Practice Leading with Neil Benson

Dave Jackson
00:00:00

Neal Benson from Practice Leading is getting into the podcast hot seat this week. Welcome to Podcast Hot Seat. We are the friend who lets you know, hey, you got some broccoli stuck in your teeth? Yeah, right there.

We make meh shows sound good and good shows sound better. Our goal is to help you make content that grabs your audience and leaves them wanting more. Welcome to the church of Constant Improvement.

Here's your host, multi award winning hall of fame podcaster Dave Jackson. Hey, thank you so much for stopping by podcast hot seat.com today I'm hanging out with Neil Benson from the Practice Leading podcast.

You can find it at practiceleading.com here's my conversation with Neil. He is from the show and I love the name Practice Leading.

That's a great name because it wasn't like I heard it and went, huh, I wonder what that show's about in anything. I would almost think about adding a tagline because it's so obvious. But there are certain niches for your show.

You talk about being a Microsoft partner and things like that. But Neil, thanks for sitting in the hot seat.

Neil Benson
00:01:20

Dave, what a pleasure. It's well and an honor actually to come and join you. Thanks so much for having me.

Dave Jackson
00:01:25

Oh yeah, you gave me an episode to listen to and I've got to say there was a lot of things you really did right on it. The big one I love is you ask really good questions and you do something that most people don't or you've been edited out and that is you shut up.

You're a really good listener. And so I thought what we're going to do here is we're going to play a few clips and I just like to start off by playing the beginning.

We're going to sit here and listen to this together, which is always a little awkward when we just sit here smiling at each other. But we'll be okay.

Muhamed the Guest
00:01:59

I had training back in the day on people actually try to recruit themselves every time you go on an interview. Typically every person would try to be like is this person as good as I am?

And then they trying to bring that person or is it the same background or is it similar interest or you know, you're trying to connect to them and if you feel that they're very close to how you think you are, then you end up recruiting them. And as from. Because if everyone is background as a Microsoft Dynamics consultant all their life, that's all of us are just one background.

But if you bring people from the industry, that itself enriches the business.

Dave Jackson
00:02:31

So I'm going to interrupt myself. The first thing I noticed there is you sound amazing. Your guest does not.

In fact, at times there's like some weird artifacts going on that I could understand him. And that in the end is all we need. It has to be listenable. But. And also, are you pulling clips from the interview just because everybody else does?

Neil Benson
00:02:58

So the structure for the show is the hook, then a show intro which is pre recorded, an episode intro which I record after the interview, and then the interview and then episode outro, and then a show outro. And so yeah, that, that hook is chosen typically by my producer.

They'll select something exciting, dramatic, interesting, and that's kind of 20 seconds at the beginning of the episode to try and hook the listener in.

Dave Jackson
00:03:30

That's it. All right. And then this is your actual intro.

Neil Benson
00:03:33

G'day and welcome to Practice Leading, a podcast for emerging and curious practice leaders of Microsoft partner businesses, if you're any.

Dave Jackson
00:03:41

So I love that part right there. Just because it's specific, like this is who it's for.

Neil Benson
00:03:46

Anything like me with an unquenchable thirst for improvement and zero tolerance for bs, you've come to the right place.

Dave Jackson
00:03:53

So I love that Again, kind of getting into what the heck the show is about.

Neil Benson
00:03:58

Hi, I'm Neil Benson and this is my personal invitation for you to join me on my own journey of discovery.

Together we'll learn from innovators and investors, executives and entrepreneurs, business leaders and business coaches that have already left their stamp on the Microsoft community and those that are exploring new and smarter ways of building their businesses.

Dave Jackson
00:04:18

So that's kind of, again, we're focusing on Microsoft and the fact they've left their stamp. And you're kind of, that answers a little bit. The question is of like, what's in it for me?

And so you kind of answered that in that last little paragraph.

Neil Benson
00:04:33

So community and those that are exploring new and smarter ways of building their businesses.

Dave Jackson
00:04:38

So we're looking for smarter ways of running our businesses.

Neil Benson
00:04:41

Whether it's groundbreaking innovations, hiring high performing teams, or the sheer force of will to disrupt our industry. Each episode is a masterclass from the trailblazers who have already achieved significant success.

