0:03

[Mark]: What was the podcasting industry like all those years ago when I first started? Ten

0:08

[Mark]: years ago, to be precise. And what does it take to run a podcast hosting platform and

0:14

[Mark]: try and keep on top of an educational podcast like the podcast accelerator? Well,

0:20

[Mark]: I figured I'd give you a look behind the curtain, go a little bit deeper into really

0:26

[Mark]: what it takes to kind of do all of these. podcasting endeavours and stay on top of it

0:31

[Mark]: whilst also keeping it fun because that of course can be the challenge but instead

0:38

[Mark]: of forcing you to listen to me harp on about the good old days of podcasting, how

0:43

[Mark]: it used to be and what it is like to do a few of the things that I do. decided to

0:49

[Mark]: bring on someone who loves podcasting probably more than I do. Someone who can truly

0:56

[Mark]: say he spends his time trying to make the industry better, enjoying the podcasting

1:01

[Mark]: industry and getting to know everyone within it. It is of course my wonderful co-host

1:05

[Mark]: and interviewer, Mr Danny Brown of course from Captivate, our fantastic head of support

1:12

[Mark]: and experience and the founder and host of the wonderful Pod Chat amongst many other

1:18

[Mark]: podcasts. What's up dude, how are you? [Danny Brown]: I'm good, I feel kind of strange sitting in Gary's seat, because normally it's

1:24

[Danny Brown]: you and Gary on the old Spark Rebellion and all the cool nerd stuff. So it

1:27

[Danny Brown]: feels kind of weird sat here. [Mark]: Well, you are a lot better looking than Gary, a lot more charming and of course a lot

1:36

[Mark]: funnier as well. So Gary, if you're listening to this, I mean everything. I mean

1:40

[Mark]: it all. But yeah, we're talking about the Star Wars show that Gaz and I do, which

1:44

[Mark]: is a hobby show, sparkrebellion.com. And this is weird because I'm going to put

1:48

[Mark]: this out the week commencing the 8th of May, but we're actually recording this on

1:53

[Mark]: May the 4th, dude. So happy Star Wars Day to you, my friend.

1:56

[Danny Brown]: Happy Star Wars Day. Many many years. What's that 40 plus years now? 77, 78?

2:02

[Danny Brown]: Good grief. [Mark]: Wow, it's insane. I actually went to watch Return of the Jedi as well in the cinema

2:05

[Mark]: the other day. It was fascinating to see. It was fantastic, man. Really loved it.

2:11

[Danny Brown]: That'd be cool to see that. And I saw there was like some little Funko toys

2:15

[Danny Brown]: there and some original Star Wars memorabilia.

2:19

[Mark]: Yeah, they were throwing all that out. And then a local guy to us, Matt Ferguson,

2:22

[Mark]: did the worldwide global poster for it, which is on Disney Plus as well. So he's

2:26

[Mark]: a guy from Sheffield, Matt Ferguson, does a lot with Disney, and it's just been

2:29

[Mark]: really nice to be a part of that. But something that we're a part of every single

2:32

[Mark]: day, of course, is the now big world, a bigger world of podcasting. And I just wanted

2:40

[Mark]: to bring on someone that I know, someone that I trust, someone that I class as a friend,

2:44

[Mark]: someone that I knew would do a good job of chatting through. what it's like to

2:49

[Mark]: do the things that we do in podcasting, just so I had the chance to, I think, share

2:53

[Mark]: some of the things that I rarely get to share. So I wanna thank you for doing this,

2:55

[Mark]: mate, but I'm actually, I'm just gonna hand over to you. I'm gonna let you run the

2:59

[Mark]: podcast accelerator. So for you, the ever-present listener, you're in fine, safe

3:06

[Mark]: hands with Mr. Danny Brown. [Danny Brown]: Thank you, Mark, and I will try not to break your show.

3:12

[Mark]: Hahaha. [Danny Brown]: So yeah, I think what I'm looking forward to is picking your brain about, obviously,

3:17

[Danny Brown]: you've been in podcasting for 10 years, at least now. You've got the scars

3:21

[Danny Brown]: and gray hair starting to show for it. So I'm sure you've got a lot to talk

3:24

[Danny Brown]: about. And I know with the podcast accelerator relaunching, it's a good opportunity.

3:29

[Danny Brown]: So kind of a catch up of the show, the industry, what's coming down the

3:32

[Danny Brown]: line, that kind of stuff. So thanks for inviting me on to be that kind of

3:36

[Danny Brown]: co-host for this episode. [Mark]: It's a pleasure, there's been a lot of change just even in the hiatus the year

3:42

[Mark]: off from this show so it's been a big a big industry shift you know a lot of things

3:48

[Mark]: kind of been tweaked some things have stayed the same that I think will inevitably

3:51

[Mark]: always stay the same but yeah I'm looking forward to digging him.

3:55

[Danny Brown]: Yeah, and also the show, I mean, it's four years old now this month. So Happy

3:59

[Danny Brown]: Birthday Podcast Accelerator, [Mark]: Thank

4:01

[Danny Brown]: probably [Mark]: you. [Danny Brown]: about the same age as Cactiway, I would have thought. Four years old, 2019,

4:05

[Danny Brown]: and it's got over [Mark]: Do you know what? [Danny Brown]: 300 episodes. [Mark]: Yeah, sorry to interrupt on that. You're right. That shocked me a little bit. I forgot

4:10

[Mark]: about that. Yeah, we launched Captivate into like an alpha. Ian Anderson-Gray started.

4:15

[Mark]: He was the first user on Captivate. And I forced Kieran to let him on in April

4:20

[Mark]: 2019 when Kieran had gone on holiday. I was like, it'll be fine. Just let Ian on.

4:24

[Mark]: It'll be all right. So yeah, that's weird. And actually, I think on May the 4th

4:29

[Mark]: as well, Spark Rebellion launched as well in 2019, which is.

4:34

[Danny Brown]: Wow. [Mark]: Yeah, how bizarre. Never thought of any of that.

4:37

[Danny Brown]: a lot of birthdays and obviously your little girl who obviously we'll mention

4:41

[Danny Brown]: later, little Dory, she must be approaching her first birthday now I think,

4:44

[Danny Brown]: or over her [Mark]: Oh [Danny Brown]: first [Mark]: she's [Danny Brown]: birthday. [Mark]: beyond it, she's 15 months in 20 days, which is

4:48

[Danny Brown]: Oh my [Mark]: terrifying. [Danny Brown]: lord. So as I mentioned, I mean, congratulations, happy birthday on the fourth

4:54

[Danny Brown]: anniversary, fourth birthday of podcast accelerator. What was the initial

4:59

[Danny Brown]: goal when you initially launched the show and how has that changed over time

5:03

[Danny Brown]: for map ideas, etc.

5:08

[Mark]: I think for me, the goal has always been the same with any kind of content that

5:11

[Mark]: I've put out and not only content, but any kind of product that I've put out, whether

5:15

[Mark]: that's my original excellence expected content, whether that is podcast websites,

5:19

[Mark]: which we still have and we still run, whether it's Captivate, whether the Accelerator,

5:23

[Mark]: my old shows, or Seven Minute Mentor, Spark Rebellion. Number one, first and foremost,

5:28

[Mark]: to have fun. We've both been in corporate, we've both been in jobs that we're not keen

5:32

[Mark]: on. We've both, even when I wasn't in corporate, I left the corporate world. 18 years

5:38

[Mark]: ago now, which is terrifying. And even, even, even having clients at an agency, you

5:46

[Mark]: do a lot of work that you really just aren't that keen on because it's just the way

5:51

[Mark]: of having your own business. So everything, my entire goal, the whole thing and the whole

5:55

[Mark]: idea for me in podcasting was to get into this thing because I love it. Similar

6:00

[Mark]: to you get into this thing because I actually love it. And I'd still podcast. you

6:04

[Mark]: know, even if I didn't work in it. And in fact, I have podcasted, even though I've

6:07

[Mark]: had the podcast accelerator down for a year. I've still done Spike Rebellion. I've

6:10

[Mark]: done the new show, It's How Old, which you kindly shared yesterday, which is launching

6:14

[Mark]: shortly. So for me, it was very much about like, find that fun first. And then when

6:19

[Mark]: it comes to, you know, can we make a living from it? Let's see how that goes. And

6:24

[Mark]: I've always been quite sensible with that. So when it came to launching the podcast

6:28

[Mark]: accelerator, it was sort of a continuation of that. And it was really focused on Like

6:34

[Mark]: you know me, I'm pretty anti-guru. I think there's a lot of people that see an opportunity

6:38

[Mark]: in industries or in things that are doing well, dive in, sell a load of snake oil

6:43

[Mark]: and smoke and mirrors, and then bail again. Like you see all the time, the people

6:47

[Mark]: in 2008 that were social media gurus, 18 months ago were NFT gurus and guess what?

