Business
590: Optimizing for podcast growth on Apple, Spotify, and Youtube w/ Seth Silvers
In this episode of Podcasting Business School, host Adam meets with Seth Silvers to discuss effective strategies for optimizing podcast growth across major platforms like Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. ...
590: Optimizing for podcast growth on Apple, Spotify, and Youtube w/ Seth Silvers
Business •
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Interactive Transcript
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Hi, this is Holly Silva with Business Strategies Podcast for Professionals and Small Business
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Owners who want to launch the business of their dreams.
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I hired Adam because I decided to do a complete rebrand and refocus of my podcast, and I
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wanted practical guidance from someone who had been there done that, so to speak, and
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you could help me to monetize it possible along the way to having the listership stats
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that significant brand sponsors are looking for.
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Not only does Adam provide fantastic practical guidance on rebranding and SEO, so that my
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podcast is discoverable by my ideal audience, but as I need it, he also provides that guidance
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step by step so as to not overwhelm me with the process.
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And he helped me to not only craft my offers, but also guided me on when and how often
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to release those offers, which makes all the difference.
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So I am immensely grateful for Adam and the podcast business school.
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Pod pals, if you want some of my best podcasting tips, make sure you subscribe to my free
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podcasting business school newsletter.
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Every Thursday I sit down and write a fresh newsletter in real time without the use of
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any AI, and here's the best part.
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My newsletter topic is completely different from my podcasting topic each week.
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So if you join the 4000 plus podcasters that are reading my podcasting business school
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newsletter each week, head on over to www.podcastingbusiness.school or just hit the link in the show
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notes.
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What's up pod pals?
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It's your buddy Adam and you are listening to podcasting business school.
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It's a show where I teach podcasts through simple strategies to help you make more money,
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get more clients and build a profitable and simple online business.
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And today we've got one of my pod pals, Seth, Silver's coming in.
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Seth and I got to jam out.
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Thanks to our mutual friend Meredith Edwards, shout out to Meredith from Meredith
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for real.
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And we met at, officially at pod fest, had some dinner, chat about some podcasting ideas.
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And I'm like, I got to have Seth on the show, create some content together.
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So Seth, let's make it official.
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Welcome to podcasting business school.
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Thank you.
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Happy to be here.
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I feel like we had been kind of in like ancillary circles for years.
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But every time I saw you, you had this like posse following you so I could just, I could
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never, never get through.
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So I was happy to finally make that connection.
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Well, truth be told, I actually hire people to pretend to be super fans, to follow me around
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to create that illusion like at pod fest.
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I've got like 11 people specifically.
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I'm like, just, just be my hero of people that like harasses me and ask me for autographs.
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And I roll in like that.
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It really creates a stir.
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You got to do what you got to do.
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Influencer marketing hashtag influencer marketing.
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No.
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I'm psyched we got connected.
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And like you said, we've been kind of circling each other's orbit here for a little bit.
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But I actually, I don't know the story of how you got involved in podcasting the first.
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So I would love to hear that just to kick things off.
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Yeah.
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So I've always been, I've always been really attracted to the concept of storytelling.
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And at a pretty young age, I felt really kind of taken by this idea of like businesses,
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business and impact.
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I remember in high school, that was when like the Tom Shoes documentary came out.
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And that was super impactful for me because that was the first time that I was like,
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oh, you can like use businesses for good.
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And so I started to pay attention to businesses, not just as like money making tools,
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but as tools to like make an impact.
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And that just kind of stuck in my brain.
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And I was involved with some like nonprofit organizations and ministries
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when I was in high school and college.
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And so we really got to see like the way you bring people together is through storytelling.
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And particularly in the world that I was in at the time, it was,
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we were working on how do we bring people together that believe super different things?
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And it's usually around like we can find a common story that we all agree on.
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Even if there's a bunch of things we disagree on.
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And so probably 15, 16, 17 years old, I started realizing how unifying storytelling is.
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And then I started realizing that I really liked marketing, but I didn't know what to call it.
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But I really liked this idea of like creating, creating content or like using messaging
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to bring people together around things that matter.
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And so in college, I remember I was watching the Super Bowl with some friends.
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And I don't remember what number it was, but I'm pretty sure Tom Brady won.
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So it could have been anytime over like a 15 year period.
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And I remember going in and I wasn't excited about the football because it was Tom Brady
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and I knew he was going to win.
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And so it was like, okay, well, I'm excited about the ads.
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And I remember going in with this expectation of like, okay, this is the biggest stage
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in the world debatably, at least in America.