Dave Jackson
00:04:53

And I love the way that, to me this is a great way of describing it in a engaging way with like not being this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Like, it's energetic but it's, it's, you know, masterclass is a really powerful word, but not to me, at least in my head, not, not super spammy.

And you know what I mean, it's like It's. I just thought it was a good description.

Neil Benson
00:05:16

Find Practice Leading on YouTube or visit practiceleading.com and learn from the mentors you wish you had earlier in your career.

Dave Jackson
00:05:24

So I thought that was a cool line.

Neil Benson
00:05:26

Today, I'm learning from Mohamed Mustafa. He's the CEO of Tech Labs London, the team behind iPropertycloud, a housing management platform that built on the Microsoft cloud.

Mohamed founded tech Labs in 2016 and today has 75 people in the UK and Egypt.

Mohamed shares with us the secrets of his innovative hiring strategies and building a dynamic company culture, and how he accidentally created a holacracy, a rare type of organization we'll learn more about shortly.

Dave Jackson
00:05:55

That right there was brilliant because when you said holocracy, I was like, what's a holacracy? And so what you've done is you've created a knowledge gap and the fact that you've given this guy's credentials.

So he's got a pretty big team and he's a helicity. And I'll tell you what about that in a minute. So that's a great hook.

Neil Benson
00:06:19

We'll discuss the importance of diversity and the pitfalls of traditional hiring practices.

Mohamed also shares his personal journey from a senior role at a Big four audit firm to founding Tech Labs London, emphasizing the value of bootstrapping over fundraising and the power of people in driving business success.

Stay tuned as we unpack Muhammad's approach to leadership, mentorship and fostering a positive work environment where employees look forward to Mondays.

Dave Jackson
00:06:45

Yeah. So to me, that's a great intro. And it's you. You didn't kind of give away the farm. And a good friend of mine, Eric K.

Johnson, better known as the podcast talent coach, always says, nobody gets on a bus without knowing where it's going. And so I know who the show's for, right? Microsoft professionals who are running a team. Is that correct? Like, who is the target audience?

Neil Benson
00:07:09

That's it. That's exactly it.

Dave Jackson
00:07:11

Which is beautiful because I got that from your intro. Yeah. So bravo on that. And I like the energy. And it just kind of smoothed along about that time. It was time for the interview.

We're just going to play the first question here, Mohamed.

Neil Benson
00:07:30

Lots of leaders might say that their customers are the most important thing in their business, but you reckon it's people. I'd love to learn more about your perspective.

Muhamed the Guest
00:07:38

So, Neil, I think people is absolutely the core of our business. And it's not just the word. This is actually reality.

People is the product that we sell I remember many, many years ago, 20 plus years ago when I first started the root of consultancy. I was told by my manager at the time that our product is our people.

Dave Jackson
00:07:57

So and so what I loved about that is it's a nice kind of open ended question and this might just be a case where you got a good guest, but he had stories. So almost all of his stories had specific examples or something to where now he's talking about.

I remember back 20 years ago when I did this and like I say, his, his audio wasn't horrendous, it wasn't unlistenable.

But, but there were times also and I don't think it was him, but there are times when it sounded like somebody was rustling papers in the background or something. There was just a weird thing.

So what I did on this answer, this is just an answer to his question, is you're going to hear what it was before and then there's a little baby pause. And all I did was run it through a plugin to kind of remove some of the reverb. Cause it kind of sounds like he's in a fishbowl.

Again, it's listenable, which is kind of our target, but if we could clean it up and make him a little more present.

And I never realized, because I work from home most of the time, I never realized until I was listening to a podcast in a car that when someone kind of has a lot of room noise and now it's battling the sound of tires on pavement, that becomes a bit of an issue. And so you'll hear just like about four seconds of a question here, then a little bring and then you're going to hear I just touched it up a little.

It's not a huge difference. It's funny because when I did this I thought it would sound like night and day difference. And to me I don't think it is, but here it is.

Muhamed the Guest
00:09:26

So without mentioning company names, but I had some of the most fantastic environments and cultures and teams and groups of people that I worked with and previous companies. I also had some not so nice experiences or cultures in some other organization.

Dave Jackson
00:09:42

So just a little more in your headphones a bit. Not quite so echoey. Not again, not a big deal, but again you had asked a question that led him to telling stories.

