Over the past year, median podcast growth rates were nearly flat. In other words, the typical show experienced almost zero growth over the previous 12 months.
If you’ve been in podcasting for a while, this might correspond with your feeling that it is harder to grow today than it once was. And yet… while growth may have slowed for the typical show, there are others that are unlocking more and faster growth than ever before.
So what’s going on here? And what do we as creators need to do to tap into the potential for growth that exists?
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Topics Covered
00:00 Is It Harder To Grow Now?
01:56 Growing in 2008 vs 2025
03:49 What the data says about growth rates
08:33 Two reasons it might be harder to grow now
13:14 The two types of competition today
15:56 Keeping up with changing tastes and expectations
21:38 Diagnosing your growth problem
24:55 A tried and true way to differentiate
28:35 Opportunities to grow a podcast today
33:49 A sneaky approach to testing big changes
35:16 The worst thing that can happen to your show
38:43 The opportunities of podcasting for your business
⭐️ Get a free podcast marketing audit with personalized recommendations to help you grow: https://podcastmarketingacademy.com/audit ⭐️
Resources
- The Tim Ferriss Show
- This American Life
- Mel Robbins’ podcast
- Headliner
- Descript
- The Law of Shitty Click Throughs by Andrew Chen
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained
Check out the Podcast Marketing Trends 2024 Report
Subscribe to the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter
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✍️ Leave your feedback for the show: **http://podcastmarketingtrends.com/feedback**
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeremy (00:00):
There are actually fewer active shows today than there
were in 2018. So you could makethe case that there are more
shows available for a listenerto find in a podcast app, but
it's actually less crowded thanit was five years ago.
Justin (00:13):
There is limited real estate for a person's time, but
your category might have fivecompetitors or three competitors
or no good competitors.Podcasting is still easier in
terms of competition.
Jeremy (00:29):
I think when we think about, like, what's working now,
what's the opportunity rightnow, this is one of those
evergreen things is So I waslistening to an episode of the
Tim Ferriss Show a while back.This was probably from sometime
in 2024 that he recorded it. Hewas talking about how he was
thinking about what his futurewas in podcasting. And he was
kind of like, you know, I'vebeen at this a long time. It
(00:51):
used to be super easy to get youknow, be in the top 10 of all
shows.
First world problems for Timthere. And now it was getting
harder. He's in, you know, thetop 50, top 100, but just how
much harder podcasting has got.And it had got him thinking
about, like, do I wanna continueputting in the effort that I'm
putting into this? And then morerecently, I saw that Amy
Porterfield, another earlypodcaster who got a lot of
(01:12):
people into podcasting, is doinga big pivot and rebrand of her
show.
It's not shutting it down, butit's a big shift. And I thought
these two things were reallyinteresting from these long
running shows that are kind oftalking about how it's harder to
podcast and how what used towork isn't really working
anymore. And so I figured itmight be worth digging into, is
it actually harder to grow now?
Justin (01:34):
I mean, the funny thing about this question is people
have been saying this as long asI've been in podcasting. Back in
02/2008, people were like, youknow, it's too late. We missed
the boat. It was easier before.This question is as old as
podcasting, but it is relevantright now.
Jeremy (01:50):
Yeah. And, you know, it strikes me that you're actually
the perfect case study herebecause your first show launched
in what year?
Justin (01:56):
Two thousand eight.
Jeremy (01:57):
Okay. So first show 02/2008. You have just launched
a new show in 2025. So you'vebeen producing podcasts, and
there's, I think, been severalin between there for a long
time. And so I'm curious aboutyour personal experience
launching shows, gainingtraction, building an audience.
How is it different now than itwas back then?
Justin (02:15):
There are definitely things that were maybe easier
back then. For example, backthen, the biggest podcasting
platform was Apple Podcasts. Andif you got in new and
noteworthy, you really couldgrow your show fast. One of the
shows that I did back then, Ithink it was my second podcast I
launched. I learned all thetricks how to get into new and
(02:37):
noteworthy.
And there's a few things youcould do. And got it into new
and noteworthy. And the Applecharts were really important.
All of that's probably hardernow, and also less true now.
Apple's just not as important asit was.
And it's harder to get into newand noteworthy, and to chart in
Apple Podcasts. More competitionfrom celebrities and big name
(02:58):
Conan O'Brien's and all themcoming in. On the other hand, it
just feels kind of the same tome. My new show, I don't know
what's it doing. We only do anepisode every two weeks.
And it looks like every episodein the first thirty days,
episodes are getting about sixeighty five downloads.
Jeremy (03:19):
So Okay.
Justin (03:20):
I feel like in some ways, I feel like that's more
than I would have had at thispoint. Especially only being
seven episodes in or something.Generally, if you're publishing
more episodes, like if you'republishing weekly, you probably
grow a bit faster. But yeah, Ifeel like it's about the same.
Lot of this is dependent on abunch of factors that I'm sure
(03:42):
we'll get into.
I don't know if it's any hardernow. In some ways, might be even
easier as well. And maybe we cantalk about that.
Jeremy (03:50):
Yeah. And, you know, actually, some of the data that
came up in the 2024 podcastmarketing trends report kinda
speaks to both sides of this,where it seems like it both
speaks to the fact that it isharder for many shows to grow,
but also that it is eithereasier or there is more
potential upside for shows thatdo figure out how to grow. And
so going through some of theresults from the survey here,
(04:13):
one of the big ones here was theyear over year and month over
month growth rates. And so thiswas the second year of the
report, we actually hadsomething to compare to the
previous year. And there's ahuge massive caveat to this data
in that the Apple iOS changeshappened over the span.
And so just shows across thepodcast industry declined in the
(04:33):
number of downloads, but that Iadjusted for that, and this is
still well beyond what the AppleiOS changes would account for.
And so looking at the, year overyear annual growth rate in the
from the calendar year of 2023was 1.3%. So, basically, shows
who submitted to the surveyalmost did not grow whatsoever.
(04:53):
And so, yes, part of this wasthat they were getting lower
downloads reported from ApplePodcasts. But in general, this
was a 94% decrease in annualgrowth rate from the year
before.
So it seems to say like, oh,growth is getting way harder
just from one year to the next.Like, there's been a huge drop
in the, you know, growth of, youknow, a pretty significant
sample size of podcasts. So butthen we actually have this other
(05:15):
side that is based on the medianannual growth rate. If you look
at the average, the averageannual growth rate was actually
97.3%. And so the average showalmost doubled in size over the
year.
And so if you start to thinkabout how medians and averages
work, it's like, oh, clearly,there are some huge outlier
shows that are just pulling up.If we go by average, they're
(05:37):
pulling up the whole dataset,and these shows grew a crazy
amount. And so this is somethingwhere I think, you know, it gets
that way where you're talking tohere is like, perhaps for the
typical average middle of theroad show, it is much harder to
grow now. But if you have acertain type of show and you
know how to market iteffectively and create a certain
type of content, perhaps thereis a way higher ceiling than
(05:57):
there was previously.
Justin (05:58):
The other thing this is making me think of is the
difference between anestablished show and a new show.
And so, the show that I juststarted, it's growing fast right
now. Like month over month. Yep.The growth rate is high because
we're actively promoting it.
We're actively accumulating newlisteners because we're growing
(06:19):
from zero. Whereas one of myolder shows is very flat. And
Yep. Podcasts generally, almostany type of media, you will kind
of gradually rise until you hita plateau. And sometimes it's
possible to break through thoseplateaus.
But most shows, newsletters,websites, any kind of YouTube
(06:42):
channel, whatever you create,most of them have kind of a
natural plateau that you'll hit.Yeah. And so, we might be seeing
some of that here as well. Theremight be an existing show that
broke through a plateau and isbringing up the average. Or
there could have just been anumber of new shows that just
year over year have reallyincreased their growth rate.
So keeping all of that in mind,that's kind of the context for
(07:06):
this.
Jeremy (07:07):
There's actually some other kind of contributing
factors that could lead to alower reported download number.
And actually so Alyssa Craig,who's the head of marketing at
Headliner, is one of these,like, short form audiogram video
creator tools that a lot ofpeople have used. Mhmm. She did
a guest post for my newsletter awhile back after the release of
this report, and she contributedthis really interesting thought
(07:28):
that I was not thinking aboutbefore, which is, you know,
we've talked previously abouthow YouTube viewership of
podcasts is going up. Those arenot being reported as downloads
in your podcast hostingplatform.
And so when I did this report, Iasked people to go to your
podcast hosting platform andinput how many downloads did you
get each month. I asked for,like, total YouTube viewership,
but not on a month by monthbreakdown. And so as we see
(07:50):
people starting to post videoson Spotify, those downloads are
now not showing up as aggregatedin your hosting provider. And so
there is this fragmenting ofdata where it's possible that
many shows have actually grownby total viewership or audience
size, but the reported downloadsin your podcast hosting platform
is actually stagnant or evengoing down even while your
(08:11):
audience has grown. And so Ithink that this is one of the
things that, as I started totalk with some people about
this, they're actually like theydidn't connect the dots.
They're like, oh, yeah. I'vebeen feeling so bad about my
podcast, but actually, YouTubehas doubled or tripled over the
past, six months. Oh, maybethat's what's happening here.
Mhmm. And so it could be thatyou might be like, oh,
something's really wrong with myshow, and actually it's it's
(08:31):
just masking other forms ofgrowth.
Justin (08:33):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.
Jeremy (08:35):
So let's maybe look at some of the reasons why it may
or may not be harder to grownow. Because it seems like there
are certainly opportunities, butthere also might be some more
headwinds that didn't existpreviously. And the way I see
it, there's kind of like twofactors at play here for why it
might be harder for some showsand some niches, and those are
increased competition, which mayor may not be true, and kind of
(08:56):
changing tastes or a kind oflike raise up the bar of
expected quality from podcastsin general. I think that one's
probably pretty clear thatthat's true. But let's maybe
start on the competition side.
And you mentioned, like, whenyou got into podcasting way back
in the day, Conan O'Brien wasnot podcasting. This was not
really a celebrity medium. Youcould say it was kind of like a
(09:17):
backwater content channel, andnow it is fully mainstream. And
so we have seen Disney is intopodcasting. Netflix is into
podcasting.
Amazon's into podcasting, andall host of celebrities. So I
think there's both a, like,potential density increase of
competition where there may bemore creators, more shows that
you're competing with. Butthere's also this kind of star
power that you're competing withtoo. What's your take on what a
(09:38):
solo creator who's starting anew show is up against nowadays?
Justin (09:41):
Yeah. I mean, we've mentioned in the past that there
is limited real estate for aperson's time. And so when they
open their podcast player, I didthis this morning, I have lots
of options. And there are showsthat would have normally been my
first go to, like This AmericanLife. I would listen to every
(10:03):
episode.
But now it's like there's justso many good shows. They get
bumped down. So, There's moregood shows to choose from. This
differs depending on yourcategory. But in general, every
listener only has so muchlistening time allocated.
And that might be an hour a day,if you're lucky. Well, if your
(10:24):
show is an hour, you'recompeting with all of those
other shows that have hourepisodes that day. So I think
that has gotten harder. Back inthe day, I remember being hungry
for like, I need more. Like, Iwould run out of podcasts to
listen to.
I haven't had that problem in along time.
