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2:59

my friend, welcome back to another episode of

3:02

Creator Science. Congratulations on clicking play on this episode, even

3:05

though you may have noticed that it is a little

3:07

longer than usual. But

3:10

I promise you, I was not lazy in the edit. This episode

3:12

just contains so much good information that I wanted to

3:14

share with you. So, if you're new

3:17

to the channel, I invite you to subscribe to my channel. I

3:19

also invite you to check out my other videos on

3:22

the channel, and I'll see you next time. Bye.

3:27

I'm sorry, it's been that we went long and I couldn't bring

3:29

myself to cut more of it out. Today,

3:32

I'm speaking with Chris Hutchins. Chris is

3:34

an avid life hacker, a financial optimizer,

3:36

and he's the host of the top-ranked

3:38

podcast, All The Hacks, where he shares

3:40

his quest to upgrade his life without

3:43

having to spend a fortune. Chris

3:45

has been featured in the New York

3:47

Times, Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. And

3:50

previously, Chris was the head of new

3:52

product strategy at Wealthfront after they acquired

3:54

his company, Grove. Before that, he was

3:56

an investor at Google Ventures, co-founded Milk,

3:58

which was acquired by. Google and he

4:00

is also a member of my community, The

4:02

Lab. I first became aware of

4:05

Chris on October 14, 2021. And

4:08

it may seem weird that I know the

4:10

exact date, but that's because that is the

4:13

date Tim Ferriss released a three-hour episode where

4:15

Chris was actually interviewing Tim. And

4:17

this is an improv episode. I'm very

4:19

excited about it because my friend Chris

4:22

reached out with many questions about podcasting,

4:24

good questions. He had already

4:26

read much of what I had written. He'd listened

4:28

to several interviews. And this

4:30

is intended to be an updated guide

4:33

to all things podcasting.

4:36

Not only did this give a big boost to

4:38

all the hacks, it created an opportunity for Chris

4:40

to go all in on podcasting. Previously

4:43

as I shared, he was really in the

4:45

startup world, but he recognized that his ability

4:47

to learn and master certain skills would serve

4:49

him as a creator too. That's

4:52

always been my MO. And

4:55

so it was no different when I

4:57

was like, I'm going to launch a podcast. And it's like,

4:59

well, I want it to be big and I want people

5:01

to love it. And I wanted to make enough money to

5:03

support me and my family. So let's treat it not

5:05

just like a side project, let's treat it like a company.

5:09

And in my past, I've started a few companies,

5:11

raised a few million dollars and

5:13

sold a couple of them. So I'm like,

5:15

let's treat this like a business, like a true

5:17

business that I'm going to grow into an empire.

5:20

And I realized that so few people were doing

5:22

that in podcasting, that it just kind of became

5:25

a cool opportunity. Over

5:27

the last couple of years, I've gotten to personally

5:29

know Chris. And I am so impressed and inspired

5:31

by the way he approaches whatever he sets his

5:33

sights on. He goes fast,

5:36

he digs in deep, and he applies

5:38

a scientific lens to his work. As

5:40

you'll hear during this episode, he has

5:42

a real experimentality. A

5:44

entire episode as a guest could be

5:46

10 to 40 times better at converting

5:48

listeners to your audience than doing a

5:51

cross promo and having the host read an

5:53

endorsement for your show for 60 seconds. experiments

6:00

that Chris has run, the results that he's seen, and

6:02

the decisions he's made because of it. So

6:04

in this episode, you'll learn how Chris grew

6:07

his podcast. You'll learn how he was able

6:09

to build and leverage relationships with high profile

6:11

creators like Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose, and

6:13

how you can build similar relationships yourself. We

6:16

also get very, very tactical into the experiments that

6:18

he's run to grow his podcast so that you

6:20

can focus on the tactics that really move the

6:22

needle the most. I'd love to hear

6:24

what you think about this episode. You can find me on

6:26

Twitter or Instagram at JClaus. Tag me. I'm

6:29

sure you're listening, but now let's learn from Chris.

6:38

I've always wanted to have the

6:41

best experience in life, and

6:43

that'll cover everything from travel

6:45

personal stuff to career and all

6:47

of it. I

6:50

just always believed that there

6:52

was some loophole backdoor way to

6:54

get the best experience without spending

6:56

all of the money. One

6:58

of the kind of formative stories in

7:01

my hacking adventure was I went to

7:03

a boarding school, and I'd say

7:05

like almost everyone had an unlimited

7:07

supply of parental money except me

7:09

and like probably 10% of

7:11

the school. So every night, people were going

7:13

and ordering pizzas, and I was like, if I order a

7:15

pizza tonight, I won't have any money for the rest of

7:18

the month. And what if I want to do something? And

7:21

so I was like, how do I solve this? And

7:23

most people's answer is like, well, I just don't get the pizza.

7:25

And I was like, well, no. So

7:28

I ordered a pizza, and then I sold six of the

7:30

slices, and I ate two of them. And

7:32

I just sold the six slices for the cost of

7:34

the pizza divided by six. And then

7:36

I was like, oh, I ate pizza for free

7:39

tonight. And then I could do that every single

7:41

night. And because I had the metabolism of a

7:43

high schooler, it was like, you could actually eat

7:45

pizza every night and not look ridiculous. If I

7:47

did this now, it would be a horrible, horrible

7:49

weight gain adventure. And so that was something

7:51

where I was like, oh, wow, I wanted the pizza. I can now get the

7:53

pizza, and I don't have to pay for it. If

7:55

we did an entire story about the chronicles

7:58

of my youth and life, you'd you find

8:00

all these little things of I want the

8:02

thing and I'm willing to do the

8:04

work to get the thing, but there has to be

8:06

a more efficient way to get the output, often in

8:08

the form of saving time or saving money, or

8:11

maybe saving headache or overhead. So

8:13

I've kind of watched this from afar and

8:15

I've really admired it because I'm the type

8:17

of person who feels like he's

8:19

riding a bicycle in first gear on flat ground.

8:22

Like I'm pedaling like hell and I'm moving forward,

8:24

but you look at it and it's like, that

8:26

is super inefficient. And then I see guys like

8:28

you ride by in third gear. I'm like, shit,

8:31

I didn't know that was an option. So

8:33

I want to understand how your brain works a little

8:35

bit. You said when you got into podcasting, you wanted

8:37

this to support you and your family and be big

8:39

and have people love it. So as well

8:42

as you can remember, what was

8:44

the mental thought process

8:46

for next steps? I

8:48

think it probably goes back and

8:50

I want to set a little bit of a stage for

8:52

people listening. It probably goes back 10 years in

8:55

that my entire career, I

8:57

don't know, maybe I feel like I'm,

8:59

I guess I'm pretending I'm younger than I

9:01

am. Maybe it goes back 20 years, but

9:03

like the entire career I've had, I've known

9:06

that I'd want to do different endeavors the

9:08

entire time. And so building relationships, adding

9:10

value to people's lives kind of

9:12

laid the groundwork for, hey, I'm

9:14

launching a podcast and

9:17

would you help support that? So out

9:19

the gate, I had a tremendous amount

9:21

of support from people who

9:23

I've helped and tried to add

9:25

value to their businesses, lives, projects,

9:27

et cetera, for my entire career. So

9:29

I think that was a big piece

9:31

that started even before the podcast came

9:33

out. In terms of like, I had

9:36

support from people out of the gate, what form

9:38

did that support take? I started a company a

9:40

handful of years ago, almost a decade ago with

9:42

a guy named Kevin Rose, who way

9:44

back in the day started this site called

9:46

Dig, which was kind of a

9:49

Reddit like company at the time and

9:51

kind of unfortunately didn't work out as

9:53

best as anyone intended. Kevin

9:55

has millions of Twitter followers. I've been helping

9:57

him with tons of projects. We'd work together.

10:00

When I worked for him, I worked as hard

10:02

as I could. So when I launched

10:04

a podcast, I was like, hey Kevin, I'm thinking of launching

10:06

a podcast. You know, he was like,

10:09

let me tell everyone about it. He even invited me

10:11

on his podcast and was like,

10:13

hey Chris, talk about this podcast you're launching. And

10:15

if you go back and listen to that episode, the funniest thing

10:17

about it was I didn't have a name at the time. And

10:20

so he was like, Chris, tell me about this podcast

10:22

you're launching. And I was like, Kevin, I don't have

10:24

a name for it. And he was like, well, we'll

10:26

put that in in post. Go home and record something

10:28

that I can insert that answers what's this and give it

10:30

to me in two days. So I had to

10:32

name the podcast in two days, which, you

10:34

know, was a very stressful two days. But

10:37

so that's an example, just people

10:39

retweeting things, sharing things, adding it

10:41

to their newsletter, talking about it.

