Inside the Growth Strategies of Two of The Smartest Podcasters Alive

Episode Transcript
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Jeremy (00:02):
So Justin, when it comes to being nerds about podcast
marketing data, I'd say you andI are pretty high up there. But
I listened to this episode on apodcast about maybe 3 or 4 weeks
ago with this guy, ChrisHutchins. He's the host of a
show called All the Hacks. And Iwas just blown away because, you
know, if we're here, Chris isjust 2x, 3x where we're at. Just

(00:23):
supreme level podcast marketingdata nerdery.
And, it was actually he was aguest on one of our mutual
friends who we've mentioned adnauseam almost every episode of
the show, Jay Clouse's podcast,Creator Science.

Justin (00:36):
Oh, Jay. One thing I love about Jay is he is a
process guy. So when he thinksabout how to create great
content, he's working backwards.He's got a process that step by
step leads him to that place.And then in his interviews, he's
always trying to kinda unravel,like, what's the process?

(00:56):
What are the steps we can taketo get to this level of mastery?
So that sounds really good.

Jeremy (01:03):
Yeah. I remember his first two episodes were Seth
Godin and James Clear. And bothof those are people I'd heard a
ton of interviews from. And bothof those, I think actually the
James Clear episode, I don'tknow that I've taken more notes
in a podcast episode than thatone. Even having already
listened to a ton of interviewswith James Clear as everyone
has.
And so that like kind of won meover. I was like, oh, Jay is a

(01:24):
excellent interviewer. And so Ididn't really know Chris that
well when I came across thisinterview. I'd kind of seen him
around. I'd come across hisshow, seen him interviewed a few
other places, but hadn't reallydug into his stuff.
But when he came up on Jay'sshow, obviously the topic was
podcasting. They were talkingabout podcast marketing. And I
was like, oh, this is gonna begood. And after I listened to
this episode, I was like, okay,should we get Jay to come on the

(01:46):
show and talk about the stuff?Should we reach out to Chris?
Can we get like a round table orsomething like that? But
eventually, we were like,there's really nothing else to
dig into here. Like, Jay didsuch a good job interviewing
Chris and bringing out all thenuggets. We were like, I don't
think there's anything we canadd to this. And so we actually
asked Jay, could we actuallyjust take this episode and
publish it on our feed?

(02:06):
It's so in alignment with ourpodcast marketing data trend
that we've got going on here.And he was like, that would be
awesome. I would love for youguys to feature that on the
feed. So today in this episode,we're actually gonna feature
that full episode from CreatorScience with Chris Hutchins of
All the Hacks. And Chris, hebrings the heat here.
He gets into the data, like Imentioned at the start, gets
into some interestingexperiments. And he also talks a

(02:27):
lot about a topic that we havetalked a lot about on this show,
which is relationships.

Justin (02:32):
Yeah. The community and relationship building piece is
so key. And you're gonna see inthis interview how you can apply
some of these principles in yourown life. And he has a great
example of how this has workedfor him. You're gonna love this
one.

Jeremy (02:47):
So, without any further ado, please enjoy this episode
from Creator Science, JayClouse, and Chris Hudgins.

Chris Hutchins (03:00):
When you run an experiment on Overcast, they
tell you how many taps theythink your podcast ad will get,
and they tell you how manysubscribers they think you'll
get. Then you can run the ad andsee how much better you perform
than what they suggest. And ifyou 3 x that performance, you
probably have a good show.

Jay Clouse (03:30):
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode
of Creator Science.Congratulations on clicking play
on this episode even though youmay have noticed that it is a
little longer than usual. But Ipromise you I was not lazy in
the edit. This episode justcontains so much good
information that we went long,and I couldn't bring myself to
cut more of it out.
Today, I'm speaking with ChrisHutchins. Chris is an avid life

(03:53):
hacker, a financial optimizer,and he's the host of the top
ranked podcast, All the Hacks,where he shares his quest to
upgrade his life without havingto spend a fortune. Chris has
been featured in The New YorkTimes, Wall Street Journal, and
CNBC. And previously, Chris wasthe head of new product strategy
at Wealthfront after theyacquired his company, Grove.

(04:14):
Before that, he was an investorat Google Ventures, cofounded
Milk, which was acquired byGoogle, and he is also a member
of my community, The Lab.
I first became aware of Chris onOctober 14th 2021. And it may
seem weird that I know the exactdate, but that's because that is
the date Tim Ferris released a 3hour episode where Chris was
actually interviewing Tim. Andthis is an improv episode. I'm

(04:37):
very excited about it because myfriend, Chris, reached out with
many questions about podcasting.Good questions.
He had already read much of whatI had written. He'd listened to
several interviews, and this isintended to be an updated guide
to all things podcasting. Notonly did this give a big boost
to all the hacks, it created anopportunity for Chris to go all

(04:59):
in on podcasting. Previously, asI shared, he was really in the
startup world, but he recognizedthat his ability to learn and
master certain skills wouldserve him as a creator too.

That's always been my MO. And so, nothing it
was no different when I waslike, I'm gonna launch a
podcast. And it's like, well, Iwant it to be big. And I want
people to love it. And I want itto make enough money to support
me and my family.
So let's treat it not just likea side project, let's treat it
like a company. And in my past,I've started a few companies,
raised a few $1,000,000, and andsold a couple of them. So I'm

(05:33):
like, let's treat this like abusiness. Like like a true
business that I'm going to growinto an empire. And I realized
that so few people were doingthat in podcasting that it just
kind of became a a coolopportunity.

Jay Clouse (05:45):
Over the last couple of years, I've gotten to
personally know Chris, and I amso impressed and inspired by the
way he approaches whatever hesets his sights on. He goes
fast, he digs in deep, and heapplies a scientific lens to his
work. As you'll hear during thisepisode, he has a real
experimentality.

A entire episode as a guest could be 10 to 40
times better at convertinglisteners to your audience than
joining doing a cross promo andhaving the host read an
endorsement for your show for 60seconds.

Jay Clouse (06:15):
This episode is full of little insights like that.
Experiments that Chris has run,the results that he's seen, and
the decisions he's made becauseof it. So in this episode,
you'll learn how Chris grew hispodcast. You'll learn how he was
able to build and leveragerelationships with high profile
creators like Tim Ferriss andKevin Rose, and how you can
build similar relationshipsyourself. We also get very, very

(06:35):
tactical into the experimentsthat he's run to grow his
podcast so you can focus on thetactics that really move the
needle the most.
I'd love to hear what you thinkabout this episode. You can find
me on Twitter or Instagram atjklaus. Tag me. Let me know that
you're listening, but now let'slearn from Chris.

So I've always wanted to have the best
experience in life. And andthat'll cover everything from
travel personal stuff to careerand and all of it. And I just
always believed that there was,like, some loophole backdoor way
to get the best experiencewithout spending all of the
money. And one of the kind offormative stories in my hacking

(07:19):
adventure was I went to aboarding school. And I'd say,
like, almost everyone had anunlimited supply of parental
money except me and, like,probably 10% of the school.
So every night, people weregoing and ordering pizzas. And I
was like, if I order a pizzatonight, I won't have any money
for the rest of the month. Thenwhat if I wanna do something?
And so, I was like, how do Isolve this? And most people's

(07:42):
answer is like, well, I justdon't get the pizza.
And I was like, well, no. Like,there's gotta be So I ordered a
pizza and then I sold 6 of theslices and I ate 2 of them. And
I just sold the 6 slices for thecost of the pizza divided by 6.
And then I was like, oh, I atepizza for free tonight. And then
I could do that every singlenight.
And because I had the metabolismof a high schooler, it was like,
you could actually eat pizzaevery night and not look

(08:04):
ridiculous. If I did this now,it would be a horrible horrible
weight gain adventure. And sothat was something where I was
like, oh, wow. I wanted thepizza. I can now get the pizza,
and I don't have to pay for it.
If we did an entire story aboutthe chronicles of my youth and
and life, you you'd find allthese little things of I want
the thing, and I'm willing to dothe work to get the thing, but
there has to be a more efficientway to get the output. Often in

(08:26):
the form of saving time orsaving money or maybe saving
headache or or overhead.

Jay Clouse (08:31):
So I've kinda watched this from afar, and I've
really admired it because I'mthe type of person who feels
like he's riding a bicycle in1st gear on flat ground. Like,
I'm pedaling like hell, and I'mmoving forward. But you look at
it, it's like, that is superinefficient. And then I see guys
like you ride by in 3rd gear.I'm like, shit.
I didn't know that was anoption. So I want I wanna

(08:52):
understand how your brain worksa little bit. You said when you
got into podcasting, you wantedus to support you and your
family and be big and havepeople love it. So as much as
well as you can remember, whatwas the mental thought process
for next steps?

I think it probably goes back, and I wanna
set a little bit of a stage forpeople listening. It probably
goes back 10 years in that myentire career, I don't know.
Maybe I feel like I'm I guessI'm pretending I'm younger than
I am. Maybe it goes back 20years. But, like, the entire
career I've had, I've known thatI'd wanna do different endeavors
the entire time.
And so building relationships,adding value to people's lives,

(09:30):
kind of laid the groundwork for,hey, I'm launching a podcast,
and would you help support that?So out the gate, I had a
tremendous amount of supportfrom people who I've helped and
tried to add value to theirbusinesses, lives, projects,
etcetera, for my entire career.So I think that was a big piece
that started even before thepodcast came out.

Jay Clouse (09:52):
In terms of, like, I had support from people out of
the gate, what form did thatsupport take?

