Insights from Podfest 2025: Networking, AI, and Future of Podcasting

[00:00:00] Hey, I'm Luis. And I'm Luis. And you're listening to the Content Is Profit Podcast. Hey guys, welcome back to Content Is Profit. Today, I have a special episode for you. This past weekend, we were at Podfest, the event that inspired us to start this podcast, Content Is Profit, in 2020. We actually went there to try to sell the service that we do now.

[00:00:30] We're just doing research and see like, hey, would people or podcasters in that case buy our service? And then we fell in love with the space. And we've been going ever since, you know, we've spoken a couple of years. This year specifically, we chose not to. We're doing a couple of experiments with the content that we recorded there. And at the same time, we're launching the community, businesscreator.club. If you're interested, go ahead now and you can check it out. It is probably at the time of the release of this, just an entry form. But

[00:00:59] what we'll be doing there is combining basically the frameworks that we've done. And on February 12th, we're going to actually teach you how we monetize our podcast. Right now, at the time of this recording, is $1 a month membership. It will go up. This is the Podfest special pricing that we did with there. We already have a few members that are excited to come network with us. And the Content Is Profit experts that are going to be coming in and chatting about every

[00:01:28] single aspect of content creation business, how to monetize, how to distribute all these incredible things. So I hope to see you in there. If you want more information, just send me a message on Instagram at Biz Bros. Co. I'm happy to answer any questions. Or also, if you go to bizbros.co forward slash monetize, you're going to get some of these frameworks and we're going to be able to, you know, reach out. But anyways, what you're going to watch today is about four segments that we did over there. Obviously, one is talking about the event, who's that for, like some of the wins.

[00:01:57] The second one, we're going to be talking with, we do a little breakdown on why environment on podcasting is important. So kind of creating that space and what it means and so on. Ignore the framing of the camera in that specific one. We were kind of like in the sponsors area and we're moving around. Anyways, but the content is golden. And then we talk with Mopod. It's a way to distribute your podcast

[00:02:23] that maybe you didn't, you haven't heard about. They bring a brand new solution to the industry that is really, really powerful. So check those guys out. We run actually our first paid strategy with them. And anyways, we go about the details on what that's going on. And the last conversation that we had was with Bona from the Capture team, which is an AI tool that has helped us, you know, write the content after the episodes are created. And they're doing so much more and

[00:02:49] they've been having conversations with people in the industry. So here are her thoughts about that. Anyways, enjoy. Let me know if episodes like this you like. We were recording this like portable microphone, so they're not going to be obviously studio quality. But keep me posted. Do you want more on street content like this? Do we want, you know, to have conversations that are a little different than just in studio? Let me know in the comments and enjoy the episode. Take care.

[00:03:17] Nice. We made it. All right. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Continent's Prophet Vlog Edition. We need an original score for this. Yes. Yes. That's something we've been learning here at PodFest where we're at right now. We learned it at PodFest? Actually, no, I learned it somewhere else. On the way to PodFest. Yeah, but I talked about it with somebody, which is, you know, having original music in your podcast. Very important. But that being said...

[00:03:46] We are at PodFest. One of our favorite conferences that we attend. We've done five years in a row. And the birthplace of Continent's Prophet, baby. That is right. We were here in 2020. We didn't have a podcast. Our only goal was to sell those many podcasters into the service. Yes. It's a research point. But we got inspired to start our own podcast. And PodFest is, so far, all these years, it has been a great community. You get

[00:04:14] to meet a lot of incredible people. Yes. You know, is it an event for everyone and any podcaster out there? I don't know. I would like to explore the question, but what are we doing in this blog? Yes. So today, I mean, this is what? Day two, technically, of the conference. Yesterday, we came in. We walked around. We networked. We chatted with new people, Continent's Prophet friends. We did karaoke last night. Well, we didn't do karaoke.

[00:04:41] We went to karaoke to support some of our friends there. It's a tradition here in this conference. But today, today, we're interested to go and chat with some creators, people that are new to podcasting, people maybe that have been doing it for a little bit, and just find out like, why podcasting? Clearly, to us, podcasting has changed our life. It helped us build our business. It helped us move the needle forward. I mean, clearly, now we do that for a living.

[00:05:08] And yeah, we want to just find out a little bit more. There's also vendors around. There's also people with cool setups. And we might chat with them and see if they have some tips for you at home if you're interested to creating some content. So what are some cool creators we've seen around? I feel like we've just hang out a lot with friends. Those are the cool creators. Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. I love the...

