All the Benefits of a Brand Focused Podcast for Justin Jackson and Transistor

It feels fitting that Justin Jackson and Jon Buda referenced 37signals in their very first episode of Build Your SaaS because they were “eating their own dog food,” or “dogfooding” their product.

They were launching a podcast about building a podcast hosting company, which they were using to host their podcast.

What does this have to do with 37signals? They are perhaps the best example of dogfooding in the modern era¹.

But the podcast became more than just a way for them to dog food their product. It became a chronicle of how they created a new company — a new SaaS. And one in a crowded field to boot.

And since building in public is hugely popular, the podcast has benefitted them in a ton of other ways too.

Build Your SaaS is really a testament to how beneficial a branded podcast can be to a company.

Let’s take a look at why, and what lessons you can take from them.

What’s Build Your SaaS About?

Build Your SaaS had a pretty straightforward goal when it first launched. According to Justin:

Building in public is all the rage, and has been for a while. For example, did you know Pat Flynn used to publish his monthly revenue starting around 2009?

The reason is clear: people very rarely get to see the start of something big.

We see the olympic gold medalist standing on the podium, but we don’t see the life of sacrifice and hard work that got them there. No one really cares about that until after the success comes, and then you need to backfill the struggle and the lessons learned.

Building in public means capturing them in real time.

Justin and Jon knew from the start they wanted to share their story. If it crashed and burned, there were lessons. But it didn’t. Now they have a blueprint for what worked for them in a post-social media world.

The Pivot: Changing Goals

There was one more bit to the description Justin provided:

They could have shut down the show, marking it as complete, but they decided to keep it open to provide more value through interviews, as well as company updates.

The interviews provide other perspectives, which is great. But the ongoing updates continue the show’s original mission.

For example, they have recent episodes on new hires, taking vacations, clearing inactive accounts, and (😱) taxes.

They know (perhaps better than most) that making your first revenue dollars isn’t the end of the story — the company grows, and you grow with it. So, they continue to build in public and be an ongoing resource for the next generation of SaaS owners.

Now, listeners can pick up the show, regardless of where they are in their journey, and get essential, real-time insight from founders going through it.

Your Takeaway: Share what you know. Build in public. You never know who’s going to extract value from your journey.

Benefit #1 of Building in Public: Little Research Needed

That headline is a bit misleading because when you’re doing the work, you’re already doing the research.

If you’re building in public, you’re sharing the things you’ve learned from doing the research already.

Here’s how Justin puts it:

This is the biggest benefit of doing a show on a topic you already know about…or are learning.

It cuts down on research, and you get to control the narrative a bit more because you’re planning the entire experience.

Interview shows are great⁴, but they are also incredibly time-consuming because you need to:

1. Research potential guests and the topics you want to cover.
2. Book the guests.
3. Do more in-depth research so you know what to ask them and craft the story.
4. Record with them.
5. Edit your audio and their audio together.

If the guest goes off on a tangent, you’ll need to cut that out. If you get a bad recording, you either need to scrap the interview, re-record it, or spend extra time editing.

When you’re creating a show where you build in public, your entire podcast is one long story, and each episode is a chapter.

As John Bernoff, professional author and ghostwriter, says, your book’s chapters should always answer a reader’s question. And you should always provide case studies.

Your build in public podcast can be built the same way. You are the case study, and each episode answers a question about something you’re actively building.

People are watching you become an expert in real time.

Your Takeaway: All podcasts require some research, but if you choose a topic where you’re already an expert, or are actively learning, you’re front-loading the research.

Streamlining the Post-Production Show Notes Process

Aside from the research, Justin and Jon record using Riverside, which is quickly become a standard for these breakdowns.

But their post-production process is super streamlined.

One place where Justin and Jon are uniquely positioned is that as podcasters themselves, they see first-hand how useful new features they introduce are.

For example, they use a feature in Transistor that will automatically generate show notes from MP3 chapters. Their editor is already doing chapter markers, so generating the show notes is super easy for them.

In-fact, their editor has been with them from the very beginning, and as Justin puts it, “has become a character in our show.”

Have such a strong connection with your editor is important because it:

1. Reduces the amount of instruction you need to give your editor.
2. Decreases the amount of time your editor needs to edit your episodes.
3. Eliminates the need for you to check their work so granularly.

And in the case of Build Your SaaS, it also means the editor populates a good portion of the show notes.

While Justin and Jon take notes during the show using Google Docs, and Justin writes up his own show notes, he says Chris’ chapter markers are a considerable part of the show notes process.

Benefit #2: Inventing a New Revenue Stream

When you create good, useful content, you’re creating a product. Movies, books, TV shows, and music are all good content that are all products.