6:53

[Mark]: Now they're AI gurus and each one of them has been a podcasting guru and people

6:58

[Mark]: like that are cropping up all the time. So for me, with the accelerator, it was sort

7:02

[Mark]: of a different offer. It was. almost a promise of no hyperbole, no BS, no like getting

7:12

[Mark]: over excited about things that might be a flash in the pan, getting over excited,

7:16

[Mark]: like remember Clubhouse, like we're not

7:19

[Danny Brown]: Yeah. [Mark]: getting excited about that, we didn't get excited about that, we did it sensibly.

7:24

[Mark]: So it was very much a way of keeping things grounded, but also I think an important

7:30

[Mark]: aspect of this is, I podcast, I've done... I don't know, 1,300, 1,400 episodes of varying

7:36

[Mark]: podcasts, plus countless interviews on other people's podcasts at this point. And

7:42

[Mark]: it was very important for me to understand that I'm a podcaster, but actually what I really

7:46

[Mark]: do is I'm a product guy. I'm a sort of lapsed developer and I'm really a brand

7:53

[Mark]: marketer. I'm not a technical marketer, I'm more of a brand marketer. So all of those

7:57

[Mark]: skills, maybe outside of the development part. are really things that people need to

8:04

[Mark]: grow their podcast. So it was how can I fulfill all the promises, no BS, no hyperbole,

8:09

[Mark]: no getting people excited about things, thinking it's a silver bullet, or I'm gonna

8:12

[Mark]: 10X this and 50X this if you just sign up for my 97 bucks a month course. But how

8:18

[Mark]: can I also take all these things that I do every day with Captivate and that I've

8:22

[Mark]: done for the last 18 years for myself and bring them to podcasters because they are

8:27

[Mark]: skills that podcasters need, even though... No one tells you that they need them. So it

8:31

[Mark]: was, that's the goal with the accelerator. And I've tried different formats. I've tried

8:35

[Mark]: short form, long form, we do interviews and it's about being adaptable. So that was

8:40

[Mark]: the goal was to just give some no BS education from the other, you know, I suppose

8:47

[Mark]: the elements of what I do for a living that people don't see when they see me on a

8:51

[Mark]: podcast because they don't realize I do these, you know, the actual nine to five

8:55

[Mark]: is this stuff. Bring that to podcasters, help them to learn from it. and be there to

9:00

[Mark]: answer questions without trying to sell them anything. So yeah, that part of it is

9:03

[Mark]: important. [Danny Brown]: And you'd mention, obviously, experimentation with formats, length, frequency.

9:09

[Danny Brown]: I mentioned you've had over 300, 332 episodes, I think, if I've got the exact

9:13

[Danny Brown]: number right, in the space of four years, which is more than one episode

9:17

[Danny Brown]: a week, if you do it on an average. So you were very, very busy, for want of a

9:23

[Danny Brown]: better word, with the show and all the other stuff. You've got Captivate,

9:26

[Danny Brown]: you've got your other hobbyist podcast, et cetera. But it went silent for

9:30

[Danny Brown]: a year, a complete year. It just went switched off. And you did publish an episode.

9:34

[Danny Brown]: about taking a hiatus back last April, I think maybe March. And it did go quiet

9:39

[Danny Brown]: for a whole year. And you launched, relaunched with a bonus episode last week about,

9:44

[Danny Brown]: you know, they talked a bit about the hiatus, you know, why you took it. And

9:48

[Danny Brown]: you actually mentioned that you had come super, super close to actually just

9:52

[Danny Brown]: closing it all down, switching it off, sending out a final episode. But you

9:56

[Danny Brown]: changed your mind and here you are with the new revamped relaunch show. And

10:00

[Danny Brown]: I know you're, you know, you've got a lot of ideas for how that's gonna look.

10:04

[Danny Brown]: with a new format. So what changed your mind? What excited you again about this,

10:08

[Danny Brown]: the short and your insights?

10:13

[Mark]: I think the thing that excited me about bringing the accelerator back, and I do want

10:16

[Mark]: to kind of bookend this with, and I mentioned this in the episode last week, I

10:21

[Mark]: legitimately recorded a This Is Finished Goodbye episode. I recorded it, I wrote the

10:27

[Mark]: script for it, I'd done everything. I think the reason that I brought it back and

10:33

[Mark]: the reason that I couldn't bring myself to publish that was, I've always got something

10:37

[Mark]: to say. You know me, I'm always pretty mouthy and I still do a lot of other people's

10:40

[Mark]: podcasts. But I was just burnt out. You know, the reason I took the hiatus that

10:45

[Mark]: I mentioned in last week's bonus episode was I was simply burnt out. There's only so

10:49

[Mark]: much content you can do about the same sort of thing. So I think I had to restock

10:55

[Mark]: the mind a little bit on actually what is important to people? What do people want

11:00

[Mark]: to hear from me? But also it was, we had a lot of transition. behind the scenes,

11:07

[Mark]: even probably you didn't see it as even part of Captivate, you know, when we integrated

11:12

[Mark]: with Global, there's just a lot of things that you've got to do, just stuff that, you

11:17

[Mark]: know, with the best will in the world, you wanna put an episode out on a Monday, which

11:21

[Mark]: is like the worst time to publish an episode, because it's Monday. And that was,

11:25

[Mark]: I think, highlighted by the fact that someone just needed something from me on a

11:29

[Mark]: Monday. So there was that element to it where I thought, I thought, look, enough

11:38

[Mark]: time has passed now where we can, you know, we're integrated well into global. We've

11:42

[Mark]: got brilliant product releases. We've got a mega release coming out next week with

11:47

[Mark]: Captivate, which is a huge release, which we'll talk about after it's been released.

11:51

[Mark]: But the ability to do the day-to-day stuff, the stuff that I enjoy doing, has come

11:57

[Mark]: back a little bit more flexibly because that major integration... Interglobal was done.

12:02

[Mark]: Also, of course, I had such a big personal year with Doc being born and just kind of helping

12:09

[Mark]: Sam through that transition, me going through that transition and just the bandwidth

12:15

[Mark]: and the brain space required to produce good content, it just wasn't there. And I think

12:20

[Mark]: this is the thing. I went through so many changes with the podcast Accelerator because

12:26

[Mark]: I wanted to keep producing good content. And to me, that was reflective of how the industry

12:30

[Mark]: shifted. Like I started with a, I think it was a daily show and then a five, five times

12:34

[Mark]: a week show and then twice a week. And it went from short form to getting progressively

12:38

[Mark]: longer to the point where when I stopped the show and went on hiatus last year, it was

12:44

[Mark]: very long form. You know, there are some eight, 9,000 word pieces that I recorded

12:48

[Mark]: as audio, which are great, but they require a day to do. And that to me was reflective

12:55

[Mark]: of like where the industry went. There's enough podcasts now that you can get content

12:59

[Mark]: on anything that you want. So in order to stand out, you've got to be really good.

13:02

[Mark]: And that was that evolution of the accelerator was short form was good. Back then, it didn't

13:06

[Mark]: have to be as well thought out and well planned because I still had a lot of good to

13:10

[Mark]: give and a lot of value and a lot of actionable stuff. But as the industry has progressed

13:15

[Mark]: and more listeners come on board and the industry started to fracture in some ways,

13:20

[Mark]: but unifying in other ways. I had to just keep refining that and refining that.

13:24

[Mark]: And I didn't... Last year when I went on the hiatus, it was sort of a, how do I keep

13:31

[Mark]: delivering this really good content at a time where we've got a new child, we are

13:38

[Mark]: integrating into a much, much bigger business than ours that thankfully leaves us

13:42

[Mark]: alone, you know, we still, we were pretty autonomous, we do great work for everyone,

13:47

[Mark]: but still requires my attention. How do I give the best content to the listener?

