Join host John Dodds at Café W.O.W. for an in-depth conversation with Ty Hildenbrandt, co-founder and voice of The Solid Verbal Podcast, the nation’s top independent college football podcast.
From climbing the corporate ladder at Fortune 500 giant Air Products to boldly ditching stability for his passion, Ty’s journey is a masterclass in chasing dreams without burning out.
Discover how this Penn State grad, once a backyard sports commentator, turned a quirky hobby into a podcasting powerhouse—syndicated on SiriusXM, showcased at South by Southwest, and downloaded millions of times.
Unearth the secrets behind Solid Verbal’s rise, from its 2008 debut to navigating the chaos of COVID-19, and why Ty waited 13 years to go all-in.
Packed with actionable insights, Ty shares three game-changing tips for aspiring podcasters: ignite your passion with a topic you love, set realistic goals to fuel steady growth, and prioritize your audience to build a thriving community.
Whether you’re a college football fanatic, a podcasting newbie, or curious about balancing corporate life with creative pursuits, this episode delivers humor, wisdom, and inspiration.
Sip an Old Fashioned with us and learn how Ty’s corporate exit led to podcast triumph—plus, peek into the future of podcasting in an AI-driven world.
If you’ve enjoyed your front-row seat at Café WOW with Ty and me, John Dodds, please show some love. Click the SUPPORT and FOLLOW buttons on your favorite podcast platform. Your support secures your spot for future episodes and keeps Café WOW thriving.
Do you have thoughts on the show? I’d love to hear them. Email me at johndodds@cafewowpodcast.com. Thank you for joining us, and let’s keep the conversation brewing!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
Welcome to Café WOW.
I'm John Dodds, your host, barista and bartender.
WOW represents the words of wisdom that my guests share
and my aim is to unearth the uniqueness of both my guests and the crafts they practice.
(00:23):
My guest on Café WOW is Ty Hildenbrandt
Ty is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University.
He joined multinational gas company Air Products,
where he rose through the ranks in IT and corporate communications
to become head of their global digital operations.
At the same time, the Solid Verbal podcast was born in August of 2008.
(00:45):
The very next year, the Solid Verbal became both the highest rated
and most popular independently run college football podcast on the web.
Since then, the show has been powered by its tens of thousands of passionate listeners
and downloaded millions of times.
The podcast has been syndicated on SiriusXM,
featured at South by Southwest in Austin and many other places.
(01:09):
It's growing from strength to strength every week.
And so Ty chucked in his promising career
with all the benefits of a global company to follow his passion.
Ty is here to share his reasons for burning his boats,
as well as answer whether companies are missing out on a valuable way
to position their brand and whether podcasts will even be around in five years.
(01:30):
Ty, very warm welcome.
Before we dissect you and the podcast ecosystem,
the first question I have to ask is,
as we're in Café WOW, what's your poison?
What's my... Thank you for the invite to Café WOW.
You got any old fashions in here?
I'm sure we can rustle something up for you.
(01:51):
I'll have to have a little rummage around for you while we talk.
That's sort of like my go-to drink if I'm at a fancy gathering like this.
So if you can rustle up an old fashion, I'm down with that.
All right. Well, I should ask you why an old fashion?
You're not old fashioned, are you?
I'm not. It's actually one of the few drinks that I have learned to make
(02:17):
respectably on my own outside of like a bar setting.
So I've got all the fixings for it upstairs.
And if we've got company or if it's a special occasion, something like that,
I've gotten pretty good at making those.
So yeah, it's usually a pretty good bell weather for the quality of a bar.
That's true.
(02:38):
Yeah.
Too high brow about things, but that's sort of like my go-to drink.
Yeah, I find the same thing about Guinness, actually.
I've started testing out Guinness's and a range of places and it is amazing
the difference in quality.
But we should talk a little bit about you and your childhood.
But here you are, a podcast king.
(02:58):
But how did you get there?
What was your childhood like?
Did you play radio DJ when you were a little one?
There are videos of me going as far back as I can remember where I am
commentating family backyard games, playing badminton or bean bags or you name it.
(03:27):
I am working the play-by-play microphone for some of those old family gatherings
that we have on home video.
And even before that, my mom had one of those really old boomboxes that had a record button
on it where you could like overdub a cassette.
(03:49):
And when I was, I had to be about 10 years old, I figured out how to use that to not
only record stuff off the radio, but then record my voice on the cassette tape.
And we actually joke about it from time to time because it was pretty clear right out
(04:09):
of the chute what I was going to end up doing someday and that it might go in this direction.
It took a while to get here, but yeah, something about this has always been with me and part
of me and yeah, it took a minute, but I think we arrived exactly where we're supposed to be.
(04:33):
It is interesting how our passions and early on do kind of shape the way we are, whether
it becomes our sole focus or whether it's in the background and we do it for fun.
Your early stages really do kind of dictate the way you go because it's where your passion
begins and it's where your emotion begins.
And of course you've got the history of growing up in that particular way.
(04:56):
I remember I was very keen on pirate radio back in the days and there we are.
We're behind a microphone.
We're behind a microphone and the thing that I always find most interesting, my voice
has changed a fair amount since I was like 10 years old, 13 years old.
But if you listen to my cadence and my voice, if you listen to how I would commentate those
(05:20):
completely meaningless family things, it's like not all that different.
It's kind of crazy.
That's another thing we joke about.
I sound kind of the same now as I did back then.
I like to think I've improved and gotten better and honed the craft a bit more.
But by and large, I'm like still the same person who's making those goofy home recordings.
(05:41):
And that's the course, the attractiveness of the solid verbal and that people like that
Zany style as well as the knowledge.
I hope so.
I mean, that's kind of our vibe.
You know, we're a college football podcast that we take the sport semi seriously.
The sport as a whole is, as we say on our show all the time, it's scaffolding built on top
(06:06):
of scaffolding.
There's no central governing body.
There's not even a common agreed upon set of rules at this stage in the game.
It really is a total free for all.
And whenever that is your subject matter, I just, I can't in good faith take that completely
(06:27):
seriously, because there is a goofy quality to it.
And I think my co-host, Dan Rubinstein and I do a good job of kind of walking that balance
between making sure that we're taking the right things tongue in cheek, making sure that
we're presenting the sport in a fun way that highlights some of the goofiness.
But also we do a good job covering the actual news, the scores, the things that actually
(06:53):
happen in a way that can give people information and hopefully leaves them feeling entertained
about it.
That's sort of our main goal.
We talk about taking sport not so seriously, but when did you start to take sport seriously
early on?
Did you play and who influenced you?
(07:13):
I think I played every sport growing up.
I think I played almost everything growing up.
I was just born into a family that I'm not going to say was chock full of elite athletes
or anything like that.
But everybody just liked sports for as far back as I can remember.
That was, that was like a big focus in the family.
(07:37):
And so were you a nerd or a jock?
I mean, you obviously are good at sport, but you're also good at the technical side early
on.
Were you a combination of them both?
I think, well, I would definitely skew more towards the nerd side of things.
I am doing a podcast now, right?
So I definitely was more on that side of the fence.
(07:59):
At the same time I was playing on the varsity baseball team as like a starting infielder.
I was also making the team's website and submitting it to like some independent things here and
there in various corners of the internet that would award prizes based on local sports
(08:19):
websites.
I mean, this is like deep Reddit lore right here.
That type of thing.
So yeah, no, I mean, I always kind of had these, these dueling interests.
One was playing sports, being out there, being part of a team.
The other was what I could do in front of a computer.
(08:41):
And obviously you combine that with the love of broadcasting or just hearing myself in
a, in a radio from a pretty early age.
It's no wonder I ended up doing this.
Absolutely.
As a full time thing.
And you also had time, most of you doing all of that to develop at an early stage being
a very good golfer.
(09:02):
I, well, I didn't take golf seriously until I got out of college.
And my uncle, who I had mainly gone golfing with when I was in high school and through
college was very, very good and had been recruited to go and play golf at, you know, the Southern
(09:27):
colleges and whatnot.
So I had learned from him a fair amount, but I didn't really take it seriously until after
I graduated college and I had a full time job and I had money coming in that I could,
I could support the habit.
And after that, I, I started to improve and get a lot better at it.
And one day, maybe about nine or 10 years ago, I just decided like I, I want to get
(09:52):
a little bit more serious with this and get better at it.
And that was, I think in earnest, the beginning of the golf journey, but, but you were a
caddy before, weren't you?
I was a cat.
I've always loved golf.
You know, I've always loved golf and, and to be honest with you, clearly money by the
hang of it as well.
Right.
I've, I've always loved golf.
I think in hindsight, I probably would have been best playing golf as opposed to baseball
(10:17):
or any of the other things that I did.
That was probably my calling on the sports side and, and I missed it until I was a little
bit older.
Uh, but yeah, I, you know, I, I caddied at a, at a country club here in the area and
got to know that side of the golf experience, what it's like at a country club with country
(10:42):
club players and what a, what the etiquette is like on a fancy golf course and whatnot.
So I, I learned a lot from that.
I got to play the course for free too.
Through colleges, just kind of cool.
Well, that's wonderful.
And, uh, you know, not, not going to act like that helped me get any better.
It certainly did not at the time, but it definitely contributed to probably love of the game on
(11:04):
the golf side.
Well, it's also handy when you become a gazillionaire and all you need to do is to play golf and,
uh,
Right.
If that happens, I'll be ready.
We're not there to play yet.
So you went to college to study English and computer sciences, which I think is a fascinating
combination.
Perfect.
I think for the, uh, the time we live in, uh, but it was a bold move at the time for you.
(11:27):
Why did you choose that combination?
I started as broadcast journalism.
My, my first year at Penn State was as a broadcast journalism major.
And, um, you know, to, to the point from earlier, I had home videos going as far back as I can
remember of me broadcasting.
(11:49):
And so it was, it was obvious that that would be the thing that I would, that I would go
for when push came to shove.
And, um, at the time, I did not get the sense that the situation I was in was one that would
leave me feeling all that stable after I graduated college.
(12:10):
The broadcasting world is very much a pay your dues type of thing.
A lot of unpaid internships, a lot of very, very, very poor paying starting jobs in broadcasting.
Um, and I didn't really want that.
It had been communicated to me, I think rather honestly by the, by the people that were running
(12:33):
the department and I didn't, I didn't want that.
And so it was at that point that I switched to, to more of the computer side of things
about a year, year and a half into my time at Penn State.
I always had it in the back of my head about figuring out some way to do broadcasting or,
(12:54):
um, writing.
I had done a lot of writing about sports as well.
I was pretty good at that as well.
And so I always had in the back of my mind that maybe I'd come back to it at some point
or another, but my thinking at the time was I got to get something stable first.
If I'm going to leave this, I need something stable enough that it can, it can help me along
(13:16):
with the other hobbies.
And so yeah, switched, switched up to the more like computer driven field and went down
that path for a good long time before switching over to this as my full-time gig.
Interesting.
And so, I mean, what was your college experience like?
Um, you, you have an interesting mix there.
(13:38):
Um, you're interested in sport.
Uh, and Penn State is a big sports school.
What was your college experience like?
My college experience.
Yeah.
I was probably a very insecure 18 year old who knew he wanted to do broadcasting, but
(13:58):
didn't know where to go to college.
And I had looked all over.
I, I got into Syracuse, which Syracuse is like kind of a renowned broadcasting school
on, on, uh, certainly this side of the country, but really all throughout it's, it's known
for that.
I could have gone to Syracuse, but I didn't.
Um, I had applied other places.
(14:18):
I had it in my head from a very early age that I wanted to go to Notre Dame.
I got wait listed at Notre Dame and in hindsight, it's probably for the best.
I ended up going to Penn State because I just, I knew other people, close friends of mine
going to Penn State.
And on top of it, I knew that Penn State had a lot to offer in terms of like what majors
(14:41):
you could, you could take up.
And I was pretty sure about broadcasting, but I also wasn't a hundred percent sure I
wanted to stick with it.
And so I ended up going to Penn State as we just discussed.
I, I did switch out of the broadcasting side of things, um, and graduated with a different
degree.
I think, was that painful?
(15:02):
I mean, I'm a lot of people go, Oh my gosh, I'm going to change my major.
That's going to change my life.
It wasn't that painful.
It wasn't that painful.
Um, I think at the time I really had, I had no vision for what like might happen with
(15:23):
new media on the internet.
This is early days of social media.
This is early days of YouTube.
When I was in college, wave heck when I'm dating myself a little bit, it was hard to
see that there would be this whole ecosystem of independent creators of publishing tools
(15:43):
that were available to the masses.
It was hard to see how that stuff might occur down the line.
I was lucky in that regard.
Um, but I just, I did not get the sense that if I stayed on the current path, I would end
up in a stable spot after college and I didn't want that.
I felt like that would make me even more stressed.
(16:05):
And so that, that was why I switched.
I mean, my college experience was, we talk about sports and that being a big part of
who I am and how I grew up.
I knew that I needed to go to a school that had a big time college football game day experience.
Weirdly that was important to me.
And it is for quite a few people actually, isn't it?
(16:27):
It's part of the, like the brand essence of a college that you become, it becomes a part
of you and you become a part of it.
And, and that stays with you.
I mean, I grew up in a pretty small suburban part of Pennsylvania, if not rural part of
Pennsylvania.
(16:47):
And for me, watching games, watching really any big sporting event on the weekends was
a big deal.
It was something that I look forward to and still do.
And so when it came time to go into college, that was really important to me.
Don't ask me about which teams I rooted for.
Before I went to Penn State, while I was at Penn State, that's, that gets a little weird.
(17:12):
But that aside, the fact that I could go to a place where they had that big game day environment
was, was really appealing to me.
And that, that helped push me over the hump with respect to go into Penn State in the,
in the first place.
If you think of your college experience, what did you take from college that has stood
(17:34):
the test of time?
Wow.
That's a really good question.
