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

Summary

Summary of "Why Your Podcast Isn’t Growing" with Seth Silvers on Content Is Profit – Episode Released February 25, 2025

In this insightful episode of the Content Is Profit show hosted by BIZBROS, Seth Silvers—the esteemed producer behind Alex and Layla Hermozi's Alex Hormozi Podcast—joins to unravel the common pitfalls that prevent podcasts from growing. With extensive experience managing content frameworks for renowned brands like Red Bull and Orangetheory Fitness, Seth provides a deep dive into effective podcast strategies, emphasizing the critical distinction between merely creating content and fostering genuine growth.

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1. The Misconception: Creation vs. Growth (00:00 – 00:32)

Seth kicks off the conversation by addressing a fundamental misunderstanding among podcasters: the belief that producing and publishing episodes equates to success. He asserts that without a focus on growth, a podcast can stagnate regardless of how many episodes are churned out.

Seth Silvers [00:00]: “I think a lot of podcasters think that creating the podcast is the game. They publish the episode and think, okay, cool, I did it. But they forget that it's actually about growing the show.”

2. Leveraging Short-Form Content for Enhanced Reach (00:21 – 00:32)

Highlighting the untapped potential of short-form content, Seth points out that even smaller creators might be missing out on thousands of monthly views by not tapping into platforms that favor brief, engaging snippets.

Seth Silvers [00:21]: “Even small creators are probably leaving like tens of thousands of views a month on the table by not leveraging short form content.”

3. Defining the Podcast’s Purpose: Business vs. Support vs. Hobby (07:11 – 12:25)

Seth categorizes podcasts into three distinct types:

• Podcast as the Business: Here, the podcast itself serves as the primary business model, relying on growth and monetization through sponsorships or premium memberships.

• Podcast Supporting the Business: In this scenario, the podcast acts as a supplementary tool to attract new clients or nurture existing ones, indirectly boosting the main business.

• Hobby Podcasts: These are created purely for enjoyment, with metrics centered around listener engagement and content appreciation rather than direct revenue.

Understanding the type of podcast dictates the appropriate metrics for success. For instance, business podcasts might prioritize downloads and direct monetization, whereas hobby podcasts focus on listener retention and satisfaction.

4. Measuring Growth and Success Appropriately (09:35 – 12:25)

Seth emphasizes the importance of aligning success metrics with the podcast’s purpose. He warns against solely focusing on download numbers without considering how they translate to broader business goals or listener engagement, depending on the podcast type.

Luis [12:25]: “Does your audience like the content? That's probably the most important thing to start with.”

5. The Crucial Role of Data in Shaping Podcast Strategy (15:14 – 32:46)

Seth delves into the significance of data analytics in podcasting. With platforms like Spotify enhancing their analytics capabilities, podcasters now have access to vital metrics such as impressions, click-through rates, and listener engagement durations. Seth shares his excitement about these advancements, illustrating how data-driven decisions can significantly impact podcast growth.

Seth Silvers [29:11]: “We saw that if we could pull any lever, like, let's say you have these three data points of impressions, clicks, and streams, the conversion rate from impressions to clicks would have the biggest impact.”

6. Navigating Platform Differences: Spotify vs. Apple Podcasts (32:46 – 41:15)

The discussion shifts to how different platforms influence listener behavior. Seth contrasts Spotify’s integrated discovery algorithms and short-form clip features with Apple Podcasts' more traditional, subscription-based model. He notes that Spotify listeners might engage in binge-listening due to discoverability features, whereas Apple listeners tend to have a more committed following of subscribed shows.

Fonzie [36:34]: “Listeners on Spotify are pretty different—they might binge listen but are less likely to stick with a series.”

7. Balancing Short-Form and Long-Form Content (42:14 – 44:08)

Seth advocates for a strategic mix of short-form and long-form content. Short-form pieces can enhance discoverability and attract new listeners, while long-form content fosters deeper engagement and trust, essential for converting listeners into loyal followers or clients.

Seth Silvers [42:14]: “Short form content is super important from my perspective, priority wise. It’s an opportunity that would be stupid for podcasters to miss.”

8. Production Quality: Treating Podcasting as a Craft (52:35 – 54:16)

Addressing the importance of quality, Seth urges podcasters to view their work as a craft to be perfected rather than just a marketing tool. He cautions against prioritizing quantity or speed over content quality, emphasizing that exceptional content naturally attracts and retains listeners.

Seth Silvers [52:35]: “Podcasting is a craft to be mastered or just a tool to be used. A lot of marketers treat it as just a tool, ruining the quality of the industry.”

9. Promotional Strategies: Organic Growth vs. Paid Advertising (46:47 – 49:55)

Seth discusses the delicate balance between promoting a podcast and ensuring its content quality. He shares anecdotes illustrating that without valuable content, paid promotions are ineffective. Instead, he recommends focusing on creating high-quality episodes that listeners are eager to share organically before investing in paid marketing efforts.

Seth Silvers [48:07]: “If the show is not good enough, more marketing won’t fix it. You need to make the show better first.”

10. Audience Feedback and Continuous Improvement (49:55 – 52:35)

Emphasizing the importance of audience feedback, Seth describes his approach to conducting surveys and gathering insights from listeners. This feedback loop allows podcasters to refine their content, ensuring it meets listener needs and expectations, which is crucial for sustained growth.

Seth Silvers [50:00]: “We asked questions like, did you feel like anything was unanswered? Did you feel clear about what the episodes were about? Did anything feel confusing?”

11. Final Insights: Embracing Continuous Learning and Adaptation (58:33 – 59:00)

In his closing remarks, Seth underscores the necessity of continual learning and adaptation in the ever-evolving podcast landscape. He encourages podcasters to stay abreast of data trends, be willing to pivot strategies based on listener feedback, and remain committed to producing high-quality content.

Seth Silvers [58:34]: “Thank you for having me. Really grateful.”

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Key Takeaways:

1. Define Your Podcast’s Purpose: Clearly categorize whether your podcast is a business, supportive asset, or hobby to align your growth strategies and success metrics accordingly.

2. Leverage Data Analytics: Utilize platform-specific analytics to understand listener behavior and refine your content and packaging for better engagement.

3. Balance Content Formats: Incorporate both short-form and long-form content to enhance discoverability and foster deeper listener relationships.

4. Prioritize Quality Over Quantity: Treat podcasting as a craft, ensuring each episode provides value and engages listeners to encourage organic growth through word-of-mouth.

5. Strategic Promotion: Focus on creating compelling content first, then consider paid promotions to amplify reach once the podcast establishes a loyal listener base.

6. Engage with Your Audience: Regularly seek and act on listener feedback to continuously improve content and better meet audience needs.

7. Adapt to Platform Dynamics: Understand the unique features and listener behaviors of each platform you publish on to tailor your strategies for maximum impact.

Seth Silvers’ comprehensive insights provide a robust framework for podcasters aiming to navigate the complexities of growth. By emphasizing purposeful strategy, data-driven decisions, and unwavering commitment to quality, podcasters can effectively overcome growth challenges and turn their content into profit.