And so the thing I loved about it is the questions you asked were very specific in many cases. And that's a great thing to do because if you want a specific answer, ask a specific question as opposed to, well, how was that when you did that?

Well, no, give him a target to hit. And I thought you did a, a really great job of that. Another one here in my notes.

Neil Benson
00:10:22

Can I admit something about those questions, Dave?

Dave Jackson
00:10:26

Sure, go right ahead.

Neil Benson
00:10:27

When we downloaded the video, my half of the video had frozen after about three seconds, so it was unrecoverable. Tech support requests into the video recording app went unanswered. Four requests over the period, about four weeks, no answer.

I don't use that app anymore. But I had to reshoot all the questions, so they ended up being a little bit tighter the second time.

I did kind of script it out so I knew what the original question was, and I more or less read it word for word.

But I didn't get to omit where I repeat the question sometimes in an interview, and I sometimes am guilty of doing that just because I want to give my guest a bit more time to think of their answer. But unless I edit out a repetitive question, it sounds pretty poor. So this version sounded pretty good.

Dave Jackson
00:11:17

I am very guilty of giving the guest tons of background as to why I'm asking the question. So I'll be like, well, I know you did this in the past, and then that led to this and did it and did it.

And then I will finally ask the question and the whole background gets edited out because my audience doesn't need to hear that. Yeah, the only one that I thought was that I was like, oh, because I wanted to hear it was this one.

Neil Benson
00:11:39

Great stuff. I was going to ask you, what's the one thing that your organization does differently to everybody else?

And it sounds like you try and do everything differently.

Muhamed the Guest
00:11:47

You've got another hour. Yeah, we do a lot of things.

Dave Jackson
00:11:52

And so I was kind of like, okay, but pick one. And you kind of let him off the hook.

And what's interesting is originally I thought, ooh, this would have been a really good question if you just said great stuff.

Neil Benson
00:12:03

I was going to ask you, what's the one thing that your organization does differently to everybody else?

Dave Jackson
00:12:08

If you just stop there and. Because it's good. Because the one thing you didn't do, which I thought was good, is I.

When somebody opens up an open ended question, sometimes instead of leaving it as a hard question where they have to pick, they'll go, was it A, was it B, was it C?

And one of my favorite examples of this, there's a famous radio guy here in the States named Howard Stern, and he was interviewing the movie star Ben Affleck, who had a, a background of trouble with alcohol and he was playing this child of an alcoholic in a movie. And I guess Ben's dad suffered with that as well. And Howard asked him a question, and there was 15 seconds of silence because Ben was.

He was kind of struggling in his chair and moving around. It was obvious he was uncomfortable. And it went like another five, six. So it was like 20 seconds of silence.

And at the end of that awkward silence where Howard just sat there and listened, an amazing question came out. So if you ask a hard question, sometimes just sit there in the awkward silence if you can. It's hard. That's easier said than done.

But nonetheless, that was one. But now the good news is you turned right around. After I was kind of like, oh, I wanted to hear the one thing that they did different.

Even though it would have been hard for him to pick one. It sounded like asking somebody to pick their favorite kid. I thought this was just another great example of a really specific question.

Neil Benson
00:13:38

Mohamed, I've got one final question for you.

Given your focus and your passion for building a great culture and recruiting great people, do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask all candidates? And you use a kind of a yardstick for measuring whether or not somebody is a good culture fit.

Dave Jackson
00:13:55

And the reason I, when I heard that, I was like, I bet thinking in my head, who is listening to this show? Right. So you have, you know, people, management people. And, and they're like, yeah, like, what is this?

And I love the fact that he actually gave an answer.

Muhamed the Guest
00:14:12

Yeah, I'm giving away too much now. But I'm gonna tell you, my favorite question is when?

Dave Jackson
00:14:19

And also, by the way, if you want to get somebody to lean into your answer started off with, with that. That's a great one.

Muhamed the Guest
00:14:26

Yeah, I'm giving away too much now.

Dave Jackson
00:14:27

But so when somebody starts off with that, you're like, oh, well, this is going to be good. Yeah. So those are, you know, it's just. I don't know if he did that on purpose. Like, oh, I'm going to open up with this.

But it's a, it's a great way to get people.

