Stupid Mistakes, Happy Accidents & Surprising Insights From Making & Marketing Our First 20 Episodes

Episode Transcript
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Justin (00:02):
A red flag for me isn't the number of downloads you're
getting. A red flag for a showis you're not getting any
responses. Yeah. Nobody'sreaching out. Nobody is taking
the time and the effort to findyou and give you something.

Jeremy (00:16):
That kind of feedback and engagement, that is the
leading indicator that thedownloads and the sponsors and
the sales and all those otherthings that we attach our self
worth and our measurement ofwhether the show is landing to.
Like, those things come way downthe line, but you don't get
those things unless you'regetting this feedback early on.

Justin (00:32):
There's no quantitative way of tracking these, but it's
this qualitative sense of everysingle time I release an
episode, am I getting somethingback? To me, that's the whole
point of doing the show is toYeah. Have people responding to
what you're doing.

Jeremy (00:49):
So Justin, we think a lot about podcast marketing, and
this is actually our finalepisode of season 1. So for 2
people such as us talking aboutthis topic, I would imagine, you
know, what do you think? Howmany downloads should we have
had by the end of the season?Like, 100,000, 500,000, million?
Like, where would yourexpectations kinda be here going
in?

Justin (01:07):
Oh, I wish you had asked me this question at the
beginning before we evenrecorded an episode. I think I
was hoping that we would hit,like, a 1000 or 2000 downloads
per episode.

Jeremy (01:17):
Yeah. I think that was in in my kind of back of my
mind, like, that would be great.I think that was my aspirational
mind speaking a little bit. Ithink my rational mind who has
just been around podcast so muchwas kind of like, yeah. I don't
really think that's in the cardshere.
But, you know, as we talkedabout in the previous episode, I
had this email list. Do you havean email list with Transistor?
And it's kinda like, okay. Canwe mobilize these people to move

(01:39):
them over to the show? And Yeah.
Now we're at the the finalepisode of season 1. So in this
episode, we are going to breakdown and share our stats from
the season. And we're also gonnalook at some of the areas that,
things we think we did reallywell and some of the things that
we probably missed the mark on alittle bit or could have done
better.

Justin (01:58):
And, yeah, for the listener that's listening, this
is a great opportunity for youto think about things you think
we could have done better ordifferently because we wanna
hear that stuff. We are at theexistential crisis stage of
podcast recording in that.Should we keep doing this?
Should we do something else?Should we stop podcasting

(02:18):
forever, burn our microphones,and move into the woods?
We wanna hear from you. So asyou're listening to today's
episode, take some notes onthings that you liked about the
show, things you would like tohave seen us do. And, yeah, let
us know through all the channelsafter you're done listening.

Jeremy (02:36):
Alright. So let's start off by breaking down the stats
here. So we kinda mentioned thatmaybe our initial kinda secret
hopes, were maybe a little bitmisguided. And so we had I
think, you know, I'm I'm prettyhappy with how the show did
given that, you know, I'vecertainly talked to so many
people who podcast for months oryears and are still at this kind
of like, you know, 25 to 50downloads an episode. And I

(02:56):
think Mhmm.
We'd mentioned in one of theprevious episodes that we were
getting roughly around 350downloads an episode, Some more,
some less. But the the big kindof thing that I wanna talk about
with the stats here, that was abig question for both of us
going in. And I know has been aquestion kind of in podcasting
for the last several years now.Is this kind of podcasting audio
only versus YouTube and videopodcasting? And we've got some

(03:19):
interesting data here, lookingat both of these different
platforms.

Justin (03:23):
Yeah. This is actually what was surprising to me when
you sent me these stats istotal, we had about 13,000
downloads slash views. Thesearen't the same thing, but
really they kind of are like howmany things got consumed. Right.
And so on the podcast side,7,334 downloads.

(03:43):
That's about 57% of totaldownloads views. Over on the
YouTube side, 43% of our, youknow, listens, views, whatever,
were on YouTube with, aboutalmost 56100. So that was
surprising to me. We have a verypodcast centric audience. I

(04:06):
thought we'd be 80% listeningand then 20% on YouTube.
Much higher on YouTube than Ithought it would be. And
incidentally, actually, if youadd together both our podcast
download numbers and our YouTubenumbers, we're not quite at a
1000 downloads, but it's close.We're, like on some episodes, I
think we're up right around thatnumber. And so this kind of

(04:30):
feels like the reality for a lotof shows going forward is they
are going to publish the audioversion, Apple Podcast, Spotify,
Pocket Cast. But YouTube formany shows make sense.
And I'm sure actually on yournewsletter, it was often the
first thing people would click.You see a thumbnail for a video.

(04:52):
It's like, oh, I'll I'll clickthat and check it out. It's very
accessible. It's discoverable.
You know, once I subscribed tothe YouTube channel, it was
showing up on my home screen.It's just in more places and is
definitely, you know, you get aboost that you might not get
with the kind of slowerrelationship building pipe

(05:16):
audience that audio podcast is.

Jeremy (05:18):
Another thing that's just occurring to me here with
the podcast versus YouTube, wekind of messed with our numbers
a little bit through some of theexperiments that we did where
Mhmm. There were 2 episodeswhere we released a long version
and a short version and thatboosted our audio only
downloads. We didn't do this onthe YouTube channel. So there
was 2 extra episodes thatprobably boosted our podcast
downloads by a cumulative maybe3 or 400 downloads. And so that

(05:43):
number should actually be lowerin the audio only podcast
category and higher in YouTubeand so that would bring them
even closer together.
And my expectations were verylimited. I think that going into
this, I worked with a lot ofpeople, talked with a lot of
people who had podcasts thatthey were just putting up, you
know, either just the kind ofsimple waveform on YouTube or
maybe a unedited, just kind ofraw video file on YouTube. And,

(06:04):
you know, to be fair, probablyyou shouldn't expect to get that
many views on YouTube if you'renot really putting much effort
into creating video firstcontent. But Yeah. Even looking
at somebody like Jay Klaus whoinvested a lot of money, a lot
of time into his YouTube setupand editing for it took him
basically a year before he had ahuge breakthrough.
And, I mean, he had a massivebreakthrough with a multiple
million, view video that finallywent viral, but it took him a

(06:27):
long time to get there. So I waskinda thinking like, okay. My
channel is starting from, like,30 subscribers, and, probably,
we're gonna have to build thatup in the first place. And so I
was thinking, yeah, 90%, 80% ofour total engagements were gonna
come through the podcast. And itreally surprised me in that it
was much closer to 50% andactually even looking in March.

(06:48):
So last month, we actually hadmore engagements on YouTube than
we did on the podcast. And thatwas even before accounting for
those extra bonus episodes thatwere showing up in the podcast
feed. So I think the thingthat's impressed me most about
this is that we've definitelyput some time and effort into
YouTube, but I don't think it'sbeen an incredible amount of
production value that is out ofreach of the average person.

Justin (07:10):
Yeah. It does affect the production time and cost, but at
the same time, for some shows, Ithink it's worth it.

