0:00

Me and my team . We make these calls , we email

0:02

and we ask how'd you find out about the

0:04

show ? What do you like , what do you not like ? After

0:07

20 calls , every three months you

0:09

start to hear the same thing . So , while we want

0:11

this data , everything , if

0:13

you just dedicate some time

0:15

to getting to know your audience , you're gonna

0:18

hear trends and you say oh , that's

0:20

how you discovered us , oh , that's what really

0:22

pissed you off . Then you can optimize

0:24

the product very authentically

0:26

.

0:27

Hey , everybody

0:34

today on the podcast , I have Josh Kaplan

0:36

. Josh is the product manager of audio

0:38

at Morning Brew and he's the producer

0:40

of their show , business Casual . It's been just

0:43

over a year since Morning Brew launched their

0:45

first podcast , business Casual , and

0:47

since then they've done over a hundred

0:49

episodes with people like

0:51

Eric Schmidt , mark Cuban , andrew

0:54

Yang If you scroll through the list , you'll

0:56

recognize a ton of those names

0:58

and so I invited Josh onto

1:01

the podcast just to pick his brain

1:03

and learn what they've learned over

1:05

the last year . I want to hear about how they sell ads

1:07

, how they've grown the podcast , and

1:10

just pick his brain about how to run a successful

1:12

podcast , especially when you're doing

1:14

so much other content . So

1:17

, josh , thank you so much for joining me .

1:19

Happy to be here . Thanks for having me .

1:21

And for people who don't know , could you just describe

1:23

a bit of what Morning Brew does and how you

1:25

launched yeah , would love to .

1:27

Morning Brew is a business media

1:29

company for the next generation

1:31

of professionals . We started

1:33

about five or so years ago as a company

1:36

with one daily email

1:38

newsletter . That caught you up on yesterday's business

1:40

news . Alex and Austin

1:42

, who founded the company , were looking at the Wall

1:44

Street Journal in the New York Times and actually I was

1:46

there at the University of Michigan with them as well

1:49

when they were looking at this and we were all preparing

1:51

for finance interviews , consulting interviews

1:53

, and you would get into an interview and they'd say how

1:55

do you stay up to date with the world ? And we would all lie and

1:57

say that we read the New York Times cover to cover , the Wall Street

1:59

Journal cover to cover .

2:00

Bloomberg .

2:01

And so instead , alex started writing this

2:03

PDF . That turned into a newsletter . That

2:06

was one narrative Open the email

2:08

, get to the bottom of the email , then you're good to go . No

2:10

clickouts , no ask for additional time , written

2:13

in the way that your friend would explain to you the business

2:15

news . And that really took

2:17

off . That really found the audience , it found

2:20

the intention , it was valuable and

2:22

we focused on that exclusively

2:24

for a very long time until

2:27

we started to expand our coverage area and

2:29

the number of mediums that we were existing in , because

2:31

we wanted to become a media company

2:33

of the future . And so when we got into a

2:37

couple of newsletters in , we said how are we going

2:39

to go from text-based journalism into

2:42

other formats ? So Kinsey , who's

2:44

the host of Business Casual , and I we came together and we said

2:46

how do we go to the next level ? And

2:48

we looked at podcasting . People were really excited

2:50

about it , we loved it . People had been asking

2:52

for podcasts and we said , all right , let's

2:54

do something that doesn't copy , keeping

2:57

you up to date in the business world . Let's go a level

2:59

deeper in the headline level . So we started to look at the

3:01

medium as a way to tell stories . That weren't optimal

3:04

for text , and then we've just continued

3:06

on . We knew that this was going to be the entry point

3:08

for the company into audio and video

3:10

and we were going to keep learning and testing new things

3:12

on different platforms . And it's been an incredible

3:15

year since then that we can actually look back and say , wow

3:17

, we've learned a lot , we tried a lot and

3:19

now each additional product that we go and release

3:21

, we can start at a much higher place . So

3:24

it's been a really fun time getting that far . We

3:26

love Business , casual and there's

3:28

so much more in store , but I love talking

3:30

about anything when it comes to growth , revenue

3:32

, the content itself and , yeah

3:34

, let's see where this thing goes .

3:36

Awesome . I love that you stepped

3:38

from having this incredible newsletter

3:40

, which a lot of people I know at our company

3:43

actually read every day , read it cover

3:45

to cover , in a sense read the whole thing . I

3:48

read Marketing Brew just to keep up

3:50

to date what's happening in the marketing world

3:52

, and I love that you

3:54

moved from newsletters to podcasts

3:56

because there is a natural

3:59

they have some similarities which

4:01

I think are really important , especially

4:04

with , like , a shifting media landscape

4:06

. There was a time when everybody

4:08

thought Buzzfeed was

4:10

the media company

4:12

of the future because they knew how

4:14

to use Facebook to grow . And

4:17

you can now see some just

4:19

I mean kind of embarrassing

4:21

stats for Buzzfeed . When they can share

4:23

a post , sometimes with millions and millions

4:25

of followers on Facebook , and

4:28

it only gets a couple hundred interactions

4:30

Because that audience

4:33

is controlled by Facebook

4:35

. Still Facebook doesn't think it's a good post

4:38

. They're not going to share it with everybody . The

4:40

difference with email newsletters

4:43

and podcasting is there is no intermediary

4:45

. You are going to put something

4:47

out into the world . People download it right

4:50

to their podcast apps or they read

4:52

it right inside their email . Is that an intentional

4:55

decision that you made when deciding

4:57

to get into podcasting ?

