Time We Discuss: Jim Harold Career in Podcasting

Transcription

(Music)

Jim Harold: Don't think bigger, think smaller. I think that's something that people could really learn from. They don't necessarily think about it the right way. They think about the obvious thing, but there's a lot of…

Dan: Today on Time We Discuss, I wanna welcome someone of great inspiration with over 80 million downloads, 3,000 episodes, and 20 years of podcasting experience. It's time we discuss what it's like being a professional podcaster with Jim Harold. Jim, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jim Harold: Thank you, sir. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and your audience. It's always great to connect with other podcasters and thank you for the opportunity.

Dan: Absolutely, I'm excited for this. Before we get started about what it's like being a professional podcaster, let's set the stage properly. Jim, take maybe 30 seconds and tell my audience about your podcast so they have some kind of background on you.

Jim Harold: I podcast on the paranormal. My longest running show is the Paranormal Podcast, which started in late July of 2005. And probably my most popular podcast is Jim Harold's Campfire, where people come on and share their personal stories of the supernatural. So I am a professional paranormal podcaster.

Dan: I absolutely love that. And I had the great opportunity to be on episode 646. So for anyone that is interested, go back and check that out. And I know I was on there recently talking about the jumping M&M. I don't know if that dropped. I'm a few episodes behind on Campfire, but by the time this episode drops, that'll be out, I am sure. So let's talk about your typical day. As a podcaster, what is your typical day like at this level?

Jim Harold: I tend to like to be at my desk by 8.30. And I work a full day, five days a week, and then also work sometimes in the evenings. If I need to record some extra calls, a lot of our campfire calls people call in. So a lot of times on Mondays, I will have calls scheduled that evening. And then I also do a couple hours here and there over the weekend. So it's probably about a 50 hour week. And it depends on the day. You know, today, Monday is typically a light interview day. I don't do too many interviews like we're doing this one now, but it's kind of catch up and editing and getting back to emails and those kinds of things. Tuesdays are almost fully dedicated to campfire calls. People call in as you did and share their stories. And Wednesdays are kind of, again, another light interview day. I will pop an interview in there once in a while if somebody's not available on Thursdays, which are my main recording days for non-campfire shows for our guests. Typically, I try to keep those to Thursdays. And Fridays are kind of a clean up day and looking forward to the coming week. But I have enough to keep me busy all week long, whether it be editing, whether it be ideation, you know, coming up with ideas, whether it's upgrading our tech. There seems to be something all the time to do. And if there isn't something comes up that fills the time. So it's never a challenge to fill the hours in any way. A lot of times the challenge is the opposite. It doesn't seem like there's enough hours in a day. And the thing is, is that people say, "Oh, you know, you work for yourself. You know, you just, you know, take off and things." And certainly, you know, if there's family stuff or there's something, I will rearrange my schedule and make up the hours later. But I am extremely, extremely serious about this. This is a job. This is not a hobby. Now I love doing it. It started off as a hobby, but it is a job. And I figured, you know, if I don't work hard for myself, you know, soon I'll be finding myself trying to find a job so I can work hard for somebody else. So I'm very serious about it.

Dan: So let's hang on that. Let's jump back 20 years ago. You got started doing podcasting. Podcasting was very, very new. I mean, it was cutting edge at that point in time. Why podcasting and why the paranormal?