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Notable Quotes:

• Seth Silvers [00:00]: “I think a lot of podcasters think that creating the podcast is the game. They publish the episode and think, okay, cool, I did it. But they forget that it's actually about growing the show.”

• Seth Silvers [29:11]: “We saw that if we could pull any lever, like, let's say you have these three data points of impressions, clicks, and streams, the conversion rate from impressions to clicks would have the biggest impact.”

• Seth Silvers [52:35]: “Podcasting is a craft to be mastered or just a tool to be used. A lot of marketers treat it as just a tool, ruining the quality of the industry.”

• Seth Silvers [48:07]: “If the show is not good enough, more marketing won’t fix it. You need to make the show better first.”

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Connect with Seth Silvers: For those interested in leveraging podcasting to grow their business or enhance their content strategy, you can connect with Seth Silvers through his website Storyon Co. and stay tuned for his upcoming co-hosted show, Profit Cast, aimed at helping businesses launch profitable podcasts.

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Transcript

[Seth Silvers]

I think a lot of podcasters think that creating the podcast is the game. Yeah, like they like, they publish the episode and they put like an intro and an outro and they think like, okay, cool, I did it. When they forget that it's actually about growing the show. Like if the show is not growing.

[Luis]

And something's probably wrong, is there any categorization or levels to types of audience?

[Seth Silvers]

In platforms, even small creators are probably leaving like tens of thousands of views a month on the table by not like leveraging short form content.

[Fonzie]

Especially if you're on those early stages of running or growing your own business. Like, you want to have as many conversations as you want with your customer. And podcasting, unfortunately might not be that vehicle.

[Seth Silvers]

You can grow your business as big as you want, but if you don't have the people and the values and the culture to support it, then it's going to be pretty hard to maintain that.

[Luis]

So with your business podcast, how do you measuring the growth of a podcast or the success of a podcast?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, it does kind of depend, but I think there's some, there's some frameworks that are common throughout it all. So I think.

[Luis]

Hey guys, welcome back to Continuous profit. Today I have a very special episode. We've chased this person for a long time just to have this conversation and it might just not be enough. We might have to do a part two or part three, like specific training in business creator club if you're part of it. But today we have you. The one and only Seth Silvers. He actually is the actual producer of Alex and Layla's Ormozi's podcast. They've been working together for a few months now and the growth that they've experienced is massive thanks to Seth. He's also the CEO of Story on Media and Marketing, which he started in 2015. Him and his team has worked with these incredible leaders. Here are some of the names. Mark Cuban, Patrick Lencioni and April Dunford. And today's episode, we talk business podcasting specifically. And we went deep with this one. We talk high level, we talk specifics, we talked data. Some of the things that we talked about is like the three types of podcasts and which one is the one that matters to you at whatever stage you're in big business, small business, hobby doesn't matter. Like you are going to be able to pinpoint one and be like, that's the one that I want to do. We talked also about how data affects your show, on how to look for it in so many platforms today. So you have you know, Apple, Spotify, YouTube shorts. No shorts. Like how do you actually look at the data that matters to drive the results? And Seth gives us some good case studies to prove it. And this was actually really interesting for me what platform you should be driving traffic to for people to consume your content. But anyways, we talked for about an hour. I think is full of golden boulders. So I hope you enjoy enjoyed today's episode. Here we go, guys. Welcome back to Content is Profit. We are here with the one and only one of our favorite producers and business podcasters on earth. We'll talk a little bit more about, about that, but I'm very excited to welcome you to Continuous Profit. Man, we've been chasing you for years.

[Seth Silvers]

I'm gonna say we can exaggerate. That's fine. Years now. It has been a while. We've been talking about making this happen for a while. So I'm super happy that. Super happy. We made it. Made it happen.

[Luis]

I'm stoked. Can we say, I mean, I mean you are a high profile producer, probably top podcast in the world, in the business world right now. Can we say, is that still top secret? Doesn't matter.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, no, no, you can. Everything is public. I can talk, I can talk about all of our projects.

[Fonzie]

Why don't you say it? Who are we talking about here that you produce your podcast for?

[Seth Silvers]

You're probably talking about our parking podcast called All Things Parking. You may be talking about our podcast for local real estate agents. Absolutely. You're probably referring to Alex and Layla Hermozi. Big name. So yeah, I've been had the opportunity to work with them over the last. It's been about six, seven months now that we've been overseeing kind of podcast strategy and production for their shows. The game with Alex Hermosi and then built with Layla, which has been a lot of fun to. A lot of fun to get to work with them, get to learn from them. They're. They're brilliant in many ways and also see their shows grow, which is, which is always the goal. Yeah.

[Luis]

Which by the way, my favorite one is the one with Layla. 100%. I'm like operator 100%. Like, this is a gem. Yeah, obviously Alex, really solid. But you guys have been doing an incredible work, man. It's, it's amazing to see it and hear it.

[Seth Silvers]

Thanks. Yeah, it's really fun to see like how their shows, like they're from the same brand of acquisition.com, but Alex and Layla are very different. And so also their shows are very different. Where Alex is going to talk more about, you know, things like money and marketing and business growth, but Layla's the operator. She's the CEO of their company and their portfolio companies. And so she's going to be talking a lot more about, like, leadership and culture and how to build a company around your values and all of the people side of the business, which I think everybody listening probably knows. Like, that's a pretty big part of the business. Like, you can. You can grow your business as big as you want, but if you don't have the people and the values and the culture to support it, then it's going to be pretty hard to maintain that. So, yeah, it's fun to get to, like, see how differently their shows hit different audiences or how different the same audience learns. Like, they learn different things from both shows.

[Fonzie]

Absolutely. Well, you know, not to ruin the party. You know, I love talking about Alex and Layla. They're absolutely amazing. But we're here to talk about you.

[Luis]

Yes.