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And the biggest companies use the biggest budgets to like they have one shot
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to like win my affection.
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And I mean, you know the story, it's like most of the ads they kind of suck.
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And it was just this moment of like, is this really what, is this really like the best storytelling?
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Like is this, like if you give the best companies in the world, millions of dollars
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to create a 30 second commercial, like this is what they're doing.
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And so it's really this interesting moment where I began to ask the question.
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And I think in times in our life, there's questions that kind of like play us.
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They just like sit in the back of our head and we roll around with them for a couple years.
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And so for me, that was when I asked the question of, would it be, would it be better for
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these companies to spend all that budget and all that time telling a story of how their
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brand was impacting people or how their community was being impacted?
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Would that work better than spending all this money on funky, weird ads?
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And I did, I legitimately didn't know the answer to the question, but I was like, what
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would it work?
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And I just kind of asked myself that question over the next couple of years.
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I was getting better, versed in marketing and college.
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And then I took marketing director job at a nonprofit after college.
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And finally, I started to see evidence and research.
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And this was around 24, 2013 to 2015.
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And so this is when research was starting to come out that actually showed that like companies
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that are investing in storytelling, it's working and that consumers are actually expecting now,
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that companies are going to be a little bit more authentic with what they're doing,
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was not thinking about podcasting.
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I think I just learned about what it was by somebody sending me an upset about entrepreneur
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on fire and I was like, this is cool.
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And so I figured I might as well like, I know I'm going to do this in the long run.
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So I might as well start figuring out what to do now.
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So I quit that job, started story on media, which is the agency I now run.
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We're now coming into 10 years.
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And the vision at the beginning was help businesses market through storytelling.
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And for the first five years, long story short, I said, yes, to almost everything anybody hired
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me for. I remember being really stoked about my first like $400 a month client and being like,
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I just need a hundred of these and I'll be fine.
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And we're like pretty much creating a YouTube video for them every single week.
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And I was like, I can do a hundred of those in a week.
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And I just had no idea how to run a business.
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And I wasn't thinking about audio, wasn't thinking about podcasting.
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And then I started a podcast called The Small Business Storytellers.
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Since has been sunsetted, but is still available.
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And I was just wanting to tell local business stories just for fun.
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And that started to really impact my business, which was confusing to me because I wasn't expecting that.
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So that was when I realized, wait a second, like podcasting one is,
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a really good tool to do this like authentic storytelling thing that I've been wanting to do.
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And also it has a really good benefit to businesses.
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So the last five years has been completely focused on helping businesses market with stories
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or market with storytelling kind of through podcasting.
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We just decided podcasting is going to be the piece of the marketing pie that we work on.
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Every year, I've gotten a little bit more focused, figured out how to do it a little bit better.
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And that was the moment where I finally said,
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started saying no in business.
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And I was like, I'm going to say no to everything else that's not podcasting.
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And that was definitely the best decision in business I've made.
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So that's kind of the long story short.
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And I like absolutely love it.
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So really have only been in podcasting for like five years,
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which some people think is really long time.
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And some people think is not a long time at all.
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The Seth Silver's origin story.
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That's it.
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Dude, it's, I'm kind of taking middle notes as I go because you hit a few hot button points.
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I love to teach on one is the concept of ready fire, aim and not ready, aim, aim, aim into infinity.
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Like you just started figuring things out.
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You're like, this is what I'm passionate about.
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I'm going to try this idea.
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Let's start putting things out there, helping people as best I can,
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making some money.
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And then we kind of figured out an aim and adjust as we go.
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And then you went to that five year period and you're like,
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ah, yes, podcasting.
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That's the route through line that I really want to focus on.
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So I feel like so many online entrepreneurs, online business owners
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get stuck in like figuring it all out before they freaking start.
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And then they never start.
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I mean, I you see in something similar to that.
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Yeah, I am.
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And my perspective is actually shifted as I think the industry podcast industry is shifted.
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So I think I've learned like with my in my story,
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I've learned the majority of the things I've learned by starting before I might be ready.
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And then like getting pretty darn good at figuring it out.
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It drives me nuts when people like ask me a question that they could before trying to Google it.
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Most of the answers are out there and you can learn these skills.
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And so that's been really big in my story.
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I do feel like my perspective on that has shifted a little bit,
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particularly with podcasts.
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And particularly with podcasts with like more established companies or more established businesses
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where I think I think part of the reason there's so many like fit like podfade podcasts
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is because people ready, ready fire aim and they don't have a strategy.