13:50

[Mark]: It just wasn't fair. to give substandard content. Like I'm pretty open with that. And

13:55

[Mark]: I think part of, part of the responsibility as someone that educates in podcasting is to

14:03

[Mark]: be really open and honest when you can't give good content out because there are that

14:07

[Mark]: many podcasters out there that think I wanna do great content, but I just don't

14:13

[Mark]: have the time to do it. What should I do? Should I stop? Should I carry on? Should

14:16

[Mark]: I hate this? And I think I could have sort of BSed my way through it. and produced

14:23

[Mark]: content that other people would have thought was good enough, but I wouldn't have

14:29

[Mark]: been happy with it. And I didn't see the point in doing like, you know, let you

14:35

[Mark]: carry on with PodChat because it's brilliant content. Let the other people that are passionate

14:40

[Mark]: about the industry give that amazing content at a time when I wasn't able to do

14:44

[Mark]: it because there's enough space for everyone. So. What I think what reignited me

14:49

[Mark]: was, you know, all that burden disappearing, you know, we settled into every... all the

14:53

[Mark]: new facets of life have been settled into now. And I had people asking, you know,

15:01

[Mark]: I literally had people asking. Two things actually, when are you coming back? Brilliant.

15:05

[Mark]: That was amazing to hear. The second thing was, I got people asking, Mark, what

15:12

[Mark]: do you think about this? So it might be like, what do you think about YouTube and

15:17

[Mark]: podcasting? What do you think about this course I've been offered? What do you

15:20

[Mark]: think about this sponsorship deal? What do you think about X, Y and Z? And I get a

15:24

[Mark]: lot of emails and DMs about this all the time. And I thought to myself, people still

15:30

[Mark]: seem to want that straight talking advice. You know, they're not looking for the, you

15:36

[Mark]: know, like when someone asks what microphone to buy, they're not looking for the, well,

15:39

[Mark]: here are 10 and I'm not going to commit to one in case it's wrong and you think I'm

15:42

[Mark]: an idiot. I'm not that guy, I'm the other guy that's like, well, these nine aren't

15:47

[Mark]: very good, use this one. You know, I'm very straight talking with that and people

15:52

[Mark]: seem to want that and the appetite didn't disappear. I'll tell you what's fascinating,

15:57

[Mark]: a lot of people think that when you go on hiatus you lose all your listeners. You

16:01

[Mark]: do not. I've had the highest download episode last week when I put the bonus episode

16:07

[Mark]: out, the first six hours were the highest downloads. that I've seen across the show and

16:14

[Mark]: that's with barely any promo. [Danny Brown]: Hmm. [Mark]: It wasn't featured in pod news on that day. There was nothing special about it. I've

16:21

[Mark]: had the highest number of downloads and the back catalog has continued to grow.

16:27

[Mark]: It has continued to receive downloads that the high just that hiatus episode that

16:32

[Mark]: I put out like March 22, April 2022. Thousands of people listen to it, which is

16:39

[Mark]: styling and that's continued to grow. So I think that was the final factor was that

16:44

[Mark]: the appetite was still there. Because I will tell you this just to long windedly

16:48

[Mark]: finish up this answer. The landscape gets busy. All right. Everyone now has an opinion

16:56

[Mark]: on podcasting and you know, there are podcasts about podcasting and how to grow your

17:00

[Mark]: podcast and this, that and the other. And I think one of the other things that I

17:03

[Mark]: didn't mention in that episode last week was sort of maybe the feeling that I didn't

17:12

[Mark]: have enough to say to compete with all that other stuff because a lot of people, like

17:17

[Mark]: there's great people in the industry like yourself and a lot of people like Ariel

17:21

[Mark]: and people like James and Sam and putting out really good content, but there's a lot

17:24

[Mark]: of crap. There's a lot of people that have got really dodgy clickbait titles that

17:29

[Mark]: are podcasts about podcasting. And I thought to myself, can I really be bothered

17:34

[Mark]: trying to quote unquote compete with that? And I just thought, no, there's no point,

17:40

[Mark]: you know? And that changed. That changed this year when I realized I got my bandwidth

17:45

[Mark]: back. I've got everything back that I needed. I'd seen people asking for it. And

17:49

[Mark]: I thought, do you know what? It turns out people do want that straight talk. And

17:53

[Mark]: so, you know, sort of screw the gurus. I'm going to come back and be a pain in their

17:58

[Mark]: neck again. So, yeah, a long winded answer. But there was a lot to that. It's quite

18:03

[Mark]: a, it's quite a thinker that, you know. [Danny Brown]: And I think to that point, it goes back to your ethos of putting only quality

18:12

[Danny Brown]: content out, not just being like the other 20, 30, 40 podcasters that talk about

18:16

[Danny Brown]: podcasting, which shows, you know, if you've got quality evergreen content,

18:20

[Danny Brown]: the audience will remain. You build up a loyal audience because they trust

18:23

[Danny Brown]: your content beforehand. They'll remain there for you, but you mentioned, obviously,

18:28

[Danny Brown]: they're waiting for that to come back. That's awesome to hear. We talked about,

18:32

[Danny Brown]: obviously, that the show is four years old. but you've been in the industry

18:35

[Danny Brown]: for 10 years, let's call it a good old simple decade, a nice decade, nice

18:39

[Danny Brown]: round number. And there must have been some, well we know there's been some

18:43

[Danny Brown]: changes, but for you specifically, what have you seen really different between

18:48

[Danny Brown]: podcasting today and podcasting in 2013?

18:53

[Mark]: There are so many things that have changed in the last 10 years, I think, of me being

18:56

[Mark]: in podcasting. The first thing I think that has remained, that's the first place to

19:01

[Mark]: start, I think, is the sense of community. I remember going to NMX in 2015 when we were

19:06

[Mark]: just, we'd just, we'd launch podcast websites, maybe two months before, 18th of

19:12

[Mark]: February. 2015, we launched podcast websites. And no one knew me. You know, I went

19:18

[Mark]: out and spoke there. I spoke at podcast movement that the year I spoke at NME, NMEU,

19:24

[Mark]: Mike and Isabella's gig 2015 and the community has remained. That was the big thing

19:31

[Mark]: that struck me. That's what sold me on podcasting. You know, prior to that, I was

19:35

[Mark]: at 2013 was myself and Gaz with our original show, Two Shots of the Head, Geek

19:39

[Mark]: Culture, DC stuff, brilliant. really loved that show, just like really loved doing

19:44

[Mark]: it, but it was a laugh, it was a hobby. And then 2014, I started my own personally

19:47

[Mark]: branded show, which led to where we are today, being as a direct path between all

19:52

[Mark]: of that. So the big thing that got me hooked on podcasting was the community, but

19:58

[Mark]: in particular, the independent community. So I went to an NMX. Yeah, I went to NMX in

20:06

[Mark]: 2015 and there was Rob was there, Elsie was there, Todd, Rob Greenlee, Jess. Pretty

20:17

[Mark]: much that's it. I can remember, obviously just eat and drink with them. I met Jonathan

20:22

[Mark]: Oakes from Trivia Warfare who just started his show. So he's coming up on nearly a decade

20:26

[Mark]: as well. Ramona Rice, a few other people, Jordan Harbinger, Pat Flynn, you know, all

20:33

[Mark]: those people. were there and I was sold on this sense of community. No one knew me

20:38

[Mark]: but everyone embraced me. And it was the same and I've always tried to foster that.

20:43

[Mark]: So that's the thing that stayed the same amongst independent creators. That's why

20:47

[Mark]: I did so much travel and so many conferences because of that. The thing that has changed,

20:51

[Mark]: there's a number of different things. You and I have spoken about it before, and

20:57

[Mark]: I've written about this, bloody heck I wrote about this about six years ago, the

21:00

[Mark]: fracturing of the industry, and I wrote a piece a while ago, The Gap Between Indians

21:04

[Mark]: and Big Podcasting. And this idea that the 99% of podcasting is made up of independents

21:10

[Mark]: like you and I, trying to make our way in this hobbyist world. And then there's media,

21:15

[Mark]: there's The Wondery, Wondery was like for me the big company that came in and- really

21:20

[Mark]: set out their stall as being, we are a media company creating things with diverse

21:25

[Mark]: IP that can then be made into other things. It's not just a podcast. And we've

21:29

[Mark]: seen that much more wildly now. So whether it's, you know, whether it's Grim and Mild

21:34

[Mark]: with Aaron, whether it's, you know. Pineapple Street, obviously Wondery purchased

21:39

[Mark]: by Amazon, all the Spotify originals, Globals owned and operated stuff, the stuff,

21:46

[Mark]: First Action Bureau by Jerry Anderson's crew, Jamie and his team. This is all IP that

21:52

[Mark]: has been created to be media. And that's been the big thing because people worried about

21:57

[Mark]: that. Like in 2017, I remember doing a talk at Podcast Movement. when all this really

22:01

[Mark]: started to kick off, you know, serial was out, Sarah Koenig was the keynote or PM

22:06

[Mark]: in maybe Chicago, maybe Fort Worth, maybe the one maybe where Kevin Smith was at,

22:13

[Mark]: which was like geek heaven for me, I loved that. And it was, that was the time when

22:19

[Mark]: Indies like You and Me and The Hobbiest that have got like 200 downloads an episode

22:24

[Mark]: really started getting worried. And all these questions started coming out. What

22:27

[Mark]: does this mean for me? How do I grow my show? How do I monetize? Then you had like,

22:31

[Mark]: and there's nothing wrong with this, even though it's going to sound like there

22:36

[Mark]: is like the entrepreneur crew that was like, oh yeah, you can make a pile of money

22:40

[Mark]: from podcasting. Eh, eh, you can, but I can make a pile of money from being a brickie.