[Fonzie]

You know, and we want to learn, obviously, your. Your approach, right? You work. You don't only work with them. You work with multiple podcasters and businesses, and you help them with strategy and growth. And that's what we want to. To talk about in here today, right? We want to see what is your approach. I remember, you know, in the last podcasting conference that we were in podfest, you were talking and, you know, you were saying how you love spreadsheets and the data, and I'm like, all right, let's talk data. I'm. I'm not that guy, but I know that we need to see the data to grow, right? And, you know, a lot of people that are listening right now, they may hear the name Alex or Mosey, right? And Layla or Mosi, and their first thought might be, well, but they're huge. You know, that might not be too relatable, but I think if we talk a little bit about the data, right? Like, what can they focus on as, you know, maybe as a small business podcaster, Right. Or even if they're enterprise podcasters and they have more resources, what are the data points that they should focus on for growth? So walk us through a little bit on, you know, a podcaster comes to you, or a business better say comes to you. And they said, you know, we want to launch a podcast to get more clients, right. Or increase our brand awareness. Like, what. What do you do first? Where do you guide that conversation through?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And I've fallen. I've kind of fallen in Love with the data side of podcasting. And I say falling. Cause, like, I kind of feel like I fell into it. Like, it wasn't necessarily something I was like, oh, I love data. I've always loved a good, like, Google Sheets formula. But yeah, so over the last few years, like, that's been something I've realized is often overlooked or it's complicated in podcasting. And so I think a lot of people are like, oh, we don't. There's not much accessible. So I think that the reality is there, there is more data that we have access to than people often think. And I think that can tell us a lot about our audience. And so for to kind of speak to your question, like, when somebody comes to us from a strategy perspective, like, we're actually gonna. We're gonna. Before we start producing, like, there's many times where we tell clients to actually hit the brakes on production. They're like, ready to. Ready to pay us, ready to start the show. And we're like, we need to, like, fig kind of build the foundation of this show. Yeah. So it's this interesting challenge where I'm all for, like, starting messy, if you will, and in committing to, like, improving. But I also want to make sure we're starting intentionally. So for us, like, we've kind of built this into what we call the business podcast roadmap. But this is kind of just the steps that we looked at of what are the shows that we've launched that have failed, what are the shows that we've been a part of that have succeeded, and what are the common elements. And so for me, like, I realized all of the shows that are doing well or have succeeded, they've had a really clearly defined audience. And so we always start with that piece. And we tell clients and podcasters, like, you should be creating your podcast with one person in mind. There's going to be a lot of those people, but you should be thinking about it, like, who's the one person? Our second element is going to be, what problems does that person have? Third is going to be the content where you're reverse engineering that content to solve those problems. And then fourth is going to be kind of a clear offer. And that doesn't just mean, like, what are you selling for $97? But just what's the clear way for a your audience to raise their hand and say, I want more. It might be something on your website. It might be. It could be a million different things, but you just want to have clarity. So I think those that's where we start with shows is going to be audience problems, content and offer. And we're going to always start by like, building that as kind of like the foundation of your podcast before we. Ideally, all of that happens before you hit publish.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

But if you're a podcaster that's already in the middle of it and you're like, well, dang, I don't have clarity on those things, then, like, you can dive into those at any time to gain clarity.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Luis]

Seth, how do you. How do you find success on a podcast? Right. And I know that this might be like a. It depends answer type deal, but we love those. We love those because we get a lot of starters in the studio. For example, people that are starting with their content. Maybe podcasting is like the first type of type of content that they are trying to produce consistently. And, you know, I like the version that you guys do on the show where it's like educational or, you know, entertainment. Right. And there's not like a mix of both. I want to hear your thoughts on it. And then on your side with your business podcast, how do you measuring the growth of a podcast or the success of a podcast?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, that it does kind of depend, but I think there's some. There's some frameworks that are common throughout it all. So I think at the end of the day, you just have to have clarity on what the goal is of your podcast. So I think a lot of people, they're measuring their podcast success solely based on downloads, and that can be one measure of success. So I think it's really important for people to know what type of podcast you're creating. In my experience, it's usually one of three things. Either the podcast is your business, which. If the podcast is your business, then the business model is to grow the show, grow downloads, get and monetize directly, whether it's through, like sponsorships or premium memberships or something. So that's if the podcast is the business. If the podcast supports your business, which is that that's the realm that most of our shows are in, then you have a business on the back end. And the idea is that the podcast would either bring new people in or it would serve to, like, help nurture your current audience. And then the third would be it's a hobby, which is it's for fun. Like, yeah, like right now, your guys football podcast. Like, I know you have aspirations for it to be, you know, a big podcast and to make money off of it, but, like, right now it's like a hobby and so, like, right now, like, I would say, like, for a show like that, are you guys having fun? Hell, yeah. Does your audience like the content? It's like, that's probably, like, the most important thing to start with it. So I think a lot of times people maybe have a hobby podcast, but they're judging it. They're comparing themselves to podcasts where the podcast is the business, like, you know, your Spotify, your Wondery shows. So I think it depends. There's like, different metrics in all of those things. So if, like, if it's the business downloads, if it's supporting the business, you probably want to have a clear connection to actual, like, revenue or retention for customers. And if it's a hobby podcast, then, like, you still want to see an increase in downloads because you still want to see some metrics, like, going up, because that means you're creating good content.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

So I think it does depend a little bit, case to case, but I think there's kind of these buckets that a lot of people don't really have. Like, sometimes I think we confuse what purpose our podcast actually serves.

[Fonzie]

Yeah. And I think to illustrate this, right, like, when the podcast is the business, we're talking somebody like Joe Rogan, for example, Right. That they make their. Their money from sponsorships and all that stuff. Right. And when we talk about supporting, like you said, is kind of like how we do it for our podcast. Right. We have our or service that we offer, I think is how you do it. I know you're your current podcast. I think it's in. In pause. You're restarting it soon. But, you know, you have your agency, and that is your business, and you're bringing in either lead connections, you know, or you're building your network throughout the podcast. That's kind of how we do it. And through the network, then, you know, you get some. Some really cool connections in there to. To work together with.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's just. It comes down to clarity, like, where does. And particularly with people that you and I work with, where usually businesses or creators that have some kind of, like, business connected to what they're doing.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

And I think that you just have to know, like, what purpose does the podcast serve? For me, I look at podcasting a little bit more like middle of funnel than top of funnel.

[Fonzie]

Same.

[Seth Silvers]

And I think a lot of podcasters start the podcast. A lot of businesses start a podcast thinking that it's top of funnel. So they're like, this is going to be the silver bullet that grows my business, when in reality it's more of like a middle of funnel. It's like more of a place where you're funneling your current kind of like fringe audience into and it's giving them more touch points with your brand. So I think the important piece to know, like, how do we define success? It kind of starts with knowing, like, where the podcast fits in your current, like, ecosystem of your brand.

[Fonzie]

So extend a little bit on that because, you know, when you say people think it is more top of funnel, right? What? I, I have the same thought as you. I, I believe it is more middle of the funnel. And when we have conversations with people that they're like, you know, I want to get clients and I want to build an audience through podcasting. And I'm like, right, well, when do you need them? Right Is like yesterday. You're like, maybe podcasting is not the right thing for you.

[Seth Silvers]

Right?

[Fonzie]

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

[Seth Silvers]

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

[Fonzie]

So what is too early, if you don't mind me asking?