4:59

Yes , it was intentional . You made all the right

5:01

points about why it's such a great medium

5:03

and why it's similar to email newsletters . We

5:06

liked being able to go direct

5:08

to the listener or the reader , which is what

5:10

we get . We like having the subscription

5:12

button . As a company

5:14

, we really like fitting into habits , knowing

5:16

our audience . It's not a quantity play

5:18

. How can we go viral

5:21

tomorrow ? How can more

5:23

people find our content be

5:25

entertained and learn from it and

5:27

then incorporate it in their morning routine or

5:29

in their running routine with the podcast or the commuting

5:32

routine with the podcast ? We don't

5:34

want to become this endless scroll company

5:36

where we're just creating so much content

5:38

that you don't know what to do with it . We want to

5:40

be part of it . We want to bring people along

5:43

for the adventure . That's why we also do

5:45

a lot of this stuff in public , where we tell people what

5:47

do you want ? Here's what we think . We

5:50

explain the whole process of it . There's a lot

5:52

about the media company that

5:54

we've created that we can look back on and say whether

5:56

it was intentional or not . We learned a lot from our

5:58

predecessors . We looked at the buzz feeds . You see

6:00

the vices of the world . We love Axios

6:03

, we love the skin . We've learned so much from these

6:05

other big players that have shown

6:07

us what to do most of the time and sometimes

6:09

what not to do . As far as emails and

6:11

newsletters go , we've always been really excited

6:14

about both of those . That's why we've been starting

6:16

with those two first and foremost .

6:18

The way we decide to do all of our

6:20

podcast content , whether it be guides

6:22

, podcast episodes or videos on our YouTube

6:24

channel we pretty consistently are just

6:26

asking people what

6:29

they need help learning . The

6:31

two areas that keep coming up

6:33

are how do I grow a podcast

6:35

and how do I monetize a podcast

6:37

once I've actually grown up some

6:39

of a listener base ? I

6:42

know Morning Brew has done a really good

6:44

job growing the podcast

6:47

business casual . I'd just like to hear after

6:50

a year , how far have you been able to

6:52

grow the podcast ?

6:54

You're getting right to it . You want all of the

6:56

dirty data and everything that's

6:58

so sacred about it . I wish I

7:00

had more data . That's a whole other conversation

7:03

about how hard it is to tell how performance

7:05

is going and podcasting and how . Even a year

7:07

of me paying attention it still baffles

7:10

me most of the time . What we

7:12

do know is that every week we get

7:14

around 150,000 listeners on the

7:16

entire catalog of the show . Another

7:19

interesting thing to talk about is the back catalog and how

7:21

that's becoming more relevant and more important

7:23

to the overall health of the show . We

7:25

released two episodes , one on Tuesday

7:27

, one on Thursday . Each of those

7:29

, by the end of the seven-day trail

7:31

, gets to about 25,000

7:34

. So we're getting numbers

7:36

. Some weeks are better than others . It's

7:39

not linear where it might be in other mediums . Sometimes

7:43

you are better timed with the guests and

7:45

the theme and what's going on in the world and sometimes you're

7:47

not . But because of the library it goes like that . So

7:50

on a weekly basis , 150k and then we've actually

7:53

just crossed 6 million total over

7:55

the lifetime of the show . That's

7:58

been a fun . Another million

8:00

to tally on and get to talk about . Those

8:04

are the high-level metrics . There's a lot of other numbers that

8:06

I like to think about and understand whether they're

8:08

valuable or not , but I think that answers

8:10

the main question about how big we've grown

8:12

from day one , and I'll answer your next question

8:15

before you ask it . The number one growth lever is

8:17

having a newsletter . With a million , two million plus

8:19

, it's the easiest , best

8:21

hack in the world and if you've got one of those , you should start

8:23

a podcast .

8:25

So you've heard it . If you want to grow your podcast

8:27

, just go ahead and grow an email newsletter to

8:29

two million subscribers and then you're golden

8:31

. We often tell people how difficult

8:33

it is to get a podcast to go viral

8:36

for a lot of reasons

8:38

, and I do like that you're using the email

8:40

newsletter , kind of saying like it is very

8:42

difficult to build a podcast on its own

8:44

and if you do have other

8:46

ways to reach people

8:49

or ways that people are already paying attention to you

8:51

, that those should be the primary

8:53

way that you grow your

8:55

podcast . Do you have any ? There have been any learnings

8:57

, anything that you've kind of discovered along the way

8:59

of how to take a

9:01

somebody's reading the

9:03

podcast and get them over excuse me , reading

9:06

your newsletter and get them over to the podcast .