Jeremy (07:20):
I think the other thing here is that we, with the roast
in particular, had content onthose episodes where I heard
from some people who weresaying, like, I feel like I'm
missing out when I listen toaudio version. And so that
pushes more people to YouTubethat there is content that is
visual in nature that makes itmore likely that we are going to
build a subscriber base onYouTube because the format, if

(07:42):
not outright demands it, it atleast encourages it somewhat
strongly. And, you know, we tryto talk through everything to
make sure that there is avaluable audio only experience,
and a lot of people do listen tothe roasts, in audio only
format. But if you do look atthe stats, the best performing
episodes on YouTube tend to bethe roasts and the Yeah. The
roasts are in the audio onlyformat.

(08:03):
They're all the worst performingepisodes. And so Yeah. We can
clearly kinda see that in thedata that probably these are the
same people who are choosing toengage with the show in
different ways depending on theformat, which is, you know,
something that doesn't reallyapply to every show. But it's
also something that I think mostshows could build in some kind
of visual element if they wantedto take advantage of YouTube
that they're not doing now, butcould either it's a separate

(08:25):
show that they release adifferent day of the week or
they build in some kind ofsegment or something like that
that could encourage more peopleto engage on YouTube and
potentially get that flywheelkinda going

Justin (08:34):
there. Yeah. What were some of the other stats? We have
engagement time and consumptionrate. Do you wanna talk through
those?

Jeremy (08:41):
Yeah. So the engagement time is the one that's really
interesting to me, and this isone that YouTube makes really
easy to find for every video andyour channel as a whole. So how
many hours did people spend withyour content? But in podcasting,
it's incredibly hard to find.Apple has made it easy to do but
every other platform, you kindof have to guess and look and
and kind of extrapolate fromApple's data across your feed.

(09:01):
And so Yeah. This was somethingthat I got turned on to from,
Dan Meisner and Jonas Wust atBumper. And so they've got a
series of blog posts about howengagement time or listen time
is their primary metric. And themore I started to think about
this, I thought, yeah this isreally what makes sense. And I
think regardless of what yourshow goals are, you don't really

(09:21):
care so much about views as timespent with you.
And so I think if you're abusiness owner, the more time
people spend with you, the moreaffinity they're gonna build for
you, the more likely they'regonna buy your product or
service. If you have Yeah.Sponsors for your show, the more
time people spend with you, themore ads they're gonna hear. And
so, really, that is the metricthat you do want to be kind of
working towards. And so it'shard to measure.
It's hard to track, but Ibasically took our, engagement

(09:44):
rate or consumption rate fromApple and Apple gives you, like,
the episode length in seconds,which is a bit interesting, but
made a spreadsheet looking atwhat was our engagement time per
episode as a whole. And what wesaw here is, you know, is almost
5050 in terms of audio onlyconsumption versus YouTube. But
in terms of engagement time, itwas just under 75% audio only

(10:05):
podcast and only 26% or so forYouTube. And so that tells the
story that, like, podcastlisteners spend a lot more time
with the content than YouTubeviewers do.

Justin (10:15):
I think that's fascinating. And in our case, we
really can use that ApplePodcasts metric as a baseline
because Apple Podcasts was byfar most of our downloads. I'm
seeing about 37100 on ApplePodcasts versus Mhmm. The
runner-up was Spotify at 952.Yeah.
So 3 or 4 times more downloadson Apple Podcasts for us.

Jeremy (10:38):
The other interesting thing on that note was looking
at the kind of spikes inlistenership on the different
platforms, whereas almost everyplatform is super spiky around
episode release dates, butSpotify actually is flatter. And
so they have obviously theiralgorithm that when you're
logging into Spotify for music,like they're pulling stuff up

(10:58):
for you and makingrecommendations, There's more
opportunities to get back infront of people. The same is
true for Youtube where a lot oftimes we would have a video that
would kind of do okay or maybeeven not that great for the 1st
few days. And then somethingwould kind of pick it up and it
would get all these downloadsstarting a week later. And and
there'd be, like, 4 or 5 dayswhere it's just bringing in all
these new downloads and thegreat thing about YouTube as

(11:20):
well is that you can kinda buildin those at the end of the
video, make a recommendation toanother video.
And so there is it's a smallnumber of people who trickle
through that but there is kindamore discovery of your feed if
you get people to stick throughthe the full episode. The other
thing that was, interesting tome here looking at the
consumption rate. And so this itkind of becomes apparent when
you think about that engagementtime that people spend. But in

(11:42):
the audio only podcast, we wereright under we're at 69.8%,
typical episode consumptionrate. So just under 70%.
And then on YouTube, on theother side, it was 20%. So I
think that's even probablypretty good for YouTube,
especially long form YouTubevideos. And so I'm pretty happy
with that. I think it's hard toget somebody to watch a 45

(12:02):
minute video on YouTube all theway through. So I think 20% is
solid, but it's not merely whatit is on the audio only feed.

Justin (12:09):
Yeah. And it it shows you the strength of each
platform. Podcasts are greatbecause when you get in the car
and you're driving to work,you're gonna listen. You're kind
of there in place and there'snothing else kind of asking for
your attention, in terms ofcontent. But YouTube, you know,
like, if you watch my kids watchYouTube, like, if we got

(12:29):
something on the TV, they aresimultaneously watching, you
know, something on their phoneand playing on their iPad, and
they've got a game going ontheir laptop.
Like, they are all over theplace.

Jeremy (12:41):
So those are kind of the numerical analytical stats
breakdowns, but I know thatthere was another category of it
might not be considered stats,but it is kind of feedback. And
so we can think about stats asbeing feedback on the quality of
the show, the effectiveness ofour marketing, all these types
of things. But there's thisanecdotal side of things as well
that I know I think both of usmaybe value that more than the

(13:03):
analytics. And I'm curious tohear your kind of take on some
of the things you've heard backfrom listeners and what that
maybe says about what we've donewith the show this season.

Justin (13:10):
I always call this the response rate. And candidly,
downloads and views and all thatstuff is not that meaningful to
me because who knows whathappened. Like, somebody could
have been listening to you inthe car, but their mind is
somewhere else. Somebody couldbe having your YouTube video on
in the background, but they'recooking. And I don't care about

(13:32):
that stuff as much.
What I care about is responserate. How many people listened
to an episode or listened to aseries of episodes and then took
the time to reach out in someway? So did they email us? Did
they leave us a YouTube comment?Did they leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts?
Did they DM me? Did they come upto me at, conference and say,

(13:55):
hey. I listened to the show.Response rate, that's what I
care about. People caring enoughto respond to what you're doing.
And a red flag for me isn't thenumber of downloads you're
getting. A red flag for a showis you're not getting any
responses. Yeah. Nobody'sreaching out. Nobody is taking

(14:15):
the time and the effort to findyou and give you something.
And, of course, this is harderto do in podcasting, but that's
what makes it so valuable whensomebody does. If somebody takes
the time to write an email toyou after they finished
listening to your episode ontheir drive home, that is
meaningful. So there's peoplethat tweeted about the show,

(14:37):
like Josh Spector just today,recommended us on Twitter, had
this really nice write up.That's gold. People recommending
the show.
We had a bunch of DMs onTwitter, DMs on LinkedIn,
messages, other places, emails,YouTube comments. This is what
is meaningful. And for me,there's no quantitative way of

(15:00):
tracking these, but it's thisqualitative sense of, am I
getting responses every singletime I release an episode? Am I
getting something back? And ifyou are, to me, that's the whole
point of doing a show is toYeah.
Have people responding to whatyou're doing.