22:44

[Mark]: I can make a pile of money from tech. I can make a pile of money from golf. I can

22:47

[Mark]: make a pile of money from anything that I put all the practice time, effort and professionalism

22:51

[Mark]: into. That's not like, that's not rocket science or wizardry, is it? So that element

22:58

[Mark]: fractured it where big podcasting came around. And then the second thing that happened

23:02

[Mark]: around the same time for me, and this is another big change, is tech started getting

23:07

[Mark]: interested. So like VCs, and we've had it with Captivate, you know, I still get it

23:11

[Mark]: today, would you like investment for Captivate? No, I'm good. And people trying

23:16

[Mark]: to buy tech, and we saw all these crazy acquisitions, we saw Simplecast, we saw Stitcher.

23:22

[Mark]: change hands, we've seen all sorts, glow, we've seen obviously, captivate become

23:27

[Mark]: part of global. And all of these acquisitions. made the industry interest into people that

23:37

[Mark]: thought they wanted to be in an industry where they could make a quick book. And that

23:43

[Mark]: was the big change. Now it's a bit different, you know, that I think I actually think in

23:46

[Mark]: the last year that's changed. Maybe we'll get to that. But so we saw all that go

23:51

[Mark]: ahead and that scared a lot of the independent people. Those people, the very same people

23:55

[Mark]: like embraced me through community were worried. What does this mean? So I think in

24:04

[Mark]: short, the way to summarize that is when I got into podcasting, it was. It was

24:11

[Mark]: the best way to phrase this. It was a media that had a foot in different industries.

24:18

[Mark]: So what I mean by that is it was sort of like I can create my own content. This is

24:22

[Mark]: great and anyone can listen to it and it doesn't matter what I talk about because

24:25

[Mark]: it's my podcast, but it's not an industry as such. There's a little bit of ad revenue.

24:30

[Mark]: There's maybe like 180,000 shows. But we're really like in the tech industry, because

24:38

[Mark]: we're a hosting company like Libsyn or whatever. Or we're like a radio company,

24:43

[Mark]: so we're in the radio industry. But now, podcasting is the industry. It employs

24:50

[Mark]: that many people and it's the, if you're a digital marketer, you've probably got, for

24:57

[Mark]: if you work for a large enough company, a budget for podcast sponsorships where you

25:01

[Mark]: didn't before. The whole programmatic side has really matured. the whole way that

25:05

[Mark]: we measure things continues to mature. So I think that's the big change. It's become

25:12

[Mark]: an actual bonafide industry. And there's a lot that goes along with that, but I think

25:19

[Mark]: that's the biggest change. There's a lot of sort of sub headers beneath that, but

25:22

[Mark]: that's the headline, I think. And I think one of the pieces of advice that I think

25:32

[Mark]: I would give to anyone getting into podcasting is to sort of ignore that. Like

25:41

[Mark]: if you create a YouTube channel, you don't think, oh my word, I'm not gonna create

25:45

[Mark]: a YouTube channel because it'll never grow because Netflix exists or movies. You

25:51

[Mark]: know, so why would you, I get people all the time and you'll be the same, wow, is

25:55

[Mark]: podcasting too busy? Is it too late to start a podcast? I know, of course not,

25:59

[Mark]: we better stop writing books. If that's the way you think, you know, we better stop

26:03

[Mark]: making new films or. better stop creating new Netflix series. All right, it's not, it's

26:08

[Mark]: not about that. And it baffles me, especially the hobbyists. You know, a lot of people get

26:14

[Mark]: into podcasting and ask genuinely as hobbyists, and they'll say, is it too late?

26:21

[Mark]: Are these good numbers? I'm like, well, if you decide to play golf, right, if your

26:24

[Mark]: neighbor comes around and says, do you wanna go out for a knock? You say, well, I've

26:26

[Mark]: never played before. And they say, well, here's some spare clubs. Let's get into it.

26:31

[Mark]: You are literally not gonna go home the next day and go, right. time to create,

26:36

[Mark]: grow and monetize my golf game. [Danny Brown]: I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

26:38

[Mark]: You're just not, it's like, it's nuts. And it's so, I think that's another thing that's

26:44

[Mark]: been a, like a bit of a, almost like running with a parachute on. It holds a lot

26:51

[Mark]: of people back, this idea that you have to monetize the thing. When we all know that

26:58

[Mark]: to monetize something, you've just got to be passionate about it, because then you

27:02

[Mark]: get good at it, you know. competence leads to confidence and confidence leads to

27:08

[Mark]: consistency and consistency leads to people starting to notice you and people noticing

27:14

[Mark]: you leads to money and that's just like marketing. So yeah, that's been such a huge

27:21

[Mark]: shift, people worrying about it's now an industry, is it too late for me to get into

27:27

[Mark]: it? How do I make money doing it? And you know, better than anyone else, you know,

27:31

[Mark]: the way that you build fandom and the way that you make money from fandom is like

27:35

[Mark]: to genuinely focus on building fans and friends. And to bring this right back to

27:41

[Mark]: the beginning of the question and the answer, like that's what people were doing

27:47

[Mark]: back then is embracing the people around them and building them as an audience and friendship

27:52

[Mark]: group and so on and so forth. So it's sort of ironic because a lot has changed, but

27:55

[Mark]: so much has stayed the same. [Danny Brown]: I wonder if part of that is down to, and I know you've spoken about this before,

28:02

[Danny Brown]: we see the community, the community is awesome, but you also see maybe some old

28:06

[Danny Brown]: guard podcasters or old guard tech leaders, etc. The industry is what you

28:14

[Danny Brown]: mentioned as the teenage stage. You know, we've gone past the baby steps, etc.

28:17

[Danny Brown]: We've sort of got a, we're a foothold in the media entertainment industry.

28:21

[Danny Brown]: We know what podcasting is, what it wants to achieve, what we want to achieve.

28:25

[Danny Brown]: But it's still very much all down to... you need an RSS feed with a podcast

28:29

[Danny Brown]: host or some kind of hosting solution and an MP3 file for your audio. And

28:34

[Danny Brown]: that stayed pretty much the same since the first days of podcasting. And I wonder

28:39

[Danny Brown]: if that reliance on RSS or the idea of reliance on RSS might be holding the

28:47

[Danny Brown]: industry back when it comes to new podcasts coming on, other companies getting

28:51

[Danny Brown]: involved, et cetera. Do you think that's the case or? You think that we're just

28:56

[Danny Brown]: talking about or concentrating on the wrong thing there? [Mark]: Well, someone's after some social media clips, aren't they?

29:03

[Danny Brown]: Ha ha [Mark]: I like this. [Mark]: I think the idea of RSS being at the centre of podcasting is brilliant and open

29:12

[Mark]: podcasting is super important. Captivate supports that through podcasting 2.0 and being

29:16

[Mark]: part of the PSP, whether you agree with those initiatives or not, there's no harm in

29:21

[Mark]: them at the minute. [Mark]: does an RSS feed harm the growth of podcasting? I wouldn't say so because, like,

29:32

[Mark]: sort of who cares as a listener or as a tech company? So take someone like Spotify.

29:39

[Mark]: And I've said this before in interviews. I wrote a piece ages ago, like five years ago,

29:44

[Mark]: saying that Spotify did not need RSS feeds and, you know, maybe they wouldn't use

29:48

[Mark]: them in the future. And I got absolutely battered by all of the... People that are friends,

29:54

[Mark]: that's the irony. You know, you're silly, you're naive, you don't know podcasts, and

29:58

[Mark]: they're like, you don't know tech. You know, and it was, guess what? Spotify don't

30:03

[Mark]: need RSS feeds, they don't. Neither does any player. They could choose to accept

30:09

[Mark]: via any other method, whether it's JSON, which they wouldn't do because it's pointless,

30:13

[Mark]: it's essentially an RSS feed again if, you know, for all intents and purposes. They

30:18

[Mark]: could choose to ingest via API. that it literally makes no difference to the listener

30:24

[Mark]: experience whatsoever. But it's not podcasting, right? So I see this on two hands.