9:09

Yes , and I'll preface it with another

9:11

learning is that the email newsletter has been

9:13

phenomenal for launching the newsletter

9:15

and sorry , I just made the same mistake Launching

9:19

the podcast and gaining brand

9:21

awareness that business casual exists

9:23

. What it is , who Kinsey is that it's

9:25

attached to morning brew , but it actually

9:27

doesn't convert direct downloads

9:30

that well , because when you open

9:32

an email on the phone in the morning

9:34

, you don't all of a sudden have 30

9:36

on structured minutes to just listen

9:39

to the interview . That's not how

9:41

people operate . So what we found

9:43

is that we've started to advertise through the newsletter

9:45

as time has gone on , about the awareness

9:47

of it who's coming on this week , what are

9:49

the topics , what are the testimonials and

9:52

that started to pay off better . But

9:54

as far as growing

9:57

getting back to growing the podcast beyond it outside

9:59

of newsletter , can I tap into that , cause I have

10:01

a lot to say there ? Yeah , absolutely so

10:05

. There's no silver bullet , right ? When it comes to

10:07

growing these things . It is

10:09

going to and it depends on the format of your

10:11

show . But for an interview based show where

10:13

we're keeping up with what's relevant in the business

10:16

world , there's a lot of different

10:18

aspects of growth . The one

10:20

that I'll cross off the list is the podcast apps

10:22

. I don't think there's a lot of discoverability

10:25

happening on Apple and on Spotify

10:27

right now . We have about 80% of

10:29

our listenership on Apple , about 10%

10:31

on Spotify . 10% goes to the rest

10:33

of the handful of apps and I think there's

10:35

some really exciting stuff happening on the technology

10:37

front , but really I don't think many

10:39

people are discovering the show via

10:42

the apps at a large

10:44

scale . I think that most of the discoverability

10:47

is happening on social , is

10:49

happening through other marketing collaborations

10:51

. That allows people to drive back

10:53

to our show and then say , oh right , that

10:56

does sound like a compelling episode to listen to

10:58

. I am going to carve out time for my ex

11:00

activity tomorrow or when I'm working

11:02

the day after . So a lot of

11:04

the marketing and a lot of the . A lot of

11:06

the growth that we've been trying to encourage

11:09

is building on different platforms

11:11

, using the YouTube search algorithm

11:13

, working with guests to share throughout

11:15

their companies and throughout their followings on

11:17

social , breaking

11:19

it up into little video clips for Twitter

11:21

and Instagram and building up there . Kinsey

11:24

going on other shows has been phenomenal , kinsey

11:27

having now , I think , close to 18,000

11:29

Twitter followers as we record . This

11:31

is an incredible asset because people

11:34

like following people . It's the intimate medium . It

11:36

all makes sense that people want to know

11:38

the person who's coming up with this thing . So

11:40

we all of a sudden have to make this relatively

11:42

complex , but then we can

11:45

simplify the whole thing . But on a week

11:47

to week basis , we're constantly tapping on all

11:49

of those different things , trying to distribute

11:52

and show why the show is great . And it's

11:54

not just saying go listen to the full episode , go subscribe

11:56

. It's achieving the brand mission

11:58

of business casual across all these other

12:01

places . So then when we have a new episode

12:03

, we have a much bigger launch pad to tell people

12:05

about . So that's been what has actually been

12:07

feeling more of our growth , and

12:09

it's not like there's hey , here's the one

12:11

thing you got to do all this stuff , I think . And

12:13

so we've been hard at work and I think that's what's allowed

12:15

us to grow over the past year to where we are today .

12:18

Okay , so I have probably about 50

12:21

follow up questions to this , but let me

12:23

jump into one that kind of shocked

12:25

me . You said

12:27

that you didn't think that the

12:29

discoverability on the apps was

12:31

super important , which definitely surprised

12:33

me , because I know you were business

12:36

casual , was a Apple

12:38

new and noteworthy show for quite a while

12:40

and at

12:42

least looking across all of all

12:44

the podcasts on Buzzsprout , it sounds

12:47

like you are very , very Apple heavy

12:49

. I think our numbers say 47%

12:52

of all listens have been on Apple podcasts

12:55

and you're saying it's closer to 80 . Do

12:57

you think that ?

12:58

there is a chance . I'm always surprised by your numbers . I

13:00

don't know what's going on . I don't know why ours are so different

13:02

. I wish I knew .

13:04

Could it be that Apple promoted you

13:06

for a new and noteworthy and got you a nice

13:08

Apple bump in the beginning ?

13:11

I think that certainly helped a ton , by

13:13

the way , and for me that was now this

13:16

time last year that we were new and noteworthy

13:18

. We launched in September . We got new

13:20

and noteworthy and we did see a really dramatic

13:22

bump . But I think I

13:24

don't know maybe I'm wrong , but I would be surprised if that's

13:26

really been such

13:29

a big indicator of why , even

13:31

today , the distribution is like that . I

13:33

think it might have to do a little bit more with

13:35

our audience . If I had to guess and

13:39

just who they are and how it's been . But I

13:42

don't know . I wish I knew . But

13:45

new and noteworthy is an incredible

13:48

growth letter . The thing is you can only do it once and

13:51

so after that you gotta say , well , thank you for that

13:53

. But what's next ? And for me it's always

13:55

been focused on what can we build as sustainable

13:57

operations that allow us to constantly

13:59

grow , rather than hoping that we'll get an

14:02

Apple or a Spotify promotion

14:05

in some shape or form . Right , and they're

14:07

great to work with . I actually love the people on both of those

14:09

teams , but it's a very crowded competition

14:12

to try and get those promotions and maybe you

14:14

get one once every now and then and sometimes

14:16

you get lucky or it makes sense , but

14:18

I think as far as really building a sustainable

14:20

strategy , you gotta go back to what

14:22

can you be repeatable , what can be repeatable and

14:24

what can you get compound interest out of by building up those

14:26

other platforms .

14:28

Yeah , I love that you're saying what

14:30

kind of strategies can you use to

14:33

get that compound interest so that things are growing

14:35

faster and faster over time ? But

14:37

because I know that everyone

14:40

watching this video and listening to this podcast is going to

14:42

ask how did you get into Apple

14:44

, new and noteworthy Again ?