Jim Harold: Well, I had been a frustrated broadcaster to begin with because I had gone to school for broadcasting, primarily television. And with a little bit of radio, but mainly television. And through a series of events, I fell into my first broadcasting job, which was as a sales assistant. It was not, you know, in front of the camera or in front of the microphone. And I later fell into advertising sales in radio as my career. And then I looked up about a dozen years later and say, oh, I'm in my thirties. I've got a wife, two kids, a mortgage. I'm never gonna be able to follow my dream. So anyway, I heard about this thing called podcasting. I was a big talk radio fan, even going back to when I was a kid. I was a kid listening to Larry King. So anyway, I was listening to Leo Laporte, the great tech podcaster, and also to Adam Curry, not doing what he does now, the no agenda stuff, but he was doing a show called Daily Source, because he was one of the inventors of the medium, along with Dave Weiner. I thought, oh gosh, I can't do what these guys do. These are, you know, they have been broadcasters for years. They're tremendous. But then I heard some of the homemade podcasts. I said, well, I can do that. And I said, well, what am I gonna do it on? You know, I'm interested in politics, but I don't wanna fight with people. Everybody has a right to their belief. I don't wanna get into that arena. Sports, what am I gonna add? I never played the game. I'm not any expert. I'm just a fan. Music, you couldn't do anything with music because, you know, it was verboten. By the way, you still can't, which is ridiculous, might I say. And then I thought, well, what are my other passions? What is something? And ever since I was a little kid, when I went to the library, when I went to the bookstore, right to the paranormal section, grew up on In Search Of, Unsolved Mysteries, later Coast to Coast with the great Art Bell. And I thought, it'd be really fun to do a paranormal podcast. And what can I call it? Well, this was so early, the name the Paranormal Podcast was not taken. And I wasn't the first paranormal podcast, but as far as I know, I'm the longest running one right now. And it's just been a blessing. It's been a great way to spend the last 20 years.

Dan: looking now 20 years later, okay, what are some lessons you've learned? Let's go with the past couple of years, because I felt the landscape has probably changed a lot, especially since COVID. Oh yeah. So what are some lessons that you learned recently that'd be very helpful to any budding podcasters?

Jim Harold: Well, a couple of things, expect the unexpected. You know, when COVID came, you mentioned COVID. I thought that was the end. I thought, oh, this is gonna be bad. People are not gonna be commuting. Nobody will be listening. And it had the exact opposite effect. For me and many podcasters, it was explosion of growth. Now, obviously, if I had a button to push and we could redo that whole COVID thing and have it not happen, I would definitely push that button. But that is to say, a lot of the times throughout my podcasting career, I've expected reaction A and I've gotten reaction B. So, you know, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that. So the thing is, is expect the unexpected. I think these days, I do think that video is important. We've been doing more and more video. You could probably tell by my setup, it's all set up for video. Campfire recently, this year after, what, how long have I been doing that show since 2009? 16 years after 16 years, we added video, which largely kind of boosts the workload of doing the show. But I think it's been a good addition. So I think that with podcasters, I think for new podcasters, my recommendation is get your audio version nailed down first. You know, doing audio by itself and doing it well is tough. So I would say don't start with audio and video. It's like trying to run a, you know, a sprint before you even walk. Try to start with your audio, get your audio nailed down. And then if you feel that it's something that will help grow your audience, then look at video. But I would always go audio first. I know for me, my audience is still largely audio and video for me as a kind of a small supplement. The other thing I would say is just keep on top of industry trends. I think one reason I've continued to be able to do this is that I'm always trying to evolve. I'm trying to learn what the newest things are. That doesn't mean you chase every trend, but that means you know what's going on on the business side of it. And I think for podcasters, you know, I think people say, oh, you know, I have this passion and I'm gonna do this passion and it's gonna be successful because it's a passion. But now if you're doing it for just a hobby, that's great. No problem. If you're, I think we, on this show, we talked more about business. If you're doing it as a business, you have to treat it as a business. So you gotta play that delicate balancing act. Don't lose your passion. Still have the passion for the subject, which I still do, I feel. I still feel I have it 20 years going in. But also realize that if you're making it a business, treat it like a business. Learn about things like cashflow. Learn about different revenue streams. Don't think you're just gonna put ads on your show and that's gonna allow you to be able to quit your day job because chances are starting out that is not gonna be the case. Don't always go after the biggest market or the biggest audience. You know, I've heard people say, if you're podcasting to everybody, you're podcasting to nobody. I think you pick a niche that you're expert in or passionate about and that could serve. My favorite example that I use, and I don't even know if this exists, I'm sure it does, but if you were a pop cap, a soda cap collector, that would be a great podcast because I'm sure there's a community of soda cap collectors that is very vibrant. And if you could become the soda cap podcast out there, the pop cap that we call Pop here in Ohio, best podcast. I mean, think about it. There's probably companies that sell like display cases for your soda caps. There's people who are passionate about it, who want community. There are probably people who would pay for more content. How do you restore your soda caps without reducing their value? I mean, the thing is, and I had a lot of detours in my career, mainly radio, but I worked in business to business media. And what that taught me, why I didn't realize why I got into business to business media, and this is when magazines were still around the turn of the century, when magazines were still pretty viable. People who ran golf courses, they had a special magazine for them. They had a special magazine for people who laid asphalt. They had a special magazine for physicians, the business side of it. The thing is, is that everybody thinks, oh, I've got to be the next Joe Rogan, or I've got to be the next whatever. I mean, if you're a barber, start a barber podcast. If you're a pet groomer, start a pet groomer podcast and be the best pet groomer podcast out there. And there are people who for that, they sell razors. They sell different equipments to groom. So don't think bigger, think smaller. I think that's something that people could really learn from. They don't necessarily think about it the right way. They think about the obvious thing, but there's a lot of non-obvious uses for podcasting.