[Seth Silvers]

I don't want to say like, necessarily a specific number, but I think like, like, like I'll throw one number out. Like, let's say a hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Like, reality is, it's, it's probably higher than that. But if, if you start a business and you're not doing a hundred thousand dollars in revenue, that doesn't mean that anything, that doesn't mean that you are bad, but it probably means that something's wrong in a sense of like, maybe your product isn't priced well, Maybe you're not getting in front of enough people. Like, maybe you don't know how to run a business yet. Like, I know I've been there. I know the reason that my business isn't bigger is because, like, usually I don't know the right things. Like, I'm not. We're not getting in front of enough people. So I think again, this kind of comes back to the data. Like, everything is a data point. And so I think if you are an early stage business where you're kind of trying to figure out how to crack your first few hundred thousand dollars in revenue, it's probably going to make more sense to figure out, do you have product market fit to figure out a consistent sales process, to figure out a consistent delivery process for your product. And so what we begin to see is some people, particularly in coaches and consulting, not only, but this was just our experience was we got hired by a few, like, coaches and consultants that were super passionate. Their show premise was great. And we were also early in podcasting and in our experience. And so I was like, yes, the show will grow your business. But the reality was like, even if our show that we were doing for them grew and got exposure, do they have like a sales process? Do they have like a clear product offering? So we started to run into some of these things where, you know, they might be spending a high percentage of their, like, revenue on podcast production. And so then they were putting a disproportionate amount of expectation and weight on the podcast, like producing all of the results and saving their business. So then at the end of, I'm just making up numbers here, but like, at the end of the year they might be like, we did a hundred thousand dollars in revenue and we spent $30,000 hiring a podcast production agency that was 30% of our revenue.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

And the expectations are going to be like, really, really high. And so by looking at several situations like that where I realized, huh, like, we might be positioning this podcast as more of like, this will grow your business. And the true thing is it, it will, but it has to be like, positioned right. And so that's why I think if you're an early business where you're figuring out the sales, you're figuring out customer success, you're figuring out all those things. Like, I, I actually wouldn't advise somebody to like, hire a high level production agency if you're in those early stages of business. And so I think some of it is the positioning side of things, but it's, it kind of just comes down to like, what's the biggest problem to solve.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

Do I think every business could have a podcast? Yes. But I also think there might be Times where there's a bigger problem for you to solve than starting a podcast.

[Fonzie]

Yeah, 100%. I love that honesty, by the way.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah.

[Fonzie]

The transparency.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah. I'm not trying to like send all.

[Luis]

Of our clients away 100%, but I think it's a great indicator for people that are looking to hire any content agency in general. Right. Obviously we're talking here about podcasting because it's our favorite one, but we've seen it in all and it's like, would this grow the business? At the end of the day, it's like, is the business in shape to grow type deal? And we've seen it with every time we started a project in the last five years, it has been an element of production is handled. And because then that is handled is off their plate, then you start seeing the trickle down. It's like, okay, maybe we don't have the right team in place to the creation aspect or the monetization side. Turns out that there's no email list or turns out that there's no way to capture leads or turns out. So you start to uncover the next problems. Right. And we've seen it where people get so busy trying to figure out how do I actually create the podcast or create the YouTube channel and they're busy with the tech and the learning videos or whatever. Or like they send the social media manager to like figure these out when the reason they might not be selling in the first place is not because of the market message, because maybe on the back end they don't have a system to capture all this. I think this conversation is super interesting.

[Fonzie]

Yeah. And let me touch here on a point real quick. You know, when I hear you talk about this, what comes to mind is speed to conversation.

[Seth Silvers]

Right.

[Fonzie]

Like you want to have. Especially if you're on those early stages of running or growing your own business. Like you want to have as many conversations as you want with your customer. Right. Or with potential customers and get, you know, shorten the feedback cycle. Right. So you can have, you know exactly where to improve, you know what to let go of. And podcasting unfortunately might not be that vehicle. Right. Because it is more of a long, long term play right now.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah.

[Fonzie]

If you look at your resources and let's say you're starting a business, but for some reason you have a huge email list. Right. You have assets, Right. You have a great following on social media that is very engaged that you can push this podcast to. On your podcast, you know, maybe it leads with some sort of an offer and et cetera, Like, I think that could improve that speed to conversation. Right. It could create some sort of feedback. But reality is that most businesses at this level, they do not have those resources. Right. They don't have a huge email list. They don't have, you know, a huge following that they can push that podcast towards. And. And I see that a lot with bigger podcasters. Right. Or actually, I think a great example for this is influencers that you might see them on TikTok, blah, blah, blah, doing their whole thing, and then all of a sudden, it's like they drop a podcast. It's like they. They ranked, you know, they. They have all these listeners, and you're like, how. Like, they're like, I tune in. I'm like, they're just talking about, you know, whatever. But the thing is, already had an asset, and they could push that, that. That podcast to do, you know, to all of those people, to all that audience, and they could get a quick feedback. And again, for smaller businesses, they might lack those resources. So the approach should be a little bit different. Right. So I think focusing on the speed of conversation.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Now, I do want to clarify, like, I'm not saying small businesses shouldn't start a podcast. So I think it's more about, like, how much are you prioritizing it.

[Fonzie]

Yep.

[Seth Silvers]

And how, like, what level of resources are you putting into it? I think that's the conversation, and that's just kind of the evolution of, like, the journey that we've gone on. I think that a podcast, again, kind of from top of funnel to middle of funnel. I used to think it was top of funnel. I've seen podcasting work best kind of when it's. When it's like we. Internally, we talk about when the podcast is like, fuel, not the spark.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

So, like, if you don't have a spark in a fire, then fuel doesn't matter. Like, you can pour as much gasoline on into a fire pit as you want, but, like, if you don't have a match, then it's not gonna work. And so I think a lot of people, when they start podcasts, particularly in the business, they're still figuring out what their spark is. Like, they're still trying to, like, light their campfire, but they're just pouring fuel on. They're like, oh, this is a marketing problem. If I pour more marketing on this business, then it will work when the business isn't on fire yet. No, it's kind of cheesy, but I think it's Good kind of illustration. So for us, it's like once you have this fire burning and you have people around that fire that are getting warm from it and they're getting value from their business, then that's, I think, when a podcast can come in and it can add fuel to that, where then it like, begins to expand that and it begins to. That's where it's like middle of funnel where we see, yes, you will bring in new customers from a podcast, but primarily it's most valuable when your current customers, the people that know about you but haven't hired you, when it's a way for those people to, like, stay in touch with you a couple times a week. That's where, like, I see kind of middle of funnel where. Where it can be really valuable.

[Luis]

Yeah, I think too, where there's like, levels to the production aspect, right? Because you could be, okay, the least friction possible going to like, I'm just gonna record a five minute note on, like, answering this question that a customer sent on my phone and then does the audio that's uploaded unedited, no intro, no nothing. That could be a podcast, right. Versus a super, you know, corporate branded show that is highly edited with, like, storylines and noises and music and like, original score and like, all this production that, you know, I think we talked about in the last event, right. One of those episodes could be $9,000, right. Type deal. Both are podcasts, both might serve, you know, a similar purpose. It's just the level of production varies depending on, like, where the business is. And. And I don't think there's a wrong answer, right, because there's a lot of people that have started very successful shows with very low friction. You know, you see people like Russell Branson starting marketing in the car, right, As a way to, like, hey, I just want to explore this medium. And he's recording on his phone on the way to work for Ex or even Alex's first episodes, right? Like, he tells. He says similar all the time. And it's been, what, six, seven years since that moment and the show has evolved to the point that, you know, they have incredible people like you producing the episodes and now solving bigger problems and things because the business evolves to.

