So what changed, and why am I deciding to make the transition despite the considerable technical debt?
When asked on Threads what inspired the change, I responded with this:
Over the last year or so they’ve made changes that took features away from paying customers, and added features to the free plan that paying customers STILL have to pay for.
Just feels like they’re not interested in helping small business owners anymore.
I like Notion because it’s flexible, used by a lot of people, and has been adding great features (like automations).
I also feel like I know what I’m paying for, and when I’m paying, when I pay for Notion.
And while that’s mostly the case, there are a couple of other reasons.
For one, I find myself spending most of my time in Notion these days. I’ve already moved a bunch of my operations there, and people I work regularly with, like RSS.com, and my assistant, Jordan, already work in Notion.
I’ve also moved family stuff into Notion, and it was very easy to share that stuff with my wife.
When I do open Airtable, it now feels cumbersome. I can’t view everything I need to view in one spot (even with interfaces), and it’s slow.
But, while this certainly feels like a major move (that I still need to make the checklists for), it’s actually a smaller part of bigger changes I’m making moving into 2024.
See, my entire tech stack is changing. Here are the switches I’m making:
Scheduling: Calendly to SavvyCal (probably, in this case)
I’ll likely write about this in greater detail in future articles, but taking out task manager (which I feel like I change a little too often), I’m moving to Squadcast because it’s now including with my Descript subscription, and I’m displeased with the direction Riverside is going in.
And the switch to SavvyCal is related — they have very tight integration with Squadcast, which is one of the most important parts of my guest-booking workflow.
Of-course, all of this requires considerable changes — so why now?
It’s a combination of cost-savings and frustration. I’ve been increasingly frustrated with Airtable, which is what pushed me to test Notion in the first place.
I don’t like how much I’m paying for Airtable, and like even less that they seem to be taking more features away from the plan I’m paying for.
Couple that with the fact that Notion is more affordable, even with full-access guests, and that they just rolled out their own Automations, and it felt like a good time to jump.
All of the moves will save me $450 annually, and will end up saving me time too. Not bad.
So when do you burn it all down and start over?
I think it’s when the frustrations start getting in the way of you working efficiently.
If what you have is working, and you can continue to afford the tools you use, leave them be.
But if your processes suddenly start fighting you, or there’s a consolidation of tools (like with Descript/Squadcast), you should consider changing.
It’s also worth noting that you’re likely not rebuilding your entire process stack like I am. But if you are switching a couple of things all at the same time, you likely don’t have to repeat some of that switch work.
For example, Moving from Airtable to Notion will requirement me to update my Guest onboarding automation anyway — so I’ll be able to update it both for Notion and SavvyCal.
If you’re worried about the level of effort — well don’t worry. I’ll be documenting that for you 🙂
Joe Casabona is a podcast and automation coach who helps coaches, course creators, and authors grow their podcasts into authority-building lead generators. He does that through expert-tested systems that come with 10 years experience podcasting, 15 years teaching, and over 20 years working the web.
Imagine creating not one, not two, but THREE versions of every podcast episode you produce.
That’s what Jay Clouse does with Creator Science. See, last year he made the decision to make his podcast “YouTube-first,” which means focusing on video production, then mastering it for audio.
If you produce a podcast, you already know that it’s time-consuming. While Christina Nicholson showed us it doesn’t have to take a lot of time for you personally, there’s still a lot that goes into an episode.
And Jay is creating a YouTube version, an audio version, and a separate Spotify video version.
This is complicated by the fact that Jay’s revenue model varies depending on the platform.
But this work isn’t for nothing! As we’ll see, he’s making a few long-term bets about the future of podcast content.
👉 In this issue
Why building a relationship with your listeners is crucial
How leveraging new technology can make you tell better stories
Thinking outside the box for monetization models
Leveraging the network effect to grow your podcast
Creator Science (formerly Creative Elements) focuses on how you can be a professional content creator, and how to be successful:
This is a fantastic mission statement: it’s clear about whom it helps, how they’re helped, and it even gives a time frame.
