Why Your Podcast Isn’t Growing w/ Seth Silvers (Alex Hormozi Podcast Producer)

[00:00:00] I think a lot of podcasters think that creating the podcast is the game. Yeah. Like they publish the episode and they put like an intro and an outro and they think like, okay, cool, I did it. When they forget that it's actually about growing the show. Like if the show is not growing and something's probably wrong. Is there any categorization or levels to types of audience in platform?

[00:00:22] Even small creators are probably leaving like tens of thousands of views a month on the table by not like leveraging short form content. Especially if you're on those early stages of running or growing your own business. Like you want to have as many conversations as you want with your customer. And podcasting, unfortunately, might not be that vehicle. You can grow your business as big as you want, but if you don't have the people and the values and the culture to support it,

[00:00:50] then it's going to be pretty hard to maintain that. So with your business podcast, how are you measuring the growth of a podcast or the success of a podcast? Yeah, it does kind of depend, but I think there's some, there's some frameworks that are common throughout it all. So I think. Hey guys, welcome back to Content Is Profit. Today, I have a very special episode.

[00:01:17] We've chased this person for a long time just to have this conversation and it might just not be enough. We might have to do a part two or part three, like specific training in businesscreator.club if you're part of it. But today we have you, the one and only Seth Silvers. He actually is the actual producer of Alex and Leila Zormozi's podcast. They've been working together for a few months now and the growth that they've experienced is massive thanks to Seth.

[00:01:43] He's also the CEO of Story on Media and Marketing, which he started in 2015. Him and his team has worked with these incredible leaders. Here are some of the names. Mark Cuban, Patrick Lencioni, and April Dunford. And today's episode, we talk business podcasting specifically. And we went deep with this one. We talk high level. We talk specifics. We talk data.

[00:02:10] Some of the things that we talked about is like the three types of podcasts and which one is the one that matters to you at whatever stage you're in. Big business, small business, hobby. Doesn't matter. Like you are going to be able to pinpoint one and be like, that's the one that want to do. We talked also about how data affects your show and how to look for it in so many platforms today. So you have, you know, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Shorts, No Shorts. Like how do you actually look at the data that matters to drive the results?

[00:02:39] And Seth gives us some good case studies to prove it. And this was actually really interesting for me. What platform you should be driving traffic to for people to consume your content? So anyways, we talked for about an hour. I think it's full of golden boulders. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Here we go. Guys, welcome back to Content is Profit.

[00:03:02] We are here with the one and only one of our favorite producers and business podcasters on earth. We'll talk a little bit more about that, but I'm very excited to welcome you to Content is Profit. Man, we've been chasing you for years, I'm going to say. We can exaggerate. That's fine. It has been a while. We've been talking about making this happen for a while. So I'm super happy that, super happy we made it happen. I'm stoked.

[00:03:31] Can we say, I mean, you are a high profile producer, probably top podcast in the world, in the business world right now. Can we say, is that still top secret? Does it matter? Yeah, no, no. You can, everything is public. I can talk about all of our projects. Why don't you say it? Who are we talking about here that you produce your podcast for? Uh, you're probably talking about our parking podcast called all things parking. Perfect.

[00:04:00] You may be talking about, uh, our podcast for local real estate agents. You're probably referring to Alex and Layla Hermosey. Yep. Big name. So yeah, I've been, had the opportunity to work with them over the last, it's been about six, seven months now, um, that we've been overseeing kind of podcast strategy and production for, for their shows, the game with Alex Hermosey and then build with Layla, which has been a lot of fun to, a lot of fun to get to work with them, get to learn from them. Yeah.

[00:04:26] Um, they're, they're brilliant in many ways and, uh, also see their shows grow, which is, which is always the goal. Yeah. That was awesome. Which by the way, my favorite one is the one with Layla. A hundred percent. I'm like operator a hundred percent. Like this is a gem. Um, obviously Alex is really solid, but you guys are, have been doing an incredible work, man. It's, it's amazing to see it and hear it. Thanks. Yeah. It's really fun to see like how their shows, like they're from the same brand of acquisition.com,

[00:04:55] but, um, Alex and Layla are very different. And so also their shows are very different where Alex is going to talk more about, you know, things like money and marketing and business growth. But Layla is the operator. She's the CEO of their company and their portfolio companies. And so she's going to be talking a lot more about like leadership and culture and how to build a company around your values and, um, all of the people side of the business, which I think everybody listening probably knows like, that's a pretty big part of the business.

[00:05:22] Like you can, you can grow your business as big as you want, but if you don't have the people and the values and the culture to support it, then it's going to be pretty hard to maintain that. So it's fun to get to like, see how differently their shows hit different audiences or how different the same audience learns. Like they learn different things from both shows. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, not to, um, ruin the party. You know, I love talking about Alex and Layla.

[00:05:48] They're absolutely amazing, but we're here to talk about you, you know, and we want to learn obviously your, your approach, right? You work, you don't only work with them. You work with multiple podcasters and businesses and you help them with strategy and growth. And that's what we want to, to talk about in here today. Right. We want to see what is your approach. I remember, you know, in the last podcasting conference that we went podfist, you were talking and, you know, you were saying how you love spreadsheets and the data. And I'm like, all right, let's talk data.

[00:06:17] I'm not that guy, but I know that we need to see the data to grow. Right. And, you know, a lot of people that are listening right now, they might hear the name Alex or Mosey, right. And Layla or Mosey. And their first thought might be, well, but they're huge. You know, that might not be too relatable, but I think if we talk a little bit about the data, right? Like what can they focus on as, you know, maybe as a small business podcaster, right?

[00:06:45] Or even if they're enterprise podcasters and they have more resources, what are the data points that they should focus on for growth? So walk us through a little bit on, you know, a podcaster comes to you or a business better say, comes to you and they said, you know, we want to launch a podcast to get more clients, right. Or increase our brand awareness. Like what, what do you do first? Where do you guide that conversation through? Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question.

[00:07:13] And I've fallen, I've kind of fallen in love with the data side of podcasting. And I say falling, cause like, I kind of feel like I fell into it. Like it wasn't necessarily something that was like, Oh, I love data. Um, I've always loved a good, like Google sheets formula, but, um, yeah. So over the last few years, like that's been something I've realized is often overlooked or it's complicated in podcasting. And so I think a lot of people are like, Oh, we don't, there's not much accessible.