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And so we've kind of grown to like encourage podcasters to take a step back,
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not like a year step, but like maybe like a six to eight week period step back
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to make sure you actually have a strategy for your podcast before starting.
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Because I think in COVID, we both saw a million people literally like there was a million
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podcasts started that year. And nobody had a plan, nobody had a strategy,
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so they don't know how to measure it. They don't know what success looks like.
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They don't know any of these things. So they're like, well, this kind of sucks.
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It's like, I don't know what I wanted out of it, but it sucks.
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So I'm a big advocate for that strategy of ready fire aim.
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But I also think there's times where we need more strategy.
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Yeah, I mean, I think it's a totally valid point to go.
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Let's take a month, a month and a half, two months and figure out what in the world we
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actually want to accomplish with this. And some you and I both know people that are like eight
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years into this. I've got 49 episodes mapped out in my head and 12 different designs of my logo
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have not hit record yet, but I'm planning on it. Yeah, that's a different story.
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Well, and when I started, I actually got stuck in that. So I bought, I bought like $1,500
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worth of podcasts equipment. I bought like a pre-sowness like eight track mixer that I think is like
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still hiding. It's like under this chair over here in the corner. I bought Mike's ATR 2100s and
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all of the stuff. And I went to record. I recorded like six or seven episodes, but I was like
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pretty embarrassed. I thought I was overconfident. So I thought that I knew how to work the tech.
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So I recorded like six episodes over two days and then I listened to it all and it sucked.
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Like not like me sucked, like the audio, like something was wrong with audio quality. And like
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the gains were so low that I had to like crank them so high to get it like workable and it sounded
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terrible. And I sat on it for a year. I didn't do anything with it because I was like so nervous.
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And then finally, I was like, okay, I need to re-record these. I need to get this thing out.
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So I just got so stuck in my head with it that I was actually sitting on episodes and not
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publishing them for a whole year before we actually had a podcast. Yeah, a lot of people do that and
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then they never do launch it. So you're I mean, thank goodness for the podcasting industry that
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says Silver's put the publish button and just got going. So you got a couple other points that
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I was curious about. Let's talk about the bigger brand business type of podcast. The
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word used was established business based podcast versus the more newbie. Maybe they
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saw business goals and things like that, but the person that's like solar per newer figuring it
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out on their own. What is going to work for that bigger brand company for like growth,
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client acquisition, that's not going to work for that indie solar per newer. I'm doing it all
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about myself type of podcast because I feel like that's one of the mistakes that leads to a lot
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of those solo newbie people quitting is they're trying to follow the strategies of their podcasting
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heroes that have established brand the team and the support to help. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I tend to
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think that in a lot of ways, I think like growth works regardless of like the strategies that are
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going to grow show or probably going to grow show regardless of like the size of the show or the
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level of the like the how established the brand is. I think that there's different ways that
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different companies can get an ROI from it. And so for example, I think that a business that has a
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more established business model. And by that, I just mean like, you know who your audience is,
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you know how you serve them and you have a track record of doing it. It's going to be easier for
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you to measure the ROI of that podcast in the long term because you in theory know how you're making
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money from your customers on the back end. Alex Hermosey, one of our clients, they're a great example.
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They don't run ads on their podcasts as of today. They never really have. And that's because they
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have felt like it makes more sense for them to run what I would call like house ads or internal
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ads because the value of them just getting people into their system is the benefit. So that's the
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reason that a lot of businesses start podcasts is like, oh, we want to we want to nurture audience
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members. We want to get people into our business. But the problem is if you're so early in business,
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you don't have your like business model figured out like if you're not a profitable business yet.
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And the ROI that you're expecting your podcasts to deliver is customers, then that's going to be
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really challenging. With Alex and Layla, they have a whole team behind them. They have whole services
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behind them. So when they get somebody into their ecosystem, they have confidence that they can
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turn that into a profitable customer. And I think that's the that's easier for big companies.
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You look at like American Express, they can spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars
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a month on podcast advertising and on pumping it into podcasts because they know that like they have
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all of this data to show them making up this number. But that maybe one out of every 10 people
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that goes and visits their website ends up opening up a credit card and over the lifetime of that
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credit card, they might make $12,000 on it like then made up numbers. But they have the data to know
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that. And I think when a lot of like very early stage businesses that are probably still trying to
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figure out how to get your first hundred couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue, I mean, you're
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still figuring it out. Like you're still figuring out like who exactly is your customer? Is your
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product good enough that they're going to consume your product and go tell somebody about it without
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you having to like pay them or something like some of those like business skills. I think early stage
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podcasts and kind of indie podcasters. Growing out the business, but they're expecting all the ROI.