So, why not podcasts?

Build Your SaaS, aside from raising the profile of Transistor and the team there, makes direct money.

They started off as ad-supported, but decided to switch to a patron model: listeners can pledge $10/mo or more for a shoutout at the end of each episode.

They have 17 patrons at the time of this writing and make $191/mo. This number surly fluctuates each month (I’ve seen it close to $400/mo), but either way, that’s over $2,000 per year. A nice little revenue stream for a podcast.

And remember: outside of a shoutout, they don’t offer any additional perks. People support them because the content is so useful.

From what I’ve gathered, this isn’t meant to be a revenue stream for Transistor. In fact, 2 purchases of their business plan make more than the podcast currently makes.

But it’s still revenue.

Justin and Jon started this show to share their story, and now it generates income for them.

Benefit #3: Repurposing

Creating good, useful content is hard. You need to come up with ideas your potential audience is eager to learn about, put the time and effort into creating the content, and then promote the content.

Using your podcast as a starting point can be a game changer for omnichannel content publishing.

Justin knows this and repurposes the content from Build Your SaaS all over the place:

• Blog posts
• Tweets
• LinkedIn
• Video Clips
• The Transistor newsletter

There are several benefits to this: first, it puts the podcast content in front of different audiences, which increases podcast discoverability. But it also assists developing content for your other channels, and vice versa.

For example, here’s a Build Your SaaS episode from May on bootstrapping with young kids. Justin has a similar blog post from around the same time, which is also referenced in this Tweet Thread.

By increasing the surface area of your content, you’re reaching more people, as well as using it to promote the podcast.

Speaking of, there’s one more interesting thing Justin and Jon did for their podcast when it came to promotion.

Launching on Product Hunt

If you don’t know about Product Hunt, it’s a website where you can post interesting products, which in-turn get surfaced to their large audience.

Recently, it’s been used for more than just products, basically as a marketing channel to get publicity for anything you can link to.

Build Your SaaS had a successful launch on Product Hunt in 2018.

This is an intriguing approach because it’s not something you see from many podcasters. In-fact, while there are topics for newsletters, videos, and generic “audio,” there isn’t even a topic listing for “podcasts.”

Since Build Your SaaS’s target audience is likely the same people who are launching products or browsing Product Hunt, Justin and Jon knew that this would be a good fit for potential listeners of their show.

And it totally worked! They were ranked #1 on their launch day.

While podcasts have seen success on Product Hunt, I suspect you’d need good audience alignment…or a big audience already.

Your Takeaway: Consider lesser-known, niche-specific promotional channels. Think about who you’re trying to reach, and where they hang out.

Using Build Your SaaS to Improve Your Podcast Workflow

There’s a lot to learn from Build Your SaaS. While it’s not as technically complex as Jay Clouse’s Creator Science, or strategically formatted like Trailer Park, we’ve learned several new lessons, all culminating in one big takeaway.

There are many benefits to a brand having its own podcast.

Build in Public

Justin and Jon have seen great success by building in public. It raised their profiles and the profile of their company, Transistor. It generates separate revenue for them. And it gives them a wealth of content to repurpose on their blog and social media.

When you build in public, you’re also building credibility. You’re showing your audience that, unlike 99% of the population, you’re showing up and doing the work.

We know that podcasting is a great way to build your authority and establish expertise in your field. When you build in public, you’re actively showing people your process and what you’re learning along the way.

This also builds trust and stronger bonds. Look at the reviews, and you’ll see lots like this one, praising Justin and Jon for being so open and honest:

Picking the Right Topic Means Less Research

Every good podcaster needs to research. As Justin stated, while they’re not specifically doing research for the show, they’re still doing research.

They’re doing research on tax compliance, competitors, choosing the right infrastructure, and more.

They need to do that research for their business to success. Then, they take what they’ve learned and they share it on the podcast.

As you consider your podcast, or the new direction to take your podcast in, think about the topics you already know well, or are actively learning — it won’t eliminate research, but you will leverage the research you’re already doing.

Consider Niche Methods for Promoting Your Show

The playbook for promotion can get pretty stale these days, especially if you’re trying to promote your niche podcast to a general audience.

Instead, look for communities or services catering to niche audiences that match who you serve with your podcast.

Much like how Justin and Jon leveraged Product Hunt because they knew they were talking to current and wannabe SaaS founders, you can find communities, websites, or subreddits that serve your niche.

Growing your podcast can be a slog, but getting in-front of the right people can make it much, much easier.

1. I totally thought they invented the term. But alas, much like a cover song, I learned about the original much, much later. ↩
2. At the time this was published. ↩
3. I’ve had one for over 7 years at this point. ↩