I think one of the things, one of the, one of the selling points of a place like Penn
State is that it's really big.
(17:55):
And you hear horror stories all the time from people who, and maybe they knew somebody
or had a friend who went to Penn State and it was like too much for them.
And they couldn't handle it.
There were all these things to do.
It was tough to focus on schoolwork.
There are plenty of stories of people who, who went there and just because they were
(18:17):
overwhelmed decided they had to go elsewhere or dropped out of college, that type of thing.
I did not fall into that camp.
I loved the fact that there was so much going on all the time and I did not have trouble
focusing.
But one thing I think I learned from that experience, just being at a place that was
so big is that you, you sort of need to be your own advocate.
(18:40):
And if you want something, you, you like, you owe it to yourself to try and go get it.
You know, there wasn't, not to say that Penn State wasn't supportive.
Penn State always was very supportive of whatever you wanted to do, but Penn State also taught
you to be somewhat self-sufficient and somewhat self-motivated if you wanted to get something
(19:02):
done because there were just so many kids and you had to assert yourself if there was
something you wanted to pursue or a hobby or a club or something that you wanted to
be part of.
And that wasn't necessarily the case growing up where, where I grew up, where everybody
knew each other and it was really just kind of a quaint place.
At Penn State, you're, you're sort of thrown into the fire.
(19:25):
And so experiencing that, experiencing that I think was a pretty big deal.
And that's actually an important, we have something at Cafe W.O.W. called the sharp end
tip jar.
And we put tips in the tip jar.
So I think we can put that one in, I think, which is great tip.
If you go to a large school where you have the experience, but of course you need to
(19:49):
be your own advocate and you've got to navigate in a selfish way in order to get what you
want, not what they want.
There's that.
The other thing is, I think, like a lot of 18 to 22 year olds, you don't, you don't know
what you're going to be when you go to college.
It's kind of ridiculous that we, we ask people that age, kids that age to figure out what
(20:13):
they want to do with the rest of their lives.
You could change it a million times over the course of a life.
But you know, I think one of the things that I learned was who I was, I learned to trust
in some of my own skills in a way that I hadn't before going to college.
(20:39):
I really learned to trust myself in a way that I didn't have to before going to state
college.
And I don't know, that's all valuable stuff now it is.
That's interesting.
As you get older, that's valuable.
You come back and you look at how that helped you because you then went to, you went corporate.
(20:59):
You actually went to work in IT.
I did.
And then corporate communications for a Fortune 500 company, Air Products in Allentown.
That's a pretty big transformation.
How did you adjust to that change?
I think, I mean, I had, I had the good fortune of working with and for really good people.
(21:25):
And yes, I did go corporate.
And yes, the corporate world compared to what I'm doing now, it's like night and day.
But everybody that I worked with was really supportive.
They knew about some of these hobbies I had away from the office.
And so that I think helped.
It was certainly not the easiest environment in which to be creative.
(21:52):
You know, you work for a big company.
You're sort of becoming part of the machine, not necessarily defining your own rules and
especially for a new employee, there's not always a ton of room to be super creative.
Really not creative to the extent that I was used to with writing things and making audio
and video things.
(22:13):
I mean, that just wasn't part of what I did at the company.
And so, you know, there were moments, I think later in my career with the company where
not being able to be creative did wear on me a little bit.
But I think in the beginning, I was probably just excited to be part of something, probably
(22:35):
just excited to step into a job that I knew was going to be stable.
And I think above all, really just learning the ropes.
You know, I was pretty adaptable and the way that I joined the company was such that you
were on a rotation and every eight to 14 months or so, you would rotate out into another job.
(22:57):
They did that to help get you some experience around the company and learn a couple different
sides of the company, not just one.
And so that was valuable.
I got used to kind of getting my feet wet with one thing before moving on to another.
So it forced me to adapt.
It forced me to kind of, you know, learn how that corporate ecosystem functions and what
(23:23):
works and what doesn't on that level.
Which I guess is important.
So it was a good experience.
Yeah, I guess it's important when you're dealing with large organizations in your current
role, because understanding the time periods and the decision process is much easier if
you've been there than if you come to it blindly.
(23:45):
I have to catch myself sometimes because what I'm doing now, it's like just me and a co-host
and some folks that help us on the business side.
And every now and again, I'll kind of catch myself sounding a little too corporate.
I do it on my podcast too.
I try not to, but I think I just kind of, I was at the corporation for 17 years.
(24:08):
On some level, just like becomes part of how you think you can break free of it to an extent,
but there's always part of that that goes with you.
And so yeah, like I think I have a pretty good understanding for what moves the needle
for big companies.
And with what I'm doing now with the show, we're obviously dealing with like advertisers
(24:32):
and potential sponsors and potentials all the time who might be interested in working
together.
So you understand the tensions and the obstacles.
Yeah, yeah, my time at Air Products working with a lot of those similar things has definitely
helped me understand what I'm doing now a little bit better.
(24:53):
So where you are now and where you were, would you recommend going into a corporation as
a career from college or these days, the startup with free popcorn, cool t-shirts seems to
be the alternative.
Is that an alluring proposition for something out of college?
I don't think there's anyone answered to that.
(25:17):
I've had that question before.
And I think it depends on the person.
I think it depends what you're into.
I have said to people in the past, just be very focused on what it is you enjoy doing.
And you may not get 100% of that in a job, but try to get as close to it as you can,
(25:39):
whether that's in a corporation or a startup, whether it's neither a smaller company that's
been around a while.
There are so many different ways you can go at it after college.
And I think it's important to take note of the culture of the place that you're stepping
(26:00):
into if that feels like a fit.
Obviously, what you're going to be doing on a day-to-day basis is I think ultimately
going to determine if you're happy there or not.
But just be mindful of what you're into and not into and how that sort of meshes with
the culture at whatever place you're interviewing at.
Right.
This is John Dodds with Ty Hildenbrandt, co-founder and host of the Solid Verbal Podcast.
(26:27):
We'll be back in just a moment.
The much-valued Tip Jar and Bell, which is very much a feature of Cafe WOW, is provided
by the Sharp End, a boutique brand consultancy helping organisations unearth and communicate
their uniqueness in the most cost-effective way.
It's a fascinating process and you can find out how the Sharp End does it and why it could
(26:50):
work for you at thesharp-end.com.
Welcome back to Cafe WOW.
I'm with Ty Hildenbrandt of the Solid Verbal Podcast and we're going to discuss how the
Solid Verbal came about.
You started it in 2008, only four years after the first podcast actually happened with Adam
(27:12):
Curry and David Weiner.
Why did you get into it so early?
Man, I don't know.
I think it's just kind of been in me since I was really young.
Whether it's recording on the radio or on my mom's old camcorder or whatever, I always
(27:37):
just wanted to do stuff like that.
It came along.
Well, yeah, it came along.
The technology made it possible.
I remember being a junior at Penn State and we had a friend who just turned 21 at the
(27:57):
time.
There were other friends who were not with us there in the flesh as we took him out for
his first night at the bars.
My earliest memory of doing something goofy on the internet was figuring out how to live
stream my friend when he came back from the bars so that our other friends who weren't
(28:19):
there could say hello or could feel like they were part of the festivities as he came in
and sort of stammered around.
Goofy stuff, obviously not high tech by any stretch in today's world.
But at the time, that was like figuring out how to do that.
It took a bunch of bells and whistles.
It sounded a little bit like Facebook and how they started up as being like some collegiate
(28:40):
dorm thing and linking each other up.
Yeah, I think everything in the early 2000s on the tech side was a lot like that.
It was just, "Hey, can we figure out how to do this?
What happens if we hit this button?"
That type of thing.
I think the combination of having some more formalized computer and programming training
(29:06):
combined with where tech was at, combined with what I already had an interest in, all
of those things when I graduated college and suddenly I have a steady paycheck.
I'm living at home at the time.
So my weeks, especially my weeknights, I have nothing to do on the weeknights.
(29:28):
I put a lot of that when I wasn't shooting basketball at the rec center with friends.
I was just playing around the computer figuring out which of these things I could do.
There was a moment in 2004 where I started more seriously dabbling with, "Okay, how can
I stream stuff on the internet?"
(29:49):
Okay, this is around the time when blogs started to become more of a thing.
Their uncle was starting a blog because blogs were blowing up.
So I started doing a little bit of that.
I think it was 2005 was my first foray into podcasting.
This is before the Solid Verbal and the College Football show, but I did a New York Yankees
(30:11):
podcast with my uncle at the time, my cousin.
At the time, it was truly us talking into a Logitech webcam with a sock over it so that
you couldn't see anything and you couldn't hear the pops when you say P words and other
at pluses we call that in the audio world.
(30:33):
I was using very, very rudimentary computer hardware to record myself and put it out on
the internet.
Just because you could.
Just because I could.
Just because I could.
Yeah, I was.
I have conversations saved onto my Gmail with other people who were doing podcasting very
(30:56):
early on, even before we really had a term for all of this.
I was probably one of the first couple dozen people doing sports podcasting on the internet
and just stuck with it.
The tech around that medium has grown up in a very big way over the last 20 years or
so and the ability to publish anything has gotten a lot easier now than it was back then.
(31:20):
So it was.
Oh, yes.
This is all.
It was like reblogs when you almost needed coding to reblog and now all you do is push
share and it goes to.
Yeah, exactly.
Followers and beyond.
Exactly.
I mean, it just for me happened very organically.
It was something that I took up as a hobby while having this other full time role and
(31:43):
I kind of just had my own lab where I could experiment and play with things and the Yankee
show came about with my uncle, with my cousin.
We did that for about three and a half, four years and it was pretty much clear to me from
the jump that this was something I was going to be doing for a while.
Like I just I instantly caught the bug for it.
(32:06):
I instantly started trying to figure out ways to like get the word out about this thing
that we were doing, found ways to interview people, not through any kind of tools like
we have now, but quite literally, John, by taping the phone to a microphone on one side
and then to an earphone on the other.
(32:26):
So you could kind of like here.
I built my own phone coupler like all of these goofy things that would certainly not hold
up or even sound good in today's world.
I kind of just had the time and space out of boredom to put it all together naturally.
And that was kind of the beginning of all this.
(32:48):
Well, and you made the point about the fact that you were holding down a day job as well.
And of course, as the podcast developed, it became the most popular independent college
football podcast in the nation.
And meanwhile, you're getting a load of work in your day job.
And I'm sure plenty of listeners have the same kind of dilemma.
They have their passion.
(33:09):
They're not sure whether to jump.
Are you in business or do you want to make money?
What are the challenges that you have and what are the tips that you would give someone
that was in your situation at the time?
Yeah, I, we started the Solid Verbal in 2008 and it within three years, it had grown to
(33:35):
a point that we couldn't possibly had foreseen.
I mean, it just, we ended up linking up with at the time, Grantland.com, which was an offshoot
from ESPN that got us a ton of new years, many of whom still listen today.
And from that point forward, it was really just kind of like a growth story, you know,
(33:58):
the podcast grew every year and it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
It wasn't until the point for me, and everybody handles this a little differently, it wasn't
until the point for me that I felt like I could earn a steady and stable paycheck, kind
(34:19):
of like a recurring theme, right?
It wasn't until that point that I decided that I was going to pull the trigger and make
the move over to this full time.
Many folks in my life, my wife included, my co-host, like there were so many people along
the way who urged me to cut bait with the corporate jobs sooner.
I really struggled with that decision.
(34:41):
That was a hard decision for me because I'd been there for so long.
I've described it before as like breaking up with my family.
But truly for me, the right time was waiting until I had enough steady income that it wouldn't
feel like that big of a risk.
I think it's a really important point actually because there are people that will follow their
(35:02):
dream and follow their gut and then ensure that they start the ball rolling and then get
disheartened and then wonder what the heck they've done.
So I think it's really valuable.
I think we're even worth putting that in the tip jar as well.
The fact that build a solid foundation so that you can go and experiment.
(35:24):
If the worst comes to the worst, you can go back, maybe in a different place or a different
role, but if you don't build a solid foundation, you're always going to be looking over your
shoulder because in the early days, it just doesn't come just like that.
And then when it does, you've got to be ready for it and a juggling two jobs probably isn't
the best way to do it.
(35:45):
No, I mean, for me, I eventually left my job in 2021, in the summer of 2021.
And at that point, I had been doing the podcast for 12, 13 years.
It was very stable.
We had gotten to the point where we were very good at forecasting numbers and all these dork
(36:07):
things that matter when it comes to hitting your goals and earning money off of what you're
doing.
And so it took a while to get there.
I probably could have done it sooner, but for me, that was the right moment to do it.
And I found myself in this vortex of the podcast is continuing to grow in a really exciting
(36:32):
way.
The job that I was working for corporate America was also growing.
And I had stepped into it.
Like you said, at the top of the show, I had stepped into a role where I was managing people
and big projects and an entire digital apparatus.
Both of those things going on in tandem was a lot.
(36:52):
And I came to an inflection point where I had to pick one or the other.
And or I should say I had to make a change of some kind because it was clear to my wife
to everybody around me.
And eventually me, I was like the last one to figure it out that it was kind of killing
me.
I just couldn't do both anymore.
(37:14):
Now, you talked about it took off.
And of course, other people listening will also be very interested to know how did it
take off?
Is there is there a process?
Is there a linear approach?
Or did you try a lot of things and failed?
And then all of a sudden a few lucky breaks happened.
There's been nothing linear about it.
And there's no blueprint.
(37:36):
There's no template.
There's no magic bullet.
Never mind.
We started the podcast in 2008.
I would say as late as 2015, you still couldn't really Google and get a whole lot of great
information on how to podcast.
You could.
There just wasn't anything out there.
Now, thankfully, there are a gazillion resources now.
(37:58):
The equipment's better.
The tech around is better.
Everything about this has gotten dramatically better as a publisher.
But back then we didn't know what we didn't know.
We were just sort of sort of bumbling our way through it.