[00:07:39] So I think that the reality is there, there is more data that we have access to than people often think. Um, and I think that can tell us a lot about our audience. And so for, to kind of speak to your question, like when somebody comes to us from a strategy perspective, like we're actually going to, we're going to, before we start producing, like there's many times where we tell clients to actually hit the brakes on production. They're like ready to, ready to pay us ready to start the show. And we're like, we need to like kind of build the foundation of this show. Yeah.

[00:08:08] Um, so it's this interesting challenge where I'm all for like starting messy, if you will, and, and committing to like improving, but I also want to make sure we're starting intentionally. So for us, like we've kind of built this into what we call the business podcast roadmap, but, uh, this is kind of just the steps that we looked at of what are the shows that we've launched that have failed? What are the shows that we've been a part of that have succeeded? And what are the common elements? And so for me, like I realized all of the shows that are doing well or have succeeded,

[00:08:38] um, they've had a really clearly defined audience. And so we always start with that piece and we tell, uh, clients and podcasters, like you should be creating your podcast with one person in mind. There's going to be a lot of those people, but you should be thinking about it. Like, who's the one person? Our second element is going to be what problems does that person have? Third is going to be the content where you're reverse engineering that content to solve those problems. And then fourth is going to be, um, kind of a clear offer.

[00:09:06] And that doesn't just mean like, what are you selling for $97, but just what's the clear way for a, your audience to raise their hand and say, I want more. Um, it might be something on your website. It might be, it could be a million different things, but you just want to have clarity. So I think those, that's where we start with shows is going to be audience problems, content and offer. Um, and we're going to always start by like building that as kind of like the foundation of your podcast before we, ideally all of that happens before you hit publish. Yeah.

[00:09:36] But if you're a podcaster that's already in the middle of it and you're like, well, dang, I don't have clarity on those things, then like you can dive into those at any time to gain clarity. Yeah. Seth, how do you, how do you find success on a podcast? Right. And I, and I know that this might be like a, it depends answer type deal, but we love those. We love those. Because we get a lot of starters in the studio, for example, people that are starting with their content, maybe podcasting is like the first type of type of content that they are trying to produce consistently.

[00:10:06] Um, and, uh, you know, I like the version that you guys do on the show where it's like educational or, you know, entertaining. Right. And there's not like a mix of both. I want to hear your thoughts on it. And then on your side with your business podcast, how are you measuring the growth of a podcast or the success of a podcast? Yeah, it does kind of depend, but I think there's some, there's some frameworks that are common throughout it all.

[00:10:34] So I think at the end of the day, you just have to have clarity on what the goal is of your podcast. So I think a lot of people they're measuring their podcast success solely based on downloads. Um, and that can be one measure of success. So I think it's really important for people to know what type of podcast you're creating. In my experience, it's usually one of three things. Either the podcast is your business, which if the podcast is your business, then the business

[00:11:00] model is to grow the show, grow downloads, get in monetized directly, whether it's through like sponsorships or premium memberships or something. So that's if the podcast is the business, if the podcast supports your business, which is that that's the realm that most of our shows are in, then you have a business on the backend. And the idea is that the podcast would either bring new people in or it would serve to like help nurture your current audience. And then the third would be, it's a hobby, um, which is it's for fun.

[00:11:30] Like, like right now your guys football podcast, like I know you have aspirations for it to be a, you know, a big podcast and to make money off it. But like right now it's like a hobby. And so like right now, like I would say like for a show like that, are you guys having fun? Does your audience like the content? It's like, that's probably like the most important thing to start with it. So I think a lot of times people maybe have a hobby podcast, but they're judging it.

[00:11:56] They're comparing themselves to podcasts where the podcast is the business, like, you know, your Spotify, your Wondery shows. So I think it depends. There's like different metrics in all of those things. So like if it's the business downloads, if it's supporting the business, you probably want to have a clear connection to actual like revenue or retention for customers. And if it's a hobby podcast, then like you still want to see an increase in downloads because you still want to see some metrics like going up because that means you're creating good content. Yeah.

[00:12:26] Um, so I think it does depend a little bit case to case, but I think there's kind of these buckets that a lot of people don't really have. Like sometimes I think we confuse what purpose our podcast actually serves. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to illustrate this, right? Like when the podcast is the business, we're talking to somebody like Joe Rogan, for example, right? That they make their money from sponsorships and all that stuff. Right.

[00:12:51] And when we talk about supporting, like you said, is kind of like how we do it for our podcast, right? We have or, or service that we offer. Uh, I think it's how you do it. I know your, your current podcast, I think it's in, in pause. You're restarting it soon, but you know, you have your agency and that is your business and you're bringing in either lead connections, you know, or you're building your network throughout the podcast. That's kind of how we do it.

[00:13:18] And through the network, then, you know, you get some, some really cool connections in there to, to work together with. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just, it comes down to clarity. Like where does, and particularly with people that you and I work with, where, um, usually businesses or creators that have some kind of like business connected to what they're doing. Yeah. And I think that you just have to know like what purpose does the podcast serve for me?

[00:13:46] I, I look at podcasting a little bit more like middle of funnel than top of funnel. Same. Um, and I think a lot of podcasters start the podcast. A lot of businesses start a podcast thinking that it's top of funnel. Yeah. So they're like, this is going to be the silver bullet that grows my business. When in reality, it's more of like a middle of funnel. It's like more of a place where you're funneling your current kind of like fringe audience into, and it's giving them more touch points with your brand. So I think the important piece to know, like how do we define success?

[00:14:16] It kind of starts with knowing like where the podcast fits in your current like ecosystem of your brand. So extend a little bit on that. Cause you know, when you say people think it is more top of funnel, right? What I, I have the same thought as you, I believe it is more middle of the funnel. And when we have conversations with people that they're like, you know, I want to get clients and I want to build an audience through podcasting. And I'm like, well, when do you need them? Right. And he's like yesterday, right?