[Fonzie]

Sounds like we're gonna have to do some podcasting from the car. That's what I'm hearing right now.

[Luis]

I'm down.

[Seth Silvers]

Well, I think that's really important, though, the levels of. Of production, though, because we're also not saying to like, not outsource production. Like, if you like, there's a lot of, like, editors or something that might be able to edit your podcast for a really good rate. Yeah. As I learned more about it, we realized, like, the service that we wanted to provide was a little bit higher level. We wanted to focus on strategy. We wanted to be able to build out analytics, dashboards and things. We wanted to be able to focus on, like the video editing and the social editing. And, like, we wanted to do a lot. And so the reality was we couldn't do all that we were wanting to do. Like, if we were wanting to do the best case scenario for a podcast, we couldn't really do that for a really low price, which then meant that, like, not everybody could afford it. And so that was really hard. But I think recognizing that, I'm a huge fan of, like, buying back your time, and if you're creating, even if it's on your phone, then, like, being able to buy back some of your time so that you can focus on growing the business. And there are tiers to production. So I don't, you know, if people are listening, they're like, well, I can't afford X amount per month. It's like, there's, there's always going to be affordable ways to, like, buy back your time.

[Luis]

Yeah. I think one of the very interesting conversations that we had earlier this month was with somebody that we met at a podcast event here locally in Jacksonville. And she was starting this incredible podcast about love. And she had, like, you could tell, like, her passion was massive. And she started it in Turkey, sitting down in a coffee shop with somebody that she met that day, recording on her phone. And that was like the concept of, of her conversation. And, you know, she came to studio, she looked at the place, she's like, oh, my God, like, this is a great target for me at one day, right? And I'm like, look, yeah, let me share the framework. Like, it's super simple, right? Or the production that we do, you might be able, you might already have the tools to do this right. Right at the end of the day. And for her, she wanted, you know, and this is a little bit more on the, on the technical production side, but it's like one camera on her, one camera on the person. Here's a software that allows you to do that automatically. Hey, we're happy to do that for you if you don't have the time. Right. But here's a recipe that you can, you know, if we're, you know, might not be in your price point, give it to an editor. They'll be Able to figure this one out. A week later, she came super excited. She's like, that conversation with you guys changed my outlook in this. And she had like three episodes produced by a freelancer editor. Amazing. Great win. Because what we want to do is like, remove the friction at the end of the day. Right. And to this day, you know, she's now part of the community that a business creator club. And we continue to be involved in different ways. But at the end of this, like, understanding what's your. Like you said, your capacity, your resources, and just move the needle forward little by little. As you. As you move that needle forward, you start publishing, discovering your message, dialing down your message, nailing down your offer, your business side. I think you're going to get more resources and continue to grow and evolve, like, everything right at the end of the day. So I think thank you for obviously, the breakdown that you did. So, for this specifically, what are some of the top metrics? Because every time we jump on Wednesdays in our calls, you bring this golden boulder. Every time you're like, we are experimenting with so and so from this platform and look at how cool this is. And we're like, oh, my God. And I'm logging in behind cameras like Spotify, new dashboard. Tell me everything. What are some of the things that you're more most excited about to, like, start measuring? Right?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah.

[Luis]

To improve on the shows?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, it's a good question. So I've been really excited over the last, like, six months. I think Spotify has, like, massively upped their game with, like, the data that they're starting to show creators. It's funny because the data that is, like, new, you can go and look at backdated for a long time. So it's like they've had this data for a long time, but now they're sharing it with us.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

And so I think some of that is, like, on a show and on an episode level, you can actually see, like, how many impressions your show is getting on Spotify, and then how many people are, like, showing interest in your show, and then how many of those people are actually listening for more than 60 seconds. So I think this kind of gives, like, data to packaging, if you will. Which packaging. We've never really had much data behind packaging and podcasting. So I think that the main thing that, that, like, first data point of, like, how many people are an impression, like, are seeing your show and how many people are clicking on it, that really speaks to, like, your title. Like, I think your title and your thumbnails on podcasting, we kind of now finally have these data points to be able to show. And we, like, we updated the packaging of. Of one of our shows, and we pretty much immediately saw, like, an increase by, like, 7 to 8% in downloads just because the packaging was more clear. And then we saw that, like, overall impression rate, which is getting a little bit granular, but we saw that, like, impression rate of how many people are seeing the show on a monthly basis and how many people are clicking on the show on a monthly basis. We saw that number go up by, like, 2 percentage points, which sounds really small, but, like, when you kind of, like, layer that in, that's actually like, the single. Probably the biggest lever that we could pull as a podcaster is recognizing a lot of people are probably seeing your show, but now we're starting to see the data of how many people are clicking on your show. And so we, we saw that, like, if we could pull any lever, like, let's say you kind of have these three data points of, like, impressions, let's say clicks and streams, or like, 60 seconds or more. So if you could pull any one of those three levers, the one that actually, like, makes the most sense to pull, that would have the biggest impact is actually that conversion rate from impressions to clicks. Um, and so we saw, like, if we could see that number go up by like, 1 or 2%, then the number of those people that are then turning into streams is going up dramatically more.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

Just because it's like a higher, I don't even know, higher magnitude, like, lever to pull. So some of those things we were, like, really excited about finally being able to, like, experiment with podcast packaging and seeing the results of it. The guys at Bumper Dan, Dan Meisner and Jonas, they just posted this really interesting article, like, this week that we're going to start experimenting with some of the data they were talking about where you can actually now see what percentage of listeners on a weekly basis or daily basis, depending on how you pulled the data, what percentage of those are new versus returning. That's something that we see often in YouTube, like, YouTube shows you, like, what percentage is new and returning, or subscribed and not subscribed. But we haven't. We haven't been able to see that in podcasting, partially because, like, nobody's really thought about the data in the right way. So that was a really brilliant article that they released this week. And so that's going to be something that we're starting to look at is like, okay, cool. If you have A thousand listeners over the last week. What percentage of them, this was their first time listening to the show. And then we can start to see, okay, is our new audience growing? Is our old audience shrinking? Like, you can do a lot with those things. Those are some of the things that I'm paying attention to and I'm excited about right now.

[Fonzie]

That's amazing. My mind goes to why has Apple doesn't release like those type of data points. Right. I'm, I'm so curious about that. And obviously I'm guessing almost like TV.

[Luis]

Doesn'T release really audience numbers.

[Fonzie]

Yeah, but, but I'm guessing like you base your, you know, I guess your hypotheses off of the data that you're seeing on Spotify and then you're kind of like, that is your baseline. And then obviously you're syndicating your podcast everywhere.

[Seth Silvers]

Right.