Dan: Jim, you said so many great things just now. I was writing different things down and I'm trying to think, which one of these I want to explore first? It's interesting you talk about chasing the trend. And it's important, like you said, you identify the trends to be aware of them and the ones that really look like they're going to take off, embrace those. So video, for instance, adapting that aspect into your podcast and applying video as well. You also talked about the business side of things. You want to treat it like a business. And ads and building a community, so many, so many great things. So let's hang back. Let's go back to, I think it was 2012, I think, when you actually made the switch over to being a professional podcaster. What was that like? What kind of research did you do leading into that? Or is it more of like watching the trend of your listeners, of your fan base? And it was like, if I put more time into this, I can make this a career. How did that all happen for you?

Jim Harold: kind of a key inflection point was in 2011 when I started my Plus Club. And that was a way that I was going to produce extra shows and so forth, and for a pretty reasonable fee, you could get access to those shows. And that was a pretty unusual thing at that time. The person I was following who was doing it was Cliff Ravenscraft, the podcast answer man who, he's kind of diversified over the years. I don't know how much he's involved in podcasting, but he was one of the early podcasting thought leaders. And he had a Plus Club. And I said, well, people really seem to be reacting to these shows. Maybe I can put out more shows and people will pay for access. And I think the first day we put it out there, I had 200 people sign up. And that day I said, there is something here. This is serious. This is no longer a hobby. This could be a career. Now, you'll note that I just didn't quit my job the next day. That was probably February of 2011. And I didn't go full time until June of 2012. So I workshopped it. And I looked at the money that was coming in and I said, I think we can meet my basic payroll needs. We can pay for health insurance. Not much more than that, but we can do that. And let's go in. So it was very methodical. It was not half cocked, so to speak. And you've got to be, especially when you've got a family to support, it's very tough to just go into something. So I say, whatever is a podcasting, whatever, work that side hustle, build that side hustle up and then make the switch. Don't just say, well, I'm gonna be a pro podcaster, unless you've got hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in the bank by all means. But if you rely on your job for a living for you and your family, do that side gig. Do that side hustle, build it up. And then at the appropriate time, you make the switch. And I was lucky, my spouse, my wife, Dar, was very supportive. A lot of people wouldn't be. I'm gonna give up my health benefits. I'm gonna give up my nine to five to talk about Bigfoot. But she was, and I'm so thankful that she was.

Dan: So you talk about community as well. And different things I've read, different people I've spoken with, different podcasts I listened to, they talk about how important community is right now. Talk to me about that and how that affects your show, how you embrace and cultivate your community and how that's helped your show out.