[00:14:44] You're like, maybe podcasting is not the right thing for you. Right. It's, you know, there's, there's a big challenge for discoverability, especially if, you know, you might be a business or a podcaster that might not be able to pour as much resources right in, in the marketing of the podcast. But I'm curious on your point of view, right? Like what is, what is that difference between that top of funnel, middle of the funnel? What functions each one serve in terms of podcasting? Yeah.

[00:15:14] I mean, I, that's a good question. I think that for me, I learned this from looking at some shows that we launched and we had to look at and we were like, this was probably premature. Like we probably shouldn't have convinced that client to start a podcast. This was years ago, but there was a couple of shows that we started in. And the reality was like, the business was too early to put, to afford, to make sense, to put the resources they put into the podcast.

[00:15:44] So it was like, what is too early? If you don't mind me asking. Um, I don't want to say like necessarily a specific number, but I think like, like, like I'll throw one number at, like, well, let's say a hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Like reality is it's, it's probably higher than that. But if, if you start a business and you're not doing a hundred thousand dollars in revenue, that doesn't mean that anything, it doesn't mean that you are bad, but it probably means that something is wrong in a sense of like, maybe your product isn't priced well.

[00:16:14] Maybe you're not getting in front of enough people. Like maybe you don't know how to run a business yet. Like I know I've been there. I know the reason that my business isn't bigger is because like, usually I don't know the right things. Like I'm not, we're not getting in front of enough people. So I think, again, this kind of comes back to the data. Like everything is a data point. And so I think if you are an early stage business where you're kind of trying to figure out how to crack your first few hundred thousand dollars in revenue,

[00:16:42] it's probably going to make more sense to figure out, do you have product market fit? To figure out a consistent sales process, to figure out a consistent like delivery process for your product. And so what we begin to see is some people, particularly in like coaches and consulting, not only, but this was just our experience, was we got hired by a few like coaches and consultants that were super passionate. Their show premise was great. And we were also early in podcasting and in our experience.

[00:17:12] And so I was like, yes, the show will grow your business. But the reality was like, we, even if our show that we were doing for them grew and got exposure, do they have like a sales process? Do they have like a clear product offering? And so we started to run into some of these things where, you know, they might be spending a high percentage of their like revenue on podcast production. And so then they were putting a disproportionate amount of expectation and weight on the podcast,

[00:17:41] like producing all of the results and saving their business. So then at the end of, I'm just making up numbers here, but like at the end of the year, they might be like, we did a hundred thousand dollars in revenue and we spent $30,000 hiring a podcast production agency. That was 30% of our revenue. Yeah. And the expectations are going to be like really, really high. And so by looking at several situations like that, where I realized, huh, like we might be positioning this podcast as more of like, this will grow your business.

[00:18:10] And the true thing is it, it will, but it has to be like positioned right. And so that's why I think if you're an early business, where you're figuring out the sales, you're figuring out customer success, you're figuring out all those things. Like I, I actually wouldn't advise somebody to like hire a high level production agency. Yeah. If you're in those early stages of business. And so I think some of it is the positioning side of things, but it's, it kind of just comes down to like, what's the biggest problem to solve? Yeah. Do I think every business could have a podcast?

[00:18:40] Yes. But I also think there might be times where there's a bigger problem for you to solve than starting a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. One hundred percent. I love that on a Steve, by the way. Yeah. The transparency. Yeah. I'm not trying to like send all of our clients away. No, a hundred percent. But it's, I think it's a great indicator for like people that are looking to hire any content agency in general. Right. Obviously we're talking here about podcasting because it's like, it's our favorite one, but we've seen it in all. Right. And it's like,

[00:19:09] would this grow the business? Right. At the end of the day, it's like, is the business in shape, you know, to, to grow type deal. And we've seen it with like, every time we started a project in the last, like, you know, five years, it has been an element of like production is handled. And because then that is handle is off their plate. Then you start seeing the trickle down. It's like, okay, maybe we don't have the right team in place to the creation aspect or the monetization side.

[00:19:37] Turns out that there's no email list. So it turns out that there's no way to capture leads or turns out. So you start to uncover the next problems. Right. And we've seen it where like people get so busy trying to figure out how do I actually create the podcast or create the YouTube channel? And they're busy with the tech and the learning videos or whatever, or like they send the social media manager to like figure this out. When the reason they might not be selling in the first place is not because of the marketing message, because maybe on the backend, they don't have a system to capture all this.

[00:20:06] I think this conversation is super interesting. Yeah. And, um, let me touch on a point real quick. You know, when I hear you talk about this, what comes to mind is speed to conversation, right? Like you want to have, especially if you're on those early stages of running or growing your own business, like you want to have as many conversations as you want with your customer, right. Or with potential customers and get, you know, shorten the, the feedback cycle. Right. So you can have, you know,

[00:20:36] exactly where to improve, you know, what to let go of and podcasting, unfortunately might not be that vehicle. Right. Cause it is more of a long, long term play right now. Yeah. If you look at your resources and let's say you're starting a business, but for some reason you have a huge email list, right. You have assets, right. You have a great following on social media that is very engaged that you can

[00:21:04] push this podcast to on your podcast. You know, maybe it leads with some sort of an offer and et cetera. Like I think that could improve that speed to conversation, right. It could create some sort of feedback, but reality is that most businesses at this level, they do not have those resources, right. They don't have a huge email list. They don't have, you know, a huge following that they can push that podcast towards. And, and I see that a lot with bigger podcasters, right.