30:37

[Mark]: On the first hand, I see the people forging ahead without RSS regardless. And so

30:41

[Mark]: people like Spotify, who cares? They're just going to do what they're going to do and

30:43

[Mark]: they're going to do it really well. And guess what? I'm really sorry to say, but

30:46

[Mark]: they are going to make money and get users doing it. because it's not a bad experience.

30:53

[Mark]: And you get a lot of people, I don't like listening to podcasts in Spotify because

30:57

[Mark]: it's not the best podcast app. My mom doesn't care. She ain't downloading Overcast

31:02

[Mark]: or Pocket Casts or Good Pods. She's got an iPhone, she doesn't even know Apple

31:06

[Mark]: Podcast is on there. And I ain't telling her because she thinks I work with computers.

31:10

[Mark]: So that's just a wasted Sunday. So the point is that it... The tech companies that

31:16

[Mark]: are going to do it will take the lambasting that they will get and they've weathered it

31:20

[Mark]: before, they will continue to weather anything that the industry throws at them because

31:24

[Mark]: they know what users do. That's the annoying thing to a lot of people in podcasting

31:30

[Mark]: is that people like Spotify come along and they know what users do because they're

31:36

[Mark]: really good at it, because they're massive and they've got billions and billions and billions

31:42

[Mark]: of events logged and data points tracked to analyze. So of course, you know, they're

31:49

[Mark]: going to forge ahead without RSS. That said.

31:54

[Mark]: The goal of podcasting and the point of originally being a podcaster was to syndicate

32:00

[Mark]: things yourself using an open RSS feed that anyone can read using a simple reader

32:07

[Mark]: and that should and will not ever go away. And that's fine. And that is how it should

32:15

[Mark]: be and it will continue to develop. It relies on a lot of other things developing,

32:20

[Mark]: so the apps developing, hosting companies like Captivate developing. standardization

32:26

[Mark]: which is sort of happening. It relies on users like caring which is the classic tech

32:34

[Mark]: adoption curve. They're not going to care for a long, long time that we've introduced

32:37

[Mark]: a new feature. They don't care. They don't care about value for value. What the

32:39

[Mark]: hell's that? Just give me some money. You know, that's like again, you know, my mom

32:44

[Mark]: doesn't care. Like take it down the next level. My brother who was more tech literate

32:48

[Mark]: and you know, much more tech savvy than my mom. Go and spend this Satoshi. go do what?

32:56

[Mark]: Alright, ok, well it's sort of like a pound, but imagine if a pound was really

33:03

[Mark]: not worth that much and you needed loads of them, and you can't really grab them. So

33:10

[Mark]: you know that sandwich you're going to get at dinner time, you can't get it with

33:13

[Mark]: that, sorry mate. He's not fussed, he don't want to do that. So to him it's transient,

33:18

[Mark]: it's like yeah that's cool, that's for the geeks. And that's a standard adoption curve,

33:21

[Mark]: like that always happens, look at Uber 10 years you know, to versus where it is now.

33:26

[Mark]: Look at podcasting 10 years ago, look at AI, look at the blockchain at large, you

33:32

[Mark]: know, so that's not, there's nothing wrong with that. That's just the normal adoption

33:35

[Mark]: curve. It's the cutting edge people, the early adopters and so on, and that's just

33:40

[Mark]: how adoption works. So I don't think RSS hinders it. I don't think RSS is going

33:46

[Mark]: away. I think we... all need to probably stop whining about the fact that it's not a

33:52

[Mark]: quote unquote podcast if it doesn't have an RSS feed because

33:59

[Mark]: like that is something that will hold our thinking back and I'm not saying we get

34:03

[Mark]: rid of RSS I would never say that like what would I do for work but the point is that

34:09

[Mark]: we can't I don't think we can close our minds and our thought processes down by

34:16

[Mark]: saying that this is not the thing because So here's the irony of that. If you start saying

34:24

[Mark]: things like, it's not a podcast unless these conditions are met, and this coming from

34:29

[Mark]: a big, big, big advocate for open podcasting and RSS feeds, but if you start saying things

34:35

[Mark]: like that and you advocate for the open podcast ecosystem, by saying things like that,

34:41

[Mark]: you become the gatekeeper

34:44

[Danny Brown]: Hmm. [Mark]: that you never... ever said should exist. You are Anakin Skywalker becoming the very

34:49

[Mark]: thing that you said you were going to destroy. And that's the problem. That you,

34:54

[Mark]: the balance is so tough with that. And I think the only way that we can solve that

34:59

[Mark]: is to continue to be open minded and say, look, you know what, maybe 10 years ago,

35:05

[Mark]: podcasts couldn't do this thing. And whatever that was, like, oh, podcasts don't

35:09

[Mark]: have adverts. Podcasts don't have programmatic adverts. Well, not right now they don't, but

35:17

[Mark]: who knows what's going to happen? Who knows where they're going to be in 10 more

35:20

[Mark]: years time? So yeah, an interesting, insightful question. And I think to summarise

35:26

[Mark]: it, we shouldn't get too caught up on RSS. It's in its rightful place. It can develop,

35:31

[Mark]: it will develop. And that is the core of open podcasting, which should and will remain

35:36

[Mark]: for the vast majority of podcasters. However, those that feel less strongly about

35:42

[Mark]: open podcasting far less stronger than you and I do and the other hosting friends

35:46

[Mark]: that we've got, they will forge ahead regardless of RSS and that just comes down

35:51

[Mark]: to that fracture that we talked about between indie and big podcasting and that's

35:56

[Mark]: just the way of the world. It's just tech. That's the way it goes. So interesting.

36:02

[Mark]: Maybe we'll do this again in 10 years. [Danny Brown]: I might still have some hair by then.

36:08

[Mark]: I won't mate, definitely not. [Danny Brown]: It does remind me though, and I'm glad you mentioned the open podcast project.

36:15

[Danny Brown]: I can know you've got the podcast in 2.0. We are involved in the podcast standards

36:19

[Danny Brown]: project, et cetera. And it does kind of go back to the community where we should

36:24

[Danny Brown]: always should be thinking about as a listener in the community. What's the

36:26

[Danny Brown]: benefit to them? They don't care about what happens behind the scenes. It's

36:30

[Danny Brown]: like if you go to the movie theater and you watch a 3D movie. you get the 3D specs,

36:35

[Danny Brown]: it looks amazing. I went to see the original avatar, and that just blew me

36:38

[Danny Brown]: away. Like the 3D, that was probably one of the best, only good one about 3D. But

36:42

[Danny Brown]: as a watcher, I don't care that you need X amount of lenses, you need them

36:47

[Danny Brown]: all focused at the same time, you need these colors lined up, et cetera.

36:50

[Danny Brown]: I just have to put on the glasses, and I've got 3D. So it's like podcasting. I

36:55

[Danny Brown]: open my app, or I press play on our web player, and that's it, I'm good

36:58

[Danny Brown]: to go. So I think, yeah, it's like you say, I'm hoping that, you know. the

37:04

[Danny Brown]: vocal counter advocates, if you like, I guess, aren't the ones that are listened

37:11

[Danny Brown]: to the most, because I think that would maybe, you know, possibly hinder

37:15

[Danny Brown]: the industry as far as audience and listener benefits go.

37:19

[Mark]: Yeah, I agree. I think that the way to progress podcasting and the way that podcasting

37:24

[Mark]: should and will continue to progress is through balance. I think it's the only way,

37:28

[Mark]: you know, the... I don't think you can think in any industry in such binary terms

37:35

[Mark]: as this is the definition of X because it might have been, and I think that's why

37:39

[Mark]: people get upset by it because that's what it used to be and that's the only thing

37:43

[Mark]: it used to be, but now it's such a diverse... set of opportunities for businesses like Spotify

37:49

[Mark]: that want to come in and challenge it. And like I said, I'm not advocating for Spotify,

37:52

[Mark]: but nor am I advocating for RSS. I'm advocating for balance. I'm advocating for

37:58

[Mark]: let's progress the things that we are passionate about, but don't close the doors

38:02

[Mark]: on other things. Because if we do, how can we take the best elements from everything

38:09

[Mark]: to... give the very best to our creators, to our listeners and so on. And you know, you've

38:14

[Mark]: only got, like you said, 3D. That's a great example. We had the, you know, avatar

38:21

[Mark]: in 3D. It's fantastic. It was pretty good. It looked well. But then guess what?