Muhamed the Guest
00:14:38

Yeah, I'm giving away too much now. But I'm going to tell you my favorite question is when thought of the interview. I say, tell me something I haven't read in your, in your cv.

You know, you've given me your cv. It's all focused on the role and the job and what you're trying. You can help, you know, the business with and your experience.

But once you know something that it's not on your cv.

And based on these answers, you can get a feel of the person and how they fit in the culture because they might have an interest that is completely not related to work, but it's actually a very good fit.

So, you know, they like to do charity work or go on, you know, marathon or they are very active in or whatever, you know, something that is not on the cv, but it's something that is actually very interesting. It shows that person type of personality to some extent.

You know, you wouldn't know everything, but it gives you a feel of what type of person you're talking to. So it's my favorite question is, tell me something on your cv.

Dave Jackson
00:15:30

And so again, I thought it was great as a very specific question. You got a great answer. And he also went into why it's his favorite question, which is kind of what people want.

So it's one of those things again where I'm like, I didn't really hear. I thought it was a great interview. And again, I love the name.

And my favorite thing is when you do an interview and we're going to get into kind of why are you doing the show? And some other things here in a second.

But one of my biggest things that I recommend people do all the time, especially if the goal of the show is to position yourself as kind of the expert, then what do you need to do? Because you just spent, you know, a half hour making Muhammad look great, and we're all learning from Muhammad. That's great.

But one of the things you can do to ever so just passively aggressively remind people that it's my show. Right? I.

I'm here for you to get to know me is I don't know if Jerry Springer ever made it to Australia, but in the States, there was this guy at a tv. Yeah. And he's, you know, people throwing chairs at each other and it's all crazy. And it would be mayhem for 25 minutes.

And at the end, Jerry would sit down and look in the camera and go, what did we learn today? And so I always say you should do a Jerry Springer at the end of your show. And you did.

Neil Benson
00:16:52

In our discussion today, Mohamed shared some invaluable insights and strategies on building a successful team and a thriving business culture. Here are my three key takeaways from this episode.

Dave Jackson
00:17:03

And this is where people get to understand you. And so that was the one thing I thought was somewhat missing was in listening to the show besides Superwear, which you mentioned.

And at first I'm like, what's Superwear. It sounds like, is that underwear for Superman? Like what's, what's the deal here? And so let's back up a little bit so we know who the show is for.

Why did you start the show?

Neil Benson
00:17:36

Great question. So I have another show. It's 160 episodes in several years underway.

We get several hundred downloads per episode where I share my expertise with Microsoft professionals. This new show, Practice Leading is I'm not the expert. I'm on a journey trying to learn how to be a better leader.

And so I'm interviewing great leaders who've already accomplished, you know, significant success. And so I'm sharing my journey with my audience who are hopefully on a similar trajectory as me.

And so it's a slightly different emphasis on more on the guest. And I will do solo episodes probably every five or six episodes after interviews where I'm giving the audience a catch up on how Superwear has done.

So by the way, superware builds software for Australia's superannuation funds, which is like retirement accounts. Just to clarify, we don't wear our underwear on the outside, but forgive you for thinking that.

So, yeah, I'm on that journey and trying to bring the audience along with me and I'm hoping on the back of this podcast to build a community of like minded leaders to support each other and we'll have some events from some of the podcast guests and experts in the industry to help us all, you know, grow together. So it's a slightly different emphasis to my first show where I'm sharing my expertise here. I'm, I'm really the student.

Dave Jackson
00:19:02

Well, yeah, that's it. This is what I call a journey podcast where I'm not the expert. I'm going to interview other experts so, you know, I can come along.

Now do any of these people that you're interviewing, would they need your products and services by any chance? Because that would be a bonus because one of the benefits of this show is your, you're growing your network through all these people.

Neil Benson
00:19:24

Yes. The seven or eight guests that we have done so far have all been people I know.

They're peers of mine, often a couple of years ahead of me in terms of business growth. Could they use our products and services? Not quite, but I'm hoping they will join our community and share their expertise in there.

So that's, you know, certainly serving my audience in a slightly different way. And I would love to organize some in person events and those will be paid for events and hopefully some of the podcast guests can join me.