[00:21:32] Or actually I think a great example for this is influencers. You might see them on Tik TOK, blah, blah, blah, doing their whole thing. And then all of a sudden it's like, Oh, they drop a podcast. It's like, they, they ranked, you know, they, they have all these listeners and you're like, how like they're like, I tune in and I'm like, they're just talking about, you know, whatever. But the thing is already had an asset and they could push that, that, that podcast to do, you know, to all of those people, to all that audience. And they could get a quick feedback. And again,

[00:22:03] for smaller businesses, they might lack those resources. So the approach should be a little bit different. Right. So I think focusing on that speed of conversation. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I do want to clarify, like, I'm not saying small businesses shouldn't start a podcast. I think it's more about like, how much are you prioritizing it? Yep. And how, like, what level of resources are you putting into it? I think that's the conversation. And that's just kind of the evolution of like the journey that we've gone on. I think that a podcast, again,

[00:22:31] kind of from top of funnel to middle of funnel, I used to think it was top of funnel. Um, I've seen podcasting work best kind of when it's, um, when it's like we internally, we talk about when, uh, the podcast is like fuel, not the spark. Yeah. So like if you don't have a spark in a fire, then fuel doesn't matter. Like you can pour as much gasoline on into a fire pit as you want. But like, if you don't have a match, then it's not going to work. And so I think a lot of people, when they start podcasts,

[00:23:01] particularly in the business, they're still figuring out what their spark is. Like they're still trying to like light their campfire. Um, but they're just pouring fuel on. They're like, Oh, this is a marketing problem. If I pour more marketing on this business, then it will work when like the business isn't, like on fire yet. And I know it's kind of cheesy, but I think it's good kind of like illustration. So for us, it's like once you have like this fire burning and you have people around that fire that are getting warm from it and they're getting value from their business,

[00:23:30] then that's, I think when a podcast can come in and it can add fuel to that, but then it like begins to expand that. And it begins to, that's where it's like middle of funnel where we see, yes, you will bring in new customers from a podcast, but primarily it's most valuable when your, your current customers, the people that know about you, but haven't hired you when it's a way for those people to like, stay in touch with you a couple of times a week. Um, that's where like, I see kind of middle of funnel where, where it can be really valuable. Yeah. I think too,

[00:24:01] where there's like levels to the production aspect, right? Because you could be, okay, the least friction possible going to like, I'm just going to record a five minute note on like answering this question that a customer sent on my phone. And then that's the audio that's uploaded on edited, no intro, no nothing. That could be a podcast, right? Totally. Versus a super, you know, corporate branded show that is highly edited with like storylines and noises and music and like original score.

[00:24:30] I'm like all this production that, you know, I think we talked about in the last event, right? One of those episodes could be $9,000, right? Type deal. Both are podcasts, both might serve, you know, a similar purpose. It's just the level of production varies depending on like where the business is. And, and I don't think there's a wrong answer, right? Because there's a lot of people that have started very successful shows with very low friction. You know, you see people like Russell Branson starting marketing in the car, right? As a way to like, Hey,

[00:24:59] I just want to explore this medium. And he's recording on his phone on the way to work, for example, or even Alex's first episodes, right? Like he tells, he says it all the time. And, uh, it's been what six, seven years since that moment. And the, the show has evolved to the point that, you know, uh, they have incredible people like you producing the episodes and now solving bigger problems and things because the business evolves too. Sounds like we're going to have to do a, some podcasting from the car. That's what I'm hearing right now. I'm down. Well, I think that's really important though. The levels of,

[00:25:29] of production though, because, um, we're also not saying to like not outsource production. Like if you like, there's a lot of like editors or something that might be able to edit your podcast for a really good rate. Yeah. as I learned more about it, we realized like the service that we wanted to provide was a little bit higher level. We wanted to focus on strategy. We wanted to be able to build out analytics dashboards and things. We wanted to be able to focus on like the video editing and the social editing. And like, we wanted to do a lot.

[00:25:57] And so the reality was we couldn't do all that we were wanting to do. Like if we were wanting to do the best case scenario for a podcast, we couldn't really do that for a really low price, which then meant that like not everybody could afford it. And so that was really hard, but I think recognizing that I'm a huge fan of like buying back your time. And if you're creating, even if it's on your phone, then like being able to buy back some of your time so that you can focus on growing the business. And there are tiers to production. So I don't, you know,

[00:26:27] if people are listening, they're like, well, I can't afford X amount per month. It's like, there's, there's always going to be affordable ways to like buy back your time. Yeah. I think one of the very interesting conversations that we had earlier this month was with somebody that we made it a podcasting event here locally in Jacksonville. And, uh, she was starting this incredible podcast about love. And she had like, you could tell like her passion was massive. And she started it in Turkey, sitting down in a coffee shop with somebody that she met that day recording on her phone. And that was like the concept of, of her conversation.

[00:26:58] And, uh, you know, she came to the studio, she looked at the place. She's like, Oh my God, like this is a great target for me at one day. Right. And I'm like, look, yeah, let me share the framework. Like it's super simple, right. Or the production that, that, that we do, you might be able, you might already have the tools to do this, right. Right. At the end of the day. And for her, she wanted, you know, and this is a little bit more on the, on the technical production side, but it's like one camera on her, one camera on the person. Here's a software that allows you to do that automatically. Hey, we're happy to do that for you if you don't have the time. Right.

[00:27:26] But here's the recipe that you can, you know, if we're, you know, might not be in your price point, give it to an editor. They'll be able to, to figure this one out. A week later, she came super excited. She's like that conversation out with you guys changed my outlook in, in this. And she had like three episodes produced by a freelancer editor. Amazing. Great win. Because what we want to do is like remove the friction at the end of the day. Right. And to this day, you know, she's now part of the community that, that a business creator club.

[00:27:54] And we continue to be involved in different ways. But at the end of the day, it's like understanding what's your, like you said, your capacity, your resources, and just move the needle forward little by little. As you, as you move that needle forward, you start publishing, discovering your message, dialing down your message, nailing down your offer, your business side. I think you're going to get more resources and continue to grow and evolve like everything right at the end of the day. So I think, uh, thank you for like, obviously the, the breakdown that you did. So like for this, like specifically,

[00:28:24] like what are, what are some of the top metrics? Cause every time we jump on Wednesdays in our calls, like you, you bring like this golden boulder every time you're like, we are experimenting with so-and-so from this platform. And look at how cool this is. And we're like, like, Oh my God. And I'm like logging in behind cameras, like Spotify, new dashboard. Tell me everything. Uh, what are some of the things that you're more, most excited about to like start measuring, right? Yeah. To improve on the shows. Yeah. It's a good question. Um, so I'm,

[00:28:53] I've been really excited, um, over the last like six months, I think Spotify has like massively up their game with like the data that they're starting to show creators. It's funny because the data that is like new, you can go and look at backdated for a long time. So it's like, they've had this data for a long time, but now they're sharing it with us. Yeah. Um, and so I think some of that is like on a show and on an episode level, you can actually see like how many impressions your show is getting on

[00:29:19] Spotify and then how many people are like showing interest in your show. And then how many of those people are actually listening for more than 60 seconds. So I think this kind of gives like data to packaging, if you will, which packaging we've never really had much data behind packaging and podcasting. Um, so I think that the main thing that, that like first data point of like how many people are an impression, like are seeing your show and how many people are clicking on it.