38:26

[Mark]: All TVs became 3D for a little while. And then people realized it was crap. But what

38:33

[Mark]: else came out of that? iMacs, which is absolutely brilliant and it is stunning.

38:38

[Mark]: And when it's used well, It's amazing as an experience. There are certain films,

38:43

[Mark]: Spider-Man, No Way Home, any Star Wars that you are only gonna see in IMAX because

38:48

[Mark]: it is that good. And that's like the bit that came out of 3D. The rest of it didn't.

38:53

[Mark]: And that's the thing with podcasting. It's like, it sort of iron sharpens iron sort

38:58

[Mark]: of scenario. You know, you have to put up against something to develop, but the risk,

39:03

[Mark]: I think, for a lot of people in podcasting, especially the industry, It doesn't sharpen

39:08

[Mark]: iron. What it does is it forces that thinking to retract and to become stagnant,

39:14

[Mark]: to hold on to the things that were as opposed to looking at what is possible. And

39:18

[Mark]: I do believe that's why we're fortunate at Captivate to have such good balance. You

39:22

[Mark]: know, we implement a lot of great things, but not rashly. And we did that with the podcasting

39:30

[Mark]: 2.0 stuff. A lot of people, including our previous advisors, were saying, you're

39:34

[Mark]: behind the curve with podcasting 2.0. That's cool. Like, I'm behind your curve, behind

39:40

[Danny Brown]: Hmm. [Mark]: actually your curve, but our users, the people who will, if we introduce something

39:47

[Mark]: that is difficult and new for them that they've got to spend time learning, may well

39:50

[Mark]: stop podcasting because they're worried that they can't keep up. I'm actually in front

39:56

[Mark]: of their curve, and I know their curve, and their curve is not where your curve is.

40:01

[Mark]: And again, that's how industries work, that the early adopters, they're the real bleeding

40:06

[Mark]: edge people. There are the people that are toeing the line between being interested

40:10

[Mark]: in the industry and sort of just kind of being in it by accident because they're

40:14

[Mark]: creating it. So there's a lot that's going on there. And I think the risk with the

40:19

[Mark]: podcast industry is that it becomes not becomes, but. Some of the more prominent

40:25

[Mark]: voices remain binary. It's this or that. And. you know, that's only a risk to them.

40:37

[Mark]: They're gonna be the ones whose curves no one really cares about if they're not careful.

40:42

[Mark]: So you gotta watch that as a founder. That's one thing that I'm conscious of. You've

40:47

[Mark]: gotta be sensible and you've gotta listen and you've gotta be empathetic with things.

40:51

[Mark]: So yeah, again, a lot in that, but I mean, we could probably do 10 episodes on that,

40:54

[Mark]: I think. [Danny Brown]: Hmm. It's like comparing the Pirelli calendar to the Michelin calendar.

40:59

[Danny Brown]: That's [Mark]: Ha ha ha [Danny Brown]: like [Mark]: ha! [Danny Brown]: a little bit differences there for anybody that knows these calendars.

41:04

[Mark]: That is, that takes me back to like 1989, taking my car to a garage

41:10

[Danny Brown]: Mm. [Mark]: in like Barnsley in the north of England, yeah. I get that, that's a reference that not

41:16

[Mark]: many people are going to get. [Danny Brown]: I know, no, we might have to make this a video segment just to like, you

41:19

[Danny Brown]: know, just throw that out there on a snip or something. Now, mostly you mentioned

41:24

[Danny Brown]: that the industry from a podcast point of view, we're now looking at kind of

41:28

[Danny Brown]: three distinct podcasters, hobbyist, serious indie podcaster, then the multi million

41:33

[Danny Brown]: dollar media companies. And one of the biggest for all, especially the serious

41:38

[Danny Brown]: indie podcaster and the media companies is monetization. monetization, especially

41:45

[Danny Brown]: the last couple of years, from working with advertisers and sponsors to Spotify

41:49

[Danny Brown]: paying for exclusives, with an eye on attracting bigger advertisers to the

41:53

[Danny Brown]: platform. And there's been mixed results. I'm curious why you think it's been

41:57

[Danny Brown]: hard for so many to effectively address monetization.

42:08

[Mark]: My microphone wouldn't unmute then. I was gonna edit this out. I thought I'll edit

42:11

[Mark]: that out, but then this is an interview

42:13

[Danny Brown]: I'm going to go ahead and turn it off. [Mark]: with me. So I'm just gonna leave it in. That was funny. So podcasts, well, monetization

42:22

[Mark]: of anything, not just podcasts, is very, very difficult because you have to get people

42:29

[Mark]: to do different things in a reasonably standardized sequence. You have to get them

42:36

[Mark]: to look at something, listen to something, move from one place to another to look at something

42:43

[Mark]: else or listen to something else, and then do a number of different things to quantify

42:49

[Mark]: and qualify whether or not what they've heard or seen or read or whatever results in

42:56

[Mark]: some ROI. And that's a really, like, high-level marketing thought process. But it's

43:03

[Mark]: the same with everything, whether you're selling software, whether you're selling cars,

43:06

[Mark]: whether you're selling Star Wars figurines, guitars, or your audience on a podcast. And

43:12

[Mark]: the challenges, I think the challenges came in the earlier days where there wasn't

43:18

[Mark]: much tech available to do decent programmatic, decent dynamic ad work within podcasts. That's

43:27

[Mark]: getting better. That is getting better. You know, we do it. Every other host does it.

43:34

[Mark]: But what happened was that the sponsorships became like the be all and end all. And you

43:38

[Mark]: know, some people discovered the fact that you could do fixed price direct sales.

43:43

[Mark]: And you know, obviously, Host Red was the real queen of the crop when it came to

43:48

[Mark]: sponsorships because they performed much better. But what that did was it left

43:53

[Mark]: creators with this problem. And it doesn't matter the size of the creator, it still left

43:58

[Mark]: them with a problem. All right. So if I'm a brand. and I think I'm gonna take a punt

44:02

[Mark]: on this podcast lark. I might allocate three or six months or even 12 months to this.

44:12

[Mark]: But then I've got to go into a meeting later, or I've got to look myself if I'm like

44:15

[Mark]: a small business that's took a punt on a smaller podcast, and I've got to say,

44:19

[Mark]: what did that do? [Mark]: And it's really difficult to understand. Now, of course, we understand things like brand

44:27

[Mark]: uplift. We understand the way to measure things like that. But again, like I said with

44:33

[Mark]: my mum earlier, you know, the equivalent of my mum's listening mindset, which is I don't

44:38

[Mark]: care what happens as long as I get the good stuff, is really, I don't care what happens

44:45

[Mark]: as a marketer as long as I get the results at the end. But we can't show that, you know,

44:52

[Mark]: so we started doing things like Go to this link with this coupon code, which is brilliant

44:57

[Mark]: for some things and rubbish for others. Like, if I listen to a podcast, what are the

45:05

[Mark]: chances of me mowing the lawn and thinking, oh, you bloody hell, you got me. That's right.

45:09

[Danny Brown]: Yeah. [Mark]: I need this new mattress right now. I'm going to stop this lawn mowing. I'm going

45:13

[Mark]: to get me a mattress. Doesn't work, all right? So it's very often about brand uplift

45:20

[Mark]: and about recollection. And we know that, you know, from the Edison data, from

45:22

[Mark]: the infinite dial stuff, We know that brand recall is really high amongst podcast

45:26

[Mark]: listeners. For that reason, you get piping into the beret of someone. So yeah,

45:30

[Mark]: I get that, but that's difficult to measure. So what that inadvertently did was

45:35

[Mark]: it meant that in order to get the right number out of the bottom end, just standard

45:38

[Mark]: marketing, you needed to put a pile of numbers in the top, which meant that in

45:41

[Mark]: order to do that, you needed downloads and you needed shows that had big downloads.

45:45

[Mark]: But that doesn't help you and I, the standard independent podcaster, that's doing

45:48

[Mark]: this for a living. So that people to obviously direct sell at fixed price. That's

45:56

[Mark]: great. I'm a big advocate of that model because I think there's a lot of power in those

45:59

[Mark]: kind of niches or for our American friends, the niches, but you're wrong, the niches. And

46:05

[Mark]: what went on then was people would, they'd find themselves having the same problem.

