Connect with Justin Peters
- SimplePod Studios
- Podcast Playbook
- FI Minded – Financial Independence Without the Extremes
- Doug’s appearance on FI Minded
Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to The Doug Show. I’m Doug Huntington, and today I’m talking to Justin Peters. How are you doing today?
Justin: I’m doing excellent, man. I’m so excited for this conversation
Doug: Yeah, we connected not too long ago, and I think we just passed each other in hallways for several years, but we never met each other until, like, a few weeks ago. And I, I think we have a ton in common, so I was like, “Yep, gotta have you on the show.” And you’re the co-founder of SimplePod Studios. That’s a podcast production agency. So we’re gonna talk a lot about, you know, running an online business and running an agency, the challenges, uh, the beginning, the growth, and all that kinda thing. I wanna start just with a little background on you, who you are, and what you do, and you can give us a little history, and I’ll leave it open for you to answer however you want.
Justin: Sure.
SimplePod Origin Story
Justin: Um, so my podcasting journey started six years ago. I was a solo podcast hobbyist for a couple of years. Uh, that, this project started out of a self-made sabbatical, and I’m too Type A to do nothing, um, during a sabbatical. So I said, “Hey, you know what? Let me try to start a podcast.” Um, I always liked consuming podcast.
I wanted to create. I wanted a creative outlet, so I started a podcast. Um, I didn’t think I would continue with it. I definitely didn’t think I’d start a business around it. Um, but even as I reentered the workforce, I continued podcasting, and then, uh, about a year and a half into my journey, I realized I didn’t really love podcast production.
I didn’t like the editing process. I didn’t… I love the conversations. I love the research. I love, uh, the input that goes into creating a podcast. Um, but all of the work that came with it was challenging. Um, so I was seeking for some help, and sure enough, my brother reached out, and he comes from a audio engineering background and said, “Hey, I’ll help you out.
Um, your audio sounds terrible. I can definitely help you.” And that was really the genesis of SimplePod Studios. I realized working with him that he could probably also help other podcast friends that I have. Um, so I started making introductions, uh, to some people I knew that he could help. I had so much fun kind of start, helping him start his freelance editing business that I eventually went to him and said, “Hey, can we do this together?”
Um, so, uh, sure enough, about four or five years ago, we started SimplePod, and it’s grown into what it is today.
Doug: Can you give us an idea of the general revenue, the profits, or maybe more generally just like the scope of the business?
Justin: Sure. Uh, this year we’re on track to do about 180,000. Uh, about a third of that goes out into cost. Most of our cost, uh, I’d probably say about 90% of our cost is contract cost. Um, we have two full-time contract editors that work for us and help produce shows that, uh, we manage, and then the rest of the profit is split 50/50 be- between Kyle and I.
And just in terms of general scope size, uh, right now we’re working with about 18 podcasters. Some of those podcasters on a seasonal basis, some of those podcasters are launching their shows, so they’re not quite in full production, and then some of these podcasters we’ve been working since the very beginning.
Uh, and we do everything from simple editing with them to full production. So we’ll handle both the editing along with someone has to write the show notes, create the thumbnails, uh, get it posted, help with social media content, deal with technical issues, communicate with guests. Um, so we’ll do all of the, the, the full package for a couple of clients as well.
Doug: Gotcha. cool, and thanks for sharing all the details. This is, uh, from the behind the scenes, um, I let you know that I was gonna ask, and you could dodge questions, you could, um, do what you need to, but ’cause a lot of people are not gonna share revenue. It’s, uh, some, you know, trade secrets or something like that. But, um, that’s, that’s awesome. Now, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s a tough business model, like you said, like y- you are … I mean, you started it because you did not want to be editing podcasts, and I’m with you. I, I love the idea of sculpting a wonderful arc of an episode, but the nuts and bolts of doing that are … I, I just don’t have the motivation to, to do it at this point. So can you talk a little bit about the, the team and all the folks that, you know, may be involved in, in production? And you said you have two full-time, but who all do you have on the team?
Justin: Yep. So, uh, Kyle, my brother, and I co-founded the business. We’re both working members. Um, so we take on probably about 50% of the workload on both sides, uh, of the house. He is, I would consider, the director of production. So as soon as an episode is recorded and moves into the production process, he pretty much handles the entire workflow and responsibility all the way through marketing a podcast episode.
And then I get all the other ancillary tasks that come with that, uh, sales and marketing, uh, client services, finance, and, uh, kinda general business operations. Um, so I get to handle a lot of, a lot of random fun things, uh, that pop up. And then we have two full-time editors. They both report to Kyle. Uh, Kyle’s in charge of overseeing their workload, the workflow itself, uh, their performance, et cetera.
Uh, our editors are editing the shows, they’re writing, uh, doing a lot of copywriting for, um, our clients, and then any of the ancillary tasks, like I said, making, uh, thumbnail graphics, et cetera. Um, so that’s mostly the dynamic of our team. We have a couple of contractors that come in and out, uh, especially graphic designers or audio engineers if we have, like, repair work that we have, we get a really bad episode.
Um, but outside of that, uh, it’s mostly a pretty lean team between Kyle, myself, and the two editors.
Doug: All right.
Sabbatical to Podcasting
Doug: What was your corporate job?
Justin: I worked in, uh, operations actually, uh, for a Fortune 500 company. So it was, uh, it was very interesting. Actually, I, I think we talked about this a little bit. I left that, uh, job. I started a self-made sabbatical, like I, I mentioned. I started podcasting out of there. I didn’t think I’d start a business out of it, so I re-entered the workforce, and actually my old employer ended up rehiring me, um, about four years ago.
So I ended up working for them and then slowly went from full-time to part-time as I scaled up my, uh, business too, and started working more and more full-time in my business. Uh, but it was, it was nice. I actually really liked that approach. It gave me, um, some security on the back end. It also allowed my brother to step full-time in the business, and if there was an- ever a month, uh, that cash flow just didn’t make sense, we could pay him first, and then I could get paid second, uh, which was great.
I could invest a little bit of the, the money I was making in my W2 for that, and I carried a lot of skill sets, uh, from that job. You know, project management, um, creative problem-solving, communication, uh, sales. A lot of these things I learned in this corporate environment, and I didn’t have to learn on the fly as an entrepreneur.
It’s already such a tough, uh, journey, so I’m glad I actually ended up working for that Fortune 500 company. But I’m also very glad that, uh, I get to do this full-time now too.
Doug: And then that’s really cool that you took the sabbatical, number one. So how did you manufacture that?
Justin: Uh, left, uh, actually, um, left the employer that I was mentioning and went to a competitor. And I was thinking grass was greener on the other side. I was a little burnt out in my career. I just thought I, I, I needed an employer change, and I realized whenever I made that change, it was even worse. And I probably tell people three weeks in it was…
Or, or three months in, I… It was probably actually about three weeks in that I knew that this job wasn’t gonna stick. But I did the whole dog and pony show. I was moving into a sales role, too, which was even more challenging, so I posted on LinkedIn that I had this big job change. If you need help or support, reach out to me.