[00:29:47] That really speaks to like your title. Like I think your title and your thumbnails on podcasting, we kind of now finally have these data points to be able to show. Um, and we, like we updated the packaging of, of one of our shows and we pretty much immediately saw like an increase by like seven to 8% in downloads just because the packaging was more clear. And then we saw that like overall impression rate, which is getting a little bit granular. Um,

[00:30:16] but we saw that like impression rate of how many people are seeing the show on a monthly basis and how many people are clicking on the show on a monthly basis. We saw that number go up by like two percentage points, which sounds really small, but like when you kind of like layer that in, um, that's actually like the single, probably the biggest lever that we could pull as a podcaster is recognizing a lot of people are probably seeing your show, but now we're starting to see the data of how many people are clicking on your show.

[00:30:46] Um, and so we, we saw that like if we could pull any lever, like, let's say you kind of have these three data points of like impressions, let's say clicks and, um, streams or like 60 seconds or more. So if you could pull any one of those three levers, the one that actually like makes the most sense to pull that would have the biggest impact is actually that conversion rate from impressions to clicks. Um,

[00:31:15] and so we saw like, if we could see that number go up by like one or 2%, then the number of those people that are then turning into streams is going up dramatically more. Yeah. just because it's like a higher, I don't even know, higher magnitude, like lever to pull. So some of those things we were like really excited about finally being able to like experiment with podcast packaging and seeing the results of it. Um, the guys at bumper, Dan, Dan Meisner and Jonas,

[00:31:43] they just posted this really interesting article like this week that, um, we're going to start experimenting with like some of the data they were talking about where you can actually now see, um, what percentage of listeners on a weekly basis or daily basis, depending on how you pulled the data, what percentage of those are new versus returning. Um, that's something that we see often in YouTube. Like YouTube shows you like what percentage is new and returning or subscribed and not subscribed, but we haven't,

[00:32:12] we haven't been able to see that in podcasting partially because like nobody's really thought about the data in the right way. Yeah. So that was a really brilliant article that they released this week. And so that's going to be something that we're starting to look at is like, okay, cool. If you have a thousand listeners over the last week, what percentage of them, this was their first time listening to the show. Um, and then we can start to see, okay, is our new audience growing? Is our old audience shrinking? Like you can do a lot with those things.

[00:32:40] So those are some of the things that I'm paying attention to and I'm excited about right now. That's, that's amazing. I'm, my mind goes to why has Apple doesn't release like those type of data points. Right. I'm, I'm, I'm so curious about that. And obviously I'm guessing. Almost like TV doesn't really, it's really audience numbers. Yeah. But, but I'm guessing like you base your, you know, I guess your hypotheses off of the data that you're seeing on Spotify.

[00:33:09] And then you're kind of like, that is your baseline. And then obviously you're syndicating your podcast everywhere. Right. Like people can listen in Apple podcasts. I listen on snipped, which I think it grabs the feed when asked me for a new podcast, I have to put like the link from like Apple podcasts or whatnot. But, um, you know, there's different platforms that people listen to their, their podcasts on, but it sounds like Spotify is really making an effort to be the hub. Right. Like trying to get people to be like, right.

[00:33:39] I need to know information about a podcast on how to grow. Let me go to the dashboard here on, on, on Spotify. But, you know, do you find based on the data points that you see in Apple, that those hypotheses that you're creating, seeing the data on Spotify are translating into the other platforms as well? Like is that success? Yeah. That's an interesting, there's yeah, that's an interesting question. Cause we have seen some differences in, in just so that people kind of understand like how I'm looking at this.

[00:34:09] Like we're typically going to be pulling data from any source that we have. So inside of Apple podcast connect, which is initially data specific to Apple listeners inside of Spotify for creators, which is specific to Spotify. Um, and then sometimes if you're a, your third party host, wherever you're hosting. And so we're going to pull all data points from all three of those places. We're going to put them into a spreadsheet. And then we're going to initially look at on an episode by episode level.

[00:34:38] Like what are the benchmarks that are either overperforming or underperforming? And so the whole goal of that is just to understand what content's performing better or worse. Um, I'm not a fan of tracking data that won't change a decision. And so I think with that, like we, Oh, I don't want to just track numbers for number's sake. Yeah. But is this data actually showing us something about our audience? Um, I've seen recently that listeners on Apple or traditional RSS feeds,

[00:35:07] like snipped is would be on RSS. I've never heard of that. So you must be the only one. I'm just kidding. Okay. Quick parenthesis, get that one is awesome as a consumer. Cause you can, uh, create like little highlights when you listen to something, you create what they call a snip and then it like saves them. It's super cool, man. It's awesome for, uh, as a consumer. Yeah. Adel, it's like $5,000 for these ad just saying. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, you're welcome. Um, but,

[00:35:37] uh, so we've seen that like people that are listening to the podcast on traditional, like RSS players, like Apple or snipped or overcast or not stitcher. Cause that's dead. Not Google podcasts. Cause that's dead. How many of those, they're going to be more likely to like binge, listen to content or to listen to like multiple episodes. So we saw this, which was really interesting with, um, with a show that we produce. And we published three episodes in one day. We just like, we're changing the format.