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So I think like I just kind of like shifted that question towards more the ROI of it. Yeah, yeah.
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But I think that's like one of the biggest differences when we're talking about like a podcast that
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supports a business from like smaller businesses that have podcasts of bigger businesses is the way
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that we should be judging the podcast. I don't think it should be the same. Yeah. I think
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a solid goal for a lot of newer podcasters that do have business goals. Like you said,
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is to get the business model figured out and in place to where are we using this show at first
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just to build our email list? Are we using this show to get people to a free workshop every single
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month and then figure out. So all these people are like, I'm not 100% sure what problems I solve and
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what kind of you know, solutions that I'm going to sell. And you have to kind of figure it out
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along the way. So a lot of people are in that zone versus the Hormozys, which have the whole
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freaking thing dialed in with the backing of team and a nice advertising budget. Yeah.
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Yeah. Well, and we, and like we put in, we usually position podcasting as a nurturing tool.
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And this came from like me failing. This came from me getting really excited when we shifted
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towards podcasting. This was during COVID kind of beginning of it. And I was like, this is an
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amazing tool to grow business. And so I told people like podcasting will grow your business.
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And we got clients. And I remember this one amazing client that we had. She was so sweet.
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We sold her on a year package producing her podcast 52 episodes. She was all excited. She was
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new business owner. And it didn't work like the podcast was good. It got listeners. But it didn't
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work in the sense that she couldn't convert them over to clients. And that was mostly because
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she didn't have a clear, like she never clear sales process. She also didn't have a clear,
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like product offering. It was like really kind of like fluffy and intangible. And at the end of the
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year, I actually felt bad. I felt like I oversold her. And I felt like the at the time, I think the
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$11,000 for the year that she paid us to produce 52 episodes. I felt like she, that money would
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have been better spent for her, figuring out some of her business problems or starting a less
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produced podcast that had different expectations. So there was a few moments like that where like the
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podcast didn't work in the way that we like wand it to. And so we realized we were like, well,
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who does it work for? And we looked at it in the clients that the podcast was more of a middle
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of funnel nurturing tool. It was a lot better where the focus of the creator was client acquisition
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second. But the first focus of the podcast was bringing as much value as possible to your current
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core audience. And then we started to see when they do that, then this is when the show begins to
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grow because you're serving an audience with specificity. And then that means that they start
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work like spreading the show through word of mouth. So it took like having some shows that failed
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and then being like, what the heck? Like I thought this was going to work. And then we realized we're
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over positioning the whole thing wrong. And so it's like podcasting does grow your business, but we've
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for us that has to be secondary. It's like for our clients, it's like, this is a nurturing tool.
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This is like a community engagement tool. And the result of having an engaged community is usually
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your business. Yeah. And I talk about all the time, like expert positioning is a huge super power
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of having a podcast. Like you get to be in somebody's ear buds every Wednesday when they walk
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their dog on that regular routine, you know, our content is inserted in that life routine. And if we
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can position ourselves as somebody that is known by our ideal listener as a person that solves
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pain points that solves problems that leads to business. And we are very top of mind. And we like that.
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Now, I know a topic that you and I both like to nerd out on is growth. Like what's what's working
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now as far as the growth experiments. I'm always experimenting. I always love seeing what you're
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experimenting with. So what do you hot on right now in the podcasting growth space? Yeah. So yeah,
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I love thinking about growth and also say like this is kind of a, over the last 18 months, I've
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been focusing a lot more on growth. And I think a lot of your listeners will probably empathize with
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this that have worked with podcast agencies. It's easy for podcast agencies to produce this nice
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little podcast baby. And then to give it to the client or publish it. And then they're like on to
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the next episode. And then you have this interesting thing where the podcast isn't growing. And the
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client is like, well, it's your fault. And the agency is like, well, it's your fault. And if that's
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kind of like that happens, not just in podcasting, but with marketing all the time. And so we started
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to realize like, well, this, this kind of sucks. Like if we're not, if we're just focused on the
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production side, but we're not knowledgeable about how to actually grow a show, it's not good for
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our business model. And it's not good for our clients, which means like eventually we'll both be
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unhappy. So I think this has been a newfound passion over the last year or two to realize like,
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we really want to get good at knowing what causes podcasts to grow. I think that a big thing that
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I'm like big on right now is even if people have an advertising budget, not spending the advertising,
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initially not spending, not going towards paid growth, unless you have organic growth.