[00:05:34] I just have so many thoughts, bro. I love this event. I love PodFest. But for me personally, at this point, five years later, is more of a straight up networking than going to the sessions type of event. There are a few sessions in there that I've seen that they really call my attention. But we barely managed to get to any... Because every time we're walking, we see somebody that either we've had on the podcast or we met or somebody that we had on

[00:06:01] the podcast they've introduced us to. And then we start talking. Again, it's a great networking conference. Yes. But if you're starting, yeah, if you're like starting your podcast, you know, fairly new, maybe a couple months old, this is the perfect spot for you. You want to be here. I would say 70% of people that come here are brand new to the space. There's a lot of talks on how to grow your

[00:06:26] podcast, how to have your podcast, how to edit it, all this stuff, right? Which is extremely beneficial. And this is going to sound super coincided, but it's like we know a lot of that stuff, right? So there are a very small amount of talks that really call my attention that I want to go that I'm like, maybe there's something in here, like a good insight that I can get. Not to say obviously you'll be good if we go to other sessions and we still, you know,

[00:06:51] learn and, you know, remember some of a lot of this stuff. But for us, the value is mostly on the network. So, you know, if you're new to the industry, the event is valuable for you to learn. If you are maybe older in the industry, you already had a podcast for a while, this would be a valuable place for you to network and make connections. And, you know, I'll say there's probably a lot more to be learned from one-on-one conversations with people around

[00:07:18] than maybe in the rooms, right? Because every conversation in here, the cool thing is that everybody comes with the mindset of, I want to learn something, you know, I want to talk about my podcast. I want to, you know, get insights so you can talk, you can approach anybody and be like, hey, what's your podcast about? You know, how do you grow your podcast? Like you're going to ask him those questions that it might be kind of awkward if you ask, you know, in another setting in a different situation. Yeah. But you can just straight up ask him and people are more than open

[00:07:46] to share what they found, you know, what they've done, what is working for them, what is not working for them. I think something really cool is obviously you see like our friend Inna does all the time, influencers in the wild. You can see them here and like, you know, people like Seth who produces one of the biggest podcasts like in the nation or even JLD with entrepreneurs on fire. Like they're, they're here, they're walking around. Also, you can just shake their hand and ask them like, you know,

[00:08:13] any question that you want about your podcast or your content and they'll be able to help you out. So I think that's super cool. There's also like meetups all around, right? There's some people are critical of the app that they use for, for the, for the event because there's so much going on, you know? So, I mean, this is the fifth year that we, that we come here to the conference and every single time it's a different thing that we come, you know, maybe the first year we wanted to sell the service and we learn about podcasts in the second year. It was more about, you know,

[00:08:40] let's go learn the tactics to start the podcast, right? And then later on it became about networking today. It is, I mean, today we are secretly launching business creators.club and, uh, it's been doesn't sound too secretly. Boom, boom, boom. It's like a podcast special that we're doing, uh, for the people here because this event means so much to us. And for us, it has been an opportunity to have close conversations with new creators, people that are, that want to put their message out there.

[00:09:08] And it's giving us a lot of feedback to improve on that side of the community, right? So if you're interested, go to the link right below and, uh, you'll find out a little bit more, but anyways, you know, come with a plan. We just did an episode on like, how can you get the most out of an event? Come with a plan. Uh, this is an event definitely to, uh, come more often. Thank you Fancy, my audio technician. Um, also super cool. They have a ton of vendors, a ton of sponsors that we're about to go

[00:09:33] see. And we're going to go talk. Um, and we're going to learn also about equipment. I'm a, you know, I love tech. I don't know the technical aspects. I just love tech in general, but we're going to learn more. That is a, that is a fun part of the event is going to the expo hall, right? Where all the vendors are and you see what the, what new teams are working on, right? You got, you know, software or your friends at Bluffsprout, right? They're in there. You also have this year, they got black

[00:10:00] magic, which, you know, hopefully in the next couple of months, we'll be recording our podcast and all people, Oh, everybody's podcast, the studio podcast suites from black magic cameras. That'll be pretty epic. You know, it's really fun to just kind of like catch up to what all these companies are doing. That is, yeah, that's definitely one of my favorite parts. All right. So let's go around. Let's go meet some people. Let's talk podcasting and let's check out what this event has to offer.