Jeremy (15:19):
Yeah. I think that, you know, knowing how much friction
there is in podcasting. And soto see that come through knowing
all the challenges that thereare to get somebody to actually
take that action, that has beenthe most kind of fulfilling
thing with this show. And it waslike from day 1, from launch
day, there were people withinthat 1st week who were not just
saying, like, oh, great job onthe show. Like, congrats on the
launch.
There's people who I reallyrespected as creators and

(15:43):
entrepreneurs and businessowners who were saying, wow.
This show is awesome. I havebeen waiting for the show, and I
am binging the show now. AndYeah. It's been cool to see as
more episodes have come outthere, the number of people who
I have heard just unpromptedrecommending the show on Twitter
or LinkedIn and tagging us andsaying, like, this is the show
I'm binging right now.
And I think hearing that, I'mlike, we're onto something here.

(16:05):
And so looking at maybe 350downloads an episode, if we take
into account the YouTube viewsas well, that's around 627 views
listens per episode, however youwanna call it. And so that's a a
decent amount of interactionswith each episode, but it's not
a crazy amount. But the level offeedback that we've got from the

(16:25):
show in terms of peopleunprompted sharing it,
responding to the things thatwe're doing has been much much
much higher than any show that Ihave ever produced, myself
before which I think that sooften that kind of feedback and
engagement, that is the leadingindicator that the downloads and
the sponsors and the sales andall those other things that we
often kind of attach our, maybe,self worth and our measurement

(16:47):
of whether the show is landingto. Like, those things come way
down the line, but you don't getthose things unless you're
getting this feedback early on.
And so to me, getting thatstuff, especially from, like,
discerning listeners who aresuper successful, like, there's
been my friend, Chanel. She runsa newsletter called Growth in
Reverse, and she she has a greatpremise for her newsletter. It's
basically she reverse engineershow, newsletter writers with

(17:09):
50,000 subscribers got there.And she's now, I think, like,
30, 40000 subscribers, somethinglike that. Maybe she went past
it already.
And so she has, like, a lot ofsuccess as a creator. She, like,
is discerning. She knows whatshe's doing. Josh has a huge
Twitter following. He has a bigemail list.
People like Jay Clouse. Andthere's all these people, Arvid
Kaul. And so there's all thesepeople who I've looked up to for
a long time for their creativework and them saying, like, I'm

(17:31):
bingeing the show and they'rerecommending it to their
friends. Like, that to me islike, okay. We hit something on
the head with this one.
Yeah.

Justin (17:37):
I think for people listening, there is another side
to this, which is your responserate can be high. You can have
lots of people interacting. Youcan have some super fans. But,
like, you need more listeners tomake the show work, and all you
have is super fans. Responserate is an important metric, but
some shows need those highdownload numbers so they can

(17:59):
sell ads.
And if that's you, then, ofcourse, you've gotta move beyond
the handful of people who areresponding to each episode and
sharing it and leaving commentsand sending you emails depending
on the podcast economy you'replaying in.

Jeremy (18:11):
The other thing that I'll just kinda touch on before
we move on to the next sectionis the cool thing regarding our
audience is that we talked aboutthis in the previous episode,
how we didn't really define itgoing in. Are we speaking to
more advanced podcasters, morebeginners? But we're kind of
having a bit of a higher caliberof conversation, kind of
assuming that the listener is upto speed on the basics at least.
And what's been really cool hasbeen getting feedback both from

(18:33):
people who are a bit earlier onand maybe haven't found traction
with their shows. They're maybein their first, you know, couple
dozen episodes, something likethat.
But then we've also got thisfeedback from, like, podcast
industry professionals andprofessional podcast marketers
who I have a friend who, I'vejust had with the other day.
He's worked on 2 of the world'sbiggest shows as their, like,
growth person and ops person.And he told me the other day,

(18:54):
he's like, dude, the show I lovethe show. It's so good. And so
getting that feedback frompeople at the very top and then
also people throughout thespectrum down to to people who
are just starting out, that'sbeen really rewarding and is
almost something I wouldn't havethought was possible going in.
But that again is another signalI'm like, okay. We're we're
really doing something rightwith the show. And that feedback
is kind of allows you to seebecause you're, you know, as a

(19:16):
creator, you're just kind of inthe dark, and you don't really
know until you hear these kindof pings back from from
different people out there.

Justin (19:22):
Yeah. And if you're out there and you're wondering, you
might be scared. You might belike, oh my gosh. I'm not
getting any feedback. There areways to prompt feedback.
So you might not be gettingfeedback because you just
haven't given listeners theright prompts. And a prompt can
be as simple as, hey, folks. Ifyou're listening right now, I
would love to know what youthink about the show. Reach out
to me by DM, by email. Like,give people some options, but

(19:45):
prompt them.
Let them know that you'relooking for that feedback and
then see what comes in.

Jeremy (19:50):
And the one other thing I'll add on to that is it's much
easier to get feedback when youhave an existing channel of
communication. And so if you arealready connected with people,
you're already part of acommunity, and then you start
the show, you're gonna be muchmore likely for those people to
respond to you rather than ifyou have no existing
interactions with thatcommunity. People don't know you
at all and maybe you have somelisteners, but you you've never
engaged with them through emailor social media or any other

(20:13):
way. And so I think embeddingyourself in that community even
before you launch or once yourshow is already going, it's kind
of primes the pump a little bitto get feedback and to get
engagement when you have alreadyinitiated some of that
engagement previously.

Justin (20:25):
Absolutely. Yeah. Alright. So let's move on to a

Jeremy (20:28):
bit of an assessment here. We talked about the stats
here in the first part, whichare are interesting certainly to
some extent. But one of the nicethings about doing a seasonal
show like this is there's kindof this natural break to say,
okay. Let's take a step back.Let's take a breath, and let's
look objectively at what aresome of the things that we think
we did really well, which, youknow, we clearly were get by
getting the feedback that wewere getting.
And then what are some of thethings that maybe we missed the

(20:50):
mark on or could develop furtherin future seasons or that we
just, you know, didn't have thetime or bandwidth to to
capitalize on. So let's startwith you on the things that you
think we did really well withthe show in this season and and
some some of the things thatyou're proud of.