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This, I think people call it like the grandmother test or mom test or something like,
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if you have a business idea and you go tell your mom like, she's probably, she's probably going
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to be really excited about it. But like if your mom thinks your idea sucks, then like chances are
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the people that I know you think it's going to suck. And so I think there's a lot of podcasts right
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now where like there, like your current audience doesn't like the show. Like they're not talking about
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it. And the reality is like if your show is, if your show is shrinking or it's plateaued,
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then that means that your audience isn't sharing the show. So I think that's like a fact that
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just a lot of people don't like, we don't think about. And so for that, like we've, we've started
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looking at things like a, like an analogy of a bucket. It's like if you have like a five-gown bucket
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and you're, you know, going to water a tree or something and you have a hose in it. And you have
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that hose. And for 10 minutes that hose is going in the water level is staying the same like midway
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up the bucket. Then you have a problem. I could add more hoses to it. Like I could put five hoses in
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and it would probably the water level would rise in the bucket would start overflowing. And I would
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be like sweet like we have an overflowing bucket of water that would bringing the analogy over like
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you start advertising on cast box and you start advertising with a mopod and you start advertising
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on Facebook and you start doing all of these things like your podcast will grow. But then when
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you take those things away, it's going to stay, it's just going to go back to the same level.
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And the only reason that would happen is if you have, but if you have holes in the bottom of the bucket.
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Yeah. And so we've, we've started doing way more extensive audits with clients to initially
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diagnose like what are the gaps and what are the, what are the opportunities for growth from an
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organic standpoint? It might be packaging like it might be, hey, like your branding is unclear.
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Like new people coming to your show don't know what it's about or it's confusing. It might be
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how you start the first 30 to 60 to 90 seconds of your episode. Those might suck and new people
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coming in might be really confused. And like we look at this through consumption data and different
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things. Then once we start to see those be healthy, then I think it's a good sign of like, okay,
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now let's do some advertising because we're confident that when new people come into contact with
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the show, they're likely to stick around. So people just usually do that backwards. They're like,
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sweet, I have an extra thousand dollars this month and I'm going to spend it in advertising.
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And they're not actually asking if their show is good. And if people that are new and I, I know,
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Jeremy Ins talks often about how like he has this hunch that way more people are coming into
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contact with your show on a monthly basis than we actually think. Spotify just added a metric
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like in the last month that showed up. Where it actually shows the percentage of the percentage of
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your audience that is following the show. And on the shows that we're looking at, that number is
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usually 20 to 45%. So like over half the people that are coming in contact with your show and
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Spotify probably are not following your show. And so I think like we need to focus on keeping those
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people. And that that usually comes to like quality of content and different things. So that
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that's where we're focusing a lot right now is like really fixing some of these like organic
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growth problems and retention problems and being willing to modify content and formats and
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different things like that. And then it's exciting to bring in advertising after that.
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All right, so with all those problems, where do the one or two that you see like, okay,
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this is popping up a lot. This is a really big hole in most people's buckets.
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Yeah, I think it's retention over the first like 60 to 90 seconds of a show. I think it's how we're
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starting shows. You know, four years ago, I feel like it was almost every show was like, okay,
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you have this and I really apologize if this is the intro to your show. I don't think it is because
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you did a called intro today, which is great. But you know, we have these like 60 second podcast
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trailers that we produce and you'd usually hire like a third party like radio voice over host and
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cool music and all of this stuff. And it was the same on every single episode. And I just think
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people's attention spans have changed. So now like we're recommending a lot more that people
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in the first like 30 seconds that your audience knows what the show is about, who you are and what
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that episode is about. And so that can happen a lot of different ways. But I think with a lot of
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bigger shows that we're working with like we just got off a call with a show there. They're doing
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like 150 to 200,000 downloads a month. So pretty big show. And their show has been shrinking. And
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the first four to six minutes of their show is ads. So like it takes like seven minutes to get
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into the actual content of the episode. So I think that's a big one is how are you starting your
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episodes. And is it is it possible for a new person who's never heard of you, never heard of your
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show to raise their hand and say, I'm in the right place. And I'm going to listen to this whole
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episode within 30 seconds. So I think that's like one of the biggest ones that we're seeing right now
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is how shows are starting. And then the other big thing is that we're recommending a lot right now
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is when possible, I just think video on Spotify is like such a land grab opportunity right now that
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a lot of people are missing. And I know there's logistics and it's complicated. And if you're running
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ads, it's complicated. So not everybody's willing to do that. But that is a big opportunity for growth
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right now. And Spotify has absolutely said publicly that they are promoting shows inside of their
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app that have video. And if shows don't have video, then they are choosing shows with video to
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promote in their place. So I think that's a really big opportunity right now that a lot of people
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are kind of starting to catch up on, but they're dragging their feet mostly because it's complicated.