[00:10:27] Hopefully we'll see you here on the next one. The next one. Let's go. You know, we're just talking here with like the incredible sponsors and black magic has this incredible setup to see the cameras. And obviously, you know, a dream for, for the studio. I think, you know, when we started the studio, we bought the studio from the previous owner. Yeah. It was audio only. Yeah. He only pretty much, he, he is like some Evo's cameras. So

[00:10:53] then we upgraded to some Sonny's EVC one, the C C V E 10s, which is what we're recording now, different lens. Yeah. Which is a nice camera decent, but it does have a, we, we found that it have a problem of overheating. If you got longer conversations. So we're trying to upgrade the studio first, upgrade the setups, how it looks like, how can we make it a little bit more dynamic for all the clients that come in and also better quality video. I would love to shoot on some

[00:11:21] black magics, being able to do some live production inside of the studio as well, where you got the video switcher and then, you know, just save time on editing. So black magic, if you're watching this video, um, just saying, give us a call emails right below. Yeah. If you're looking to sponsor somebody, let us know. I wanted to sit here and chat a little bit about, you know, importance of the set, right? You know, we have a studio people coming, they ask us all the time, Hey, um, you know, can we personalize the set? Right. And obviously we have a few podcasts that go through the studio.

[00:11:50] We produce, uh, for like all types of shows and we can all personalize in that specific studio for that specific podcast. But we do think, I personally think that your set is also a personality of your show. Yeah. It enhances your personality. It enhances the personality. So, you know, that by the time of this recording about a week ago, we ended up and we shot at a customer's location and that was actually pretty neat. Like you looked incredible. Yeah. And, uh, this one enhances your

[00:12:16] personality. Yeah. Especially this book right here. What does it say? What does it say? I'm doing. No, no, no, no, no. What are you talking about? No, cancel. I'm looking at that. Uh, wow, dude, what are the, what's the theme on this? I don't know. I was watching the books.

[00:12:41] I'm like, interesting. You know, but anyways, if you are a podcaster or video podcaster, are looking to, I guess, enhance your show quality of the message over quality of the production. Yeah. 100% of the time. But when you have conquered that message, you can start leveling up on your setup. And again, it's not, this is not necessary to get started. I mean, us as a studio, we're looking to improve obviously the quality of the production as much as we can. So 100%.

[00:13:06] We want black magic stuff, right? Yes. So, but it's a good, it's a good goal to have as a podcaster, to continue to level up, especially also on stuff like this. Yeah. 100%. And you know, when we want people coming to the studio, if we have a dynamic setup, that'd be absolutely amazing. So that we can change depending on them. But at the same time, if they look, the type of cameras that are being filmed on, right? The quality of the footage that comes out of that, like, that it just adds value to the product. You know, on the side of the business, business speaking,

[00:13:35] we'll be able to probably charge a little bit more as well, right? I mean, it's more of a premium product now because of the quality that you're, you know, providing to the customer. Yeah. So on the other end, we'll be able to do bigger shoots, right? We can take all this equipment and, you know, shoot a very high quality, relocation, podcast recordings or educational content, whatever it is, right? That we're trying to film. So yeah. Anyways, I think the possibilities are

[00:14:02] endless in like this industry with podcasting. It's super cool because you can make it super personalized to what you're doing and you can literally start with a cell phone. That's literally how we started the podcast. And now we can sit down in any table like this one and have a conversation with you on the other side of the camera. That's right. And I think it's a fun, a fun challenge for you as a creator. Like how do I generate enough resources to be able to purchase and level up my show to get it to a point? So again, if you have any questions right below

[00:14:33] businesscreator.club, we're happy to help you out with it. You also know which camera is filming you right there. Yeah, right here. Right here, baby. Let's go. Yeah. New message to Blackmagic right now. Blackmagic, I love you. This is a love letter for Blackmagic. I love you. You are the most incredible company that creates cameras with a moi quality. We wait for you in Jacksonville, Florida. Send us

[00:15:00] three cameras. Bye. Bye. Bye. Blackmagic. See ya. My name is Mike Whiston. I am the CEO and co-founder of Mopod. That's Mopod.com. And we are the largest driver of engaged subscribers and listeners to many of the most prominent podcasts and networks in the US. Is that right? That's it. We're done. No, I'm kidding. Okay. So many of you in the podcast know that we ran

[00:15:25] a few campaigns. Actually, our first paid campaign was with you guys and the network. And we saw incredible results, right? And a lot of people that come to the studio, they're like, guys, how can we get more distribution? And how can we get in front of more eyes? And even though we were podcasting for like four years, we had no idea on the paid side. Like it was very confusing, right? For a lot of people, right? And you've built a product that is one, super simple to use,

[00:15:53] two, gets incredible results. And you throw the best parties in your conference. We definitely throw the best parties. So talk to me a little bit about the platform and kind of how it works and some of the new features that you guys have. Sure. So we actually have a couple products. The product I think you're talking about is our Boost self-serve. That's the one that we used initially. No, we used the Boost, the original Boost. Right. And then the self-serve is what we're looking for to start using.