I started a company a handful of years ago,
almost a decade ago, with a guynamed Kevin Rose, who way back
in the day started this sitecalled Digg, which was kind of a
a Reddit like company at thetime, and kind of,
unfortunately, didn't work outas best as as anyone intended.
Kevin has millions of Twitterfollowers. I've been helping him
with tons of projects. We'd worktogether. When I worked for him,

(10:20):
I worked as hard as I could.
So when I launched a podcast, Iwas, like, hey, Kevin. I'm
thinking of launching a podcast.You know, he was, like, let me
tell everyone about it. He eveninvited me on his podcast. And
was, like, hey, Chris.
Talk about this podcast you'relaunching. And if you go back
and listen to that episode, thefunniest thing about it was I
didn't have a name at the time.And so he was, like, Chris, tell

(10:40):
me about this podcast you'relaunching. And I was, like,
Kevin, I don't have a name forit. And he was, like, well,
we'll put that in in post.
Go home and record somethingthat I can insert that answers
what's this and give it to me in2 days. So I had to name the
podcast in 2 days, which, youknow, was was a very stressful 2
days. But so that's an example.Just people retweeting things,
sharing things, adding it totheir newsletter, talking about

(11:02):
it. You know, there was nosecret silver bullet strategy.
It was just, you know, I thinkeveryone kind of gets 1 or 2
chances every 3 or 4 years toask their friends, family,
colleagues for a favor, And Ihad been storing all of those
favors for 10 plus years, anddecided now would be the time to
use it to see if this podcasthas legs. Because, you know,

(11:25):
there's 100 of thousands ofpodcasts that don't go anywhere.
And until you kind of breakthrough to a little, you know,
let's call it thousands ofdownloads a month, you know,
it's really hard to see it beinga business that could sustain
anything. And so I thought,let's ask for all the favors and
launch it into that that area.And if it doesn't work, it'll
just fall down.

(11:46):
And so my idea was, I'll do 8episodes. I'll do as big of a
launch as I possibly can, andeither people will like it, and
then I'll be excited by it andkeep going, or people won't. And
I'll see, like, the firstepisode got a ton of downloads,
and the second one got none, andthe third one got less and less
and less. I think I was luckythat I picked a topic that I was
so personally obsessed with,and, like, was just my entire

(12:09):
being in a show that, you know,it it kind of worked. And the
the downside to my strategy issometimes it takes, like, a lot
of years to build in your repsto feel like you've got
something ready for the world tosee.
And I think the downside ofdoing a big crazy launch is
that, you know, you if you don'thave that ready right away,

(12:30):
people are gonna get introducedto a less than ideal version of
your show. But I recorded, Ithink, 6 episodes. And the 6th
one was so I was, like, that'snumber 1. Like, I just knew
after that recording that it hadto be episode 1. And so that was
it.

Jay Clouse (12:47):
I guess, an underrated podcast launch tip,
by the way. I did the same thingwith this show. Like, my first
episode was Seth Godin and thenJames Clear. But those are
probably like somewhere betweenthe 6th and the 8th interviews
that I did. But man, I I wouldlove to hear this from you
actually.
Do people go back to your firstepisode a lot when they find the
show? Because I I find that on amonthly basis, my first two
episodes are still some of themost popular episodes of the

(13:08):
podcast. So

this data is a little skewed because I a friend
of mine is Tim Ferris, and Iwent on his podcast and did a 3
hour long interview where Iinterviewed Tim about everything
related to podcasting.

Jay Clouse (13:22):
Great episode.

And before that, Tim said, go give me an episode
I should listen to of your showso I could talk about it. And I
sent him 2, and he liked episode1. And he was like, this episode
was fantastic. And he toldeveryone to his, you know, close
to a 1000000 listeners, go checkout Chris' show. This episode
number 1 was fantastic.
He's like, the guest he had isjust everything you want in a

(13:45):
guest. And it was, like, youknow, it was a great endorsement
for the show, but that drove somuch traffic to episode 1 and
continues to that it's a littlebit I'm a little unclear how
much of people going back andlistening to number 1 is people
that wanna go back and hear thebeginning or people that heard
Tim Ferris' podcast, which couldbe a completely different, you

(14:06):
know, reason for that growth.Yeah.

Jay Clouse (14:08):
That's tough. Okay. Let's put that aside. A moment
ago, you said, you know, you'vebeen spending years in your
career adding value to people.And so you you build up, like,
these cards that you can playand ask for the favor.
This might sound like a stupidquestion. But what does it look
like to ask for a favor?

It would be, hey, I'm launching a podcast on
Friday. It would mean the worldto me if you could post
something about it. You canwrite anything you want, but I
wrote something for you to makeit easy. Feel free to tweak it,
change it, write whatever youwant. Anything is appreciated.
And if it doesn't feel likesomething you wanna do, no
worries.

Jay Clouse (14:44):
Is that a text message? Is it an email? If it's
an email, is it a bulk send? Isit a bunch of individual sends?

It's probably a text or a phone call. I find
that when you ask something tosomeone in person, they're more
likely to say yes. So if I wereto ask you if you do something
to support me and we're now liveon air, you're probably gonna
say yes because you don't wannasound sound rude. But if I send
you an email, it'd be mucheasier for you to ignore that
email or write back, I'm reallybusy this month or I'm not

(15:12):
willing to do it. So I think,you know, the closer you can get
to a live recorded environment,which prior to having a podcast
is probably an in person meetingor a phone call, I think the
better.

Jay Clouse (15:23):
I like asking these questions because I find a lot
of the folks in my audience, alot of creative people. I've
heard creative people describedas highly sensitive people who
are telling the story of whattheir experience of the world is
like and sharing it with therest of us. And so if you're a
highly sensitive person a lot ofpeople default to not making the

(15:45):
ask not asking for a favorbecause they feel like they are
imposing and it's not evenbecause they don't want to be
asked themselves which I thinkis probably a misconception
where they think, well, Iwouldn't wanna be asked, so I
won't do that. No. For somereason, we just think that we
are imposing.
And so we don't make the ask andwe don't get the benefit from
it. And these things compound,you know, the the ask to Tim to

(16:08):
do that podcast episode, notonly did that help with the
launch, I'm sure that'scontinuing to pay off over time,
even though you're notcontinuing to do that interview.
So it's something that, I reallyadmire about folks like yourself
who earn the right to ask andthen make the ask.

Yeah. I think to earn the right to ask is an
important thing. You don't wannajust find some person that you
know and be, like, hey, can youdo this thing for me, until
you've kind of built up enoughof you know, like, social
currency, if you will. And soone thing I did early on, which
is a strategy I think everyoneshould take on in whatever arena
they're playing in. And and youwere a both participant and

(16:49):
recipient in this whole thingwas when I got started, I was
like, I wanna learn everythingabout podcasting.
So I'm gonna go talk to everyoneI can and ask them questions and
try to ask good questions andimportant important few points.
I'd go listen to anything they'ddone on podcasting, so I wasn't
wasting their time asking themquestions they'd already
answered. And I think one of themost valuable things that

(17:11):
someone once told me, they askedme they were we're talking about
podcasting, and I can't evenremember what. Someone said, I
need to figure out how to dothat. And I was like, do you
want me to help?
And his response was, I have apersonal rule that I don't ask
people questions if I can findthe answer myself in less than
15 minutes. And I was like, Ilove that rule. Like, I wish the
world adopted that rule. So Itry really hard to make sure

(17:33):
that when I'm going to any ofthese conversations, I'm not
just going in being like, hey,Jay. How did you get started as
a creator?
Because I'm pretty sure you'vedone an episode answering that.
So I'd binge everything, ask thequestions. That was part 1. Part
2 is after I'd had 15, 20conversations, I started pulling
together all the insights fromthat, and I shared it back with

(17:57):
everyone. So, you know, I I puttogether, like, a little
presentation last year of somegrowth hacks I learned on
podcasting.
And I remember sending it to youand saying, hey, check this out.
It's great. That was onestrategy I have. So if you're
going to do 5 informationalinterviews, which I guess is the
like college kind of term whenyou're trying to get get a job.
But same concept, take all thelearnings and share it back to

(18:19):
everyone else.
Even just summarizing what youlearned from that per single
person. Can you imagine ifsomeone called you and said,
hey, can I pick your brain onwriting a newsletter? And you
you were an expert innewsletters, and you answered
all that. And they wrote back toyou and said, hey. I just wanted
to summarize the top fivetakeaways that I got from our
conversation about newslettergrowth.

(18:40):
You're giving this amazing giftto someone, which by the way, in
the future, they're gonna get anemail from someone else that
says, hey, can you talk aboutnewsletter growth? And they're
gonna say, hey, actually, hereare the top five takeaways that
someone had from a you know,like, you can give them
something that adds their valueto their life easily.

Jay Clouse (18:55):
I would love to hear how you think about and
prioritize content creationrelationship building and any
third thing that comes to mindbecause even just hearing your
answer here what I'm hearing isthere's a lot of consumption
that you're doing before youreach out to folks and have
conversations There's a lot ofconversations you're having then

(19:16):
there's time in sharing thatback to people. These are all
things that are outside therealm of traditional you know
quote unquote content creationthat are super high value high
leverage and I'm realizing Ihaven't created much time for so
I'd love to hear if these arelike things that you've noted
explicitly as priorities or isthis just kind of an implicit

(19:39):
way of operating but even stillhow much time are you spending
on these activities?