Jeremy (10:42):
And, you know, this gets into a bit of an interesting
dichotomy of how you look at thedata. So there are more podcasts
that have obviously ever beencreated. That number is always
going up. There are always morenew shows being created. They're
not going down.
We're not subtracting shows thathave we're erasing them from
history. You're writing them outof existence. That show never
existed. So the total number ofshows that are findable online
(11:02):
somewhere is going up. If youlook at the number of active
shows and so this is shows thathave been, producing or had
published an episode in the lastthirty days.
There are actually fewer activeshows today than there were in
2018. So this is even before the2020 boom COVID boom of
podcasting. In 2018, there were525,000 active shows. As of the
(11:24):
end of twenty twenty four, therewere 332,000. So actually a
pretty significant drop.
So you could make the case thatthere are more shows available
for a listener to find in apodcast app. But of the shows
that are actively producingepisodes, which are generally
the shows that new people aresubscribing to, it's actually
less crowded than it was nowover five years ago.
Justin (11:45):
Yeah. And as we've mentioned before, not all of
those 332,000 shows are anygood. If there was a magical
filter we could apply on top ofall these things, which is which
of these shows are good, whichof these shows actually resonate
with an audience, and then whichof these shows actually are in
your category, you can imaginethat that group gets even
(12:06):
smaller. For some folkslistening, your category might
have five competitors, or threecompetitors, or no good
competitors. And so Yes.
I think we can be encouraged inthe sense that And I think
you've got some other statshere. Compared to other mediums,
podcasting is stillcomparatively easier in terms of
(12:30):
competition. There's lesscompetition, especially when you
compare it to something likeYouTube.
Jeremy (12:35):
Yeah. And this is something that, you know, I see
a lot with my clients, and soI'll often do in-depth audits
for my clients, and I'll do somecompetitor research as well. And
in most niches, there are a lotof shows on the same topic. And
I'll go poke around. I won'tlisten to all the shows, but
I'll poke around.
And the vast majority of them,98 of them, like, in a niche
(12:56):
that might have, like, 25 showson a topic, there might be two
that are, like, interesting thatstand out to me. And I'm like,
oh, those look like refreshingtakes on this topic. And then
the rest of them are entirelygeneric and have almost no shot
at growth unless you alreadyknow the creator and you're
following them and you're a fanof them. But that show is not
going to attract new people justbased on its own merit. And so
Mhmm.
This to me, kind of like yousaid, I think this is actually
(13:17):
really encouraging where theremay be a lot of shows in your
niche, in your genre, probablyvery few of them are actually
good. And there's a distinctionhere between competition and
noise. And, like, we all kind ofare competing with noise, but
there are shows that are highquality, they're active, that a
listener is actively choosingbetween. And so they might
choose between ours. They mightlook at one or two other shows
(13:38):
that seem interesting to them,and maybe they listen to all of
them and test them out.
Maybe they just pick the onethat seems like the safest bet.
But then there is thecompetition of a whole bunch of
low quality shows that we allneed to kind of raise our shows
above that kind of base level.And so I think that that is
certainly higher and across allcontent, not just podcasting,
like, that is only going up. Andso I think that to me, it is a
(14:00):
little bit disheartening maybeas a creator to see that how
fast AI can both just churn outon its own junk and also how
fast people using AI can churnout junk. Just like, maybe they
record the podcast, but it's anAI written script, and it just
sucks.
And it's like, that makes itharder for the rest of us. But I
do think that for people who putin the time and care and craft
(14:22):
to make a better than averagepodcast, there is a huge amount
of blue ocean still available.
Justin (14:27):
The other thing that people don't think about is
there are people that are notactive podcast listeners, but
would be brought in to thecategory if they could find the
content that they want. Right? Ieven think about, like, in the
comedy category, you thinkthere's all these juggernauts.
Joe Rogan and Mark Marron. Andyou think, wow.
(14:49):
Like, there's no way that anyonecould create a space in there.
And then you've got thisphenomenon like Kill Tony, which
Yeah. That show is just verydifferent and attracts a
different audience. I think hebrought a lot of new people into
podcasting. And that's becausepeople might resonate with a
particular host, a particularformat, a particular topic.
(15:13):
And they're like, oh, well, if Ihave to go to podcasts to get
that, then I was just talking tosomebody outside here in my co
working office. And he wastalking to a co worker who has
just gotten into podcastsbecause they want to get more
into history. And they foundthis podcast about Napoleon. And
so they're listening to 300episodes on Napoleon. Now Yeah.
(15:34):
That is a perfect example of nonpodcast listener not showing up
in any of our stats. They comein, and now that show has grown
because somebody was seekingthat content, that format,
whatever. They have a job to bedone and it's being done.
Jeremy (15:50):
Mhmm.
Justin (15:51):
So, yeah. I I get encouraged by stuff like that
because there's a lot of peoplenot listening to podcasts right
now or not listening regularly.
Jeremy (15:58):
The last thing I'll say on the competition front is
there's this concept called thelaw of shitty click throughs.
And this was coined by a guynamed Andrew Chen, who I think
was at Uber, was one of theirmarketing guys or head of
growth. And the idea isbasically that in marketing is
obviously his domain here. Thereis some tactic that will work.
And a few people will know aboutit at the start.
(16:19):
And so at the at the start ofthe Internet, it was like banner
ads were like super cheap andyou can get a ton of traffic
back to your website. And thenword gets out and all of a
sudden everybody's doing bannerads. And so the cost per click
goes up, the cost per conversiongoes up, and eventually becomes
not worth doing anymore. Yeah.The same has happened for
Facebook in various ways,whether it's groups or pages or
(16:39):
ads.
And the same happens topodcasting as well. And so I
think about a lot of the peoplethat my agency worked with, they
were business owners, And a lotof them signed up to work with
me back in, like, 2017, '18, '19because they had their own
coaches or mentors or friendswho had started podcasts in
twenty thirteen, fourteen,fifteen Mhmm. Had immediately
built up big audiences and werelike, hey. Here's a tactic that
(17:00):
works to grow my audience. I'mgonna launch a podcast.
I'm not gonna put too muchthought into the concept
development. I'm just gonna hosta, you know, a show, have my
friends on and interview them,and I'm gonna grow an audience
like all those other people. Andso you still get this
proliferation of shows who a lotof times people have been
thinking about doing a show for,like, five years, but they're
still anchored in this old worldway of of podcasting where it's
(17:21):
like, you can just start a showand you'll grow an audience
around it. And they're like,five of my friends did it, and
so I've just been waiting topull the trigger, not realizing
that actually the bar hasshifted quite a bit. Mhmm.
Which I think actuallytransitions into this kind of
next idea around, like, tasteschange and expectations change
around, you know, a medium as awhole, but then also within any
one niche or, you know, contentchannel, anything like that. And
(17:44):
I'm wondering, like, this ismaybe something that you can
specifically speak to of, like,the type of content you would
have created ten years agowithin your community versus the
type of content you would createnow is probably vastly
different.
Justin (17:55):
Oh, yeah. I mean, in the business category, the big trend
used to be doing these dailyinterview shows. That was like a
way of getting traction becauseyou could If you did them every
day, you got way more downloads.And the charts and the
algorithms were not super smart.And so they would just interpret
(18:15):
like all of these downloads forthe show means it's a popular
show.
And it would go to the top ofthe charts. You don't see people
doing that as much anymore. Youwere gonna copy that I mean,
maybe you could copy it againfor this generation. It would
work. But interview shows ingeneral used to be You know,
even when I started, it wasfairly novel for a founder to
(18:35):
get approached and say, hey, doyou want to be on my podcast?
Now, people of note that get alot of requests are kind of
like, How many downloads yougot? I'm not gonna waste my
time. Yeah. And so, the bar hasshifted, for sure. There's still
ways in.
You know? There's still creativeways to do all those formats.
There's still green space there.Yeah, it's definitely shifted.
(18:58):
The one thing that hasn'tshifted is a creator that comes
into a space and has an instinctabout what might resonate.
And then they pursue that.That's not always going to work.
But if you've been in a spacefor a while, and you're like,
Oh, you know what everyone'smissing? Everyone's missing
(19:18):
this. And then you come out withthat, and you execute on it
well, that's a strategy thatwill never go out of style.
This space, can I bring herethat would resonate that's not
being done, that I think wouldattract an audience?
Jeremy (19:34):
You know, that I think is you get really into the art
side of of this, where it's likethis you can bring some strategy
to it, but it's kind of comesout of something that you have
just been immersed in the space.You have been able to connect
the dots in a way that nobodyelse has. Mhmm. And I I was
talking with a a potentialclient today. They actually have
a very successful show already,very long running, and they're
(19:57):
doing something like four or500,000 downloads a month,
something like that.
So big show. But they feel theylook at some of the shows at the
top of the charts, and they say,you know, we're kinda talking
about a lot of the same contenthere.
Charles Duhigg (20:09):
And it's in the let's call it
Jeremy (20:10):
the broad self help category. And so shows at the
top of the chart are MelRobbins. So biggest show in the
world right now. So Mel Robbinsis broad self help. It's, you
know, accessible to a lot ofpeople.
And that show is is newer newerthan this show from this
potential client I've beentalking to. And they're kinda
wondering, like, what's going onhere? And it's like sometimes
when you think about self help,a lot of these ideas have been
(20:33):
in constant circulation andrecirculation for at least a
hundred years, if not longer.You can look at, like, Ryan
Holiday, the stoicism. He kindof revived that in many ways.
Maybe not entirely singlehandedly, but did a lot of that.
But, like, those ideas,thousands of years old and are
now still relevant. Mhmm. And soI think you're right. It's not
only that you've seen somethingthat somebody else hasn't seen,
(20:54):
but that you're often able toarticulate it and package it for
the moment.
Mhmm. And I think that this iswhere a lot of times shows that
have been going for a while andfeel it's harder now, it's kind
of like they've become out ofsync with the culture. And I
think that this is the naturallife cycle of any business
creator is if you can get at thepoint where things start to work
and you gain traction, you beginto take your foot off the gas a
(21:15):
little bit and are not quite so,like, in the grind doing the
research, talking to peoplebecause now you're worried about
these, like, running thebusiness or whatever it is. And
pretty soon you find yourselfout of step with where tastes
have shifted. And so I thinkthat this is one of those things
that is so hard to do becauseyou're juggling so much.
But it's something we all needto be aware of is like, this is
happening. We're like in themiddle of a river. And if we try
to like anchor ourselves down,like everything's gonna go
(21:37):
flowing by us, and we're quicklygonna be behind.
Justin (21:39):
The other thing, this is not gonna be a popular take.
I'll just Bring
Jeremy (21:44):
it on.
Justin (21:44):
I'll just say it. And again, I know what it's like to
be a creator. I know how hard itis. I think if your show is not
growing, that is an opportunityfor you to ask some hard
questions. And I'll justillustrate this with an example.
There was a show that I reallyliked because the content was
(22:05):
what I wanted to learn about.But the host's voice, their
microphone quality, that partalways graded on me. They could
have probably fixed it with somespeech coaching or whatever. But
as soon as another show showedup. Yeah.
Where the host was just betterspoken, more engaging, more
(22:28):
entertaining, I switched. AndI'm sure that creator was like,
what happened? I this show usedto be popular. And now Yep. What
why what's going on?