I was already networking a bunch, and then here I am, three months into this job, like, “Ugh, this is not what I wanna do.” Um, but the problem was I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I came out of a really great conversation with a career coach, and he told me, “Justin, why don’t you just create some white space for yourself?
Like, you told me about your financial situation. Instead of, like, trying to jam another job in there and see if it works or not, just create some white space for yourself. Take a sabbatical.” And as somebody that had been working since they were 14 years old and never even thought about taking a sabbatical, let alone a sabbatical in my 20s, I was like, “Whoa, that’s a novel idea.”
Uh, it took me two more months to actually implement that, but I left that job and then created a, a seven-month mini-retirement, sabbatical, whatever language that you wanna use for this. Um, and I’m so glad I did it, ’cause like I said, I… The first half of that, uh, he gave me some really good advice. He said, “Don’t think about whatever job.
Don’t apply for jobs. Don’t try to, like, have networking conversations. Take three months to do you, to…” Um, and one of the biggest piece of advice he told me is, “Work on a project that you’ve always wanted to do but never had time because of work.” And, um, eight months before that conversation, I’d bought two Blue Yeti microphones, uh, with the intent of starting a podcast.
I set them up on my shelf, and there they sat on my shelf for eight months. So as soon as he gave me that piece of advice, I knew it was, uh, starting a podcast was gonna be what I was gonna spend those first three months on. Um, so yeah, it was, uh, honestly serendipity that I had that conversation with him.
He planted that idea in my head. I was a little bit lost in my career, uh, but I was also financially stable enough that I could take some time off.
Doug: How hard was it for you to chill out? ‘Cause it sounded like you are– You’re pretty driven, so how did you keep that under control?
Justin: Yeah, I, I don’t know if I did it well, to be honest. Like I said, I started a podcast, uh, six days into my, my sabbatical so I don’t know if that would necessarily be good at chilling out. Um, but I did try to build a little bit of structure around my days. I knew I wanted to, um, read every single day, run every single day, and work on my podcast every single day, and that was the only requirements that I had for myself, and if I got those things done and it was 1:30 then on a Tuesday, I would allow myself the flexibility, the freedom, to go out and do anything else that I wanted.
So I don’t know if I was great at chilling out. I still had to put some structure behind it. Um, but I do think having a more simplified and shorter to-do list allowed me to feel like I could check the boxes of my Type A personality, but also allowed me to really spend probably the second half of the day chilling out or doing what I wanted to do
Doug: It sounds like you were an avid and are an avid podcast listener. What were the shows that inspired you the years?
Justin: The very first show I ever listened to was The Jordan Harbinger Show. Um, I just loved Jordan. I loved how he conducted interviews. I really fell in love with just pod- like audio learning in general. Um, actually, audio learning started to me prior before that. I started working for this company. I was 19 years old.
It was, um, an insurance brokerage, so as you can imagine, at 19, I was two times, maybe three times less, uh, in terms of age of most of the people I was talking to. And I was getting bored of always having the same conversation about weather or about kids. Um, and I was like, “Man, what do these people like to talk about outside of that?”
And like politics or current news, things like that was something that came up a lot, but I had no… As a 19-year-old, I had no investment. I had no idea what was going on. So I started listening to talk radio on my drives into work. I listened to NPR a lot. NPR guided me to podcasting. Uh, then I got introduced to Jordan Harbinger and some other, like, um, uh, podcasters at the time, like the, like Tim Ferriss, and just consumed, um, so much in that space.
But, uh, since then I’ve, I have branched out a ton. I love niche shows now. Um, I, you know, anytime I, I wanna tackle a topic, I usually go to podcast players first and, and see who’s creating in the space.
Doug: And when you started your show, or w- well, what was your show? And then, yeah, how did you, how did you approach it? ‘Cause it’s like, I mean, there’s a lot. You could cover anything, and it sounds like you have a lot of interests
Justin: Yeah. I, I don’t know… I mean, looking back and now as a podcast coach, I did probably, like, all the wrong things starting my show. But I did one right thing, which was just get it started. Like , at the end of the day, like, if, if you’re thinking about starting a podcast, just get going. You’re probably not gonna find your voice, definitely not until episode 20, probably closer to episode 100.
Like, it just takes reps, takes time, and you’ll start figuring out, this is who I like to talk to, this is what I like to talk about, this is who my audience is, this is what they’re attracted to. Um, but the initial concept of my show, uh, the show was called The Struggle Is Real, and it was exploring topics that I wish were taught in college but weren’t.
Um, I came out of college and, uh, thought it was gonna prepare me for all the things that young adulthood threw my way, but realized that was not the case. Uh, I was… I felt kind of like I was sold this bag of goods, um, that actually didn’t, uh, deem fruitful. So I- here I was at 26 years old, starting a podcast, and I was like, “You know what?
I’m gonna cover relationships, health and wellness, personal finance, um, some of these other big topics.” And of those categories, the, the most response and the most amount of questions I typically got were about personal finance, about money, um, money management and anything in that realm. And I kept just creating more and more based on audience feedback, and eventually The Struggle Is Real turned into a personal finance show, and I eventually rebranded it to Fi Minded, or F-I Minded, which is a personal finance show with a financial independence tilt
Doug: Before we get into more agency stuff, s- we both have a strong interest in the, in the Fi community. So when did you get introduced to Fi and, and perhaps Fire and all that stuff?
Justin: Uh, always came from a frugal upbringing, pretty… Uh, I was lucky that my dad always taught me probably core personal finance tenets. Um, so I was always a pretty good saver. I would– As soon as I started working, I knew about getting my 401match and investing, and, um, I always lived within my means. So I think I had a pretty good foundation, but I never had a reason why.
Like, uh, outside of just, like, take care of yourself and, um, you know, don’t be a, a burden on society. Like, that was, that was, like, that was the line my dad was feeding me. I was like, “Yeah.” It just wasn’t, like, a strong why for me until I picked up the book, “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” um, and started reading through that and got introduced to financial independence, financ-financial freedom, um, and this concept of being able to live off a nest egg, um, as you build it, and maybe even potentially only working for 15 or 20 years, uh, and not having to, to wait till 65 to be retired.
So I think that probably happened around 2017, 2018. I don’t know the exact year. Um, but, um, yeah, I got super excited about financial independence and, of course, drank the Kool-Aid pretty quickly and doubled down on, um, a lot of what this community has to offer.