Jim Harold: Well, first of all, I mean, I have a genuine affection for my listeners. I'm very appreciative. And I feel like I'm a fellow traveler, right? Because I don't have the answers to these questions. I don't claim to have the answers to these questions. I'm just another guy who wants to get the answers. And we kind of together explore this. So I feel a real kinship. And I gotta say, 99.9% of people are great. Occasionally you'll get somebody who's like, whoa, what's wrong with that person? But most people are great. You know, in the early years and up until recently, we relied on social media for that. But I did make a bit of a pivot just in the last couple of months. And this is what I think is so important. You've gotta stay fresh. We started our own community, the virtual campfire. We had a virtual campfire group on Facebook. It's still there. We're gonna be winding that down. That has 27,000 members. But if you follow Facebook at all, it's totally almost exclusively pay for play now. And if you have a group, you know, I would post something and maybe 1,000 people would see it, maybe out of 27,000. And they signed up to see the stuff. And I finally said, you know what? This is ridiculous. So we started our own online community. Still early days, about a month in. We have about 2,500 people. It's a free community. But the nice thing seeing is, you know, I go in there and I'll post once or twice a day. Dar will go in, post, you know, once or twice a day. Maddie, my VA will post once or twice a day. But it's being driven by the community. And there are ones saying, hey, I'm gonna share this story. I'm gonna share this photo and those kind of things. So I think building a community is really important from just a human perspective and also from a business perspective. It's virtualcampfiregroup.com. And if anybody's interested in spooky stuff, please do check it out. It is free. I'm finding that a great place. And you want people to, and it's very much a guy who I really admire and who's done this way better than me, is somebody like Pat Flynn. And just tremendous at what he does. And he talks about super fans. And you always hear that get people to know, like, and trust you. But I think an important part of that is to be trustworthy. You know, you don't scam people. You don't sell their information to other people. You be respectful of them. If you promote products, which I do, I have sponsors. I vet sponsors. And I have turned quite a few sponsors down because it's like, we just recently had one. And our ads have been down a little bit. I mean, the host-read ads on independent podcasts are hard to come by. I've been lucky because I have that ad sales experience and been able to leverage it. But it's been a little depressed. As I've said on the shows, I've been very honest. I think that's important, being honest with your audience. But the point is, is that we recently had somebody approach and say, hey, we'd like to do the show. And it might've been a several month commitment, would have been a nice addition that we could use. We researched the product and we said, nope, not for us. Because it had a lot of complaints. It had better business bureau stuff. It's like, no, no. Because the thing is, is that I think that when you're trying to build a community, you have to maintain your integrity. And no short-term profit or gain is worth selling out that community. Because if you want people to know, like, and trust you, you have to be trustworthy.

Dan: That is awesome. I love that. That ethical responsiveness that you have is just awesome. Especially in today's world, where there's so many charlatans out there. There's so many people out there trying to make a quick buck. It's nice to know that you do what you're supposed to do as a human being. That's what you're supposed to do. You bet the people and you do what you should do. I love that. Absolutely love it.

Jim Harold: And I consider myself, with some people now, let's face it, I don't get political, but capitalism is a dirty word. I don't believe capitalism is a dirty word. But like any other system, it can be misapplied. And I consider myself an ethical capitalist. I wanna make a profit. I wanna support my family. But I wanna do so within the bounds of being a good human being.

Dan: That is awesome. Very respectable. So let's hang on the money side of things vaguely. You said that it sounds like a sponsorship. You know, it's kind of down, it sounds like. How important, now I know you have merchandise. You have your premium membership. How important is it for a person to have these extra tentacles out there to bring in income?

Jim Harold: Absolutely. 110% diversify your revenue streams. Because in the ebb and flow of business, some things are gonna go up, some things are gonna go down. It reminds me, I don't know if you ever watched that show, "Mad Men."