It's interesting because I I did an interview
about podcasting with anotherpodcaster named Danny Miranda,
and he he talked about how hisshow was a way for him to build
his network. And, you know, it'sa reason that he put so much
energy into flying to his guestsand recording in person because
he's really trying to buildrelationships with people. And

(20:04):
when I do my show, when I thinkabout the content I'm creating,
I will sacrifice everythingpersonal for the content. And
so, to the detriment of myrelationships, I've done
interviews where I'm like, Iknow that if I ask this
follow-up question, I will builda better relationship with this

(20:26):
person. However, I know that thefollow-up question I'll ask is
not gonna deliver what I want tothe listener in terms of
content.
Now, I might be wrong there.Maybe people want a little more
storytelling and everything. Butif you listen to my show, it's
like, how can I densely pack,like, as much knowledge about a

(20:46):
topic into, like, a 1 hourmaster class from a true expert
and break out all the strategiesand the tactics and the
individual specifics? It's nothow do we talk about some cool
story in your life. And so Iremember doing an interview.
And I I I actually would saymaybe I didn't do as well of a
job here delivering on thatpromise with a guy named Mike

(21:08):
Hayes, who I believe is acommander of SEAL team 2. And I
was like, the storytelling thatyou could get from someone who's
commanded a SEAL team isprobably we could fill hours.
But I was like, I'm here to talkabout the leadership lessons
that you got from this role sothat other people who are
leading teams and leadingcompanies can benefit. And yes,
we did some storytelling, but Ireally wanted to focus on the

(21:31):
tactics. And so, I don't think Ihave as good of a relationship
with the guests I've had on myshow as other podcast hosts
would because they went inperson, maybe.
And for me, I'm like, the reasonI can't go in person is because
I need time for other things,like building relationships.
And, like, going in person wouldtake more time. But I'll get the
same output for the show doingthe remote interview, I think.

(21:55):
And so when it comes to content,that's priority 1. Like,
delivering on the premise of theshow, which we don't have a
banter show.
We have, like, a chock full oftactical information show. But
that leaves time for me to goand really prioritize outside of
that building relationships. Andso, I I built a ton of

(22:16):
relationships in podcasting withsome of the tactics I've talked
about. I'm starting to meetpeople in other creative spaces.
I'm a member of your lab, soI've met lots of people in the
lab doing other interestingthings.
And so, it's kind of a balanceof outside of the content, I'm
willing to prioritize it. Withinthe content, I'm not. Similarly,

(22:36):
I have people that I know wouldbe big guests that I happen to
have in my network, but I justdon't think what they have to
say would fit the theme of theshow. And it drives me crazy
that, you know, someone with whowho has a very, let's say, like,
YouTube able and and, you know,name that would probably perform
really well for the algorithm.Someone with millions of

(22:57):
followers that might post it.
But, like, they just don't havetactics and strategies about
optimizing any aspect of yourlife. So I just don't have a
place for them in the show.Yeah. And even though it would
probably benefit myrelationship, you know, one of
the founders of, like, a massiveunicorn company that everyone
I'm sure listening has on theirphone was, like, I'd love to

(23:19):
come on your show sometime. AndI was, like, well, I just don't
know what we talk about.
And, like, I'm sure it would bea great relationship builder to
invite, you know, someone likethat on the show, but it just I
care about the content first.

Jay Clouse (23:32):
I I think it's a smart approach though because I
do see a lot of interview showsthat are clearly, like, guest
name and clout oriented thatit's difficult to package that
show as a premise that isgrowable. It's like hard to say
this is what the show is about.People who like this should
listen to this show or peoplewho are trying to learn this

(23:53):
should listen to this show. It'snot clear what you're tuning in
for. And I think it becomes verybinary in terms of the outcome
of that show over the long term.
It's either gonna be huge andit's gonna be like a school of
greatness type thing where it'slike we bring on big names who
have achieved great things allover the place and we talk to
them about everything Or it'sgonna go to 0 over time because

(24:15):
it's hard to hold an audience'sattention for a long period of
time, I think, if you have nonspecificity.

And how if you're out there trying to start
a podcast, how do youdifferentiate being a show
that's premises I interviewpeople about their success?
Like, there's thousands of showsdoing that. Almost anyone that
you're talking to has been onmany of those shows. So I tell
everyone, like, tell me in asentence what your show is that
makes it very clear that it'snot what a lot of other shows

(24:44):
are. And maybe maybe it needs tobe 2 or 3 sentences, but, like,
I wanna hear from your trailerthat you're not we're just like
diary of a CEO, but we're justnot diary of a CEO.
Like, okay.

Jay Clouse (24:55):
Well We just have less access and less resources.
So

that's what I wanna push people to to do is
think, what can I dodifferently? And what can make
my show unique and and own that?And at the expense of that
comes, you're probably not gonnasome other area. For me, it's,
you know, the if you wannareally pull out all the tactics,
it means when I hear someonemention something that could be
an interesting story, but I alsoknow there's, like, one other

(25:23):
important tactic that they'revery good at, I pivot to the
tactic and not ask them aquestion about their family,
which, you know, those kinds ofquestions build better
relationships.

Jay Clouse (25:33):
After a quick break, Chris and I talk about his
approach to mastering newplatforms. And later, we dig
into the specifics of hispodcast growth experiments. So
stick around. We'll be rightback. And now back to my
conversation with ChrisHutchins.
Tell me if this is true aboutyou or not. I I have the sense
that when you have an idea oryou set your sights on

(25:55):
something, it becomes a veryintense like, you you focus very
intensely in that direction. Forexample, you said you joined the
lab. Emilia, when you joined,like, who can I talk to you
about x y or z? And you hadthose conversations and, like,
you get into something, youcommit to it, you move through
it quickly.
Is that is that sound fair? Doesthat sound like a fair
classification?

So if anyone listening goes to listen to all
the hacks, you'll see lots ofreviews. You you don't see
downloads on podcast, but thereare, you know, tens of thousands
of them every episode. And thenyou go to YouTube and you're
like, wow. Couple 100. What'sgoing on there?
And part of the reason is that Iknow there are so many things
I'm not doing well on YouTube,intentionally. Like, I'm fully

(26:36):
aware. But right now, I tell myproducer and editor, I'm like,
just edit the video and put iton YouTube. I don't care what
the title is, I don't care whatthe thumbnail is, just put it up
there because I don't wanna nothave it up there, but I don't
care. Because I know that if Istart caring about YouTube, I
will not be able to stop atconsuming every possible bit of
information about YouTube andgoing so deep on it, and I'm not

(26:59):
ready for that project to tocommence.
Yeah. Because I know I won't beable to control myself from
going as all in as possible.And, you know, I started with
the podcast. Next thing Ifocused on was the newsletter.
And I know that social.
I know that, you know, video andclips and threads, and there's

(27:20):
lots of other things I should bedoing. I know that when I want
to tackle those, I willhopefully do a great job, but it
will take a lot of energy, and Ijust don't have the time for a
new project yet.

Jay Clouse (27:31):
But it's such a it's such a skill because I know you
listen to, Invest Like the Best,Patrick O'Shaughnessy Show. Do
you recall the episode of BoydVarty called Live Like a
Tracker? I think it was called.

I do not.

Jay Clouse (27:43):
This is guy. He grew up in like the bush and he
really relates a lot of life towhat it's like to track a lion
in Africa. And something fromthat episode that I think about
all the time is he describeslions and their animals of prey.
He's like, they have 2 speeds.They're going at a 100% to

(28:05):
capture their prey, get thekill, or they are resting 100%.
And I see people who have thatsame, like, mentality and
approach things in that way, atleast in broad strokes. And I
realized that I am almostcompletely opposite, where I've,
like, set my life up to beoperating at higher than average
100% of the time. And I thinkI'm really missing out on some

(28:28):
of the the gains that come fromthe top level of intensity. But
it would come with a trade offof doing less, if that makes

sense. I listened to one of your retros
recently, and I was like, god. Ihad the opposite feeling though.
I was like, gosh. Jay's doingall these things.
Why am I not doing all thethings? He's doing everything.
I'm so far behind. I'm not doingany of the things. So I had the
opposite feeling, looking at youthinking I was I was leaving all
these opportunities on thetable.
I don't have courses, you know,like I'm not you you were like,

(28:59):
I wanna post on LinkedIn everyday or something. I was like, oh
my god. Every day. I haven'teven posted on LinkedIn yet. So
I am leaving things on the tablebecause my strategy is become
like a a master of a platformbefore attacking it.
And I do think there's analternative, which is the kind
of Facebook, ship fast, breakthings strategy of just getting

(29:21):
something out there and testingit. And so I have to scale
myself back from doing that, butI'm depth your breadth.

Jay Clouse (29:29):
I think you're taking the right approach though
because especially given theother things that we know about
your approach and yourpersonality because you would be
able to conquer one game. We'llcall it podcasting. And then
that gives you the asset thatyou can basically barter with
somebody on some other platform.You'll be like hey you're
getting into podcasting. Let meteach you how to be really great

(29:50):
at podcasting.
Let me even give you a leg upbecause I'm going to shout you
out of my podcast or whateverchannel that I have. We see this
a lot with social media inparticular where somebody will
go and crush Linkedin and thenthey say next I wanna take on
Twitter. So they find someonewho's crushed Twitter but has no
Linkedin audience and theybasically barter across that and
that's such a faster way ofbecoming multichannel at a high

(30:13):
level than trying to brute forceall of them at once, which has
been my approach thus far.

It's funny because you you say that because
I'm talking to a friend in,like, the medical field who's
just like a very well connecteddoctor. That's like, if if you
ever have a medical problem, youwanna know this person. I'm
bartering podcasting knowledgebecause he's asked a few people
and they were all like, go talkto Chris. He he, like, if you
are trying to launch and grow apodcast, talk to Chris. But I'm
not even doing it for socialmedia help.

(30:39):
I'm doing it for, like, somefuture situation where I have
some weird disease. And I'm,like, I know that the doctor
that knows every doctor in theBay Area, like, you know, will
pick up my phone call because Ihelped him with his podcast.
Yeah. And so and by the way, Imight never get that disease.
You know?
Like, it might it it's a goodrelationship to have, but I it's
not like a quid pro quonecessarily. It's just, you

(31:02):
know, you're getting to meetinteresting people if you're at
that level in one arena. But itmeans that my social following I
noticed you were like, this youtrack the growth of all your
social channels. And I'm like,I'm glad I don't because they
just it would be a flat line. SoI do think that at a point,
there's kind of 2 versions ofwhat you execute.

