Jon Cheek: If you get thirty, forty, fifty listeners to a podcast that you've just launched, that's really good.
Like give yourself a pat on the back rather than just trying to be the hundreds of thousands of persons right away.
And going back to my pedals and podium, just keep on the pedals because it will come, but it won't come straight away.
Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired.
I'm Neil McPhedran, founder of Podium Podcast Company.
We help university podcasters level up.
Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee, founder of JPod Creations, podcasting is broadcasting.
And we want you to know you're not alone.
In fact, there are many of you higher ed podcasters out there and we can all learn from each other.
Neil McPhedran: That is right, Jen.
And as we say, please check out the Higher Ed Pods, Higher Education Podcaster Community.
Sign up.
We are over a thousand university podcasts in there now, which is an incredible repository, directory of university higher education podcasts and growing, we've got a lot of really interesting stuff.
And we talked about it last episode and I'm just going to talk about it again, haven't zeroed in on the actual date yet, but we've got this upcoming thing we're planning, the higher education podcast conference.
I think we're going to call it the Higher Ed PodCon.
Chicago, second week of July is where we're aiming.
So hopefully this week we lock down our venue.
Email us if you're interested in participating.
It's for anyone interested in learning about or working in and around the higher education podcast space, even if you're listening to this for the first time and you're just starting your journey, it would be a perfect place to come and meet other higher ed podcasters.
Really at the heart of it that's what we're hoping to do.
So hopefully next episode, I'll be able to zero in on some specifics here, but we're super excited about it.
And hopefully we can see some of you in person in Chicago in July.
Jennifer-Lee: Love it because that's the one thing, and I know we mentioned before, is when we go to other conferences, there's just such a small cohort of us.
And we're like, we want to be with other university podcasters.
Neil McPhedran: Okay, so Jen, this episode, we are chatting with Jon Cheek from the Uni Taster Days.
And Jon is from jolly old England.
And has a great accent.
So that's always good to chat with someone from Britain.
They always feel like they're a little bit more sophisticated than us just because of their accent.
But Jon's from Uni Taster Days and he is the host and founder, I guess, as well, of the Uni Guide podcast.
Jennifer-Lee: He's got a great voice.
And I think he probably has the best last name of somebody that we've interviewed so far.
And I think his idea, not just for the podcast, but Uni Taster Days, which is a guide that happened before the podcast of how to get into different educational institutions across Britain, I think was super smart.
Neil McPhedran: So far, just the UK.
Yep.
Jennifer-Lee: Something we could really do here.
And we really haven't stumbled upon it yet.
What a great resource.
So let's get into it.
Neil McPhedran: Welcome John.
Great to have you here on the Continuing Studies podcast.
Jon Cheek: Lovely.
Thanks very much for inviting me.
I'm really looking forward to this chat with you.
And we were saying just before we started recording that I'm usually in kind of the seat that you're in asking the questions.
So I'm really looking forward to seeing what it's like on the other side today.
Jennifer-Lee: You're in the hot seat today.
I'm really excited to have you on because you're from England and we don't really get that many other podcasts outside of North America.
So we're really excited to talk to somebody that isn't Canadian or US.
Neil McPhedran: But our goal in 2025, Jen, right, is to reach further beyond North America.
Jennifer-Lee: Get out of our backyard.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, so welcome.
It's great to have you here.
So, Jon, why don't we just start with what is Uni Taster Days?
What a unique name and it's super unique endeavor that you have there.
Jon Cheek: Yeah, thank you.
So, basically Uni Taster Days, we, in the main, we're an event site for students and schools to find university events.
But basically, I used to work a long time ago at a university and part of my job was to go into schools and deliver events for schools, but there was never a place to find them.
So schools never had a place where they could find all these events.
Like universities went directly to schools, schools went directly to universities.
And I kind of had the idea of Uni Taster Days as being that middle ground between schools and universities.
So 2012, I set that up as a website.
And then since then, we've kind of been building lots of resources for schools, including the podcast, which we're going to talk about today.
And ultimately, what we do is make things better for students when it comes to university, more information so they can make better decisions in the future.