It helped that we got picked up with ESPN and linked up with ESPN and that they were
(38:20):
able to help promote the show to new people that wouldn't have found us otherwise.
That was a big deal.
That was a huge catalyst early.
But there have been plenty of shows that have been in that situation that had a momentary
rise and then couldn't sustain it, couldn't keep that growth going.
I think we got really good at understanding our audience.
(38:45):
I think that's probably the most important thing when it comes to podcasting.
How do you do that?
There's a balance, especially with college football.
Because college football is two things at once.
On one hand, it's a national sport that if you talk to any college football fan out there,
they can tell you seven of the top 10 teams.
(39:06):
It's a lot of the same teams year in and year out.
On that level, it's a national sport.
What people really care about is their own specific teams.
It's very tribal in that sense.
What we figured out, I think pretty early on, is that it takes a lot to walk that balance.
To present a national podcast that an Oklahoma State fan might not really care that much
(39:30):
about because you're not focusing on their team.
How can we take that national thing that we cover and translate it into a form that the
Oklahoma State fan, the Penn State fan, the Notre Dame fan will actually care enough about
to want to listen to what's going on separate from their team, if all that makes sense.
(39:52):
Yes, it does.
It's very much a national, personal approach.
I think people want to have a context for their team.
They don't just want to support their team.
They want to compare their team.
They want to say, "Where are we going?
What is the game doing?"
Looking at players that they can get or people that have tripped up or others that are joining
(40:17):
their league.
There is an interest in a broader scale, but as you say, it has to be personal too.
Ty, during COVID, football was canceled.
People weren't traveling.
You built up a solid verbal to be something special, and then it was kind of taken away
(40:40):
from everyone.
How did that impact you?
COVID was really tough for college football as a whole.
They played the NFL season in front of, I think, empty stadiums.
They played kind of half of a college football season.
(41:05):
Some teams played more games than others, all in front of no people.
What happened in addition with college football is that it was politicized.
At the time, you may recall a lot of discourse out there about, "Should we close things down?
Should we not close things down?
What is college football?
(41:25):
What is sports as a whole?
What is the role that sports needs to play right now?
Is it something that can serve to entertain amid this horrible pandemic going on, or is
it something that we should shut down entirely?"
People were very mixed on that.
Regardless of which side of the fence you were on, it's clear that it had been politicized
(41:47):
in a way that it hadn't been before.
We found, among our people, and I'm sure many others felt similarly, there were a lot of
folks that normally would listen to us that decided they couldn't, that they weren't into
college football in 2020 during the pandemic the way they would be otherwise.
(42:15):
We kind of felt similarly as well.
Just as the two guys running the show, we were conflicted knowing that the news was
just horrible all the time.
Of course, there was this big human thing that we're all worried about with the virus.
(42:36):
At the same time, it's like, "Well, we're supposed to do a college football show."
It was really challenging to try and walk that balance and figure out how goofy can
we be on the show without turning people off because this was always in the backs of everyone's
minds.
I guess also the fact that people were thinking that the players are taking a risk by doing
(43:00):
this because at that stage, nothing was very clear other than everybody was in lockdown.
These folks were almost gladiatorial in the way that they were playing.
On the one hand, I guess it was seen to be trivial.
On the other side, it was seen to be the one spark of humanity in a very difficult situation.
(43:20):
Yeah.
The reaction to it truly ran the gamut.
We struggled with it, I think, in the same way that a lot of people struggled with it.
We just didn't know how hard to push on college football and how goofy we could be without
upsetting people.
COVID was tough.
(43:41):
I don't know if we got that balance right.
We certainly did our best to find it.
I know for me personally, without going into the office with suddenly now everything being
at home, for me personally, that was sort of the beginning of the end of the corporate
job because the combination of running the podcast, the podcast growing and flourishing
(44:05):
and doing well, the combination of that with big projects at the office, one of the biggest
projects, with suddenly having more responsibility, all of these things that went down in 2020
for me personally, it came to a head in September during football season, right, as things were
getting started.
(44:26):
I remember I was launching a big website on the day that Alabama was playing its first
football game of that year, that season.
Thinking in the back of my mind, how in the hell am I going to do all this?
How am I going to do this?
Because there was no, you didn't have that delineation between work and home.
(44:46):
Everything was just at home.
Your computer was always on, especially when you're working on a big project.
You don't really have much downtime.
I'd be going from one computer to the other to do something different.
And cheating in some ways.
Yeah.
I think COVID was challenging for us as college football fans and podcasters for obvious reasons.
(45:11):
But for me personally, it was taken to almost like a completely different level because
of some of the conflicts I had with work and trying to balance everything.
The term work-life balance did not exist for me in 2020.
Do you think it does now for people?
Do you think that work-life balance has changed forever?
(45:32):
I hope that through COVID or some other way, people have been able to find what's right
for them.
I know for me, COVID was a really important way to discover that.
And so if it had the same effect on other people, the same positive effect on other people,
(45:53):
and that's not to say COVID was a good thing, it was horrible.
But if there is any silver lining, at least for me personally, it was that I kind of found
that balance within myself and was able to make a change that I think I'm better off
for it now.
And it's always a challenge to figure out where the lines are.
And I think it was clear that in 2020, and for a lot of folks who were home even beyond
(46:19):
2020, figuring out that balance was more important than ever.
Right.
And of course, thank goodness the world came roaring back and college football came roaring
back and the solid verbal came roaring back.
And now, of course, there's, I think it's estimated there's over 2 million podcasts
(46:40):
and 48 million episodes.
And with the new technology, the barriers to entry become lower every week, both in
technology and costs.
We can't all be like Seth Rogen or Ty Hildenbrand.
What does it take to be a successful podcast?
(47:00):
Or does that depend very much on what your motivation is?
Yes.
Yes.
Can I answer it?
No.
I mean, again, there's no silver bullet, but the most important thing with podcasting is
to make sure that your topic is something that you love talking about.
(47:21):
I think that's the singular most important thing because a podcast, if it's not a continuing
series, if it's not something that is published on a repeating basis, it's just a clip you
post to the internet or something you post to SoundCloud or something.
(47:45):
That is not a podcast.
If you do it once or twice, that's not a show.
So finding things that you care about enough to talk about them every week, every other
week, once every month, however often you choose to publish, you just need to make sure it's
the topic that you care about and have opinions about and can lend some personality to on
(48:07):
a recurring basis.
I think that's singularly the most important thing.
We could have a conversation about mic skills and types of microphones and software and
how you promote and all of that, but at its core, it's about finding something you love
enough to want to keep talking about it.
(48:28):
It starts there.
Everything starts from there.
But there are plenty of people that want to talk about stuff and whether it's marketing
or sport or whatever, there are hundreds and hundreds of podcasts that cover each of those
and people just like talking.
So where do they go?
Where will the big clean out happen?
(48:51):
Is it beginning to happen?
Has it happened?
Do you think because of the low cost of entry, which basically means that if you pay for
a microphone and you upload it, you're basically in the game?
Again, it varies.
(49:13):
I think what you see a lot is because the barriers to entry are so low now.
If you want to start a podcast tomorrow for $0, you could do that.
You couldn't do that before, but you can do that now.
You find that a lot of people that decide they want to try their hand at it will get
(49:33):
one or two episodes in and then they're toast.
They can't keep it up.
They're not willing to put in the time to do it.
Maybe they don't like it as much as they thought.
Maybe they were just dabbling or experimenting, which is totally cool.
It's not for everybody.
I think that weed out period happens typically within the first couple months of trying this.
(49:57):
If you make it beyond that, I think the next stage that a lot of people encounter is, "Okay,
I've got this thing now.
I'm passionate about it.
I enjoy doing it.
Now I want it to grow.
Now I want more people to know about what I'm doing."
That's where it gets hard.
That's the challenge for everybody in podcasting, having new folks find your stuff.
(50:20):
It's just not a medium that lends itself very well to that.
There's legwork that goes into it.
I think the next weed out period for a lot of people who get started in this field is,
"Okay, I'm doing it now for a year and discovery is really hard.
My show sounds good, but it's not growing."
That can be really demoralizing.
(50:41):
I think that serves as another natural weed out period of sorts where people just throw
in the towel because the numbers aren't moving up and to the left.
That can be demoralizing.
It really can.
It's just interesting because I just heard today that Spotify are saying that if you,
(51:03):
as a musician, have not had more than a thousand streams in a year, you're not going to get
any royalties.
I don't know what to think about that.
The fact that a thousand streams isn't very much and maybe you're not investing, and so
they're not going to invest in you other than to put your piece of music on.
I guess it's true for the spoken word as well.
(51:28):
You have to decide, "Is your target market 50 people or 500,000 people?"
I mean, it's a goals thing.
It's a conversation about what are your goals.
Do you do the podcast because you want to grow it as big as you can?
Or do you do the podcast because you just enjoy doing the podcast?
If you just enjoy doing the podcast, it doesn't really matter what your numbers are.
(51:51):
You may care on some level about making it bigger, but I know plenty of people who have
been doing shows for years on end and do not have what we would consider stratospheric
numbers by any stretch of the imagination.
They just like freaking do it.
It's not expensive to do.
Why stop?
(52:12):
Why stop?
Go for it.
There are other people who approach it differently.
I've had conversations with folks before who start a podcast mainly because they hear that
there's potentially a payout at the end of it.
I think that's the wrong reason to get into anything, but that is also a perspective that
(52:33):
I know a lot of people share.
More in the middle are just like the normal hobbyists who got into it, enjoy doing it,
but want to make money and want it to grow.
Having all of those things happen at once tends to be really hard, especially nowadays
where everything is very oversaturated in most topics.
(52:56):
Podcasting as a whole, it's just difficult to find new stuff.
They still have not solved that part of the problem.
I think people come up against that decision point all too often and decide they're going
to cut bait.
Ty Hildenbrandt on the solid verbal, we're going to come back and identify what it is
that makes the solid verbal special.
(53:19):
We're going to unearth the uniqueness.
This is John Dodds with Ty Hildenbrandt on Cafe WOW.
Thank you so much for hanging out with our guest in Cafe WOW.
You're an extremely valuable part of what Cafe WOW is trying to bring to life.
Since the first coffee shop opened in Constantinople in 1475, cafes have been valuable places
(53:43):
to gain knowledge, share words of wisdom and hang out with good friends.
I hope we can count on you returning as a valued customer.
So if you're enjoying the conversation, simply click follow on your favorite podcast platform
to guarantee you a coveted seat at Cafe WOW.
Many thanks.
(54:05):
Welcome back.
Ty Hildenbrandt, co-host and co-founder of the Solid Verbal Podcast.
We were talking about the podcast market is huge.
I think somewhere I've read that there's about 100 million listeners to podcasts every
month and there is a very strong podcast population who are avid listeners.
(54:28):
Let's start to unbundle unearth the solid verbal.
What is it that makes the solid verbal special?
What makes us special is, as I mentioned earlier, that balance between covering the sport on
a super zoomed in team by team level and also covering it from the 30,000 foot view.
(54:58):
We've been able to walk that balance pretty well over the last 15, 16 years now.
I think the other thing that we do that is different from many in the space is both Dan,
my co-host and I are very, very creative when it comes to how we present college football.
(55:22):
We are the ones in the off season coming up with goofy concepts to keep it entertaining.
We do so at the risk and with full knowledge of the fact that there are other shows out
there that might be covering things with more depth.
It's just a editorial decision that we've made over the years that we just enjoy making
things as entertaining as we can.
(55:43):
And you get the good feedback for it.
You get the good feedback for it.
We've been doing this show long enough now that we've developed our own vocabulary.
We've got a great community of folks that you get to that point and it's almost like
a flywheel.
Everything kind of reaches critical mass and you can lean on your community to help power
(56:05):
you with new ideas and take things in different directions you wouldn't have thought up otherwise.
I just think we like having fun with it.
We really enjoy college football.
College football has gone through a ton of changes.
It's not for everybody now.
It's complicated in a way that it wasn't 10 years ago.
But we still like to have fun with it and acknowledge the fact on pretty much every
(56:28):
episode that the sport and the way it's run is incredibly goofy.
You just can't get past that if you want to cover college football in 2024 and we don't
even try.
Interesting.
Interesting.
And when you think about the audience and when you think about how powerful the medium
podcasting is, it appears that more podcast listeners are more active on social media
(56:54):
and more likely to follow brands.
It appears that companies large and small have not really sure what this podcasting thing
is about.
And if they do, they outsource it and they play with it rather than integrate it into
their brand as something that they can engage.
I think especially that's true of B2B.
(57:17):
Why do you think that is?
I think for a while it was a new thing.
And having that corporate background, I mean, we both do, like corporations are risk averse.
And the term brand safety, which has, I think, had a bit of a rebirth in today's social media
(57:39):
day and age, it's a real thing that companies care about.
They don't want to put their message or put their product somewhere where it could be
viewed negatively.
And podcasting for a long time was just kind of an unknown.
Bear in mind that this started as a couple of guys on the internet who figured out how
(58:03):
to wire up audio with an RSS feed and it was very manual.
There weren't a whole lot of checks and balances in place.
It wasn't until somewhat recently that we even had a standard convention for downloads
and what counted as a download.
All of these things matter to companies when they're trying to put their money behind something,
(58:24):
whether that's digital advertising, whether you're putting it on a billboard or a radio
ad.
All of these things genuinely matter and there are some of the first questions that a company
might ask.
Podcasting didn't have great answers to any of those questions until, let's say, the
last five years.
I mean, it's really gotten to a point now where it is a little bit more standardized
(58:46):
and I think you see more companies coming into the space because it's taken a while,
but now that framework is there where if you want to spend X number of dollars and get
so many impressions across one podcast or a group of podcasts on a network, you can
get those numbers now and you can feel good that they're being counted and being reported
(59:11):
on in a way that's responsible.
So buying is easier now.
Buying is way easier now than it was before.