So It'll be adjacent to some of the big Microsoft conferences in the us Maybe we'll meet up for dinner or a day, the week weekend before the conference, bring the community together. And those will be ticketed events. So there is something to sell, I guess, but that's not the main emphasis of the show.

I used Mohammed's interview question this morning like an hour ago in an interview with a candidate. So I'm learning from these guests and putting those takeaways into practice and that's what I'll be sharing in my solo episodes, how I've done that.

Dave Jackson
00:20:27

Nice. Yeah, you don't always have to sell something.

It's just one of the things that a lot of times people hop into this and then a year or two in they're like, hey, I'm not making any money at this. So I always kind of assume that people are. And that would. But that would be one of my other questions. So we know who's at 4.

We know kind of why you're doing it, to grow your network and to learn from other leaders. How are we going to measure success? It sounds like your community is going to be the gauge for that. Maybe it is.

Neil Benson
00:20:56

So obviously podcast listeners is one metric, but really I want those listeners to enjoy the show so much and learn from it that they want to come and join the community. And that will be a paid community.

I'm working with a community strategist to build that out on Heartbeat, which I know is a community platform that you know well. Yay.

Yeah, we're going to be launching that here in the next couple of weeks and if in 12 months time I've got a thriving podcast with a good back catalog of guests, some regular listeners and a community of 100 people in it, that would be amazing. That would be light side, kind of successful as far as the podcast goes.

Dave Jackson
00:21:36

Great. Okay, so let me. We'll go down and play your ending here and I think I already know my answer because you just said it, but let's hear the ending.

Neil Benson
00:21:43

Done. Silos and Enrich our culture. What lessons did you learn from the show?

Leave a comment in YouTube or in the practice leading page on LinkedIn and let me know. Visit practiceleading.com for a summary of the lessons from each episode and to find out more about our guests.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Practice Leading and found it as useful and just as inspiring as I did.

If you did, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Reviews Help other like minded practice leaders like you find this podcast and grow our community. In your review, please let me know one thing I can do to improve the show and make it more valuable for you.

I'd rather have a four star rating with a constructive comment than a five star rating. But you know, five star ratings are cool too. Until then, keep experimenting.

Dave Jackson
00:22:30

And I gotta say, that's one of the coolest ways I've heard people ask for ratings and reviews. The whole like, you know, give me four and a half. I'd rather have a four and a half with a negative comment than a five star.

That to me, like, it wasn't put on, it was honest. And then the whole keep experimenting. I know that's just part of your brand.

There's all sorts of pictures with goggles and you're always experimenting, things like that.

The one thing I wanted to point out, and this doesn't mean you need to change anything, but this is from Apple, because I like to let people know ratings and reviews do not help you get found. But it's been repeated so often that everybody believes it. But this is from Apple.

Although ratings and reviews and shares also help indicate a podcast newness, popularity and quality, they are not factored into the algorithm that determines the rankings for top shows and top episodes. So they don't help you get found.

Now, they might help people click on it because it also says, in other words, they may not help people find a podcast on their own, but they influence whether people will listen or follow. So this is where I always go, their social proof. And those factors influence the chart. So the more people listen, the more you go up the charts.

So it's kind of a, hey, I just always, I don't know why that always bugs me. It doesn't really help you get found, but it kind of does.

Neil Benson
00:23:54

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Dave Jackson
00:23:56

The other thing you might do, especially when you're new, although you're not new because you've got your other podcasts you've been doing for a while, is the old, hey, if you know somebody else that's a Microsoft professional that would enjoy this show, please tell them to go to the website or share it on your phone or things like that.

But all in all, I was like, okay, there's not really a much to do, except I went to, and I've never done this on Descript, so I'm going to share my screen on that outro.

Neil Benson
00:24:27

I was advised not to, not to jam too many calls to action into the outro because if there's seven or eight calls to action, people will do nothing better to ask them one thing. So I've actually recorded eight different outros that are going to cycle through different episodes. My podcast producer thinks I'm crazy.

But have you ever seen anybody take that strategy before? And does it work?

Dave Jackson
00:24:49

No, but it's a really great strategy because having one call to action is really hard.

There are times when I will tell people that, and myself included, that just struggle doing one call to action, because I'm like, what's the one thing you want people to do? I say, okay, if, you know, if you can narrow it down to two or three, do a website sandwich.