There are countless folks who talk about how they did it 4, 7, or even 10 years ago. But the landscape changes fast. Creator Science helps you keep up.
Jay has also been experimenting more with solo shows, as noted in the description: “You’ll also hear firsthand experiments and actionable advice from the host, Jay Clouse.”
Producing Solo Shows
Jay cites two reasons why he’s creating more solo shows:
They’re easier to produce than interviews.
He wants to build and leverage better relationships with his listeners.
I’m a big fan of mini podcasts for these exact reasons. When you make a solo episode, aside from worrying about the tech and research side of production, you’re not at the mercy of someone else’s schedule.
You can also record 2+ solo episodes in the same time it takes you do to one interview, all told.
But there’s the relationship-building side as well. Here’s how Jay puts it:
This is such an excellent point. While you can form that relationship as an interviewer, your listeners are eager to learn more about you and what you do.
That’s important to keep in mind as you create your podcast…especially if you’re a business owner.
Your Takeaway: Understand that you’re building a relationship with your listeners — and they likely want to learn more about you.
Streamlining Research by Knowing the Guests
Jay’s podcast is still primarily interviews, and his approach is pretty interesting.
He manages his process flow in Notion. When someone signs up with SavvyCal, they get added as a page, that’s visualized via a Kanban board.
What struck me about Jay’s scheduling process is how much information he captures from guests at first:
This was eye-opening for me, as experience has taught me to get as much info up-front as possible, but I could be missing an opportunity…especially with big guests.
Of-course, big guests aren’t necessarily the key to good content or good growth.
In his course, Podcast Like the Pros, he mentions trying to get a big guest early on, because that lends credibility to your show…a perfect example of social proof.
But as someone with a super credible show, Jay has begun to take a different approach. He wants to have guests that it’s easy to have a conversation with:
Jay explains that you want to find a sweet spot for the conversation: you don’t want to know everything because it can feel flat — more like a profile than a conversation. But you don’t want to go in blind because you’re unable to guide the conversation, and craft the right story.
So, Jay picks people whom he knows or is familiar with…and it’s paying off!
His recent conversation with Chenell Basilio of Growth in Reverse has become his second most popular episode, behind Seth Godin, which is his first -ever episode.
The bulk of his production time can be spent in post.
Jay spends a lot of time in post — he’s essentially creating 3 versions of his podcast.
Being Video First
Jay has made the conscious choice to make his podcast video-first. That means he records with video in mind, and edits it as video content.
Then he’ll send the audio out to be mastered by an audio engineer, before adding it back to the video. He’ll then upload that video and mastered audio to his host, Megaphone.
He’ll upload a completely separate version of the video to YouTube. You’ll see why in a minute.
I asked Jay if the juice is worth the squeeze. Here’s what he had to say:
It was very reminiscent of Walt Disney, who insisted on using color as soon as he possibly could. Disney Animation Studios created the colorful cartoon called Flowers and Tress all the way back in 1932 when they debuted Technicolor.
Why? Because Walt knew that even though the technology was new, it would become standard, and he didn’t want the studio going back to reproduce everything in color.
Walt Disney’s pioneering work in color was not, however, a mere gimmick to attract moviegoers to the latest technical fad. Color provided different opportunities for telling stories unique to the enhanced medium. The expressive range of the technique yielded new potential as Disney continued to experiment in creating narrative pathos onscreen.
Unique storytelling opportunities. Jay knows now, much like Walt did then, that this new process is expensive, time-consuming, and not mass-market ready.
But it will be, and his podcast has an advantage other podcasts don’t. Just look at this interview with Paddy Galloway:
B-roll, helpful visuals, interesting transitions. It’s definitely very engaging. It’s also not visuals-reliant, so you can watch, or listen.
And with YouTube integrating podcasts into their music app, Jay isn’t just making a podcast that stands out. It’s more convenient, too. Imagine watching the video, then going out to run errands, but continuing to listen in the app. It’s seamless.