14:46

the secret is we are growing

14:48

this podcast off of a very

14:51

large brand of Morning Brew , and

14:53

being able to say , hey , we're

14:55

gonna put Apple at the top of the newsletter

14:57

that goes out to however

15:00

many we had at the time caught their

15:02

eye . Everything , I think , is a trade

15:04

. Then nothing's for free . I think

15:06

you always gotta say what's in it for them

15:08

and to say Morning Brew is launching a new

15:10

podcast , go listen . On Apple it

15:13

says , oh , wow , we're gonna send a good amount of audience

15:15

their way maybe , and I think that catches their

15:17

attention . And we use that for guests . We use

15:19

that for a lot of things because a lot of it is leveraging

15:21

the assets we have a company and

15:24

being a part of this Morning Brew ecosystem

15:26

is really , really good for

15:28

business casual . So I think

15:30

that is why I'm sorry

15:32

to anybody listening or watching to this

15:35

that might not be able to repeat

15:37

the same steps , but

15:39

the whole Apple team is very receptive and I think if

15:42

you say this is how I'm promoting Apple

15:44

and this is

15:46

why I'm bringing good content to your

15:48

platform , they will hear you and they

15:50

will work with you as best as they can . I

15:53

won't speak for them , but I think , they will .

15:55

Yeah , absolutely . I mean you do want if

15:57

you're hoping for somebody to promote your show , you

15:59

definitely wanna show them a little bit of what's in it for them

16:02

, that you see them as an

16:04

important player in the field . Maybe

16:07

, if you are a podcast that's Apple-centric , maybe

16:10

you're looking at using the new Apple

16:12

Podcasts embed player on your website

16:14

, which is actually sending all your traffic to

16:16

them , and that also

16:18

is just going to increase the number of downloads

16:21

that Apple's seeing , so that it will get

16:23

surfaced a little bit more likely . They'll see hey

16:26

, subscriber numbers are really shooting up for this podcast

16:28

. Maybe we should take a look . One

16:31

of the strategies I saw you actually

16:34

wrote a really great blog post on Medium

16:36

when you hit your first million

16:38

downloads , so this was January of

16:40

this year . One

16:43

of the things you talked about was creating

16:45

the right calls to action in

16:48

your content , and I think this was specifically

16:50

in your newsletter . Can

16:53

you talk to us a little bit about your

16:55

calls to action for people to listen to

16:57

the podcast ? You used the phrase things

17:00

need to be short , negative

17:03

and elusive . What do you mean by

17:05

that and give us a little bit of idea of

17:07

how you think about this ?

17:08

Short , negative and elusive actually is something is

17:11

for the newsletter opens , which is something that

17:13

, if you're doing email marketing for your show or for

17:15

whatever you're doing , we have found and we've

17:17

AB tested and the editorial

17:19

team and the growth team that has been focused

17:21

on the newsletter has absolutely perfected this

17:23

at Morning Brew . So , jenny , neil

17:25

, they have really broken this down to a science

17:28

where if you're short , negative and elusive in the

17:30

subject by an email , you're gonna get opened . But

17:33

what I think we've learned from the

17:35

podcast side of things is

17:37

that that's not exactly true and it's something we've

17:39

learned more recently . We used to be cute in

17:41

the title and try and be elusive

17:43

and try and bring people in when they see the title

17:45

of the podcast and they say , oh

17:47

, that might be interesting , but then we start

17:50

to switch off and on as far as how

17:53

specific can you be ? What is the future

17:55

of the cannabis industry ? And

17:57

when we're more obvious , business

17:59

casual succeeds . That might not

18:01

be true for every podcast , that might not be true

18:03

for every audience

18:05

in particular , but for the business casual

18:07

business listener , we have found

18:10

that they wanna know what they're getting themselves into and

18:12

I think once you get into the audio . Then

18:14

you have to story tell in a way that

18:17

is still elusive , that keeps people

18:19

going , that people wanna stay for the entire

18:21

length of the episode , and

18:23

that's , I think , where you can get a little bit more cute and

18:25

a little bit more creative . But I think in the show

18:27

notes and in the episode title , the shorter

18:30

, the more obvious , the more information you convey

18:32

, the better off you'll end up being .

18:34

Interesting . So that

18:36

aligns pretty much with what Apple

18:38

also recommends . We actually just got an email

18:40

pretty recently . When they're talking

18:42

about they just released the

18:44

HomePod Mini and they said

18:46

you know , it's gonna be a lot more likely for people

18:49

to listen to podcasts on

18:51

these devices and

18:53

the way one of the things they recommend is have

18:55

short , concise titles that really let

18:57

people know what the podcast

18:59

is about , and it sounds like that's aligning

19:02

with what you've learned . I

19:04

think so .

19:06

Yeah , it's already hard to make these

19:08

decisions for such a significant amount of

19:10

time . If we're asking for

19:12

35 minutes out of someone's day , that's

19:14

a lot . That's a big commitment . It's not

19:16

as easy as oh . Maybe you'll see what's behind this

19:18

email . Do I want to buckle up for

19:20

this ? I think that means you have to show

19:22

a bit more . I agree with Apple

19:25

. We've seen what we've tried to test . Testing isn't

19:27

as easy on the podcast front . It's

19:30

not as scientific as the subject line

19:32

testing is on email . But I would totally agree

19:34

with what you're saying .