(31:25):
1 is execute a strategy thatworks, and then go and optimize
that strategy. And that's whereI've started pivoting to. So for
YouTube, it's like, the strategythat works is post your videos
on YouTube. We could probablytweak the thumbnails. We could
probably tweak tweak thedescriptions.
I've started doing, like,slightly punchier intros that I
think I picked up from a episodeof this show. And I'm not gonna

(31:46):
go all in, but I'm gonna make ahandful of changes to try to
level up where we're at. Let'spick 2 or 3 clips and post
those, even if they're not thebest clip designed the best way.
And then if I want, I can godeeper on each on each one later
to improve it. But there is an80 20 to it that I think I avoid
by trying to get to, like, the955.

(32:08):
But there is a certain advantageif you can be amongst the top
experts in any field that youget from other people wanting to
connect with you and trade withyou and barter with you because
you have that extra 15% ofknowledge that most people don't
have.

Jay Clouse (32:26):
Well, I wanna get into some of the nerdery that is
the test you've done on podcastgrowth. But before we dive into,
like, the specific tests andsome of the data we've seen and
what's worked well for you onPodcast Growth, at a high level,
do you think that these smalltests are more impactful than
just having relationships andcalling in favors?

I think that neither of them matter as much
as just having good content. SoI don't think you know how to
use the favors without doing thetest. So we could talk a little
bit about guesting versus crosspromoting versus other stuff.
The only reason I know what theright favor to ask is is because
I've been doing theexperimentation to learn what
moves the needle. And so, andyou can only ask so many favors.

(33:13):
So I would say a lot of what I'mdoing now is not calling in
favors. I think I called in alot of favors when I launched
the show, and I kinda used themall up. Now it's, well, I've
learned what works. I know it'svaluable to me. I know might
know what's valuable to someoneelse.
I can even convince them thatthis thing that I know is
valuable to both of us issomething they can should
consider that they weren'tconsidering because I know it

(33:34):
will work. So I think you haveto understand those tactics and
and understand the results. Andby the way, I'm happy to just
share them to save people a lotof time. I think the entire
premise of my existence and myshow is, like and by the way, my
show is not about podcasting.Right?
It's about, like, travel andmoney and life and negotiating
and health, all these things.And I just go as deep as

(33:56):
possible. And since I've donethat on one area, let's just
share it and save people sometime.

Jay Clouse (34:01):
Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. And it's a good call
out to say, also, mostimportantly, the content has to
be good. I feel like a lot oftimes on shows like mine, we
focus on all the things aroundthe content to say, how do we
grow this?
And it's really making theassumption that the content
itself is even worthy of beinggrown, which is a bold
assumption to make because thebar for quality content gets

(34:25):
higher all the time. And oddsare, if you're wondering, is my
content good enough to spread orworthy of that? The answer might
be no. It might be, like, let'sget back to the lab and make
make some really good. I mean,the lab, like, in in the
metaphorical sense and makestuff that's that's better.
Okay. Well, let's let's talkabout some of these experiments

(34:46):
that you've run because youlaunched a show, you're now full
in on this as a creator. Thepodcast is the core of it. You
want this to support you andyour family. So how did you go
about testing these differentavenues for growing all the
hacks?

So first off, podcasting is a stressful place
to test. So if you're in anyother creator platform, I'm
gonna try to make these lessonsrelevant to any platform, but
they'll be coming from apodcasting world. It is just
exponentially harder because youget no information. I'm loving
going into newsletters right nowbecause I'm like, oh, I know
that this person subscribed, andthen opened this email, and then

(35:19):
bought this thing, and, youknow, then clicked a link. On
podcasting, I'm like, I know howmany people listened, and I know
what platform they listened on,but I have no idea if they're
gonna listen next week.
And by next week, I won't knowif they're the same person that
listened the week before. So itis very very hard. However, the

(35:41):
one key component that I thinkmakes a lot of tracking
possible. I think there's like 2big things that I do that lots
of people do 1, very few peopledo the other. Is I'm just doing
the best I can to track all thethings I'm doing.
So on the audio side, I'm usinga lot of things from Chartable,
which is an analytics platformthat I think there's a free

(36:02):
version of and a paid versionpaid version of. If you use the
megaphone hosting provider, thepaid version is free. And they
do a really good job at usingthe IP address data from people
listening to the podcast, andletting you do interesting stuff
with it. And I think one of theunique things about podcasting
is, when you have video, if youupload your video on YouTube,

(36:25):
like, you don't like, they'rewatching on YouTube and the
video is on YouTube. When youupload your audio podcast to
whatever hosting provider youuse, everyone, whether they're
on Apple Podcasts or Spotify orOvercast or Google Podcasts,
they're all consuming the audiofile that's hosted on your
hosting platform.
So you actually get a lot ofinformation from the source,

(36:47):
whereas on most other mediums,you've gotta go put the content
on a bunch of sites. So youactually get a full
comprehensive picture ofeveryone across every site
that's listening. And becauseyou get their IP address, which
I assume everyone's technical,but I probably shouldn't since I
kinda grew up in, you know,Silicon Valley startup world,
which is just a, you know, anumber associated with your your

(37:09):
Internet service provider atyour house. So, like, you if
you're at home on Wi Fi with 10devices, as far as my hosting
provider knows, you're all thesame IP address. If you leave
your house and you get off yourWiFi, your cell phone now has an
IP address.
If you go to school and you jointheir WiFi, now you have a
different IP address. So it'snot a perfect solution, but at
least you get some ability tosee who that person is. And so,

(37:34):
the most important ways that Iuse those analytics are with
link tracking and with crosspromotion. So with link
tracking, you say, hey, I wantsomeone to share this podcast,
and they can you can give them alink that'll redirect anywhere
you want. Could redirect toApple.
It could redirect to Spotify. Itcould redirect to your website.
It could redirect to Apple foriPhones and, you know, Google

(37:56):
Podcasts for Androids. And whensomeone clicks that link,
Chartable says, what IP address?Click the link.
And then it looks at all thepeople that downloaded the
episodes and played the episodesof your show, and did did that
same IP address listen. So youcan start to say, oh, I'm gonna
sponsor a newsletter. Got a 100clicks, nobody listened. Not

(38:16):
good. I'm gonna put my podcastin my TikTok link in bio, and
make a bunch of video shorts,which is an experiment I ran.
And I was like, I wonder howmany people are gonna go listen
to my podcast after I got Idon't know. It felt like,
probably close to a 1000000, 100of 1000 of views on TikTok. It
was like, a very small numberthat you could probably it's

(38:37):
probably like 5 or 10 people. SoI was like, wow. Link in bio on
TikTok, not converting verywell.
Now, could someone have gone toSpotify and searched? Yes. So
it's not a perfect answer, butthat's one path. I also use it
on shows. Maybe I'll send you a,a smart promo, which is a way to
say, hey, did the IP address ofanyone listening to our

(38:58):
conversation right now, go checkout all the hacks?
And it'll look, and over 30 dayssay, wow. Some percentage of the
people listening did. And I'llget an idea. Should I go on more
podcasts? And I'll I'll actuallytrack it.
I'll be like, should I go onmore podcasts and talk about
podcasting and creator life? Orshould I go on more podcasts and
talk about life hacks and thatfinancial optimization and

(39:21):
credit card points and miles? Iwould guess that the latter
would perform better since it'scloser aligned to the topic of
my show.

Jay Clouse (39:29):
This was super well explained. This even I mean, I
use Chartable and I do a lot ofthe stuff. And this has helped
close some connections for me toeven better understand how to
use these things. So of thedifferent tests you've run and
it sounds like you're creating alot of Chartable links. Like,
essentially, people listen tothis, it's kinda like creating a
Bitly link.

Yeah. I'm also creating a lot of Bitly links.
The second piece of all of thisis, I use a site called PodPage,
which if you have a podcast,you're not using PodPage to host
your podcast's website. Itdoesn't have to be your brand's
website, but your podcast'swebsite, I think you're doing it
wrong. And I could, you know, Icould go down a 1000000 lists
here about why, maybe I shouldgo make a video about why, but

(40:11):
one of the features is that andI'm sure you could do this with
WordPress and anything else.
But one of the features I likeis anytime I'm creating a link
to share, I just create all thehacks.com/something. I redirect
it to a Bitly link where I cantrack clicks, and that Bitly
link goes to wherever I wannasend people. And so whenever I
announce sponsors, I say, hey,go to all the hacks.com/8 sleep,

(40:35):
which is a sponsor of mine. Andpeople will go to that link, and
I'll know how many peopleclicked on that link, or went to
it, you know, by typing it intotheir browser. So I get a sense,
let's try a few different adreads and see what works.
Or let's tell people to sign upfor my newsletter. And you might
think that all thehacks.com/newsletter is the
landing page, but in fact, it isa redirect to all the

(40:58):
hacks.com/blog, which is where Iactually host the newsletter, so
that I can track the links onthat redirect, specifically ones
that I announce on the show.Maybe someday I wanna try a new
experiment and go to all thehacks.com/email, and track that
one separately so I could get asense of when I talk about
certain things, what do peopleclick click on or go to? What

(41:19):
works? What doesn't work?
So yes, I'm creating lots ofthem. I think I have 100 of, you
know, short, you know, prettythey call them pretty redirects
on PodPage. I have 100 of those,100 of Bitly links, 100 of smart
promos and smart links. And it'sled to some really interesting
discoveries. And one that Ishared with you earlier, which,

(41:39):
at least to me blew my mind isevery time I have an episode and
I have a sponsor, I say, hey,let me tell you about the
sponsor.
I talk about it for a minute,and I tell people where to go.
And so, let's take an example ofCopilot, which is my favorite
app for tracking expenses. It'sa iOS Mac only app, so sorry
Android users. And I'll say, ifyou wanna check out Copilot, and

(42:02):
if you wanna get a deal, becausewe've got an awesome deal, go to
all the hacks.com/copilot. AndI'll say that in the episode.
Now, I'll also put that in theshow notes. So if you've ever
listened to a podcast, you'relistening to a podcast right
now. You click down and look atthe episode, you'll see it
written out. I put a differentURL in the show notes and I went
and saw how many people wereclicking on the links in the

(42:24):
show notes versus how manypeople were listening to the
audio and just typing in all thehacks.com/copilot on the
website. And it was twice asmany people were clicking on the
link in the show notes as goingto the URL, which made me think,
wow.
Sometimes I run ad campaignsacross my entire catalog of
episodes dynamically, but I'mnot putting any links in the

(42:46):
show notes. I should go backmanually and add all those show
notes every time I run one ofthose campaigns. Sure, it might
take me 20 minutes to gomanually add all those links,
but if it's result if it makesup 2 thirds of the traffic, I
could really outperform forsponsors. So that's something
that I started doing anytime Irun those campaigns because I
know how important it is.