Jennifer-Lee: And can you just tell us what university you're part of, for people that might not know?
Jon Cheek: I've previously, I've worked at, how many now?
So I've worked previously at three universities, but now I'm completely independent.
So we work with lots of, we've got over a hundred universities that are members, but we are completely kind of the middle ground.
The beauty of us being that independent middle ground person or company, is that we can be completely impartial.
We can talk about university without kind of saying come to this one or come to that one.
Neil McPhedran: So is this for UK students, if I have that correct?
And is it more for UK universities or is it also UK students that are interested in going abroad as well?
Jon Cheek: Yeah, at the moment we're very much focused on the UK, so we work with universities in the UK, students in the UK.
In time, you know, hopefully in the years ahead we might be, perhaps this is our first step in order to being international in terms of the podcast, but we haven't yet nailed the UK, we're getting close, but we, you know, there's still some, there's a few universities that aren't members.
We're really keen to make the members, um, and likewise.
You know, Uni Tasters were founded in 2012, so we've had a long time to build stuff with schools, but there will be still some schools that don't know enough about us.
And we're keen to nail this market and see what we can do to help others.
Jennifer-Lee: So Uni Taster Days, it's its own entity.
And then you guys have the podcast that relates to that?
Jon Cheek: Yeah, exactly.
So we're a website that has lots of resources.
And one of the resources we've got on the website is the podcast.
And we've got guides for students to find videos and, we offer this portal where students can find incentives to attend events and things.
The podcast is literally been launched back in 2022 to provide students with loads of information so they can go on to make really good decisions.
And we have lots of different guests and ultimately it's really to help students to make great decisions in the future.
And that's the main part of what we do and why we do it.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
And the podcast is called Uni Guide podcast, which is an excellent name.
Jennifer-Lee: Great SEO.
Neil McPhedran: And so the target audience for the podcast is students and parents.
Is that right?
Jon Cheek: Yeah, it's a funny story in terms of the audience.
And one funny story that, that I bet others can relate to is kind of the journey to where we got to this point.
So now the podcast is for students considering university.
So in terms of listeners, that's exactly who again, we're marking ourselves to support, but that's not how it started.
So how it started was a podcast for parents and also staff that work in schools.
Because we thought to ourselves, you know, I was chanting to my colleague, Tim, who produces the podcast, and there's not enough information out there for parents when it comes to Uni, but also those working in schools.
So we thought what we could do is launch a podcast because there's so many millions of people listen to podcasts.
And we thought parents listen to podcasts, school colleagues, you know, adults will be listening to podcasts.
And it's a nice way of reaching that audience.
So we launched the podcast for parents and teachers in the first instance.
And for the first four or five episodes, they were the audience that we were supporting.
But so many contacted us to say, the podcast is brilliant.
We're going to pass it on to our son, daughter, considering university.
And it kept on happening.
And we were like, we got to a stage where we thought, you know what?
Rather than, you know, be the podcast that is supporting everyone and potentially then targeting guests is challenging.
Maybe we should just support students.
And there's a lot more students considering university than there is, you know, staff in school.
So, you then, kind of targeting a bigger market, but we're very much student led now in terms of guests on the podcast, but in terms of who we're kind of attracting as listeners, but it's not how it started.
And actually one thing for the listeners that you can take from us is that we didn't ever fight up to about three, four episodes in think that this podcast will be driven towards students, supporting students considering Uni.
In the end, it has been.
So if you are thinking about the future, the audience is a massive part of it, but for us, we had that situation where we completely changed audience by about five episodes in.
And the beauty of that, I suppose, is by doing it early, it meant that, you know, we're not in the situation where we've been spending two, three years on a podcast and then we're going to change, change angle.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah.
I love a good podcast pivot story.
Jennifer-Lee: They're always pivoting.
We haven't pivoted this one yet.
Neil McPhedran: Well, we started so niche we would have to just do a whole new podcast then.
Jennifer-Lee: Like, pivot into finance?
I don't think that would work with you and I.
But this is just interesting to me because usually Neil and I interview universities or colleges that have podcasts either in the recruiting department or on specific topics like science or arts or law.