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Yeah. Right. Let's have a list of questions of both these these key points here that the holes in
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the bucket. So that with the first one with the intro. Yeah, I think we're on the same page.
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I just tend to think we are we training our audience members to skip or to listen. Yeah. And if
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we hear welcome to the set, silver show, and it's the same damn thing. We go skip, skip, skip to
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maloo. And then let's get to the real stuff. I actually, you know, I did a cold open for this
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episode. That's what I do for every episode. But I actually start the first 60 seconds is a fresh
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client testimonial. That's the first audio people here is somebody else's voice. I think that
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pattern disruption of over expecting Adam and it's this female voice talking. What is happening?
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I actually had somebody email me the other day that they said at first I was confused. And then
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I realized, you're brilliant. You have someone else advertising the thing and working with you.
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And it's 60 seconds and then we start the show. So I think there's like a pattern, just a pattern
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disruption factor there that really helps. Yeah. I don't think there's like a right formula for
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anybody. I think that this is where the data comes in. And I like looking at the analytics of things.
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And I love like asking what it means. It's not even necessarily trying to hit a right number. And by
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number, I would say like the percentage of people that are still listening. So like I'll say we
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we typically like to see between 85 and 90% of your audience still listening 60 seconds in.
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That feels pretty healthy. Yeah. But you might look at your show and you might be like, oh, it's
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it's 80% and then you try out some new formats for a while and maybe it goes up and maybe it goes
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down. So it's not even like about like a specific number or a specific format. It's more about
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learning like what's healthy about your show? What's the benchmark and that benchmark for you
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might be different than somebody else? And are you willing to experiment to see if you can get
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that benchmark number to go up or down? But we've been told by the podcast industry that the most
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important thing of podcasting is consistency. And I've grown to think that that is a load of crap
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because you guys both know so many people that have been doing the same exact thing for three years.
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And they're like, I'm 150 episodes in. I don't know why this is working. I've been being consistent.
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And it's like, do you listen to your show and do you ask if your show is actually good?
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Like, have you experimented to try to get the show better? Do you? So I think we get we get thinking
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that like, oh, if I just do the same thing over and over and over and over again, then it will work
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because we've been like sold on consistency. When I think that we need to be like more willing to
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like just iterate things. So your intro might work really well and for you and any year you might be
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like, oh, I want to try something out and change things. And I think it's about that like flexibility
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and iteration more. So then we all need to do it. How Adam's doing it? Yes. Yes. Thank you for
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saying that. I just tried to get up in my clients' grill sometime about this because they're like,
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so yours is the template and we must follow that template. I'm like, no, no, no, no. My template is
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freaking experiment and change it up. Calling audible. You get out of the huddle, you break the
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huddle, you go to the line of scrimmage and you call it you payton manning, we're going to say
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it oh, maha, oh, maha, and we're calling it audible and we're doing something a little bit different
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just to get our listeners to pause for being go, oh, this is you know, something a little
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little different, a little curveball here and pay attention and be fearless in that experimentation.
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I just tell people sometimes I'm like, take your outro and flip it and make it your intro. Take
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your advice first. Just try is if we're going to experiment with anything, my god, let's experiment
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with the most skippable parts of everybody's podcast, the intro and the outro. Those are the most,
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I mean, that is most likely to be skipped award. Let's play around with that a little bit. Let's see
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what happens and maybe you hit, you know, something that spurts some growth and some engagement for
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a little bit and then you can still be flexible and keep trying new stuff. Yeah. Yeah, and I think a
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lot of people, they discount the benefit of like few percentage points at a time. You know, we're
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like, well, this didn't grow my show by 50%. And I need to know the numbers, but it's like, if your
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show grows by like three to five percent a month, then like a year from now, you have a lot bigger
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show. And that's just like the value of compounding. And so I think that the reality of podcast growth
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is it's a lot of like, oh, this is 2% better here and 4% better here and 5% better here. And
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some people listening might be like, well, that's too complicated. It's like, forget the
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percentage points. It's just about like stacking like little wins and little optimizations. I mean,
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like, okay, we're grown by a little bit here. And then when all that comes together, then you look
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back over the last year too. And you're like, and we've been growing 40% year over year. And that's
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better than pretty much everybody in the podcast industry. And I think that it's just a different
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perspective, but YouTube has kind of trained us to think like, well, that can go viral. And like,
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for us, like we look at, we look at like viral and podcasting as pretty much any episode that
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over overperformed by 20%. I'm like, something crazy happened with this episode. If you normally have
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100 listeners and on this episode, you had 120. It's like something different happened. And it's
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just different perspective. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about that Spotify video because I know
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my audience is probably freaking out. But comment. So do you think it's just simply the hack right now
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that's like you said, Spotify is like, if you have video content, we are going to point you a
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little bit extra at what level does that video content need to be? Is it like, let's just like
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recording this upload that as the video, we're going to get a little boost in Spotify. Or do you
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think it needs to be like YouTube optimized like with all the typical video bells and whistles?