So, you know, whether it's, you know, oh, just go to podcast hotseat.com. you can sign up there, you can leave a review. You can join the email list. It's all there. Podcast hotseat.com. that's a podcast.

That's a, you know, URL sandwich. But, yeah, if you can do one and then rotate them out, that's a great strategy in my book. Something I should do. And, yeah, I think that's great.

Yeah, well, it's one of those things that it stops it from being stale.

And so, yeah, I think it's great when we go to your website now, for the record, in full disclosure, I'm the head of podcasting at PodPage, so he's using PodPage, so you wouldn't believe.

Neil Benson
00:25:51

What this website's built on, Dave.

Dave Jackson
00:25:54

Well, no, I remember this because I remember when you were trying to get the background to work, Right.

Neil Benson
00:25:58

Yeah.

Dave Jackson
00:25:58

Then I was like, hey, I know this guy. So obviously, I like. You might consider making different artwork for each episode, which I realize you're like, yeah, great. More work.

Neil Benson
00:26:11

I do that for my other show. I decided not to do it for this one because it's more work.

Dave Jackson
00:26:16

It is more work. So what you might do is you can go in to PodPage and have the episodes listed without artwork and see if that.

It's kind of one of those, like, well, which one looks better? No artwork. But there's no artwork or having the artwork. And it's the same thing over and over and over. There are ways you can kind of tweak that.

But that's when I came over, and your about page again is about the podcast, which is great, but there's nothing on here.

And I went over and looked at your LinkedIn profile, and I was like, this guy's got a great background, and there's nothing on here that lets me know who I'm listening to. Which I get it. It's your journey. But there might be people that like, well, who is this Neil guy?

So you could always add a paragraph here or in PodPage, there's a spot where you can put who the host is and then it'll put it at the bottom of the page. So that was just something that came through. The one thing that I was like, I have no idea what this is, is you have a button called the Lab.

And I think I answered it. My guess is because when I click on this, it goes to a subdomain and Yep, that's your heartbeat. Community.

That's not quite ready for primetime yet, it sounds like. Is that correct?

Neil Benson
00:27:32

Yeah, it's going to be called Practice Leading Lab. And that's, you know, you can go there from the podcast website into the Lab. It's not ready yet, so. And there's no explanation of that on the.

On the homepage of the podcast website either.

Dave Jackson
00:27:44

Yeah, you.

You could if you wanted to, either a, have that link lead to a page that describes what the Lab's going to be, click her to join the newsletter and we'll let you know the minutes available. Because right now it's just a link to nothing. And that's usually not a great strategy. Or just take it off the navigation bar for now.

But that also explains, because I was like, that's really weird. You have the Lab here and it looks like it's going to something. But there was zero call to action for that.

And I now understand why, because it's not ready for prime time yet. So that answers basically some of the biggest questions I had. I was like, wait, there's. There's this thing here.

There's no call to action for it, and what's the deal? And that explains it. It's not.

Neil Benson
00:28:28

You've given me some food for thought there because even when the. The Lab does launch, it's not going to be obvious what the Lab is or takes you to.

So I might be better just to use a more generic phrase like community or leaders lounge or something a bit more generic that signposts what you're being led to rather than just the Lab. Great idea.

Dave Jackson
00:28:49

Yeah.

But like, Like I said, the only thing when I looked at your website was the fact that there wasn't really anything about you, which is, you know, I love the fact a lot of times it's the other way around.

People have, here's a paragraph and a half about the host, but when somebody comes to your website and they see it's a podcast and they're clicking on about they want to know about the podcast. So I always say depending on what the priority is. But I love the fact you have it set to explain what the show is.

I still would add something there for the. So people get to know you a little bit, even though you know the goal was not to set you up as an expert, but just so people know.

Because you never know. They might go, oh, you know. And then you can even say, I also do another podcast and then put a link to that as well.

But all in all, everything was looking good.

And another thing, just because you're here and you're using PodPage, if you didn't know, you can send people to follow and that will send them to where they can follow the show. And I think you do a great job here. Really. There's no wrong answer.

But the fact that you have three podcast options in YouTube, I think I know on some of my shows I have like every option available and it just seems a bit. It seems a bit overwhelming. You are asking for feedback. If you send people to practiceleading.com voicemail they can actually.