Jay Clouse (43:06):
This is in the weeds. But when you do your ad
reads, do you say go to all thehacks.com/copilot? Do you also
say or check the link in theshow notes? Do you make a call
to action to check the link inthe show notes?

I actually I did maybe a year ago, and I stopped.
But, and this isn't the same,but at the end of every episode,
after the last ad, not the endof the episode, but the end of
the last ad, I say, if you wantlinks to all the promo codes,
deals, coupons, everything fromall of our partners, go to all
the hacks.com/deals, which isnot the show notes. It's a 3rd

(43:38):
page where we have all of ourdeals. So if you go there,
you'll see here are all of ourpartners. Here's all the promo
codes, the coupons, and we tryto get good deals, so they're
all there.
And I track that separately.That was like 10%, and then it
was like 60% click and 30% go tothe URL. So the URL did convert
higher. Higher conversion. So Iwent to one of my part brands

(44:01):
and I said, hey, can we tradedata?
You know the conversion rates. Iknow the click rates. Let's
trade data so that we can try tofigure out how we make our
relationship perform better. Andit was like people that typed in
the URL had a little higherintent, so they converted
better. Mhmm.
But clicks are still prettyvaluable. So yeah. Well, the the

Jay Clouse (44:19):
other insight from that that I hear is listeners
have an assumption that thelinks you share are in the show
notes even though you haven'texplicitly told them that that
sponsor link is in the shownotes. For them to go seek out
in the show notes versus go typeit in, that's interesting.
Because I've always I've I'vereally, like, assumed people
aren't looking at the show notesmost of the time.

Me too. I still did them. I don't know why. I
put very detailed show noteswith all the links to everything
we talk about. You know, anauthor bio.
I have clickable, chapters inSpotify. And I was like, I I
wanted to do it because I wantedto do what's what I thought was
best, but I assume no one usedit. And now I'm like, wow. I was
totally wrong. And so I've beentelling all these podcasters I

(45:02):
know, this is a good example torewind a little bit.
I'd email podcasters I know. I'dgo to their podcast and I'd look
at their show notes and say,hey. I noticed you don't put
links to your sponsors in yourshow notes. I just ran this
experiment and found that 2thirds of the links or the
clicks for my sponsors arecoming from the show notes. You
should probably consider doingthis and see if you see an
uptick.

(45:23):
And then one friend of mine hosta podcast. He did it. He was
like, wow. I saw an uptick inperformance for my sponsors.
It's like, yeah.
So anytime I'm learningsomething, I'm like, how do I
get that information back toother people?

Jay Clouse (45:35):
After one more quick break, Chris and I dig into his
specific podcast growthexperiments. You'll wanna hear
this, so stick around. We'll beright back. And now, please
enjoy the rest of myconversation with Chris Hudgins.
So from your copious linkproduction and tests, what are
some of the other insightsyou've had when it comes to,

(45:55):
growth experiments?

I think an interesting one is it is wildly
more valuable to target peopleon platforms that are the exact
same as yours or closer toyours. So podcasting, for
example, if if we do somethingcross promotional, it's going to
perform a lot better than if Ido something cross promotional

(46:17):
with a newsletter, which isgonna do even better than if I
cross promo with someone thatdoes Twitter or Instagram or
TikTok because of the therelationship they have and the
type of the content that theirfollowers are used to consuming.
Furthermore, if you can be aguest on a podcast instead of
just cross promote with apodcast, I found that it does

(46:40):
anywhere from 10 to 40 timesbetter. And that's not 10

Jay Clouse (46:45):
to 40%. That's 10 to 40 times better.

Yeah. Like, I when I when I run a cross promo,
it'll convert somewhere between0.1 to, let's say, 0.8 or 0.9
percent of the audience of ashow. Meaning, you know,
slightly less than 1% might comeover and try out my show of
people that have never tried itout before. So these are brand

(47:09):
new listeners. And when I do across promo or sorry.
When I do a guest spot, it canbe as high as 4% of the audience
of that show comes over. Andthen one time, I did a episode
where a host and I were friends,and we recorded an episode on
each other's platforms. Andremind me to tell you about this

(47:30):
strategy, because I think it's agreat guesting strategy. And
that did just as well. That didreally well also.
We recorded an episode togetherand put it on both feeds. And I
thought maybe it wouldn'tbecause people had already heard
the same content. But it goesback to that guessing. It's
people wanna hear you for anhour, not hear you for a minute.
Yeah.
Because at the end of the day, Ithink a lot of times podcasters

(47:50):
forget that people are comingfor the host. Like, the the
topic has been talked about onother shows. The guest has been
interviewed on other shows. Thething that's gonna keep someone
listening is that they like thehost's perspective, because
that's the only thing they'regonna get that's consistent the
next time. And so you've gottaremember that people need to
like you.
This is entertainment. As muchas it is information, as much as

(48:13):
it is ink is content, it's gottakeep you entertained. It's gotta
keep you, like, hooked. And theonly person that's gonna do that
well is the host. And so, if youhave someone else saying if
you're on a your show saying,hey, I really love this other
show.
Check it out. That's great. Butif if someone can hear the host
of that other show and likethem, it's gonna do so much

(48:34):
better. But there are somepeople that think, gosh, I don't
know if I have the credibilityto go on some shows. And
something I've managed to do,once with Tim Ferris, once on
the Bigger Pockets Real EstateShow, and and I respect him for
saying this.
I I sent him a note and I said Isent him, like, 20 questions
about podcasting. None of whichI'd found him answered publicly.

(48:54):
And my 21st question was, and bythe way, could I come on your
show as a guest? And heimmediately wrote back within 2
minutes and he was like, werethe 20 questions fake just
because you felt like you neededto ask me something to be able
to get to the 21st question?

Jay Clouse (49:10):
And I was,

like, no. You don't have to have me on your
show, but I really wanna knowthe answers to these questions.
And he was, like, well, I'll behonest. Right now, where I am in
my life, I'm not that interestedin, like, all the optimizations
of credit cards, points andmiles, and deals and stuff,
which makes sense. Tim has a lotof money and maybe doesn't have
to optimize for those things.
But he's like, but I always getemails from people asking how I

(49:32):
grew my podcast. And so whydon't you ask me those 20
questions on air as the host ofthe Tim Ferriss Show, and we'll
talk about podcasting.Naturally, your show will come
up, but I'm not that interestedin interviewing you. And I was
like, great. That performedreally well, drove a lot of
people to my audience, which wasawesome.
I learned a ton. You can toobecause that episode is public.

(49:54):
Anyone can go listen to it on myor his feed. But I tried that
strategy again. There's apodcast called Bigger Pockets
Real Estate.
Really big show. Probably, thebiggest real estate podcast out
there. You know, I've got atarget. I'm like, I wanna go on
some of the biggest shows andadd value so people wanna come
listen to my show. But I justdon't have a lot of knowledge
about real estate.
So I was like, how do I but Iknew someone that worked at

(50:16):
BiggerPockets. So I was like, Ihave the end, but I don't have
the strategy. And I just said, Iwanna do an episode about
optimizing the home buyingexperience. Your hosts know real
estate so well. Could Iinterview your hosts and we'll
air the episode on both of ourfeeds?
And it's great content for them.Anyone listening that's a

(50:37):
content creator knows that,like, coming up with ideas for
content and prepping them andplanning them, it's a lot of
work. So if you go to anothercontent creator and say, hey,
I'm gonna plan an episode foryou. It's gonna be awesome. I'm
gonna put hours of work into it.
That's great. So we did this. Itperformed so well for both of
our shows. And I've I managed toeffectively get a guest spot on

(50:58):
a show that I have noqualification being a guest on
because I kind of went on as ahost.

Jay Clouse (51:05):
Alright. Let me recap some of these things. This
is so good. One One thing thatyou said kind of in passing and
I'll make sure people understoodwhat you mean. You said it makes
more sense to basically haveyour strategy in the same
medium.
And the translation of that isif you're trying to get podcast
followers, subscribers, you wantto be doing marketing efforts in
podcasting. It's more effectiveto cross promote or guest or do

(51:28):
some sort of collaboration withanother podcaster because that
audience is already in audio andget them to transfer to your
audio than to do an emailcampaign trying to get podcast
listeners. Yeah. Second thingyou said was, guesting is 10 to
40 times more impactful thancross promotions. And we've

(51:48):
we've really been sold aspodcasters like cross
promotions.
That's like the silver bullet,which I think may have been true
at some point in time, but Ithink it's less effective as
more and more shows do it. Andthen you said a strategy for
doing a guest swap is basicallyto co create a piece of content
together that you can both airon each other's feeds.