I think some of the secondary benefits that companies have reported on having after they
do podcast advertising is it is sort of a show of goodwill as a company sponsors a podcast
(59:39):
because there's so many independent creators in this space.
Many of these shows have these very niche communities of a couple dozen, a couple hundred
folks that follow a podcast and for those community members, seeing or hearing a company
advertise on that show, it's like, oh, cool, they support it too.
(01:00:01):
They're oh, cool, they're supporting, they're giving back to this creator, the show that
I really love.
So I'm going to give them a chance as well.
So there's almost a signal to audiences, both large and small, that a company by supporting
a show is sort of almost like ingratiating itself to the fan base and making it a little
(01:00:25):
bit more likely that they'll convert on the ad.
The podcast numbers for conversions are crazy good, better than almost any other form of
advertising because people who advertise on podcasts tend to talk directly into very specific
communities with a specific tone of voice and people are very likely to act on ads that
(01:00:48):
they hear on some of their favorite shows.
So this is why I'm able to do this full time.
It's because the ads for podcasting actually work and they will continue to work as the
structure around them has continued to improve.
And what's interesting about it is that in some kind of endorsements, it tends to be
(01:01:08):
the host that actually reads the ad out.
And so there's almost a built in validation from the person that you enjoy listening to
that this is, I am endorsing this.
And in fact, people like Tim Ferriss and some of the other leading podcasters, they do that
(01:01:34):
and they read it and they personally say they've tried it and endorsed it.
So that's quite a different form of advertising, which is kind of quite intrinsic to the program.
And the styles of advertising have changed too over the years.
We first started doing ads on our show.
(01:01:56):
I don't even remember the year.
It's been at least 10 years now.
It was somebody gave us a script.
We would read the script.
We would cut that portion of our audio from the episode and we would upload it to like
a Dropbox folder somewhere.
(01:02:17):
We tell somebody at what time code in the episode that ad was played, we had proof of
the ad because we could upload it and they could play it for themselves.
And then after the fact, we would give them, in many cases, kind of a rough estimate for
how many people heard it.
(01:02:38):
Now there are a couple of different ways that you can get an ad in front of people.
Not everybody is into the host red ad in the voice of the host.
Some people want to pre-produce their own stuff and they can.
There are plenty ways now of taking your own commercial and having it programmatically
(01:03:01):
inserted into a show like mine.
That's a really popular way that a lot of companies are advertising.
There are still plenty of host red ads, which is again the host putting that script in his
or her voice.
We can do it now in such a way that we record it, we give it to somebody and then they can
(01:03:22):
programmatically insert it back into your show as part of a commercial.
Then there are other ways that are still kind of old school where it's like, "Yeah, we just
want you to read this as part of your normal deal and no fancy tricks with programmatic
insertion or anything like that.
Just read the damn ad."
So your choices, I would say as an advertiser, have greatly increased over the last certainly
(01:03:51):
five years for how you can get your message in front of a podcast audience.
Well, I can say from Cafe WWW, we'll take any ad in any format and do a nice job for
you.
There you go.
Ty, one of the obviously people listening to this and maybe I fancy starting a podcast.
How do I get the money?
One of the ways that podcasters get money is through creating exclusive content which
(01:04:16):
they charge a fee to their Patreon members.
How does that work for you and for others?
Is it a significant revenue stream?
Yeah.
We started our Patreon in 2020.
Of all years, the worst year ever for college football, we started our Patreon.
(01:04:41):
We've been going strong with it now for a few years running.
It continues to grow every season.
It has been a really significant revenue source for us and it's been an even better way for
us to strengthen our bond with our community.
(01:05:02):
I think that's the most important thing.
Bond offers all sorts of resources that can help creators figure out what they should
offer above and beyond what they would already do.
I think everybody kind of, it takes a while to figure out what's right for you and what
isn't.
(01:05:22):
At least it did for us.
But I think giving our community a behind the scenes look at what we do, giving them
access to bonus content that we might put out, giving them a better way to communicate
amongst themselves.
(01:05:44):
All these things would not be possible without a Patreon that we started in 2020.
As it's grown, it has continued enabling us to do different things and new things.
If nothing more, it's been a great sounding board for some of these goofy ideas that
we have that we're able to almost pilot test to some of our most passionate fans.
(01:06:09):
There's a lot of benefit in that.
Again, it's not a silver bullet and it's among many other ways that we make money off
the show.
It's probably the one that I think we care the most about just because it does give us
that pipeline directly into the people who care the most about our show.
Well, that's definitely a Cafe WW1 for the tip jar, the way that you used your Patreon
(01:06:34):
account as a sounding board or research tool and a way that members can connect both with
you and with each other.
That's well worth popping in the jar.
I guess one of the big questions about podcasting is where is it going as AI appears on the
scene as the technology changes and evolves as newer people come in?
(01:07:03):
Where do you see the podcasting landscape in five years and where will a solid verbal
be?
Where is the...
Wow.
Where is it going?
Where is this all going?
Is that not the existential question of our time?
Of course.
I think from what I've read, from the business guys who study this intimately, the size of
(01:07:33):
the podcast market is not going to decline anytime soon.
There is more willingness now than ever before to spend money and sponsor shows from the
brand side.
As long as you've got that money coming in, I don't see there being any hiccup in the
(01:07:54):
podcasting space.
I think it's going to continue to grow.
I think it's going to continue to be something that challenges terrestrial radio.
I think the fact that you could very easily in 2024 listen to a radio host on the other
side of the country in my genre, which is sports, you couldn't do that.
(01:08:17):
It was easily five years ago.
It's just so easy now to get this content on demand.
I think it's going to continue to grow in prominence.
It's easier now than ever before to subscribe to a podcast, to follow a podcast, to use
the right nomenclature.
I think the fact that more people are comfortable with what podcasts are is really important.
(01:08:44):
That seems to grow every single day.
This is all a very long way of saying that I don't think the listenership is going to
decline.
I don't think the spend from outside companies is going to decline.
I think there will continue to be more podcasts that come online every year.
But I think what we've seen happen over the last couple of years is we have seen a natural
(01:09:10):
weed out of some of the shows that maybe were around for a while, but weren't seeing the
growth, didn't want to stick with it.
Some other shows that changed for one reason or another and maybe fell by the wayside as
well.
Maybe some just starting out.
There was this huge movement, just as an example, during the pandemic for a lot of production
(01:09:32):
houses to give big money to celebrities to do podcasts.
One of the things that they found was while many of them were very good and some of them
have been quite profitable, most weren't and most didn't get their money back.
One of the things that I think a lot of people learned as part of that is that you can't
necessarily just throw money at this and make a show work.
(01:09:53):
It really does come down to building out your community and making sure that it's actually
got a following of people behind it that can't wait for the next episode to drop, that type
of thing.
Those shows and that behavior, none of that is likely to change anytime soon.
I think you're always going to have those passionate fans who find new shows, who prop
(01:10:16):
new shows up and who stick with some of the old favorites that they're used to.
I think as long as those trend lines are accurate, we're still in a pretty stable industry,
even though podcasting on its own feels a little bit underground.
I think what's interesting is that I think the industry is in a good spot.
(01:10:37):
Yeah, I think what you, when you use the word show, I think that's a critical point because
the show is yours.
Podcasting is a transmission method and I've talked to many people because I do radio as
well as this and I try to explain to people that we actually do a range of shows that
(01:11:01):
become podcasts, financial shows, shows about different minority audiences that are all
extremely valuable and that they are aired on air and then they become podcasts.
So, podcasting by its nature is actually a transmission method.
(01:11:23):
What has happened is that anybody that does a show like you calls it a podcast because
it goes over the, it's like calling a piece of cheese a fridge because it's actually the
mechanism for keeping it as a fridge.
But the truth of the matter is your brand is your show and one could argue that it may
be that in five years time, you might reverse engineer your show to be on radio as well
(01:11:50):
as a podcast, as well as in the community in some way at college football grounds.
And so, the brand at the end of the day is the thing.
The fact that you know your audience, that you know your subject, that you create humor
and you create knowledge from that is interesting but it's really a transmission method and
(01:12:16):
of course as that changes, things may have to change for any kind of brands.
Yeah, I mean, one of the other big ways that I think podcasting is changing, the audience
is changing and the audience is changing with respect to how they find you or how they
(01:12:36):
listen to you.
There's a study out there and I don't have the numbers in front of me that something
like and it's a really high number, maybe like 75% or 50%.
It's a big number of people who will watch a podcast on YouTube and also listen to a
(01:12:57):
podcast using something like Spotify, a totally different show.
The audience doesn't tend to care what a podcast is.
I'm old school.
A podcast is audio, a podcast is a continuing series that you listen to with a podcast app
but I think that that old way of thinking is pretty much dead.
(01:13:19):
For folks that aren't around this or haven't been around this as much as me, you just
sort of want to find the thing wherever you find the thing.
If you're into YouTube and you like watching podcasts on YouTube, it's important for shows
like mine to be on YouTube.
It's important for shows like mine to have a presence on TikTok or on Instagram or on
(01:13:43):
any of these other shorter form platforms where people tend to find content as well.
It's important to sort of diversify if you've got a show that you're trying to grow or that's
been around a while because your audience is in a thousand different places.
I think that is different.
That is fundamentally different than it was back in the early days because there were
(01:14:06):
only a couple of ways back then to hear the thing.
Now there is definitely a movement of foot to produce more video content with respect
to podcasts.
That's a big thing that's changing.
I think you will continue to see more and more of a presence out on YouTube among people
who run shows.
(01:14:27):
More and more of a presence across social media platforms where video is a component.
These are all ways the audience can find you and the audience has diversified itself and
now we have no choice but to do the same on our end.
Well, it's lucky that I've got a face for radio then, isn't it?
(01:14:48):
Because what's interesting about that and you're absolutely right is as soon as that
starts to happen, people like you who have grown up with the technology and have lived
with the technology and innovated are in a very strong position.
Those that have just about worked out how to do a podcast on the existing platforms that
(01:15:10):
now have to set up for video and now have to set up for social media by creating clips
and promoting the clips that support the YouTube, which supports the core, which is also on
the website, it suddenly becomes a lot of effort.
I think one of the things I wanted to close with is the fact that over the hundreds of
thousands of podcasts that debut each year, of that number, 12% have only published a
(01:15:34):
single episode, 6% haven't made it past two episodes and half have four or fewer, 14 or
fewer episodes and yet thousands of influencers, well-intentioned and knowledgeable individuals
want to start a podcast knowing those numbers or maybe not knowing those numbers because
their idea is going to be better.
(01:15:56):
So what I'd like to have from you, which I hopefully get a double ring on the bell,
what are the three pieces of advice that you would offer anyone who like you was prepared
to chuck in their well-paying job or college education to start a podcast?
Well, I mean, for me, I didn't, I was fortunate that I didn't, I could do both concurrently
(01:16:26):
and so I had the show going for a while before I decided that I wanted to switch to it and
work on it full-time.
I know a lot of people who have done the exact opposite approach where they're passionate
about starting this thing and they're going to stop what they're doing and they're going
to focus on the new show or podcast or YouTube series, what have you that they've created.
(01:16:52):
So it's, you know, it comes down to personal preference, how you go about it.
I mean, I think the first thing that I would say to anybody trying to start something like
this is, you know, outside of what I said earlier, which is you got to have a passion
for the subject that you're covering.
I think you need to be realistic with your goals and you need to know what it is you're
(01:17:19):
trying to achieve with the show.
If, if the point of the show is just personal enjoyment because you like doing it, then
so be it.
That's perfectly fine.
If the intention is to grow the show and get, you know, tens of thousands of downloads,
then it's, it's certainly not impossible, but it is going to take some hard work.
(01:17:42):
And I think being realistic with your goals, at least initially, and then coming back to
them every so often is important.
Everybody wants to have an enormous show, but it's, it takes a while to build.
And so just be mindful of that.
And as for, I guess, maybe a third piece of advice, I would say focus more on your audience
(01:18:08):
than you do on yourself.
If you do this long enough, you eventually develop something of a relationship with the
people who listen and the people who will help you make it a bigger deal.
And so it's important to listen to them.
It's important to give those folks ownership so that they feel like they are part of not
(01:18:30):
just your show, but the community around the show.
It is that energy that you will lean on time and again throughout your journey if you want
to build into something bigger.
So just be respectful of the audience and, you know, learn from them more so than you
(01:18:54):
are preaching to them.
Just be mindful of the people that are listening.
And as long as you're honest about that, I think that will help you grow the show.
Wonderful.
Well, that's definitely for the tip jar.
Is that four now?
Five?
Yeah, four.
Yeah, the tip jar is overflowing tight.
It's amazing.
(01:19:14):
Wonderful.
I do, I, but I do remember many years ago when I had a similar hankering to start a
coffee bar, I had a friend who was very wise still is, and we sat in this coffee bar and
we had a coffee and I said, so what do you think?
And he said to me, do you want to be in business or do you want to make money?
(01:19:35):
And it really, really struck me that that was the choice I had in terms of starting a coffee
bar.
And I do think that there is an element of that in the starting a podcast.
You have to ask a simple question about, is this something you're going to do as a hobby
and get into it and build into it?
Or is it something that you feel is so important that you're going to get investment off the
(01:19:58):
bat because you're that good and then you're going to start a podcast?
And are you going to get bored quickly?
And clearly you haven't because you've been one of the first and you are still very much
a leading light.
And Ty, it's been an absolute pleasure to pick your brains unearth your uniqueness and
that of the solid verbal and an absolute pleasure to have you in Cafe WW.
(01:20:20):
It's great to be here.
A wonderful old fashioned in the cafe.
I appreciate it very much.
Thank you.
And thank you for the invite on.
I hope I was able to impart some wisdom.
You certainly were.
Wonderful ideas for people.
(01:20:41):
Take care.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks, John.