Doug: Okay. And then did you have like a target like, “Hey, I wanna retire by a certain date,” like folks do? Okay. So yeah, talk about that a little bit
Justin: Yeah, uh, five by 40 was always my mantra. Um, I, I felt like that was a good age. I, I just kind of picked that number between compound interest calculator slash where I felt like I’d be in my life. Um, you know, kids and relationships and et cetera. I felt like, uh, I’d love to, to, to reach financial independence by 40.
Um, and it’s cool to say, uh, I’m not 100% to my financial independence number. I’ve actually moved into, uh, what people call Coast FI at this point in time. I’m not really aggressively pursuing financial independence, but I do consider myself pretty much financially independent. And, uh, I just turned 33, so I, I think I checked the box on five by 40
Doug: Very good. Yeah, and, and I think, um, some of the early bloggers were a lot more aggressive. My podcast co-host, Carl Jensen, his blog was 1,500 days, so he was, like, trying to do it in under four years from when he discovered the concept. you know, later on we hear, like, “Oh, taking a little bit longer.”
And maybe, I mean, you have created your own business and, you know, you’re a co-founder, you’re the boss, and that’s probably way more fulfilling and potentially, like, a lot more valuable, like, in the long run, uh, both financially and just for our mental health and, you know, psychology around the whole thing.
So very cool. Congratulations. It, it definitely, like, it allowed you to take the sabbatical, I suspect, and it allowed you to be selective and do the part-time work. So
Justin: De- definitely. Yeah, and it’s interesting because, um, I consider myself financially independent and, and I always thought it had to be the nest egg number, the 4% rule that, that would get me there. Um, but I’m reading, uh, Cody Burnan’s book, uh, Berman’s book right now, Retire by four- uh, by 30, and he puts another concept in there called cash, you know, uh, cash flow.
And I never thought about it, but the reason why I haven’t necessarily been as aggressive on my financial independence journey right now is I got this big nest egg over here, and then all the rest of my expenses are really just paid through SimplePod. And I love SimplePod, and I don’t see it going away.
So I kind of like lost interest in continuing to build that nest egg ’cause I’m like, “Uh, I don’t know if I really need any more money right now.” And it’s nice ’cause they can kind of play, uh, a part, and we’ll probably talk about this a little bit. I don’t have to be as aggressive with my business either.
I don’t have to take on clients I don’t want. I don’t have to do or expand scope of services to expand revenue. Um, there are a lot of things that I get to do and build a more of a lifestyle business because I’m pretty taken care of on both sides of the, the, the, the aisle right now.
Doug: Funny enough, I was literally just talking to Cody, so he’ll be the preceding episode
Justin: Nice.
Doug: Yeah.
Agency Growth and Niching
Doug: So we’ll get into starting the agency, and basically, I mean, this is a classic, um, thing that happens where you’re starting your show, you realize that you should outsource a portion of it. You’ve trained people conceivably, or you’ve put together a team, and can outsource that portion of it, so you realize, hey, I can, you know, whatever, slap on the overhead and the margin so that it is profitable, and all of a sudden you have an agency, and then you don’t have to do the work that you don’t wanna do.
So I, I summarized that accurately correct?
Justin: it’s a great summary.
Doug: Okay.
Justin: great summary. Like I said, there was no intention of building a business. It was just a problem I needed to solve, and then I realized I could solve this problem for my other podcast friends, and, uh, sure enough, other people outside my circle also wanted support and help
Doug: Okay. So yeah, what were the first clients? And you said you, you had friends that were podcasters, so how’d you meet these friends and talk about figuring out who you wanted to work with and who you didn’t wanna work with?
Justin: Yeah. Um, so I had podcast friends that I’d made just through podcasting. We do a lot of guesting, so I ended up meeting a lot of people. But actually, our very first client, uh, ran a show called Military Money Manual. I actually still produce that show. And, um, it was, uh, two guys, Jamie and Spencer, and I met them at a conference.
Uh, and that worked out really well actually. I realized a lot of business gets done at conferences or at networking events or at local events. Um, so I doubled down on that as a kind of primary method of finding new clients. And actually, probably, I would say two out of five clients end up coming, uh, to us via live events or, um, like in-person events.
Um, so we started working with them. Actually, prior to that, we took on one of our friends as a, uh, temporary client. We traded a opportunity to produce his show for free, um, so we could dial in our workflows and, uh, get some feedback from him. And in return, he got five episodes edited for free from us. Uh, and we got a refer- or we got a recommendation out of it as well.
Um, so we took the summer to work on his show to dial in some of our practices, uh, along with producing our own sh- uh, show that we were working on at the time. And then, um, in August, we signed Jamie and Spencer as our very first client.
Doug: Very cool. How did you figure out the pricing and packages and, you know, it, it’s so hard to figure that stuff out.
Justin: Ugh, trial and error, Doug. This is, this was one of our big mistakes, man. I wish I had a better strategy outside of, um, sell it once, raise the price, and sell it again, and see kind of where it landed. Our very first client, um, we sold episodes at $40 per episode, which is insanely low. Insanely low, espe- especially as we started to realize we didn’t wanna be the ones editing the shows as well.
Luckily, Kyle, uh, was editing the shows whenever we very first started. Um, so but yeah, you think about $40 an episode split between two people after cost, very, very thin margins there. Uh, didn’t get us super excited, so we had to quickly increase our, our prices, and like I said, a lot of that was trial and error.
Um, I would continue to, to raise them, usually just, like, add $25 or $50 onto that price, uh, until I got a no. And then once I started getting some more consistent nos, I felt like I was maybe in range. Uh, going back, I probably would’ve done a little bit more competitor analysis. Um, but there… Honestly, when we were getting started, the podcast production agency space wasn’t as, um, populous as it is now, so I didn’t really have a lot of references for how much outside of just going to Fiverr and kind of looking up what other people were charging, and that’s kinda where we got to the $40 to start with.
Just didn’t work in an agency model, um, for us, so we had to quickly change pricing
Doug: Okay. And then how about the packages?
Justin: Yes
Doug: it’s, it’s all hand-in-hand and, you know, d- things have changed a lot in the last five years. Basically, it’s like show notes, there’s video, there’s other stuff. So yeah, where did it start and how did you tweak it along the way?
Justin: Yeah, this is definitely a big evolution for us, and con- honestly continues to be a big evolution for us as well as we try to figure out what is most important for our clients and also what we should just handle for our clients. Like, not even what they think is important, but what we know is important through our expertise and, um, knowledge.
Uh, but yeah, this was an evolution. We honestly said yes to our clients a lot. Like, we would sell editing to start with, and then they would… A lot of times our clients would ask us, “Hey, could you also do this?” Um, so the first year was just a year of yeses, and we would just say, “Yeah, we could do that,” and we would, uh, add it to the package.
We’d price it out. I’d usually add, like, 10 or 15 bucks on, um, as they, like, slowly added things into their package. We’d try it out. Um, we’d figure out the best way to work that into our workflow, um, and ultimately decide do we wanna continue offering this or not. Uh, and we made some mistakes. Um, there were some things that I realized I do not want to include in packages regardless of how much someone pays us.