10:44

You know, there was no secret silver

10:46

bullet strategy. It was just, you

10:48

know, I think everyone kind of gets one

10:51

or two chances every three or four years

10:53

to ask their friends, family, colleagues for a

10:55

favor. And I had been storing

10:57

all of those favors for 10 plus

11:00

years and decided now would be

11:02

the time to use it to see if

11:05

this podcast has legs because, you

11:07

know, there's hundreds of thousands of podcasts

11:09

that don't go anywhere. And

11:11

until you kind of break through to a little,

11:13

you know, let's call it thousands

11:15

of downloads a month, you know,

11:17

it's really hard to see it being a business

11:20

that could sustain anything. And so I thought, let's

11:22

ask for all the favors and launch it into

11:24

that area. And

11:26

if it doesn't work, it'll just fall down. And

11:28

so my idea was I'll do eight episodes. I'll

11:30

do as big of a launch as I possibly

11:32

can and either people will like it

11:34

and then I'll be excited by it and keep going

11:36

or people won't. And I'll see like the first episode

11:38

got a ton of downloads and the second one got

11:40

none. And the third one got less and less and

11:42

less. I think I

11:44

was lucky that I picked a topic that

11:47

I was so personally obsessed with and

11:49

like was just my entire being

11:51

in a show that, you

11:54

know, it kind of worked. And

11:57

the downside to my strategy is sometimes

11:59

it takes. like a lot of years to build

12:01

in your reps to feel like you've got something ready

12:03

for the world to see. And

12:05

I think the downside of doing a

12:07

big crazy launch is that, you know, if you

12:10

don't have that ready right away, people are going

12:12

to get introduced to a less than ideal version

12:14

of your show. But

12:16

I recorded, I think, six episodes and

12:19

the sixth one was so I was

12:21

like, that's number one. Like

12:23

I just knew after that recording that it had to

12:25

be episode one. And so that

12:28

was it. I guess an underrated podcast launch

12:30

tip, by the way, I did the same thing with

12:32

the show, like my first episode was

12:34

Seth Godin and then James Clear, but those are probably

12:36

like somewhere between the sixth and the

12:38

eighth interviews that I did. But man,

12:40

I would love to hear this from you, actually, do

12:42

people go back to your first episode a lot when they

12:45

find the show? Because I find that on a monthly

12:47

basis, my first two episodes are still some of the

12:49

most popular episodes of the podcast. So

12:51

this data is a little skewed because

12:53

I, a friend of

12:56

mine is Tim Ferriss, and I went on his

12:58

podcast and did a three hour

13:00

long interview where I interviewed him

13:02

about everything related to podcasting. And

13:05

before that, Tim said, go give

13:07

me an episode I should listen to of your show so I could

13:10

talk about it. And I sent him to and he

13:12

liked episode one. And he was like, this

13:14

episode was fantastic. And he told everyone to

13:17

his, you know, close to a million

13:19

listeners, go check out Chris's show. This

13:22

episode number one was fantastic. He's like, the

13:24

guest he had is just everything you want

13:26

and a guest. And it was like, you

13:28

know, it was a great endorsement for the

13:30

show. But that drove so

13:32

much traffic to episode one and continues to

13:35

that it's a little bit I'm a little

13:37

unclear how much of people going back and

13:39

listening to number one is people that

13:42

want to go back and hear the beginning

13:44

or people that heard Tim Ferriss's podcast, which

13:46

could be a completely different reason for that

13:48

growth. Yeah, it's tough. Okay, let's put that

13:50

aside. A moment ago, you said, you

13:53

know, you've been spending years in your career adding

13:55

value to people. And so you build

13:57

up like these cards that you can play and ask for

13:59

the. favor. This might sound like

14:01

a stupid question, but what does it look like

14:04

to ask for a favor? It

14:06

would be, hey, I'm launching a podcast on

14:09

Friday. It would mean the world to me

14:11

if you could post something about it. You

14:13

can write anything you want, but I wrote

14:16

something for you to make it easy. Feel

14:18

free to tweak it, change it, write whatever

14:20

you want. Anything is appreciated, and

14:22

if it doesn't feel like something you want to

14:24

do, no worries. Is that a text

14:26

message? Is it an email? If it's an email, is

14:28

it a bulk send? Is it a bunch of individual

14:31

sends? It's probably a

14:34

text or a phone call. I find that

14:36

when you ask something to someone in person,

14:38

they're more likely to say yes. So

14:40

if I were to ask you if you'd do something

14:42

to support me and we're now live on air, you're

14:45

probably gonna say yes because you don't want to sound

14:47

rude, but if I send you an email, it'd

14:49

be much easier for you to ignore that email

14:52

or write back, I'm really busy this month or

14:54

I'm not willing to do it. So I think,

14:56

you know, the closer you can get to a

14:58

live recorded environment, which prior

15:01

to having a podcast is probably an in-person meeting or

15:03

a phone call, I think the better. I

15:05

like asking these questions because I find

15:07

a lot of the folks in my

15:09

audience, a lot of creative people. I've

15:11

heard creative people described as highly

15:13

sensitive people who are

15:17

telling the story of what their experience of the world is

15:19

like and sharing it with the rest of us. And

15:21

so if you're a highly sensitive person, a

15:23

lot of people default to not making

15:26

the ask, not asking for a

15:28

favor because they feel like

15:30

they are imposing. And it's not even because they don't

15:32

want to be asked themselves, which I think is probably

15:34

a misconception where they think, well, I wouldn't want to

15:37

be asked, so I won't do that. No, for some

15:39

reason, we just think that we are imposing and

15:41

so we don't make the ask

15:44

and we don't get the benefit from it. And

15:46

these things compound, you know, the ask

15:49

to Tim to do that podcast

15:51

episode. Not only did that help with

15:53

the launch, I'm sure that's continuing to

15:55

pay off over time, even though you're

15:58

not continuing to do that So

16:01

it's something that I really admire about folks

16:03

like yourself who earn the

16:05

right to ask and then make the ask Yeah,

16:07

I think that earn the right to ask is an important

16:09

thing You don't want to just find some person that you

16:12

know and be like, hey, can you do this thing for

16:14

me? until you've kind of

16:16

built up enough of You

16:18

know like social currency if you will

16:20

and so one thing I did early on which

16:23

is a strategy I think everyone should take

16:25

on in whatever arena they're playing in and you

16:28

were a both participant

16:30

and recipient in this whole thing was when I

16:32

got started I was like I want to learn

16:34

everything about podcasting so I'm gonna go talk to

16:36

everyone I can and ask them questions and try

16:39

to ask good questions and Important

16:41

important few points. I'd go listen to

16:43

anything they'd done on podcasting So I

16:45

wasn't wasting their time asking them questions.

16:47

They'd already answered and I think one

16:50

of the most valuable

16:52

things that someone once told me

16:54

they asked me they were talking about podcasting and

16:56

I can't remember what someone said I need to

16:59

figure out how to do that and I was

17:01

like Do you want me to help and his

17:03

response was I have a personal rule that I

17:05

don't ask people questions If I can find the

17:07

answer myself in less than 15 minutes, and I

17:09

was like, I love that rule

17:11

Like I wish the world adopted that rule So

17:13

I try really hard to make sure that when

17:16

I'm going to any of these conversations I'm

17:18

not just going in being like

17:21

hey Jay How did you get started as

17:23

a creator because I'm pretty sure you've done

17:25

an episode answering that so I'd binge everything

17:27

ask the questions That was part one part

17:29

two is after I had 1520

17:33

conversations I started pulling together

17:35

all the insights from that and

17:38

I shared it back with everyone So,

17:40

you know, I put together like a little presentation

17:42

last year of some growth hacks I'd learned on

17:44

podcasting and I remember sending it to you and

17:47

say hey check this out. It's great That was

17:49

one strategy I have so if you're going to

17:51

do five informational interviews Which I

17:53

guess is the like college kind of term

17:55

when you're trying to get to get a

17:57

job But same concept take all

17:59

the learning and share it back to

18:01

everyone else. Even just summarizing what you

18:03

learned from that single person, can

18:06

you imagine if someone called you and said,

18:08

hey, can I pick your brain on writing

18:10

a newsletter and you were an expert in

18:12

newsletters and you answered all that and they

18:15

wrote back to you and said, hey, I

18:17

just wanted to summarize the top five takeaways

18:19

that I got from our conversation about newsletter

18:21

growth. You're giving this amazing gift to someone,

18:23

which by the way, in the future, they're gonna get

18:25

an email from someone else that says, hey, can you

18:27

talk about newsletter growth? And they're gonna say, hey, actually,

18:30

here are the top five takeaways that someone had from

18:32

it. You can give them something

18:34

that adds their value to their life easily.

18:37

I would love to hear how you think about and

18:40

prioritize content creation,

18:43

relationship building, and

18:45

any third thing that comes to mind.

18:47

Because even just hearing your answer here, what

18:50

I'm hearing is there's a lot of

18:52

consumption that you're doing before you reach

18:54

out to folks and have conversations. There's

18:56

a lot of conversations you're having. Then

18:58

there's time in sharing that

19:00

back to people. These are

19:02

all things that are outside the realm

19:04

of traditional, quote unquote, content creation that

19:07

are super high

19:09

value, high leverage. And I'm

19:11

realizing I haven't created much

19:14

time for. So I'd love to hear if

19:16

these are like things that you've noted explicitly

19:18

as priorities, or is this

19:20

just kind of an implicit way of operating, but even

19:22

still, how much time are you spending on these activities?

19:25

It's interesting, because I did an

19:27

interview about podcasting with another podcaster

19:29

named Danny Miranda, and he talked

19:31

about how his show was a

19:34

way for him to build his network. And

19:37

it's a reason that he puts so

19:39

much energy into flying to his guests

19:41

and recording in person, because he's really

19:43

trying to build relationships with people. And

19:46

when I do my show, when I think about

19:48

the content I'm creating, I will

19:51

sacrifice everything personal for

19:55

the content. And so

19:57

to the detriment of my relationships,

20:00

I've done interviews where I'm like, I

20:02

know that if I ask this follow

20:04

up question, I will build a

20:06

better relationship with this person. However,

20:09

I know that the follow up question

20:11

I'll ask is not going to

20:13

deliver what I want to the

20:15

listener in terms of content.

20:17

Now, I might be wrong there, maybe

20:20

people want a little more storytelling and everything. But

20:23

if you listen to my show, it's

20:25

like how can I densely pack like

20:27

as much knowledge about a topic into

20:29

like a one hour masterclass from a

20:31

true expert and break out all the

20:34

strategies and the tactics and the individual

20:36

specifics? It's not how

20:38

do we talk about some cool story in your life?

20:41

And so I remember doing an interview and I

20:44

actually would say maybe I didn't do as well

20:46

of a job here delivering on that promise with

20:48

a guy named Mike Hayes, who I believe is

20:50

a commander of SEAL team too. And

20:53

I was like, the storytelling that you could

20:55

get from someone who's commanded a SEAL team

20:57

is probably we could fill hours. But

21:00

I was like, I'm here to talk about

21:02

the leadership lessons that you got from this

21:04

role so that other people who are leading

21:06

teams and leading companies can benefit. And

21:09

yes, we did some storytelling, but

21:11

I really wanted to focus on the

21:13

tactics. And so I don't

21:16

think I have as good of a relationship

21:18

with the guests I've had on my show

21:20

as other podcast hosts would because they went

21:23

in person maybe. And for me, I'm like,

21:26

the reason I can't go in person is because I

21:28

need time for other things, like building relationships, like going

21:30

in person would take more time. But

21:32

I'll get the same output for the

21:34

show doing the remote interview, I think.

21:37

And so when it comes to content,

21:39

that's priority one, like delivering on the

21:41

premise of the show, which we don't

21:43

have a banter show. We have like

21:46

a chock full of tactical information show.

21:49

But that leaves time for me

21:51

to go and really prioritize outside

21:53

of that building relationships. And

21:56

so I built a ton of relationships

21:58

in podcasting with some of the tactics I've I'm

22:00

starting to meet people in other creative spaces.