And as Ty departs Cafe WW, I'm left rummaging through the shop in Tipjar and some of the
points that he made college to be self-sufficient and to find who you are and really trust your
judgments.
When you really think that you want to start a new business, whether it's a podcast or
(01:21:04):
something completely new or different, try and make sure you do both concurrently and
make sure that you're set up for your next task.
Have a passion for what you do.
Be realistic and also understand what it is that you're trying to achieve, especially
as far as a podcast goes.
And certainly as far as podcast audiences are concerned, it takes time.
(01:21:28):
And the final point that he made, which I think was very valuable, is to focus on your
audience more than yourself.
Listenership is so important and you can get very valuable tips, as I certainly can from
you.
So all I would leave you with is a simple request, if you like, is the fact that I would
love to have you here for our next show.
(01:21:48):
So if you're enjoying the conversations that we have, simply click follow on your favorite
podcast platform that you are listening to, and that will guarantee you a seat at Cafe
W.O.W.
Thank you so much for joining me and look forward to catching up with you soon.
(01:22:11):
(upbeat music)
[Music]
Welcome to Café WOW.
I'm John Dodds, your host, barista and bartender.
WOW represents the words of wisdom that my guests share
and my aim is to unearth the uniqueness of both my guests and the crafts they practice.
(00:23):
My guest on Café WOW is Ty Hildenbrandt
Ty is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University.
He joined multinational gas company Air Products,
where he rose through the ranks in IT and corporate communications
to become head of their global digital operations.
At the same time, the Solid Verbal podcast was born in August of 2008.
(00:45):
The very next year, the Solid Verbal became both the highest rated
and most popular independently run college football podcast on the web.
Since then, the show has been powered by its tens of thousands of passionate listeners
and downloaded millions of times.
The podcast has been syndicated on SiriusXM,
featured at South by Southwest in Austin and many other places.
(01:09):
It's growing from strength to strength every week.
And so Ty chucked in his promising career
with all the benefits of a global company to follow his passion.
Ty is here to share his reasons for burning his boats,
as well as answer whether companies are missing out on a valuable way
to position their brand and whether podcasts will even be around in five years.
(01:30):
Ty, very warm welcome.
Before we dissect you and the podcast ecosystem,
the first question I have to ask is,
as we're in Café WOW, what's your poison?
What's my... Thank you for the invite to Café WOW.
You got any old fashions in here?
I'm sure we can rustle something up for you.
(01:51):
I'll have to have a little rummage around for you while we talk.
That's sort of like my go-to drink if I'm at a fancy gathering like this.
So if you can rustle up an old fashion, I'm down with that.
All right. Well, I should ask you why an old fashion?
You're not old fashioned, are you?
I'm not. It's actually one of the few drinks that I have learned to make
(02:17):
respectably on my own outside of like a bar setting.
So I've got all the fixings for it upstairs.
And if we've got company or if it's a special occasion, something like that,
I've gotten pretty good at making those.
So yeah, it's usually a pretty good bell weather for the quality of a bar.
That's true.
(02:38):
Yeah.
Too high brow about things, but that's sort of like my go-to drink.
Yeah, I find the same thing about Guinness, actually.
I've started testing out Guinness's and a range of places and it is amazing
the difference in quality.
But we should talk a little bit about you and your childhood.
But here you are, a podcast king.
(02:58):
But how did you get there?
What was your childhood like?
Did you play radio DJ when you were a little one?
There are videos of me going as far back as I can remember where I am
commentating family backyard games, playing badminton or bean bags or you name it.
(03:27):
I am working the play-by-play microphone for some of those old family gatherings
that we have on home video.
And even before that, my mom had one of those really old boomboxes that had a record button
on it where you could like overdub a cassette.
(03:49):
And when I was, I had to be about 10 years old, I figured out how to use that to not
only record stuff off the radio, but then record my voice on the cassette tape.
And we actually joke about it from time to time because it was pretty clear right out
(04:09):
of the chute what I was going to end up doing someday and that it might go in this direction.
It took a while to get here, but yeah, something about this has always been with me and part
of me and yeah, it took a minute, but I think we arrived exactly where we're supposed to be.
(04:33):
It is interesting how our passions and early on do kind of shape the way we are, whether
it becomes our sole focus or whether it's in the background and we do it for fun.
Your early stages really do kind of dictate the way you go because it's where your passion
begins and it's where your emotion begins.
And of course you've got the history of growing up in that particular way.
(04:56):
I remember I was very keen on pirate radio back in the days and there we are.
We're behind a microphone.
We're behind a microphone and the thing that I always find most interesting, my voice
has changed a fair amount since I was like 10 years old, 13 years old.
But if you listen to my cadence and my voice, if you listen to how I would commentate those
(05:20):
completely meaningless family things, it's like not all that different.
It's kind of crazy.
That's another thing we joke about.
I sound kind of the same now as I did back then.
I like to think I've improved and gotten better and honed the craft a bit more.
But by and large, I'm like still the same person who's making those goofy home recordings.
(05:41):
And that's the course, the attractiveness of the solid verbal and that people like that
Zany style as well as the knowledge.
I hope so.
I mean, that's kind of our vibe.
You know, we're a college football podcast that we take the sport semi seriously.
The sport as a whole is, as we say on our show all the time, it's scaffolding built on top
(06:06):
of scaffolding.
There's no central governing body.
There's not even a common agreed upon set of rules at this stage in the game.
It really is a total free for all.
And whenever that is your subject matter, I just, I can't in good faith take that completely
(06:27):
seriously, because there is a goofy quality to it.
And I think my co-host, Dan Rubinstein and I do a good job of kind of walking that balance
between making sure that we're taking the right things tongue in cheek, making sure that
we're presenting the sport in a fun way that highlights some of the goofiness.
But also we do a good job covering the actual news, the scores, the things that actually
(06:53):
happen in a way that can give people information and hopefully leaves them feeling entertained
about it.
That's sort of our main goal.
We talk about taking sport not so seriously, but when did you start to take sport seriously
early on?
Did you play and who influenced you?
(07:13):
I think I played every sport growing up.
I think I played almost everything growing up.
I was just born into a family that I'm not going to say was chock full of elite athletes
or anything like that.
But everybody just liked sports for as far back as I can remember.
That was, that was like a big focus in the family.
(07:37):
And so were you a nerd or a jock?
I mean, you obviously are good at sport, but you're also good at the technical side early
on.
Were you a combination of them both?
I think, well, I would definitely skew more towards the nerd side of things.
I am doing a podcast now, right?
So I definitely was more on that side of the fence.
(07:59):
At the same time I was playing on the varsity baseball team as like a starting infielder.
I was also making the team's website and submitting it to like some independent things here and
there in various corners of the internet that would award prizes based on local sports
(08:19):
websites.
I mean, this is like deep Reddit lore right here.
That type of thing.
So yeah, no, I mean, I always kind of had these, these dueling interests.
One was playing sports, being out there, being part of a team.
The other was what I could do in front of a computer.
(08:41):
And obviously you combine that with the love of broadcasting or just hearing myself in
a, in a radio from a pretty early age.
It's no wonder I ended up doing this.
Absolutely.
As a full time thing.
And you also had time, most of you doing all of that to develop at an early stage being
a very good golfer.
(09:02):
I, well, I didn't take golf seriously until I got out of college.
And my uncle, who I had mainly gone golfing with when I was in high school and through
college was very, very good and had been recruited to go and play golf at, you know, the Southern
(09:27):
colleges and whatnot.
So I had learned from him a fair amount, but I didn't really take it seriously until after
I graduated college and I had a full time job and I had money coming in that I could,
I could support the habit.
And after that, I, I started to improve and get a lot better at it.
And one day, maybe about nine or 10 years ago, I just decided like I, I want to get
(09:52):
a little bit more serious with this and get better at it.
And that was, I think in earnest, the beginning of the golf journey, but, but you were a
caddy before, weren't you?
I was a cat.
I've always loved golf.
You know, I've always loved golf and, and to be honest with you, clearly money by the
hang of it as well.
Right.
I've, I've always loved golf.
I think in hindsight, I probably would have been best playing golf as opposed to baseball
(10:17):
or any of the other things that I did.
That was probably my calling on the sports side and, and I missed it until I was a little
bit older.
Uh, but yeah, I, you know, I, I caddied at a, at a country club here in the area and
got to know that side of the golf experience, what it's like at a country club with country
(10:42):
club players and what a, what the etiquette is like on a fancy golf course and whatnot.
So I, I learned a lot from that.
I got to play the course for free too.
Through colleges, just kind of cool.
Well, that's wonderful.
And, uh, you know, not, not going to act like that helped me get any better.
It certainly did not at the time, but it definitely contributed to probably love of the game on
(11:04):
the golf side.
Well, it's also handy when you become a gazillionaire and all you need to do is to play golf and,
uh,
Right.
If that happens, I'll be ready.
We're not there to play yet.
So you went to college to study English and computer sciences, which I think is a fascinating
combination.
Perfect.
I think for the, uh, the time we live in, uh, but it was a bold move at the time for you.
(11:27):
Why did you choose that combination?
I started as broadcast journalism.
My, my first year at Penn State was as a broadcast journalism major.
And, um, you know, to, to the point from earlier, I had home videos going as far back as I can
remember of me broadcasting.
(11:49):
And so it was, it was obvious that that would be the thing that I would, that I would go
for when push came to shove.
And, um, at the time, I did not get the sense that the situation I was in was one that would
leave me feeling all that stable after I graduated college.
(12:10):
The broadcasting world is very much a pay your dues type of thing.
A lot of unpaid internships, a lot of very, very, very poor paying starting jobs in broadcasting.
Um, and I didn't really want that.
It had been communicated to me, I think rather honestly by the, by the people that were running
(12:33):
the department and I didn't, I didn't want that.
And so it was at that point that I switched to, to more of the computer side of things
about a year, year and a half into my time at Penn State.
I always had it in the back of my head about figuring out some way to do broadcasting or,
(12:54):
um, writing.
I had done a lot of writing about sports as well.
I was pretty good at that as well.
And so I always had in the back of my mind that maybe I'd come back to it at some point
or another, but my thinking at the time was I got to get something stable first.
If I'm going to leave this, I need something stable enough that it can, it can help me along
(13:16):
with the other hobbies.
And so yeah, switched, switched up to the more like computer driven field and went down
that path for a good long time before switching over to this as my full-time gig.
Interesting.
And so, I mean, what was your college experience like?
Um, you, you have an interesting mix there.
(13:38):
Um, you're interested in sport.
Uh, and Penn State is a big sports school.
What was your college experience like?
My college experience.
Yeah.
I was probably a very insecure 18 year old who knew he wanted to do broadcasting, but
(13:58):
didn't know where to go to college.
And I had looked all over.
I, I got into Syracuse, which Syracuse is like kind of a renowned broadcasting school
on, on, uh, certainly this side of the country, but really all throughout it's, it's known
for that.
I could have gone to Syracuse, but I didn't.
Um, I had applied other places.
(14:18):
I had it in my head from a very early age that I wanted to go to Notre Dame.
I got wait listed at Notre Dame and in hindsight, it's probably for the best.
I ended up going to Penn State because I just, I knew other people, close friends of mine
going to Penn State.
And on top of it, I knew that Penn State had a lot to offer in terms of like what majors
(14:41):
you could, you could take up.
And I was pretty sure about broadcasting, but I also wasn't a hundred percent sure I
wanted to stick with it.
And so I ended up going to Penn State as we just discussed.
I, I did switch out of the broadcasting side of things, um, and graduated with a different
degree.
I think, was that painful?
(15:02):
I mean, I'm a lot of people go, Oh my gosh, I'm going to change my major.
That's going to change my life.
It wasn't that painful.
It wasn't that painful.
Um, I think at the time I really had, I had no vision for what like might happen with
(15:23):
new media on the internet.
This is early days of social media.
This is early days of YouTube.
When I was in college, wave heck when I'm dating myself a little bit, it was hard to
see that there would be this whole ecosystem of independent creators of publishing tools
(15:43):
that were available to the masses.
It was hard to see how that stuff might occur down the line.
I was lucky in that regard.
Um, but I just, I did not get the sense that if I stayed on the current path, I would end
up in a stable spot after college and I didn't want that.
I felt like that would make me even more stressed.
(16:05):
And so that, that was why I switched.
I mean, my college experience was, we talk about sports and that being a big part of
who I am and how I grew up.
I knew that I needed to go to a school that had a big time college football game day experience.
Weirdly that was important to me.
And it is for quite a few people actually, isn't it?
(16:27):
It's part of the, like the brand essence of a college that you become, it becomes a part
of you and you become a part of it.
And, and that stays with you.
I mean, I grew up in a pretty small suburban part of Pennsylvania, if not rural part of
Pennsylvania.
(16:47):
And for me, watching games, watching really any big sporting event on the weekends was
a big deal.
It was something that I look forward to and still do.
And so when it came time to go into college, that was really important to me.
Don't ask me about which teams I rooted for.
Before I went to Penn State, while I was at Penn State, that's, that gets a little weird.
(17:12):
But that aside, the fact that I could go to a place where they had that big game day environment
was, was really appealing to me.
And that, that helped push me over the hump with respect to go into Penn State in the,
in the first place.
If you think of your college experience, what did you take from college that has stood
(17:34):
the test of time?
Wow.
That's a really good question.
I think one of the things, one of the, one of the selling points of a place like Penn
State is that it's really big.
(17:55):
And you hear horror stories all the time from people who, and maybe they knew somebody
or had a friend who went to Penn State and it was like too much for them.
And they couldn't handle it.
There were all these things to do.
It was tough to focus on schoolwork.
There are plenty of stories of people who, who went there and just because they were
(18:17):
overwhelmed decided they had to go elsewhere or dropped out of college, that type of thing.
I did not fall into that camp.
I loved the fact that there was so much going on all the time and I did not have trouble
focusing.
But one thing I think I learned from that experience, just being at a place that was
so big is that you, you sort of need to be your own advocate.