And as creators, if it's notresonating, there's got to be a
reason. It could be you're notmarketing it enough. But there's
some other things that I thinkare worth looking at. Maybe the
(22:52):
format of your show isn't quiteright. Maybe you need to bring
on a co host.
Podcasters that are at the topof their game, and have been
doing this for a long time, areconstantly reevaluating and
adjusting. And so Tim Ferrissmight be like, You know what?
I've been doing this show for along time now. Is this still
(23:14):
worth doing? And AmyPorterfield's probably saying,
Okay.
We've been doing this show along time. Our goal is to grow.
Are we just gonna keep doing thesame old thing? Because there's
more competition than ever inour What are we gonna do about
it? That means taking a hardlook at everything.
What Yeah. Is potentially notworking. And I'll just refer
(23:36):
back to our episodes on doinglistener research. That's why
that's so important. Have aquestion in there.
A box where people can putunfiltered opinions on your
show. It's hard. I've done this.And people have said some things
that hurt my feelings. But Iwant to create things that have
(23:57):
resonance.
And if I'm doing things that areimpeding the show's growth, I
want to know about it. So Ithink that's the other thing
that you can look up here is,yeah, competition's better. You
know what? Conan O'Brien, he isa practiced, well oiled machine.
He is a good entertainer.
And if you're going to head tohead with him in the comedy talk
(24:21):
space, it's going be tough. Whatare you going to bring to the
table that he's not? And youdon't have to be exactly like
him, but you've gotta bring somesort of A game that's gonna be
able to compete at his level.Stand up comedy is such a good
example of this, because thereare different types of people
that win different ways. NormMacDonald was one of my favorite
(24:41):
comics.
And he was just weird andirreverent and very different
than Mark Marron or Joe Rogan orConan O'Brien. So there's a way
to do this. But you gotta bringyour A game, whatever that is.
Jeremy (24:56):
I think there are infinite ways to differentiate
yourself, and not all of themare going to be winners. But I
think that the hard thing isit's about actually seeing the
negative space. I've never takenany art classes, but I've heard
that one of the exercises thatthey get you to do is draw a
chair, let's say, not by drawingthe chair, but by learning to
see the space between the chairlegs. And it's like you're
learning to see what's notthere. Mhmm.
And I think that this is a supervaluable skill for any creator
(25:19):
to both immerse themselves intheir space and be able to
objectively you know, it's gonnabe painful at the start. When
you see all these other shows,most of them are gonna be better
than you if you're just startingout. But that's actually the
only way to be able to see thatnegative space and understand,
for one, like, what's not inexistence right now. But the
other thing is the cliches. Andso I think that this is, like,
one of the easiest ways to standout is to do this research, to
(25:41):
just go read all thedescriptions of 25 shows in your
space, and you will realize,like, I guarantee it, if there
are a significant number ofshows in your niche, you will
see the same language pop upagain and again and again and
make a spreadsheet of this.
Justin (25:54):
Appreciate it. Appreciate
Jeremy (25:54):
it. Probably, there is a good chance that if you have not
done this research before,you're gonna have a lot of that
same language as well. And thisis the only way to find it and
then eliminate it and thenactually maybe counter position
against it. And so I think thatdoing that kind of research and,
like, one of the things that aswe're talking about more
competition and more, like, lowquality competition, high
quality competition, a lot of itis just, like, something is
(26:16):
popular again, and so peopleadopt it, and it quickly becomes
kind of, like, just ubiquitousand then a bit of cliche, and
then it eventually becomescringe. It, like, moves down
this life cycle.
Mhmm. And it's like, you don'twanna find yourself moving down
that line. You gotta kinda be,like, updating your messaging.
Like, there is no winningmessaging or positioning for a
show. Yeah.
It's a constant kind of like,hey. We're trying to keep pace
(26:37):
with how everything is movingaround us, how our audience is
moving, how the world is moving.You think about, like,
presidential elections canchange everything overnight. And
now all of a sudden, the wholemood of society has shifted. And
now it's like, hey.
If I'm creating within thisframe that is society, I need to
adjust what I'm doing to fit themoment. We wanna think that
there's just, a right answer.Like, found the right show. I
(26:58):
found the right way to talkabout it. I found the right way
to market it.
But really, all of this is aconstantly shifting kind of,
like, Rubik's cube that we'realways trying to, like, one
phase changes, and then we gottaadjust the other ones to bring
it back in alignment.
Justin (27:08):
Yeah. I love when you were talking that the line that
came in my head is tocontinually ask, What resonates
now? Like, in this moment, whatresonates? And to open your eyes
again, maybe for the first timein a while, to look at what's
going on. What are other peopledoing that I'm missing?
(27:28):
What are the listeners feelingnow? Are they feeling like,
Woah, wait, you're talking aboutsomething that happened five
years ago. Or you're usinglanguage that was like from
2020. You know, how can weupdate what we're doing? What
resonates now?
Jeremy (27:42):
So we talked a lot about here some of the potential
reasons that it might be harderto grow now, more competition.
Think certainly higherexpectations of what people
expect from a podcast. And Ithink to your point there about,
you know, listening to that showthat, like, you you would have
listened to it in the past. Itdidn't quite do it for you with
the kind of grading vocals,whatever, but then something
better comes along, and it'slike, yeah. I'm gonna choose
(28:04):
that one.
It's easier to get professionalequipment. It's easier to use
Descript to do studio sound, toremove kind of any, you know,
problems with your vocals. Andso the general quality for
podcasts is undoubtedly higher,and we all need to now conform
to Mhmm. That said, we kindatalked about at the start here
that there are opportunities andthat some shows are growing way
faster than they previously had.And so we talked about here the
(28:27):
idea of, like, finding the thingthat resonates now with your
audience.
What else would you add when itcomes to opportunities in and
around podcasting and maybecontent in general?
Justin (28:37):
So maybe one thing I'll say to just frame this is I
think about a podcast likeAcquired. And if you look at
their growth trajectory, it goeslike it's very very flat. And
then all of a sudden, it startsto curve up. And they started
that show in 2015, so they'vejust celebrated their ten year
anniversary. And they said forthe first two years, it was just
(29:02):
getting a couple hundreddownloads per episode.
Like, small. But they enjoyeddoing it. They kept trying to
get better at it. They weregetting good feedback. The way
they talk about it is that theyjust wanted their audience to
grow every year.
And every year they did it, youknow, they started beginning a
(29:22):
hundred downloads per episode.Then by the next year, they were
getting 200 downloads perepisode. And then the next year,
they were getting 400. And overtime, that compounding
eventually turned into crazygrowth. And now they get
millions of downloads.
In 2024, they hit 500,000listeners. So this is a long
game. And when we're thinkingabout growth, one secret is just
(29:47):
keep doing it longer than yourcompetition. Keep improving. So
compounding happens in differentways.
Compound the quality of theshow. The resonance of the show.
Just keep doing that, and you'llgrow. That is the most
underrated growth opportunity isyou've started, and now, okay,
(30:08):
what are you going to do? Andit's just like putting one foot
in front of the other, and justimproving, improving, improving.
And okay, I'm gonna try to growmy audience every year, and
that's gonna compound.
Jeremy (30:19):
I think when we think about like, what's working now?
What's the opportunity rightnow? This is one of those
evergreen things is justcontinuing to do it is the thing
that will always work. And wehave to put a distinction there.
Like, some shows will never gaintraction.
Yeah. Just doing the same thingthat has shown no signs of
promise, that is probably notgonna work. But continuing to
iterate and move closer towardsyour goal and testing out
(30:41):
different things, that is asurefire way to almost
inevitably lead to success. And,you know, there is a trade off
here where it's like, maybe thething that you start to find
traction on is not the thing youwanna create. And so, you know,
there are always going to besome trade offs potentially when
you're dealing with this kind ofcreative work.
Nobody is guaranteed anaudience. And so we have to find
the intersection between thethings we want to create and the
(31:01):
things that people want toconsume. Mhmm. But one of the
things, you know, talking aboutwhat's resonating now, and also
you brought up this point of,like, if you have a show that
isn't working, what do you dothen? I always think about this,
especially if you have lowdownloads, you have very low
risk to do big bold experiments.
And there's one of the mostfamous copywriters of all time,
Eugene Schwartz. He would gethired by companies to come in,
(31:23):
and they had an ad running,let's say, in the newspaper, and
it was converting at, you know,1% or something like that. And
so he would be brought in toincrease the conversion rate by,
like, 10% or 20%, which would begreat. You know, a big company
gets him to come in and increasehis profits by 10%. Perfect.
But he was known for actually,like, tripling or quadrupling or
quintupling the conversionrates. And basically, his secret
(31:45):
was to test big differences iswhat he called it. And so it's
not just iterating on a wordhere or there in the copy. It's
not just tweaking the headline.It's saying, let's just scrap
this whole ad that we have andstart with a totally different
angle and test out this one.
Mhmm. And I think that this issomething that more podcasters,
if you have been doing your showfor a year or two and are just
feeling like, man, I have gotthis out there. I've got this in
(32:06):
front of people. I'm proud ofthe quality of show, and it's
just not taking. It could bethat this angle to the show does
not have the legs that you'relooking for, and maybe there is
another version of the show,same topic, aimed at the same
audience that you're trying toreach right now, but a totally
different format, totallydifferent concept that could
work.
And so this is something that Ithink there's a huge opportunity
(32:27):
when the stakes are low, whenyou got, like, a hundred
listeners an episode, and it'slike, okay. I want more than
this, and I don't wanna just,like, get to a 50. I wanna get
to 5,000 downloads an episode,And this show format has not
proved to me so far that it'scapable of getting me there.
Justin (32:41):
Mhmm. Yeah. I was just talking to somebody in Slack
about this. His name is Brett.And his existing show is flat.
And he's like, what am I goingto do about it? And his thought
was, wait a second. We've got abunch of episodes where we talk
about AI. But the main focus ofthe show is not about AI. But
(33:02):
what if we repurpose thiscontent for a separate feed?
Let's do a big swing on anothershow type. But we already have
the content. We're gonna just reedit those episodes, put them
here, and see if this packaging,which is totally different than
this other show, gets moretraction. I think it's great.
(33:23):
You've already got this existingthing.
It's like, let's try a big swingover here. Let's just try it.
See what happens. And my thoughtbecause there's some other
keywords in this title that Ithink might even get search
traffic. And so it's like, I'dbe interested in just switching
the title, the keywords, thefocus, if that ends up getting
more traction.
(33:43):
It's a great experiment to try,because he's got a baseline. How
fast did this show grow? Andthen this one over here.
Jeremy (33:50):
And I think that you don't need to make the full
rebrand before you start testingsome of these things. And so
with the show concept, if you'relooking at experimenting with,
like, what if we took a totallydifferent approach, a different
lens into this topic? You canjust write down your show
concept. You say, okay. My showname is a show about my topic
where in every episode we do x yz.
And that x y z should besomething interesting and
distinctive and refreshing. Andyou can just take that sentence
(34:14):
and you can start telling thatto people. And you can say, hey.
It comes up in conversation.They ask, oh, you have a
podcast?
You start telling them that. Andthat's not actually what your
current show is, but you startto gauge, like, do I get that
eyes light up moment wherethey're like, oh, that sounds
really interesting. And if theysay, where do I find that? You
say, well, okay. If you can findit here, it's actually under a
different name right now.