22:02

I'm a member of your lab, so I've

22:04

met lots of people in the

22:07

lab doing other interesting things. And

22:09

so it's kind of a balance of

22:11

outside of the content. I'm

22:14

willing to prioritize it. Within the content, I'm not.

22:17

Similarly, I have people that I know would be

22:19

big guests that I happen to have in my

22:21

network, but I just don't think what they have

22:23

to say would fit the

22:25

theme of the show. And it

22:27

drives me crazy that someone who

22:30

has a very, let's

22:32

say, YouTubable and name

22:36

that would probably perform really well for

22:38

the algorithm, someone with millions of followers

22:40

that might post it, but they just

22:42

don't have tactics and strategies about

22:44

optimizing any aspect of your life, so

22:47

I just don't have a place for them in the show. And

22:50

even though it would probably benefit my relationship,

22:54

one of the founders of a massive

22:57

unicorn company that everyone I'm sure listening has

22:59

on their phone was like, I'd

23:01

love to come on your show sometime. And I was like,

23:03

I just don't know what we talk about.

23:06

I'm sure it would be a great

23:08

relationship builder to invite someone like that

23:10

on the show, but I care

23:12

about the content first. I think it's a

23:14

smart approach, though, because I do

23:16

see a lot of interview shows

23:18

that are clearly guest

23:21

name and clout oriented that

23:24

it's difficult to package that show as

23:27

a premise that is growable. It's

23:29

hard to say this is what this show is about. People

23:31

who like this should listen to this show or people who

23:34

are trying to learn this should listen to this show. It's

23:36

not clear what you're tuning

23:38

in for, and I think that becomes very

23:42

binary in terms of the outcome of that show over the

23:44

long term. It's either gonna be huge and

23:46

it's gonna be like a school of greatness type thing

23:48

where it's like we bring on big names so we've

23:50

achieved great things all over the place and we talk

23:53

to them about everything. Or it's gonna go

23:55

to zero over time because it's

23:57

hard to hold an audience's attention for

24:00

a long period of time, I think,

24:02

if you have non-specificity. And

24:05

if you're out there trying to start a podcast,

24:07

how do you differentiate being a show that's premises,

24:10

I interview people about their success? Like

24:12

there's thousands of shows doing that. Almost

24:15

anyone that you're talking to has been on many

24:17

of those shows. So I tell

24:19

everyone, like, tell me in a sentence what your

24:21

show is that makes it very clear that it's

24:23

not what a lot of other shows are. And

24:26

maybe it needs to be two or three sentences,

24:29

I wanna hear from your trailer that

24:31

you're not, we're just like diary

24:33

of a CEO, but we're just not diary

24:36

of a CEO. Like, okay, well. We just

24:38

have less access and less

24:40

resources. So that's

24:42

what I wanna push people to do

24:44

is think, what can I do differently?

24:47

And what can make my show unique and

24:49

own that? And at

24:52

the expense of that comes, you're probably

24:54

not gonna, some other area. For me,

24:56

it's, you know, if you wanna

24:58

really pull out all the tactics, it means

25:00

when I hear someone mention something that could

25:02

be an interesting story, but I also know

25:04

there's like one other important tactic that they're

25:06

very good at, I pivot to

25:08

the tactic and not ask them a question

25:10

about their family, which, you know, those kinds

25:12

of questions build better relationships. After

25:15

a quick break, Chris and I talk about

25:17

his approach to mastering new platforms. And later

25:19

we dig into the specifics of his podcast

25:21

growth experiments. So stick around, we'll be right

25:24

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p-o-r-k-b-u-n.com/creator. And

27:08

now back to my conversation with Chris Hutchins. Tell

27:11

me if this is true about you or not. I

27:13

have a sense that when you

27:15

have an idea or you

27:17

set your sights on something, it becomes a

27:19

very intense, like you

27:21

focus very intensely in that direction. For example,

27:23

you said you joined the lab, and

27:26

immediately when you joined, you're like, who can I talk to

27:28

you about X, Y, or Z? And you had those conversations,

27:30

and you get into something, you commit to it, you move

27:32

through it quickly. Does that

27:34

sound fair? Does that sound like a

27:36

fair classification? So if anyone listening goes to

27:39

listen to all the hacks, you'll see lots

27:41

of reviews. You don't see downloads

27:43

on podcasts, but there are tens of thousands of them every

27:45

episode. And then you go to YouTube and you're like, wow,

27:47

a couple hundred. What's going

27:49

on there? And part of the

27:52

reason is that I know there

27:54

are so many things I'm not doing well

27:56

on YouTube, intentionally, like I'm fully

27:58

aware, but right now, Right now I tell

28:00

my producer and editor, I'm like, just edit the video and

28:02

put it on YouTube. I don't care what the title is,

28:05

I don't care what the thumbnail is, just put it up

28:07

there because I don't wanna not have it up there, but

28:10

I don't care. Because I know that if

28:12

I start caring about YouTube, I will not be

28:14

able to stop at consuming every

28:16

possible bit of information about YouTube and

28:19

going so deep on it, and

28:21

I'm not ready for that project

28:23

to commence. Because

28:26

I know I won't be able to control myself from

28:29

going as all in as possible, and

28:31

I started with the

28:33

podcast, next thing I focused on

28:35

was the newsletter, and I

28:37

know that social, I know that

28:39

video and clips and

28:42

threads and there's lots of other things I should be

28:44

doing, I know that when I want to tackle those,

28:46

I will hopefully do a great job, but

28:49

it will take a lot of energy, and I just

28:51

don't have the time for a new project yet. But

28:54

it's such a skill, because I

28:56

know you listen to Invest Like

28:59

the Best, Patrick O'Shaughnessy show. Do

29:01

you recall the episode of Boyd Vardy called Live

29:03

Like a Tracker, I think it was called? I

29:05

do not. It's this guy, he grew up in

29:08

like the bush, and he really relates

29:10

a lot of life to what

29:12

it's like to track a lion in

29:15

Africa. And something from that

29:17

episode that I think about all the time is

29:19

he describes lions and their

29:21

animals of prey, and he's like, they

29:24

have two speeds. They're going at 100% to

29:26

capture their prey, get

29:29

the kill, or they're resting 100%. And

29:33

I see people who have that same mentality

29:35

and approach things in that way, at least

29:37

in broad strokes, and I realize that

29:39

I am almost completely opposite, where

29:41

I've set my life up to be

29:43

operating at higher than average 100% of

29:45

the time. And

29:48

I think I'm really missing out on

29:50

some of the gains that come from the

29:52

top level of intensity, but

29:54

it would come with a trade off of doing

29:56

less, if that makes sense. I

29:59

listened to one of your... retros recently and I was like,

30:01

God, I had the opposite feeling though. I was

30:03

like, gosh, Jay's doing all these things. Why

30:06

am I not doing all the things? He's doing everything.

30:08

I'm so far behind. I'm not doing any of the

30:10

things. So I had the opposite feeling,

30:12

uh, looking at you thinking I

30:14

was, I was leaving all these

30:17

opportunities on the table. I don't have courses,

30:19

you know, like I'm not, you're, you're, you are like,

30:21

I want to post on LinkedIn every day or something.

30:23

I was like, Oh my God, every day I haven't

30:25

even posted on LinkedIn yet. So I

30:28

am leaving things on the table because my

30:31

strategy is become like

30:33

a master of a

30:35

platform before attacking it. And

30:37

I do think there's an alternative, which

30:40

is the kind of Facebook ship fast

30:42

break things strategy of just getting something

30:44

out there and testing it. And

30:46

so I have to scale myself back

30:49

from doing that, but I'm depth

30:51

your breath. I think you're taking the right

30:53

approach though, because especially given other things that you

30:55

know about your approach and your personality, because

30:58

you would be able to conquer

31:00

one game. We'll call it podcasting.