(18:40):
And if you want something, you, you like, you owe it to yourself to try and go get it.
You know, there wasn't, not to say that Penn State wasn't supportive.
Penn State always was very supportive of whatever you wanted to do, but Penn State also taught
you to be somewhat self-sufficient and somewhat self-motivated if you wanted to get something
(19:02):
done because there were just so many kids and you had to assert yourself if there was
something you wanted to pursue or a hobby or a club or something that you wanted to
be part of.
And that wasn't necessarily the case growing up where, where I grew up, where everybody
knew each other and it was really just kind of a quaint place.
At Penn State, you're, you're sort of thrown into the fire.
(19:25):
And so experiencing that, experiencing that I think was a pretty big deal.
And that's actually an important, we have something at Cafe W.O.W. called the sharp end
tip jar.
And we put tips in the tip jar.
So I think we can put that one in, I think, which is great tip.
If you go to a large school where you have the experience, but of course you need to
(19:49):
be your own advocate and you've got to navigate in a selfish way in order to get what you
want, not what they want.
There's that.
The other thing is, I think, like a lot of 18 to 22 year olds, you don't, you don't know
what you're going to be when you go to college.
It's kind of ridiculous that we, we ask people that age, kids that age to figure out what
(20:13):
they want to do with the rest of their lives.
You could change it a million times over the course of a life.
But you know, I think one of the things that I learned was who I was, I learned to trust
in some of my own skills in a way that I hadn't before going to college.
(20:39):
I really learned to trust myself in a way that I didn't have to before going to state
college.
And I don't know, that's all valuable stuff now it is.
That's interesting.
As you get older, that's valuable.
You come back and you look at how that helped you because you then went to, you went corporate.
(20:59):
You actually went to work in IT.
I did.
And then corporate communications for a Fortune 500 company, Air Products in Allentown.
That's a pretty big transformation.
How did you adjust to that change?
I think, I mean, I had, I had the good fortune of working with and for really good people.
(21:25):
And yes, I did go corporate.
And yes, the corporate world compared to what I'm doing now, it's like night and day.
But everybody that I worked with was really supportive.
They knew about some of these hobbies I had away from the office.
And so that I think helped.
It was certainly not the easiest environment in which to be creative.
(21:52):
You know, you work for a big company.
You're sort of becoming part of the machine, not necessarily defining your own rules and
especially for a new employee, there's not always a ton of room to be super creative.
Really not creative to the extent that I was used to with writing things and making audio
and video things.
(22:13):
I mean, that just wasn't part of what I did at the company.
And so, you know, there were moments, I think later in my career with the company where
not being able to be creative did wear on me a little bit.
But I think in the beginning, I was probably just excited to be part of something, probably
(22:35):
just excited to step into a job that I knew was going to be stable.
And I think above all, really just learning the ropes.
You know, I was pretty adaptable and the way that I joined the company was such that you
were on a rotation and every eight to 14 months or so, you would rotate out into another job.
(22:57):
They did that to help get you some experience around the company and learn a couple different
sides of the company, not just one.
And so that was valuable.
I got used to kind of getting my feet wet with one thing before moving on to another.
So it forced me to adapt.
It forced me to kind of, you know, learn how that corporate ecosystem functions and what
(23:23):
works and what doesn't on that level.
Which I guess is important.
So it was a good experience.
Yeah, I guess it's important when you're dealing with large organizations in your current
role, because understanding the time periods and the decision process is much easier if
you've been there than if you come to it blindly.
(23:45):
I have to catch myself sometimes because what I'm doing now, it's like just me and a co-host
and some folks that help us on the business side.
And every now and again, I'll kind of catch myself sounding a little too corporate.
I do it on my podcast too.
I try not to, but I think I just kind of, I was at the corporation for 17 years.
(24:08):
On some level, just like becomes part of how you think you can break free of it to an extent,
but there's always part of that that goes with you.
And so yeah, like I think I have a pretty good understanding for what moves the needle
for big companies.
And with what I'm doing now with the show, we're obviously dealing with like advertisers
(24:32):
and potential sponsors and potentials all the time who might be interested in working
together.
So you understand the tensions and the obstacles.
Yeah, yeah, my time at Air Products working with a lot of those similar things has definitely
helped me understand what I'm doing now a little bit better.
(24:53):
So where you are now and where you were, would you recommend going into a corporation as
a career from college or these days, the startup with free popcorn, cool t-shirts seems to
be the alternative.
Is that an alluring proposition for something out of college?
I don't think there's anyone answered to that.
(25:17):
I've had that question before.
And I think it depends on the person.
I think it depends what you're into.
I have said to people in the past, just be very focused on what it is you enjoy doing.
And you may not get 100% of that in a job, but try to get as close to it as you can,
(25:39):
whether that's in a corporation or a startup, whether it's neither a smaller company that's
been around a while.
There are so many different ways you can go at it after college.
And I think it's important to take note of the culture of the place that you're stepping
(26:00):
into if that feels like a fit.
Obviously, what you're going to be doing on a day-to-day basis is I think ultimately
going to determine if you're happy there or not.
But just be mindful of what you're into and not into and how that sort of meshes with
the culture at whatever place you're interviewing at.
Right.
This is John Dodds with Ty Hildenbrandt, co-founder and host of the Solid Verbal Podcast.
(26:27):
We'll be back in just a moment.
The much-valued Tip Jar and Bell, which is very much a feature of Cafe WOW, is provided
by the Sharp End, a boutique brand consultancy helping organisations unearth and communicate
their uniqueness in the most cost-effective way.
It's a fascinating process and you can find out how the Sharp End does it and why it could
(26:50):
work for you at thesharp-end.com.
Welcome back to Cafe WOW.
I'm with Ty Hildenbrandt of the Solid Verbal Podcast and we're going to discuss how the
Solid Verbal came about.
You started it in 2008, only four years after the first podcast actually happened with Adam
(27:12):
Curry and David Weiner.
Why did you get into it so early?
Man, I don't know.
I think it's just kind of been in me since I was really young.
Whether it's recording on the radio or on my mom's old camcorder or whatever, I always
(27:37):
just wanted to do stuff like that.
It came along.
Well, yeah, it came along.
The technology made it possible.
I remember being a junior at Penn State and we had a friend who just turned 21 at the
(27:57):
time.
There were other friends who were not with us there in the flesh as we took him out for
his first night at the bars.
My earliest memory of doing something goofy on the internet was figuring out how to live
stream my friend when he came back from the bars so that our other friends who weren't
(28:19):
there could say hello or could feel like they were part of the festivities as he came in
and sort of stammered around.
Goofy stuff, obviously not high tech by any stretch in today's world.
But at the time, that was like figuring out how to do that.
It took a bunch of bells and whistles.
It sounded a little bit like Facebook and how they started up as being like some collegiate
(28:40):
dorm thing and linking each other up.
Yeah, I think everything in the early 2000s on the tech side was a lot like that.
It was just, "Hey, can we figure out how to do this?
What happens if we hit this button?"
That type of thing.
I think the combination of having some more formalized computer and programming training
(29:06):
combined with where tech was at, combined with what I already had an interest in, all
of those things when I graduated college and suddenly I have a steady paycheck.
I'm living at home at the time.
So my weeks, especially my weeknights, I have nothing to do on the weeknights.
(29:28):
I put a lot of that when I wasn't shooting basketball at the rec center with friends.
I was just playing around the computer figuring out which of these things I could do.
There was a moment in 2004 where I started more seriously dabbling with, "Okay, how can
I stream stuff on the internet?"
(29:49):
Okay, this is around the time when blogs started to become more of a thing.
Their uncle was starting a blog because blogs were blowing up.
So I started doing a little bit of that.
I think it was 2005 was my first foray into podcasting.
This is before the Solid Verbal and the College Football show, but I did a New York Yankees
(30:11):
podcast with my uncle at the time, my cousin.
At the time, it was truly us talking into a Logitech webcam with a sock over it so that
you couldn't see anything and you couldn't hear the pops when you say P words and other
at pluses we call that in the audio world.
(30:33):
I was using very, very rudimentary computer hardware to record myself and put it out on
the internet.
Just because you could.
Just because I could.
Just because I could.
Yeah, I was.
I have conversations saved onto my Gmail with other people who were doing podcasting very
(30:56):
early on, even before we really had a term for all of this.
I was probably one of the first couple dozen people doing sports podcasting on the internet
and just stuck with it.
The tech around that medium has grown up in a very big way over the last 20 years or
so and the ability to publish anything has gotten a lot easier now than it was back then.
(31:20):
So it was.
Oh, yes.
This is all.
It was like reblogs when you almost needed coding to reblog and now all you do is push
share and it goes to.
Yeah, exactly.
Followers and beyond.
Exactly.
I mean, it just for me happened very organically.
It was something that I took up as a hobby while having this other full time role and
(31:43):
I kind of just had my own lab where I could experiment and play with things and the Yankee
show came about with my uncle, with my cousin.
We did that for about three and a half, four years and it was pretty much clear to me from
the jump that this was something I was going to be doing for a while.
Like I just I instantly caught the bug for it.
(32:06):
I instantly started trying to figure out ways to like get the word out about this thing
that we were doing, found ways to interview people, not through any kind of tools like
we have now, but quite literally, John, by taping the phone to a microphone on one side
and then to an earphone on the other.
(32:26):
So you could kind of like here.
I built my own phone coupler like all of these goofy things that would certainly not hold
up or even sound good in today's world.
I kind of just had the time and space out of boredom to put it all together naturally.
And that was kind of the beginning of all this.
(32:48):
Well, and you made the point about the fact that you were holding down a day job as well.
And of course, as the podcast developed, it became the most popular independent college
football podcast in the nation.
And meanwhile, you're getting a load of work in your day job.
And I'm sure plenty of listeners have the same kind of dilemma.
They have their passion.
(33:09):
They're not sure whether to jump.
Are you in business or do you want to make money?
What are the challenges that you have and what are the tips that you would give someone
that was in your situation at the time?
Yeah, I, we started the Solid Verbal in 2008 and it within three years, it had grown to
(33:35):
a point that we couldn't possibly had foreseen.
I mean, it just, we ended up linking up with at the time, Grantland.com, which was an offshoot
from ESPN that got us a ton of new years, many of whom still listen today.
And from that point forward, it was really just kind of like a growth story, you know,
(33:58):
the podcast grew every year and it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
It wasn't until the point for me, and everybody handles this a little differently, it wasn't
until the point for me that I felt like I could earn a steady and stable paycheck, kind
(34:19):
of like a recurring theme, right?
It wasn't until that point that I decided that I was going to pull the trigger and make
the move over to this full time.
Many folks in my life, my wife included, my co-host, like there were so many people along
the way who urged me to cut bait with the corporate jobs sooner.
I really struggled with that decision.
(34:41):
That was a hard decision for me because I'd been there for so long.
I've described it before as like breaking up with my family.
But truly for me, the right time was waiting until I had enough steady income that it wouldn't
feel like that big of a risk.
I think it's a really important point actually because there are people that will follow their
(35:02):
dream and follow their gut and then ensure that they start the ball rolling and then get
disheartened and then wonder what the heck they've done.
So I think it's really valuable.
I think we're even worth putting that in the tip jar as well.
The fact that build a solid foundation so that you can go and experiment.
(35:24):
If the worst comes to the worst, you can go back, maybe in a different place or a different
role, but if you don't build a solid foundation, you're always going to be looking over your
shoulder because in the early days, it just doesn't come just like that.
And then when it does, you've got to be ready for it and a juggling two jobs probably isn't
the best way to do it.
(35:45):
No, I mean, for me, I eventually left my job in 2021, in the summer of 2021.
And at that point, I had been doing the podcast for 12, 13 years.
It was very stable.
We had gotten to the point where we were very good at forecasting numbers and all these dork
(36:07):
things that matter when it comes to hitting your goals and earning money off of what you're
doing.
And so it took a while to get there.
I probably could have done it sooner, but for me, that was the right moment to do it.
And I found myself in this vortex of the podcast is continuing to grow in a really exciting
(36:32):
way.
The job that I was working for corporate America was also growing.
And I had stepped into it.
Like you said, at the top of the show, I had stepped into a role where I was managing people
and big projects and an entire digital apparatus.
Both of those things going on in tandem was a lot.
(36:52):
And I came to an inflection point where I had to pick one or the other.
And or I should say I had to make a change of some kind because it was clear to my wife
to everybody around me.
And eventually me, I was like the last one to figure it out that it was kind of killing
me.
I just couldn't do both anymore.
(37:14):
Now, you talked about it took off.
And of course, other people listening will also be very interested to know how did it
take off?
Is there is there a process?
Is there a linear approach?
Or did you try a lot of things and failed?
And then all of a sudden a few lucky breaks happened.
There's been nothing linear about it.
And there's no blueprint.
(37:36):
There's no template.
There's no magic bullet.
Never mind.
We started the podcast in 2008.
I would say as late as 2015, you still couldn't really Google and get a whole lot of great
information on how to podcast.
You could.
There just wasn't anything out there.
Now, thankfully, there are a gazillion resources now.
(37:58):
The equipment's better.
The tech around is better.
Everything about this has gotten dramatically better as a publisher.
But back then we didn't know what we didn't know.
We were just sort of sort of bumbling our way through it.
It helped that we got picked up with ESPN and linked up with ESPN and that they were
(38:20):
able to help promote the show to new people that wouldn't have found us otherwise.
That was a big deal.
That was a huge catalyst early.
But there have been plenty of shows that have been in that situation that had a momentary
rise and then couldn't sustain it, couldn't keep that growth going.
I think we got really good at understanding our audience.
(38:45):
I think that's probably the most important thing when it comes to podcasting.
How do you do that?
There's a balance, especially with college football.
Because college football is two things at once.
On one hand, it's a national sport that if you talk to any college football fan out there,
they can tell you seven of the top 10 teams.