I'm making some changes. I'mmoving to this new format. But
now you're like, okay. I've gota data point that people are
(34:35):
interested in that. You can, youknow, do polls.
You could say to your existingaudience, I'm thinking about
starting a spin off podcast.I've got these three new ideas
I'm thinking about. Which do youlike best? And so now you can
kind of, like, validate the showconcept idea and just see, like,
what are people interested in?What are people, like, clicking
on when I talk to them?
What are they getting excitedabout? And then you can do the
same thing a little bit withinthe existing show format. And so
(34:57):
without officially changing yourconcept name, you can just say,
hey, let's try some bonusepisodes where I'm going to
experiment with a differentformat. And if I get feedback
that people like this, if I feellike it's exciting to me, maybe
that then kind of subsumes theexisting show and I do a proper
rebrand. And so you don't needto, like, go all in and pull the
trigger on all these changessight unseen upfront.
Justin (35:18):
You know what that made me think of? Is in the software
business, there's this sayingthat the worst thing that can
happen when you launch a newsoftware product is that you get
$500 of recurring revenue rightaway. Because then it's like,
oh, I've got customers here. Igotta serve these people.
Validates it enough that you'relike, okay, there's something
here.
But then so many of thosebusinesses don't grow past 500
(35:41):
or a thousand dollars of revenueper month. I think the same
thing happens in podcasting.Where people
Jeremy (35:47):
Yeah.
Justin (35:47):
Put out a show, and all of a sudden they're getting a
thousand downloads per month.And they're like, oh, I've got
traction here. This is validatesthat the concept is good. But
what they're not seeing is theadjacent possible. I know we
have listeners that are workingon shows that have had some
traction, but aren't achievingthe goals that the creator has
(36:09):
for that show.
Jeremy (36:10):
Yep.
Justin (36:11):
And the best thing that they could do is do what you
just said. Maybe try a littlespin off idea. Just pitch a
different idea. It could stilleven be in the same topic or
category. But you give it newpackaging.
You give it a new structure. Youjust try something that's a
bigger swing, a differentdirection, and see what happens.
(36:33):
And you might be surprised. Andyou might just be maintaining
this old show just because it'sjust got the bare minimum of
traction. It's like and youthink I'll never get more than
this.
Like I gotta hold on to this. Igotta try to grow this. Whereas
in business and in podcastingand in anything, I think the
truth is sometimes you just needto switch it up. You're
(36:55):
maintaining something that'sactually holding you down.
Jeremy (36:58):
This reminds me of an anecdote that I've heard about
James Clear when he wasreformatting and rebranding his
newsletter. So now he's got thethree two one newsletter. It's
been a widely copied format.It's there's a lot that really
works about it. He's got, Ithink, like, 2,000,000, three
million, four millionsubscribers, something like
that.
Obviously, his book has played abig role in the newsletter's
success, but he used to have adifferent newsletter format
(37:19):
where he published long formessays every week. And he
basically put this thoughtexperiment to himself. I believe
it was in response to writingthe book and realizing that he
couldn't spend so much time onthe newsletter. And so he asked
himself, do I believe that thereare infinite possible newsletter
variations? There's, like, allthese combinations of what could
go into a newsletter.
It's like, well, yes, obviously,there are many ways that a
(37:41):
newsletter on this topic couldexist. If I accept that, how
likely do I think it is that Ihave both the most valuable,
highest quality, and leasteffort combination of those?
Mhmm. And it's like, of coursenot. If there are infinite
possible newsletters, there's noway that I have found the
perfect version of it.
And so then once you acceptthat, then it starts to open
(38:01):
your eyes to say, okay. Now Iknow that there are shows that
are both probably less effortfor me to make, more fun for me
to make, easier to grow, morevaluable to the listeners. You
know, that doesn't give you aroad map to how to find them,
but it at least opens your mindto saying like, ah, I am not on
the best possible version ofthis thing. There's an easier
path. There's something that'sbetter for everybody involved,
(38:22):
and maybe I should open my mindto starting to look for
potential ideas to chase down ortweaks to make to move towards
that.
Justin (38:28):
Yeah. I love that. And it might take a while to test
out an idea. That's the hardpart about podcasting is, you
know, any sort of AB test isgonna take longer. Because it
just takes a while to see if ashow is resonating.
But I think that principle isexactly what people need to be
thinking about.
Jeremy (38:45):
So this is kind of on the podcast specific front. I
think the other thing that'sinteresting is talking to the
audience of people who have apodcast for their business. And
this is where it getsinteresting that we talked a
little bit about before howpodcasting still has a lot of
space when you compare it toother platforms like YouTube,
blogging, email. Likepodcasting, if you look at some
(39:05):
of the data, so we talked abouthow there were 332,000 active
podcasts, and there's a total ofmaybe, like, three to four to
5,000,000 shows available. Butthen if you look at YouTube
channels, then there are 35 to40,000,000 active channels.
And so that's, like, 10 times asmany active channels as there
are total podcasts in existence,so a lot more. Blogs, there are
(39:26):
70 to 80,000,000 active blogs,and that is approximately, from
a total pool of 600 plus milliontotal blogs. And so clearly,
like, podcasting is not acrowded medium as far as other
content creation platforms go.And so I think for people who
are creating shows for theirbusinesses, it's like you're
looking at what are your otheroptions. If you're creating long
(39:47):
form content that is meant tonurture your audience,
podcasting is still, I think, apretty good place to be.
And I think actually what'srequired is maybe shifting the
mentality from this is anaudience growth platform where
people are going to discover meto one that is more. This is
where I'm going to nurture myexisting audience and build up
that relationship and hopefullykind of accelerate their time to
conversion here because they'vespent so much time with me and
(40:09):
my ideas and my content. Mhmm.That's a bit of a reframe
because I think, you know, tenyears ago, people started
because you could build up a bigaudience pretty quickly. I don't
think that's the case anymore.
But I don't think that thatmakes podcasting less valuable
to your business.
Justin (40:21):
No. No. And I mean, here's the other number we don't
know. Is that the conversionrate for listeners to customer
might have gone way up in thattime. Yep.
And so, you know, maybe in theold days, it was easier to build
a big audience. Oh, suddenlyI've got, you know, 20,000
people listening to the show.But back then, you were
(40:42):
converting about, I don't know,let's say a thousand of those to
customers every year.
Jeremy (40:47):
Yep.
Justin (40:48):
And now, you're still doing the show, but now your
audience isn't as big as 5,000.So the audience has gone way
down. But you're stillconverting a thousand of those
listeners to customers. So, ifyour goal is, I need to get a
thousand customers every year,and the show is still
accomplishing that, then you'redoing great. Right?
(41:08):
Normally in marketing, you wantmore traffic at the top of the
funnel, ends up giving you moresales. But I just want to point
out that that's not necessarilytrue for every medium. And
especially in podcasting, I justhave the sense of like Because
it's such a long termrelationship with the host. I
could see Yeah. It's like, yeah.
(41:29):
Maybe you're getting less peopleat the top of the funnel, but
the absolute number of customersthat are coming in is the same
or growing. And if that's thecase, then two thumbs up. It's
accomplishing what you want itto.
Jeremy (41:42):
Yeah. And some of the numbers that I've seen, I've
talked to so many people whoare, like, coaches, consultants,
service providers, where 80 to90% of their clients listen to
the podcast. They may not havediscovered them through the
podcast, but almost everybodywho signs up to work with me
listens to the podcast. Often,they're also reading the
newsletter, but they do listento the podcast. They quote it
back.
And this is really a smallsample size of data, but
(42:04):
anecdotally, what I have seenpretty repeatedly is that
podcast listeners for thosetypes of businesses convert at,
like, four to 8% Mhmm. Which isway higher than the typical like
one to 2% in most onlinemarketing platforms.
Justin (42:18):
That, again, if that's your goal, that's the question
you should be asking. Is, okay,am I getting enough people
converting to customers fromthis? How often do people
mention it when they sign up? Ifa lot of people are mentioning
it, then you're doing great.Like, keep going.
Yeah. And don't forget that youmight not need as many listeners
as you think you do, if yourgoal is to convert folks to
(42:40):
customers.
Jeremy (42:41):
So kind of like closing out this idea on opportunities.
I think we, know, we talkedabout taking big swings,
reinventing things. You know, wehave talked about repeatedly
throughout this season theopportunity or threat of video.
Mhmm. I think there is acountercurrent to ride by
doubling down on the craft ofcreating audio first audio only
(43:02):
experiences.
Mhmm. And I think that this issomething that it's both
blending, becoming a student ofthe craft of podcasting and the
medium of podcasting. What is agreat podcast? As well as
understanding, like, what isyour audience looking for and
how can you position create ashow that is not trying to
compete with YouTube and thetype of content that does well
(43:22):
on YouTube and offering it arefreshing alternative that is
maybe a bit of a reprieve fromthe noise that exists elsewhere.
And so I think that this is oneof the opportunities that
podcasters have not really takenseriously enough.
I think a certain subset ofpodcasters takes this really
seriously. And I think about,like, the NPRs and the public
radio folks, like, this is theirbread and butter. But I think
(43:44):
there is more opportunity formore, like, indie creators,
people who are creating showsfor their businesses to really
lean into, like, what makesaudio special and really double
down on that.
Justin (43:54):
Yeah. James Crisland has that quote where he says,
Podcasting is something for myears when my eyes are busy. I
think that's great. Was itMichael Osborne that said
podcasting is where I go toescape the internet?
Jeremy (44:05):
Yes.
Justin (44:06):
I love And I think that framing is so great. And again,
then as podcast creators, we canlean into that and go, if my
competition is this hyperactive,addictive TikTok feed. So people
are trying to get, let's saythey're trying to get
(44:27):
information about the cateringbusiness through TikTok and
Instagram. Well, what are thedisadvantages of that platform?
Well, I end up scrolling forhours and hours and hours.
It's very hyper. It's like shortform. Those are the
disadvantages. Okay. So what canI offer as a podcast creator for
(44:47):
people interested in thecatering business that they
can't get there?
What would the format soundlike? And the idea that people
are either taking a walk withyou, they're taking a drive with
you, they're doing some choreswith you. That framing, I think,
can even help go, okay, whatmode are people in right now?
(45:08):
And yeah, crafting your showaround that. And then putting it
right in your podcast marketing.
Hey, if you're tired of bitesized TikTok content, and
influencer bros, and you know,all the toxic stuff that's going
on over here, this is a reprieveover here. I've designed this
show to be a calm place where wecan really dig into a topic at
(45:32):
length. If that's for you, takea walk with me as we talk about
the catering business. You know,that's, I think, an underrated
approach.
Jeremy (45:42):
I think just to bring it back to that idea of, you know,
what will resonate now, whatwill cut through now, what will
land with people now. The thingfor me is, like, podcasting is
many things. It's a a mediumthat's made up of, like, there's
certainly the entertainmentaspect. But I also think that
maybe more than any short formchannel or video channel, like,
podcasting is a medium thatthrives on ideas and big ideas
and discussing big ideas. And Ithink there is always room.