But this is neat because you guys are resources for students for many different post secondary education institutes throughout the UK, you're not just one thing.
And so this is something new.
It's kind of like you're creating a mini network on your own, but with one podcast.
Jon Cheek: Yes, it's interesting, actually, that you mentioned that, Jen.
So the funny thing about this podcast is that it's the one thing that I'm asked more about.
You know, the podcast for Uni Taster Days is a big part of what we do, but not the biggest part.
But it's, it's probably the thing that I'm asked about more from people.
Like I could, you know, I get asked to deliver events and talk about podcasts and a lot of the time, you know, people that I know will contact me and say, can you speak to a colleague about the podcast?
And it's funny that so many people are interested in them.
The advantage that I suppose Uni Taster Days has got with this podcast in comparison to a Uni that has their own podcast is our reach is far greater.
Because for university, they, they might have one that's for their current students, or they might have one for prospective students that are thinking about going to that Uni.
Whereas, for us, we can produce a podcast that is for everyone, um, interested in Uni.
And I'm not, you know, by any means a podcast expert.
You guys are.
But the, thing that surprised me actually is in the UK, there wasn't really a big podcast that helps everyone considering Uni.
Like a lot of universities have got their own, but there was never kind of the Uni Guide version.
Yeah, we just, I just thought there was a lot of potential there to create something.
And it's certainly the one area in the last two years that I've grown, developed more than anything.
And I love it.
If I said to myself three years ago, four years ago, I'd be involved in a podcast and talking about podcasts a lot and having conversations like this on your podcast, I'd have said no chance, but fast forward and yeah, really, really enjoy it.
Neil McPhedran: It amazes me that we've been at this for, I guess we're coming into our third year now.
How often we hear the folks that we interview say how much they love their podcast and being part of it and the people they talk to.
And as Jen said, we cover from alumni to academics that are really niche into their subject matter or whatever.
But that is something that we hear often, just about how enjoyable it is.
For me, and Jen, you'll probably agree, one of the things I've loved the most about our podcast is the people that we've met and the conversations we have.
It's an interesting medium that allows us to dig into something and to really get to know the reason behind the podcast and so on and so forth.
And I don't think in other ways we would have that opportunity.
Jon Cheek: Yeah, completely agree.
And, and I kind of live by being curious.
I think, you know, the podcast gives you the opportunity to be curious and speak to really interesting people and learn stuff like every, you learn from every single person that you speak to.
Podcasts provide that opportunity, whether it's listening to other people's, I like listening to lots of podcasts and I listened to yours the latest episode in advance of this.
It's such a nice way to kind of learn.
And there's some podcast episodes, of the podcasts I listen to and listen to several.
There's lots of episodes that sometimes you start listening to and you think, you know what, the guest isn't perhaps for me.
And naturally there might be a few people that listen to me and they think, ah, nah, not the guest for me.
And that's absolutely fine.
But it gives you that option to kind of give people a bit of time and find out if you can learn or if you enjoy kind of the stuff they're saying.
I'm a big kind of advocate of podcasts.
The only thing just to add on that, I want to stay super positive about podcasts.
But, one thing that I always say to people that speak to me about having their own podcast, is not to underestimate the work that you need to put in to do it well.
Like there's, some people speak to me and say that, we want to do a podcast and we're going to record it on a Tuesday evening and it's going to take an hour and then we're going to put it out.
And I always kind of stress them that if you're going to do it well, it needs so much more than that.
You need to know, like we did with this one, have pre chats with guests and talk about their own experience so you can ask really good questions.
You then need to edit it really well.
And it's not something that you can just do really quickly and expect it to be fantastic.
And that's one of the big things I've stressed to people, because I don't want them to go away and think, yeah, let's do this and get really enthusiastic and then realize that what they've decided they're going to do is so much more work than they anticipated.
I think if they go into it with that attitude that it's a lot of fun, but it's going to be a lot of work.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.
And I also think people not only underestimate the workload, but they underestimate the fact that they put all this workload into it and they're like, what's my return?