[00:16:17] Sure. So Boost is actually driving people from a native display ad on hundreds or thousands of sites, targeting the specific user or the specific listener with a profile that matches your show, and then driving them back to a landing page with all the information about the show, the Mobod player, and then ultimately the listener can listen to the show. It shows up in your hosting

[00:16:42] platform as in most hosting platforms as Mobod. So it's very clear that the campaign came from us. And then we provide full transparency on reporting. So you can see every single impression by programmatic strategy, exactly what worked, what didn't, where it was delivered, etc. Wow. So good. Okay. So for somebody that is maybe in the initial stages of podcasting, right? They're like, hey, we just did our 12 episodes, right? What's an easy way they can start

[00:17:08] and maybe picture where this ad is going? Because I think that's the question. Where am I going to be looking at my ad? A lot of people are very familiar with maybe Facebook ads or YouTube ads. So these are native display ads. They actually, again, they're on hundreds or thousands of sites. We're not targeting the specific site. So we're not saying let's put your ad on Forbes. Yeah. Or let's put your ad on whatever website. It's more, let's find the specific user profile,

[00:17:37] wherever they happen to be. Perfect. And if they match that targeting and the geos that we're looking for, etc., then the ad will show up for that person. They're native ads, so they look like they belong with the rest of the content on that page. Yeah. And I think that's the key as well. It doesn't necessarily look like an in your face ad that's jumping out at you. It's more, I'm reading the content. I like, you know, the rest of this is resonating with me. And this makes sense for me because this is targeted to me. Absolutely. I think like what I personally like

[00:18:04] is finally have like a reliable way to be like, okay, like our message is being shown to this many people on this site. And then you can just like see the data right there for like the audio side of the podcast. Right? So I think that's super cool what you guys have built. And they just released, right? Because yes, yes, this is huge. And I love it because I'm like right there checking, you know, on charts, like where's the podcast ranking? What are we doing? You know, in general,

[00:18:31] the drum roll. Yes. So why don't you walk us through a little bit of like the latest features? First of all, it's charts.mopod.com. Yes. Charts.mopod.com. It's right behind us right here. And what we're actually looking at is we have the Chartable replacement. Chartable went out recently. They were the destination for getting your historic chart ranking information from Apple podcasts. If you

[00:18:57] go into Apple, all you can really see is your current chart ranking and how you stack up against other people currently as of today. But so we actually show you the historic when it loads the next one. It's going through a cycle right now for a demo. And that year is terrible. But you can actually go and see a look up your show. You can see the chart that shows you all the way back to October 23rd. It's forever free. We don't hide anything behind a paywall, or you don't have to enter an email or give

[00:19:27] us information in order to use this tool. And we're not selling you anything on the page. It's literally we want this to be the best and most used utility tool in the space for checking your Apple chart ranking. And ultimately, in the next iterations, Spotify chart ranking and some other data in the space. Yeah. And just as a resource for everyone to use. Yeah. And I love it, right? Like you can see, here's one of the things that we talk on the show, like all the time. It's like, okay, how do I know

[00:19:55] if like a marketing strategy is working? Right. And recently we're promoting a pretty big show. And we saw immediately all the rankings go up and we know exactly the day that happened. And we didn't really get a heads up of like when this campaign was going to go out. And as soon as we saw like the chart, the charts going up, I'm like, that is the one thing that was different. Let's go back and backtrack. Because a lot of people are like, they don't really know. They might be guessing on other shows. And you can see on it with the data that these guys are

[00:20:21] providing exactly what is working. Or if you run a campaign with somebody like, is this actually moving to needle for the show? So yeah. And I think the critical piece there is not just I ran a campaign. Here's, you know, I saw that go up and great. Awesome. A campaign was effective. It's more. All right. Here's the chart. Here's the episodes I released. I know I ran the campaigns from this date to this date. And before the campaign, here's what my stats look like during the campaign.