46:11

[Mark]: All right, I will fix price this. I've got 250 listeners per episode. Give me a grand

46:15

[Mark]: a month. It's a super tight audience. You'll definitely sell some stuff. But then

46:18

[Mark]: they didn't because that... that relevance at the right time is not right. I'm not ready

46:25

[Mark]: to buy the thing, but I know about the thing. So I'm at the attribution back to the

46:29

[Mark]: podcast might not happen for six, nine, 12 months because I'm not ready for that mattress

46:32

[Mark]: until a year later, but I still remember hearing it. So that caused a lot of people

46:39

[Mark]: to then fret about, and this is at every level, by the way, this is not like just the

46:43

[Mark]: Indies. This is people [Danny Brown]: Hmm. [Mark]: like Spotify offering big MRGs, minimum revenue guarantees to like Joe Rogan and whatever,

46:49

[Mark]: signing bonuses or whatever. That's all stopped or certainly there needs to be

46:55

[Mark]: a damn good business case for that sort of stuff and it's much lower cost than it was

46:59

[Mark]: two years ago because they're having the same problems. I thought, well, how do

47:03

[Mark]: I quantify all this stuff? So what that has led to is what we've always advocated at

47:08

[Mark]: Captivate and what any person with any common sense whatsoever in any business role

47:15

[Mark]: in any business in any country in the world has always advocated for eggs and bloody

47:20

[Mark]: baskets. Right, don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you want to make money podcasting,

47:26

[Mark]: don't make all your money from sponsorships. So this is about diversity in monetization.

47:32

[Mark]: And we're seeing this a heck of a lot already. We're seeing it through memberships

47:36

[Mark]: and subscription models, exclusive access, early access, windowed content. We're seeing

47:41

[Mark]: it through tips, listener support. We're seeing all that sort of stuff that all the

47:44

[Mark]: best hosts are really doing very, very well. There are some rudimentary implementations

47:49

[Mark]: of that. but it can still work. And the point is that diversity monetization, spreading

47:55

[Mark]: your eggs amongst many different baskets, activates a range of different fans. So it

48:00

[Mark]: will activate the casual fans that wanna chuck you a fiver. It'll activate the people

48:04

[Mark]: like you do with PodChat that wanna subscribe to the premium feed and get exclusive

48:07

[Mark]: or early access content. It will allow you to do things like be selective over your

48:12

[Mark]: sponsors. And guess what? If you do good work, you will get direct sponsorship,

48:17

[Mark]: which... Theoretically, if you carry on doing good work, you should elevate yourself

48:21

[Mark]: to being able to do dynamic programmatic marketplace style sponsorships, like spot sales,

48:27

[Mark]: where this is all fed through an ad server. We enter the big leagues and we enter

48:32

[Mark]: the realm of CPM based, cost per thousand downloads based advertising. So it's a progression,

48:37

[Mark]: it's diversity in monetization. And those challenges exist at every single level.

48:42

[Mark]: I know some of the biggest podcasts in the world who could and do. have CPM based

48:48

[Mark]: sponsorships, they bolster their revenue with predictable recurring money that comes

48:53

[Mark]: in every month from their membership subscribers. Because eggs in baskets. So it's

49:01

[Mark]: a challenge, but it sort of isn't as well. And I think this is one of the, like

49:08

[Mark]: one of the frustrating things about all the kind of guff that was perpetuated by

49:11

[Mark]: the online [Mark]: 2014 to 2018 ish when it was really prevalent. Like the, create a podcast and you

49:25

[Mark]: will monetize it. I know you won't. You'll know this better than anyone. Build

49:30

[Mark]: a website and they will come. No, they won't. [Danny Brown]: Hmm. [Mark]: Open a shop, they'll come. No, they won't. Put a song on Spotify, you'll get listens.

49:37

[Mark]: No, you won't. Put a YouTube video, people will watch it. No, no, no, no, no, no.

49:40

[Mark]: It requires a lot of other stuff. Marketing. So I don't like, it's not any more complex

49:45

[Mark]: than anything else, but the difference is twofold across the entire podcasting industry.

49:54

[Mark]: Listening is passive. It's not active. Like I'm looking at you now and we're actively

49:58

[Mark]: engaged. I watch YouTube, I'm actively engaged. I watch The Mandalorian, I'm actively

50:02

[Mark]: engaged. Podcasting is passive. So I've got to really get someone, you know, recollection,

50:09

[Mark]: boom, boom, boom, hit me with a brand, hit me with a brand, hit me with a brand, hit

50:12

[Mark]: me with a brand, hit me with a brand. So when I need the mattress, I'm like, that

50:16

[Mark]: bloody brand that I heard on that podcast, oh, of course, that's what it is. The second

50:20

[Mark]: problem is that, you know, if you build a business, you need to do all this same stuff.

50:27

[Mark]: You get your first sale through a lot of hard work, a lot of marketing, a lot of

50:32

[Mark]: promotion, a lot of people knowing about you. But a lot of the time that's your business.

50:36

[Mark]: 90 odd percent of podcasters that we talk to. are doing it because they love it.

50:44

[Mark]: That's the equivalent of me spending two hours a week on my golf tops, going out

50:51

[Mark]: there after the two hours a week and being like, why do I still slice it then? Because

50:55

[Mark]: I don't have the time to do anything else. Of course, that's fine. It's a hobby.

50:59

[Mark]: So I think podcasting has these challenges across the board. It

51:10

[Mark]: like literally learn marketing and understand that it takes time. That's why we exist, is

51:17

[Mark]: to help people with that. So yeah, a big complex issue I think that we could, again,

51:22

[Mark]: we could spend a heck of a lot of time on, but it's, I think it warrants further discussion

51:28

[Mark]: probably later down the line. Maybe we'll do this again with a couple of other

51:31

[Mark]: people on as well, but there's a lot, there's a lot to that. But the basic, the basis

51:35

[Mark]: is anyone can only make money. if other people know enough to want to be exposed to

51:42

[Mark]: what they do. That's it, that's just the rule. [Danny Brown]: And it does seem that you mentioned Spotify, you mentioned the CPI model of a lot

51:50

[Danny Brown]: of the bigger advertisers. It does seem that a lot of the news that came

51:52

[Danny Brown]: out of the industry where Spotify's cutting exclusives, Amazon cut exclusives,

51:58

[Danny Brown]: podcast agencies or media companies are closing down or laying people off. A lot

52:02

[Danny Brown]: of that's based around those that are only really involved in ad model as

52:07

[Danny Brown]: opposed to multiple streams of revenue. And that's, I know Captivates Our

52:13

[Danny Brown]: goal with Captivate is to really help the indie podcaster grow the shop, save

52:18

[Danny Brown]: time, save money, but grow and make money. So as you mentioned, you need to

52:23

[Danny Brown]: learn marketing and you need to allocate time to that to really bring the

52:27

[Danny Brown]: audience in that helps you get these listeners and XYZ into sponsors, revenue,

52:33

[Danny Brown]: memberships, etc. If someone asked you as a podcaster, okay, there's 10

52:39

[Danny Brown]: different things that I can do. What are the two or three things that I can

52:42

[Danny Brown]: really focus on now to try and get to that stage?

52:49

[Mark]: If I was going to grow a fresh podcast from scratch, I'd focus on two particular areas.

52:54

[Mark]: I'd focus on short-term, near-sighted marketing, if you like, and long-term gain

53:03

[Mark]: marketing. So I'll start with that one, actually. So the biggest thing you can do,

53:07

[Mark]: and you can even use, I'm sure there are gurus selling courses on this. If you'd

53:13

[Mark]: like to know, there is some right charlatans out there. Like you can even use chat GPT to

53:18

[Mark]: just say, right, what are people looking for in my niche? You know, and so think about

53:25

[Mark]: this as keyword research because the best way to build anything. is to always be

53:33

[Mark]: present throughout the research cycle or the buying cycle or the listening cycle

53:36

[Mark]: or the whatever cycle is to be like, you want to be the obvious choice. I used to

53:41

[Mark]: make an analogy when I was doing speaking gigs around startups and business where if

53:46

[Mark]: you imagine a sale at the end of a corridor, so you've got a corridor, you've got a leisure

53:49

[Mark]: prospect, the person buying the thing that you're selling right down a hotel corridor

53:54

[Mark]: and at the end, there's a door at the very, very end that you've got to get them

53:57

[Mark]: through in order to sell them the thing. But out of each other door, on each side of

54:01

[Mark]: them, on the corridor, is someone shouting an objection. What about the cost? What about

54:05

[Mark]: the guarantee? Can you really afford this? Is it going to be crap? Is it going to

54:07

[Mark]: be any good? What about these missing things? What about these things that you might

54:11

[Mark]: not need? Your job at every stage is to be present enough to close down those objections

54:19

[Mark]: before they get to the door. All right. So it's like, what about the price? No brainer.