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I so I don't think it needs to be YouTube optimized with all the bells and whistles. And usually
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for clients when we are uploading video to Spotify that is shared with YouTube, we are actually
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we're actually simplifying it a little bit. So we're pulling out like if there's like sound
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design. So if there's like, you know, on YouTube, sometimes there's like a lot of intro music and
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whooshes and bells and all this stuff. We usually pull that stuff out because a lot of people on
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Spotify are still going to be listening. And it's really confusing to be hearing like a
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like a the sound of a piece of paper crumpling without seeing the piece of paper crumple across
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the screen. You're like, what the heck is going on? So I actually think there's room on Spotify for
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the video content to be more simple. I don't think the production level has to be as high.
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I think something like like if you're recording, if you have a video version of your podcasts,
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you should be putting it on Spotify. Even if that is something like this in StreamYard or Riverside
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or something that would be considered like a more simple editing style. And I think that there
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we're starting to see Spotify has like if you're scrolling through Spotify, you'll see these like
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you might also like kind of like banners. Some of those are handpicked by Spotify.
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If they're handpicked by Spotify, they're usually for big shows. And there's like pretty high
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thresholds of like qualification for those shows to where then they have people on Spotify's team
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that are like, hey, you know, Adam, you have 15 banners for your like shows that you're managing to
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choose from for like 15 banner spots, whatever. So some of those are like chosen, but those are
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usually for big shows. We've seen episodes for small shows that have shown up in those banners.
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And we asked Spotify and they said that they actually have a algorithm that is identifying
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show episodes that are overperforming and they're promoting them inside of their app.
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So I would say this is one of the first times that we have evidence of a podcast app at scale,
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beginning to identify content that's performing well within the app and then give it promotional
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promotional space of some sort. So I think just knowing that that is possible inside of Spotify
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for big and little shows and also knowing that that is not happening for audio only shows is
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important to recognize. And I think you said a phrase a couple of times during our time here
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recording that went along the lines of I reached out to Spotify and they replied and said,
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that it and like I don't feel like anybody has ever said that ever about Apple in any way.
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You know, it's like I reached out to Apple and they got right back about how to do anything.
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So Spotify to me is a very content creator friendly platform like they want they want to overtake Apple
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so paying attention to things like this. This is important. Now I know my audience will have this
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question. Video content on Spotify. Are we loading that up through our podcast host platform
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like Libson Buzzsprout, whatever or we go on directly into Spotify for creators and uploading there?
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Yeah. So in that I might I might not be there might be things out there that are different
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than what I'm about to say. So the way that we're doing it just because we've felt like it's simple
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even though it's not as anyway we felt maybe not as simple but we felt like it's clear
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is typically we are disconnecting Spotify from your podcast host and then you are
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setting up a hosting account with Spotify for creators. And so you like the easiest way to think
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about is like there whether you like it or not there are now three pillars in podcasting.
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There is your audio platforms. It's going to be through your host. There's Spotify and there's
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YouTube. You're going to get the best results if you're uploading directly to those three pillars.
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It is a little bit more work but that's where you can like customize it a little bit more. So that's
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what we're doing. I feel like I just haven't I just haven't felt like super confident yet in hosts
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say that they're uploading video to Spotify. I maybe should. We're running an
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experience. We're beta testing right now, Flightcast which is a new host that's video first and so
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that's where you will go in and upload one file and they will upload it to YouTube and upload
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its video to Spotify and upload audio everywhere else. That's being built by a partner of Stephen
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Bartlett with Diary of a CEO. So it's like you have a big podcast that's thrived in the video world
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that that is creating a tool for video podcast host. So there's a lot of things from a host
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perspective that we're like testing. But right now we've seen that the easiest, the most clear
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way to do it is to disconnect Spotify from your host and then upload it directly to Spotify for creators.
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I this the hard thing is that does mean that you can't do dynamically inserted content.