31:03

And then that gives you the asset that

31:06

you can basically barter with somebody on

31:08

some other platform. You'll be like, Hey,

31:10

you're getting into podcasting. Let me teach you how

31:12

to be really great at podcasting. Let me even

31:14

give you a leg up because I'm going to

31:16

shout you out on my podcast or whatever channel

31:18

that I have. We see this a lot with

31:21

social media in particular where somebody will go and

31:23

crush LinkedIn. And then they say next,

31:25

I want to take on Twitter. So they find someone who's

31:27

crushed Twitter, but has no LinkedIn audience and they basically barter

31:30

across that. And that's such a

31:32

faster way of becoming multi

31:34

channel at a high level than trying to brute

31:37

force all of them at once, which has been

31:39

my approach thus far. You

31:42

say that because I'm talking to a friend

31:45

in like the medical field who's just like a

31:47

very well connected doctor. That's like if you ever

31:49

have a medical problem, you want to know this

31:51

person. I'm bartering podcasting knowledge because

31:53

he's asked a few people and they were like, go

31:56

talk to Chris. He like if you were trying to

31:58

launch and grow podcast, talk to Chris. But

32:00

I'm not even doing it for social media

32:02

help. I'm doing it for like some future

32:05

situation where I have some weird disease and

32:07

I'm like, I know that the doctor that

32:09

knows every doctor in the Bay Area, like,

32:12

you know, will pick up my phone call because I helped him

32:14

with his podcast. And so, and by

32:16

the way, I might never get that disease. You

32:18

know, like it might, it's a good

32:20

relationship to have, but it's not

32:22

like a quid pro quo necessarily. It's

32:24

just, you know, you're getting to meet

32:26

interesting people if you're

32:28

at that level in one arena. But

32:31

it means that my social following,

32:33

I noticed you were like, this is, you track the

32:35

growth of all your social channels. And I'm like, I'm

32:37

glad I don't because they just, it would be a

32:39

flat line. So

32:41

I do think that at a point,

32:44

there's kind of two versions of what

32:46

you execute. One is execute

32:48

a strategy that works and

32:51

then go and optimize that strategy. And that's

32:53

where I've started pivoting to. So for YouTube,

32:55

it's like the strategy that works is post

32:57

your videos on YouTube. We could

33:00

probably tweak the thumbnails. We could probably tweak

33:02

the descriptions. I've started doing like slightly punchier

33:04

intros that I think I picked up from

33:06

a episode of this show. And

33:09

I'm not gonna go all in, but I'm

33:11

gonna make a handful of changes to try

33:13

to level up where we're at. Let's pick

33:15

two or three clips and post those, even

33:17

if they're not the best clip designed the

33:19

best way. And then if I

33:21

want, I can go deeper on each, on each

33:23

one later to improve it. But there

33:25

is an 80-20 to it that I think I avoid

33:27

by trying to get to like the 95-5, but

33:31

there is a certain advantage if

33:33

you can be amongst the top

33:36

experts in any field that

33:38

you get from other people wanting to connect

33:40

with you and trade with you and barter

33:42

with you because you have that

33:44

extra 15% of knowledge that

33:47

most people don't have. Well,

33:49

I wanna get into some of the nerdery that

33:52

is the test you've done on podcast growth. But

33:54

before we dive into like the specific tests and

33:57

some of the data we've seen and what's worked

33:59

well for you on podcast. growth at a high

34:01

level. Do you think that these

34:05

small tests are more

34:07

impactful than just having

34:09

relationships and calling in favors? I

34:11

think that neither of them matter

34:14

as much as just having good content. So

34:16

I don't think you know how to use

34:18

the favors without doing the tests. So

34:21

we could talk a little bit about

34:23

guessing versus cross-promo-ing versus other stuff. The

34:26

only reason I know what the right favor

34:28

to ask is, because I've been doing the

34:30

experimentation to learn what moves the needle. And

34:32

so, and you can only ask

34:35

so many favors. So I would say a lot

34:37

of what I'm doing now is not calling in

34:39

favors. I think I called in a lot of

34:41

favors when I launched the show and I kind

34:43

of used them all up. Now

34:45

it's, well, I've learned what works. I know it's

34:47

valuable to me. I might know what's valuable to

34:49

someone else. I can even convince them that this

34:51

thing that I know is valuable to both of

34:53

us is something they should consider that they weren't

34:56

considering because I know it will work. So

34:58

I think you have to understand those tactics

35:00

and understand the results. And by the way,

35:02

I'm happy to just share them to save

35:04

people a lot of time. I think the

35:06

entire premise of my existence and

35:08

my show is like, and by the way, my

35:10

show is not about podcasting, right? It's

35:13

about like travel and money and life and

35:15

negotiating and health, all these things. And I

35:17

just go as deep as possible. And

35:20

since I've done that on one area, let's just

35:22

share it and save people some time. Yeah, okay,

35:25

that's helpful. And it's a good call out to say, also,

35:28

most importantly, the content has to be good. I feel

35:30

like a lot of times on shows like mine, we

35:32

focus on all the things around the content to say,

35:35

how do we grow this? And it's really

35:37

making the assumption that the content itself is

35:39

even worthy of being grown, which

35:41

is a bold assumption

35:44

to make because the

35:46

bar for quality content gets

35:48

higher all the time. And

35:50

odds are, if you're

35:52

wondering, is my content good

35:55

enough to spread or worthy of

35:57

that? The answer might

35:59

be no. But it might be like, let's get back

36:01

to the lab and make some really good, I mean

36:03

the lab, like in the metaphorical sense, and make stuff

36:06

that's better. Okay, well let's talk

36:08

about some of these experiments that you've run

36:10

because you launched a show, you're

36:12

now full in on this as a creator, the

36:14

podcast is the core of it, you want this

36:16

to support you and your family. So how did

36:18

you go about testing these different avenues for growing

36:20

all that? So first off,

36:23

podcasting is a stressful place to

36:25

test. So if you're in any other creator platform,

36:27

I'm gonna try to make these lessons relevant to

36:29

any platform, but they'll be coming from a podcasting

36:31

world. It is just exponentially

36:33

harder because you get no information. I'm

36:35

loving going into newsletters right now because

36:37

I'm like, oh, I know that this

36:39

person subscribed and then opened this email

36:41

and then bought this thing and then

36:44

clicked the link. On podcasting, I'm like,

36:47

I know how many people listened and

36:50

I know what platform

36:52

they listened on, but I have

36:54

no idea if they're gonna listen next week.

36:56

And by next week, I won't know if

36:58

they're the same person that listened the week before.

37:00

So it is very, very hard. However,

37:02

the one key component

37:05

that I think makes a lot

37:07

of tracking possible, I think there's like two big

37:09

things that I do that lots of

37:11

people do one, very few people do the other, is

37:14

I'm just doing the best I can to

37:16

track all the things I'm doing. So on

37:19

the audio side, I'm using a lot of

37:21

things from Chartable, which is an

37:23

analytics platform that I think there's a free version

37:25

of and a paid version of. If you use

37:28

the megaphone hosting provider, the paid version is free.

37:31

And they do a really good job

37:33

at using the IP address data from

37:36

people listening to the podcast and

37:40

letting you do interesting stuff with it. And

37:42

I think one of the unique things about

37:44

podcasting is when you have video, if you

37:46

upload your video on YouTube, like

37:49

they're watching on YouTube and the video

37:52

is on YouTube, when you upload your

37:54

audio podcast to whatever hosting provider you

37:56

use, everyone, whether they're on

37:58

Apple Podcasts or Spotify, Spotify or Overcast

38:01

or Google Podcast, they're all consuming

38:03

the audio file that's hosted on

38:05

your hosting platform. So you

38:07

actually get a lot of information from the

38:09

source, whereas on most

38:11

other mediums, you've gotta go put the content on

38:13

a bunch of sites. So you

38:15

actually get a full comprehensive picture of everyone

38:18

across every site that's listening. And

38:20

because you get their IP address, which I

38:22

assume everyone's technical, but I probably shouldn't since

38:24

I kinda grew up in, you know, Silicon

38:26

Valley startup world, which is just a

38:29

number associated with your

38:32

internet service provider at your house.

38:34

So like, if you're at

38:36

home on wifi with 10 devices, as far

38:38

as my hosting provider knows, you're all the

38:40

same IP address. If you leave your

38:42

house and you get off your wifi, your cell

38:44

phone now has an IP address. If you go to

38:46

school and you join their wifi, now you have a

38:48

different IP address. So it's not a

38:50

perfect solution, but at least you get some ability

38:53

to see who

38:55

that person is. And so the

38:57

most important ways that I use

39:00

those analytics are with link tracking

39:02

and with cross promotion. So with

39:04

link tracking, you say, hey,

39:06

I want someone to share this podcast

39:08

and you can give them a link

39:10

that'll redirect anywhere you want. Could redirect

39:12

to Apple, it could redirect to Spotify,

39:14

it could redirect to your website, it

39:16

could redirect to Apple for iPhones and

39:19

Google podcasts for Androids. And

39:21

when someone clicks that link, Chartable says, what

39:23

IP address click the link? And

39:26

then it looks at all the people that

39:28

downloaded the episodes and played the episodes of

39:30

your show and did that same IP address

39:32

listen. So you can start to

39:34

say, oh, I'm gonna sponsor a newsletter. Got

39:37

a hundred clicks, nobody listened, not good.

39:39

I'm gonna put my podcast in my TikTok, link

39:42

in bio, and make a bunch of video shorts,

39:44

which is an experiment I ran. And

39:46

I was like, I wonder how many people are

39:48

gonna go listen to my podcast after

39:51

I got, I don't know, felt like

39:53

probably close to a million, hundreds of thousands

39:56

of views on TikTok. It was like A

39:58

very small number that you could. That is like five

40:01

or ten people still like wow, Lincoln

40:03

bio and Tic Tac not the murty

40:05

very well Now. Could. Someone have

40:07

gone to spot if I and searched

40:09

yes so it's not a perfect answer

40:11

but that's one. Alpha

40:13

you that on shows. Maybe I'll send

40:15

you a as smart promo which is

40:17

a way to say hate did the

40:20

ip address. If anyone listening to our

40:22

conversation right now go check out all

40:24

the hacks and a look and over

40:26

thirty days say wow. Some.

40:28

Percentage of the people listening did and

40:30

I'll get an idea. Saigon More podcast.

40:33

And I'll I'll actually track of Act

40:35

Sagamore on more podcast and talk about

40:37

podcasting and creator life or like on

40:40

more podcast and talk about. Life.

40:42

Hacks and finance optimization and credit card

40:44

points in miles. I would guess that

40:46

the latter would perform better since it's

40:49

closer aligned with the topic of my

40:51

shell. The. Superbowl explained this even I

40:53

mean I used article and I do a

40:55

lot of the stuff and this has helped.

40:57

Closed and connections for me to even better

40:59

understand. How to use these

41:02

things? So. Of

41:04

the different tests you've run and it sounds like

41:06

you're creating a lot of charitable acts. like essentially

41:08

people who think this is kinda like creating a

41:10

Bentley link. Yeah, I'm also create a lot of

41:12

Bentley Max and is the second piece of all

41:14

of this is. I. Use a

41:17

psychopath page. Which. If you

41:19

have, I guess you're not using Pod Page

41:21

to host your podcasts website doesn't have to

41:23

be or brands web sites. we're podcasts website.

41:25

I think you're doing it wrong. And.

41:28

I gave you know I could go down a

41:30

million lists, hear about why? Maybe I should make

41:32

a video about why buy one of the features

41:34

is that? and I'm sure you could do this

41:37

with Wordpress. An idea. What are the features I

41:39

like is any time I'm creating a link to

41:41

share. I. Just create all the

41:43

hacks.com/something I redirected to a Bentley link

41:45

where I can track clicks and that

41:48

Bentley like goes to wherever I want

41:50

to send people. And so

41:52

whenever I now sponsors I say

41:54

hey, Go. to all the

41:56

hacks.com/eight sleep which is a

41:58

sponsor mine and people will go

42:00

to that link and I'll know how many

42:03

people clicked on that link or went to it, you

42:05

know, by typing it into their browser. So I can

42:07

get a sense, hmm, let's try a few different ad

42:09

reads and see what works. Or let's

42:11

tell people to sign up for

42:13

my newsletter. And you might think

42:15

that allthehacks.com/newsletter is the landing page.

42:18

But in fact, it is a

42:20

redirect to allthehacks.com/blog, which is where

42:22

I actually host the newsletter, so

42:24

that I can track the links

42:26

on that redirect, specifically ones that

42:28

I announced on the show. Maybe

42:30

someday I'll want to try a new experiment

42:33

and go to allthehacks.com/email and track that

42:35

one separately. So I could get a

42:37

sense of when I talk about

42:39

certain things, what do people click click on or

42:41

go to what works, what doesn't work. So

42:43

yes, I'm creating lots of them. I think

42:45

I have hundreds of, you know, short, you

42:47

know, pretty, they call them pretty redirects on

42:50

pod page. I have hundreds of those hundreds

42:52

of bitly links, hundreds of smart promos and

42:54

smart links. And it's

42:56

led to some really interesting discoveries.