Justin (21:03):
Yeah. I mean, I I do think we did a pretty good job
of promoting the show overall.You had this email newsletter
that you've been doing forever.We had the transistor email
list. We promoted it on Twitter.
We had built up some existingchannels that made sense.
LinkedIn ended up being kind ofgood for us too. We also did a
good job of promoting the showbefore we launched. So Yeah. We

(21:27):
built some anticipation leadingup to the show, and sometimes
that was just, like, releasing ascreenshot of you and I talking
or whatever.
So, yeah, I feel pretty goodabout it. I feel like we gave
that a good effort.

Jeremy (21:40):
Yeah. I think with the launch in particular, we did a
really good job. And there wouldbe some things I might do a
little bit differently. We had along lag time between our teaser
episode and then our nextepisode. And Mhmm.
So we got up to number 27 in theUS marketing charts at the
launch, which is higher than Iexpected that we would get. But
I think we actually diluted thatby promoted the teaser first and

(22:02):
got a bunch of followers andsubscribers then, and then the
the main episode or the firstepisode on our official launch
date. I think if we had kind ofjust combined that into one
push, I don't know how high wecould have gotten, but higher
than 27. And this was reallysurprising to me. We stayed in
the top 200 of the marketingcategory throughout most of the
season.
And we were often around thenumber 100 mark, which given our

(22:23):
download numbers, I was kind oflike, oh, I'm kind of surprised
we're, we're that high. And so Ithink that does show you a
little bit, like, it's lesscompetitive than you think it
is. Like, if you're a showgetting a 1,000 gallons an
episode, you're probably gonnabe in the top 100 of most
categories. And so that waskinda cool. Personally, I felt
like the promotion for me interms of outward facing social
media declined from there.

(22:44):
I feel like the launch was thehigh watermark and I feel like I
did a really good job promotingto my email list, which to me is
like the warmest audience. So itfeels like it makes the most
sense to promote to them first.I think there's a lot more we
could get out of those peoplealready. But I did feel like it
when it came to posting clips orthings like that, that would be
something that I personallywould look to improve in the
subsequent season.

Justin (23:03):
I also think we did, like, we did a lot of
experimentation. I liked that.We were using tools like
Linkfire, Chartable. You youused Spotify's engagement tools,
rating links and show notes. Wedid that episode length
experiment.
You sent out that audience, whydon't you listen survey. Yeah.
And that to me is the buildingblocks of, like, making

(23:27):
something great isexperimenting, especially early
on when the download numbers arelow enough. That's like, let's
let's fiddle around with this alittle bit. We also experimented
with structure and engagementloop of, you know, let's get the
roasts going.

Jeremy (23:43):
Yeah. I think that was fun to do. There was a lot of
things. Like, it's been a whilesince I had my last personal
show, and a lot of times I'vehad ideas over the years where
I'll kinda tell friends aboutthem like, hey. This would be an
interesting thing to try.
Like, you should do this. Butbeing able to do that with this
show and just have this idea andbe like, This is like a small
thing or a big thing orwhatever, but, like, why not try
it out? That's been really fun,rewarding, and there's been a
lot of great insights out of it.And so that to me, yeah, that

(24:06):
was a big plus and pro from theseason and something that I
think I would like to lean intofurther going forward and really
building that. We've talkedabout this a little bit
previously.
Like, that could become a corepart of a premise for this show
or another show where it's maybewholly built around experiments.
And, like, maybe that's asporadically released show where
we don't release it every week,but it's like every time we have
an episode that we do anexperiment on, we run that and,

(24:28):
you know, maybe it's 1 a monthor something like that. And
that's the whole feed. Thatcould be something interesting
too. And then I think to me, theother big thing that I was
really proud of with the seasonis just the production as a
whole.
And so part of that is the videoproduction, which I've muddled
around with some videoproduction in the past, but
really figuring it out, gettinga workflow down for this that
was kind of audio video. To me,that was a fun part of this. It

(24:50):
was also a very time intensivepart of this. And one of the
reasons that we're not justdoing this 2 episodes a week on
an ongoing basis is that there'sjust a lot of work that goes in
the video side. But Yeah.
I think that from both thetechnical production but also
the content organization, Ithink we did some really
interesting things that in thefirst two or three episodes, I
don't think we'd quite found ourfooting. And then we started

(25:12):
getting into this idea. We havethe structure with these, like,
3 scenes per episode. We've gotour hook and starting to get
creative with some of theepisode formatting things and
how we're presenting the thisidea that we have for the
episode in a way that's maybeone layer more complex than just
a let's just talk through thistopic in one unbroken streak.
And so that, I think, to me, hasbeen the biggest takeaway is
like, oh, okay.

(25:32):
I've had a lot of ideas aroundstructuring content, and now we
got to experiment and play witha bunch of those.

Justin (25:37):
Yeah. The evolution. I I'm I've even forgotten that,
like, the structure of the showchanged. We developed this 3
scene structure that was sohelpful for us. Three scenes is
just so much easier to organizeyour thoughts around.
It just gave us, like, ah, nowwe've got a format that we can
follow.

Jeremy (25:55):
This is one of the things that happens. We've
talked about this before, but alot of times you don't find the
groove with a specific show or aspecific project until you get a
number of episodes in. And Mhmm.I was actually kind of impressed
at how quickly we kinda got intosome of these things. Obviously,
we we're both immersed inpodcasting, so you kind of kinda
recognize some of these things.
We have a lot of creativeexperience. And so we kind of
found our way into those maybefaster than I would have

(26:18):
expected. But the other thingthat I think is worth mentioning
is you talked about this, like,finding a format that works for
us. These roasts were like, theyjust emerged as a kind of, like
Mhmm. Idea that we had of, like,oh, this would be fun to do.
We've done this just on an adhoc basis on YouTube in the
past. It's like, oh, maybe weadd that on to it's just a
segment to each episode. Andthen we did one and we're like,
oh, we just talked for 45minutes. That's not a segment of

(26:39):
the show. That's a whole otherepisode.
And so stumbling into those,it's interesting that those have
been really resonant with ouraudience and they get talked
about a lot and we get goodfeedback on both styles of
episodes and they kindacompliment each other, but it's
been cool to, like, that was acomplete accident. And it's
actually this kind of arenawhere we can take some of the

(26:59):
things we talk about on the mainepisodes and say, oh, here's how
some of these things show up inpractice. And Yeah. That's been
really cool that I think thosetwo things really complement
each other. And the nice thingabout those is that they're
really easy for us to do.
And you can kind of strategizethis of, like, where is there
something that just is easy tocreate? It doesn't take a ton of
prep work, but it creates highquality content. There's this

(27:22):
kind of arbitrage going on here.Mhmm. And I think that the
roasts are that for us whereit's like, we can record endless
roasts, and we don't need to doa ton of prep.
We have to pick a show thatseems kinda interesting, and we
can come on and we can talkabout it knowledgeably, and it
creates a great episode. And sothose have been kind of a a
revelation.

Justin (27:38):
Yeah. And I think maybe let's move into the things we
didn't do so well. The roastswere like this great idea that
just grew organically out ofwhat we were doing.