And of course we always want a return, but I'm finding that the more we speak to different podcasters, and the more that Neil and I work with clients, is that there are returns that you would have never thought of.
And people always just think of like, oh, listeners and whatever.
But it's like, I know people who have gotten jobs from podcasts.
I know people who have gotten new clients from podcasts and their listenership hasn't even been that crazy.
One of the schools that Neil and I talked to, which is Stanford, one of their courses, a storytelling course.
And they said that these students are in there for like communication or things like that.
Just taking this course.
And the professor was like, at the end of the course, they just happened to take these podcasts that they created, without her asking them to.
And they got jobs in different fields because I think it just shows that you're dedicated.
So podcasting can be used in many ways.
But again, you've got to be the catalyst for it.
You can't just stick it out there and be like, okay, that's it.
Jon Cheek: Love it, Jen.
Yeah, completely relate to that.
And, one of the things I try and live by, I don't know if it's a term that's used so much kind of outside the UK, but it's podium and pedals.
And what I mean by that is rather than kind of always thinking about the podium in the sense of getting, you know, hundreds of thousands of listeners, I very much concentrate on the pedals.
Do things well, do things consistently, and then the podium will come.
But, you know, if the people think about the podium before doing the pedals, I think you've got it completely the wrong way around.
And the other quick story I can share with you is.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
Jennifer-Lee: I was like, that's the name of Neil's company.
Jon Cheek: Just keep doing it.
Neil McPhedran: Podium and pedals.
Jennifer-Lee: That's a UK term?
Jon Cheek: I can't remember the source of it.
I read it in a book, I think somewhere.
And I could just relate to it really well.
And they, you know, they said pretty much the same thing that they, they concentrate, you know, rather than always thinking about the, the end goal and, and looking at weekly download figures and, and streaming figures and stuff, just concentrate on doing things well, because then if you do things well the podium part, you know, you will, that will come.
But if you go into it, thinking podium, and I'm going to get the lead in podcasts straight away, it's not going to happen.
You just need to be consistent.
You just need to do things well and edit things well, get good audio, get good guests.
And that's what I've kind of taken from it.
The other thing just to extend on that, is I work a lot with universities that travel the UK and go to visit students in schools and they'll travel say hundreds of miles to speak to students.
Sometimes they might speak to a group of thirty students for an hour and spend half a day traveling to speak to those students.
If they produce a video or a podcast and they had thirty people that listened to it, they'd be like, ah, that's disappointing.
It's still thirty people, isn't it?
And I think sometimes with the online stuff that we produce, people expect to have hundreds of thousands of views and millions of views or listens.
And you know, in an ideal world, that would be fantastic if you get that.
But if you get thirty, forty, fifty listens to a podcast that you've just launched, that's really good.
Like give yourself a pat on the back rather than just trying to be the thousands, hundreds of thousands of persons right away.
And going back to my pedals and podium, just keep on the pedals because it will come, but it won't come straight away.
Jennifer-Lee: I'm gonna throw a pop culture reference that just happened into the mix here.
But I think with just anything, a lot of people don't take the time and realize things are a long term goal, not, not a short term goal, because even I was just shocked, Demi Moore just won a Golden Globe and she said that's her first award ever in acting and she's been doing the career for forty-seven years.
So, you know, if you've got, you gotta sometimes step it up, take a, take a while.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah.
Um, so why a podcast?
So you were at the, so if I, my math is right, you were at it for ten years with Uni Taster Days.
And then somewhere in your tenth year, basically, you launched a podcast.
So you obviously had previous to that had all kinds of communication tools and channels and whatnot going.
Why did you think podcasting and what have you found from the podcast as sort of part of your quiver of communication tools and channels that you're meeting with a podcast?
Jon Cheek: Yeah, probably if I go back to, the podcast launched in 2022, in January of 2022, I listened to podcasts, but I had no plans whatsoever to have one.
How things changed is I was invited to go on another podcast and I had this conversation, it's a university podcast.
Ultimately, I came away from that conversation, you know, we had a kind of pre chat, and I came away from the conversation thinking, I'd love to be more of a part of this.