42:59

And one that I shared with you earlier, which

43:02

at least to me blew my mind is every time

43:04

I have an episode and I have a sponsor, I

43:06

say, Hey, let me tell you about the sponsor. I

43:09

talk about it for a minute, and I tell people

43:11

where to go. And so let's

43:13

take an example of copilot,

43:15

which is my favorite app

43:17

for tracking expenses. It's iOS,

43:19

Mac only app. So sorry,

43:21

Android users. And I'll say

43:24

if you want to check out copilot, and if

43:26

you want to get a deal, because we've got

43:28

an awesome deal, go to all the hacks.com/copilot. And

43:30

I'll say that in the episode. Now, I'll

43:32

also put that in the show notes. So if you've

43:34

ever listened to a podcast, you're listening to podcasts right

43:36

now, you click down and look at the episode, you'll

43:38

see it written out. I put

43:40

a different URL in the show notes.

43:43

And I went and saw how many people

43:45

were clicking on the links in the show

43:47

notes versus how many people were listening to

43:49

the audio and just typing in all the

43:51

hacks.com/copilot on the website. And it was

43:54

Twice as many people were clicking on the link in

43:56

the show Notes as going to the URL, which. Me

44:00

think wow. Sometimes I run

44:02

ad campaigns across my entire

44:04

catalogue of episodes dynamically. But.

44:07

I'm not putting any links in the show

44:09

notes. I should go back manually. And and

44:11

although show notes every time I one run

44:13

one of those campaigns, sure am I take

44:16

me twenty minutes to go manually add all

44:18

those links. But if it's result, if it

44:20

makes up two thirds of the traffic, I

44:22

could really out reform for sponsors. So.

44:24

That's something that I started doing any time

44:27

I run those campaigns because I know how

44:29

important it is. This isn't weeds. The when

44:31

you do your ad reads do you say

44:33

go to allacts.com/copilot. Do. Also say or

44:36

check the link in the show notes to make a call

44:38

to action to chuckling in the zone Us. I.

44:40

Actually, I did Maybe a year ago

44:42

and I stopped. But. And

44:45

this isn't the same but at the end

44:47

of every episode after the last add not

44:49

the end of the episode, the end of

44:51

the last. Bad I say if you want

44:54

links to all the promo codes, deals, coupons,

44:56

everything from all of our partners Good all

44:58

the hacks that com/deals. Which. Is not

45:00

the show notes. It's a third page where

45:02

we have all of our deals of you.

45:04

Go there, you'll see cure all of our

45:06

partners. Here's all the promo code, the coupons.

45:08

We try to get good deals so they're

45:10

all their and I tracked that separately. That

45:12

was like ten percent. And. Then it

45:15

was like sixty percent click and

45:17

thirty percent Go to the U

45:19

R L South you are a

45:21

bit convert higher higher conversion. So.

45:23

I went to one of my part brands and

45:25

I said hey, can we strayed data You know

45:27

the conversion rates. I know the click through rates.

45:29

Let's trade data so that we can try to

45:31

figure out how we make our relationship perform better

45:34

and is like people that typed in the are.

45:36

I have a little higher intent so I've been

45:38

converted better. But clicks are still

45:40

pretty valuable. so yeah well the the

45:42

other insight from that by hear his.

45:45

Listeners. Have an assumption that the links

45:47

you share our in the show notes email

45:49

you haven't explicitly told them. That. That

45:51

sponsor link is in the show notes for them to

45:53

go seek out in the shows versus go type in

45:55

an. That's. Interesting. Accent

45:57

always ivory. I'd really like a.

46:00

I assumed people aren't looking

46:02

at the show notes most of the time. Me

46:04

too. I still did them, I don't know why.

46:06

I put very detailed show notes with all the

46:08

links to everything we talk about, you know, author

46:11

bio, I have clickable chapters

46:13

in Spotify, and I

46:15

was like, I wanted to do it because I

46:17

wanted to do what I thought was best, but

46:20

I assumed no one used it, and now I'm

46:22

like, wow, I was totally wrong. And

46:24

so I've been telling all these podcasters I know,

46:26

this is a good example to rewind a little

46:28

bit, I'd email podcasters I know, and

46:30

I'd go to their podcast and I'd look at their show notes and say, hey, I

46:33

noticed you don't put links to your sponsors in your

46:35

show notes. I just ran this

46:37

experiment and found that two thirds of the links

46:40

or the clicks for my sponsors are coming from the

46:42

show notes. You should probably consider doing this and see

46:44

if you see an uptick. And then one friend of

46:47

mine hosts a podcast, he did it, and he was

46:49

like, wow, I saw an uptick in performance for my

46:51

sponsors. I was like, yeah. So

46:53

anytime I'm learning something, I'm like, how do I get that

46:56

information back to other people? After

46:58

one more quick break, Chris and I dig

47:00

into his specific podcast growth experiments. You'll wanna

47:02

hear this, so stick around, we'll be right

47:05

back. If

47:07

you know me, you know how much I

47:09

believe in memberships. My membership is the core

47:11

of my business and earning an income directly

47:13

from your audience is one of the most

47:15

sustainable ways for you to become a professional

47:18

creator too. So I wanna tell you about

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let them know that I sent you. And

48:43

now, please enjoy the rest of my conversation with

48:45

Chris Hutchins. So from

48:47

your copious link production and tests,

48:50

what are some of the other insights

48:52

you've had when it comes to

48:54

growth experiments? I think an

48:56

interesting one is it is wildly more valuable

49:01

to target people on platforms that

49:04

are the exact same as

49:06

yours or closer to yours. So

49:09

podcasting, for example, if we do

49:11

something cross promotional, it's going

49:13

to perform a lot better than if I

49:15

do something cross promotional with a newsletter, which

49:17

is gonna do even better than if I

49:20

cross promo with someone that does Twitter or

49:22

Instagram or TikTok because

49:25

of the relationship they have and the type

49:27

of the content that their followers are used

49:29

to consuming. Furthermore, if you

49:31

can be a guest on a

49:34

podcast instead of just cross promote

49:36

with a podcast, I found

49:38

that it does anywhere from 10 to 40 times

49:41

better. And that's

49:43

not 10 to 40%, that's 10 to 40 times better. Yeah,

49:47

like when I run a cross promo, it'll

49:50

convert somewhere between 0.1 to let's

49:52

say 0.8 or

49:56

0.9% of the audience of a

49:59

show, meaning. and slightly less

50:01

than 1% might come over and

50:03

try out my show of people that have

50:06

never tried it out before. So these are

50:08

brand new listeners. And when I do a

50:10

guest spot, it

50:14

can be as high as 4% of the

50:16

audience of that show

50:18

comes over. And then one time I

50:20

did a episode where a host

50:22

and I were friends and we recorded

50:24

an episode on each other's platforms. And

50:27

remind me to tell you about this strategy because

50:29

I think it's a great guesting strategy. And

50:31

that did just as well. That did really well

50:34

also. We recorded an episode together and put

50:36

it on both feeds. And I thought maybe it

50:38

wouldn't because people had already heard the same content,

50:40

but it goes back to that guessing. People

50:42

wanna hear you for an hour, not hear you

50:44

for a minute. Because at the end of

50:46

the day, I think a lot of times podcasters

50:49

forget that people are coming for the

50:51

host. Like the topic has

50:53

been talked about on other shows. The guest

50:55

has been interviewed on other shows. The thing

50:57

that's gonna keep someone listening is

51:00

that they like the host's perspective. Because that's the only

51:02

thing they're gonna get that's consistent the next time. And

51:05

so you've gotta remember that people need

51:07

to like you. This is entertainment. As

51:09

much as it is information, as much

51:11

as it is content, it's gotta keep

51:13

you entertained. It's gotta keep you hooked.

51:17

And the only person that's gonna do that well

51:19

is the host. And so if

51:21

you have someone else saying, if you're on

51:23

your show saying, hey, I really love this

51:25

other show, check it out. That's great. But

51:28

if someone can hear the host of that

51:30

other show and like them, it's

51:32

gonna do so much better. But there are some

51:34

people that think, gosh, I don't know

51:36

if I have the credibility to go on some

51:38

shows. And something I've managed to do, once

51:41

with Tim Ferriss, once on the Bigger Pockets real

51:43

estate show, and I

51:45

respect him for saying this. I sent him

51:47

a note and I said, I sent him

51:49

like 20 questions about podcasting. None of which

51:51

I'd found him answered publicly. And my 21st

51:53

question was, and

51:55

by the way, could I come on your show as a

51:57

guest? And he immediately wrote back.

52:00

In two minutes. Any with like. With

52:02

a twenty questions fake just because you felt

52:04

like you needed to ask me something to

52:06

be able to get said attorney says i

52:08

soon as I know you don't have to

52:10

have me on your show but I really

52:12

wanna know the answers to these questions and

52:14

he was like well I'll be honest right

52:16

now where I am in my life I'm

52:19

not that interested in like all the optimisations

52:21

of credit cards points in miles and deals

52:23

and stuff which makes sense them as lot

52:25

of my and maybe does that optimized for

52:27

those things but he's like but I always

52:29

get emails from people asking how I grew

52:31

my podcast. And so why don't

52:33

you ask me those twenty questions on air

52:36

as the host of the Timbers show and

52:38

will talk about podcast seen. Naturally your show

52:40

will come up but I'm not an interest

52:42

in interviewing you and I like great that

52:44

performed really well drove a lot of people

52:46

to my audience which is awesome. I learned

52:49

a time this you can to because that

52:51

episode of public and even go as a

52:53

do it. On. My or his feet.

52:55

But. I tried that strategy again.

52:58

There's a podcast called Bigger Pockets Real Estate.

53:00

Really? Big surprise of biggest real stay podcast

53:03

out there. Yeah. I've got a target I'm

53:05

like I want to go and some of the biggest shows and

53:07

add value so people want to come with the my show. When.