54:25

[Mark]: Look at all the value. What about trusting these people? Yeah, hello. They've answered

54:30

[Mark]: all these other questions. These guys are the obvious choice for this. And it's the

54:36

[Mark]: same with podcasting. If you are present for every time someone asks a question about

54:44

[Mark]: anything in your niche and you've got a damn episode about it, you will gain listeners.

54:49

[Mark]: That is it. That is a fact. That is a fact and I know that because that's how I've

54:54

[Mark]: grown this year. That's how I've grown Captivate. Like how many times do we share

54:59

[Mark]: the, here's a trailer format you can copy podcast episode, a

55:03

[Danny Brown]: Hmm. [Mark]: lot of times, like if you Google podcast network business plan, one of my episodes is

55:09

[Mark]: there just because that's the plan. Okay. So that's the first thing. short term,

55:17

[Mark]: like near sighted stuff, you have to focus on not necessarily marketing but just

55:24

[Mark]: promotion. Like just promotion. If you don't have time to learn marketing, get really

55:33

[Mark]: good at saying, here's this new thing that I've released today. Here's how you get

55:38

[Mark]: it and tell everyone you know about it. And that's really high level stuff. There

55:42

[Mark]: are a lot of tactics that go with that. Do you use social? Do you use video? How, you

55:45

[Mark]: know, what are your calls to action? How do you structure that? What toolkit do

55:48

[Mark]: you use to do that? But that's the basis. Here's new thing. you enjoy it and tell everyone

55:55

[Mark]: else that you know that might enjoy it to also enjoy it. That's why, like for Spark

56:00

[Mark]: a Rebellion, a really good way to promote that is just turn up at Star Wars Celebration.

56:06

[Mark]: Just turn up and have conversations. Guess what? How do we grow Captivate? All those

56:13

[Mark]: speaking gigs, all of those conferences, all those friends that I've got so that when

56:19

[Mark]: we launch Captivate, like the day we launched Captivate, we were... greatly profitable,

56:23

[Mark]: literally the second that we enabled the sign up screen. We had people signing up

56:29

[Mark]: because it was like, oh, it's Mark and Kieran. That'll be good. It's Mark and

56:32

[Danny Brown]: Hmm. [Mark]: Kieran. Oh, that'll be good. And people told other people. So you've got to do the

56:36

[Mark]: same with your podcast. So yeah, that's what I'd say. That's what I'd say. Again, a

56:39

[Mark]: lot to that, a lot we could dig into with that one, but good question, dude.

56:43

[Danny Brown]: So Mark, we talked about how you got your fire back right at the start of

56:46

[Danny Brown]: the episode, which seems a long, long time ago. We talked about how you got

56:50

[Danny Brown]: your fire back after a year away, and it's clear, speaking to you now about some

56:53

[Danny Brown]: of the topics that we've discussed, there's a lot that you've got to say. So what's

56:59

[Danny Brown]: next for the podcast accelerator, and what's next for you, and what's next for

57:03

[Danny Brown]: Captivate? [Mark]: Well, for me and the podcast accelerator, it's more of the same. A lot of people say

57:08

[Mark]: that, like, what's next for you? Now you're part of global. Are you off? Are you

57:12

[Mark]: going to do different things? Like, no, this is just me. I could still be podcasting

57:16

[Mark]: even if I didn't work in it. So it's just more of the same. It's, I said it last

57:20

[Mark]: week on the episode, you know, we've got an amazing team with Captivate. You know,

57:24

[Mark]: you're a huge part of it. We've got such a strong and confident team that I don't

57:28

[Mark]: have to do a lot of the stuff that I used to do, a lot of the... The stuff that

57:32

[Mark]: when you have a team, it's like micro management, but when you don't have a team,

57:35

[Mark]: it's just getting your hands dirty. So I'm able to think like I used to do, like

57:41

[Mark]: some of the big picture stuff, like the new features that we're putting out next

57:44

[Mark]: week, some of the longer term planning for Captivate, some of the brand position with

57:49

[Mark]: Captivate, again, some of the stuff that we're launching next week is very much

57:51

[Mark]: a sort of subtle brand repositioning. So it's more of that, man. I love doing it.

57:57

[Mark]: I am very fortunate. to work in an industry like you do that is just enjoyable. So it's

58:02

[Mark]: more of the same. The accelerator, it's shifting to Thursdays from Mondays because

58:06

[Mark]: it's silly to put out episodes on a Monday like what idiot thought that was a good

58:09

[Mark]: idea. It's gonna be a mix of this stuff. So it's gonna be a lot of interviews with people

58:16

[Mark]: who are genuinely great at what they do. It's gonna be a lot of my solo education.

58:21

[Mark]: It's gonna be round tables. So it's gonna be very much education focused but probably

58:25

[Mark]: an industry. level if you like sometimes you know bringing in education on the industry

58:31

[Mark]: because I think that's the thing that the hobbyist podcaster sometimes feels alienated

58:35

[Mark]: by is what's going on that I don't know about that I probably should know about and

58:41

[Mark]: do I need to worry about it. So there's a lot of that going on. For Captivate, couldn't

58:46

[Mark]: possibly tell you, you're going to have to turn up to the live stream on youtube.com

58:50

[Mark]: slash Captivate podcasting at 4pm UK on the 16th of May. And I will say and I know

58:55

[Mark]: you'll back this up. The new set of features that we're putting out next week are

58:59

[Mark]: absolutely insane. They are, it is the most well done piece of kit, I think, on the

59:05

[Mark]: entire market, dude. I think everyone's done such a good job of it.

59:08

[Danny Brown]: Yep, no, I 100% backed that up. I've just been doing some testing this week

59:11

[Danny Brown]: and I've been blown away and I had to share on Twitter. No screenshots,

59:14

[Danny Brown]: obviously, because I value my life and limps. But yeah, it's super amazing.

59:19

[Danny Brown]: I can't wait for the podcasters to get their hands on it. [Mark]: I love it man, I love it. Well listen, thanks for interviewing me mate. This has been

59:28

[Mark]: a swap in roles which I'm fascinated by so I really appreciate it dude and we've

59:33

[Mark]: mentioned it a few times but what are you working on? What's the thing? What's the

59:38

[Mark]: thing? I know we've mentioned it a couple of times but what's the thing that you want

59:41

[Mark]: people to get a hold of that you're producing dude?

59:43

[Danny Brown]: Yeah, so thanks man. I enjoyed it. It's like it's different to be the interviewer

59:47

[Danny Brown]: bit on someone else's show. That's like as a new one. I might have to look into

59:50

[Danny Brown]: that as a niche niche, whatever. So yeah, you mentioned PodChat. Thank you for

59:54

[Danny Brown]: that. That's fun enough on a little bit of a spring hiatus, but I'm getting

59:57

[Danny Brown]: I've got a bunch of guests lined up for that. I do one minute podcast tips,

1:00:01

[Danny Brown]: which I can't really explain any more than that. Just one minute podcast

1:00:04

[Danny Brown]: tips and no deep dives. Nothing. They're just really short punchy things. So

1:00:08

[Danny Brown]: you can basically find me whatever podcast I do. I've got some really fun hobby

1:00:11

[Danny Brown]: ones that I do. Now and again, you can find all that at dannypod.com. And

1:00:16

[Danny Brown]: obviously I'm on the Captivate team, so you can find me online. Any Captivate

1:00:19

[Danny Brown]: questions, either fling them over at Captivate Audio on Twitter, or myself

1:00:23

[Danny Brown]: at Danny Brown, CA. [Mark]: Legend, thank you my friend and to you the ever present and always appreciative listener.

1:00:31

[Mark]: You are appreciated right back in return. We've got a lot of content coming up, I've

1:00:36

[Mark]: produced a lot. We've got some great interviews coming up talking about YouTube,

1:00:39

[Mark]: talking about community, talking about monetization and of course some solo education

1:00:44

[Mark]: from me as well. So welcome back to the podcast accelerator. Keep sharing your

1:00:49

[Mark]: voice because it matters to those who hear it. Until next time, take it easy, bye

1:00:55

[Mark]: for now.