Dan: Yes.

Jim Harold: And I think, great show, love that show. So anyway, they had like one big client, you know, they lose that client, the agency goes out of business. And that's like, just kind of like a very basic kind of like, that's why you never wanna put all your eggs in one basket. You always wanna be thinking, how can I add another revenue stream? Because three, four, five years ago, host-read independent, you know, endorsements were going great. They were fantastic. And now, I mean, I still probably do way better than most independent podcasters, but they are decidedly down. Plus, some of the podcast platforms change the way they measure the audience. So, you know, you might look like you get 70,000 downloads and then three months later, they're saying, oh, you're only getting 50. And your audience didn't change the way they measure it changes, but then you have to adjust your pricing down. So the thing is, the lesson in that is we have books, we have merch, we have the Plus Club, we have host-read ads, we have programmatic ads. And I have some more ideas. And the thing is, is the idea is to super serve your audience in multiple ways and give them multiple things that they wanna buy. And it doesn't mean that you're scamming them or ripping them off, you just give them more, more and more. And then they decide what they want. There've been things I've launched, podcasts, products, whatever, I thought were gonna be great. And they've been, and then I've launched things like, eh, nobody will like this. Oh my God, people love this. And I think that that's just kind of par for the course. It's like being in the laboratory, you have to experiment a lot.

Dan: It's so funny, similarly, different people I've spoken with. I spoke with a talent manager back earlier this year. And I thought that was awesome. He deals with getting models set up, bring them into the industry. And I thought that would be a great one. That's so fascinating. And it didn't compare nearly as well as some of the other episodes I've done. It's very strange.

Jim Harold: I had an episode on UFOs and it was my most popular YouTube video ever. And it was a good interview, don't get me wrong. I thought it was a really strong interview and a great guest, but nothing better than, I've had much better interviews where I was much better. Now I think it might've been kind of a quirky thumbnail that I did, but it was a multiple of any YouTube video I've ever done. Now the following week, I had an interview with a tremendous guest. Not that the other guest wasn't tremendous, but I felt this was my strongest interview of 2025. You don't know.

Dan: So I have to ask, so I'm gonna go detour for a second. Then we're gonna come back to, I wanna talk more about low barrier to entry on streams of income. But I wanna ask you, what was your favorite story that you've heard, just in a nutshell, if you can pick one, just one, Jim. (Laughs) What was your favorite story that you've heard over the 20 years?

Jim Harold: For "Campfire," I would say it's one called "The Roadhouse Saloon."

Dan: That is a great one.

Jim Harold: I mean, it's a long story. Yeah, it would take me 10 minutes to tell it, but I'll give you kind of the TLDR of it. Basically, it was a woman who went to see a bar band with friends. They're coming back home. It was after closing time. Everything should have been closed up. She had to go to the restroom. There was a bar wide open. She went there. A lot of strangeness ensued while they were at the bar, but it was wide open. They were there a while. Basically, they saw themselves coming to a mural, like materializing mural. They left. The minute they walked out the door, the whole bar went like it was never open. The cars that were outside were not outside, and she left. It was like, did she find another dimension? That one's on the YouTube channel. We have a special video dedicated to that. I think, Did She Enter Another Dimension? The thing is, is I got to meet the person in 2019. I went to her home. We did a video of it. I totally believe her. It speaks to the strange nature of reality. I think sometimes there are other dimensions and things that we can see. There's a report out there that people in Liverpool, this one certain street, it'll turn into the 1960s. They'll be able to interact with people and objects and things, and then they'll walk out of a shop or something, and it's back to 2025. I think there's some real weirdness in our universe. I don't think we see it all the time, but I think we interact with it sometimes when there's a glitch in the matrix, so to speak.

Dan: I love that. I've heard that story several times, usually the end of the year when you do your summary or the best of or something like that. I know you featured that story several times. Every time that one comes on, it's like, ah, So going back, we talked about ads. We talked about merchandise. If someone wants to get started diversifying, which do you think has the lowest barrier to entry that would be the easiest for someone to start?