(46:05):
People are always hungry for thenext big idea. And so I think
that that's something thatalways cuts through as well. And
Mhmm. That can be somethingwithin your micro niche, or that
can be something much bigger.But thinking about, like, what
is the big idea that this showis built on that nobody else is
quite understanding, nobody elseis quite articulating in the way
that I feel it needs to, andthen marrying that with some
kind of show format or conceptthat is listenable, that is
(46:27):
attractive, that gets people tonotice it.
And I suspect in the next fewyears, we're gonna see lots more
creativity, lots moreoriginality, lots more iterating
on what a podcast is and whatcreators are doing with the
medium, and hopefully a lot morelisteners along with it.
Justin (46:41):
Yeah. I hope folks had a few moments in here where they
were inspired to think aboutsomething or go do something.
Because the answer to growth,like, how do I grow the show, is
creativity. It's like, how can Iget creative in the space I'm
in?
There are actually fewer active shows today than there
were in 2018. So you could makethe case that there are more
shows available for a listenerto find in a podcast app, but
it's actually less crowded thanit was five years ago.
Justin (00:13):
There is limited real estate for a person's time, but
your category might have fivecompetitors or three competitors
or no good competitors.Podcasting is still easier in
terms of competition.
Jeremy (00:29):
I think when we think about, like, what's working now,
what's the opportunity rightnow, this is one of those
evergreen things is So I waslistening to an episode of the
Tim Ferriss Show a while back.This was probably from sometime
in 2024 that he recorded it. Hewas talking about how he was
thinking about what his futurewas in podcasting. And he was
kind of like, you know, I'vebeen at this a long time. It
(00:51):
used to be super easy to get youknow, be in the top 10 of all
shows.
First world problems for Timthere. And now it was getting
harder. He's in, you know, thetop 50, top 100, but just how
much harder podcasting has got.And it had got him thinking
about, like, do I wanna continueputting in the effort that I'm
putting into this? And then morerecently, I saw that Amy
Porterfield, another earlypodcaster who got a lot of
(01:12):
people into podcasting, is doinga big pivot and rebrand of her
show.
It's not shutting it down, butit's a big shift. And I thought
these two things were reallyinteresting from these long
running shows that are kind oftalking about how it's harder to
podcast and how what used towork isn't really working
anymore. And so I figured itmight be worth digging into, is
it actually harder to grow now?
Justin (01:34):
I mean, the funny thing about this question is people
have been saying this as long asI've been in podcasting. Back in
02/2008, people were like, youknow, it's too late. We missed
the boat. It was easier before.This question is as old as
podcasting, but it is relevantright now.
Jeremy (01:50):
Yeah. And, you know, it strikes me that you're actually
the perfect case study herebecause your first show launched
in what year?
Justin (01:56):
Two thousand eight.
Jeremy (01:57):
Okay. So first show 02/2008. You have just launched
a new show in 2025. So you'vebeen producing podcasts, and
there's, I think, been severalin between there for a long
time. And so I'm curious aboutyour personal experience
launching shows, gainingtraction, building an audience.
How is it different now than itwas back then?
Justin (02:15):
There are definitely things that were maybe easier
back then. For example, backthen, the biggest podcasting
platform was Apple Podcasts. Andif you got in new and
noteworthy, you really couldgrow your show fast. One of the
shows that I did back then, Ithink it was my second podcast I
launched. I learned all thetricks how to get into new and
(02:37):
noteworthy.
And there's a few things youcould do. And got it into new
and noteworthy. And the Applecharts were really important.
All of that's probably hardernow, and also less true now.
Apple's just not as important asit was.
And it's harder to get into newand noteworthy, and to chart in
Apple Podcasts. More competitionfrom celebrities and big name
(02:58):
Conan O'Brien's and all themcoming in. On the other hand, it
just feels kind of the same tome. My new show, I don't know
what's it doing. We only do anepisode every two weeks.
And it looks like every episodein the first thirty days,
episodes are getting about sixeighty five downloads.
Jeremy (03:19):
So Okay.
Justin (03:20):
I feel like in some ways, I feel like that's more
than I would have had at thispoint. Especially only being
seven episodes in or something.Generally, if you're publishing
more episodes, like if you'republishing weekly, you probably
grow a bit faster. But yeah, Ifeel like it's about the same.
Lot of this is dependent on abunch of factors that I'm sure
(03:42):
we'll get into.
I don't know if it's any hardernow. In some ways, might be even
easier as well. And maybe we cantalk about that.
Jeremy (03:50):
Yeah. And, you know, actually, some of the data that
came up in the 2024 podcastmarketing trends report kinda
speaks to both sides of this,where it seems like it both
speaks to the fact that it isharder for many shows to grow,
but also that it is eithereasier or there is more
potential upside for shows thatdo figure out how to grow. And
so going through some of theresults from the survey here,
(04:13):
one of the big ones here was theyear over year and month over
month growth rates. And so thiswas the second year of the
report, we actually hadsomething to compare to the
previous year. And there's ahuge massive caveat to this data
in that the Apple iOS changeshappened over the span.
And so just shows across thepodcast industry declined in the
(04:33):
number of downloads, but that Iadjusted for that, and this is
still well beyond what the AppleiOS changes would account for.
And so looking at the, year overyear annual growth rate in the
from the calendar year of 2023was 1.3%. So, basically, shows
who submitted to the surveyalmost did not grow whatsoever.
(04:53):
And so, yes, part of this wasthat they were getting lower
downloads reported from ApplePodcasts. But in general, this
was a 94% decrease in annualgrowth rate from the year
before.
So it seems to say like, oh,growth is getting way harder
just from one year to the next.Like, there's been a huge drop
in the, you know, growth of, youknow, a pretty significant
sample size of podcasts. So butthen we actually have this other
(05:15):
side that is based on the medianannual growth rate. If you look
at the average, the averageannual growth rate was actually
97.3%. And so the average showalmost doubled in size over the
year.
And so if you start to thinkabout how medians and averages
work, it's like, oh, clearly,there are some huge outlier
shows that are just pulling up.If we go by average, they're
(05:37):
pulling up the whole dataset,and these shows grew a crazy
amount. And so this is somethingwhere I think, you know, it gets
that way where you're talking tohere is like, perhaps for the
typical average middle of theroad show, it is much harder to
grow now. But if you have acertain type of show and you
know how to market iteffectively and create a certain
type of content, perhaps thereis a way higher ceiling than
(05:57):
there was previously.
Justin (05:58):
The other thing this is making me think of is the
difference between anestablished show and a new show.
And so, the show that I juststarted, it's growing fast right
now. Like month over month. Yep.The growth rate is high because
we're actively promoting it.
We're actively accumulating newlisteners because we're growing
(06:19):
from zero. Whereas one of myolder shows is very flat. And
Yep. Podcasts generally, almostany type of media, you will kind
of gradually rise until you hita plateau. And sometimes it's
possible to break through thoseplateaus.
But most shows, newsletters,websites, any kind of YouTube
(06:42):
channel, whatever you create,most of them have kind of a
natural plateau that you'll hit.Yeah. And so, we might be seeing
some of that here as well. Theremight be an existing show that
broke through a plateau and isbringing up the average. Or
there could have just been anumber of new shows that just
year over year have reallyincreased their growth rate.
So keeping all of that in mind,that's kind of the context for
(07:06):
this.
Jeremy (07:07):
There's actually some other kind of contributing
factors that could lead to alower reported download number.
And actually so Alyssa Craig,who's the head of marketing at
Headliner, is one of these,like, short form audiogram video
creator tools that a lot ofpeople have used. Mhmm. She did
a guest post for my newsletter awhile back after the release of
this report, and she contributedthis really interesting thought
(07:28):
that I was not thinking aboutbefore, which is, you know,
we've talked previously abouthow YouTube viewership of
podcasts is going up. Those arenot being reported as downloads
in your podcast hostingplatform.
And so when I did this report, Iasked people to go to your
podcast hosting platform andinput how many downloads did you
get each month. I asked for,like, total YouTube viewership,
but not on a month by monthbreakdown. And so as we see
(07:50):
people starting to post videoson Spotify, those downloads are
now not showing up as aggregatedin your hosting provider. And so
there is this fragmenting ofdata where it's possible that
many shows have actually grownby total viewership or audience
size, but the reported downloadsin your podcast hosting platform
is actually stagnant or evengoing down even while your
(08:11):
audience has grown. And so Ithink that this is one of the
things that, as I started totalk with some people about
this, they're actually like theydidn't connect the dots.
They're like, oh, yeah. I'vebeen feeling so bad about my
podcast, but actually, YouTubehas doubled or tripled over the
past, six months. Oh, maybethat's what's happening here.
Mhmm. And so it could be thatyou might be like, oh,
something's really wrong with myshow, and actually it's it's
(08:31):
just masking other forms ofgrowth.
Justin (08:33):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.
Jeremy (08:35):
So let's maybe look at some of the reasons why it may
or may not be harder to grownow. Because it seems like there
are certainly opportunities, butthere also might be some more
headwinds that didn't existpreviously. And the way I see
it, there's kind of like twofactors at play here for why it
might be harder for some showsand some niches, and those are
increased competition, which mayor may not be true, and kind of
(08:56):
changing tastes or a kind oflike raise up the bar of
expected quality from podcastsin general. I think that one's
probably pretty clear thatthat's true. But let's maybe
start on the competition side.
And you mentioned, like, whenyou got into podcasting way back
in the day, Conan O'Brien wasnot podcasting. This was not
really a celebrity medium. Youcould say it was kind of like a
(09:17):
backwater content channel, andnow it is fully mainstream. And
so we have seen Disney is intopodcasting. Netflix is into
podcasting.
Amazon's into podcasting, andall host of celebrities. So I
think there's both a, like,potential density increase of
competition where there may bemore creators, more shows that
you're competing with. Butthere's also this kind of star
power that you're competing withtoo. What's your take on what a
(09:38):
solo creator who's starting anew show is up against nowadays?
Justin (09:41):
Yeah. I mean, we've mentioned in the past that there
is limited real estate for aperson's time. And so when they
open their podcast player, I didthis this morning, I have lots
of options. And there are showsthat would have normally been my
first go to, like This AmericanLife. I would listen to every
(10:03):
episode.
But now it's like there's justso many good shows. They get
bumped down. So, There's moregood shows to choose from. This
differs depending on yourcategory. But in general, every
listener only has so muchlistening time allocated.
And that might be an hour a day,if you're lucky. Well, if your
(10:24):
show is an hour, you'recompeting with all of those
other shows that have hourepisodes that day. So I think
that has gotten harder. Back inthe day, I remember being hungry
for like, I need more. Like, Iwould run out of podcasts to
listen to.
I haven't had that problem in along time.
Jeremy (10:42):
And, you know, this gets into a bit of an interesting
dichotomy of how you look at thedata. So there are more podcasts
that have obviously ever beencreated. That number is always
going up. There are always morenew shows being created. They're
not going down.
We're not subtracting shows thathave we're erasing them from
history. You're writing them outof existence. That show never
existed. So the total number ofshows that are findable online
(11:02):
somewhere is going up. If youlook at the number of active
shows and so this is shows thathave been, producing or had
published an episode in the lastthirty days.
There are actually fewer activeshows today than there were in
2018. So this is even before the2020 boom COVID boom of
podcasting. In 2018, there were525,000 active shows. As of the
(11:24):
end of twenty twenty four, therewere 332,000. So actually a
pretty significant drop.