YouTube is now the most utilized podcast listening platform in the U.S.: 29% say it is the platform they use the most, followed by Spotify (17%) and Apple (16%)
How Being Video First Affects His Overall Process
There are a few things Jay considers as he’s video-first.
One is big picture. He goes into each episode with a specific, narrow scope. That way he can think of the packaging for the episode — title, description, thumbnail — ahead of time.
He’s also spending most of his editing time on the first 90 seconds of the video. Jay knows the hook makes or breaks you on YouTube (and in audio, for that matter). So, he wants to make sure that the intro is perfect for two reasons:
It aides retention. Hook the viewer early on, and they’ll stick around.
He can reuse that 90 second intro as a teaser trailer on social media.
Brilliant.
In other word: Jay is thinking about the story he’s telling before the interview even gets recorded. Another reason he should be familiar with the creator’s work already.
There’s another, more subtle change in his process by being video first: he doesn’t take notes during the interview. When you’re on-camera, it’s very distracting, and he’s trying to make the best video possible.
Yet another reason he should know the story he wants to tell ahead of time.
Your Takeaway:Think about how you can improve the storytelling in your podcast by leveraging new technologies.
Creating the Show Notes
So, how does Jay handle the show notes?
Because he knows the story he’s telling, he has a pretty specific format that he’s perfected. Someone on his team with take the episode and cover these 3 points:
A high-level bio of the guest
Social proof to instill confidence in the listener
The topics they talk about
This is SUPER smart: what they do, why the audience should trust them, and what they’ll talk about.
The Decision to not Direct-Sell Sponsors
One of the reasons Jay’s process is slightly more complicated is because of how he sells ads…which is to say, he doesn’t.
Instead, he leverages these methods for sponsorship:
The HubSpot Network: Jay joined the HubSpot Network earlier this year, so they get at least a couple of spots in each episode.
Podglomerate: Jay’s old podcast network, Podglomerate, still sells the lion’s share of his ad inventory for him. This allows him to focus on the rest of his podcast, while knowing the spots are going to fill up.
Brand Deals: If he works out a deal directly with brands, he’ll do the insertion on YouTube only.
For HubSpot and Podglomerate, the ads are inserted dynamically — something his host, Megaphone, specializes in. This is called Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) and you’ve likely heard these types of ads. If you’ve ever thought, “Wow, it’s weird that this massive podcast has an ad for something specific to my area,” it was DAI.
Jay has some controls over what gets advertised, but they are generally targeted, and he doesn’t always do the read himself, or even know what they’re going to be ahead of time.
For YouTube, he brokers direct deals.
Sponsors on YouTube
I know what you’re thinking. “Didn’t you just say he doesn’t sell ads himself?” That’s mostly true. But that doesn’t mean opportunities don’t arise anyway. Jay has a popular newsletter (where the ads are primarily sold by the ConvertKit Sponsor Network), and a strong social media following.
And notice the exception there: the brand deals won’t make it into the audio version of the show; only the YouTube version gets them.
This is why he’s essentially creating 3 versions of his podcast:
A video to upload to Megaphone, which puts the video on Spotify (with no ads, but presumably video-specific ads in the future)
A mastered version of the audio, which gets put back into the video. Megaphone will then split them apart for the podcast feed.
A YouTube-only version of the video, which doesn’t include the breaks for DAI, but will include baked-in brand deals.
This is certainly worth is for Jay. He’s getting enough downloads, and has enough ad breaks, that he’s generating money from the show that makes the extra effort a no-brainer.
But it’s all about using that extra effort wisely.
Your Takeaway: Experiment with different methods of monetization. Consider what options are out there and try something you haven’t before.
Short Form Videos Don’t Drive Growth
Something that Jay has been experimenting a lot with is short form content. He used to have his editor pull out clips to share on social media. But it didn’t work out. Here’s what he had to say:
After realizing this, Jay felt his editor’s time was better spent perfecting those first 90 seconds.