Jim Harold: Well, the easiest is probably programmatic ads, but that's tough. I mean, because usually the CPM costs per thousand are pretty low, and if you have a small podcast, and let's say that the CPM is $10 cost per thousand, and you get 2,000 downloads, congratulations, you just made $20. So you have to have a pretty good-sized audience to do that. Now, that's where my strategy I was telling you before I think comes into play. If you're super niche, if you're going for a broad audience, let's say you just want to do, hey, I'm gonna do interviews with whatever interests me, whoever interests me. That's gonna be hard to get an audience for because a lot of people are doing that, and people who are famous and on TV are doing that. Now, if you say, I am a specialist in microphone manufacture, I see on my set here, there's a microphone in front of me, and behind me, couple behind me, and I wanna start podcast on microphone manufacturing or the aspects of microphones. Well then, wait a minute, it's a much smaller audience, but it's much easier to access people within that vertical and maybe get them to sponsor a show, and not on a pennies per listener thing, but they might, if you hit the right 2,000 people in the microphone market, it could be very lucrative. Or I used to work on a ophthalmology magazine. Now this kind of stuff, when you get into medical, you gotta be a little careful. But if you did something geared towards the business aspects of ophthalmologists, for example, has a very lucrative thing because one of those lasers that they could get could be $100,000. So think, if you're targeting a broad audience, you need mass. If you're targeting a niche audience, you don't need mass, you just need the right people. So I think if you're looking at it as a business proposition, that's the way to go. I think I kind of sidetracked your question totally, but.

Dan: No, that was good, that was perfect information. Jim, I thought I could talk, we just scratched the surface on this, I feel like. I feel like I talked to you for another hour easily about being a podcaster. But unfortunately, I am running short on time, but one thing I like to do whenever I'm speaking with someone, I like to give them the opportunity to talk about a project they're working on, a cause they believe in, their business, podcasts. I like to leave the floor open, so it's all yours.

Jim Harold: Well, I firmly believe that when you're talking to people who aren't familiar with your podcasts, that you always should lead with your free podcasts. And probably my most popular one is Jim Harold's Campfire. So if you happen to be watching this show and you're a fan of spooky things, maybe not necessarily a true believer, maybe a little bit skeptical, but you love to hear people talk about their real experiences, I recommend Jim Harold's Campfire. The Paranormal Podcast is our free show where we interview authors and experts on everything from ghosts to cryptids to UFOs. Doesn't mean I necessarily agree with each and every theory, but we hear them out and we let you decide. And then that, and both those podcasts can be found on all the major podcast platforms in YouTube, of course. And then the Virtual Campfire Group, if you have a story that you wanna share in written form, talk to people about these topics, VirtualCampfireGroup.com, that's absolutely free. The paranormal report is one that I do with my wife weekly. That's only been around for a little less than a year. And we do, we go back and forth on paranormal news. And that's a lot of fun. You get the dynamic between her and myself. And I think that adds a new dimension. I think she's at the start of the show. So that's another one to check out the paranormal report in the same places. And again, thank you for this opportunity. It's great to talk to you. And I love talking about the business side of it. It's probably obvious, but most people don't ask about that stuff. They ask about what microphone do you use, which is important. But I think sometimes the business side gets lost. So it's good to talk about that kind of stuff.

Dan: Absolutely, I'm so glad that you're able to share with us and all those podcasts you mentioned. I can say that I've listened to them. They're amazing like that for many, many years. But I will get all those links from you. I'll put them in the show notes. They'll be on the website. They'll be all over the place. So when people are trying to find you, they can easily find you. Jim, it's been absolutely awesome having on Time We Discuss and we learned what it's like to be a professional podcaster.

Jim Harold: Thank you for your time today and everybody stay spooky.