Jeremy (27:46):
Mhmm.

Justin (27:47):
But I think my conclusion on the roasts is that
they didn't belong so much inthe feed, you know? Yeah. And
that they make a great YouTubeshow, but not so much a podcast
episode.

Jeremy (28:00):
I think

Justin (28:01):
we could have kept our audio feed a little bit more
pure and tight and concise. AndI think people would have even,
like, maybe found it morecompelling and been willing to
try it more often if we had nothad those in our audio feed. And
if we had just been, like, oh,wow. Like, we just found a great
format for YouTube. Let's keepthat over there, and then let's

(28:23):
have these audio episodes here.

Jeremy (28:26):
That was the always the big thing for me with them where
I was like, these these are goodcontent, but it feels like from
a momentum perspective, it wasgood to have them in this feed
because we were getting peoplewe can push people to one place
to get this. But Mhmm. Somethingthat we've talked quite a bit on
both the roast and the mainepisodes is this idea of having
a kind of concise and compellingshow concept. And so the show
concept for this show was reallytaking the data from the podcast

(28:50):
marketing trends report andbreaking that down. And the
roasts are not associated withthat at all.
There is no tie in to thereport. And so from a brand
perspective around the report,the roasts are kind of diluting
that and kind of taking awayfrom it. And I will probably do
this in the future is actuallyremove the roast from this feed
to keep this feed true to thepremise that it is. And so that

(29:13):
if somebody comes into this,they're getting what was
promised to them in a consistentdosage. And maybe that's
creating another feed that'sjust for the roasts where the
audio versions can live thereand all you're gonna get is the
roasts and we could unite thisunder a a channel in Apple
Podcasts and kinda tie ittogether in different ways.
But I do think that seeing theclear differentiator between
okay. The typical shows get muchmore downloads than the roasts

(29:35):
do. And also, there was someanecdotal feedback from people
that they enjoyed 1 episode morethan the other and that they
only listen to 1. And I thought,it should be a more cohesive
experience in a long term kindof brand building, show building
perspective.

Justin (29:51):
Yeah. And I think the other thing in terms of what we
did, we could have done better.We kind of bit off more than we
could chew in a sense. Yeah.Like, we record these episodes.
We start at 10, and typically,we wouldn't finish till 3 PM my
time. Mhmm. That's a lot oftime. And this episode that
we're recording right now sowe're already at about 43

(30:11):
minutes record time between,like, pre talking and
strategizing and going overthings and then recording the
episode. So to get a 45 minuteepisode, I would say maybe hour
and a half Mhmm.
Total. So that's already a bigchunk of time, and then we added
on recording 2 roasts or inanother episode. So we were,

(30:31):
like, batching all these thingstogether, and these Tuesdays
have just been a lot. It's just,like, a lot of recording. But
maybe what we should have doneis said, man, that roast idea is
so great.
We should just wait until theend of the show. Like, we'll
finish the season, then we'llcollect all of the people who
left reviews, and then we'llstart doing roast. But we just,

(30:54):
like, crammed it all in here.And that is a big part of doing
a show is creator burnout andYeah. You know, can you sustain
it?

Jeremy (31:03):
Yeah. And that's just recording time. That's not
postproduction or anything else.And so

Justin (31:07):
Not editing, not promotion, nothing else. It's
like, if we're talking abouttotal time per episode,
including Chris' time and Yeah.Including promotion, it's like,
I don't know, 10, 15 hours ofhuman time per episode,
something like that.

Jeremy (31:24):
I think more. Because if you even consider if we've been
doing, let's say, 3 hours onthese calls or more, there's 6
hours just between the 2 of usjust in recording. There's some
prep that goes in before that.So I think you get to almost 10
hours before postproductionalmost even starts or the the
early bit. So, yeah, I think ifyou're talking person hours, it
could be 25 probably afteraccounting for everything.

Justin (31:46):
Yeah. So Whereas if you compared it to something like
the roast, the roast issomething that we could do where
we just show up, pick a name offthe list, get into it, be done
the recording in 20, 30 minutesis where we were getting to. So
that that production like, therecording time of that was much
shorter.

Jeremy (32:05):
A couple other things that I noted down that I think
we we could have done better. Ifeel like we started really
strong with some of the kind ofbuild in public stuff and
sharing more of the behind thescenes publicly. We talked
through a lot of stuff and someof our experiments on the show,
but I would have liked to domore of that through blog posts
or just Twitter threads or onLinkedIn with screenshots and

(32:26):
some of the behind the scenesthings because that would be in
in such alignment with the showpremise and in service to our
listeners. And so that'ssomething that we've got a bunch
of stuff that we did here, but Ifeel like it could have been
shared a little bit more inother mediums other than on the
podcast, which actually wouldhave done a better job getting
people back to the podcast. SoYeah.
That was one thing that that Iwas like, okay, I kinda missed

(32:48):
opportunity there. I personallywould have liked to experiment
more with dynamic ad insertion,which we did maybe just once or
twice, but I think that that'ssomething that there's a lot of
interesting creativeopportunities that are not just
about running ads. And so that'ssomething that I've got a few
ideas that maybe we'll run someexperiments in a future season
or a different show, but I thinkthere's lots of room to kind of

(33:11):
innovate there on rather thanjust, like, doing a plug for a
sponsor or even your own stuff.So, maybe a little bit of a
tease of some future experimentscome in there.

Justin (33:19):
I also think Michael Osborne's feedback, we talked
about he's the one of the hostsof Famous and Gravy. And his
feedback was, like, if you had aspecific audience in mind or if
you knew that you were justtalking, for example, to not
beginners and not the, you know,big producers of the big shows,
but this group in the middle

Jeremy (33:39):
Mhmm.

Justin (33:39):
We didn't have to have so many disclaimers of, like,
well, it depends. And we we hadto be a little loosey goosey.
And for the listener, I think itcould sometimes feel like, do
they know they're speaking tome? You know? And I think
identifying, like, this show isfor those people in the middle.
They've already started a show.

Elaine Appleton Grant (33:56):
They've already gone 0 to 1. They are
now trying

Justin (33:57):
to go from 1 to 10. And what does that take? And, if we
just been clear about that, wecould have treated them with the
level of sophistication thatthey already had.