So it's a longer story really, but the, so I then contacted the organization that invited me to be a guest and said, look, if you're looking for a sponsor I'd love to support what you're doing.
'Cause it was a podcast to support equal opportunity in education and didn't really work out because that organization they wanted to stay completely impartial.
And if we have a, commercial partner on it, are we then completely impartial?
And I could completely understand their decision, but I still thought, you know what, I could then start exploring my own a podcast and do something very different to what they do, but appeal to kind of masses.
So I did a bit more digging and I spoke to a guy called Tim, who now produces our podcast and he was actually involved in the other podcast and said, look, I'm very confident I can get some really good guests, I've got these ideas but what I don't have any expertise on at all is the production side and how we produce this podcast, how we turn a conversation into great audio.
And he's fantastic at that.
And he's involved in lots of different podcasts and he had that expertise, whereas I had to kind of be the knowledge of where I wanted the podcast to ultimately go.
And I think it's just one of those situations.
So right place, right time, and I had more of a chat with Tim and we started planning and kind of three months after that initial conversation, we then produced our, first podcast
And if we now fast forward to 2025, we've, produced, I think we're on number thirty-seven of them.
And we've also been involved in another podcast called the One in Five, where someone listened to the Uni Guide and they were really impressed with it.
And they actually wanted to produce a podcast themselves to support disabled students considering Uni.
So they then approached us and said, look, we've got this idea.
We want to support more disabled students to consider Uni, but we haven't got the expertise in house to produce this and would you like to be involved in it?
And we were like, yeah, that sounds fantastic.
So,
Jennifer-Lee: I'd love to have them all on too.
Neil McPhedran: And we'll put a link to that other podcast in our show notes as well.
Jon Cheek: Yeah.
Thanks.
It's called the One in Five, because one in five students at university have a disability.
And the really cool part of that podcast is Tim and I were involved in producing it, but the five co hosts all have different disabilities.
So they kind of talked about lived experience.
And it's one of the most positive, powerful, it's just such a nice podcast.
And it's great to chat to people that listen to it and have been inspired perhaps to consider university as a result of it.
And judging that, Jen mentioned earlier on, about wider benefits of being involved in the podcast and the five co hosts part of that, they contacted Tim and I to say they've grown so much as a result of it, you know, in terms of their communication skills and, and I'm sure, now I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I'm sure now, you know, kind of a year on, they're probably still talk about it.
It's probably on their job applications, the things they've have been involved in.
And it was just, it was a series of six podcasts, podcast episodes, but they, if you kind of listened to the first one and then the last one, you can just see how much they've developed.
And we all had conversations and it's so much nicer when the guests are relaxed and you can just hear that their tone's so relaxed.
And, and you never know, they might go ahead themselves in the future and create different podcasts about different subjects.
And that all started from being involved in that One in Five.
So yeah, lovely to be part of it.
And that came as a result of the Uni Guide and people listening to that one and thinking, you know what, we can approach these two and see if they can help us with our one.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
One of the things you mentioned, and I can see when I go to the website for the Uni Guide and you mentioned a little bit, was the student panel and the student participation in the podcast, the Uni Guide podcast.
Curious about that.
So can you sort of unpack that a little bit for us?
How does that student panel work?
And, tell us a little bit about that strategy.
Jon Cheek: Yeah, it's funny, Neil, the journey in terms of the, what we do now is very much for students from students.
So the advice comes from students.
And actually Tim, the producer and my role is over the last couple of years, it's got smaller and smaller.
And that is really based on feedback we've had.
The listeners want to hear from students at university, about university.
They don't want to hear from a forty year old man that previously attended a Uni and worked for Uni.
And that's me, by the way.
That's not Tim.
Tim's much younger.
I thought we could just create something that's like for students, from students, and they're volunteers.
So we don't pay the students that are part of the podcast.
They give up their time to kind of help other students.
They talk about their own experience.
And how we structure every single episode is we have two or three students from the student panel and then we have what we call an expert guest.
The expert guest used to be from a university, so it used to be someone that works at a university in the UK.
And that worked really well.
The content was always impartial, but the worry we had was that, some listeners might think that this guest from University of whichever will just want to talk about University of whichever.