That takes them right to a page where they could leave voicemail.

Now I did notice and I thought this was kind of interesting, you have a link to what looks like to be a newsletter and the button says send me key takeaways for each episode. So it looks like somebody's putting their name and email so they can then contact you. Or what's.

Is there something behind this or is that just a newsletter sign up?

Neil Benson
00:30:35

It is a newsletter. So I've embedded my Mailerlite signup form into podpage. So you're joining my Mailerlite newsletter subscription list.

And then every episode that I publish, you'll get like a cheat sheet of all the key takeaways. So it's like an expanded version of that episode outro.

So in Mohammed's case, it was like two and a half pages summarizing the key lessons from the episode.

Dave Jackson
00:30:59

Nice. The only part I was confused on was the lab.

And you've answered that question and that answers why it was not in the call to action or anywhere in the show.

And using Captivate when it is ready, you could easily add either a quick 15 second pre roll or somewhere in the middle of that interview, if you wanted to break it up, you could insert hey, our new communities open yada yada yada and go from there.

Neil Benson
00:31:27

Exactly. My plan is to create some dynamic content and slot it in. In the middle.

Dave Jackson
00:31:32

Yeah. What is the name of your other show?

Neil Benson
00:31:34

It's Called Amazing Apps. Oh, here's an interesting question. So Amazing Apps has got a very long subtitle. There's like Amazing Apps dash, blah, blah.

And then it's all description of who the show is for. It's a very long title. Whereas Practice Leading, short title.

I don't know which one works best, but you did mention I should consider including a subtitle for Practice Leading. Should the subtitle go at the end of the title? Or how would you recommend I structure it from a directory point of view, an SEO and things like that?

Dave Jackson
00:32:08

Just think of it like a book, you know, like the book. Like here, we'll grab one behind me. Right. It's by Matthew Dix. It's a great book, by the way. Matthew Dix, storyworthy.

Name of show tagline engage, teach, persuade and change your life through the power of storytelling. So I don't know if it has to. I mean, that's a book. They can get away with a really long tagline. But yours might be Practice Leading colon.

Neil Benson
00:32:33

Curious and emerging practice leaders or something. Yep.

Dave Jackson
00:32:37

Yeah. But I would throw in Microsoft Professional in there somewhere, because that's who you're targeting. And so that way.

The reason for that is when they go to apps. And most people don't realize this, but as someone who worked at Libsyn for eight years, search in apps is horrible. It's better than it used to be.

But I still probably once a month get somebody that says, hey, I'm searching for the exact name of my show and it's not coming up. And I kind of go, yeah, welcome to podcasting.

And so by having a tagline, sometimes it will give a little more food on the plate for the search tool to find it. So that way, if somebody's looking for a Microsoft Professional show, they type in. Microsoft Professional have a much better chance of doing that.

In the past, people would add tag or keywords to their name. Like, I remember at one point I was Dave Jackson, comma, podcast consultant, comma growth specialist. Apple started kicking people out.

Neil Benson
00:33:42

Yes. They refused to publish my first show for that. They said it was. Eventually I discovered I was keyword stuffing my name.

Dave Jackson
00:33:48

Yeah. Yeah. So that's bad.

And then some people were like, you know, the Dave Jackson Power Hour, inspired by Abraham Lincoln, John Lee Dumas, Gary Vaynerchuk, and all these just famous names. And they're like, they were just, no, that's not going to work. So don't do that.

But you might consider coming up with a quick little tagline of what the shows who's it for maybe the benefit of that. But I would definitely have Microsoft Professional in there just to.

Neil Benson
00:34:16

Well, it's got to go in the episode title, right? There's no other field in a podcast episode in the RSS feed or the XML to insert that.

Dave Jackson
00:34:24

So, yeah, yeah, just at the end, just practice leading, throw on a colon and go to town. So.

Neil Benson
00:34:31

All right.

Dave Jackson
00:34:31

But all in all. And that explains it because I was like, you know, what if this is a new guy?

Like, there's really not much wrong with the, you know, these little tweaky things. And that explains it. You got 160 episodes under your belt.

I was like, oh, well, that explains it, because I was like, this is actually a pretty good show. So.