So you could make the case thatthere are more shows available
for a listener to find in apodcast app. But of the shows
that are actively producingepisodes, which are generally
the shows that new people aresubscribing to, it's actually
less crowded than it was nowover five years ago.
Justin (11:45):
Yeah. And as we've mentioned before, not all of
those 332,000 shows are anygood. If there was a magical
filter we could apply on top ofall these things, which is which
of these shows are good, whichof these shows actually resonate
with an audience, and then whichof these shows actually are in
your category, you can imaginethat that group gets even
(12:06):
smaller. For some folkslistening, your category might
have five competitors, or threecompetitors, or no good
competitors. And so Yes.
I think we can be encouraged inthe sense that And I think
you've got some other statshere. Compared to other mediums,
podcasting is stillcomparatively easier in terms of
(12:30):
competition. There's lesscompetition, especially when you
compare it to something likeYouTube.
Jeremy (12:35):
Yeah. And this is something that, you know, I see
a lot with my clients, and soI'll often do in-depth audits
for my clients, and I'll do somecompetitor research as well. And
in most niches, there are a lotof shows on the same topic. And
I'll go poke around. I won'tlisten to all the shows, but
I'll poke around.
And the vast majority of them,98 of them, like, in a niche
(12:56):
that might have, like, 25 showson a topic, there might be two
that are, like, interesting thatstand out to me. And I'm like,
oh, those look like refreshingtakes on this topic. And then
the rest of them are entirelygeneric and have almost no shot
at growth unless you alreadyknow the creator and you're
following them and you're a fanof them. But that show is not
going to attract new people justbased on its own merit. And so
Mhmm.
This to me, kind of like yousaid, I think this is actually
(13:17):
really encouraging where theremay be a lot of shows in your
niche, in your genre, probablyvery few of them are actually
good. And there's a distinctionhere between competition and
noise. And, like, we all kind ofare competing with noise, but
there are shows that are highquality, they're active, that a
listener is actively choosingbetween. And so they might
choose between ours. They mightlook at one or two other shows
(13:38):
that seem interesting to them,and maybe they listen to all of
them and test them out.
Maybe they just pick the onethat seems like the safest bet.
But then there is thecompetition of a whole bunch of
low quality shows that we allneed to kind of raise our shows
above that kind of base level.And so I think that that is
certainly higher and across allcontent, not just podcasting,
like, that is only going up. Andso I think that to me, it is a
(14:00):
little bit disheartening maybeas a creator to see that how
fast AI can both just churn outon its own junk and also how
fast people using AI can churnout junk. Just like, maybe they
record the podcast, but it's anAI written script, and it just
sucks.
And it's like, that makes itharder for the rest of us. But I
do think that for people who putin the time and care and craft
(14:22):
to make a better than averagepodcast, there is a huge amount
of blue ocean still available.
Justin (14:27):
The other thing that people don't think about is
there are people that are notactive podcast listeners, but
would be brought in to thecategory if they could find the
content that they want. Right? Ieven think about, like, in the
comedy category, you thinkthere's all these juggernauts.
Joe Rogan and Mark Marron. Andyou think, wow.
(14:49):
Like, there's no way that anyonecould create a space in there.
And then you've got thisphenomenon like Kill Tony, which
Yeah. That show is just verydifferent and attracts a
different audience. I think hebrought a lot of new people into
podcasting. And that's becausepeople might resonate with a
particular host, a particularformat, a particular topic.
(15:13):
And they're like, oh, well, if Ihave to go to podcasts to get
that, then I was just talking tosomebody outside here in my co
working office. And he wastalking to a co worker who has
just gotten into podcastsbecause they want to get more
into history. And they foundthis podcast about Napoleon. And
so they're listening to 300episodes on Napoleon. Now Yeah.
(15:34):
That is a perfect example of nonpodcast listener not showing up
in any of our stats. They comein, and now that show has grown
because somebody was seekingthat content, that format,
whatever. They have a job to bedone and it's being done.
Jeremy (15:50):
Mhmm.
Justin (15:51):
So, yeah. I I get encouraged by stuff like that
because there's a lot of peoplenot listening to podcasts right
now or not listening regularly.
Jeremy (15:58):
The last thing I'll say on the competition front is
there's this concept called thelaw of shitty click throughs.
And this was coined by a guynamed Andrew Chen, who I think
was at Uber, was one of theirmarketing guys or head of
growth. And the idea isbasically that in marketing is
obviously his domain here. Thereis some tactic that will work.
And a few people will know aboutit at the start.
(16:19):
And so at the at the start ofthe Internet, it was like banner
ads were like super cheap andyou can get a ton of traffic
back to your website. And thenword gets out and all of a
sudden everybody's doing bannerads. And so the cost per click
goes up, the cost per conversiongoes up, and eventually becomes
not worth doing anymore. Yeah.The same has happened for
Facebook in various ways,whether it's groups or pages or
(16:39):
ads.
And the same happens topodcasting as well. And so I
think about a lot of the peoplethat my agency worked with, they
were business owners, And a lotof them signed up to work with
me back in, like, 2017, '18, '19because they had their own
coaches or mentors or friendswho had started podcasts in
twenty thirteen, fourteen,fifteen Mhmm. Had immediately
built up big audiences and werelike, hey. Here's a tactic that
(17:00):
works to grow my audience. I'mgonna launch a podcast.
I'm not gonna put too muchthought into the concept
development. I'm just gonna hosta, you know, a show, have my
friends on and interview them,and I'm gonna grow an audience
like all those other people. Andso you still get this
proliferation of shows who a lotof times people have been
thinking about doing a show for,like, five years, but they're
still anchored in this old worldway of of podcasting where it's
(17:21):
like, you can just start a showand you'll grow an audience
around it. And they're like,five of my friends did it, and
so I've just been waiting topull the trigger, not realizing
that actually the bar hasshifted quite a bit. Mhmm.
Which I think actuallytransitions into this kind of
next idea around, like, tasteschange and expectations change
around, you know, a medium as awhole, but then also within any
one niche or, you know, contentchannel, anything like that. And
(17:44):
I'm wondering, like, this ismaybe something that you can
specifically speak to of, like,the type of content you would
have created ten years agowithin your community versus the
type of content you would createnow is probably vastly
different.
Justin (17:55):
Oh, yeah. I mean, in the business category, the big trend
used to be doing these dailyinterview shows. That was like a
way of getting traction becauseyou could If you did them every
day, you got way more downloads.And the charts and the
algorithms were not super smart.And so they would just interpret
(18:15):
like all of these downloads forthe show means it's a popular
show.
And it would go to the top ofthe charts. You don't see people
doing that as much anymore. Youwere gonna copy that I mean,
maybe you could copy it againfor this generation. It would
work. But interview shows ingeneral used to be You know,
even when I started, it wasfairly novel for a founder to
(18:35):
get approached and say, hey, doyou want to be on my podcast?
Now, people of note that get alot of requests are kind of
like, How many downloads yougot? I'm not gonna waste my
time. Yeah. And so, the bar hasshifted, for sure. There's still
ways in.
You know? There's still creativeways to do all those formats.
There's still green space there.Yeah, it's definitely shifted.
(18:58):
The one thing that hasn'tshifted is a creator that comes
into a space and has an instinctabout what might resonate.
And then they pursue that.That's not always going to work.
But if you've been in a spacefor a while, and you're like,
Oh, you know what everyone'smissing? Everyone's missing
(19:18):
this. And then you come out withthat, and you execute on it
well, that's a strategy thatwill never go out of style.
This space, can I bring herethat would resonate that's not
being done, that I think wouldattract an audience?
Jeremy (19:34):
You know, that I think is you get really into the art
side of of this, where it's likethis you can bring some strategy
to it, but it's kind of comesout of something that you have
just been immersed in the space.You have been able to connect
the dots in a way that nobodyelse has. Mhmm. And I I was
talking with a a potentialclient today. They actually have
a very successful show already,very long running, and they're
(19:57):
doing something like four or500,000 downloads a month,
something like that.
So big show. But they feel theylook at some of the shows at the
top of the charts, and they say,you know, we're kinda talking
about a lot of the same contenthere.
Charles Duhigg (20:09):
And it's in the let's call it
Jeremy (20:10):
the broad self help category. And so shows at the
top of the chart are MelRobbins. So biggest show in the
world right now. So Mel Robbinsis broad self help. It's, you
know, accessible to a lot ofpeople.
And that show is is newer newerthan this show from this
potential client I've beentalking to. And they're kinda
wondering, like, what's going onhere? And it's like sometimes
when you think about self help,a lot of these ideas have been
(20:33):
in constant circulation andrecirculation for at least a
hundred years, if not longer.You can look at, like, Ryan
Holiday, the stoicism. He kindof revived that in many ways.
Maybe not entirely singlehandedly, but did a lot of that.
But, like, those ideas,thousands of years old and are
now still relevant. Mhmm. And soI think you're right. It's not
only that you've seen somethingthat somebody else hasn't seen,
(20:54):
but that you're often able toarticulate it and package it for
the moment.
Mhmm. And I think that this iswhere a lot of times shows that
have been going for a while andfeel it's harder now, it's kind
of like they've become out ofsync with the culture. And I
think that this is the naturallife cycle of any business
creator is if you can get at thepoint where things start to work
and you gain traction, you beginto take your foot off the gas a
(21:15):
little bit and are not quite so,like, in the grind doing the
research, talking to peoplebecause now you're worried about
these, like, running thebusiness or whatever it is. And
pretty soon you find yourselfout of step with where tastes
have shifted. And so I thinkthat this is one of those things
that is so hard to do becauseyou're juggling so much.
But it's something we all needto be aware of is like, this is
happening. We're like in themiddle of a river. And if we try
to like anchor ourselves down,like everything's gonna go
(21:37):
flowing by us, and we're quicklygonna be behind.
Justin (21:39):
The other thing, this is not gonna be a popular take.
I'll just Bring
Jeremy (21:44):
it on.
Justin (21:44):
I'll just say it. And again, I know what it's like to
be a creator. I know how hard itis. I think if your show is not
growing, that is an opportunityfor you to ask some hard
questions. And I'll justillustrate this with an example.
There was a show that I reallyliked because the content was
(22:05):
what I wanted to learn about.But the host's voice, their
microphone quality, that partalways graded on me. They could
have probably fixed it with somespeech coaching or whatever. But
as soon as another show showedup. Yeah.
Where the host was just betterspoken, more engaging, more
(22:28):
entertaining, I switched. AndI'm sure that creator was like,
what happened? I this show usedto be popular. And now Yep. What
why what's going on?
And as creators, if it's notresonating, there's got to be a
reason. It could be you're notmarketing it enough. But there's
some other things that I thinkare worth looking at. Maybe the
(22:52):
format of your show isn't quiteright. Maybe you need to bring
on a co host.
Podcasters that are at the topof their game, and have been
doing this for a long time, areconstantly reevaluating and
adjusting. And so Tim Ferrissmight be like, You know what?
I've been doing this show for along time now. Is this still
(23:14):
worth doing? And AmyPorterfield's probably saying,
Okay.
We've been doing this show along time. Our goal is to grow.
Are we just gonna keep doing thesame old thing? Because there's
more competition than ever inour What are we gonna do about
it? That means taking a hardlook at everything.