And, we were a bit worried about that.
So we thought by having a guest that's completely external to a university, we could then really, really build the impartiality.
And that's how we do things now.
But the student panel is so brilliant.
They, again, give up their time to help others.
And I'd like to think they've got a lot out of it as well.
And I'm listening to them over the years.
Their communication skills have developed massively, but we're always really, really keen to kind of help them.
So when it comes to small things like writing recommendations or references for them, and also to kind of ask them how we could help them further in terms of, is there any skills that you want us to help you with when it comes to being part of the podcast?
They are a massive part of it.
And there's seven students now that appear on various episodes, you know, two or three students each time.
We book a guest and then we send up two students to say, look, this date, who fancies it?
Who's available?
And then students work with us to create some questions for the guest.
They're very involved in the whole process.
A lot of the success of the podcast is down to them.
Tim and I, producer Tim and myself, are now a small part of it.
We're more behind the scenes and we leave it to the guest or the students to create really good content that listeners will hopefully really enjoy listening to.
Jennifer-Lee: So when you guys are looking for guests, what type of guests are you looking for?
Jon Cheek: I'm actually, at the moment, one of my current jobs is looking at potential guests that can appear on it.
What we try and do is find subjects that we think students considering university will be super interested in.
And then once we get the subject, we look for people that are experts in that area.
And a lot of the time they're looking for organizations.
If I give you an example, the latest podcast that we launched actually just today is all about writing personal statements.
So in the UK, if you want to apply for a university, you need to write a page about yourself essentially, and why you're going to be great for Uni.
The deadline for personal statements is in, at the end of this month.
So we had that topic, you know, personal statements are due at the end of this month.
That's the topic we wanted.
And then we just looked out for people that do really interesting work in that space.
And the guest that we've got on this episode is a guy called Jonathan.
He's worked at eight different universities for twenty-five years, and now he runs a completely separate organization that produces newsletters and things to support students.
And he was probably the person that jumped out as being the biggest expert we could find in that space.
So we approached him.
And for the next one, we'll kind of look at deadlines that are coming up in February and then March and student finance and things, and nail the subject.
And then once we've got the subject, we try and find guests.
And one interesting thing is it's very, very rare when we approach guests, I don't know if you both find this, but it's very, very rare when we approach guests that guests say no.
Usually they, they actually lap up the chance of being on a podcast.
And it's probably, I don't know, perhaps why they say yes, it might be visibility or it might just be that they listen to podcasts themselves and they perhaps just want to be involved in the process and want to know what's involved.
And we're really fortunate in terms of guests.
We've never struggled.
Jennifer-Lee: I just think podcasting is a new way of connecting.
It's a new way to basically have a coffee and also get your point across and have a wider reach as we all work on our personal brands.
And I really think what you guys are doing is really unique.
The fact that you're doing topics that don't pertain to one university, they pertain to many.
And the fact that you're kind of getting more neutral guests that are targeted, opposed to like other universities that we've done in the past.
It's so focused on that school and what their criteria is.
So I just feel like you guys are doing something really unique.
Neil and I have not hit on that in North America yet.
Neil McPhedran: We've talked to recruiter podcasts that are definitely in a similar vein, I guess, that are focused on helping students figure out, but you get into a specific program at a school or get into a school.
Jennifer-Lee: A very specific school.
Neil McPhedran: As you say, Uni, but I like your wider aperture that you've, that, you know, that you've applied.
Jon Cheek: Yeah.
It's, I suppose the big advantage that we've got as an organization kind of sitting in the middle ground, working with the vast majority of Uni's, is we can be completely impartial and we can, you know, we're not talking about a particular Uni.
In fact, we never ever talk about a particular Uni.
We talk about a university topic, wherever it's you know, writing a personal statement, applying for student finance, why you might want to consider university, you know, they're all very central topics.
But actually they, these are topics that seventeen and eighteen year olds are going to be thinking about because university is such a, you know, wherever that's universities in the US or universities in the UK, it's such a big decision.
And if people always talk about the cost of it, but actually I always think it's time, like you can make loads of money in the future.