Jeremy (34:09):
Yeah. The last thing that I had down here and I think
this is both something that wedid well and also something that
we could have made a differentkinda creative decision on is
that we are both business ownerswho serve our audience. We have
done 0 promotion really of ourown stuff in the show, which
actually there was there was a afunny bit of feedback early on

(34:32):
that I think you had mentionedtransistor. I wouldn't have even
called it a plug, but we gotsome negative listener feedback
from that. And I think that kindof both of us were like, okay,
so we got some vocal people whodon't wanna be promoted to, and
that actually did come up a lotin our listener feedback survey,
surprisingly, from the peoplewho had never even listened to
the show.
But it seemed like there was alot of people who had this
impression that podcasts weremostly just selling to their

(34:53):
listeners. And so that's not theexperience that we wanted to
create here, but one of theinteresting things is that I've
had to provide some additionalcontext to a lot of my clients
and students who have beenlistening to the show and will
kind of make note of something.And I'll say like, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. So with our situation,it's a little bit different. If
I was doing the show just for mybusiness and the whole point was

(35:14):
to get more customers or emailsubscribers, I would do things
differently than we are doing inthe show. But it's a bit of a
different situation where, like,we have different businesses,
and the show isn't really meantto serve that purpose. But I
think there is a a bit of adanger, and we're talking a lot
about marketing.
We have not demonstrated infuture shows, like, we might

(35:39):
make different decisions. Andspeaking of caveats, in future
shows, like, we might makedifferent decisions. And
speaking of caveats, if you area business owner, like, we have
not necessarily exhibited thebest practices here with that
goal in mind.

Justin (35:50):
There is also just a long play of podcasts is a
relationship game. And so Mhmm.As we do the show, eventually
people get to know us, and thenthey go, oh, like, I know that
Justin is connected to this, andJeremy is connected to this. And
people wanting to take the nextstep could do that. Right?

(36:11):
And maybe that initial bit ofcriticism, we should have just
not listened to it. It was justtoo early. It didn't matter.
Yeah. We got too sensitive aboutit.

Jeremy (36:18):
Alright. So we've kinda hinted that we're at this
crossroads where this is tied tothe podcast marketing trends
report. And so there is going tobe another report coming out
likely in the next few months orso. And so we will have some new
fodder for a new season at thatpoint. But in the meantime,
we've also kinda built up thismomentum and we're kind of like,
okay.
How do we keep this going?Should we keep this going? And

(36:40):
so we've got a bunch of ideasbrewing, and it's kind of
decision time as to, you know,what do we do with this at this
point?

Justin (36:47):
Yeah. So I think for anybody who is listening to this
right now, anybody who's beenwatching us, we wanna know from
you, what should we do next? Wehave some ideas. The first thing
is we could keep this featgoing. And I think a lot of
folks who have heard us talkabout, like, we're thinking
about taking a break from thisshow, and they're like, what?

(37:10):
Like, you did all that workgetting this thing going,
getting people to click followin Spotify and Apple Podcasts,
and now you're just gonna leavethat? Like, what are you
thinking about? And, again,personally, I kinda feel like I
would like a different formatjust because this format's been
a lot of work. Now the next timewe do the podcast marketing

(37:32):
trends report, it might befaster. We might have episodes
that are 20 minutes and not dothe podcast roasts

Jeremy (37:38):
Mhmm.

Justin (37:38):
And it would be fine. But there's this other thing is,
like, we built up this feed witha bunch of people who wanna make
their shows better and bigger,and it's like we could just
repurpose this feed forsomething else as well.

Jeremy (37:54):
This is such a classic question that so many podcasters
face at some point is that youchange your interest. Sometimes
it's really slight. The the kindof focus of your show shifts
just a little bit. Sometimesit's a a dramatic kinda drastic
rebrand and you're kinda like,what do I do with this existing
feed? And my typical response isusually, if you're doing a
rebrand of your business andyour show and your existing

(38:16):
audience is at least most ofthem are going to be interested
in the new direction, I wouldkeep that feed.
Potentially, I would keep allthe episodes on it in the back
catalog depending on on ifyou're really dramatically
shifting the premise. Maybe Iwould get rid of those and take
those down depending on theexperience that you want new
listeners to have.

Justin (38:33):
But Mhmm.

Jeremy (38:34):
This case is a little bit interesting because we kinda
set this up as a seasonal showand have the intention at least
right now that we're gonna doadditional seasons with each
new, report that comes out. Andso Yeah. My kind of intention
right now with that report is tokeep doing it annually. And so
where I'm at as a creator rightnow is I am liking this kind of

(38:55):
seasonal approach to projectswhere I have a few things that I
do on an ongoing basis that aremanageable and fit into my life
and then doing like a few moreambitious projects throughout
the year. And so part of mereally likes the idea of doing
maybe one 6 to 10 episode seasonbased on the report each year
that can kinda fit into mayberecord all the episodes in 1
month and then drip them outalongside the report after that.

(39:18):
That feels nice and I think thatif that's the kind of case here,
then keeping this feed alignedwith that concept and tied to
the report makes sense. But I dothink that we could use this
feed still to launch additionalshows off of. And maybe we even
take those kinda cross promo orfeed drop episodes that we might
do for a new show. We leavethose up for a time and then we

(39:39):
take them down so that they'renot kinda cluttering up the feed
with just a long string of crosspromo episodes between seasons.
So that's my kind of initialthought on how we can kinda
leverage what we've done alreadyhere because probably some of
these other ideas we're thinkingabout are gonna be very relevant
to the audience that we'vealready built up while still
kind of preserving the brandaround that we built up around
the show.

Justin (40:00):
Yeah. It's actually very hard to repurpose a feed for
something else. I've tried it anumber of times. It's difficult.
Mhmm.
And again, with this show, it'snot like we're giving up
thousands and thousands ofsubscribers. It's like we built
up to a couple 100 subscribers,but it still feels like we could
launch something new if wewanted to, and it might still do

(40:20):
just as well or better. And wewould have a nice baseline to
compare it against. Right?

Jeremy (40:25):
Yeah. So let's talk through some of these ideas that
we have for potential newadditional shows, kinda
different directions that wemight be able to take with
different show concepts here.And to start this off, we have
kind of thought that we'reprobably going to keep doing the
roast. Maybe those get their ownaudio feed. We'll probably
certainly keep doing them asYouTube first, kinda episodes.

(40:47):
But we've also got 3 other ideasfor interesting kinda audio
first podcast that might beworth exploring. So you wanna
talk us through what those ideasmight be?

Justin (40:57):
Yeah. So from the time you and I met, we had this idea
to do a show called Make It Big.I I don't know if you listen to
the podcast Startup by Gimlet,but that was kind of a narrative
show where they were goingthrough, like, what it was like
to build a startup. And we werethinking we could do a similar
idea, but you and I would takean existing podcast that's out

(41:20):
there already that we think haspromise, but they're only doing,
you know, maybe 500, a 1000downloads per episode. And then
we would coach them each week tomake the show big.
So this is all made up by we'regonna help Ellie McBride take
her podcast about auto mechanicsfrom 1,000 downloads per episode
to 10,000. Can we do it? Listento find out. I like this one

(41:45):
because it's got narrative. It'sgot journey.
Nobody knows how it's gonna turnout. Every week, we're trying to
implement a strategy, andthere's this kind of build in
public, like, what's happeningas they are giving this advice
to a real person, and thenpeople get to know the real
person. They get to know whattheir aspirations are for the
show, what the show means tothem, why it needs to succeed.

(42:08):
You know, if Ellie doesn't getto 10,000 downloads, she's gonna
lose her house. So there's,like, stakes.
I love all that stuff. It it hasa few problems. One is that it
sounds like a lot of work.