And again, I'm not a Microsoft professional, but I've been in management before, and I thought those were, like I said, really good questions, really good answers, and I look forward to seeing what happens with your community. So any other questions for me before we wrap up?

Neil Benson
00:35:04

No, that was good. I really like the hints and tips you give me about the about section on my website. The link to the lab, I need to tidy that up.

Maybe put a holding page in place of a link directly to Heartbeat. We talked about the title or subtitle and the tag and some tweaks I might want to make to some of the intros and outros and that kind of thing. So.

And then music, transitioning the music. I'll check the other episodes.

Dave Jackson
00:35:27

Yeah, that was picky.

The other thing, just because I know you're on Podpage, if you had put Mohammed as a guest in Podpage, you can then attach the guest to the episode and it will put all of his contact information at the bottom of the episode. The other thing it does is it makes a page for Muhammad on your website.

And what that's for is now you're interviewing Microsoft professionals, so probably not going to apply. But in the event you had somebody who wasn't super, like, Internet famous, you know, sometimes you have people like, I'm not really on.

I have a Facebook page or something. Well, if somebody searches for your guest, there's a chance now that your website will come up.

And the other thing it does is while it makes a page for every individual guest, it also makes a page for all of your guests. So if you're trying to get new guests on your show, you can say, oh, here's a link.

You can see we've had Jack and Jill and Ernie and Bert and everybody else on this show and kind of create that Fear of missing out kind of thing when you're trying to get new guests. So that's just some things you can do in the back end of PodPage.

Neil Benson
00:36:35

That page is there because I noticed some new guests have come through the podpage guest intake form. So they've already created that profile and it will automatically get attached to their episode when I publish it.

For people who didn't come through that intake process, I do need to double check that I've created a manual guest page for them. Mohammed. I thought I had done, but maybe not. I'll go, I'll go and check that and make sure it's all set up correctly. Thank you for that.

I might not have put the navigation link in the, in the top menu, so maybe that's why it's, it's hard to see.

Dave Jackson
00:37:04

I just making sure you are aware of that. So that's. I didn't see it and I thought, oh, maybe I should let him know if I was smart, if I, I should have just logged in. I, I worked there.

I could have gone in and looked at your dashboard and seen if you had. I do want to ask a question. What inspired you to order a podcast audit?

Neil Benson
00:37:22

I listened to a couple of your others and I just thought, because I'm starting a new show, this is a chance for a reset to lift my game and I don't know what I don't know. And having anybody who works in the industry audit your show and give you that kind of analysis can, you know, confirm what you're doing right.

In some cases, and then just point out things that I would be blind to myself. So this has been super helpful. I've learned lots. I've confirmed some things. I thought I was on the right track and that's good to know.

And I found a dozen things I can improve. So thank you very much.

Dave Jackson
00:37:59

People talk all the time about, I want to, you know, why isn't my show growing? And I always ask. I'll give you an example. The church I go to for at least a year and a half has had a logo with a typo in it.

Like, and somebody noticed it about two months ago and didn't say anything. And I was like, wait, you gotta be kidding me. They're like, yeah, there's two L's in Talmadge and there's only one in the logo.

And I was like, how did we all miss this? And I'm like, well, I preach this all the time. We're too close to our own content and we miss stuff.

And so, yeah, it always, for me, it always comes in handy to have a second set of eyes come in and take a look at it. So I appreciate for you to come on the show. Appreciate your time, appreciate your show, Wish you the best of luck.

And I'll be working with you at least for a couple weeks here in the School of Podcasting. So if you're a Microsoft professional, you want to check it out and go over to practiceleading.com and check out Neil. Neil, thanks for coming on.

Neil Benson
00:39:02

Thanks, Dave. It's been wonderful. Thank you so much. Bye for now and keep experimenting.

Dave Jackson
00:39:05

Keep inspiring. Keep experimenting indeed.

If you would like to experiment with your show and get it in front of someone who would tell you when you are doing things right. You see, Neil is doing a lot of things right, but there are always a couple things. Like I say, we are too close to see our own stuff.

And Neil's been enjoying his month at the School of Podcasting. If you'd like to go through this experience, I'm here to tell you your audience will thank you. Go out to podcast hot seat dot com.

I'm Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting. I help podcasters. It's what I do, and I'd love to see what we can do together.