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In your Spotify content which for some people they might be doing ads. If you're making 43 dollars
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and 24 cents a month through your programmatic ads then you should take the loss in upload video
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to Spotify. And I think you'll be happy you're with having video on Spotify then you will with your
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43 dollars and 27 cents. If you're making $10,000 a month in programmatic ads then that's a little
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bit more difficult to become a conversation. I like how you broke it down to those three pillars.
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Like you got the YouTube you got the audio based shows then you've got Spotify kind of on
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it's so I feel like a lot of people love Spotify into the audio based show platform. So
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we're sure like mine almost 600 episodes break that link with like I host in Libsyn in Spotify.
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And now I'm going in to Spotify my Spotify for creators account and when I upload a new audio
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episode I just upload the video right along with it. That's that's what your sense kind of the most
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optimized situation. That's in our experience that's what we've done. I know that you can like go
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into Spotify for creators right now and after I know that it's possible if everything is still
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connected for after Libsyn sends the audio to Spotify to go in and add the video. Okay.
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So I know that's possible but that does require that makes it impossible to schedule your video.
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So from a timing perspective that can be challenging because you have to go in like right when that hits
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and add the video to it. I've also heard of some like sink sinking issues with doing that and like
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I've heard Spotify not recommend that. Obviously they're biased so they want you to do everything through
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them. So you have to like look at it all through their bias. So I don't know that that's like my
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recommendation right now but being fully transparent I haven't looked I know that in the last year
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several hosts have like added the capability they say to like upload video podcasts. I just don't
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know what that means because I've known hosts that have said that for years but like they're just
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uploading an audio gram and it's like I don't care that this is technically an MP4 file that you're
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sending to YouTube like this is not a video podcast. So there might be other things out there but that's
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what we've seen. Okay. What a deep dive on a new Ninja move that we can possibly do to hack a
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little bit of growth into our show. Well Seth I want to be respectful of our time on the clock here.
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I want to make sure that you get a chance to shout out what you're doing you're you know what
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people come and dive into your world where you're creating content all that stuff man. So go
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and take a couple minutes and just let us know how to dive a little deeper into the set.
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Silver's ecosystem. Yeah. Probably the easiest way to like get in touch with things probably
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like LinkedIn or email. I'm like pretty accessible on those platforms. You guys can check out our
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website at storyon.co. It is very out of date which we're updating this fall which will be fun.
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So for our 10 year anniversary we figured we're like we should probably do like a rebrand in new
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website. So I'm excited about that. But yeah I think our focus as a company is helping businesses
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or like business focused creators launch podcasts and we're always happy to talk to anybody that
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is interested in getting support in that. I always tell people like I'm always happy to jump on a
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call with people and if it makes sense for like me to help then I will make that ask confidently.
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And if it doesn't if I know somebody else that makes more sense then I'll connect you with him.
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And then another fun thing that we're kind of experimenting with over the next year is
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we're going to start doing these like kind of like podcast dinner like podcast or dinners.
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I love going to the podcast conferences. You'll see me there and I think it's great. I always love
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talking with people like Adam and being like hey what's working and what's not working.
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And so we're just going to kind of replicate that an environment for like 10 to 12 podcasters to
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come together and have dinner and kind of be able to go around and share what they're struggling with
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and what they're seeing work. And I'm a big fan of like curating those those moments where we can
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all learn from each other and I think our industry is so collaborative so we should lean into it.
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I love it. I think you just got to have like food themed like the John Lee Dumas burger and like you
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know that would be good. That's a good idea. That's going to be the most important part of this is
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what I'm saying. All right pod pals I got to tell you this. Seth is one of the nicest is most like
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genuine content creators I've met in the space just a great individual great human being.
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Go connect with them dive into his world and you will gain value from it. I can guarantee that
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with that being said pod pals appreciate you tuning in appreciate your support. And I'm
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going to send you out of the world wishing you health happiness and many downloads we will see
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on the next episode. Hey there good looking just a quick reminder to hit that link in the show notes
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and get signed up for my free podcasting business school newsletter. I'm going to send you a fresh
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hot newsletter every single Thursday with some of my best podcast launch growth and monetization
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strategies. Hit that link in the show notes and keep your eyes on your inbox.
Topics Covered
Business Strategies Podcast
podcast rebranding
monetizing podcasts
SEO for podcasts
podcasting tips
storytelling in marketing
influencer marketing
podcast marketing strategies
authentic storytelling
building a podcast audience
podcast business school
successful podcasting
online business strategies
creating engaging content
podcast launch tips