If you, you know, a lot of students will make lots of money in the future, but what they can't get is that time they spend at Uni.
And that's a big part of why we do what we do, is hopefully doing all we can to make that investment of time, a really good one, whether it's a university they go to or which course they do.
And resources like the podcast, I think, go a long way to helping students with that.
Jennifer-Lee: It's just smart because I haven't obviously applied for university for a long time.
And I remember the application process was quite convoluted and complicated and like, you know, we had the internet, but I didn't have all these resources that we have now.
Jon Cheek: Exactly.
And now I support resources that support students considering university.
But if I go back to myself when I was seventeen and eighteen, I was absolutely useless.
I picked my course based on one chat with a careers advisor in a school.
So, but a big reason why I do what I do now is to avoid what I did looking back and making things.
available.
And you know people say there's so much information at students fingertips now, which there is, but they still got to find it.
And actually the more that we can do, whether it's podcasts, really useful websites to make that easier.
Neil McPhedran: I want to say I commend you on something that you've, that sort of a thread that's come up on a couple of things as we've talked is how you listen to your audience.
And I think that we as podcasters need to spend more time listening to our audience versus just being focused on the next episode and what we're producing and the content.
You early on in your podcast, as you mentioned, made that pivot from an audience to more focused in on the students.
But then the story you told about the student panel and how that's come about and how that podcast has evolved and the thread that you've mentioned throughout is listening to your audience and what you heard from your audience.
And I just think that's a great takeaway for ourselves, Jen, you and I, but also our audience here as well, too.
So, uh, that is excellent.
I think maybe that's a good thing for, I'm going to remember that for 2025 as I move forward.
Just sort of how important listening to your audience is.
Jon Cheek: The only thing I was kind of extend in on that, I'm very into, you know, I really appreciate you saying that Neil.
The big, I'm such an advocate of listening to the audience rather than kind of getting absorbed in numbers, which a lot of people will look at numbers first.
I don't actually, I try and get feedback from listeners first.
And if you, a lot of people will look at, you know, downloads of each episode.
But unless you're changing something radically, actually looking at, you know, spending lots of time looking at numbers all the time, I don't think helps massively because you haven't changed your approach.
You know, our podcast now is we have an expert guest, we have a student panel, and then we have a chat for about an hour and produce a thirty minute episode as part of that.
And if we, if we changed that completely, whether it became the audience or how we did things, then naturally, then you've got to go straight to the numbers and see what the impact is.
But if you're not going to change it, I think, you know, change it radically, I think that what you get so much more use out of is actually talking to listeners and saying like, what you like, what don't you like, what could we improve on?
And you don't get that in terms of looking at bare numbers.
You get that on feedback and creating more of a community perhaps is where we'd like to go longer term.
And, we don't do that so much now, but wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of community filter podcast?
So I'm really looking forward to doing more this year is making more of a community of it.
Jennifer-Lee: I think you're so ahead because that's an important thing that a lot of people don't do, is listen to their audience.
Yes, you can look at the numbers, but if you're not listening to your audience, how are you going to grow?
That being said, you already gave us one great tidbit, but just in general, in the university post secondary podcasting space, is there something that you hear other podcasters do you don't have to throw anyone under the bus, but anyone in that space that you would love to change or something you'd like to see, um, in the post secondary education podcasting space that you haven't seen or you'd like to fix?
Jon Cheek: That's a brilliant question, Jen.
The only thing I would kind of answer, and it's probably not the best answer, but it's the best one I can give right now, is that I think doing things well is the most important.
The amount of podcasts that you see that are very short lived because someone's had an idea and they've had, you know, one or two podcasts and looked at the figures and then thought, ah, there's not enough people listening.
I just think you need to do it well and you need to do it consistently.
So when I say do it well, I mean, produce a podcast really well, make sure the audio is good, make sure the guests are briefed.
And the thing that surprised me in terms of this podcast is you could speak to the most confident people in the world.
But actually, if they've never appeared on a podcast, they are going to be massively out of their comfort zone.
And one thing that you guys are really good at and you've done with me is make people feel comfortable.