What Yeah. Is potentially notworking. And I'll just refer
(23:36):
back to our episodes on doinglistener research. That's why
that's so important. Have aquestion in there.
A box where people can putunfiltered opinions on your
show. It's hard. I've done this.And people have said some things
that hurt my feelings. But Iwant to create things that have
(23:57):
resonance.
And if I'm doing things that areimpeding the show's growth, I
want to know about it. So Ithink that's the other thing
that you can look up here is,yeah, competition's better. You
know what? Conan O'Brien, he isa practiced, well oiled machine.
He is a good entertainer.
And if you're going to head tohead with him in the comedy talk
(24:21):
space, it's going be tough. Whatare you going to bring to the
table that he's not? And youdon't have to be exactly like
him, but you've gotta bring somesort of A game that's gonna be
able to compete at his level.Stand up comedy is such a good
example of this, because thereare different types of people
that win different ways. NormMacDonald was one of my favorite
(24:41):
comics.
And he was just weird andirreverent and very different
than Mark Marron or Joe Rogan orConan O'Brien. So there's a way
to do this. But you gotta bringyour A game, whatever that is.
Jeremy (24:56):
I think there are infinite ways to differentiate
yourself, and not all of themare going to be winners. But I
think that the hard thing isit's about actually seeing the
negative space. I've never takenany art classes, but I've heard
that one of the exercises thatthey get you to do is draw a
chair, let's say, not by drawingthe chair, but by learning to
see the space between the chairlegs. And it's like you're
learning to see what's notthere. Mhmm.
And I think that this is a supervaluable skill for any creator
(25:19):
to both immerse themselves intheir space and be able to
objectively you know, it's gonnabe painful at the start. When
you see all these other shows,most of them are gonna be better
than you if you're just startingout. But that's actually the
only way to be able to see thatnegative space and understand,
for one, like, what's not inexistence right now. But the
other thing is the cliches. Andso I think that this is, like,
one of the easiest ways to standout is to do this research, to
(25:41):
just go read all thedescriptions of 25 shows in your
space, and you will realize,like, I guarantee it, if there
are a significant number ofshows in your niche, you will
see the same language pop upagain and again and again and
make a spreadsheet of this.
Justin (25:54):
Appreciate it. Appreciate
Jeremy (25:54):
it. Probably, there is a good chance that if you have not
done this research before,you're gonna have a lot of that
same language as well. And thisis the only way to find it and
then eliminate it and thenactually maybe counter position
against it. And so I think thatdoing that kind of research and,
like, one of the things that aswe're talking about more
competition and more, like, lowquality competition, high
quality competition, a lot of itis just, like, something is
(26:16):
popular again, and so peopleadopt it, and it quickly becomes
kind of, like, just ubiquitousand then a bit of cliche, and
then it eventually becomescringe. It, like, moves down
this life cycle.
Mhmm. And it's like, you don'twanna find yourself moving down
that line. You gotta kinda be,like, updating your messaging.
Like, there is no winningmessaging or positioning for a
show. Yeah.
It's a constant kind of like,hey. We're trying to keep pace
(26:37):
with how everything is movingaround us, how our audience is
moving, how the world is moving.You think about, like,
presidential elections canchange everything overnight. And
now all of a sudden, the wholemood of society has shifted. And
now it's like, hey.
If I'm creating within thisframe that is society, I need to
adjust what I'm doing to fit themoment. We wanna think that
there's just, a right answer.Like, found the right show. I
(26:58):
found the right way to talkabout it. I found the right way
to market it.
But really, all of this is aconstantly shifting kind of,
like, Rubik's cube that we'realways trying to, like, one
phase changes, and then we gottaadjust the other ones to bring
it back in alignment.
Justin (27:08):
Yeah. I love when you were talking that the line that
came in my head is tocontinually ask, What resonates
now? Like, in this moment, whatresonates? And to open your eyes
again, maybe for the first timein a while, to look at what's
going on. What are other peopledoing that I'm missing?
(27:28):
What are the listeners feelingnow? Are they feeling like,
Woah, wait, you're talking aboutsomething that happened five
years ago. Or you're usinglanguage that was like from
2020. You know, how can weupdate what we're doing? What
resonates now?
Jeremy (27:42):
So we talked a lot about here some of the potential
reasons that it might be harderto grow now, more competition.
Think certainly higherexpectations of what people
expect from a podcast. And Ithink to your point there about,
you know, listening to that showthat, like, you you would have
listened to it in the past. Itdidn't quite do it for you with
the kind of grading vocals,whatever, but then something
better comes along, and it'slike, yeah. I'm gonna choose
(28:04):
that one.
It's easier to get professionalequipment. It's easier to use
Descript to do studio sound, toremove kind of any, you know,
problems with your vocals. Andso the general quality for
podcasts is undoubtedly higher,and we all need to now conform
to Mhmm. That said, we kindatalked about at the start here
that there are opportunities andthat some shows are growing way
faster than they previously had.And so we talked about here the
(28:27):
idea of, like, finding the thingthat resonates now with your
audience.
What else would you add when itcomes to opportunities in and
around podcasting and maybecontent in general?
Justin (28:37):
So maybe one thing I'll say to just frame this is I
think about a podcast likeAcquired. And if you look at
their growth trajectory, it goeslike it's very very flat. And
then all of a sudden, it startsto curve up. And they started
that show in 2015, so they'vejust celebrated their ten year
anniversary. And they said forthe first two years, it was just
(29:02):
getting a couple hundreddownloads per episode.
Like, small. But they enjoyeddoing it. They kept trying to
get better at it. They weregetting good feedback. The way
they talk about it is that theyjust wanted their audience to
grow every year.
And every year they did it, youknow, they started beginning a
(29:22):
hundred downloads per episode.Then by the next year, they were
getting 200 downloads perepisode. And then the next year,
they were getting 400. And overtime, that compounding
eventually turned into crazygrowth. And now they get
millions of downloads.
In 2024, they hit 500,000listeners. So this is a long
game. And when we're thinkingabout growth, one secret is just
(29:47):
keep doing it longer than yourcompetition. Keep improving. So
compounding happens in differentways.
Compound the quality of theshow. The resonance of the show.
Just keep doing that, and you'llgrow. That is the most
underrated growth opportunity isyou've started, and now, okay,
(30:08):
what are you going to do? Andit's just like putting one foot
in front of the other, and justimproving, improving, improving.
And okay, I'm gonna try to growmy audience every year, and
that's gonna compound.
Jeremy (30:19):
I think when we think about like, what's working now?
What's the opportunity rightnow? This is one of those
evergreen things is justcontinuing to do it is the thing
that will always work. And wehave to put a distinction there.
Like, some shows will never gaintraction.
Yeah. Just doing the same thingthat has shown no signs of
promise, that is probably notgonna work. But continuing to
iterate and move closer towardsyour goal and testing out
(30:41):
different things, that is asurefire way to almost
inevitably lead to success. And,you know, there is a trade off
here where it's like, maybe thething that you start to find
traction on is not the thing youwanna create. And so, you know,
there are always going to besome trade offs potentially when
you're dealing with this kind ofcreative work.
Nobody is guaranteed anaudience. And so we have to find
the intersection between thethings we want to create and the
(31:01):
things that people want toconsume. Mhmm. But one of the
things, you know, talking aboutwhat's resonating now, and also
you brought up this point of,like, if you have a show that
isn't working, what do you dothen? I always think about this,
especially if you have lowdownloads, you have very low
risk to do big bold experiments.
And there's one of the mostfamous copywriters of all time,
Eugene Schwartz. He would gethired by companies to come in,
(31:23):
and they had an ad running,let's say, in the newspaper, and
it was converting at, you know,1% or something like that. And
so he would be brought in toincrease the conversion rate by,
like, 10% or 20%, which would begreat. You know, a big company
gets him to come in and increasehis profits by 10%. Perfect.
But he was known for actually,like, tripling or quadrupling or
quintupling the conversionrates. And basically, his secret
(31:45):
was to test big differences iswhat he called it. And so it's
not just iterating on a wordhere or there in the copy. It's
not just tweaking the headline.It's saying, let's just scrap
this whole ad that we have andstart with a totally different
angle and test out this one.
Mhmm. And I think that this issomething that more podcasters,
if you have been doing your showfor a year or two and are just
feeling like, man, I have gotthis out there. I've got this in
(32:06):
front of people. I'm proud ofthe quality of show, and it's
just not taking. It could bethat this angle to the show does
not have the legs that you'relooking for, and maybe there is
another version of the show,same topic, aimed at the same
audience that you're trying toreach right now, but a totally
different format, totallydifferent concept that could
work.
And so this is something that Ithink there's a huge opportunity
(32:27):
when the stakes are low, whenyou got, like, a hundred
listeners an episode, and it'slike, okay. I want more than
this, and I don't wanna just,like, get to a 50. I wanna get
to 5,000 downloads an episode,And this show format has not
proved to me so far that it'scapable of getting me there.
Justin (32:41):
Mhmm. Yeah. I was just talking to somebody in Slack
about this. His name is Brett.And his existing show is flat.
And he's like, what am I goingto do about it? And his thought
was, wait a second. We've got abunch of episodes where we talk
about AI. But the main focus ofthe show is not about AI. But
(33:02):
what if we repurpose thiscontent for a separate feed?
Let's do a big swing on anothershow type. But we already have
the content. We're gonna just reedit those episodes, put them
here, and see if this packaging,which is totally different than
this other show, gets moretraction. I think it's great.
(33:23):
You've already got this existingthing.
It's like, let's try a big swingover here. Let's just try it.
See what happens. And my thoughtbecause there's some other
keywords in this title that Ithink might even get search
traffic. And so it's like, I'dbe interested in just switching
the title, the keywords, thefocus, if that ends up getting
more traction.
(33:43):
It's a great experiment to try,because he's got a baseline. How
fast did this show grow? Andthen this one over here.
Jeremy (33:50):
And I think that you don't need to make the full
rebrand before you start testingsome of these things. And so
with the show concept, if you'relooking at experimenting with,
like, what if we took a totallydifferent approach, a different
lens into this topic? You canjust write down your show
concept. You say, okay. My showname is a show about my topic
where in every episode we do x yz.
And that x y z should besomething interesting and
distinctive and refreshing. Andyou can just take that sentence
(34:14):
and you can start telling thatto people. And you can say, hey.
It comes up in conversation.They ask, oh, you have a
podcast?
You start telling them that. Andthat's not actually what your
current show is, but you startto gauge, like, do I get that
eyes light up moment wherethey're like, oh, that sounds
really interesting. And if theysay, where do I find that? You
say, well, okay. If you can findit here, it's actually under a
different name right now.
I'm making some changes. I'mmoving to this new format. But
now you're like, okay. I've gota data point that people are
(34:35):
interested in that. You can, youknow, do polls.
You could say to your existingaudience, I'm thinking about
starting a spin off podcast.I've got these three new ideas
I'm thinking about. Which do youlike best? And so now you can
kind of, like, validate the showconcept idea and just see, like,
what are people interested in?What are people, like, clicking
on when I talk to them?