Or even you create it for the like Yeah. Try
to make it as little amount ofwork for someone else as
possible. And sometimes, I'llI'll put a twist in a little bit
of this. I did a show with RamitSethi, and I said, hey, I'm
gonna have you on my show. Youdon't have I've tried to pitch a
guest swap.
Right? Why don't I come on yourshow? Why don't you come on my
show? A really cool advantagehere, and this is applies across

(52:29):
all platforms, is that the lessyou're just swapping
impressions, the less people askabout download numbers. So you
say, hey, why don't I guest onyour show, you guest on my show.
It's not about the number ofdownloads. Whereas if you say,
why don't I air 20,000impressions? It just has to be
about the numbers, just how howhow it is. And so but he doesn't

(52:50):
have guests. So I was like, hey,why don't you come on my show,
and then it'd be awesome if youcould just do a cross promo on
your show.
So I turn, you know, at aminimum even though I was gonna
have him on as a guest anyways,why not make the ask? He could
just say no, but maybe he couldsay yes. Or Sahil Bloom, you've
had him on your show. I said,hey, I'd love to have you on the

(53:11):
show. I know you don't have apodcast anymore.
But if you could at least, youknow, promo the podcast in your
newsletter, that would beawesome. Or maybe I should have
said, if you could promo mynewsletter in your newsletter
Yeah. It would have been evenbetter. So always make the ask.
But I love giving people an outthat makes it feel like you're
not forcing their hand.
It's like, I'd love if you coulddo this. If not, totally

(53:31):
understand.

Jay Clouse (53:32):
Yeah.

And usually, you get the same result. But if the
person wants to say no, they'regonna feel better about saying
no. And it doesn't, like,tarnish your relationship with
that person.

Jay Clouse (53:43):
Yeah. Something I found to be effective, but
difficult to replicate. Peoplewho are getting new into
podcasting new, they have thisassumption. Well, if I have a
big name, not only will thatdraw people who are interested
in that name, but maybe thatperson will share it. And that's
gonna be my golden ticket.
In my experience, a lot ofpeople who are like professional
interviewees, they don't reallyhave interest in sharing every,

(54:05):
appearance they do on a podcastbecause that would become all of
their content. However, folksthat are on a sharp upwards
trajectory who have not done alot of guesting yet, there's
some real sweet spot there. Myfriend, Chanel, she has a great
newsletter called Growth andReverse. She was on the show a
couple months ago. And that showis, I believe, the number one

(54:25):
most popular show, at least onSpotify, that I've ever done.
It outranks Seth Godin and JamesClear. And it was because she
was excited to share it becauseshe hadn't been doing much
guesting. Her audience is on a asharp upwards trajectory, and
they love her work. So they'reexcited to listen to it. And a
similar thing happened withDickie Bush when he was just
starting ship 30 for 30.

(54:46):
So there's like this this inbetween area where, yeah, if you
find someone that does have anaudience, but they have not yet
really done much publicly, thatcan really have an impact.

Yes. I found that the bigger the name the
value of having a really bigname guest is not that they're
gonna share the episode. It'snot even at least on podcasting
that it's gonna magically, like,hit the algorithm because on
podcasting, there is noalgorithm. And it didn't even
work on YouTube, by the way, forbig name guest. Like, it even
though I don't have a hugechannel, it didn't hit that

(55:18):
algorithm.
Yep. I think because mostYouTube channel most people on
YouTube are not looking for a 1hour long interview that's not
very visually interesting.Preach. But then I've done
episodes with people that no oneknows. Forget even whether they
shared it or not.
I by the way, totally agree withyour strategy. Finding people
with smaller, loyal, excitedaudiences that don't get enough.

(55:40):
They want more of the personthat they're listening to,
reading from, etcetera. Greatstrategy. But I've had episodes
with that didn't get shared bythe guest, but where the guest
was just so good at the topicthat the episode did incredibly
well.
Far better than episodes withreally well known people. I did
an episode with Tony Hawk who Iimagine anyone listening knows.

(56:03):
But, like, the content wasn't asgood as I wanted it to be.
Partially, because I think TonyHawk is just a savant in
skateboarding and just isn't asintentional. As much as you and
I are like, let's research allthese things and let's try to be
experts.
He's like, why just skateboard?And I just happen to be very
good at it. And I just try hardand like so he couldn't
articulate a lot of tactics thatsomeone could replicate because

(56:25):
he's it was entertaining. It wasgreat. But the one thing it did
do is now when I'm trying to getsomeone to come on the show, I
can say, we've had on guestslike Tony Hawk.
And people are like, oh, ifyou've had on that really big
name guest, you probably, youknow, I I probably should go on
that show. So Yeah. My rule isget 3 big name guests if

(56:47):
possible because it will helprecruiting other guests. And
after that, make a 100% of yourdecisions based on whether they
are going to create incrediblecontent. Or if they're so big
that they'll push down the thethe least of the 3 big name
guests and be the new numberone.
So I don't know if Obama hastactics, but, like, a former

(57:08):
president? Sure. I'll say yes.And and I think that would
really help recruit any otherguest in the future.

Jay Clouse (57:15):
I do see that some folks, they take that guest name
strategy and then they almostlike keyword stuff the
description of their show. And Idon't know how effective that
is. You know, where you're likethat your show description
you're cramming in a bunch ofguests that you think people
might be searching for. I don'tknow if that works well in like
a Spotify search or an Applepodcast search, but I do see a

(57:36):
lot of people at least tryingit.

So, I can tell you that that strategy does not
work on Apple. Because Appledoes not index the show
description. Spotify does, allthe other platforms do. Not all,
but most of the other platforms,Castbox, Overcast, Google
Podcasts, Player FM do. Butthere are Apple is, for my
audience, the number oneplatform for the podcast, and

(57:59):
they don't index description.
So the things that you can focuson, title, author, episode
title. And then the 5051 ischannel description and
everything else doesn't matter.The description of your episode,
only 4.3% of podcast listenersuse an app that searches the

(58:20):
episode description. So thechannel description is still
there for Spotify, but reallythe most important thing that
you can title is the title.Which is tough because you don't
want your show to be creatorscience colon YouTube podcasting
newsletter.
Like, so, SEO for podcasting isreally really tough. But, I'm

(58:42):
excited to spend a little bitmore time. I've never really
thought of my podcast website,which is just all the hacks.com,
as like a blog. So I haven'tthought about it from the
strategy that most bloggers doof SEO and everything. But, I
was playing around on PodPage,and either a released or soon to
be released beta feature is onevery single episode.

(59:07):
PodPage is now analyzing all ofyour keywords and your SEO stuff
and he's doing the site is doinga SEO analysis for every
episode. So I want this isanother thing. I wanna spend a
little more time digging intowhether focusing on SEO could
impact the podcast. But knowingthat I only have the title and,

(59:30):
you know, the episode title toto do that from is tough. But
the episode title, if you lookat, a Tim Ferris show episode,
you'll notice I'm looking at themost recent one.
Doctor Shirley Sarman, alegendary PT, does a deep dive
on Tim's low back issues,teaches how to unlearn painful
patterns, talks about movementas medicine or poison and more.

(59:52):
That is a very long podcasttitle, but I can tell you that
the podcast episode titles areindexed by everyone. So maybe
there is an argument to havingreally long podcast titles
because you can pull in a lot ofthe keywords from there.

Jay Clouse (01:00:07):
I was wondering about that because part of me,
whether it's episode titles oremail subject lines, there's a
point of truncation in a lot ofplaces. Right? And so a lot of
times, I'm I'm trying to playthe game of I wanna make sure
everything is seen pretruncation or at least
everything pre truncation shouldbe compelling. I think that's
probably the strategy to say weknow truncation happens. Doesn't

(01:00:30):
mean not to go beyond the pointof truncation, but just make it
so that everything pretruncation makes sense and is
compelling.
But doing more descriptivekeywords in episode titles
sounds like then would be asmart strategy. And I wasn't
sure if that was a strategydecision on the part of people
like Tim or if that was like anartifact of just how we used to

(01:00:51):
do it and that habit haspersisted.

Chris Hutchins (01:00:54):
Yeah. I don't know the actual answer there.
I've no. I probably I probablyshould have asked that in our 3
hour podcast episode abouttitle. But, it's at least
something that might matter.
But the description thing, itmight it does matter on Spotify.
So if you're trying to grow onSpotify or your audience is more
in line with Spotify's audience,which I found that the Apple

(01:01:17):
audience, and this is probablyno surprise, like, the Apple
audience probably skews a littleolder and a little higher net
worth than, you know, the nonApple audience. And for my show
at least, I can tell you afterApple and Spotify, the biggest
player is overcast with 4%. So,like, Spotify and Apple, like,

(01:01:40):
dominate the entire market. ButI have friends whose shows are
70% Spotify.
So if you play in the Spotifydemographic more, maybe the the
the show description could bebetter better keyworded. And I
haven't played enough there, butI probably should consider it.

Something we didn't touch on when we're talking
about cross promotions, guestingis feed drops, where you
basically place an entireepisode of your show in the feed
of another related show. Haveyou tested that much?