[00:20:47] Oh my God. Wow. The campaign's amazing. But then after the campaign's over, seeing that slow trickle down back to your standard or higher than your standard, that's everything. Yes, man, you guys are the life of the events. I lost my voice. I know. And, you know, your product keeps getting better and better. So go check him out. We're gonna leave all the links right below. And I thank you guys so much

[00:21:10] for your time. Let's go. Thank you. All right, guys. So we are here with a bon app from capsule, one of our favorite platforms to use. You know that Fonzie has a raging war against AI. And this has been the tool that conquered Fonzie's heart. So if you haven't checked it out, go ahead and the link right below, you're gonna get a bunch of access to incredible features. But my favorite one is that it

[00:21:37] saves a ton of time. We talk a lot about the, you know, creation process, the production, and then people forget that we still have to like write these descriptions or create assets from your episodes and like lead magnets, the email campaigns, newsletters, a bunch of stuff. And this tool does it incredibly. So, but how's it been like kind of creating this platform almost from scratch, right? I'm presenting it to people here at PodFest. Yeah, it's been well. PodFest is very dear to us because

[00:22:03] we actually launched the very, very, very first version of Capture, which was just basically automated show notes two and a half years ago at our very first PodFest. So it's amazing coming back here kind of a few years later with what we have now and being able to create like what you just said, you know, not just show notes, but, you know, blog posts, LinkedIn articles, image generators, also doing like clipping and kind of everything you need, all of your post-production stuff. So it's been, it's been a wild ride, but doing it with podcasters, doing it with the community,

[00:22:31] and really being responding to what they need has been, has been really, really awesome. Yeah. The cool thing is like, you know, we've seen the platform almost from like inception and you guys are really out there like talking to the actual consumer and implementing feedback so fast. And the product has been better. And now is a great time to join because either the price point is like the best price point that you could probably get it at. Yes. So I love the fact that you guys are so

[00:22:57] in tune with the community, right? And you're, every time we walk through here, like we see you talking for like five different people and you guys have like this incredible game, like scavenger hunt going. Yeah. What are, what are some of the, like the trends or things that you've seen with like podcasters today? Yeah. So the first thing that I think came up for a lot of people, whether they were beginning or they were like kind of like fully, you know, experienced in podcasting and creating content was that they're really looking at platforms like Substack or these other places that they could migrate their

[00:23:26] listener into a more intimate environment. Because I think social media is kind of a necessary evil for a lot of us, but it's kind of very crowded. Yeah. I would potentially see if I've been banned and there's going to be even more of an influx of creators coming onto these platforms. So I think looking for other spaces like, like Substack, I think is very much an emerging thing, which is really, really cool. I'm also talking to people about who are looking at other formats. Like I think a lot of people wanting to maybe like turn their

[00:23:50] podcasts into more of like speaking appearances, writing books, you know, that sort of stuff. I was like, oh, that's really cool because now they're reaching different audiences in different ways and maybe having a more like potentially longer lasting impact. But also I think what I'm seeing is the other thing that we saw was that people are being more intentional. A lot of the beginners that I've spoken to who are like about to launch their podcast or very new to it, they've actually kind of taken a bit more time rather than just kind of going, okay, well,

[00:24:19] I think I should talk about personal development and blah. I'm just going to get out there. They've really kind of taken the time to like research what their angle may be and things like that, which I think is a really, really great thing because they're really kind of starting to find their voice much earlier, which is awesome. That's so cool. Anyways, guys, we're going to leave all the links right below. Please go check them out. I know a lot of people are like very worried about like how the podcast and the video is going to look like. And then we completely forget our account content for like what comes after like the captions, the descriptions, which is also like

[00:24:49] super important. If you have a website that goes with your show or your YouTube channel, whatever it is. So I think like at least you can experiment with with caption and test it out. See what works. I remember Fonzie here like in behind the camera is a really, he's a really good writer, but I personally do not enjoy writing. I think I feel I personally as a creator feel more comfortable talking to a camera than typing in my computer. And a flow that works for me is I literally record a video,

[00:25:18] load it into caption and it gives me an incredible output to get started or piggyback off of. So we can add, remove, experiment something, something different. And then we did it with the football show, sent it to Fonzie's like, what do you think about this? And he's like, this is pretty good. That is an excellent in real world status. But anyways, thank you so much. Any last thoughts? Thank you, Maurice. No, that this is, it's really exciting to be here. Thank you for having me. Yes, absolutely.