So…what is Jay doing to drive growth?
Thinking About Listener Churn
First, let’s look at something Jay said that really struck me:
This is something that Sounds Profitable wrote about last year. While they don’t have a lot of data on it right now3, it’s something all podcasters should be cognizant of — kudos to Jay for realizing it’s a problem!
How Jay Drives Growth
Back to how Jay drives growth. He’s not doing a lot of repurposing, and we’ve noted that clips don’t really work.
Is his show just growing organically? This tweet should provide some insight:
There are a couple of takeaways here:
He changed the show’s category
He joined a network.
Furthermore, he mentioned those trailers we talked about earlier.
So, what can you glean from Jay’s process?
The first is to reevaluate your show’s categories every once in a while. Make sure the category you’re in fits with your show’s mission.
While joining a network isn’t for everyone, you can create your own network with friends or other podcasters.
See, one of the great things the HubSpot Network does is require each show to promote one of their other shows in every episode.
You can reach out to hosts of similar podcasts and see if they’d be willing to do the same thing. If you find 4–6 podcasts, you can do a sort of round-robin promotion schedule to help each other gain new listeners.
Your Takeaway:Experiment with Podcast Promo Swaps and creating your own network of podcasts.
Using Creator Science to Improve Your Podcast Workflow
There are so many incredible takeaways from Jay’s process, and of-course it all comes down to experimenting. There’s a reason his show is called Creator Science, after all.
Build the Relationship with Your Audience
Jay recognizes that building a relationship with your audience means giving them more of you. As he said, it’s a smart business decision.
Instead of always giving air time to a guest, try some solo shows.
Or, if you don’t like talking by yourself, bring on a cohost you have great chemistry with. Jay’s even experimenting with recurring guests with whom he has a good rapport.
He said a story is how your message lives on. And to prove it, he tells this haunting story about a time he stayed in a hotel and got a late-night call5.
My dad would always ask me how I could remember every line of every movie I ever watched, when I couldn’t remember anything from Math class earlier that day.
There were no stories in Math class. Stories stick where facts don’t.
Jay knows it, Mike knows it, Walt Disney knew it.
If you want your podcast to catch people’s attention…if you want people to share it…you need to tell good stories.
As you approach your next set of episodes, think about the story you want to tell.
Try Different Ways to Monetize
You’ve likely heard that you need multiple income streams. But you should also try different approaches to those income streams.
Jay relies on his podcast network, his ads network, the ConvertKit Sponsor Network, and his ability to land brand deals.
As you consider monetization, think about the different avenues you can explore. Just like Disney has movies, merch, parks, and other experiences, you can make some small bets on how to best monetize.
If you want to go the sponsored route, remember you may not need to sell the ads yourself. And what you give up in revenue, you’ll save in a ton of time.
You could also try affiliate links to start. Or selling your own product.
The possibilities are endless — it’s up to you to think outside the box!
Create Your Own “Network”
Finally, one of the best things you can to do grow your podcast is podcast swaps. You’re getting your show in-front of look-alike audiences, and at least some of that audience will check out your show.
Jay is part of a podcast network that has each show promote another show.
We see this with iHeartRadio, Wondery, and countless other networks as well. They know their audience, and understand that one show’s audience will likely want to listen to other, similar shows.
Now, how can you create your own “network?” You don’t need official branding or a name.
You just need to find 4–6 podcasts you’re willing to work with. Create a promotion schedule with them where you’re each promoting the other shows, round-robin style.
Create some copy for the other hosts to read where you essentially give potential listeners your mission statement, and how to listen.
Doing this helped double my podcast downloads last year — from 34,000 to 70,000 per month.
If you’re going to pick one takeaway from Jay’s process, make it this one.
There’s a reason I’m so ardent about the need for a podcast mission statement. Answering those questions (“who is my audience,” “what problem do they have,” and, “how can I solve it for them”) will help guide you and unlock interesting ideas and value propositions for your listeners. This will make your show stand out.