Jeremy (42:19):
To be honest, on our side of things, I don't know
that there would be that muchwork. It would depend on how
involved we were with themarketing and strategy side of
things. So there's anotherseries that, Chris Do, did. He's
much more of a YouTube creator.He's a former motion designer,
now runs a, education company onfreelancing called the future.

(42:40):
And he had the series on theYouTube channel where he took I
think she was a brand designerand it was like every month or
something like that, they had acoaching call and so it was like
a live coaching call and he washelping her build out her brand
in public. And I remember thisfrom several years ago and I
always thought, that is such agreat concept for a show because
it's really easy for him. Hegets to display and just do what

(43:02):
he's good at and ask insightfulquestions and she has to kinda
react to this and she brings allthese situations and saying
like, okay. I'm in thissituation. I'm having this
negotiation with the client.
They only wanna pay this much,but I know that it's worth this
much. It's gonna take way moretime. Like, how do I handle
this? How do I, like, close thedeal here? And he kinda talks
her through all these differentscenarios.
And so Mhmm. I really like thatconcept for this show. And I

(43:22):
think if we pick the rightperson who had some subject
matter that we at least had somefamiliarity with, we kinda knew
the space, we could guide themthrough that. I don't know
necessarily that it would be aton of work on our end but my
concern would be that it puts somuch pressure on that person
that if we have a, let's say,weekly publishing schedule, this

(43:44):
needs to be basically their fulltime job for them to be able to
keep up and make all thisprogress and implement all these
things. And there's also oftenin podcasting and marketing,
this long lead time betweentaking an action and getting
result.
And so my thought is that if wewere gonna do this show, we
would essentially need to recordthe episodes bit by bit over the
course of, like, a year orsomething like that And then

(44:07):
release it as a season, youknow, drip them out week by week
at the end of that, which soundsfun from, you know, one
perspective, But it's also justlike, okay, we gotta do all this
work upfront and it's gonna beso long before we get any kind
of feedback on this or anythinglike that. So Yeah. I love the
idea of this, but it doesn'treally feel feasible right now

(44:27):
based on on where we're at, Idon't think.

Justin (44:29):
It's kind of missing the real time aspect of, like,
putting something out and thengetting feedback right away. And
also, my question with all ofthese ideas Yep. Is would
something simpler, less work,maybe less lead time, less
production time, give us asimilar result. As in our goal

(44:50):
for that show would be tocontinue to grow our audience
within the podcasting community.Maybe there's another concept
that would also do that.
Even though that's a great idea,there might be something else.
Yep. Here's another idea that wehad is a show called what makes
it great, the attributes ofgreat podcasts. And so here, I

(45:12):
like this idea of inviting anexpert panel member each week
who can sit on a panel with us.And we would go, let's listen to
this clip together.
Let's watch what Tim Ferris isdoing here and talk about why it
works. So we would be reactingto real clips from podcasts that

(45:33):
people know and identifying whydoes this work. Let's listen to
this segment from Ira Glass, orlet's listen to this segment
from Wendy Zuckerman fromScience Versus. And go, here's
what Wendy does amazing righthere. Listen to this clip.
So I like it because I'm alwayslistening to podcasts, and often

(45:53):
I, like, discover sections orshows or episodes that are doing
something really well. Anddissecting that for an audience
would be really interesting.

Jeremy (46:05):
Yeah. This is one that I've had this idea for years,
and I thought about it doing itin newsletter form. I thought
about doing it in podcastingform. I think once we started
talking about doing a show, thiswas one of the ideas we
initially batted around, Andwe've kind of done of the
opposite version of this. Imean, the roasts do have we
offer praise as well asconstructive, feedback and
criticism.
But this one is all about, like,the things that make a show

(46:26):
truly great. And so what I likeabout it is I'm just doing this
naturally. When I'm listening topodcasts, it's this thing where
I'm like, oh, wow. They just dodo that really well, and this is
what elevates this show aboveother similar shows. And so it
feels like part of what I wouldget out of this is right now, I
do this, and I don't have anyoneto tell about it.
Yeah. And so being able to,like, listen, find something
interesting, and be like, oh,this is so cool. Like, and with

(46:48):
it's essentially like a nerd outsession with other people who
all, you know, understand whatmakes great shows and then being
able to share that with anaudience as well. So I love that
idea of a show. I think it couldbe higher production value with
pulling in clips and things likethat.
I really like that version thatmy other concern would be how
much work does that become. Idon't think it would necessarily
need to be that much work. It'sfairly easy to just pull in a

(47:11):
couple clips here and there. Butwhat I kind of like about this
idea is bringing in somebody andasking them about their favorite
show and what they love about itand us kind of reacting for the
first time. And I think thatthere's something interesting
about that, about somebody who'sa super fan of a show, who knows
everything there is about it,and it can be like, okay.
Listen for this. Like, this is,like, classic Jay Acunzo on

(47:31):
unthinkable. Yeah. How he doesthis thing in every episode.
And, you know, I'm just, like,the big fan of his, and he's he
does this better than anyoneelse.
And, like, that's a show wherewe can then kind of, like,
appreciate that somebody elsecan kinda give the breakdown to
us, and we can kinda be like,oh, this is really cool. And,
also, I'm picking up this thingand that thing and kind of going
at it from a a show level aswell of looking at, like, what's
the concept here? Why does theconcept work? Why does this

(47:52):
host? Like, what is it aboutthem that makes them the perfect
host for this topic?
And I think that there's so muchthat we could get into that it's
one thing to look at shows whoare kind of on this bubble
trying to break through like wedo with the roasts, but there's
this whole other side anddifferent things that are going
to come out when you look atshows that have already broken
through and built up an audienceand are are much more
successful. And so it's almostthe inverse of the roast in some

(48:14):
way or the natural complement.So I there's a lot to like about
that idea too. So, secretly, I'mkind of, you know, rooting that
we get to that one, sooner orlater at some point.

Justin (48:23):
Yeah. And it has elements of song explorer. It
has elements of reaction videos,which are very popular. Yep. And
I think it's also veryshareable.
So if we're talking aboutdesigning a show that is
shareable, like people would besharing clips, or it would be
easy for us to showcase someclips on social media and have
people being interested in it,This show lends itself to those

(48:47):
kinds of things. I think itcould actually grow bigger and
faster than the show here thatwe did.

Jeremy (48:52):
Yeah. I think that it's really important as a creator to
be embedded in the broader,larger kind of creative world
and being able to pick up onsome of these meta trends
because you mentioned thereaction videos which is
something that I was also kindof thinking about of, like, oh,
this fits into this category ofa type of content that is
already successful and popularand we know people like and it's
just bringing a new spin onthat. And there's also these

(49:14):
elements of Song Exploder,another successful show. And so
I think keeping in mind whenyou're developing concepts like
what else is already popularthat I know people like
consuming this kind of contentand how could I create something
that is original, and it's,like, a refreshing take or
application of that format.