And then you can get so much better content because someone's comfortable having a conversation with you.
And that's probably the one thing, not so much answering the question as well as I perhaps should have, Jen, 'cause I'm kind of getting on a tangent, but I would say that maybe the thing that we need to do more of is really thinking about the podcast before you go straight to recording it.
And taking more of a long term view of it and say, look, we're going to do this for one year, whether it's twelve episodes, if you do it monthly, or if you do it weekly, I wouldn't suggest doing a weekly perhaps for university podcasts, but if you did do a weekly, you know, it's fifty-two, um, don't do it weekly.
Say if it's twelve episodes and actually committing to it and saying, look, I am going to do this consistently for this period of time.
And then in a year's time or however long you put on it, we'll then have a look at where we are and not kind of having the attitude where I'm going to just release it straight away.
And then in two weeks or three weeks, I'm going to look at the thousands of listeners.
Because it's very unlikely that's going to happen and you'll be disappointed.
So I think it's more, if people decide and they're going to do it and really thinking hard about doing it and taking a long term view of it and then producing something consistently that's really good, is what I'd like to see more of rather than kind of the, the impulsive podcast where it's like, we'll do this.
And then you then see on, you know, Spotify or Apple podcast, however, there's people listening.
You see podcasts with a subject.
It will say the last episode was recorded in 2023 or so.
And you're like, what a shame.
Jennifer-Lee: I thought that was a brilliant answer and a great end to this conversation.
Neil McPhedran: It's great.
I've really enjoyed our conversation.
And I think there's some really good takeaways for our audience here.
And thank you so much for sharing and being open with us.
Jon Cheek: I've really enjoyed this and I've also enjoyed listening.
Yeah.
I'm so glad that we had the initial conversation because now I can find out more about the stuff you're doing.
And you've certainly gained a listener now.
So I'll be listening to future podcasts.
Neil McPhedran: I love it.
Gaining one listener at a time through guesting.
Well, Jen, another awesome conversation there.
I really enjoyed our chat with Jon.
It's too bad, we were supposed to also have his producer, Tim, join him.
We had some technical glitches there off the top and it didn't quite work for him.
We're going to have Tim on separately.
He actually works with a few other podcasts that are sort of in and around the space that look pretty interesting, but great chat we had with Jon.
I really like the pivots that he made with the podcast and especially sort of how he's focused in more and more on actual prospective students, students looking to get into university and, you know, he's brought more students into it.
So like his voice is kind of pulling back a little bit and it's more students voices for students.
I thought that was a really interesting, I guess, not necessarily a pivot, but a really interesting evolution that he's made with the podcast.
I love to see that when podcasts make changes along based on what they learn and hear and feedback they get from their audiences.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, I also like the fact that he mentioned a lot of podcasts when you're doing a specific university, you're tied to that university.
And that he said this one, it's like you can interview many different universities and get feedback from, not just what is it like to apply to them, but going back to your earlier point, of having the students come on in their voice.
About really what their thoughts about going to university and things that they struggled with and it's not just about the application process.
It's like afterwards getting in and it's like, well, how do you get a dorm?
Like they do various topics of like, where is like, where is your community?
How do you get new friends?
Neil McPhedran: And then from that, to be able to hear in the student's voice, I think, is just, uh, fantastic.
So yeah, anyway, another great episode.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.
And that's what really makes this podcast unique because I think when we are all thinking about post secondary education, we want to ask those questions, but we don't have someone to tell us that because at the end of the day, university isn't really right for everybody.
It's not something that everybody should invest time into or money and maybe, it doesn't mean like you're not successful.
There are like a lot of entrepreneurs that never even went to postsecondary school, but you got to find your fit.
So I think it is a really great resource.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, you're right about the agnostic point of view.
We've definitely chatted with a few podcasts that are specific to a university and the recruitment process and they're super helpful and excellent resources.
This is an interesting one coming from the purview of, you know, it's not associated with a specific institution, so it's an agnostic voice, if you will.
Jennifer-Lee: So, anyways, thank you for tuning in to the Continuing Studies podcast, a podcast for higher education podcasters.
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