53:10

I just don't have a lot of

53:12

knowledge about real estate so like satellite

53:14

but I knew someone that worked a

53:16

bigger pocket so that I have the

53:18

in but I don't have the strategy

53:20

and I just said I want to

53:22

do an episode about optimizing the home

53:24

by an experience Your hosts no real

53:26

estate so well could I interview your

53:28

hosts and will air the episode on

53:30

both of our seeds. And

53:32

it's great content for them. Anyone

53:35

listening to The Counting Greater knows that like coming

53:37

up with ideas for content and prepping them and

53:39

playing them as lot of work. So if you

53:41

go to another content creators a ham and a

53:43

plan an episode for you it's gonna be awesome.

53:45

I'm gonna put hours of work into it. That's.

53:48

Great! So he did this. He

53:50

performed so well for both of

53:52

our shows. An Ice I managed

53:54

to effectively get a guest spot

53:56

on a show that I have

53:58

no. Qualify. really

58:00

big name guest is

58:02

not that they're gonna share the episode, it's

58:04

not even, at least on podcasting, that it's

58:06

gonna magically hit the algorithm, because on podcasting

58:09

there is no algorithm, and

58:11

it didn't even work on YouTube, by the way,

58:13

for big name guests, even though I don't have

58:15

a huge channel, it didn't hit that algorithm. I

58:18

think because most people on YouTube are

58:21

not looking for a one hour long

58:23

interview that's not very visually interesting, but

58:26

then I've done episodes with people that

58:28

no one knows, forget even whether

58:30

they shared it or not, by

58:32

the way, totally agree with your

58:34

strategy. Finding people with smaller, loyal,

58:36

excited audiences that don't get enough,

58:38

they want more of the person

58:40

that they're listening to, reading from,

58:42

et cetera, great strategy, but

58:45

I've had episodes that didn't get shared

58:47

by the guest, but where the guest

58:49

was just so good at the topic,

58:51

that the episode did incredibly well, far

58:54

better than episodes with really well known

58:56

people. I did

58:58

an episode with Tony Hawk, who I imagine anyone listening knows,

59:01

but the content wasn't as good as I wanted

59:03

it to be, partially because I think

59:06

Tony Hawk is just a savant

59:08

in skateboarding and just isn't as

59:10

intentional, as much as you

59:12

and I are like, let's research all these things,

59:14

and let's try to be experts, he's like, well,

59:16

I just skateboard, and I just happen to be

59:19

very good at it, and I just try hard,

59:21

and so he couldn't articulate a lot of tactics

59:23

that someone could replicate, because it was entertaining, it

59:25

was great, but the one thing it

59:27

did do, is now when I'm trying to

59:29

get someone to come on the show, I can say,

59:31

we've had on guests like Tony Hawk, and

59:34

people are like, oh, if you've had on that

59:36

really big name guest, you probably,

59:38

I probably should go

59:40

on that show. So my rule is, get

59:43

three big name guests, if possible, because it

59:45

will help recruiting other guests, and

59:47

after that, make 100% of

59:49

your decisions based on whether they

59:52

are going to create incredible

59:54

content, or if

59:56

they're so big that they'll push down the

59:58

least. of the three big name

1:00:01

guests and be the new number one. So

1:00:03

I don't know if Obama

1:00:05

has tactics, but like a former president,

1:00:07

sure, I'll say yes. And

1:00:09

I think that would really help recruit any

1:00:11

other guest in the future. I

1:00:13

do see that some folks, they take that

1:00:16

guest name strategy and then they almost like

1:00:18

keyword stuff, the description of their show. And

1:00:20

I don't know how effective that is, where

1:00:23

you're like, that your show description, you're cramming

1:00:25

in a bunch of guests that you think

1:00:27

people might be searching for. I

1:00:29

don't know if that works well in like a

1:00:31

Spotify search or an Apple podcast search, but I

1:00:34

do see a lot of people at least trying

1:00:36

it. So I can tell you that that strategy

1:00:38

does not work on Apple because

1:00:40

Apple does not index the show

1:00:42

description. Spotify does, all the other

1:00:44

platforms do, not all, but

1:00:47

most of the other platforms,

1:00:49

Castbox, Overcast, Google Podcasts, Player

1:00:51

FM do, but Apple

1:00:54

is, for my audience, the number one platform

1:00:56

for the podcast and they don't index description.

1:00:59

So the things that you can

1:01:01

focus on, title, author,

1:01:04

episode title. And then

1:01:07

the 50-50 one is channel description

1:01:09

and everything else doesn't matter. The

1:01:12

description of your episode, only

1:01:14

4.3% of podcast listeners use an app that

1:01:17

searches the episode description. So

1:01:20

the channel description is still

1:01:22

there for Spotify, but really

1:01:25

the most important thing that you can title is

1:01:27

the title, which is tough because you don't want your

1:01:30

show to be creator science,

1:01:32

colon, YouTube, podcasting, newsletter.

1:01:36

So SEO for podcasting is

1:01:38

really, really tough, but

1:01:40

I'm excited to spend a little

1:01:43

bit more time. I've never really

1:01:45

thought of my podcast website, which

1:01:47

is just allthehacks.com, as like

1:01:49

a blog. So I haven't thought about it from

1:01:51

the strategy that most bloggers do of SEO and

1:01:54

everything, but I was playing

1:01:56

around on a pod page and

1:01:59

either a... It's

1:04:01

at least something that might matter.

1:04:04

But the description thing, it does matter

1:04:06

on Spotify. So if you're trying to

1:04:08

grow on Spotify or your audience is

1:04:10

more in line

1:04:12

with Spotify's audience, which

1:04:14

I've found that the Apple

1:04:16

audience, and this is probably no surprise,

1:04:18

like the Apple audience probably skews a

1:04:21

little older and a little higher net

1:04:23

worth than the non-Apple audience.

1:04:26

And for my show at least, I can tell

1:04:28

you after Apple and Spotify,

1:04:30

the biggest player

1:04:33

is overcast with 4%. So

1:04:36

like Spotify and Apple dominate the

1:04:38

entire market. But I have friends who shows

1:04:40

are 70% Spotify. So

1:04:43

if you play in the Spotify demographic more,

1:04:45

maybe the show

1:04:47

description could be better keyworded.

1:04:51

And I haven't played enough there, but I

1:04:53

probably should consider it. Something we didn't touch

1:04:56

on when we're talking about cross-promotions, guessing is

1:04:58

feed drops, where you basically place an entire

1:05:00

episode of your show in the feed of

1:05:03

another related show. Have you tested that much?

1:05:06

So the problem is I'm not necessarily opposed

1:05:08

to doing this, but I'll go back to what

1:05:10

I said before, which is like the content is

1:05:12

the most important thing. And

1:05:14

so I'm really

1:05:17

not interested in any strategy that

1:05:21

would put anything, put

1:05:23

the content down. So maybe if

1:05:25

I found, I haven't done it to be clear. If

1:05:28

I have done the strategy of me

1:05:30

and another podcaster will co-produce something and

1:05:32

place it in both feeds, that I

1:05:34

have done. I have done, I

1:05:36

went on as a guest on another

1:05:39

show and took the interview

1:05:41

of me and put it in my

1:05:43

show. But I have not

1:05:45

just put an episode from another person

1:05:47

about another topic completely unrelated to me

1:05:49

or the show and put it in

1:05:51

my feed. And part of

1:05:53

the reason is that I just,

1:05:56

I don't know if that's what I would want as

1:05:58

a listener. Yeah. unless it was done

1:06:01

very, very thoughtfully.

1:06:05

And I have heard, there's a

1:06:07

podcast called The Mad

1:06:09

Fientist, and I believe, and I could

1:06:11

be wrong, but I believe there

1:06:14

was an episode where he was like, I

1:06:16

heard this interview with so and so,

1:06:19

and it was so good,

1:06:22

the host of this podcast asked every

1:06:24

question I would have asked, that I thought,

1:06:26

why would I waste my time asking

1:06:29

this person to go do another interview where

1:06:31

I would ask the same questions they've already

1:06:33

been asked. And so instead I emailed the

1:06:35

host and said, would you mind if I

1:06:38

just aired your interview on my feed? And

1:06:41

that's something I've considered. And

1:06:44

would do it as a swap, right? Hey, air this

1:06:46

on my feed, and then in return, maybe you'll do

1:06:49

some cross-promos for me. Maybe you'll have me on as

1:06:51

a guest. So that is

1:06:53

a strategy that's in my like, to

1:06:55

test soon, but haven't, but

1:06:58

it would need to be because I found

1:07:00

a show where a specific

1:07:02

episode was so good, and

1:07:04

I just, I didn't even think trying to

1:07:07

get that host, or sorry, that guest on

1:07:09

my show was worth the time

1:07:11

because someone else did such a good job. So

1:07:14

I haven't done it. The only other

1:07:16

place that I've thought about doing it is

1:07:18

there's a few guests that I've been trying

1:07:20

to get on the show, and for whatever

1:07:22

reason, I just have been completely unsuccessful, and

1:07:25

I feel like what they've said would be

1:07:27

really valuable. And even though there are questions

1:07:30

that I would want to ask this person,

1:07:32

if I could get them on the show, I just, I

1:07:35

haven't been able to get them to agree to come on the show.

1:07:37

And so that could be another reason

1:07:39

to say, look, I wanted

1:07:41

to do an interview with so-and-so, I loved their

1:07:43

book, I couldn't get them on the show,

1:07:46

so I found the best interview. What

1:07:48

I've actually experimented with instead

1:07:51

is if there's a topic and I can't get a guest

1:07:53

I want, or I can't find a guest, I'll just do

1:07:55

the show by myself. Like, I

1:07:57

think too many people locked.

1:08:00

themselves into a format for their show.

1:08:02

And the format I

1:08:04

started with. Now I

1:08:06

have three or four formats

1:08:09

that I regularly do that

1:08:11

were not what I started with. My

1:08:14

show started as an interview show. And

1:08:16

then I was like, well, let's do some Q&A episodes.

1:08:18

And those performed by the way, better

1:08:20

than many interview episodes. And then I

1:08:23

said, well, I want to talk about

1:08:25

insurance. So I was like, I want to help

1:08:27

people make all the right decisions with their insurance

1:08:29

policies. And so that was my next goal

1:08:31

was to do an episode on insurance. And I was like,

1:08:34

who knows enough about insurance to

1:08:36

do this episode. And I couldn't find anyone.