19:36

One of the things that you're really good at in

19:38

Morning Brew is repurposing content

19:40

. I feel like everything that you share in the newsletter

19:43

also is on social media

19:45

. For the podcast , you have really great transcripts

19:47

on the website

19:49

. You do a really good job of getting all

19:52

that content out on whatever

19:54

channel people are on

19:56

. I guess I just want to ask

19:59

how do you repurpose

20:01

content in a way that just doesn't make you

20:03

go insane ?

20:06

When you say go insane , you're saying from the

20:08

operations of it or from the audience

20:10

making them insane .

20:11

No , I'm definitely asking from the content creator

20:14

side . For everybody who's putting out a podcast

20:16

and feels this need

20:18

to repurpose across a bunch

20:20

of channels , is there a way to systematize

20:23

that so that they don't feel overwhelmed

20:25

that they have to promote

20:27

in all these different areas ?

20:29

What I believe in podcasting is just

20:31

for long form content is that you get your

20:33

whole full length episode

20:35

. There's a story that comes before the episode

20:38

. Why did you choose to do it ? There's a story that

20:40

comes after the episode . What do people think

20:42

? What did you learn after putting it out ? What

20:44

kind of responses ? As far as the full

20:46

episodes go , that's your anchor asset . That's

20:49

your full length thing . What you have

20:51

to figure out to do how to do is

20:53

how to atomize it and how to take little pieces

20:55

of it , whether it's quote cards , video clips

20:58

, trivia , questions , who knows

21:00

? You got to find out what works for your show and

21:02

what works for your audience , but you got

21:04

to get as much value out of the episode

21:07

as possible . And then you

21:09

got to redistribute it so

21:11

that other people can enjoy and say , oh

21:13

, that's a good point . That's an interesting thesis

21:15

from that guest . That's an interesting statistic

21:18

. I think I'll give this whole show a shot

21:20

. Or the other way around . It

21:22

says I listened to the episode and

21:24

now I have something to share . Most

21:26

people don't actually share the full episode

21:29

because even when you send it to a friend , it's a hard

21:31

expectation . Hey , humor me and give me 45

21:33

minutes of your time . But if you can say , hey

21:36

, I'm already on my Instagram app , I'm already on

21:38

Twitter , let me just flick this thing over to my

21:40

friend Then you make it much easier

21:42

to let people show that they're a fan of

21:44

the show . So that's

21:46

more conceptual . But as far as the operations go , you

21:48

have your anchor assets , which is something that , like Kinsey

21:51

as the idea generator , marilyn as

21:53

the idea generator really focus on

21:55

making the best possible full length

21:57

episode . And then what we've done is

21:59

as a team and we'll divvy up the responsibilities

22:01

. I do the transcripts , somebody else does this , somebody

22:04

else does that , some are freelancers and

22:06

we say , hey , can you help us break

22:08

this up into clips ? Yeah , I mean

22:11

, from there you just do it . It's not easy . It takes

22:13

time . There's no secret sauce to coming

22:15

up with the right captions , to finding the right

22:17

clips to do . I don't know the

22:19

secret to that . Maybe someone has a better way

22:21

. Some people have tried to automate it . I've seen these softwares

22:24

that pick out , based on the word

22:26

analysis , what might be the most provocative

22:29

part of the podcast . I don't think

22:31

we're ready to outsource

22:33

that to technology . Maybe one

22:35

day I would love to get that off of my hands , but

22:38

we know best . We were there for the interview

22:40

. We've seen the whole

22:42

editing process . We know what is the most compelling

22:44

snippet . The shorter the better . By the way

22:47

, we found that if you try and cut a

22:49

minute and a half for Twitter , that's

22:51

not good . You need like 20 seconds . If you're

22:53

on YouTube , you can then allow yourself to go more

22:55

, like four to six minutes . But it's

22:57

been a whole education on these platforms and while

22:59

I think I'm still podcasting , all of

23:01

a sudden I have to give myself this whole operational

23:04

and strategic education as to what's

23:06

going to work best outside of the actual

23:08

podcasting apps . And I think that's a really necessary

23:10

component to growing these shows . We cannot

23:12

just live and die by the RSS feed .

23:14

I think that's incredible and I

23:17

know that on our side we see a

23:19

lot of this repurposing as a way to

23:21

get in front of new listeners

23:23

, because all the other platforms

23:26

, all the platforms social media platforms

23:28

in particular are built to

23:30

get distribution . But

23:33

it's mostly like one time you might get lucky

23:35

and something goes viral and you're

23:37

kind of just buying a bunch of lottery tickets

23:40

every time that you share something on one

23:42

of these sites and you're hoping

23:44

this gets a ton of traction

23:46

and then a bunch of people go , wow , that's actually

23:48

a really interesting point from Ray

23:51

Dalio and I now want to listen to this

23:53

whole interview . Oh , this

23:55

podcast actually has a great interview

23:57

. I'm going to go listen to it right away .

23:59

Yeah , yeah , that's the name of the game right

24:01

now .

24:02

Now , one other thing you've written about is

24:05

you wrote this great blog post on podcast

24:07

transcriptions and one of the things

24:09

you wrote I've got here is the

24:11

real value of transcript is for hearing

24:13

impaired users and non English

24:15

first , but it also helps with SEO

24:18

. We really

24:20

believe in transcripts quite a bit at Buzzsprout

24:23

, so I'd like to hear how do you think about

24:25

the value of transcripts and

24:27

what process do you go through to create

24:29

those transcripts ?