Uh, for example, one of those is social media management. Uh, we had a client ask us if we could, if we could manage their social media for them. Uh, we said yes right away, and then quickly unbundled that and realized this is not what we wanna do. It’s not, not my expertise. It’s not where I wanna play. It’s a competitive domain.
Um, I think, uh, it required a lot of hoops to jump through, so we ended up, um, running it as a trial with them for three months. Uh, luckily, I, I was smart enough to know, hey, I don’t know if we wanna take this on yet, but we’re down to try to take it on for three months. At the end of the three months, we told them, “Hey, uh, this actually isn’t what we wanna do.”
But the smart thing that I did was in that three-month period, ’cause we knew after month one we did not wanna continue this, uh, I went out and networked with someone that is really good at this. Um, so I was able to offer a, a, a solution for them after all of it was said and done and say, “Hey, we don’t wanna do it, but I have someone that’s willing to do it, and they’ll bolt onto our process so that it feels very seamless for you.”
And that’s worked well in terms of service offerings that we don’t feel comfortable doing or we don’t wanna do, so that we can stay in our lane in terms of, uh, just being podcast experts.
Doug: From the podcast expert standpoint, how important is the social media piece?
Justin: Ah, man, that’s a loaded question. I think it can be very important or not important at all, and part of it depends on the client itself. Um, most of our expertise lies in, uh, professional service providers, specifically, um, coaches, advisors in the financial planning or financial coaching sp- um, space. And if they have an existing audience, they are already creating organic content for social media, it can be a great bolt-on.
It can be a great addition if we can start to overlap, uh, podcast audience and social media audience. If they have no interest in that whatsoever, uh, they don’t plan to do anything outside of podcast repurposing content for social media, I think it can typically be a money pit for a lot of, uh, service providers.
So I think it’s a case-by-case basis for most c- for most clients.
Doug: Cool. Great, great answer. And, um, you know, I, I don’t really like social media myself,
Justin: Yeah,
Doug: I’m like
Justin: what’s your strategy? Do you, do you participate in social media?
Doug: Just for fun. I like, uh, you know, and guitars, so like my, my feed is kind of filled with that stuff. Stand-up comedy as well.
Justin: Mm-hmm.
Doug: But yeah, from the marketing side, just it’s a choice that I’ve made, and through the years of me like working online, like stuff can work for certain people. Timing is really important.
There’s a lot of other factors. Nothing is quite as easy, and it shifts all the time. So at some point I was like, “I’m out.” You can do social media, and it can help your sh-show grow, but probably the effort and resources are better spent like being on other shows or just like some pure networking w- what it comes down to, and word of mouth.
Justin: Yeah
Doug: it’s just really hard to like manufacture the, the viral stuff even though some people will say, “Oh, I have the formula, and I can guarantee it.” It’s like, eh, maybe not. I don’t, I don’t know. So it’s, it’s just an excuse for being a not put in the time.
Justin: And I think that’s a decent excuse. I think as long as you’re intentional, uh, with the decision and that you’re not just thinking you have to be on social media, and then you do it half-heartedly, and then you burn yourself out or add additional workflow that is not paying off whatsoever. Um, I think in an, in an intentional decision is, uh, something that I try to push our clients into making whenever it comes to social media
Doug: Something we haven’t highlighted yet, but I really wanna spell it out and get your sort of history on it, but you mentioned that you’re kind of in the, the financial space. Is that accurate? Like, all the clients are in that space. So obviously those folks can charge a lot and they earn a lot of money. The finance space is, is a good one to spend time in. Um, maybe one that’s not as profitable would be, I’m just gonna make one up, like, um, dog walkers or something like that. That is high dollar, uh, noble thing. I love dogs, and it’s good to walk outside and, and all that stuff. But they’re not gonna have as much, um, profit margin to hire a podcast editor and agency to produce and run their show. So how– was that super intentional, where you were like, “These people make a lot of money, and they will…” Like, one client, one conversion is worth tens of thousands of dollars, and they may only have, whatever, 100 downloads per episode or 50 or whatever, and if they get one conversion, it pays for a couple years of your service.
So talk about that decision.
Justin: Definitely. Um, at the end of the day, we have to, we have to provide ROI for our clients, or this has gotta be a very short relationship with clients. And a little bit of this was organic because I had a personal finance podcast. I love personal finance, um, and I attended a lot of in-person, uh, personal finance conferences and events, so I naturally started to meet a lot of advisors or, uh, tax prep people, et cetera.
I also think, um, their expertise lends really well to the medium of podcasting, and I think it’s a space that grows very well outside of, like, dog walking. I’m not really sure how many people are, like, looking for a dar- dog walking podcast out there. Probably, like, dog training podcasts are out there, I’m sure.
Um, but it just seemed like a, a space that translated well. So many of these, um, coaches and advisors also don’t love social media, but they’re looking for a way to market their services. Uh, there’s an endless amount of opportunity to create episodes around this. And then, yes, at the end of the day, um, you know, if a lifetime value of a client for them is somewhere in the range of 50 to $75,000 and, uh, we can help them pick up even one client every single year, we can figure out a way to make ROI and pay back our services pretty easily.
Doug: By the time people come to you, have, they’ve already decided they wanna start a show kind of? Or where in their podcast life cycle might they find you?
Justin: Yeah. Uh, either one of two places. They are considering launching a podcast, so they’re coming for us for our launch services, and we have, like, a 8 to 12-week launch package, uh, that we walk them through, white glove, handheld. Um, or they’re an existing podcaster. Sometimes we’re approaching them from another service provider that just isn’t up to par, uh, and they’re looking for a new editor or a new production team.
Um, other times they’ve been running it solo on their own or with, uh, their team, and they’re realizing their team doesn’t have the expertise to be able to produce a podcast, or they might be frustrated about growth, um, anything else in that realm. Um, so we’ll pick up existing or potentially, uh, new podcasters
Doug: Okay. So I think that that was three of different categories. Which is the best client to have from your observations?
Justin: Uh, ones that are able to follow a process and be deadline-oriented. At the end of the day, like, that is the kind of client that I’m really looking for. Uh, I like… I- if you were to put a gun to my head, I probably would say I like existing podcasters more than people that are interested in launching a podcast.
I just… It’s very hard for me to articulate the workload and time and effort that goes into podcasting, but I know if an existing podcaster comes to me, I look at their feed, and they’ve been, uh, releasing an episode for 40 straight weeks, uh, they already have a little bit of the chops, and they know the understanding of what it takes to, uh, podcast on a consistent basis.
