where when we drop a new episode people say, oh, I cannot wait to listen to that one. I’m ready for another one. I want another one. Now, it might take a little bit more of my time and focus, so we’ll see if the pace accounts for that. But that’s where I’d hope

Casey Cheshire: Love it. Love it. And I hope all of that comes true. I can’t wait to hear those. Where can people get more information on you? Where do they connect with you? Where do we go [00:38:00] to get gated and what is gated? Give us a shout out.

Melissa Moody: Yeah. So easy to find me on LinkedIn. I’ll put it in the show notes for you. You can also, because I have gated you, anyone can email me at any time. My name is, or my email is melissa gated.com. So gated is a, I’m going to start with this idea of we’re in a really increasingly noisy digital world.

We have trouble. Spending our time on the things we know we need to spend time on. And our original solution is for email. It’s basically a system where when somebody emails you that you don’t know, they actually have to donate to a charity you’ve picked to reach your inbox. So it puts up a little bit of a digital boundary for stuff that might not be exactly what you need to hear from, but might be something you really do want to hear from.

Sorry, I’m a little bit out of deal on the spiel because we are actually really focused on the next evolution of gated, which is beyond email. And that’s actually going to be launching in the next few weeks. So we are going to be doing the same mission, [00:39:00] which is to help you focus better in a very noisy digital world.

But we’re going to do it beyond email. We’re going to give people a really cool technology that they can use to stay focused on the goals that really matter to them. So it’s exciting. It’s coming out soon. All of it’s at gated.com. G a t e d.com is our home. You can go there, see what we’re up to. And if you’re really into the idea of two pizza marketing definitely let me know.

We’ve got a great kinda small and growing Slack community, very casual. The vibe is show up in your pajamas and be yourself. And that’s the vibe of the podcast too. So those are the places to find me.

Casey Cheshire: Love that. I will definitely have to check out that Slack community. I love those when they’re tied to podcasts and communities. Thank you so much for coming on here. I have just my brain is smoking. I’ve learned so much chatting with you and it’s always great to have those powerful high level strategic marketing conversations as well as podcasting conversations and.

I just can’t wait to get you on the other marketing podcast now cause [00:40:00] we, so we can geek out on marketing and we geek on podcasts. But thank you so much for coming on here and just sharing these things with me.

Melissa Moody: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. And I think those of us who have gotten, more than one tattoo podcast have a special bond. So yeah, thanks for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure and I look forward to chatting again soon.

Casey Cheshire: Hell yeah. And for those listening, if you learn something and I freaking know you did, cause I literally have two pages of notes over here, front and back. got to share. So I’m not making this up. People check out the video. I’ve learned a ton. And if you did to share this with one person I. Three people, 9,000 people is okay too, but even one person.

But put what you learned. What was that one takeaway? Was it around the why before making that decision? What was the fact that there are other people in your place too? Pace co-hosting the flow, all these things we talked about. So good. But share. Your takeaway, tag us in LinkedIn. We’ll hop in there.

We’ll have a little party on the comments. And just get good information to other people. That’s thought leadership. So again, Melissa, you are the best. [00:41:00] Thank you for coming on here.

Melissa Moody: Rock on. Thanks, Casey.

Casey Cheshire: All right, everyone, this has been creating the greatest show. We will see you all next time.

And next time doesn’t have to be next week. Life’s too short. And we have way too much to talk about. Find show notes full of takeaways, lessons and links at creating the greatest show.com. For more information on launching your own podcast or working with us to produce your existing show, come on down to the big tent@ringmaster.com.

Until then, friends, whatever you do it with all your might work at it, if necessary, early and late in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned and never deferring for a single hour, that which can be done just as well. Now, PT Barnum.