(39:06):
It's a lot of the same teams year in and year out.
On that level, it's a national sport.
What people really care about is their own specific teams.
It's very tribal in that sense.
What we figured out, I think pretty early on, is that it takes a lot to walk that balance.
To present a national podcast that an Oklahoma State fan might not really care that much
(39:30):
about because you're not focusing on their team.
How can we take that national thing that we cover and translate it into a form that the
Oklahoma State fan, the Penn State fan, the Notre Dame fan will actually care enough about
to want to listen to what's going on separate from their team, if all that makes sense.
(39:52):
Yes, it does.
It's very much a national, personal approach.
I think people want to have a context for their team.
They don't just want to support their team.
They want to compare their team.
They want to say, "Where are we going?
What is the game doing?"
Looking at players that they can get or people that have tripped up or others that are joining
(40:17):
their league.
There is an interest in a broader scale, but as you say, it has to be personal too.
Ty, during COVID, football was canceled.
People weren't traveling.
You built up a solid verbal to be something special, and then it was kind of taken away
(40:40):
from everyone.
How did that impact you?
COVID was really tough for college football as a whole.
They played the NFL season in front of, I think, empty stadiums.
They played kind of half of a college football season.
(41:05):
Some teams played more games than others, all in front of no people.
What happened in addition with college football is that it was politicized.
At the time, you may recall a lot of discourse out there about, "Should we close things down?
Should we not close things down?
What is college football?
(41:25):
What is sports as a whole?
What is the role that sports needs to play right now?
Is it something that can serve to entertain amid this horrible pandemic going on, or is
it something that we should shut down entirely?"
People were very mixed on that.
Regardless of which side of the fence you were on, it's clear that it had been politicized
(41:47):
in a way that it hadn't been before.
We found, among our people, and I'm sure many others felt similarly, there were a lot of
folks that normally would listen to us that decided they couldn't, that they weren't into
college football in 2020 during the pandemic the way they would be otherwise.
(42:15):
We kind of felt similarly as well.
Just as the two guys running the show, we were conflicted knowing that the news was
just horrible all the time.
Of course, there was this big human thing that we're all worried about with the virus.
(42:36):
At the same time, it's like, "Well, we're supposed to do a college football show."
It was really challenging to try and walk that balance and figure out how goofy can
we be on the show without turning people off because this was always in the backs of everyone's
minds.
I guess also the fact that people were thinking that the players are taking a risk by doing
(43:00):
this because at that stage, nothing was very clear other than everybody was in lockdown.
These folks were almost gladiatorial in the way that they were playing.
On the one hand, I guess it was seen to be trivial.
On the other side, it was seen to be the one spark of humanity in a very difficult situation.
(43:20):
Yeah.
The reaction to it truly ran the gamut.
We struggled with it, I think, in the same way that a lot of people struggled with it.
We just didn't know how hard to push on college football and how goofy we could be without
upsetting people.
COVID was tough.
(43:41):
I don't know if we got that balance right.
We certainly did our best to find it.
I know for me personally, without going into the office with suddenly now everything being
at home, for me personally, that was sort of the beginning of the end of the corporate
job because the combination of running the podcast, the podcast growing and flourishing
(44:05):
and doing well, the combination of that with big projects at the office, one of the biggest
projects, with suddenly having more responsibility, all of these things that went down in 2020
for me personally, it came to a head in September during football season, right, as things were
getting started.
(44:26):
I remember I was launching a big website on the day that Alabama was playing its first
football game of that year, that season.
Thinking in the back of my mind, how in the hell am I going to do all this?
How am I going to do this?
Because there was no, you didn't have that delineation between work and home.
(44:46):
Everything was just at home.
Your computer was always on, especially when you're working on a big project.
You don't really have much downtime.
I'd be going from one computer to the other to do something different.
And cheating in some ways.
Yeah.
I think COVID was challenging for us as college football fans and podcasters for obvious reasons.
(45:11):
But for me personally, it was taken to almost like a completely different level because
of some of the conflicts I had with work and trying to balance everything.
The term work-life balance did not exist for me in 2020.
Do you think it does now for people?
Do you think that work-life balance has changed forever?
(45:32):
I hope that through COVID or some other way, people have been able to find what's right
for them.
I know for me, COVID was a really important way to discover that.
And so if it had the same effect on other people, the same positive effect on other people,
(45:53):
and that's not to say COVID was a good thing, it was horrible.
But if there is any silver lining, at least for me personally, it was that I kind of found
that balance within myself and was able to make a change that I think I'm better off
for it now.
And it's always a challenge to figure out where the lines are.
And I think it was clear that in 2020, and for a lot of folks who were home even beyond
(46:19):
2020, figuring out that balance was more important than ever.
Right.
And of course, thank goodness the world came roaring back and college football came roaring
back and the solid verbal came roaring back.
And now, of course, there's, I think it's estimated there's over 2 million podcasts
(46:40):
and 48 million episodes.
And with the new technology, the barriers to entry become lower every week, both in
technology and costs.
We can't all be like Seth Rogen or Ty Hildenbrand.
What does it take to be a successful podcast?
(47:00):
Or does that depend very much on what your motivation is?
Yes.
Yes.
Can I answer it?
No.
I mean, again, there's no silver bullet, but the most important thing with podcasting is
to make sure that your topic is something that you love talking about.
(47:21):
I think that's the singular most important thing because a podcast, if it's not a continuing
series, if it's not something that is published on a repeating basis, it's just a clip you
post to the internet or something you post to SoundCloud or something.
(47:45):
That is not a podcast.
If you do it once or twice, that's not a show.
So finding things that you care about enough to talk about them every week, every other
week, once every month, however often you choose to publish, you just need to make sure it's
the topic that you care about and have opinions about and can lend some personality to on
(48:07):
a recurring basis.
I think that's singularly the most important thing.
We could have a conversation about mic skills and types of microphones and software and
how you promote and all of that, but at its core, it's about finding something you love
enough to want to keep talking about it.
(48:28):
It starts there.
Everything starts from there.
But there are plenty of people that want to talk about stuff and whether it's marketing
or sport or whatever, there are hundreds and hundreds of podcasts that cover each of those
and people just like talking.
So where do they go?
Where will the big clean out happen?
(48:51):
Is it beginning to happen?
Has it happened?
Do you think because of the low cost of entry, which basically means that if you pay for
a microphone and you upload it, you're basically in the game?
Again, it varies.
(49:13):
I think what you see a lot is because the barriers to entry are so low now.
If you want to start a podcast tomorrow for $0, you could do that.
You couldn't do that before, but you can do that now.
You find that a lot of people that decide they want to try their hand at it will get
(49:33):
one or two episodes in and then they're toast.
They can't keep it up.
They're not willing to put in the time to do it.
Maybe they don't like it as much as they thought.
Maybe they were just dabbling or experimenting, which is totally cool.
It's not for everybody.
I think that weed out period happens typically within the first couple months of trying this.
(49:57):
If you make it beyond that, I think the next stage that a lot of people encounter is, "Okay,
I've got this thing now.
I'm passionate about it.
I enjoy doing it.
Now I want it to grow.
Now I want more people to know about what I'm doing."
That's where it gets hard.
That's the challenge for everybody in podcasting, having new folks find your stuff.
(50:20):
It's just not a medium that lends itself very well to that.
There's legwork that goes into it.
I think the next weed out period for a lot of people who get started in this field is,
"Okay, I'm doing it now for a year and discovery is really hard.
My show sounds good, but it's not growing."
That can be really demoralizing.
(50:41):
I think that serves as another natural weed out period of sorts where people just throw
in the towel because the numbers aren't moving up and to the left.
That can be demoralizing.
It really can.
It's just interesting because I just heard today that Spotify are saying that if you,
(51:03):
as a musician, have not had more than a thousand streams in a year, you're not going to get
any royalties.
I don't know what to think about that.
The fact that a thousand streams isn't very much and maybe you're not investing, and so
they're not going to invest in you other than to put your piece of music on.
I guess it's true for the spoken word as well.
(51:28):
You have to decide, "Is your target market 50 people or 500,000 people?"
I mean, it's a goals thing.
It's a conversation about what are your goals.
Do you do the podcast because you want to grow it as big as you can?
Or do you do the podcast because you just enjoy doing the podcast?
If you just enjoy doing the podcast, it doesn't really matter what your numbers are.
(51:51):
You may care on some level about making it bigger, but I know plenty of people who have
been doing shows for years on end and do not have what we would consider stratospheric
numbers by any stretch of the imagination.
They just like freaking do it.
It's not expensive to do.
Why stop?
(52:12):
Why stop?
Go for it.
There are other people who approach it differently.
I've had conversations with folks before who start a podcast mainly because they hear that
there's potentially a payout at the end of it.
I think that's the wrong reason to get into anything, but that is also a perspective that
(52:33):
I know a lot of people share.
More in the middle are just like the normal hobbyists who got into it, enjoy doing it,
but want to make money and want it to grow.
Having all of those things happen at once tends to be really hard, especially nowadays
where everything is very oversaturated in most topics.
(52:56):
Podcasting as a whole, it's just difficult to find new stuff.
They still have not solved that part of the problem.
I think people come up against that decision point all too often and decide they're going
to cut bait.
Ty Hildenbrandt on the solid verbal, we're going to come back and identify what it is
that makes the solid verbal special.
(53:19):
We're going to unearth the uniqueness.
This is John Dodds with Ty Hildenbrandt on Cafe WOW.
Thank you so much for hanging out with our guest in Cafe WOW.
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(53:43):
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Many thanks.
(54:05):
Welcome back.
Ty Hildenbrandt, co-host and co-founder of the Solid Verbal Podcast.
We were talking about the podcast market is huge.
I think somewhere I've read that there's about 100 million listeners to podcasts every
month and there is a very strong podcast population who are avid listeners.
(54:28):
Let's start to unbundle unearth the solid verbal.
What is it that makes the solid verbal special?
What makes us special is, as I mentioned earlier, that balance between covering the sport on
a super zoomed in team by team level and also covering it from the 30,000 foot view.
(54:58):
We've been able to walk that balance pretty well over the last 15, 16 years now.
I think the other thing that we do that is different from many in the space is both Dan,
my co-host and I are very, very creative when it comes to how we present college football.
(55:22):
We are the ones in the off season coming up with goofy concepts to keep it entertaining.
We do so at the risk and with full knowledge of the fact that there are other shows out
there that might be covering things with more depth.
It's just a editorial decision that we've made over the years that we just enjoy making
things as entertaining as we can.
(55:43):
And you get the good feedback for it.
You get the good feedback for it.
We've been doing this show long enough now that we've developed our own vocabulary.
We've got a great community of folks that you get to that point and it's almost like
a flywheel.
Everything kind of reaches critical mass and you can lean on your community to help power
(56:05):
you with new ideas and take things in different directions you wouldn't have thought up otherwise.
I just think we like having fun with it.
We really enjoy college football.
College football has gone through a ton of changes.
It's not for everybody now.
It's complicated in a way that it wasn't 10 years ago.
But we still like to have fun with it and acknowledge the fact on pretty much every
(56:28):
episode that the sport and the way it's run is incredibly goofy.
You just can't get past that if you want to cover college football in 2024 and we don't
even try.
Interesting.
Interesting.
And when you think about the audience and when you think about how powerful the medium
podcasting is, it appears that more podcast listeners are more active on social media
(56:54):
and more likely to follow brands.
It appears that companies large and small have not really sure what this podcasting thing
is about.
And if they do, they outsource it and they play with it rather than integrate it into
their brand as something that they can engage.
I think especially that's true of B2B.
(57:17):
Why do you think that is?
I think for a while it was a new thing.
And having that corporate background, I mean, we both do, like corporations are risk averse.
And the term brand safety, which has, I think, had a bit of a rebirth in today's social media
(57:39):
day and age, it's a real thing that companies care about.
They don't want to put their message or put their product somewhere where it could be
viewed negatively.
And podcasting for a long time was just kind of an unknown.
Bear in mind that this started as a couple of guys on the internet who figured out how
(58:03):
to wire up audio with an RSS feed and it was very manual.
There weren't a whole lot of checks and balances in place.
It wasn't until somewhat recently that we even had a standard convention for downloads
and what counted as a download.
All of these things matter to companies when they're trying to put their money behind something,
(58:24):
whether that's digital advertising, whether you're putting it on a billboard or a radio
ad.
All of these things genuinely matter and there are some of the first questions that a company
might ask.
Podcasting didn't have great answers to any of those questions until, let's say, the
last five years.
I mean, it's really gotten to a point now where it is a little bit more standardized
(58:46):
and I think you see more companies coming into the space because it's taken a while,
but now that framework is there where if you want to spend X number of dollars and get
so many impressions across one podcast or a group of podcasts on a network, you can
get those numbers now and you can feel good that they're being counted and being reported
(59:11):
on in a way that's responsible.
So buying is easier now.
Buying is way easier now than it was before.
I think some of the secondary benefits that companies have reported on having after they
do podcast advertising is it is sort of a show of goodwill as a company sponsors a podcast
(59:39):
because there's so many independent creators in this space.
Many of these shows have these very niche communities of a couple dozen, a couple hundred
folks that follow a podcast and for those community members, seeing or hearing a company
advertise on that show, it's like, oh, cool, they support it too.
(01:00:01):
They're oh, cool, they're supporting, they're giving back to this creator, the show that
I really love.
So I'm going to give them a chance as well.
So there's almost a signal to audiences, both large and small, that a company by supporting
a show is sort of almost like ingratiating itself to the fan base and making it a little
(01:00:25):
bit more likely that they'll convert on the ad.
The podcast numbers for conversions are crazy good, better than almost any other form of
advertising because people who advertise on podcasts tend to talk directly into very specific
communities with a specific tone of voice and people are very likely to act on ads that
(01:00:48):
they hear on some of their favorite shows.
So this is why I'm able to do this full time.