24:30

Totally . I don't know which

24:32

one's more important . It's hard to say . I want

24:35

to be inclusive . We should be thinking of accessibility

24:38

first . I think that's really important for

24:40

all media . So I want to say that's just

24:42

like that shouldn't even be a question . Everybody

24:44

should be enjoying what we put out , regardless

24:46

of wherever you are , however

24:48

you are . So I

24:50

think , whatever , just do it . I found

24:53

somebody on Upwork . Again , this is something that people

24:55

are trying to automate with

24:57

software , and I think that day

24:59

will come because that's

25:01

the future . But right now , if we use

25:03

the computer transcripts , there's

25:05

always some sort of mistake and it doesn't flow

25:08

well as written copy because there's all

25:10

these filler words , there's all these little things . If

25:13

somebody knows a better software that they really think

25:15

works , let me know . I would love to try it . But

25:17

we found somebody on Upwork . Her

25:19

name's Dana . She's up in Queens when

25:21

COVID receives work and I'll go get drinks

25:23

or something like that , but she is just

25:26

always on the ready to transcribe her episodes

25:28

and she likes the content , she

25:31

gets paid , it's great . And

25:33

so then I take that transcript and I put it on the website

25:36

and so then I can just tell

25:38

that my SEO score by having

25:40

all these big names and all these big businessy buzzwords

25:43

are starting to collect a lot of weight over

25:45

time , because the audio we know is searchable . Now

25:47

I've seen a bunch of articles about how Google will

25:49

index based on podcasting , but

25:51

I think that , given how easy

25:54

it is to add this to your

25:56

operations , I

25:58

think it's something that's really good , from

26:00

the very first point I made , but also to the SEO

26:02

play . I'm not an SEO

26:04

wizard , but I can just tell from my

26:06

Google analytics where the traffic is coming from

26:09

and just as the months go by

26:11

, my search volume that brings people into the

26:13

website continues to go up .

26:14

I love you talking about making sure it's

26:17

accessibility first , because that really should be table

26:19

stakes . We should just assume that

26:22

we are making this content for everybody

26:24

. There's

26:28

accessibility for people who are

26:30

hearing impaired or just hard

26:32

of hearing , but there's also like , let's

26:34

just get it out there so people can share it and

26:37

the people can go and read it . Sometimes people

26:39

can't listen to something , but they could

26:41

read and they would enjoy just to

26:43

read the podcast . Right then , and

26:45

it's like we already talked about if

26:47

someone's not a native speaker of

26:49

English , translating , that is

26:51

so much easier when there's a

26:54

well written transcript

26:56

which well written sometimes does

26:58

not mean verbatim it can actually

27:00

mean editing out segments

27:02

, probably some of the segments that I might have

27:04

just put into this answer . Okay

27:09

, so one last promotion strategy I've

27:11

seen you use is you

27:14

have a group called the podcast promo exchange

27:16

, where , if you have

27:19

excess inventory for your ads

27:21

, you'll do a promotion for

27:23

another podcast in exchange for that

27:25

podcast doing a promotion for you . So

27:28

can you tell us a little bit about what's happening

27:30

there ?

27:32

Yes , but I've got bad news for you . It doesn't work

27:34

. I debunked myself

27:36

. So this group is fantastic

27:38

. There's a Slack group , you

27:41

know . A bunch of people from a bunch of different companies are in there . Everyone's

27:44

being super helpful to each other

27:46

and welcoming and solves each other's problems

27:48

and connects to all sorts of resources

27:50

, which is just really cool for me to be a part of . I'm

27:52

pretty early in my career , so to get to be

27:55

exposed to professionals that easily

27:57

is something special and unexpected

27:59

, and for a while we

28:01

would say , hey , if you have access inventory , if you

28:03

have a certain ad space that's

28:05

dedicated to swapping , let

28:08

me know and we'll swap shows . Because

28:10

what we saw in the newsletter world

28:12

is that cross-promoting with other newsletters

28:15

was fantastic . If you like email newsletters

28:17

, you're more susceptible and more likely to

28:19

like more email newsletters . We

28:22

thought that would drag over to audio and that

28:24

if you're listening to a podcast , you would give another

28:26

podcast a shot . There's

28:29

a couple problems with that is that by

28:32

creating your own ad unit , you

28:35

don't really know how someone's going to deliver your show

28:37

, and so sometimes we would do a

28:39

cross-promotion and they'd say , oh , I heard you

28:41

on XShow . No way , I can't believe they

28:43

did that for you . I'm like that wasn't free , that was

28:45

marketing , but what

28:48

we learned was that someone

28:50

hit , someone miss and it was really hard to attribute

28:52

. There are a couple tools and I'm sure I

28:55

actually think you probably can speak to this better about the attribution

28:57

side of audio to audio , but

29:00

we were trying that and nothing was showing

29:02

a dramatic uptick . So for the six

29:04

months of the year we did a couple million

29:06

of cross promos and then for the

29:08

third quarter we backed off and

29:10

I haven't really seen any sort of dramatic shift

29:12

. So again

29:15

, it's one of these data problems that I wish I

29:17

could say . I know everything , I know that they

29:20

100% work , which ones do , which

29:22

ones don't , but I think that the reality is that if

29:24

you don't hear and if you don't see anything

29:26

, it's not there . And I've seen

29:28

and I've heard much better signals from other

29:30

marketing things that we've tried to do

29:32

, like the ones I was speaking to earlier . So

29:35

I've actually backed off of the cross promotions

29:37

. I think that the better way is to do a real

29:39

integration and to have the host

29:41

of another show on your show and then to

29:44

have our host have Kinsey go on to another

29:46

show where they can really do it justice and

29:48

it's a real thought through partnership that

29:50

you then put over social , you then put over

29:53

your email , you put over your podcast and

29:55

you really say I believe in this integration

29:57

. I think my audience would like you . I

29:59

think your audience would like me . We were shelling

30:01

out a lot of cross promos to shows

30:03

that if you asked me today , did you think

30:06

that I was like I don't really think they would like it , and

30:08

so I think it was a

30:10

lot of learning . It was good to

30:12

make those connections as well . We made some friends through

30:14

the process , but it's not a strategy

30:16

that I personally am continuing to

30:19

pursue .