So the problem is I'm not necessarily opposed
to doing this. But I'll go backto what I said before, which is
like the content is the mostimportant thing. And so I'm
really not interested in anystrategy that would, you know,
put anything put the contentdown. So maybe if I found an I

(01:02:27):
haven't done it, to be clear. IfI I have done the strategy of me
and another podcaster will co coproduce something and place it
in both feeds, that I have done.
I have done I went on as a gueston another show and took the
interview of me and put it in myshow. But I have not just put an
episode from another personabout another topic completely

(01:02:50):
unrelated to me or the show andput it in my feed. And part of
the reason is that, I just Idon't know if that's what I
would want as a listener. Yeah.Unless it was done very very
thoughtfully.
And I have heard, there's apodcast I called the Mad
Fientist. And I believe, and Icould be wrong, but I believe

(01:03:15):
there was an episode where hewas like, I heard this interview
with so and so, and it was sogood. The guy asked the host of
this podcast asked everyquestion I would have asked.
That I thought, why would Iwaste my time asking this person
to go do another interview whereI would ask the same questions
they've already been asked? Andso instead, I emailed the host

(01:03:38):
and said, would you mind if Ijust aired your interview on my
feed?
And that's something I'veconsidered. Same. And and and
would do it as a swap. Right?Hey, air this on my feed.
And then in return, maybe you'lldo some cross promos for me.
Maybe you'll have me on as aguest. Maybe so that is a
strategy that's in my, like, totest soon, but haven't. But it

(01:03:59):
would need to be because I founda show where a specific episode
was so good, and I just I didn'teven think trying to get that
host, or sorry, that guest on myshow was worth the time because
someone else did such a goodjob. So I haven't done it.
The only other place that I'vethought about doing it is

(01:04:19):
there's a few guests that I'vebeen trying to get on the show.
And for whatever reason, I justhave been completely
unsuccessful. And I feel likewhat they've said would be
really valuable. And even thoughthere are questions that I would
want to ask this person if Icould get them on the show, I
just I haven't been able to getthem to agree to come on the
show. And so, that could beanother reason to say, look, I

(01:04:42):
wanted to do an interview withso and so.
I love their book. I couldn'tget them on the show, so I found
the best interview. What I'veactually experimented with
instead is, if there's a topicand I can't get a guest I want
or I can't find a guest, I'lljust do the show by myself.
Like, I think too many peoplelock themselves into a format

(01:05:03):
for their show. And the format Istarted with, now, I have 3 or 4
formats that I regularly do thatwere not what I started with.
Mhmm. My show started as aninterview show. And then, I was
like, well, let's do some q anda episodes. And those performed,
by the way, better than manyinterview show episodes. And

(01:05:24):
then, I said, well, I wanna talkabout insurance.
So I was like, I wanna helppeople make all the right
decisions with their insurancepolicies. And so that was my
next goal was to do an episodeon insurance. And I was like,
who knows enough about insuranceto do this episode? And I
couldn't find anyone. And Ilooked, but I just couldn't find
someone that I thought was theright person to do an interview

(01:05:46):
an episode about insurance.
And I was like, but I researchinsurance on every policy so
much that maybe I'm the one thatshould do this episode. And that
episode has been incredible. Ijust as we record this, yester
or this last week got thisreview. And I just have to read
it because it's my favoritereview I've gotten so far. The
title is episode 104 saved me$15,854 a year.

(01:06:11):
And and it's a this personrepriced all their insurance
policies after listening to thatepisode and was like, this this
was like, they saved over$15,000 a year. And if you would
ask me when I was starting theshow if I would ever do it by
myself, I would say, no. It wasa like, it was just a show for
interviewing. That happened.Then I just, one day, had all
these weird ideas and I justwanted to talk about them.

(01:06:32):
So I did an episode that Icalled like, my musings about
things. And that episode didbetter than like, every other
type of episode. It was just metalking about how I fought with
Macy's to get my warrantycovered on my couch, and how I
was thinking about planning alast minute trip. So I really
encourage people to experiment,not just with growth, but with

(01:06:52):
your content format. Sometimes,I've done short episodes,
released them on an off day.
I don't know. I just feel likemy show has evolved to the point
that more than 50% of what I'mdoing now is not what I
originally sought out to do. Andit's only because I was willing
to experiment with new stuffthat I was comfortable with with
trying it. And now, it it I lovedoing the show even more because

(01:07:15):
I get to do these other things.

Yeah. I agree with that. We, Connor and I did an
episode talking about what welearned on YouTube. I've done a
q and a episode recently. And interms of especially retention
throughout the episode, thoseepisodes perform so well Yes.

That it

has me really interested in doing more solo
stuff. We're running a littlebit long. So I do wanna get to
one more kinda category here,which is paid acquisition,
because I know you've run somepaid acquisition tests as well.
We don't have to go through thenitty gritty of all of that, but
I'd love to hear some of thetakeaways you have when it comes
to paid acquisition. Is it worthit at a top level?

(01:07:52):
If so, to some degree, whatplatform seem to be the best and
anything else that you think isimportant for folks listening?

So the one thing that really sucks, unlike
newsletters is and and manyother channels is when you run
paid experiments, you can seethe uptick And many of the paid
experiments you'd run-inpodcasting are are tied to a
player app. And so you can seethe uptick in that player app,
but it's very hard to measurethe retention. I've just started

(01:08:20):
I just ran an experiment acouple weeks ago, and I'm
looking at the retention curvebecause I ran it with a app
called player. Fm. I can see thenumber of new downloads on
player.
Fm, and then I can see how thatgoes over time. And after a
handful of weeks, I'll be ableto say, well, it used to be 50
or a 100 people listened. Now anew episode gets 400. So really
now I'm feeling like I got anextra 300 listeners. Let's

(01:08:43):
divide that by the cost of theacquisition experiment and what
did it cost to get a listener.
I've found that at the lowestend of that spectrum, it can be
a couple dollars, like, $2. Andat the highest end, it can be,
you know, more than $10 which Iwould put in the category of a
total waste of time. Thechallenge is I and I found a

(01:09:03):
site. This random person sent mean Imessage. Like, came in as a
text, but from an email address.
His name's Ibrahim. And he was,like, I have a podcast growth
company. I wanna run a growthtest for you. Totally free. You
pick an episode.
I'll send you traffic and youcan see the quality. And I was
like, okay. Why not? And I ranthis experiment. And he was very

(01:09:23):
transparent.
He was like, our service willdrive downloads to your podcast.
People will listen just longenough to trigger the download,
but not long but they're notlistening to the episode.
They're just triggeringdownloads. So that paid growth
won't help my sponsor revenue orsponsor conversion or anything.
It will help the show's downloadnumbers, which may help me

(01:09:47):
convince advertisers to try theshow out because it has more
downloads.
A really interesting fact isthat, because there's so many
agencies playing in the and I'mgonna come back to your
question. But because there's somany agencies playing in the
podcast monetization world,people have gotten so stuck on
CPMs for pricing for ads thateven if your show converts 3

(01:10:10):
times better than other shows,many brands, because the agency
is the one doing the mediabuying, will never pay 3 times
as much for your ads even ifthey convert 3 times better. The
hack there is to try to say,great. We'll do this super cheap
test, but know that we're gonnabe charging 3 times more. And so
then they go back to the brandand say, how did it convert?

(01:10:31):
And they're like, this show'samazing. We should do it. And
they're like, well, it's 3 timesmore. And they're like, we
should still do it. But it couldbe worth and and one one podcast
network told me, oh, well, wejust tell all the brands that
you have twice as manydownloads.
And I was like, really? He'slike, yeah. We just lie about
the download so that we bringthe CPM to a place that they
would be comfortable with. And Iwas like, I don't feel good

(01:10:52):
using that strategy. Idefinitely don't feel good
working with you.
But it's so ridiculous that youcan't just convince them to care
about performance that they careso much about an arbitrary
number. So it's messed up inmany ways. So you could just buy
downloads that mean nothing andthat might help that arena.
Overcast, I think going back tothe first thing we talked about
with content, they let you runreally small dollar experiments

(01:11:14):
for podcast ads. And I'm lookingat them right now, and I've run
8 anywhere ranging from $250 to$1400 depending on the category
you advertise in.
The range of subscribers I gotfrom these experiments was,
like, 49 to 204. So we'retalking very, very small

(01:11:36):
numbers. But like I said, if Ispend $350 and I get 99
subscribers, it's, like, youknow, $38.50. It's not the best
use of money. Mhmm.
But the reason why I advocatepeople test something like this
is when you run an experiment onOvercast, they tell you how many
taps they think your podcast adwill get. And they tell you how

(01:11:57):
many subscribers they thinkyou'll get. Then you can run the
ad and see how much better youperform than what they suggest.
And if you 3 x that performance,you probably have a good show.
So if you're wondering, do Ihave a good show?
Run an ad for your show, Spend$350 or $500 for whatever
category it's in. And if yourshow performs terrible compared

(01:12:19):
to their benchmarks, you mightnot have a good show.

Or at least, I mean, I I would guess, like, the taps
metric on that would tell youhow good your packaging is in
terms of a premise. Yeah. Andthen subscribers is like

So you can break it into 2 experiments.

Yeah. And then the subscribers would be, oh, I
liked it.

Yeah. If you wanna test cover art, run an
experiment 1 month with 1 coverart, run an experiment the next
month with another another coverart, same description, and
you'll be like, oh, which one dopeople click on more? I think a
lot of people that design theircover art design it where it's
taking up their whole screen andforget that most people are
seeing it, you know, smallerthan, you know, their core nail.

(01:12:55):
And so I love doing those littleexperiments to test the title,
the description, the album art,that kind of stuff. Castbox is a
platform for paid advertisingthat I found dollar per
subscriber performs the best.
What I don't know, and I'm notsure how to think about it, is I

(01:13:15):
don't know if it helpsadvertisers. Like, I don't know
how engaged these listeners are.I don't know how loyal they are,
but it does but I can see thatpeople are still listening on
Castbox. And I think the onlyreason I am skeptical is that
I've just never met anyone thatactually uses the Castbox app to
listen to podcasts.

I 100% agree. I I am in agreement with that full
assessment. Although, I do thinkthat it probably does not help
advertisers much. I I am alsodubious of it. We've run a good
handful of Castbox ads becauseit is like the dollar for dollar
best spend if you're trying togrow week over week downloads.