Justin (49:30):
The other thing I like about this show is that it has a
40 minute version that would bethe podcast. It has a 10 minute
version that could be theYouTube video, and it has a 60
second version that could beTikTok and Reels. Like, let's
break down why this Yeah.Particular thing works. And then
it's just a 60 second summary.
It has a lot of things going forit. The 3rd idea now that we've

(49:50):
described those 2 and I'veexpressed so much excitement,
this 3rd idea might not be asexciting. But I think it
actually has a lot going for itin the sense that it would be a
natural extension to the show,and it would also be the easiest
to produce. We've just calledthis 15 minute podcast riff,
which is a 15 minute show wherewe just bring up some of these

(50:13):
things that we got reallyexcited about often on the human
side of podcasting. Like, whenshould you quit doing a show?
Yeah. That could be a great 15minute topic where we could get
vulnerable, where we could havesome emotion, but it's just you
and I showing up every week withjust something that we've like,
you know what? This week, Iwanna talk about how bad DAI ads

(50:38):
are. And so we just riff on thattopic for 15 minutes. Like,
these ads are they're notnormalized properly.
There's a show that it'sbasically for a a certain
audience in podcasting. And theother day, I heard, like, a Twix
ad on it. It's like, what

Jeremy (50:53):
Oh.

Justin (50:53):
What are people doing here? So I feel like we could
riff on topics that are kind ofin the mix in the community.
They would be very in themoment, because we could react
in real time. Like, if all of asudden, you know, thousands of
people are being laid off at thebig podcast companies, we could
talk about that. But we couldalso talk about these topics

(51:13):
that people care about.
Another 15 minute podcast riffcould be, how are people really
making money on podcasts? Andjust have a good solid 15
minutes of you and I going backand forth little bit more raw, a
little bit more off the cuff, alittle bit more uncensored, and
just, like, kind of having thesefree flowing discussions, but

(51:35):
keeping them to about 15minutes.

Jeremy (51:36):
I like this one because I think most of the time, I tend
to gravitate to evergreencontent. So almost everything I
create, I have in mind from thestart. Like, I don't want to be
on this hamster wheel ofconstantly needing to put out
fresh content and I I kindawanna just be building out my
body of work. But that kindacomes at the trade off of there
are all these topics that arekind of timely and relevant

(51:58):
right now that I just kind ofignore. And so this is a format
where we could get into some ofthose things and I think they're
more immediately useful to a lotof people.
And I think the show has a lotof potential for growth as well,
especially on YouTube where Ithink we can keep these to, you
know, 10 or 15 minutes, be muchmore concise and be much more
targeted around very specificquestions that we know people
are asking. And looking at thestats from this season, our

(52:24):
easily best performing episodewas the episode called does
social media actually lead topodcast growth or something
along those lines. And thatepisode was so closely aligned
with the question that was oneverybody's mind that it's no
surprise to me that that was ourhighest performing episode by
far. And so that's somethingthat I think we could much more
easily manufacture with thisshow Absolutely. Where we can

(52:45):
start with questions that weknow people are asking or are
thinking about but haven'tverbalized yet that we're kinda
sensing out there and just kindaspeak to those and have a kinda
concise, short, 15 minutedigestible episode which was
something that from our ourlistener feedback survey, we
know there is an audience forwhere, you know, there's people
who listen to our hour longepisodes here, but there's a
significant number of people whospecifically asked for shorter,

(53:07):
more digestible episodes, kindof, very actionable addressing a
specific topic.
So I I think that this is agreat episode format as well
and, is something that there ispotential in a way that is part
of me thinks it's, like, equalpotential to the other ones or
maybe even more in some ways.It's like each of these shows
has its own kind of promise andits own opportunities, and they

(53:29):
all do quite different jobs,which is interesting.

Justin (53:32):
I think also the attraction to this format would
be, like, you're at a podcastconference or a meetup, and
everybody's at the bar, and thensomebody turns to you and goes,
Jeremy, give me the real goods.Like, how are podcasters making
money? And just to have, like, ano bullshit, like, just 15
minutes, like, okay. Like, I'llbe completely candid with you.

(53:55):
This is how people are reallymaking money, and this is how
many of them there are.
This is what they had to do toget there. This is how much they
like their lives.

Jeremy (54:04):
You

Justin (54:04):
know? Like, you could just get into all that. And
there's something about thatthat, you know, if someone's
sharing their car ride with us,it has more of that feel of,
like, 2 people in a car talkingand saying, you know, just give
it to me straight, dude. Like,when should I quit my podcast?
Like, should I quit doing this?
Yeah. And to have a honestdiscussion about that topic. And

(54:27):
it it kind of highlights one ofpodcast's strengths, which is
it's an honest space. You know,let's be honest here. Let's be
real here.

Jeremy (54:35):
Yeah. I think there's there's potential there, but
we're not actually going to makeup our minds quite yet on this
episode. We've teased some kindashow ideas here, but we would
love to get your feedback, youas a listener to the show. So we
are going to have a link in theshow notes for this episode
where we can collect somefeedback on each of these show
ideas that we have presented aswell as you'll have the

(54:56):
opportunity to submit your ownideas of things that you would
like to hear us riff on. Maybethose are individual episodes.
Maybe those are questions youhave. Maybe it's a show concept
that you wanna pitch to us andsay, like, I think you guys
should do this show. And so, youcan find the link in the show
notes for this episode and youcan kinda fill out the form
there. Upvote some of yourfavorite ideas that other people
have submitted or that we havesubmitted and kind of help us

(55:19):
shape the direction ofpotentially this show,
potentially another show,potentially all of these shows
maybe. Who knows?
Probably we're not gonna committo those all at once. But, you
know, down the line over thenext couple of years, maybe we
work our way through these 1 by1.

Justin (55:30):
Yeah. I'd I'm really excited to hear from people. I
wanna know what they think aboutthese ideas and which one they
like the best, which one theysay they would listen to.

Jeremy (55:39):
And as we have mentioned previously, we will be back for
another season of this show. Andso when the podcast marketing
trends 20 24 report drops, weare going to be back with a
whole new swath of data to digthrough and see how it compares
to the previous year. And thereare a bunch of new questions and
insights that are going to comeout of this report that, I am
personally very excited to diginto some of the stuff that

(56:01):
wasn't, explored on the initialreport that I think is going to
be very interesting, foreveryone else going forward when
it comes to the marketing ofyour show. So to everybody who
has listened, stuck with usthrough this season, whether
this is your first episode ofthe season or you've been with
us from the start, I would justlike to say, you know, thank you
so much for for sticking with usand for sharing the show. If you
are one of those people who hasbeen sharing the show, as we've

(56:22):
heard many people, have beenseeing that on Twitter and
LinkedIn, And people just, gotmultiple emails, in the past
couple days, even people sayingthey're recommending the show to
everyone.
We super, super appreciate that.

Justin (56:32):
Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Don't go anywhere. We'll see you
here on this feed for season 2.

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