1:08:38

And I looked, but I just couldn't find

1:08:40

someone that I thought was the

1:08:42

right person to do an interview an episode

1:08:44

about insurance. And I was like, but

1:08:47

I research insurance on every policy so much

1:08:49

that maybe I'm the one that should do

1:08:51

this episode. And that episode

1:08:53

has been incredible. I just as we record

1:08:56

this yesterday or this last week got this

1:08:58

review, and I just have to read it

1:09:00

because it's my favorite review I've gotten so

1:09:02

far. The title is Episode 104 saved

1:09:05

me $15,854 a year. And it's this person repriced all their

1:09:12

insurance policies after listening that episode and was

1:09:14

like, this this was like they

1:09:16

saved over $15,000 a year. And if

1:09:19

you would ask me when I was starting the show, if I

1:09:21

would ever do it by myself, I would say no, it was

1:09:23

a get like, it was just a show for interviewing. That

1:09:26

happened. Then I just one day had all these weird

1:09:28

ideas. And I just wanted to talk about them. So

1:09:31

I did an episode that I called like my musings

1:09:33

about things. And that episode did

1:09:35

better than like every other type of episode. It

1:09:37

was just me talking about how

1:09:39

I fought with Macy's to get my warranty

1:09:41

covered on my couch and how I was

1:09:44

thinking about planning a last minute trip. So

1:09:46

I really encourage people to experiment

1:09:49

not just with growth, but with

1:09:51

your content format. Sometimes I've

1:09:53

done short episodes, released them on an off

1:09:55

day. I don't know, I just feel like

1:09:57

my show has evolved to the point that

1:09:59

more More than 50% of what I'm doing now is

1:10:01

not what I originally sought out to do. And

1:10:04

it's only because I was willing to experiment

1:10:06

with new stuff that I was comfortable

1:10:09

with trying it. And now

1:10:12

I love doing the show even more because I

1:10:14

get to do these other things. Yeah, I agree

1:10:16

with that. We, Connor and

1:10:18

I did an episode talking about what we learned

1:10:21

on YouTube. I've done a Q and A episode

1:10:23

recently. And in terms of

1:10:25

especially retention throughout the episode.

1:10:27

Those episodes performed so well. Yeah, that

1:10:29

has me really interested in doing more

1:10:32

solo stuff. We're running a little

1:10:34

bit long. So I do wanna get to one more

1:10:36

kind of category here, which is

1:10:38

paid acquisition. Cause I know you've run some paid

1:10:40

acquisition tests as well. We don't have to go

1:10:42

through the nitty gritty of all of that. But

1:10:45

I'd love to hear some of the takeaways you have

1:10:47

when it comes to paid acquisition. Is it worth it

1:10:49

at a top level? If so, to

1:10:51

some degree, what platforms seem to be the best

1:10:53

and anything else that you think is important

1:10:56

for folks listening. So the one

1:10:58

thing that really sucks, unlike newsletters,

1:11:01

and many other channels is when you run paid experiments,

1:11:04

you can see the uptick. And

1:11:07

many of the paid experiments you'd run in

1:11:09

podcasting are tied to a player app. And

1:11:12

so you can see the uptick in that

1:11:14

player app, but it's very hard to measure

1:11:16

the retention. I've just started, I just

1:11:19

ran an experiment a couple of weeks ago. And I'm

1:11:21

looking at the retention curve because I ran it with

1:11:23

a app called player.fm. I

1:11:25

can see the number of new downloads on player.fm, and

1:11:28

then I can see how that goes over time. And after

1:11:30

a handful of weeks, I'll be able to say, well, it

1:11:32

used to be 50 or 100 people listened. Now

1:11:36

a new episode gets 400. So

1:11:38

really now I'm feeling like I got an extra 300

1:11:40

listeners. Let's divide that by the

1:11:42

cost of the acquisition experiment and what did it

1:11:44

cost to get a listener? I've

1:11:46

found that at the lowest end of

1:11:48

that spectrum, it can be a couple

1:11:51

dollars, like $2. And

1:11:54

at the highest end, it can be more than $10, which

1:11:57

I would put in the category of a total waste of time.

1:12:00

The challenge is, and I found a site,

1:12:02

this random person sent me an iMessage,

1:12:04

like came in as a text but

1:12:06

from an email address, his name's Ibrahim,

1:12:09

and he was like, I have a podcast growth

1:12:11

company, I wanna run a growth test for you,

1:12:13

totally free, you pick an episode, I'll send you

1:12:15

traffic and you can see the quality. And I

1:12:17

was like, okay, why not? And

1:12:19

I ran this experiment, and he

1:12:21

was very transparent. He was like, our

1:12:24

service will drive downloads to your podcast.

1:12:26

People will listen just long enough to

1:12:29

trigger the download, but not long

1:12:31

enough, but they're not listening to the episode. They're

1:12:33

just triggering downloads. So that

1:12:36

paid growth won't help my sponsor revenue

1:12:38

or sponsor conversion or anything. It

1:12:41

will help the show's download

1:12:43

numbers, which may help me

1:12:45

convince advertisers to try

1:12:48

the show out because it has more downloads. A

1:12:51

really interesting fact is that because

1:12:54

there's so many agencies playing in the,

1:12:56

and I'm gonna come back to your

1:12:58

question, but because there's so many agencies

1:13:00

playing in the podcast monetization world, people

1:13:02

have gotten so stuck on CPMs for

1:13:04

pricing for ads that even

1:13:07

if your show converts three times better

1:13:09

than other shows, many brands,

1:13:12

because the agency is the one doing the

1:13:14

media buying, will never pay three times as

1:13:17

much for your ads, even if they convert

1:13:19

three times better. The hack

1:13:21

there is to try to say, great, we'll do

1:13:23

this super cheap test, but know that we're gonna

1:13:25

be charging three times more. Then

1:13:27

they go back to the brand and say, how did it convert?

1:13:29

They're like, this show's amazing, we should do it. They're like, well,

1:13:32

it's three times more. We should still do it. But

1:13:34

it could be worse. One

1:13:37

podcast network told me, oh, well, we just

1:13:39

tell all the brands that you have twice

1:13:41

as many downloads. I was like, really?

1:13:43

He's like, yeah, we just lie about the downloads so that

1:13:45

we bring the CPM to a place that they would be

1:13:47

comfortable with. I was like, I don't

1:13:50

feel good using that strategy. I definitely don't

1:13:52

feel good working with you, but it's so

1:13:54

ridiculous that you can't just convince them to

1:13:56

care about performance, that they care so much

1:13:58

about an arbitrary number. So it's messed up

1:14:01

in many ways. So you could just buy downloads

1:14:03

that mean nothing and that might help that arena.

1:14:06

Overcast, I think going back

1:14:08

to the first thing we talked about with content,

1:14:11

they let you run really small

1:14:13

dollar experiments for podcast ads. And

1:14:15

I'm looking at them right now

1:14:17

and I've run eight anywhere

1:14:19

ranging from $250 to $1,400 depending

1:14:24

on the category you advertise in. The

1:14:26

range of subscribers I got from these experiments

1:14:28

was like 49 to 204. So

1:14:32

we're talking very, very small numbers. But like

1:14:34

I said, if I spend $350 and I

1:14:36

get 99 subscribers, it's

1:14:40

like $3.50, it's not the best use of money. But

1:14:45

the reason why I advocate people test

1:14:47

something like this is when

1:14:50

you run an experiment on Overcast, they tell you

1:14:52

how many taps they think your podcast ad will

1:14:54

get and they tell you how many subscribers they

1:14:56

think you'll get. Then you can

1:14:58

run the ad and see how much better you

1:15:01

perform than what they suggest. And

1:15:03

if you 3X that performance, you

1:15:05

probably have a good show. So if you're wondering,

1:15:07

do I have a good show? Run an

1:15:10

ad for your show, spend $350 or $500 for

1:15:13

whatever category it's in. And if

1:15:16

your show performs terrible compared to their

1:15:18

benchmarks, you might not have

1:15:20

a good show. Or at least, I mean, I would

1:15:22

guess like the taps metric on that would tell you

1:15:24

how good your packaging is in terms of a playlist.

1:15:27

And then subscribers is like, so you can break

1:15:29

it into two experiments. Yeah. And

1:15:31

then the subscribers would be, oh, I liked it.

1:15:33

Yeah, if you wanna test cover art, run an

1:15:36

experiment one month with one cover art, run an

1:15:38

experiment the next month with another cover art, same

1:15:41

description, and you'll be like, oh, which one do

1:15:43

people click on more? I think a

1:15:45

lot of people that design their cover art design it where it's

1:15:47

taking up their whole screen and forget that most people are seeing

1:15:49

it, smaller than, you know, a

1:15:52

quarter. A quarter. And

1:15:54

so I love doing those little experiments

1:15:56

to test the title, the description, the

1:15:59

album art. That kind

1:16:01

of stuff. Castbox is a

1:16:03

platform for paid advertising that

1:16:05

I found dollar per subscriber

1:16:07

performs the best. What

1:16:09

I don't know, and I'm not sure

1:16:12

how to think about it, is I don't

1:16:14

know if it helps advertisers. Like I don't

1:16:17

know how engaged these listeners are. I don't

1:16:19

know how loyal there are, but it does.

1:16:21

But I can see that people are still

1:16:23

listening on Castbox. And I think the only

1:16:25

reason I have them skeptical is that I've

1:16:28

just never met anyone that actually uses the

1:16:30

Castbox app to listen to podcasts. I 100%

1:16:32

agree. I am in

1:16:34

agreement with that full assessment. Although I do

1:16:37

think that it probably does not help advertisers

1:16:39

much. I am also dubious of

1:16:41

it. We've run a good handful of

1:16:43

Castbox ads, because it is like the

1:16:45

dollar for dollar best spend if you're

1:16:48

trying to grow week

1:16:50

over week downloads. And

1:16:52

there is like a noticeable decay over a

1:16:54

period of months. But it's

1:16:57

still a significant portion of my

1:16:59

total downloads. And I haven't done

1:17:01

a Castbox campaign in a year.