(01:13:53):
And there is, like, a noticeabledecay over a period of months,
but it's still a significantportion of my total downloads.
And I haven't done a Castboxcampaign in a year. So I do
think that there are people whodo genuinely listen from it.
What I think happens is and Idon't know this for sure, so
don't quote me. But I think whathappens is Castbox pays for

(01:14:17):
downloads in the app store.
And when you download Castbox,they say you should subscribe to
some shows. And I bet theyrecommend some of their paid
advertisers in that spot in theapp experience. So they are real
people. But what you don't knowis if they are actual if they're
gonna stick using Castbox, youdon't know if they're going to
keep listening to podcasts. Andyou certainly don't know if they

(01:14:39):
actually liked your show.
This is my hunch. I don't knowthis for sure.

Yeah. I can tell you that Player FM does
something that the thing thatmakes me skeptical is that if
you sign up for player dot f m,they'll pre check like 10
podcasts. And if you're runningthrough the onboarding, you just
hit next next next next next.You'll end up subscribed to the
sponsored podcast, and thoseepisodes will start downloading
and downloading on a weeklybasis with no intention. I

(01:15:05):
believe on Castbox, the user hasto opt in to like, yes, they're
shown promotional things, butthey have to opt in to them.
So it's a little higher

bar. Doubt. Yeah.

But I'm looking right now, the Castbox app on
Apple. And yes, they probablypay to promote the app. But it
has a 116,000 reviews, 4.8 staron Google. Yeah. They have 10
+100000010000000 plus downloads,290,000 reviews.
So like, people are using thisapp. You you can't get 290,000

(01:15:36):
reviews on Google and a 116,000reviews on Apple and not have
people using the app. So I thinkCastbox is a good a good channel
for growth. I would have tospend a tremendous amount of
money to see how much it affectsconversion. I I tell myself that
I really wish that I could buildthe, like, analytics optimizers

(01:15:56):
version of my pie of this wholething.
And what I would do is I wouldtell Castbox, I would give them
a different RSS feed. Andactually, I could do this. Now
that I'm thinking about it, Ihave a new experiment. Because
you give each player an RSSfeed. And so I think, what if I
gave Castbox a new RSS feed andI use something like Zapier.

(01:16:17):
And I use Zapier to go say, takethe RSS feed from Megaphone, and
find replace all the links withdifferent like I come up with I
don't know. I gotta think abouthow exactly I would do this. But
the idea would be, have all thelinks in the show notes get
redirected through somethingwhere I could track them, and

(01:16:37):
see do Castbox users click linksin the show notes. Mhmm. And I
think that if I gave them adifferent RSS feed, I could even
do this manually for 3 weeks.
I'll just find replace, and it'sonly for the latest episode. So
if I can remember, I might tryto change my RSS feed on
Castbox, host a static filethat's just a duplicate of my

(01:16:58):
RSS feed, and manually add in mynext week's episode, putting
Bitly links specific forCastbox, and see if people are
actually clicking the links inthe show notes.

I love this. I hope you do it. I would never, but I
hope you do.

So at the end of the day, paid growth. I think
I've also run some paid ads,like cross promos, but I just
pay someone to read ads for theshow. I know Jordan Harbinger
does a ton of these. When you'regetting started, you just you
don't have a choice. You don'thave the inventory to give
people to make it work.
So they just they didn't performas well as cross promos. And I

(01:17:35):
think the hosts were just kindof reading ads. If I could find
the right person, the rightshow, I maybe would try that
again and see how it performs,but it was tough. I I I haven't
found a good paid strategy otherthan pay someone to help you
make the show better. Like Yeah.
Pay someone to go pitch you as aguest, but not some service

(01:17:56):
that's gonna, like, churn outthese guest pitches that are
I've received so many of thatare just boiler plate templated.
Pay someone to go listen to 10episodes of a podcast, and craft
a very specific pitch that makesit so obvious that you've
listened to their show andunderstand it, and then send
that effort. Don't pay someone,like, I'm low number, high high

(01:18:20):
quality. And so I could tellyou, if someone pitched me, I
could tell you exactly what Iwant in a pitch. I want someone
to pitch me on a topic that'sbroadly relevant to most people
in the world about a topicrelated to life, money, or
travel that they're an expertin.
And that we can have aconversation that will help
someone learn some strategiesand tactics to upgrade their own

(01:18:42):
life in that area. But But I getpeople that are like, do you
wanna interview Bill? Billstarted a real estate company
that got really big. And I'mlike, I don't have a show about
people who start real estatecompanies that got big. No.
I don't want to interview Bill.I don't even I don't even
respond. But the but the numberof people who've actually taken
the time to say, I get what youwant and I have it and here's

(01:19:03):
why. I've had multiple of thosepeople on the show as a guest.

Alright. Last last question. I promise. Since you
use Chartable so much, I need toknow how much you pay attention
to the new device retentiongraph in Chartable. Do you look
at that much retention episodeover episode or month over
month?

So I have looked at it and the reason I don't pay
attention to it, but I want tonow, is that I don't have a good
baseline. So if I'm looking atmine, the average after next
episode is 36.35%. But I don'tknow if that's good because I
have no idea what's what'snormal. If they had benchmarks,

(01:19:43):
I would look at it a lot. Andso, you know, what I'll say
here's here's what I'll say.
If you have a podcast out thereand you want to know how you're
doing against a benchmark, takea screenshot of your chartable
new device retention, episodic 5episodes. Send that screenshot
to me, podcast at all thehacks.com. And I will aggregate

(01:20:03):
all of it, average it out, andsend a benchmark. Maybe send me
also how many downloads perepisode you get so that if the
numbers are very differentbetween show size, we can split
that out. And I will use thosebenchmarks and share them with
everyone.
I'll send them to you, Jay. Youcan choose whether you wanna
share them in a future episodealso. But yeah. So I don't the
reason I don't use them isbecause I just don't have a good

(01:20:25):
sense of what perfection is. I100% agree.
I assume perfection is, like,50%. I don't think anyone's
metrics are probably higher thanthat unless you have a very
small show with a very loyal setof people who never leave their
house.

I 100% agree. This I I also really want to pay
attention to this because I'mfeeling like I've ignored this
for too long. But everyone I'vetalked to so far says when they
look at this chart, they getdepressed. So the question is,
is this data hard to gather anddifficult to believe, or is
churn in podcast listeners somuch higher than we realize? I

(01:21:01):
don't know.

I don't know the answer, but I do know. Here's a
here's a around the way answerway to answer that question.
Question. I know the averagenumber of downloads that I get
on different platforms. I knowthat on Apple, if I get 25,003
963 downloads, and this is alittle bit

little bit old,

Sam Mullins (01:21:17):
but when I did this,

I had 30,000, This is a little bit old, but
when I did this, I had 30,975subscribers. So about 31,000
subscribers, 26,000 downloads.So from Apple, I know that a
very high percentage of mydownloads must be coming from
subscribers, and mostsubscribers are listening.

(01:21:38):
Spotify, of 5,000 downloads,they came from 46,000
subscribers.

Mhmm.

So on Spotify, it's very clear that 1 in 9
people that subscribe aredownloading each time. And by
the way, it could be lessbecause some people might not
even be subscribed. But onApple, it's like 7 out of 8 or
something. Wild. 5 out of 6.
Very interesting. On Castbox,it's 2 out of 40,000. So on

(01:22:05):
Castbox, it's it's, you know,it's not even close. So it's
weird. I have more subscriberson Castbox, and, you know, than
on Apple, but I have 10 timesthe number of downloads on
Apple.
Wild.

Alright, Chris. This has been awesome. I feel like
we'll probably be giving folkslistener exhaustion at this
point. I could keep talkingabout this, but I feel like we
save it for a part 2. I hopepeople do email you with their
Chartable retention numbers.
I have no idea why Chartabledoesn't just aggregate a
benchmark. That'll be so They dobenchmarks for

a lot of things. For smart promos, they do
benchmarks. I wish they had abenchmark for this number. If I
could get someone at Chartableto respond to my emails, I would
ask them. But, they'd have tobuild something to make this
possible.

I have learned so much about podcasting from
Chris, and I hope with thisepisode, you did as well. If you
wanna learn more about Chris,you can visit his website at all
the hacks.com. Links to that andhis podcast are in the show
notes. Thanks to Chris for beingon the show. Thank you to Emily
Kloss for creating our artwork.
Thank you to Adam Lockwood forediting this episode. I'd love
to hear what you think about it.You can find me on Twitter or

(01:23:11):
Instagram at jklaus. Just tag meand let me know what you
thought. And if you really wannasay thank you, please leave a
review on Apple Podcasts orSpotify.
Thanks for listening. And we'lltalk to you next week.

Justin (01:23:29):
So I hope you enjoyed that episode. We'd love to hear
your takeaways from theirconversation. You can hit us up
on all the regular channels,Twitter, email, however you
reach us. And if you wanna hearmore from Jay, look for creator
science in your podcast player.

Jeremy (01:23:44):
And if you wanna hear more from Chris, look up all the
hacks And the episode that Iwould most recommend, it was
mentioned in this episode and itwas my next step after I first
listened to this episode onCreator Science, was Chris
interview with Tim Ferris. It's2 or 3 hours long as most Tim
Ferris podcast episodes are. Andin that episode, there are even
more insights into the creativeand marketing process behind

(01:24:07):
both Tim's and Chris'srespective podcasts. So a lot of
juice still to be had byfollowing the rabbit trail down
both Jay and Chris and Tim'srabbit holes. So let us know
what your takeaways were fromthis episode, any ideas that you
are going to be applying goingforward, and we'll talk to you
more real soon.

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