It’s a little bit harder for me to validate that with someone who is interested in starting a podcast. Um, so I’m much tougher in the sales process, really trying to explain to them what it takes to consistently produce a podcast. Um, but yeah, at the end of the day, people that can follow a process and hit deadlines is really important to me, um, because if they can’t, that puts a lot of stress and pressure on my production team.
Um, and they’re just not gonna be a good fit in the long run. We- it’s, it’s very hard.
Anatomy of One Episode
Justin: Podcasting is very hard. You’re typically looking at eight ep- If you’re a weekly show, you’re typically looking at eight episodes all at one time, and each one of those episodes needs to be moving through the certain stage of the production process.
Some of that is content planning, some of that’s recording, some of that is editing itself, or some of that might be the, the actual marketing of those episodes. Um, and if people can’t juggle multiple episodes at a time and make sure they’re hitting the timelines for each one of the responsibilities that fall on their plate, uh, the wheels are gonna fall off, and things are gonna t- burn out pretty quickly here
Doug: Man, you’re stressing me out with, uh, all the work that a podcast takes. T- try to, uh, so there’s a lot of stuff going on. Like, can you try to articulate, like, how much work would go into, like, one episode? just so people have an idea
Justin: Yeah. Uh, so if I’m about to work on a new episode, I need to think about what is the concept or what’s the idea for the episode. Uh, if I’m gonna have a guest, I’m gonna have to think through who is the right person to have this conversation with. If I don’t know that person, I’m gonna have to cold pitch them.
If, even if I know them, I’m still gonna need to reach out to them and work through calendars and scheduling. Uh, then comes recording day. If I’m recording with someone else, we’re gonna have a conversation just like this. Uh, if I’m recording on my own, I’m probably building a specific outline or script and recording on my own.
Um, either way, I’m probably doing some research and preparation for the episode between getting it scheduled and actually recording it. And then the fun really starts. You’re probably about at the tip of the iceberg right there. You press stop, and now, uh, after this episode is done, uh, Doug’s gotta put it into production.
So he’s gonna have to download files, upload them to wherever his team’s gotta grab them. The team has gotta go through at least one, maybe two rounds of editing. Um, it’s taking out the ums, the ahs, the you knows, looking for pacing, looking for false starts, uh, doing all the audio engineering so it’s leveled and sounds correctly.
Uh, maybe handing it back to him for review, then, uh, getting it back for a final edit. And then once the edit is done, we have to then start working on the packaging, the thumbnail, the title, the show notes. Someone has to draft and write that, approve that. Uh, and then at the end of the day, you press schedule.
It’s gotta be done, or at least that’s what you think. Now you have to get people to listen to that episode. So then there’s typically another process at the very end of this where you’re going to take a couple of steps, either putting it into your email newsletter, creating, um, posts on, for social media to promote these episodes, uh, and then maybe even thinking about podcast strategy larger than that too, and, like, how are you gonna get new people to come out, check out your show.
You know, reaching out to people you don’t know, getting on their shows, uh, running paid ad strategies, et cetera. There is a lot that goes into just one episode, and then on top of that, managing your podcast in general.
Doug: That’s a good summary. Good summary.
Consistency Over Perfection
Doug: It, you know the crazy thing, Justin? So I have this show and I have My Life Hi. For a few years, I was doing two shows, two episodes per show per week, so four. And
Justin: You’re crazy
Doug: but yeah, there was As you’re talking about it, I’m like, “Oh, sh- shit. That, that was a lot, man.”
It was, it was totally a lot, and it was awesome to cut, cut it down to one episode per week for each one, and I was like, “Oh yeah, I can do less,” which is, uh, it, it felt great.
Justin: I honestly, the, I love putting new clients through, you know, new launch clients through the wringer and trying to keep them on a weekly episode cadence as long as they can. ‘Cause eventually they might move to bi-weekly, and then they feel like it is the easiest thing to do, to create one… I get two weeks to do what I was doing in one week?
Like, it’s crazy.
Doug: Yeah. And it’s, um … Yeah, I mean, when I look back at, like, the sheer number of episodes, it’s, um, it’s mind-boggling, and I’m like, “Ah.” I’m not big on streaks, um, which is, I think, it, it’s good because it could be a little unhealthy. I, and I have a streak for both of the shows. I’ve never missed a week, and for a long time I was doing two episodes per
There’s some tricks. You know, you could rebroadcast. You could do a, a, you know, a remix or something like that. But, at the end of the day, like you said, I mean, there’s no shortcuts. There’s just, like, a lot of pieces of the process. So I know one thing that I’ve done, even from the beginning, I’m like, “If I going to sustain this, I need to change the scope.”
And just, like, at the end of the day, it ends up being, like, lowering the quality,
Justin: Yes
Doug: Like, there’s no, there’s no tr- it, it’s all trade-offs, right? So, like, either I have to put in all the time and do all the pieces that you’re talking about, the quality will be a little lower. And I’m like, the quality’s a little lower, but I’m extremely consistent.
Justin: Yeah, and if you– I, I think that’s actually a really great point to make here, and it’s something that I talk about a bunch. You know, at the end of the day, I do think consistency is what’s going to drive a lot of podcast growth and a lot of, um, audience development. And, um, I like to work through trying to help, especially my existing podcasters that come to me, audit their whole workflow and figure out what’s actually providing ROI and what’s not, and then dropping or removing some things.
A lot of times that might be getting rid of video, because video adds a lot of complexity. Um, it forces people to be at a studio. It, uh, doubles the download time for files. It requires you to be camera ready. It– There’s so many other elements to it. But I like to talk through a bunch of different things like that.
You know, some clients of mine think you have to record for 40 minutes, and I like to be like, “What about– Well, how does a 15-minute solo episode feel for you?” Uh, uh, so you know, there are a bunch of tips and tricks that I think you could reduce your workload. If you’re a online business owner right now and you’re thinking about starting a podcast, I do think you could be working on a podcast one to two hours a week, or 10, 15, 20 hours a week.
And some of that, as Doug was alluding to, is just scope and just deciding what you actually want to put in. Um, but you don’t have to do it all, especially from the start. And you can kind of decide over time to add or remove things, um, which I think is nice. I’ve gone from weekly to bi-weekly and back to weekly.
I’ve added video at different times. I’ve been posting on social media. I haven’t posted on social media before. Um, there are a lot of different things that you can decide to, to do or not do.
Doug: One observation with all kinds of different online business s- specifically is things kind of worked immediately. a lot of stuff that I tried, like, didn’t work and, you know, you don’t wanna quit too early. We know sort of the compound interest of the effort and the learnings and, and you stop making as many mistakes.
But generally, things work really quickly. worked, like, right away? Did, did the whole, um, concept work and you were like, “Okay, this is clearly a good path for us to go down”?
Justin: Um, oh man, I wanna say so many things worked well right away, but that’s not always the case. On the sales front, in person, um, networking worked really well, so I doubled down on that and realized putting three to five conferences, uh, on my calendar every single year was going to drive outcome, drive sales.