[00:36:04] And so we changed it and we kind of dropped like a series in one day. And on traditional RSS players or audio list, audio players, we saw the downloads for that day go up by 2.8%, 2.8 times. So a lot of the audience listens to most of the episodes, like not just one on Spotify, the downloads only went up by 5%. So you have a difference from 280% to 5%,

[00:36:33] which is wild. Um, and so that to me, like I always ask like, what does this mean? Like, this is interesting. What does this mean to me? That shows that people that are consuming content on Spotify, it's a little bit more of what's at the top of my feed. Like I'm going to listen to like, what's at the top. And then I'm probably going to move on to something else. And I think that on traditional like audio players, people are usually going like for a creator or they're like, I'm, I'm following the content that this creator is giving me. Similarly, we see,

[00:37:03] we initially get more downloads from less followers on audio players. Like you're like download to follower ratio is going to be a lot higher on audio players than on Spotify. So I think with the integration of Spotify video and with music and with all that's happening on a Spotify app, there's tons of great opportunities, but I do think that the way that people consume podcasts is pretty different on Spotify versus other platforms. That sounds like a, like a challenge, right? That like a new challenge might be approaching in sense of like,

[00:37:34] you know, looks, it seems like Spotify is trying to push a little bit of discoverability in a way, you know, like with multiple things going on, but then you want as a middle of the funnel podcast, you want people to stick and to listen to multiple episodes, be able to nurture that. And if you're going to be, you know, somebody is going to be listening to your show on Spotify, but then immediately get recommended another one, right? Like, yeah, what is that relationship in there? Right? Like,

[00:38:04] again, publishing in both platforms doesn't really take too, too much effort. So you get both of the benefits, but not only that also, but maybe like who's the core user of any of these apps that we put our content out, right? Because same thing, like who's the main consumer for Spotify and they might be getting into podcasting and, and they have a big play with big influencers, for example, but the consumer of the Spotify app might be very different than the Apple podcast consumer that has been listening podcasts for more than 10 years, for example. Right?

[00:38:34] So, you know, we go to Apple podcast because we know that's the place for that specific one. Now Spotify has other products more like on the YouTube side, right? A long form content consumer is very different than a shorts consumer, right? And it might create some awareness and your face will show up in these shorts over and over, but they might not even know the name of your podcast, right? Because like they don't even, they might not even know there's a podcast or they might not even know that there's an audio podcast because the consumer of that app is a little bit different than, than the other one.

[00:39:04] Well, that's one of the interesting things is like, as they, I guess, as podcasters look at like, what are the challenges we face? One of the biggest ones, I'm sure you guys know this and would agree with this is like discovery. Like it's so hard for people to find your podcast. Like the main way that people find podcasts is still like me listening and then me going and telling somebody about it. Like, it's still like the ultimate word of mouth tool. And so with YouTube and with Spotify, they are beginning to incorporate some like discovery algorithms into podcasts.

[00:39:34] Spotify is doing this. They're beta testing this right now with some of their like clips features where, you know, they're kind of like categorizing your episodes based off of topics. So that if I'm like looking at a clip on content is profit, it might say, Hey, this episode is about entrepreneurship and leadership. And if I click on entrepreneurship, then it's going to start, you know, I could scroll through clips from other podcasts about entrepreneurship. So it's really cool. Cause that sounds like a great feature to be able to be like, man,

[00:40:01] I want to listen to a podcast today about entrepreneurship and just to scroll through until I find a clip that I'm like, okay, I want more of that and then go to the podcast. But the problem is if when I open up Spotify and that's what I do, then I'm not going to my library to find the newest episodes from the shows I've already subscribed to. Yeah. So I think that the industry of podcasting is saying, Hey, we want more discoverability. We want like, we want more ways for people to be able to learn about our shows, which we do.

[00:40:30] But I think we also have to realize that people have a limited attention span. And so if Spotify is redirecting my attention from my current library to a new library, then it's going to be harder for me to spend time on the shows I've already subscribed to, which at the end of the day, that just means we have to have better shows. Like we have to have shows that are good, that our audience loves that they're going to come back to. So it actually puts more responsibility on us as creators to have content that kind of like supersedes those algorithms. So it's,

[00:41:00] it's a good problem, but I think that people will need to realize that like with every solution comes new problems. Yeah. And I think we're going to start to face some of that in the next like year or two, as YouTube and Spotify continue to kind of like develop their like podcast discovery algorithms. Yeah. Sounds like that second order of effects, you know, that people don't really think about is like, yeah, now we got discoverability. Yeah. Yeah. But now they're just sending them everywhere. You know, I'm curious, like, as we have this conversation, right.

[00:41:28] Is there any categorization or levels to types of audience in platforms? Right. Like, do you prioritize a specific type of audience based on the data that you've seen? Right. So like an example could be like, okay, we know that in Apple podcast, people listen to about 70% of that. It's, I know obviously the bigger platform, but maybe on Spotify, we have way more, let's say way more downloads, but they listen less. Right. Because of the nature of the platform. Right. Or same thing, YouTube shorts, YouTube shorts,

[00:41:59] massive views, right. In a way, but low intent of following up with the long form, for example. Right. So have you, do you guys have a ranking for the shows that you're currently on? You're currently producing. And how do you, how do you tackle that challenge? Yeah. I mean, I, I look at like short form content as very different as long form content. So we definitely incorporate short form content into all of our shows. And we think that's like really important.

[00:42:26] And it's an opportunity right now that would be stupid for podcasters to miss, um, from just like a discoverability and reach standpoint. Like, I think a lot of even small creators are probably leaving like tens of thousands of views. A month on the table by not like leveraging short form content, uh, maybe even a lot more. And so short form content is super important from my perspective, priority wise. Like I still want to do everything we can to get, uh,

[00:42:55] to get our audience into a long form, preferably audio format. Um, when you're listening to audio, like I don't, I don't have all of the distractions. Like, yes, you're probably doing something. You might be going to the gym. You might be doing work around the house, whatever you're doing. But I still think that like the engagement level of people that are less consuming on audio is so much higher. So we see like audio, uh, like we can use the term kind of like AVD, which is on YouTube, like average view duration, huge metric on YouTube.

[00:43:25] Um, when we calculate that on the podcast, it's usually a minimum of three X. So like if your AVD on your YouTube videos is usually 10 minutes, then your AVD on a podcast episode on audio is probably going to be 30 minutes. Yeah. obviously that's going to vary, but from that perspective, like we want to get our audience members, uh, if we can to listening to the podcast in a long form, like setting just because that it's going to,

[00:43:54] uh, I I've, I've heard it said like time on brand, it's going to get us the most like time on brand with the audience, which is ultimately what we're looking at. Cause like that time results in trust and that trust results in business and kind of goes from there. Yeah. I have two possible ways that I think this, you know, conversation can go to, or I don't know, maybe you can bring them both together somehow, but we're talking about discoverability, right. And obviously my mind goes to what are some of the best ways to get this cover. Right.