1:17:04

So I do think that there are people

1:17:07

who do genuinely listen from it. What I

1:17:09

think happens is, and I don't know this

1:17:11

for sure. So don't quote me. But I

1:17:13

think what happens is, Castbox pays for downloads

1:17:15

in the app store. And

1:17:18

when you download Castbox, they say you should

1:17:20

subscribe to some shows. And I bet they

1:17:22

recommend some of their paid advertisers in that

1:17:24

spot in the app experience. So they are

1:17:27

real people. But what you don't know is

1:17:29

if they are actual, if they're

1:17:31

going to stick using Castbox, you don't know

1:17:33

if they're going to keep

1:17:35

listening to podcasts. And you certainly don't know if

1:17:37

they actually liked your show. This is my

1:17:39

hunch. I don't know this for sure. Yeah, I

1:17:42

can tell you that Player FM does

1:17:44

something that the thing that makes

1:17:46

me skeptical is that if you

1:17:48

sign up for player.fm, they'll pre check like

1:17:50

10 podcasts. And if you're running through the

1:17:52

onboarding, you just hit next, next, next, next,

1:17:55

next, you'll end up subscribed to the sponsored

1:17:57

podcast. And those episodes will start

1:17:59

downloading and and downloading on a weekly basis

1:18:02

with no intention. I believe on Castbox

1:18:04

the user has to opt in, like

1:18:06

yes, they're shown promotional things, but they

1:18:08

have to opt into them, so it's

1:18:10

a little higher to the bar. But

1:18:13

I'm looking right now, the Castbox app on

1:18:15

Apple, and yes, they probably pay to promote

1:18:17

the app, but it has

1:18:19

116,000 reviews, 4.8 star on Google, they

1:18:24

have 10 million plus downloads, 290,000 reviews, so

1:18:30

people are using this app. You can't

1:18:32

get 290,000 reviews on Google and

1:18:36

116,000 reviews on Apple and

1:18:38

not have people using the app. So I think

1:18:40

Castbox is a good channel

1:18:42

for growth. I would

1:18:44

have to spend a tremendous amount of

1:18:46

money to see how much it affects

1:18:48

conversion. I tell myself that

1:18:50

I really wish that I could build the

1:18:53

analytics optimizer's version

1:18:55

of this whole thing,

1:18:58

and what I would do is I would tell Castbox,

1:19:00

I would give them a different RSS feed, and actually

1:19:02

I could do this. Now that I'm thinking about it,

1:19:04

I have a new experiment. Because

1:19:08

you give each player an RSS feed, and

1:19:10

so I think, what if I gave Castbox

1:19:12

a new RSS feed, and I used something

1:19:15

like Zapier, and I used Zapier to go

1:19:17

say, take the RSS feed from Megaphone

1:19:20

and find, replace all the links with different,

1:19:23

like I come up with, I don't know,

1:19:25

I gotta think about how exactly I would

1:19:27

do this. But the idea would be, have

1:19:30

all the links in the show notes get

1:19:32

redirected through something where I

1:19:35

could track them and see, do Castbox

1:19:37

users click links in the show notes? And

1:19:39

I think that if I gave them a different RSS feed,

1:19:42

I could even do this manually for three weeks,

1:19:45

I'll just find replace, and it's only for the

1:19:47

latest episode. So if I

1:19:49

can remember, I might try

1:19:51

to change my RSS feed on Castbox, host

1:19:54

a static file that's just a

1:19:56

duplicate of my RSS feed, and manually

1:19:58

add in my next. week's episode,

1:20:00

putting Bitly links specific

1:20:03

for Castbox and see if

1:20:05

people are actually clicking the links to the show notes.

1:20:07

I love this. I hope you do it. I

1:20:09

would never, but I hope you do. So

1:20:13

at the end of the day, paid growth.

1:20:15

I think I've also run some paid ads

1:20:17

like cross promos, but I just pay someone to read ads

1:20:19

for the show. I know Jordan Harbinger does a

1:20:21

ton of these. When you're getting started,

1:20:23

you just you don't have a choice. You don't

1:20:26

have the inventory to give people to make it

1:20:28

work. So they just they

1:20:30

didn't perform as well as cross

1:20:32

promos. And I think the

1:20:35

hosts were just kind of reading ads.

1:20:37

If I could find the right person, the right show, I maybe

1:20:39

would try that again and see how it performs. But

1:20:42

it was tough. I haven't found a good

1:20:44

paid strategy other than pay

1:20:47

someone to help you make the show better.

1:20:50

Like, yeah, pay someone to go pitch you as

1:20:52

a guest, but not some service

1:20:54

that's going to like turn out these guest

1:20:56

pitches that are I've received so many of

1:20:59

that are just boilerplate templated. Pay

1:21:01

someone to go listen to 10

1:21:03

episodes of a podcast and craft

1:21:05

a very specific pitch that makes

1:21:07

it so obvious that you've listened

1:21:10

to their show and understand it

1:21:12

and then send that effort. Don't

1:21:15

pay someone like I'm low

1:21:17

number high, high quality. And

1:21:20

so I can tell you if someone pitched me, I can

1:21:23

tell you exactly what I want to pitch. I want someone to

1:21:25

pitch me on a topic that's broadly

1:21:27

relevant to most people in

1:21:30

the world about a topic related

1:21:32

to life, money or travel that they

1:21:35

are an expert in and that we

1:21:37

can have a conversation that will help someone learn

1:21:39

some strategies and tactics to upgrade their own life

1:21:41

in that area. But I get people that are

1:21:43

like, do you want to interview Bill? Bill

1:21:46

started a real estate company that got really big.

1:21:48

And I'm like, I don't have a show about

1:21:50

people who start real estate companies that got big.

1:21:52

No, I don't want to interview Bill. I don't

1:21:54

even respond. But the number

1:21:56

of people who've actually taken the time to say, I get

1:21:59

what you want. and I have it

1:22:01

and here's why. I've had

1:22:03

multiple of those people on the show as a guest. All

1:22:06

right, last, last question, I promise. Since

1:22:08

you use Chartable so much, I need to

1:22:10

know how much you pay attention to the

1:22:13

new device retention graph in

1:22:15

Chartable. Do you look at that much? Retention

1:22:17

episode over episode or month over month? So

1:22:19

I have looked at it and the reason I

1:22:21

don't pay attention to it but I want to

1:22:23

now is that I don't

1:22:26

have a good baseline. So if I'm looking

1:22:28

at mine, the average

1:22:30

after next episode is 36.35%. I

1:22:36

don't know if that's good because

1:22:38

I have no idea what's normal. If they

1:22:40

had benchmarks, I would look at it a

1:22:42

lot. And so, you know, what I'll say,

1:22:44

here's what I'll say. If you have a

1:22:46

podcast out there and you want

1:22:48

to know how you're doing against the benchmark,

1:22:50

take a screenshot of your Chartable new device

1:22:53

retention episodic five episodes. Send

1:22:55

that screenshot to me, podcast

1:22:57

at allthehacks.com and

1:23:00

I will aggregate all of it, average

1:23:02

it out and send a benchmark. Maybe

1:23:04

send me also how many downloads for

1:23:06

episode you get so that if the

1:23:08

numbers are very different between show size,

1:23:10

we can split that out. And

1:23:13

I will use those benchmarks and share them with everyone.

1:23:16

I'll send them to you Jay, you can choose whether you want to

1:23:18

share them in a future episode also. But yeah,

1:23:20

so I don't, the reason I don't use them

1:23:22

is because I just don't have a good sense

1:23:24

of what perfection is. I

1:23:27

assume perfection is like 50%. I

1:23:30

don't think anyone's metrics are probably higher

1:23:32

than that unless you have a very small

1:23:34

show with a very loyal set of people

1:23:36

who never leave their house. I 100% agree.

1:23:39

I also really want to pay attention to this

1:23:42

because I'm feeling like I've ignored this for too

1:23:44

long. But everyone I've talked to so far says

1:23:46

when they look at this chart, they get depressed.

1:23:48

So the question is, is this

1:23:51

data hard to gather and difficult

1:23:53

to believe? Or

1:23:55

it's churn and podcast listeners so

1:23:57

much higher than we realize. I

1:24:00

don't know. I don't know the answer, but I

1:24:02

do know here's a here's a around the way

1:24:04

answer way to answer that question. I

1:24:07

know the average number of

1:24:09

downloads that I get on

1:24:11

different platforms. I know that on

1:24:13

Apple if I get 25,000 three 963 downloads, this is

1:24:18

a little bit a little bit old. But when I did this,

1:24:20

I had 30,975 subscribers, so about 31,000

1:24:25

subscribers, 26,000 downloads.

1:24:27

So from Apple, I

1:24:29

know that a very high percentage

1:24:31

of my downloads must be coming

1:24:34

from subscribers and most subscribers are

1:24:36

listening. Spotify of 5000 downloads,

1:24:40

they came from 46,000 subscribers.

1:24:44

So on Spotify, it's very clear that one

1:24:46

in nine people that subscribe are downloading each

1:24:48

time. And by the way, it could be

1:24:50

less because some people might not even be

1:24:52

subscribed. But on Apple, it's like seven

1:24:55

out of eight or something wild five

1:24:57

out of six. Very interesting. On

1:24:59

Castbox, it's two out of 40,000. So on Castbox,

1:25:04

it's you know, it's not

1:25:07

even close. So it's weird. I have more

1:25:09

subscribers on Castbox and you know, than

1:25:11

on Apple, but I have 10 times the number of

1:25:13

downloads on Apple. Wild. Alright,

1:25:15

Chris, this has been awesome. I feel like we'll probably

1:25:17

be giving folks listener exhaustion at this point. I could

1:25:19

keep talking about this, but I feel like we save

1:25:21

it for a part two. I hope

1:25:24

people do email you with their chartable retention

1:25:26

numbers. I have no idea why charitable doesn't

1:25:28

just aggregate a benchmark. That'd be so do

1:25:30

benchmarks for a lot of things for smart

1:25:32

promos. They do benchmarks. I wish they had

1:25:34

a benchmark for this number. If

1:25:36

I could get someone to try to will respond to my emails, I would

1:25:38

have them. They'd have to

1:25:40

build something to make this possible. Thanks

1:26:01

to Chris for being on the show. Thanks to

1:26:03

Emily Kloss for creating our artwork. Thank you Adam

1:26:05

Lockwood for editing this episode. I'd love to hear

1:26:07

what you think about it. You can find me

1:26:09

on Twitter or Instagram at JKloss. Just tag me

1:26:11

and let me know what you thought. And if

1:26:13

you really want to say thank you, please leave

1:26:15

a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Thanks

1:26:18

for listening. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks

1:26:30

for watching.