30:20

Okay , interesting . So

30:22

one of the other videos we recently

30:24

just did was with Jordan Harbinger and

30:27

for his podcast he said this was

30:29

the main way he was growing . He'd

30:32

grown the Jordan Harbinger show . So it'd be interesting

30:35

to kind of compare

30:38

and contrast how

30:40

he's doing the cross promo and

30:42

then how you've done it , maybe see if

30:44

we kind of pull out what

30:47

the differences might have been there . I

30:49

totally feel your pain , though , on

30:51

being able

30:54

to attribute things . We've been completely

30:56

spoiled by

30:58

the attribution that we can do

31:00

for Facebook ads , for Google

31:03

. There's

31:05

all this ad

31:07

tech and there a lot of it is incredibly

31:09

creepy in how good it is

31:11

at tracking , and I think as

31:13

marketers we maybe have gotten a

31:15

little too addicted to it , because

31:18

as soon as you get into a world of podcasting

31:20

where we don't have it all which

31:23

I think is actually at times a very

31:25

good thing it is hard

31:27

to figure out Like it . Did this

31:29

purchase of a bunch of ads actually lead

31:31

to something . For me it

31:34

can be difficult to tell . So I know

31:36

you have spoken , you

31:38

know the team at Chardwell and those

31:41

are really great guys and I think that's

31:43

probably the best software . Is there other software that

31:45

you've used for attribution

31:48

and tracking ?

31:49

Yeah , we use pod sites as well

31:51

. Charitable more so on the marketing side of

31:53

things , pod sites more on the advertising

31:55

side of things . I don't know if that's just by happenstance

31:58

or if they're building their products to better

32:00

target on one side or the other . But

32:03

yeah , the guys at Charitable and pod

32:05

sites and the whole team , guys and girls over there , everything

32:08

they're doing , the podcast

32:10

lord's work over there I think it's a whole

32:12

. We could do a whole other episode about whether

32:14

we want the data or not . I think

32:17

somebody got mad at me on Twitter because they

32:19

were like this whole thing with RSS

32:22

is going down the dark side . I'm like

32:24

have you heard of Google and Facebook

32:27

? We're nowhere close . They're like you still should be diligent

32:29

. I'm like , yeah , agreed , but like we got

32:31

to do business , we got to figure out how to be efficient

32:34

. So I think that what we're all

32:36

doing is like complaining and they're actually building

32:38

a product that will solve it , and someone has

32:40

to have vision and says , okay , how

32:42

are we actually going to build some sort of ecosystem

32:44

that respects the user but also tells you

32:47

when your work is actually productive ? Because

32:49

, like the reality , in which I'm just going to respect everyone's

32:51

privacy . And then , you know , never make

32:54

any real attribution or understand what's

32:56

productive and what's not . Like , maybe

32:58

I think I'm ethical enough to slow

33:01

myself down , but somebody else is not

33:03

going to slow themselves down and they're going to take laps

33:05

around me , so I

33:07

don't know . It's something that I think is very interesting

33:09

at large about which tools we use , and

33:12

I think somebody has to come in and say this

33:14

is what the ecosystem should look like

33:17

, where it's open , distributed

33:19

, fair , good for everybody , which

33:21

is really hard , but I think that we're still looking

33:23

for more leadership and less complaining when

33:25

we come down to the attribution conversation .

33:28

There's a solid chance that the person complaining

33:30

had a at bus sprout email address

33:32

, because we've definitely been on the . We've

33:35

definitely been on the . You know

33:38

, watch out , for a lot of the mistakes

33:40

of the internet have been

33:43

connected to some of this creepy

33:45

ad tech , and so I

33:48

really like what Charitable is doing . They seem like

33:50

they're trying to do everything in the right way , and

33:53

hopefully we'll continue to find

33:55

a way to let people measure

33:57

the success of their campaigns without

33:59

actually invading

34:02

people's privacy .

34:03

I've got one more point on the ethical of it . Ethics

34:06

of it it is that we all think we

34:08

want all this fancy data , but

34:10

I think what we've , what I've found out and

34:12

I love talking to these

34:14

listeners and some of my friends now

34:16

and somewhere already my friends but I me

34:18

and my team we make these calls

34:21

, we email , we ask how'd you find

34:23

out about the show , what do you like , what do you not

34:25

like ? After 20 calls , every

34:27

three months you start to hear the same thing

34:29

. So , while we want this data

34:32

, everything if you just dedicate

34:35

some time to getting to know your audience , you're

34:37

going to hear trends . And if you

34:39

go toward the hundred true fans and you listen

34:42

to the audience and you say , oh , that's

34:44

how you discovered us , oh , that's what really

34:46

pissed you off , then you can optimize

34:48

the product very authentically

34:50

and very real Cause if you ask good questions

34:53

, how are you doing ? What did you think

34:55

? The basic stuff . There's no

34:57

rocket science here , but I found that you start to hear the same

34:59

thing over and over again and then that leads to

35:01

a signal and then I can optimize from there . So some

35:03

of our best pivots , instead

35:05

of optimizing a little thing here and there and

35:07

trying to tweak something digitally . We've

35:09

made massive enhancements to the show because

35:12

we just gone on the phone and said what do you think

35:14

? So I don't know . I think

35:16

that there's a lot of other ways to go about

35:19

the end

35:21

goal of data that can

35:24

be solved with many different ways

35:26

of just that . There's a lot of better

35:28

ways that are not nearly

35:30

as intrusive and get you to potentially better

35:33

and bigger discoveries .