Um, dividing and conquering with my co-founder and brother, Kyle, worked really well right away. So we click- quickly tried to figure out which lane, uh, we were both best served in versus us kind of just 50/50 dividing all of the work. Like at one point in time we tried like, “You handle these five clients and I’ll handle these five.”
But we realized it shouldn’t be a client division, but actually a task or responsibility or workflow division, um, that’s happening. Uh, so we actually went back to that, realizing it was working, um, right from the get-go. Um, yeah, there were probably some other things that I’m just not thinking about at the top of my head right now, but, um, I think those are probably the two big ones right at the, the gate that I, I thought about
Doug: Okay. And perfect.
Co-Founder Communication Rules
Doug: And it sounds like you guys able to communicate well and adjust and, you know, take what you learned. Like, “Oh, we thought this,” and we switched, and we switched back. and I take it you work pretty well with your brother, too.
Justin: Uh, y-yes and no. Um, yes in s- in terms of sense that, uh, we’re family and there’s nothing that would break that bond, and our business w- right from the get-go, we told ourself, “The business never needs to get in between our relationship.” So if we were ever struggling with that, we promised we’d just shut the business down.
But on the same vein, running a business can be stressful, and with that stress comes communication failures. And a lot of times we defaulted to how we communicated with each other when we were 13 years old. Not, not as 20-somethings, but as, as teenagers. Um, so after about a year of a few blowups, we both had to come back to the table and be like, “Hey, I, I love you.
You got my back. We want this to, to work. Um, how are we gonna put some things in place?” Just simply like, “Hey,” you know, uh, especially with co-founded, two co-founded relationsh- uh, uh, businesses, decision-making a lot of times does turn into a 50/50 split. And we had to realize what happens when it’s just two people.
And we didn’t wanna get a third party. Like sometimes, like, ugh, I feel like I was like defaulting, be like, “Oh, what’s my girlfriend think?” Like, “Gabby thinks this. We should go this way.” And Kyle’s like, “I don’t care what Gabby thinks. This is our business, not yours, uh, or not hers.” I was like, “Actually, that’s fair.”
Um, so we had to put a couple of, uh, principles in place where we would always try to come to an agreeance on a decision, but, uh, the third party or the, the third vote that was in it was whoever owned that domain. Um, so, you know, for him, he might come to me with a team member issue and be like, “Hey, I’m really struggling with the editor.
They’re doing this. What do you think? What do you– How do you think we should proceed?” He would get my feedback. He would give me what his feedback is, and then we might come to a decision on what to do. And if that deci-decision was split, it’s his domain. He ultimately gets to decide what, uh, decision is made there, and I have to be comfortable with it.
I don’t… I, I realized early on I had to get over the, um, complex of wanting to be right and instead what’s best for our business, and I think that was a challenge for me in year one of, uh, running a business. And then same on, on my side too. Uh, you know, for example, I’m in charge of pricing and packaging.
Um, so I might go to him and brainstorm or talk out pricing. “I’m thinking about increasing this. What do you think?” He might come back to me. Uh, I’ll hear him, get his feedback. I’ll share mine. But at the end of the day, if it’s a split decision, it’s my responsibility to make a decision and then own that responsibility.
Um, so we put a lot of those practices in place of how we communicate and who ultimately gets decisions, and I think that really helped coming out of year one and into year two of business.
Doug: So we talked on your podcast about, idleness and really just not working too hard. It’s something I’m passionate about. And how do you keep yourself from working too much? And I mean, you’re, you’re your own boss, so you can create the job that you want, but you’re also very driven, and I’m just curious how you deal with that.
And the oth- I mean, the other piece of this is, like, once you start working for yourself, you see, like, there’s no– there’s very little waste in the system, so there’s not all these middle managers like a corporate job. So if you, you know, you triple your clients, like, you and your brother could be taking home, like, three X and maybe not be putting in a ton more time.
It scales in a way that f- feels surprising. So how do you embrace a lifestyle business approach?
Justin: Uh, Doug, I think this was one of the most challenging things through the evolution. You know, we talked about financial independence at the beginning of this, this conversation, and reaching financial independence while scaling a business, uh, was a bit of a dichotomy because at the end of the day, I wanted to reach financi-fin- financial independence so I could s- work a little bit less and I could have more ownership of my time, and I needed to implement that with my business.
But it wasn’t just my business, it was also my brother’s business. Um, and he’s on a different path in his own financial journey too right now. So of course, he would love for us to be 10X where we’re at right now. Um, I would love to be right where we’re at right now ’cause I like, uh, the, the container that it’s currently in.
Um, so there is some trade-offs and some back and forth that him and I have to talk through, uh, on that front. But there are a couple of things that I put into place that have really allowed me to contain this to a lifestyle business maybe 25 to 30 hours a week. Um, and those hours, for the most part, are fairly flexible hours.
Um, I, for the most part, work at the same time most of the week. Uh, but it’s nice on a random Tuesday if I wanna just do an hour of work and then shut the laptop down and not think about anything else for the rest of the day and go on my merry way. Um, so a couple of things that I did, time blocking meetings.
Um, places that I needed to be at certain times, I tried to contain them to three hour ti- three hour time blocks, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. So client meetings, networking meetings, sales calls. It’s nice putting them there. Um, so I had maximum flexibility for the other, I don’t know, 15, 20 hours a week, uh, that I needed to work to spend or spread out how I wanted to.
Uh, also making a list of five important tasks that I wanted to do that week. It’s very easy as a business owner to just keep adding to the to-do list and, and saying, “Hey, I need to do this and this and this, this week.” Um, on Mondays, sometimes Sunday nights, I look down and I say, “Hey, if I only got five things done this week, what should those five things be?”
And then whenever I check those five things off for the week, I don’t, I don’t beat myself up if I decide I don’t wanna do or work on any other things related to my business. Um, and then a- always auditing and dropping non-producing task is also important. Like, what was I doing just because I thought it was the right thing to do or, um, I thought it might be adding some value to the business, but it wasn’t adding any value to the business.
Always questioning and asking those things that I was doing, especially the things that weren’t ongoing, but maybe like monthly, uh, or quarterly. I’m like, does any of… Do any of my clients check their analytics worksheets that I’m updating them on every single month? And I’d ask them, and some of them are like, “I never look at that, and I don’t really care.”
And some are like, “Yeah, I do. I really like that, and it’s this great, um, uh, overview for me.” So I’m like, “Okay, cool. I’ll just drop doing all of these, and I’ll only do these couple right here that really care about this.”
Doug: Yeah
Justin: so working through each one of those, I think has been really helpful for me too.