[00:44:24] And we talked about this at the beginning, like takes a lot of promotional efforts, right. So some podcasters already have the assets, right. They can push them. Um, but in your eyes, what is, just push them in there. But in your eyes, you know, like we talked about, you know, the clips and all that stuff, but organic, have you seen, you know, results from paid? We have tested a little bit. And honestly, personally, we didn't see, uh, maybe very exciting results on that end. But again,

[00:44:54] we're obviously basing it off of just one time that, that we, that we ran that. But also I want to, you know, put a highlight on asymmetric effort, right. When you were talking about the levers, right. Hey, it makes more sense to pay attention to, you know, the impressions, you know, that rate from the impressions, because it's going to have a bigger effect than if we just focus on kind of like the bottom of the funnel of analytics. Right. But, you know, we've heard usually asymmetrical effort in the sense of production,

[00:45:23] like focus more on the hook, right. Like at the beginning of the episode, like, why are you going to spend 20 hours editing, you know, the last eight minutes of a video, uh, rather than spending those 20 hours focusing on, you know, the first one or two minutes of the video that is going to hook people, right. That are going to get them involved. Um, so for me, when I see asymmetrical effort here in podcasting, it's like, well, okay, there's multiple elements, right.

[00:45:52] In the production side itself, but also in the promotion side itself, right. Like, do you put more of your effort into the promotion, right. Trying to get people trying to get the podcast into more people's feeds, right. Or is it strictly promotion, right. Uh, so production. And the reason I say this is, I do believe podcasting is one of those mediums that like, it is so like quality is very important,

[00:46:22] right. Like if, if a podcast doesn't hook you, like you will probably not listen to it ever again. If it comes across you, I mean, discoverability that we were talking is very small right now. So you might not even find that again. So like you want to maximize somebody listening for the first time and retaining them, right. For the longterm, but at the same time, you know, how much of your effort and your resources are you spending in getting discovered, right? Like, are you doing YouTube and all these things? I know that's a big question. Yeah.

[00:46:52] Yeah. I mean, I think our perspective is shifting a little bit on it. Like we're starting to focus more on the growth side, but, um, I'll answer with a story. So this week, I don't know. You guys are pro, we're probably all in some of the same like Facebook groups about with podcasters or something. And I saw some forum that, some question that this guy posted in one of them that had like, had over a hundred comments and there was this guy and he said, Hey, I've been podcasting for two years. I haven't missed a week. Um,

[00:47:19] and I'm only getting like 29 downloads per episode. My highest download episode is 97 downloads. He's like, what, what do I do to like promote the show? Like, what are you guys helping help me grow the show? And I read every single comment. And then I came to Dave Jackson's comment, which Dave Jackson is like, yeah, he's been podcasting longer than we've been alive. But he's like one of the OGs. And, uh, his comment was the only one that was encouraging,

[00:47:49] um, this podcaster to survey his audience and to initially focus on like, like question the quality of the show question, like the content, everybody else was like, Oh, you should do this. Like you should email, you should do Facebook ads. You should do this platform. Everybody was like, you should do all these promotional things. Yeah. When only one person out of the hundred was asking, maybe something's wrong with the show. Like maybe there's a disconnect between your audience.

[00:48:18] And so I think both are super important with production and promotion. Um, but I think that with podcast, with the main way currently that people are still finding out about podcasts being like recommendations and word of mouth and recommendations from friends, the show has to be good enough that I want to tell somebody about it. And if it's not, then I'm not going to tell anybody about it. Like, I'm not going to take my time to recommend mediocre content that doesn't solve anybody's problems. It's like, I don't have any, I don't have any time for that.

[00:48:47] So I think in that sense, the production is super important and focusing on the hook. If, if the hook isn't good, then people probably won't get far enough in the show to get the value to then recommend it. Um, so I do think that we should focus on like making the show better. And then I think there is a natural progression of like, if the show should be growing on its own, then we add in paid promotion. And it's kind of back to what we were talking earlier about with business. Like if there's no spark, like if the fire is not going,

[00:49:16] then the promotion doesn't matter. So I think there's a lot of shows right now where people think that paid advertising doesn't work because their show isn't good enough. And so they're trying to solve a like bad show with more marketing. And I just think that doesn't go well together. So we, we have a client right now where they're, they're putting like, they have a lot of, a lot of budget for promotion, but we're actually waiting until the end of the first season to do any paid promotion.

[00:49:45] And we did like an audience survey before we even launched the show. We're initially making sure that the show is connecting with the audience in the way we want to, before we promote the show, because otherwise that money is going to be wasted. Yeah. What type of, sorry, Yeah. So we sent, um, we're starting to do this more. Like I want to do this with everybody, but not everybody has the patience because it takes time. Um,

[00:50:10] but we asked questions like some vague questions where we gave them like 10 episodes. So, which is probably too many. So we, we gave like a trusted group of people like 10 episodes to review and kind of said, if you can review one, great, if you can review 10. Um, and so a lot of it was like, what question, like, did you feel like anything was unanswered? Did you feel clear about what the episodes were about? Um, did you, was anything confusing? Um, who would you recommend the show to? Like,

[00:50:39] what problems do you think this show solves? Like some of those things where we should have clarity. And so if our audience doesn't have clarity, then like, we're probably missing the boat. Um, yeah. I like that. Uh, it's so funny to me because is my show good enough to earn the downloads? Right. And that's a question that as a creator, you just assume initially that the answer is yes. And, uh, as you were describing your situation,

[00:51:07] it has happened to us many times where like we have people here that produce. And, and obviously when people come to the studio, it's strictly production, right? We don't, we don't wear like consultants or like strategies hat whatsoever, except if they're whatever plan they're in. But I fear Mike, like I personally, obviously I might not be the right audience, but this person, when I hear him talk on the microphone, it might not be the best creator out there. Right. For whatever topic. And again, my eyes, one opinion,

[00:51:37] but like extrapolate that into, you know, a bunch of people that are, you know, tuning to the show and that becomes a very real possibility. And I, as you were describing the thing I'm looking at, I'm thinking about us, you know, playing soccer, for example, right? Like, uh, or, or my kid now that is learning to play soccer, like how many hours and sessions, like he will have to do to become a, like a really good soccer player. Right. Same thing with creator. Like this is a skill at the end of the day. It's like, you need the reps, you need to put in the time, you need to, you know, educate yourself. Like how many,

[00:52:07] times do we used to say in our first episodes, you know, I think I'm down to like 50 prep. It used to be like 300 per episodes. You know, I think that's okay. Uh, but we need to get better. Uh, you know, whatever that it makes you, you, you know, at the end of the day, but as creators is, is a skill at the end of the day. And not just because we know the topic, we're going to be able to be a good creator. Uh, and I think that's such an important topic, man, that thank you for sharing that, uh, that case study on the money.