[Fonzie]

Like people can listen in Apple podcasts. I listen on Snipped, which I think it grabs the feed. When they asked me for a new podcast, I have to put like the link from like Apple Podcast or whatnot. But you know, there's different platforms that people listen to their podcast on. But it sounds like Spotify is really making an effort to be the hub. Right. I try to get people to be like, right, I need to know information about a podcast on how to grow. Let me go to the dashboard here on, on, on Spotify. But you know, do you find based on the data points that you see in Apple that those hypotheses that you're creating, seeing the data on Spotify are translating into the other platforms as well? Like, is that success?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, that's related. Yeah, that's an interesting question. Because we have seen some differences and just so that people kind of understand like how I'm looking at this, like we're typically going to be pulling data from any source that we have. So inside of Apple Podcast Connect, which is initially data specific to Apple listeners, inside of Spotify for creators, which is specific to Spotify. And then sometimes if you're, you're a third party host, wherever you're hosting. And so we're going to pull all data points from all three of those places, we're going to put them into a spreadsheet and then we're going to initially look at, on an episode by episode level, like what are the benchmarks that are either over performing or underperforming. And so the whole goal of that is just to understand what content's performing better or worse. I'm not a fan of tracking data that Won't change a decision. And so I think with that, like, we. Oh, I don't want to just track numbers for numbers sake. But is this data actually showing us something about our audience? I've seen recently that listeners on Apple or traditional RSS feeds like snipped is would be on rss. I've never heard of that. So you must be the only one. No, I'm just kidding.

[Fonzie]

Okay, quick parenthesis. Co. Parenthesis. Get that one is awesome as a consumer because you can create like little highlights when you listen to something. You create what they call a snip and then it like saves it. It's super cool, man. It's awesome for as a consumer.

[Luis]

Yeah, they owe us like $5,000 for this ad. Just saying.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, you're welcome. But so we've seen that, like, people that are listening to the podcast on traditional, like RSS players like Apple or Sniper, Overcast or not Stitcher, because that's dead. Not Google podcasts, because that's dead. Not many of those. They're going to be more likely to like, binge listen to content or to listen to like multiple episodes. So we saw this, which was really interesting with. With a show that we produce, and we published three episodes in one day. We just like, we were changing the format and so we changed it and we kind of dropped like a series in one day. And on traditional RSS players or audio listen audio players, we saw the downloads for that day go up by 2.8%, 2.8 times. So a lot of the audience listens to most of the episodes, like, not just one. On Spotify, the downloads only went up by 5%. So you have a difference from 280% to 5%.

[Fonzie]

Wow.

[Seth Silvers]

Which is wild. And so that to me, I always ask, what does this mean? This is interesting. What does this mean? To me that shows that people that are consuming content on Spotify, it's a little bit more of what's at the top of my feed. I'm going to listen to what's at the top and then I'm probably going to move on to something else. And I think that on traditional audio players, people are usually going for a creator or they're like, I'm following the content that this creator is giving me. Similarly, we see we initially get more downloads from less followers on audio players. Like, your download to follower ratio is going to be a lot higher on audio players than on Spotify. So I think with the integration of Spotify video and with music and with all that's happening on a Spotify app. There's tons of great opportunities. But I do think that the way that people consume podcasts is pretty different on Spotify versus other platforms.

[Fonzie]

That sounds like like a challenge, right? That like a new challenge might be approaching in sense of like, you know, looks like. Seems like Spotify is trying to push a little of this variability in a way, you know, like with multiple things going on. But then you want, as a middle of the funnel podcast, you want people to stick and to listen to multiple episodes, be able to nurture that. And if you're going to be, you know, somebody's going to be listening to your show on Spotify, but then immediately get recommended another one. Right? Like, yeah, what is that relationship in there?

[Seth Silvers]

Right.

[Fonzie]

Like again, publishing in both platforms doesn't really take too much effort, so you get both of the benefits.

[Luis]

Not only that also, but maybe like who's the core user of any of these apps that we put our content out? Right? Because same thing, like who is the main consumer for Spotify? And they might be getting into podcasting and they have a big play with big influencers, for example. But the consumer of the Spotify app might be very different than the Apple podcast consumer that has been listening podcasts for more than 10 years, for example. Right?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah.

[Luis]

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

[Seth Silvers]

Well, that's one of the interesting things is like as I guess as podcasters look at what are the challenges we face. One of the biggest ones, I'm sure you guys know this and would agree with this is like discovery. Like it's so hard for people to find your podcasts. Like the main way that people find podcasts is still like me listening and then me going and telling somebody about it. Like it's still like the ultimate word of mouth tool. And so with YouTube and with Spotify, they are beginning to incorporate some like discovery algorithms into podcasts. Spotify is doing this, they're beta testing this right now. With some of their, like, clips features, where, you know, they're kind of like, categorizing your episodes based off of topics. So that if I'm, like, looking at a clip on content is profit, it might say, hey, this episode is about entrepreneurship and leadership. And if I click on entrepreneurship, then it's going to start. You know, I could scroll through clips from other podcasts about entrepreneurship. So it's really cool because that sounds like a great feature to be able to be like, man, I want to listen to a podcast today about entrepreneurship, and just to scroll through until I find a clip that I'm like, okay, I want more of that and then go to the podcast. But the problem is if when I open up Spotify and that's what I do, then I'm not going to my library to find the newest episodes from the shows I've already subscribed to.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

So I think that the industry of podcasting is saying, hey, we want more discoverability. We want, like, we want more ways for people to be able to learn about our shows, which we do. But I think we also have to realize that people have a limited attention span. And so if Spotify is redirecting my attention from my current library to a new library, then it's going to be harder for me to spend time on the shows I've already subscribed to. Which, at the end of the day, that just means we have to have better shows. Like, we have to have shows that are good, that our audience loves, that they're going to come back to. So it actually puts more responsibility on us as creators to have content that kind of, like, supersedes those algorithms. So it's. It's a good problem. But I think that people need to realize that, like, with every solution comes new problems.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

And I think we're going to start to face some of that in the next year or 2 as YouTube and Spotify continue to kind of develop their podcast discovery algorithms.

[Fonzie]

Yeah. Sounds like that second order of effects that people don't really think about. It's like, yeah, now we got discoverability. Yeah. But now they're just sending them everywhere.

[Luis]

I'm curious, as we have this conversation, Right. Is there any categorization or levels to types of audience in platforms? Right. Like, do you prioritize a specific type of audience based on the data that you've seen? Right. So, like, an example could be like, okay, we know that in Apple podcast, people listen to about 70% of that. It's obviously the bigger platform, but maybe on Spotify we have way more, let's say way more downloads, but they listen less. Right. Because of the nature of the platform. Right. Or same thing. YouTube shorts. YouTube shorts. Massive views. Right. In a way, but low intent of following up with the long form, for example. Right. So have you. Do you guys have a ranking for the shows that you're currently producing and how do you, how do you tackle that challenge?