Doug: One, one question I didn’t put on the list here is around exiting or selling the business. And towards the, I don’t know, kind of the, the end of my online business, uh, efforts, I was like, I think building an agency… Business models were shifting, but like I think building an agency and then selling it would be like one of the most profitable, especially if you knew that you were going to sell it and you were not a critical piece in that business. be a great sort of turnkey situation for someone who maybe wanted to, you know, stop their corporate job and they had a few hundred thousand dollars to buy a business. So have you guys talked about that or is that on your radar at all, like your brother buying you out or something?
Justin: Yeah, um, definitely on our radar, uh, either direction. Um, we’d… both of us would offer it to each other before we would, um, offer it to someone else or get somebody else involved. Uh, we’ve also done a lot of strategic networking with freelancers or other agency owners that at any point in time, um, we wanted to, to throw the cards on the table and have that conversation, I would probably already have about five to six people I would turn to and, and ask if they have interest in it.
Doug: Perfect. That’s great. Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the, the best things is like there’s competitors out there, but like you kinda wanna be friends. Like those folks are the people that may buy you one day i- if
Justin: Yes
Doug: or you buy them or whatever. So it’s good not to be a jerk to other folks.
Justin: I love networking with other, uh, editors or agency owners. I think there’s a lot of wisdom to, to learn from other people and stay on top of things. But yeah, there’s also, at the end of the day, this little f- you know, thought in the back of my head, who would I hand this off to? Like, who would I love to sell this to?
Um, because I’m so invested and involved in many of my clients, uh, you know, as a podcast producer and working with some of these, uh, clients of mine, we might be like a, a fraction of their marketing team or maybe all of their marketing team, and we’ve been invested in, uh, new services that they’re providing, changes that are happening in their business.
Uh, many of my clients I actually consider friends first, um, which can be dangerous, but I, I’m down to play in the space of working and having friendships with my clients. So if I did ever sell the business, I would know, I would want to know that I’m handing it to someone that I really trust and that will care just as much as we care, um, because I care about these people that I’ve been working with now some four or five years at this point.
Doug: Are you good on time if we go just a couple minutes
Justin: Yeah.
Doug: Okay.
Justin: I’m wide open the rest of the day, man.
Doug: perfect. This is the last thing for me too, so
Justin: Cool
Doug: Okay.
Industry Trends and Wrap-Up
Doug: I want to shift into a couple industry things, partially like my own interest in I’ve read some, some of the research out there, but it, you know, it’s hard to get data on the podcasting industry.
So, the, the first one kind of a, a slam dunk most likely. Is the podcast industry still growing?
Justin: Actually, I, it’s funny that you, um, asked that because I just read an article this morning, uh, that had some data around this. The podcast consumption over the last decade has 4X’d. Um, so there’s either four times as many listeners and/or listeners are consuming four times what they, they were consuming.
Uh, and year over year, podcast consumption growth is up 5%, um, which is great. Like, at the end of the day, hopefully your show’s growing 5% because just naturally the industry is growing at that rate. Um, so yes, I think it is definitely still growing, but the, the caveat that I’d put on it, it is way more competitive than it was five, six, seven years ago.
I started podcasting in 2019, and, um, you… Uh, it was starting to develop at that point in time, and it was really starting to take some, some shape, I think, going, especially going into 2020 when so many of the, the business owners got locked in, in their houses over COVID and were like, “What, what should I do to grow my business?”
And, like, there was a flood of podcasters. Um, you can see all the, the stats on new shows, and, uh, 2020 and 2021, there was huge spikes in new shows ’cause so many people were getting into podcasting. Um, and then so many of them faded out, but what was left was, um, experienced podcasters, and these big brands are coming into the space.
There’s dollars that are getting put behind podcasting right now. It’s, it, you can’t simply just throw up a conversation with a friend and assume you’re gonna get thousands of downloads now. You have to really be thinking about a specific target market, the production of your show, driving a great conversation or shaping a really good episode.
It’s, uh, just in my six years in this space, I have seen how much it has changed from the beginning to now
Doug: Totally. And I, I started in 2019 also, and I felt so behind. I was like, “Oh, I, I wish I would’ve started in…” I mean, I, I thought of doing a, a podcast on beer actually in like 2009, ’cause that w- that was the first shows that I listened to was like about home brewing in like 2007. An avid listener for about five or six years. your point, like people could just record something, horrible quality, like no direction. It was a beer-related, um, podcast, so a lot of times I would just be drunk. So, I mean, it was kind of a train wreck. But it was funny. It, you know,
Justin: Yeah
Doug: cool and it worked. Um, but yeah, it’s so crazy that like we started in 2019 and we’re like, we- we’re ki- we’re ahead.
I mean, like we’ve kept doing it, so there’s some value in that. But I mean, the early shows that I was listening to f- it was… I mean, there was no other podcasts basically in comparison. okay. So with platforms, um, for my shows I see Apple Podcast and Apple products seem to be the vast majority, um, maybe like 60, But there’s Spotify. I talk to some people and they think Spotify is the only thing out there. I’m like, “I don’t use Spotify. I don’t care,” and it’s super interesting. then YouTube is huge. I think they’re now the biggest, but, um, there’s a few studies out there. But your observations and then what you have read perhaps in that study that you mentioned.
Justin: Yeah. One follow-up thought. I, it is unbelievable that you even knew what a podcast was in 20, uh, 2007, let alone listened to podcasts at that time. Uh, another really fun chart that you can Google is, um, how many Americans understood the word podcast and what that was, and it’s, like, that, that timeframe, it was like 11 or 12% of the population knew what a podcast was.
And now today it’s like 78, 79% or something, I think was the last thing that I saw. And you see it showing up in media now. Like, um, uh, there are like shows that reference podcasts. There are like, uh… Dang, there was that like, um, uh, Selena Gomez TV show that, like, the whole concept was them like having a, a, a podcast.
Do you know what that one, what I’m talking about?
Doug: it’s, uh, Steve Martin and
Justin: Yes
Doug: and, um, uh, is it Murder- Only Murders in the Building or
Justin: Yes. That’s crazy.
Like, that concept is, that is insane that that came into, to TV. Um, so cool that you, uh, were an early consumer of podcasts. Uh, but back to your question about platforms. Um, I… YouTube makes this really fuzzy and really muddy, uh, because I’ve seen a lot of the same studies that YouTube consumes, like, 80% of podcast listening, and then other studies that show it at, like, 17%, and Apple and Spotify ahead in those charts.
Uh, I think part of the issue is definitions. Um, a view on YouTube is not the same as a download on, on Apple. Is… And that is not the same as a play on Spotify. Um, so I think there are some definition, um, adjustments that have to be made here, along with even defining what a podcast is. Uh, and there’s some people in the industry that think a, a podcast has to be related to what is called an RSS feed, while there are other people that don’t necessarily agree with that.