It's because the ads for podcasting actually work and they will continue to work as the
structure around them has continued to improve.
And what's interesting about it is that in some kind of endorsements, it tends to be
(01:01:08):
the host that actually reads the ad out.
And so there's almost a built in validation from the person that you enjoy listening to
that this is, I am endorsing this.
And in fact, people like Tim Ferriss and some of the other leading podcasters, they do that
(01:01:34):
and they read it and they personally say they've tried it and endorsed it.
So that's quite a different form of advertising, which is kind of quite intrinsic to the program.
And the styles of advertising have changed too over the years.
We first started doing ads on our show.
(01:01:56):
I don't even remember the year.
It's been at least 10 years now.
It was somebody gave us a script.
We would read the script.
We would cut that portion of our audio from the episode and we would upload it to like
a Dropbox folder somewhere.
(01:02:17):
We tell somebody at what time code in the episode that ad was played, we had proof of
the ad because we could upload it and they could play it for themselves.
And then after the fact, we would give them, in many cases, kind of a rough estimate for
how many people heard it.
(01:02:38):
Now there are a couple of different ways that you can get an ad in front of people.
Not everybody is into the host red ad in the voice of the host.
Some people want to pre-produce their own stuff and they can.
There are plenty ways now of taking your own commercial and having it programmatically
(01:03:01):
inserted into a show like mine.
That's a really popular way that a lot of companies are advertising.
There are still plenty of host red ads, which is again the host putting that script in his
or her voice.
We can do it now in such a way that we record it, we give it to somebody and then they can
(01:03:22):
programmatically insert it back into your show as part of a commercial.
Then there are other ways that are still kind of old school where it's like, "Yeah, we just
want you to read this as part of your normal deal and no fancy tricks with programmatic
insertion or anything like that.
Just read the damn ad."
So your choices, I would say as an advertiser, have greatly increased over the last certainly
(01:03:51):
five years for how you can get your message in front of a podcast audience.
Well, I can say from Cafe WWW, we'll take any ad in any format and do a nice job for
you.
There you go.
Ty, one of the obviously people listening to this and maybe I fancy starting a podcast.
How do I get the money?
One of the ways that podcasters get money is through creating exclusive content which
(01:04:16):
they charge a fee to their Patreon members.
How does that work for you and for others?
Is it a significant revenue stream?
Yeah.
We started our Patreon in 2020.
Of all years, the worst year ever for college football, we started our Patreon.
(01:04:41):
We've been going strong with it now for a few years running.
It continues to grow every season.
It has been a really significant revenue source for us and it's been an even better way for
us to strengthen our bond with our community.
(01:05:02):
I think that's the most important thing.
Bond offers all sorts of resources that can help creators figure out what they should
offer above and beyond what they would already do.
I think everybody kind of, it takes a while to figure out what's right for you and what
isn't.
(01:05:22):
At least it did for us.
But I think giving our community a behind the scenes look at what we do, giving them
access to bonus content that we might put out, giving them a better way to communicate
amongst themselves.
(01:05:44):
All these things would not be possible without a Patreon that we started in 2020.
As it's grown, it has continued enabling us to do different things and new things.
If nothing more, it's been a great sounding board for some of these goofy ideas that
we have that we're able to almost pilot test to some of our most passionate fans.
(01:06:09):
There's a lot of benefit in that.
Again, it's not a silver bullet and it's among many other ways that we make money off
the show.
It's probably the one that I think we care the most about just because it does give us
that pipeline directly into the people who care the most about our show.
Well, that's definitely a Cafe WW1 for the tip jar, the way that you used your Patreon
(01:06:34):
account as a sounding board or research tool and a way that members can connect both with
you and with each other.
That's well worth popping in the jar.
I guess one of the big questions about podcasting is where is it going as AI appears on the
scene as the technology changes and evolves as newer people come in?
(01:07:03):
Where do you see the podcasting landscape in five years and where will a solid verbal
be?
Where is the...
Wow.
Where is it going?
Where is this all going?
Is that not the existential question of our time?
Of course.
I think from what I've read, from the business guys who study this intimately, the size of
(01:07:33):
the podcast market is not going to decline anytime soon.
There is more willingness now than ever before to spend money and sponsor shows from the
brand side.
As long as you've got that money coming in, I don't see there being any hiccup in the
(01:07:54):
podcasting space.
I think it's going to continue to grow.
I think it's going to continue to be something that challenges terrestrial radio.
I think the fact that you could very easily in 2024 listen to a radio host on the other
side of the country in my genre, which is sports, you couldn't do that.
(01:08:17):
It was easily five years ago.
It's just so easy now to get this content on demand.
I think it's going to continue to grow in prominence.
It's easier now than ever before to subscribe to a podcast, to follow a podcast, to use
the right nomenclature.
I think the fact that more people are comfortable with what podcasts are is really important.
(01:08:44):
That seems to grow every single day.
This is all a very long way of saying that I don't think the listenership is going to
decline.
I don't think the spend from outside companies is going to decline.
I think there will continue to be more podcasts that come online every year.
But I think what we've seen happen over the last couple of years is we have seen a natural
(01:09:10):
weed out of some of the shows that maybe were around for a while, but weren't seeing the
growth, didn't want to stick with it.
Some other shows that changed for one reason or another and maybe fell by the wayside as
well.
Maybe some just starting out.
There was this huge movement, just as an example, during the pandemic for a lot of production
(01:09:32):
houses to give big money to celebrities to do podcasts.
One of the things that they found was while many of them were very good and some of them
have been quite profitable, most weren't and most didn't get their money back.
One of the things that I think a lot of people learned as part of that is that you can't
necessarily just throw money at this and make a show work.
(01:09:53):
It really does come down to building out your community and making sure that it's actually
got a following of people behind it that can't wait for the next episode to drop, that type
of thing.
Those shows and that behavior, none of that is likely to change anytime soon.
I think you're always going to have those passionate fans who find new shows, who prop
(01:10:16):
new shows up and who stick with some of the old favorites that they're used to.
I think as long as those trend lines are accurate, we're still in a pretty stable industry,
even though podcasting on its own feels a little bit underground.
I think what's interesting is that I think the industry is in a good spot.
(01:10:37):
Yeah, I think what you, when you use the word show, I think that's a critical point because
the show is yours.
Podcasting is a transmission method and I've talked to many people because I do radio as
well as this and I try to explain to people that we actually do a range of shows that
(01:11:01):
become podcasts, financial shows, shows about different minority audiences that are all
extremely valuable and that they are aired on air and then they become podcasts.
So, podcasting by its nature is actually a transmission method.
(01:11:23):
What has happened is that anybody that does a show like you calls it a podcast because
it goes over the, it's like calling a piece of cheese a fridge because it's actually the
mechanism for keeping it as a fridge.
But the truth of the matter is your brand is your show and one could argue that it may
be that in five years time, you might reverse engineer your show to be on radio as well
(01:11:50):
as a podcast, as well as in the community in some way at college football grounds.
And so, the brand at the end of the day is the thing.
The fact that you know your audience, that you know your subject, that you create humor
and you create knowledge from that is interesting but it's really a transmission method and
(01:12:16):
of course as that changes, things may have to change for any kind of brands.
Yeah, I mean, one of the other big ways that I think podcasting is changing, the audience
is changing and the audience is changing with respect to how they find you or how they
(01:12:36):
listen to you.
There's a study out there and I don't have the numbers in front of me that something
like and it's a really high number, maybe like 75% or 50%.
It's a big number of people who will watch a podcast on YouTube and also listen to a
(01:12:57):
podcast using something like Spotify, a totally different show.
The audience doesn't tend to care what a podcast is.
I'm old school.
A podcast is audio, a podcast is a continuing series that you listen to with a podcast app
but I think that that old way of thinking is pretty much dead.
(01:13:19):
For folks that aren't around this or haven't been around this as much as me, you just
sort of want to find the thing wherever you find the thing.
If you're into YouTube and you like watching podcasts on YouTube, it's important for shows
like mine to be on YouTube.
It's important for shows like mine to have a presence on TikTok or on Instagram or on
(01:13:43):
any of these other shorter form platforms where people tend to find content as well.
It's important to sort of diversify if you've got a show that you're trying to grow or that's
been around a while because your audience is in a thousand different places.
I think that is different.
That is fundamentally different than it was back in the early days because there were
(01:14:06):
only a couple of ways back then to hear the thing.
Now there is definitely a movement of foot to produce more video content with respect
to podcasts.
That's a big thing that's changing.
I think you will continue to see more and more of a presence out on YouTube among people
who run shows.
(01:14:27):
More and more of a presence across social media platforms where video is a component.
These are all ways the audience can find you and the audience has diversified itself and
now we have no choice but to do the same on our end.
Well, it's lucky that I've got a face for radio then, isn't it?
(01:14:48):
Because what's interesting about that and you're absolutely right is as soon as that
starts to happen, people like you who have grown up with the technology and have lived
with the technology and innovated are in a very strong position.
Those that have just about worked out how to do a podcast on the existing platforms that
(01:15:10):
now have to set up for video and now have to set up for social media by creating clips
and promoting the clips that support the YouTube, which supports the core, which is also on
the website, it suddenly becomes a lot of effort.
I think one of the things I wanted to close with is the fact that over the hundreds of
thousands of podcasts that debut each year, of that number, 12% have only published a
(01:15:34):
single episode, 6% haven't made it past two episodes and half have four or fewer, 14 or
fewer episodes and yet thousands of influencers, well-intentioned and knowledgeable individuals
want to start a podcast knowing those numbers or maybe not knowing those numbers because
their idea is going to be better.
(01:15:56):
So what I'd like to have from you, which I hopefully get a double ring on the bell,
what are the three pieces of advice that you would offer anyone who like you was prepared
to chuck in their well-paying job or college education to start a podcast?
Well, I mean, for me, I didn't, I was fortunate that I didn't, I could do both concurrently
(01:16:26):
and so I had the show going for a while before I decided that I wanted to switch to it and
work on it full-time.
I know a lot of people who have done the exact opposite approach where they're passionate
about starting this thing and they're going to stop what they're doing and they're going
to focus on the new show or podcast or YouTube series, what have you that they've created.
(01:16:52):
So it's, you know, it comes down to personal preference, how you go about it.
I mean, I think the first thing that I would say to anybody trying to start something like
this is, you know, outside of what I said earlier, which is you got to have a passion
for the subject that you're covering.
I think you need to be realistic with your goals and you need to know what it is you're
(01:17:19):
trying to achieve with the show.
If, if the point of the show is just personal enjoyment because you like doing it, then
so be it.
That's perfectly fine.
If the intention is to grow the show and get, you know, tens of thousands of downloads,
then it's, it's certainly not impossible, but it is going to take some hard work.
(01:17:42):
And I think being realistic with your goals, at least initially, and then coming back to
them every so often is important.
Everybody wants to have an enormous show, but it's, it takes a while to build.
And so just be mindful of that.
And as for, I guess, maybe a third piece of advice, I would say focus more on your audience
(01:18:08):
than you do on yourself.
If you do this long enough, you eventually develop something of a relationship with the
people who listen and the people who will help you make it a bigger deal.
And so it's important to listen to them.
It's important to give those folks ownership so that they feel like they are part of not
(01:18:30):
just your show, but the community around the show.
It is that energy that you will lean on time and again throughout your journey if you want
to build into something bigger.
So just be respectful of the audience and, you know, learn from them more so than you
(01:18:54):
are preaching to them.
Just be mindful of the people that are listening.
And as long as you're honest about that, I think that will help you grow the show.
Wonderful.
Well, that's definitely for the tip jar.
Is that four now?
Five?
Yeah, four.
Yeah, the tip jar is overflowing tight.
It's amazing.
(01:19:14):
Wonderful.
I do, I, but I do remember many years ago when I had a similar hankering to start a
coffee bar, I had a friend who was very wise still is, and we sat in this coffee bar and
we had a coffee and I said, so what do you think?
And he said to me, do you want to be in business or do you want to make money?
(01:19:35):
And it really, really struck me that that was the choice I had in terms of starting a coffee
bar.
And I do think that there is an element of that in the starting a podcast.
You have to ask a simple question about, is this something you're going to do as a hobby
and get into it and build into it?
Or is it something that you feel is so important that you're going to get investment off the
(01:19:58):
bat because you're that good and then you're going to start a podcast?
And are you going to get bored quickly?
And clearly you haven't because you've been one of the first and you are still very much
a leading light.
And Ty, it's been an absolute pleasure to pick your brains unearth your uniqueness and
that of the solid verbal and an absolute pleasure to have you in Cafe WW.
(01:20:20):
It's great to be here.
A wonderful old fashioned in the cafe.
I appreciate it very much.
Thank you.
And thank you for the invite on.
I hope I was able to impart some wisdom.
You certainly were.
Wonderful ideas for people.
(01:20:41):
Take care.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks, John.
And as Ty departs Cafe WW, I'm left rummaging through the shop in Tipjar and some of the
points that he made college to be self-sufficient and to find who you are and really trust your
judgments.
When you really think that you want to start a new business, whether it's a podcast or
(01:21:04):
something completely new or different, try and make sure you do both concurrently and
make sure that you're set up for your next task.
Have a passion for what you do.
Be realistic and also understand what it is that you're trying to achieve, especially
as far as a podcast goes.
And certainly as far as podcast audiences are concerned, it takes time.
(01:21:28):
And the final point that he made, which I think was very valuable, is to focus on your
audience more than yourself.
Listenership is so important and you can get very valuable tips, as I certainly can from
you.
So all I would leave you with is a simple request, if you like, is the fact that I would
love to have you here for our next show.
(01:21:48):
So if you're enjoying the conversations that we have, simply click follow on your favorite
podcast platform that you are listening to, and that will guarantee you a seat at Cafe
W.O.W.
Thank you so much for joining me and look forward to catching up with you soon.
(01:22:11):
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