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, I mean, I look at like short form content as very different as long form content. So we definitely incorporate short form content into all of our shows and we think that's like really important and it's an opportunity right now that would be stupid for podcasters to miss from just like a discoverability and reach standpoint. Like, I think a lot of even small creators are probably leaving like tens of thousands of views a month on the table by not like leveraging short form content, maybe even a lot more. And so short form content is super important from my perspective, priority wise. Like, I still want to do everything we can to get to get our audience into a long form, preferably audio format. When you're listening to audio, like, I don't, I don't have all of the distractions. Like, yes, you're probably doing something, you might be going to the gym, you might be doing work around the house, whatever you're doing. But I still think that like the engagement level of people that are list consuming on audio is so much higher. So we see like audio, like we can use the term kind of like AVD, which is on YouTube, like average view duration, huge metric on YouTube. When we calculate that on the podcast, it's usually a minimum of 3x. So like if your AVD on your YouTube videos is usually 10 minutes, then your AVD on a podcast episode on audio is probably going to be 30 minutes. Yeah, obviously that's going to vary. But from that perspective, like we want to get our audience members, if we can, to listening to the podcast in a long form, like setting, just because that it's going to, I've heard it said, like time on brand. It's going to get us the most like time on brand with the audience, which is ultimately what we're looking at because like that time results in trust and that trust results in business and kind of goes from there.

[Fonzie]

Yeah, I have two possible ways that I think this, you know, conversation can go to, or I don't know, maybe you can bring them both together somehow. But we're talking about discoverability. Right. And obviously my mind goes to what are some of the best ways to get discovered, Right. We talked about this at the beginning. Like, takes a lot of promotional efforts, right? So some podcasters already have the assets, right? They can push them. But in your eyes, what is this? Put them in there, but in your eyes, you know, like, we talked about, you know, the clips and all that stuff, but organic. Have you seen, you know, results from paid. We have tested a little bit, and honestly, personally, we didn't see maybe very exciting results on that end. But again, we're obviously basing it off of just one time that we. That we ran that. But also, I want to, you know, put a highlight on asymmetric effort, right. When you were talking about the levers, right? Hey, yeah, it makes more sense to pay attention to, you know, the impressions, you know, that rate from the impressions, because it's going to have a bigger effect than if we just focus on kind of like the bottom of the funnel of analytics. Right? But, you know, we've heard usually a symmetrical effort in the sense of production, like, focus more on the hook, right? Like, at the beginning of the episode. Like, why are you gonna spend 20 hours editing, you know, the last eight minutes of a video rather than spending those 20 hours focusing on, you know, the first one or two minutes of the video that is gonna hook people, rather, you're gonna get them involved. So for me, when I see a symmetrical effort here in podcasting is like, well, okay, there's multiple elements, right, in the production side itself, but also in the promotion side itself, right? Like, do you put more of your effort into the promotion, right. Trying to get people. Trying to get the podcast into more people's feeds, Right. Or is it strictly promotion? Right. So production. And the reason I say this is I do believe podcasting is one of those mediums that, like, it is. So, like, quality is very important. Like, if a podcast doesn't hook you, like, you will probably not listen to it ever again if it comes across you. I mean, discoverability that we were talking is very small right now, so you might not even find that again. So, like, you want to maximize somebody listening for the first time and retaining them. Right. For the long term. But at the same time, you know, how much of your effort and your resources are you spending in getting discovered?

[Seth Silvers]

Right?

[Fonzie]

Like, are you doing YouTube and all these things? I know that's a big question.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think our perspective is shifting a little bit on it. Like, we're starting to focus more on the growth side. But I'll answer with a story. So this week, I don't know you guys are pro. We're probably all in some of the same, like, Facebook groups about. With podcasters or something. And I saw some forum that. Some questions that this guy posted in, one of them that had, like, had over a hundred comments, and he was this guy, and he said, hey, I've been podcasting for two years. I haven't missed a week, and I'm only getting like 29 downloads per episode. My highest download episode is 97 downloads. He's like, what. What do I do to, like, promote the show? Like, what do you guys help me. Help me grow the show? And I read every single comment. And then I came to Dave Jackson's comment, which Dave Jackson is like, yeah, he's been podcasting longer than we've been alive, but he's like one of the OGs. And his comment was the only one that was encouraging this podcaster to survey his audience and to initially focus on, like. Like, question the quality of the show. Question, like, the content. Everybody else was like, oh, you should do this. Like, you should email, you should do Facebook ads. You should do this platform. Everybody was like, you should do all these promotional things.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

When only one person out of the hundred was asking, maybe something's wrong with the show. Like, maybe there's a disconnect between your audience. And so I think both are super important with production and promotion. But I think that with podcast, with the main way currently that people are still finding out about podcasts being, like, recommendations and word of mouth and recommendations from friends, the show has to be good enough that I want to tell somebody about it. And if it's not, then I'm not going to tell anybody about, like, I'm not going to take my time to recommend mediocre content that doesn't solve anybody's problems. Like, yeah, I don't mean we. I don't have any time for that. So I think in that sense, the production is super important and focusing on the hook. If. If the hook isn't good, then people probably won't get far enough in the show to get the value to then recommend it. So I do think that we should focus on, like, making the show better. And then I think there is a natural progression of, like, if the show should be growing on its own, then we add in paid promotion, and it's kind of back to what we were talking earlier about with business. Like, if there's no spark, like, if the fire is not going, then the promotion doesn't matter. So I think there's a lot of shows Right now where people think that paid advertising doesn't work because their show isn't good enough. And so they're trying to solve a, like, bad show with more marketing. And I just think that doesn't go well together. So we. We have a client right now where they're. They're putting like, they have a lot of. A lot of budget for promotion. But we're actually waiting until the end of the first season to do any paid promotion. And we did like an audience survey before we even launched the show. We're initially making sure that the show is connecting with the audience in the way we want to before we promote the show, because otherwise that money is going to be wasted.

[Fonzie]

Yeah. What type of. Sorry, what type of questions do you ask in that surve. Right.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah. So we sent. We're starting to do this more like I want to do this with everybody, but not everybody has the patience. Cause it takes time. Um, but we asked questions, like some vague questions where we. We gave them like 10 episodes, so. Which is probably too many. So we. We gave like a trusted group of people like 10 episodes to review and kind of said, if you can review one, great. If you can review 10. Um, and so a lot of it was like, what question? Like, did you feel like anything was unanswered? Did you feel clear about what the episodes were about? Did you. Was anything confusing? Who would you recommend the show to? Like, what problems do you think this show solves? Like, some of those things where we should have clarity. And so if our audience doesn't have clarity, then, like, we're probably missing the boat.