What are they getting excitedabout? And then you can do the
same thing a little bit withinthe existing show format. And so
(34:57):
without officially changing yourconcept name, you can just say,
hey, let's try some bonusepisodes where I'm going to
experiment with a differentformat. And if I get feedback
that people like this, if I feellike it's exciting to me, maybe
that then kind of subsumes theexisting show and I do a proper
rebrand. And so you don't needto, like, go all in and pull the
trigger on all these changessight unseen upfront.
Justin (35:18):
You know what that made me think of? Is in the software
business, there's this sayingthat the worst thing that can
happen when you launch a newsoftware product is that you get
$500 of recurring revenue rightaway. Because then it's like,
oh, I've got customers here. Igotta serve these people.
Validates it enough that you'relike, okay, there's something
here.
But then so many of thosebusinesses don't grow past 500
(35:41):
or a thousand dollars of revenueper month. I think the same
thing happens in podcasting.Where people
Jeremy (35:47):
Yeah.
Justin (35:47):
Put out a show, and all of a sudden they're getting a
thousand downloads per month.And they're like, oh, I've got
traction here. This is validatesthat the concept is good. But
what they're not seeing is theadjacent possible. I know we
have listeners that are workingon shows that have had some
traction, but aren't achievingthe goals that the creator has
(36:09):
for that show.
Jeremy (36:10):
Yep.
Justin (36:11):
And the best thing that they could do is do what you
just said. Maybe try a littlespin off idea. Just pitch a
different idea. It could stilleven be in the same topic or
category. But you give it newpackaging.
You give it a new structure. Youjust try something that's a
bigger swing, a differentdirection, and see what happens.
(36:33):
And you might be surprised. Andyou might just be maintaining
this old show just because it'sjust got the bare minimum of
traction. It's like and youthink I'll never get more than
this.
Like I gotta hold on to this. Igotta try to grow this. Whereas
in business and in podcastingand in anything, I think the
truth is sometimes you just needto switch it up. You're
(36:55):
maintaining something that'sactually holding you down.
Jeremy (36:58):
This reminds me of an anecdote that I've heard about
James Clear when he wasreformatting and rebranding his
newsletter. So now he's got thethree two one newsletter. It's
been a widely copied format.It's there's a lot that really
works about it. He's got, Ithink, like, 2,000,000, three
million, four millionsubscribers, something like
that.
Obviously, his book has played abig role in the newsletter's
success, but he used to have adifferent newsletter format
(37:19):
where he published long formessays every week. And he
basically put this thoughtexperiment to himself. I believe
it was in response to writingthe book and realizing that he
couldn't spend so much time onthe newsletter. And so he asked
himself, do I believe that thereare infinite possible newsletter
variations? There's, like, allthese combinations of what could
go into a newsletter.
It's like, well, yes, obviously,there are many ways that a
(37:41):
newsletter on this topic couldexist. If I accept that, how
likely do I think it is that Ihave both the most valuable,
highest quality, and leasteffort combination of those?
Mhmm. And it's like, of coursenot. If there are infinite
possible newsletters, there's noway that I have found the
perfect version of it.
And so then once you acceptthat, then it starts to open
(38:01):
your eyes to say, okay. Now Iknow that there are shows that
are both probably less effortfor me to make, more fun for me
to make, easier to grow, morevaluable to the listeners. You
know, that doesn't give you aroad map to how to find them,
but it at least opens your mindto saying like, ah, I am not on
the best possible version ofthis thing. There's an easier
path. There's something that'sbetter for everybody involved,
(38:22):
and maybe I should open my mindto starting to look for
potential ideas to chase down ortweaks to make to move towards
that.
Justin (38:28):
Yeah. I love that. And it might take a while to test
out an idea. That's the hardpart about podcasting is, you
know, any sort of AB test isgonna take longer. Because it
just takes a while to see if ashow is resonating.
But I think that principle isexactly what people need to be
thinking about.
Jeremy (38:45):
So this is kind of on the podcast specific front. I
think the other thing that'sinteresting is talking to the
audience of people who have apodcast for their business. And
this is where it getsinteresting that we talked a
little bit about before howpodcasting still has a lot of
space when you compare it toother platforms like YouTube,
blogging, email. Likepodcasting, if you look at some
(39:05):
of the data, so we talked abouthow there were 332,000 active
podcasts, and there's a total ofmaybe, like, three to four to
5,000,000 shows available. Butthen if you look at YouTube
channels, then there are 35 to40,000,000 active channels.
And so that's, like, 10 times asmany active channels as there
are total podcasts in existence,so a lot more. Blogs, there are
(39:26):
70 to 80,000,000 active blogs,and that is approximately, from
a total pool of 600 plus milliontotal blogs. And so clearly,
like, podcasting is not acrowded medium as far as other
content creation platforms go.And so I think for people who
are creating shows for theirbusinesses, it's like you're
looking at what are your otheroptions. If you're creating long
(39:47):
form content that is meant tonurture your audience,
podcasting is still, I think, apretty good place to be.
And I think actually what'srequired is maybe shifting the
mentality from this is anaudience growth platform where
people are going to discover meto one that is more. This is
where I'm going to nurture myexisting audience and build up
that relationship and hopefullykind of accelerate their time to
conversion here because they'vespent so much time with me and
(40:09):
my ideas and my content. Mhmm.That's a bit of a reframe
because I think, you know, tenyears ago, people started
because you could build up a bigaudience pretty quickly. I don't
think that's the case anymore.
But I don't think that thatmakes podcasting less valuable
to your business.
Justin (40:21):
No. No. And I mean, here's the other number we don't
know. Is that the conversionrate for listeners to customer
might have gone way up in thattime. Yep.
And so, you know, maybe in theold days, it was easier to build
a big audience. Oh, suddenlyI've got, you know, 20,000
people listening to the show.But back then, you were
(40:42):
converting about, I don't know,let's say a thousand of those to
customers every year.
Jeremy (40:47):
Yep.
Justin (40:48):
And now, you're still doing the show, but now your
audience isn't as big as 5,000.So the audience has gone way
down. But you're stillconverting a thousand of those
listeners to customers. So, ifyour goal is, I need to get a
thousand customers every year,and the show is still
accomplishing that, then you'redoing great. Right?
(41:08):
Normally in marketing, you wantmore traffic at the top of the
funnel, ends up giving you moresales. But I just want to point
out that that's not necessarilytrue for every medium. And
especially in podcasting, I justhave the sense of like Because
it's such a long termrelationship with the host. I
could see Yeah. It's like, yeah.
(41:29):
Maybe you're getting less peopleat the top of the funnel, but
the absolute number of customersthat are coming in is the same
or growing. And if that's thecase, then two thumbs up. It's
accomplishing what you want itto.
Jeremy (41:42):
Yeah. And some of the numbers that I've seen, I've
talked to so many people whoare, like, coaches, consultants,
service providers, where 80 to90% of their clients listen to
the podcast. They may not havediscovered them through the
podcast, but almost everybodywho signs up to work with me
listens to the podcast. Often,they're also reading the
newsletter, but they do listento the podcast. They quote it
back.
And this is really a smallsample size of data, but
(42:04):
anecdotally, what I have seenpretty repeatedly is that
podcast listeners for thosetypes of businesses convert at,
like, four to 8% Mhmm. Which isway higher than the typical like
one to 2% in most onlinemarketing platforms.
Justin (42:18):
That, again, if that's your goal, that's the question
you should be asking. Is, okay,am I getting enough people
converting to customers fromthis? How often do people
mention it when they sign up? Ifa lot of people are mentioning
it, then you're doing great.Like, keep going.
Yeah. And don't forget that youmight not need as many listeners
as you think you do, if yourgoal is to convert folks to
(42:40):
customers.
Jeremy (42:41):
So kind of like closing out this idea on opportunities.
I think we, know, we talkedabout taking big swings,
reinventing things. You know, wehave talked about repeatedly
throughout this season theopportunity or threat of video.
Mhmm. I think there is acountercurrent to ride by
doubling down on the craft ofcreating audio first audio only
(43:02):
experiences.
Mhmm. And I think that this issomething that it's both
blending, becoming a student ofthe craft of podcasting and the
medium of podcasting. What is agreat podcast? As well as
understanding, like, what isyour audience looking for and
how can you position create ashow that is not trying to
compete with YouTube and thetype of content that does well
(43:22):
on YouTube and offering it arefreshing alternative that is
maybe a bit of a reprieve fromthe noise that exists elsewhere.
And so I think that this is oneof the opportunities that
podcasters have not really takenseriously enough.
I think a certain subset ofpodcasters takes this really
seriously. And I think about,like, the NPRs and the public
radio folks, like, this is theirbread and butter. But I think
(43:44):
there is more opportunity formore, like, indie creators,
people who are creating showsfor their businesses to really
lean into, like, what makesaudio special and really double
down on that.
Justin (43:54):
Yeah. James Crisland has that quote where he says,
Podcasting is something for myears when my eyes are busy. I
think that's great. Was itMichael Osborne that said
podcasting is where I go toescape the internet?
Jeremy (44:05):
Yes.
Justin (44:06):
I love And I think that framing is so great. And again,
then as podcast creators, we canlean into that and go, if my
competition is this hyperactive,addictive TikTok feed. So people
are trying to get, let's saythey're trying to get
(44:27):
information about the cateringbusiness through TikTok and
Instagram. Well, what are thedisadvantages of that platform?
Well, I end up scrolling forhours and hours and hours.
It's very hyper. It's like shortform. Those are the
disadvantages. Okay. So what canI offer as a podcast creator for
(44:47):
people interested in thecatering business that they
can't get there?
What would the format soundlike? And the idea that people
are either taking a walk withyou, they're taking a drive with
you, they're doing some choreswith you. That framing, I think,
can even help go, okay, whatmode are people in right now?
(45:08):
And yeah, crafting your showaround that. And then putting it
right in your podcast marketing.
Hey, if you're tired of bitesized TikTok content, and
influencer bros, and you know,all the toxic stuff that's going
on over here, this is a reprieveover here. I've designed this
show to be a calm place where wecan really dig into a topic at
(45:32):
length. If that's for you, takea walk with me as we talk about
the catering business. You know,that's, I think, an underrated
approach.
Jeremy (45:42):
I think just to bring it back to that idea of, you know,
what will resonate now, whatwill cut through now, what will
land with people now. The thingfor me is, like, podcasting is
many things. It's a a mediumthat's made up of, like, there's
certainly the entertainmentaspect. But I also think that
maybe more than any short formchannel or video channel, like,
podcasting is a medium thatthrives on ideas and big ideas
and discussing big ideas. And Ithink there is always room.
(46:05):
People are always hungry for thenext big idea. And so I think
that that's something thatalways cuts through as well. And
Mhmm. That can be somethingwithin your micro niche, or that
can be something much bigger.But thinking about, like, what
is the big idea that this showis built on that nobody else is
quite understanding, nobody elseis quite articulating in the way
that I feel it needs to, andthen marrying that with some
kind of show format or conceptthat is listenable, that is
(46:27):
attractive, that gets people tonotice it.
And I suspect in the next fewyears, we're gonna see lots more
creativity, lots moreoriginality, lots more iterating
on what a podcast is and whatcreators are doing with the
medium, and hopefully a lot morelisteners along with it.
Justin (46:41):
Yeah. I hope folks had a few moments in here where they
were inspired to think aboutsomething or go do something.
Because the answer to growth,like, how do I grow the show, is
creativity. It's like, how can Iget creative in the space I'm
in?
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