35:34

Yeah , I love that . I think it's

35:36

very easy to look

35:39

at numbers as the source of truth

35:41

and then often miss the stories

35:43

and the people behind those numbers . People

35:46

will tell you with a lot more nuance

35:48

you look at just Google analytics

35:51

which site somebody came from , but

35:53

they may tell you oh , I'd actually been thinking

35:55

about you for months . I'd heard you on

35:57

this podcast and I watched for YouTube videos

35:59

. Then I saw a retired getting ad and then

36:01

I finally was on this website and I clicked the link

36:04

. You're going to get a lot more data and

36:06

a little bit more understanding of

36:08

somebody's purchasing decision if

36:10

you talk to them , versus just seeing

36:12

the one data point of them coming to make

36:15

the purchase . So

36:17

I know we've used over an hour of

36:19

your time . Do you have time for some rapid fire

36:21

questions before we go ?

36:23

Yeah , surely let's do it .

36:24

All right . So what advice would you give to

36:27

new podcasters just starting out ?

36:29

Get to know your audience and give them value

36:31

, whether it's entertainment , education . Both

36:33

give them something , solve a pain

36:36

point and then keep on going

36:38

and then just obsess over your audience

36:40

and worry about everything else . Second , they

36:42

will help you grow . They will help you monetize . Know

36:45

the audience , make them the happiest people they've ever been

36:47

.

36:48

Is it too late to start a podcast ?

36:51

Hell . No , that's it . That's the whole

36:53

answer . It's not too late . Make content . Everyone should

36:55

be expressing themselves . Tell your story . Tell whatever

36:58

story you think you need to go tell , but also put

37:00

it in other places . Don't live and die by the

37:02

RSS feed . Youtube is your friend

37:04

. Audio grams are okay

37:06

If you can get video , if you can get animation

37:09

, somehow find a freelancer online

37:11

, get creative , iterate on top of it , make

37:14

your content , put it in both places

37:16

, see what goes well and then keep going

37:18

. You might start with a podcast and then end up with

37:20

a video . You might start with a video and end up with a podcast

37:22

. As long as you're expressing and storytelling

37:24

and using Buzzsprout , then you're good to go .

37:28

Should businesses be creating their own podcasts

37:31

?

37:34

Yes , again , people should be expressing themselves , but businesses

37:37

should be owning their own media properties . I

37:39

think I'm saying this is a media company that wants your

37:41

advertising dollars . Own your own media

37:43

channels . This is the future

37:45

. This is the future of real estate . It's better than

37:47

having a corner property in New York City . It's

37:50

all about having your own audience

37:52

and distribution and catalog of content

37:54

so you can distribute without constantly

37:57

paying somebody else to do it for you . I

37:59

think the sooner these companies

38:02

and most companies B2B , b2c

38:04

bring in media as a cornerstone

38:06

, the same way you have marketing , the same way you have revenue

38:08

and this and product and engineering . I

38:11

think everyone for internal communications

38:13

, for thought leadership and being

38:15

a champion of your employees , for customer

38:17

acquisition , for customer retention , own

38:20

your media . Everyone should be

38:22

making content . This is the future

38:25

. That's my biggest thesis right now that I'm

38:27

super excited about . But 100%

38:29

, start a podcast .

38:30

Well , thank you so much . We really appreciate you coming

38:33

on to the podcast slash YouTube

38:35

video thing that we're doing

38:37

and just sharing all these insights you've learned

38:39

, because there's not a ton

38:41

of podcasts that are doing as well as

38:44

you have been doing . If

38:46

people want to learn more about Morning

38:48

Brew or the podcast business casual

38:50

, or just learn more from

38:53

you in particular , where would you direct people

38:55

to go ?

38:56

They've probably heard enough of me , but if you want more of

38:58

my random thoughts I think

39:00

I've been putting out more of my stuff through Twitter . I should

39:03

write another medium blog post of some sort

39:05

, but follow me on Twitter . I'm Jay Kaplan

39:07

. 1 . Check out Business Casual

39:09

and podcasting . Follow Kinsey Grant

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at Kinsey Grant on Twitter as well . The

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show itself explores the different relevant

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business trend each week . I

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think that we're doing an awesome job bringing on really

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smart people to answer our questions , to explore

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that part of the business world . Give

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that a shot . Give me a follow

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, reach out , say hi . Thank

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you so much for having me on . This is really

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fun . It's nice to step out

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from behind the scenes and to be the

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one on it . It's super weird , but I

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appreciate it . Thank you so much .

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Well , thanks again . Hopefully in the future maybe hit

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another 10 million downloads , we can get you

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back on to share even more things

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that you've learned . Sounds great

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. We'll see you there . See you there .