[00:52:35] I think a lot of podcasters think that creating the podcast is the game. Yeah. Like they, like they publish the episode and they put like an intro and an outro and they think like, okay, cool. I did it. Yeah. Like when they forget that it's actually about growing the show, like if the show is not growing and something's probably wrong. So this is where like, I have a ton of respect for people like Jordan Harbinger and Tim Ferriss, where like for them, like they are looking at podcasting as a craft. Yeah. And so we've, we've started using like the phrase of like, like, are we looking at the,

[00:53:05] are we looking at the show as like a craft to be mastered or just like a tool to be used? Gary V says marketers ruin everything and he's part of the problem and he admits it. And so like any type of like communication, there's going to be marketers that come in and they're like, okay, cool. If I just do the thing, then it'll work. And so then the industry gets filled with a bunch of things that are low quality. And so I think that some of that is like happening right now where the industry is mature enough.

[00:53:32] It's maturing to where in order to make it from now on, I think that people are going to have to look at the show, look at your podcast as a little bit more of a craft. Um, you know, 10, 10 years ago, Mr. Beast videos probably sucked, but they probably still got views. Same with Marquez Brownlee, same with Casey. Like they probably weren't as good as they are now. Yeah. I mean, that's because the game is different. It takes, it requires different things now on YouTube to win than it did 10 years ago.

[00:53:59] And I think that we're kind of like starting to see a maturity level like that for the podcasting side, where there's still so much room, like start a podcast. Everybody, everybody can start a podcast and it can be successful. Like I truly believe that, but it's going to require work. Like just doing the podcast isn't enough. A hundred percent. I think it's an exciting time, man, because I think like we're going to see different brands and creators and hosts that will put like their own, you know, twist, a creative twist to, to whatever they're, they're doing. Right.

[00:54:28] And it could be a mix of audio and visual aspect. I think it's, it's just going to bring a lot more. And, and like the really good ones are just going to go to the top. Uh, I mean, right after COVID, in COVID everybody and their mother launched a podcast. Right. And it was like, Oh, you also have a podcast. Right. Yeah. And then everyone and their mother closed their podcast. And, uh, and I think obviously, you know, equipment gets better and cheaper, right? Like barrier of entry gets, you know, lower and cheaper.

[00:54:58] Same thing. Like you could launch a podcast today for free, like in, in legit, like two hours, you could do it. And, uh, and I think this conversation, it's very interesting to me because it just shows that there's a lot of opportunity. If you're really to put the work in and, um, and, you know, touch on all the things that we do. So I think we're wrapping up the show. Fonzie, I know that you're typing like questions for maybe session two. Oh no, I'ma, I'ma do a rapid fire right here, right now. You ready? You ready? All right.

[00:55:27] What do you think of AI podcasts? Uh, I don't like them. I, as far as AI being the podcast content, I don't like it, but I think AI can make a lot of aspects of podcast production and scripting and different things quicker. But as far as AI being the voice behind the podcast, not a fan. Love it. We're on the same team. Where would you be if you didn't publish? Ooh,

[00:55:57] it's probably working. So yeah, working some nine to five job, nine to five job. I don't know. What is your favorite podcast at the moment? Besides content is profit, of course. Um, I, I, I really like calling in some of your show. Like that's a show. That's a show that I probably list. I listened to like a pretty high percentage of what they produce. Awesome. And then why would people want to connect with you and where can they connect with you? Yeah, I think,

[00:56:27] uh, everybody might not want to, but I think the people that might want to is, uh, we use the most common call that I get is a business that says we want to get into podcasting, but we want to make sure we do it right. Like even if it takes more time, if it costs more money, like we want to make sure that we do it right. And not just like flippantly. So those are the conversations that we can like serve really well. Um, what the place to find me, our website is story on.co. Um, so you can go there. And then, uh,

[00:56:56] also when, whenever, I don't know when this is coming out, but when this comes out, the new ish podcast that I'm like joining the cohost team of, uh, will be live, which is called profit cast. So that's a show that's been around for a long time. And then, um, I'm joining the host, the real Brian. And, we're kind of like shifting the focus of the show to like helping businesses launch profitable podcasts. So that's going to be a weekly show that we're doing that. I'm really excited about. So go check out profit cast. I love it. I love it.

[00:57:26] And the last question of the day, which one is your favorite brother? Obviously Luis. I'll take it. Great answer. He said, Lou is not meant to you. Just so you know, I know. You guys can fight over which Luis. He said it the right way. Yeah. For those that I think, for those that think my name is Fonzie, my name is actually Luis. All right. Just say,

[00:57:56] just define the loss is fine. Seth, it's been a pleasure, man, having you as always. This is your home. So anytime you want to come in and talk, you know, podcasting and content, you know, it's an open door. We're going to leave all the links right below. You got to do a scroll down and click and, uh, connect with Seth, man. So awesome. Oh yeah. Fonzie, anything else you want to add? Just thank you, man. It was absolutely amazing. I love that. I love this conversation. Um, it's not every day that we get to dive so deep into, you know, our own made a world of podcasting, you know? So it's,

[00:58:25] it's, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Thank you. Maybe we do a, like a legit data session inside of a business creator, the club. So I think that that'll be a fun one. Yeah. That'll be fun. That'd be great. Thank you guys for like data fun. Yeah. Thank you for, for having me. We're really grateful. Absolutely. Guys, with that said, Oh, hold on. With that said, thank you so much for tuning into content's profit podcast. Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform. I know social media at this brosco. That is right. And it's set here.

[00:58:54] Help you move one step closer towards your goal. Please don't forget to share this episode. And of course, don't forget to leave a five-star review. See ya. Bye guys. Sweet.