So I think there’s a lot of muddiness. Um, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s that challenging to be on all platforms. The… There’s a technology out there where you can essentially pay for a podcast host. You upload your episode there, and then you can connect your podcast host to all the listening platforms, and then on those listening plat- Or, or then you can get anyone that chooses whatever listening platform they want can get access to your show.
So it’s a one-time setup. I don’t think it’s overwhelming. Um, I’m in favor of getting it to wherever people listen to podcasts, so any time a new listening platform comes on the table, uh, I like to get my, my clients’ show submitted there
Doug: Cool. And f- for me, uh, when I looked at some of the research and thought about the demographics of my audience and then compared it to the demographics, it was like Apple Podcasts, I mean, they were the original directory and player out there, and it seemed to be like m- my audience is whatever, uh, 35 to 55 or something like that, the majority. And there’s more people that use Apple Podcast in that demographic Spotify. YouTube skews younger generally. Um, but… A- and there’s overlap all over. Just interesting ’cause like when I think about it, I think a lot of my… I mean, I see a lot of my friends have, they, they don’t have Apple devices, and they a- they have Android.
And I’m like, “Wait, why are you guys on the… Do you have an iPhone? Are you an
Justin: I have an iPhone, yeah. I’m actually a, I’m a Spotify user. I love Spotify. Um, I actually really like it from a podcast, a podcaster standpoint too. They’re coming out with a real- a lot of interesting features. They were one of the first to bring comments to, um, podcast, uh, platforms, which is great, outside of YouTube, of course.
Um, they have been providing more and more analytics, um, especially listener analytics now, which is great. I can see on, on Spotify how many people are returning versus new listeners on every single episode, which seems like a very easy piece of data that these podcast players would give us. But aside from YouTube, we don’t…
As podcasters, we did not have a lot of data until recently, um, to help equip and make better decisions. So I do like what Spotify’s got going on here. But yeah, I see it. It’s fun to, to be working on 18 shows ’cause I can kind of compare things across the board here. And someone like, uh, we have a leadership consultant that talks to CEOs, and his audience is primarily on Apple, uh, probably skews a little bit older.
And then I have a, uh, um, agency owner that speaks to freelance graphic designers, and her audience skews more Spotify related. Um, so it is, it’s fun to see kind of how the shows attract different audiences and where those audiences are listening to their, their content.
Doug: Yeah. And I mean, to your point, I’m like, “Ah, it’s interesting when I kind of look at the data,” and then at the end of the day, I’m not actually making a decision based on it or doing anything with it, but I’m like, “Oh, there’s a lot more people on Apple.” Like, I, you know, it- interesting, you know? I, I put the effort in YouTube ’cause I…
Actually, I started YouTube before the podcast anyway, and it’s, you know, it’s… I, I have the studio, right? It’s easy enough for me to just, like, turn on the, the camera and get going, but it’s not… It doesn’t have the same… You know what? I’m not trying to grow the show as much, but, like, there’s more discoverability, which is, like, the big thing with YouTube. lot of new, new folks might find you through the algorithm, you could also become a slave to the algorithm, so it’s a double-edged sword
Justin: It is. And I am appreciating Spotify is also becoming a little bit more algorithmic now, um, which once again, double-edged sword, sword. It’s nice because you can grow your show with a lot- without a lot of your effort. Um, you know, if you develop the right kind of audience, you understand what they’re searching for, and then you build content around that, you can really grow an audience now on Spotify, which in the past it wasn’t necessarily like that.
It was much more a- archaic in terms of how search worked. Um, and it was mostly just the bigger shows, like the, the big dogs that are out there, um, that would dominate search. Um, but yeah, I think they’re, they’re learning a little bit from YouTube. YouTube’s learning a little bit from podcast players, uh, which is great, and we’re starting to see a lot of overlap between the platforms.
And, um, I think for the most part it… there, there is good here. But I’m with you. I don’t really love getting driven by the, the slave of an algorithm either. Like, it’d be so easy for me to make clickbaity titles, um, for me to double down on content that I know would perform really well, but for me doesn’t excite me to, to create around.
Uh, I don’t know. As a, um, someone that, that likes to talk about sustainably creating content, um, there are some other considerations outside of just growth, um, that, that come into play
Doug: All right. As we’re wrapping up, ’cause I, I realize we could just talk about this, uh, stuff all day long. It’s, it’s so interesting. How important is video when you’re talking to your clients? Are you pushing them that, that way? I mean, I think the industry is kind of moving in that direction. Video is really important, but I know it’s not the only thing.
So how important in your view?
Justin: I think I land on video just like I land on social media. It’d be easy for me to say yes or no, um, to this answer. Like, I could straw man my own argument and, um, yes, like, we see so much, um, push towards video. The social media platforms, like, uh, it’s video heavy now. Uh, you have an algorithm on YouTube, um, that’s really serving you from video.
People like to consume on video. Um, but then on the same side, I could say no, and, uh, I know many successful podcasters, our most successful client isn’t even on video. Um, I think at the end of the day, I like to articulate the pros and the cons. Um, video is much more expensive, so already if you’re considering starting a podcast and you are either, uh, money strapped or time strapped, video…
removing video from the process should be a high consideration. Uh, you can always add it back on. You could always just record it and leave it somewhere and not even do anything with it and maybe come back to it. Um, also you wanna think about, um, is your content going to be heavily dependent on visuals?
Uh, there are some kind of content creators that the visual component is a very important part, while other creators that they can get by just with audio. Uh, how do you plan to monetize? Like, what is your current skill set with video? Uh, what’s your current, um, uh, equipment list? I think there are a lot of questions I’d wanna go through with a client before I could really guide them if video is right for them or not.
Um, but overall, I, I definitely think there’s a shift to video, um, but I think it’s probably less important than what media news is, is showcasing right now.
Doug: Justin, this has been fun. It’s good that we connected, and I want to make sure people can, you know, find your stuff. So if they wanna connect with you, see what you’re working on, where should they go?
Justin: Uh, SimplePod Studios is probably, um, simplepodstudios.com is probably the easiest place if you wanna check out, uh, what we have going in terms of our business. And then if you have questions, you wanna just connect with me, LinkedIn is the only platform that I’m super active on. Uh, so you can find me, Justin Lee Peters, on LinkedIn.
Uh, connect with me, t- tell me that you, you heard me on Doug’s show and, uh, start a conversation because, um, I love chatting with people on LinkedIn outside of the people that just spam you with a, a sales DM immediately.
Doug: That’s usually what I see over there. And, and you have a podcast too, w- and I’ll link up to that.
Justin: Yes.
Doug: called?
Justin: If you’re interested in podcasting, uh, “Podcast Playbook” is, uh, our show. You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. And if you’re interested in financial independence, uh, you can find me over at FI Minded, um, that’s FI Minded
Doug: All right. Awesome. I’ll link up all that stuff so people can find it really easily, and thanks a lot, Justin
Justin: Thank you so much, Doug