[Luis]

Yeah, I like that. It's so funny to me because is my show good enough to earn the downloads? Right. And that's a question that as a creator, you just assume initially that the answer is yes. And as you are describing your situation, it's happened to us many times where, like, we have people here that produce. And obviously when people come to the studio is strictly production. Right. We don't. We don't wear like consultants or like strategies hat whatsoever, except if they're. Whatever plan they're in. But I figure I personally, obviously, I might not be the right audience, but this person, when I hear him talk on the microphone, it might not be the best creator out there. Right. For whatever topic. And again, it's one opinion, but like extrapolate that into a bunch of people that are tuning to the show and that becomes a very real possibility. And as you were describing the thing I'm thinking about us playing soccer, for example. Right. Or my kid now that is learning to play soccer. How many hours and sessions, like, he will have to do to become, like, a really good soccer player. Right. Same thing with creator. Like, this is a skill at the end of the day. It's like, you need the reps, you need to put in the time. You need to, you know, educate yourself. Like, how many do we used to say in our first episodes? You know, I think I'm down to, like, 50 per episode. Used to be like, 300 per episode. You know, I think that's okay. We need to get better, you know, whatever that makes you. You, you know, at the end of the day. But as creators is a skill at the end of the day, and not just because we know the topic. We're going to be able to be a good creator. And I think that's such an important topic, man, that. Thank you for sharing that, that case study and on the money, man.

[Seth Silvers]

I think a lot of podcasters think that creating the podcast is the game.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

Like, they, like, they publish the episode and they're like, they put, like, an intro and an outro and they think, like, okay, cool, I did it. Yeah. Like, when they forget that it's actually about growing the show, like, if the show's not growing and something's probably wrong. So this is where, like, I have a ton of respect for people like Jordan Harbinger and Tim Ferriss, where, like, for them, like, they are looking at podcasting as a craft.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

And so we've. We've started using, like, the phrase of, like, are we looking at the. Are we looking at the show as, like, a craft to be mastered or just, like, a tool to be used? Gary Vee says marketers ruin everything, and he's part of the problem, and he admits it. And so, like, any type of, like, communication, there's going to be marketers that come in and they're like, okay, cool, if I just do the thing, then it'll work. And so then the industry gets filled with a bunch of things that are low quality. And so I think that some of that is, like, happening right now where the industry is mature enough, it's maturing to where in order to make it from now on, I think that people are going to have to look at the show. Look at your podcast as a little bit more of a craft. You know, 10 years ago, Mr. Beast videos probably sucked, but they probably still got views. Same with Marques Brownlee. Same with Casey. Like, they probably weren't as good as they are now. Yeah, I Mean, that's because the game is different. It takes. It requires different things now on YouTube to win than it did 10 years ago. And I think that we're kind of like starting to see a maturity level like that for the podcasting side, where there's still so much room. Like, start a podcast. Everybody. Everybody can start a podcast and it can be successful. Like, I truly believe that. But it's going to require work. Like just doing the podcast isn't enough.

[Luis]

100. I think it's an exciting time, man, because I think, like, going to see different brands and creators and hosts that will put like their own, you know, twist, a creative twist to. To whatever they're doing. Right. And it could be a mix of audio and visual aspect. I think is it's just going to bring a lot more and like, the really good ones are just going to go to the top. I mean, right after going, everybody and their mother launch a podcast, right? And it was like, oh, you also have a podcast, right?

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Seth Silvers]

And then everyone and their mother closed their podcast.

[Luis]

Exactly. And I think obviously equipment gets better and cheaper. Right. Like, barrier of entry gets lower and cheaper. Same thing. You could launch a podcast today for free, in legit, like two hours. You could do it. And I think this conversation, it's very interesting to me because it just shows that there's a lot of opportunity if you're really to put the work in and touch on all the things that we do. So I think we're wrapping up the show. Fonsi, I know that you're typing questions for maybe session two.

[Fonzie]

Oh, no. I'm gonna do a rapid fire right here, right now. You ready? You ready? All right. What do you think of AI podcasts?

[Seth Silvers]

I don't like them. As far as AI being the podcast content, I don't like it. But I think AI can make a lot of aspects of podcast production and scripting and different things quicker. But as far as AI being the voice behind the podcast. Not a fan.

[Fonzie]

Love it. We're on the same team. Where would you be if you didn't publish?

[Seth Silvers]

Who is probably working. So, yeah, working some 9 to 5 job.

[Fonzie]

9 to 5 job. I don't know what is your favorite podcast at the moment? Besides content is profit, of course.

[Seth Silvers]

I. I really like Colin and Samir's show. Like, that's a show. That's a show that I probably list. I listen to, like a pretty high percentage of what they produce.

[Fonzie]

Awesome. And then why would people want to connect with you and work and they connect with you.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah. I think everybody might not want to, but I think the people that might want to is we use. The most common call that I get is a business that says we want to get into podcasting, but we want to make sure we do it right. Like, even if it takes more time, if it costs more money, like, we want to make sure that we do it right and not just like flippantly. So those are the conversations that we can like, serve really well. What the place to find me our website is Storyon Co. So you can go there and then also when, whenever. I don't know when this is coming out, but when this comes out, the new ish podcast that I'm like joining the co host team of will be live, which is called Profit Cast. So that's a show that's been around for a long time. And then I'm joining the host, the real Brian, and we're kind of like shifting the focus of the show to like, helping businesses launch profitable podcasts. So that's going to be a weekly show that we're doing that I'm really excited about. So go check out Profit Cast.

[Fonzie]

I love it. I love it. And the last question of the day, which one is your favorite?

[Seth Silvers]

Brian, obviously Luis.

[Fonzie]

Great answer.

[Seth Silvers]

Great answer.

[Fonzie]

He said Louis is not meant to you, just so you know.

[Luis]

I know.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah. You guys can fight over which Luis.

[Luis]

He said it the right way.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah.

[Fonzie]

For those that I think. For those that think my name is Fonzie, my name is actually Luis.

[Luis]

All right.

[Fonzie]

Just saying. Just throw it out of there.

[Luis]

Justifying the loss is fine. Seth, it's been a pleasure, man, having you. As always, this is your home, so anytime you want to come in on time, talk, you know, podcasting and content, you know, is an open door. We gotta leave all the links right below. You gotta do is scroll down and click and connect with Seth, man. So awesome. Oh, yeah, Fonzie. Anything else you want to add?

[Fonzie]

Just thank you, man. It was absolutely amazing. I loved it. I love this conversation. It's not every day that we get to dive so deep into, you know, our own made a world of podcasting, so it's pretty cool. Thank you.

[Luis]

Maybe we do a like a legit data session inside of business creator club. So I think that would be a fun one.

[Seth Silvers]

Fun. Yeah.

[Luis]

That'll be fun.

[Seth Silvers]

That'd be great. Thank you guys.

[Luis]

Like data fun.

[Seth Silvers]

Yeah. Thank you for having me. Really grateful.

[Luis]

Absolutely. Guys, with that said. Oh, hold on. That's it. Thank you so much for tuning to content. Perfect podcast. Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform and on social media at these Bros Go.

[Fonzie]

That is right. And it said here help you move one step closer towards your goal. Please don't forget to share this episode. And of course, don't forget to leave a five star review.

[Luis]

See ya. Bye guys. Sweet.