And one of the most interesting podcast value propositions I know of is from Annie Fulton (RN, BSN, PCCN). Her podcast, Up My Nursing Game, has a very unique value proposition for her listeners: nurses can use it for continuing education credits.
Let’s rewind for a minute.
This is so interesting to be because I have direct experience with this. My wife is a nurse, and every year she struggles to hit the requisite 30 hours of continuing education so she can renew her nursing license.
It’s because her options are mostly terrible (that’s my official assessment, not hers). Most of the continuing education is long, boring videos of power point presentations.
But Up My Nursing Game is none of that. It’s interesting interviews with people in the medical field, from a currently practicing nurse — someone who’s in the trenches!
Listen to the episodes, take the assessment at VCU Health, and you’ve logged time towards those 30 hours.
This also makes Annie’s podcast very popular. It gets lots of listens from people in the nursing, and wider medical, field. It’s obvious why. She’s making an important part of being a nurse so much easier.
Instead of being stuck in front of a laptop during 30 of your free hours (plus the assessment), you could listen to an episode on your commute to the hospital.
So what can we learn?
The first thing, which I mentioned earlier, is that you should have a rock-solid mission statement.
But the second and third come from her actual workflow.
I will likely be doing a deep dive of Annie’s process because it’s so interesting, but because her show counts as continuing education, it needs to hit a certain standard of quality.
That means when she books guests, they need to sign some papers, she needs to submit each episode to VCU Health for marking them as continuing education, and she needs to create assessments.
She also needs to script parts of her episodes so that she’s ensuring she covers a topic completely, and the answers for the assessments are covered in the episodes.
So the second lesson is that your workflow doesn’t need to follow some prescribed way to create your show. This is obviously a lot of work for Annie, but it’s been worth it as she’s gained sponsors and personal benefits.
However, she’s still a full time nurse with a young child — so anything she can do to improve her workflow would be a huge boon to her.
You might notice that over the course of this year, she’s done a lot more solo episodes. This is to help with her workflow.
When we worked together in 2022, she asked me how to lighten the time commitment and bottleneck in parts of her process. In auditing her workflow, we determined that interviews add even more time to her production process than the typical interview show.
So I asked her if she could do more solo episodes, while still maintaining the show’s status for continuing education.
In the following months, she came up with a workflow that allows her to do just that, and it appears to be going well!
Your third and final lesson: experiment with different formats. If you always do interviews, try solo shows. If you always so solo shows, bring on a co-host to see if it works sometimes.
You might be able to unlock a new type of content that saves you time AND resonates with your audience.
Disclosure: Annie hired me for podcast coaching in 2022.
A recent favorite podcast of mine is American History Tellers from Wondery. After finding History Daily back in April, I followed host Lindsay Graham’s work more closely — I was already a fan of him from American Elections: Wicked Game and 18651.
One of the great things History Daily does is a “Saturday Matinee” episode, where they publish a full episode of another podcast. And in October of this year, he used that slot to promote the latest American History Tellers series on the Salem Witch Trials.
But while I strongly recommend podcast swaps, that’s not the workflow recommendation I have.
See, while listening to American History Tellers, which does 4-6 episodes on a single topic, I had a feeling of deja vu at times.
The things I was hearing on American History Tellers, I heard on History Daily.
And that’s the workflow: repurpose content when you can.
All of Graham’s shows are deeply researched and scripted by a fantastic team of people. That means they have a ton of raw material that they can mold however they’d like.
American History Tellers goes deep into the stories and covers it from all aspects, hiring voice actors and putting you in the story. Each episode is around 40 minutes long — so there’s lots of content for each topic/series.
History Daily takes one aspect of an event from that day in history and gives you context around it. Each episode is about 15 minutes long. It’s easy to see how researchers for American History Tellers might take what they learn, extract it, and turn it into a shorter episode for History Daily…or vise versa.
Perhaps while researching things that happen on specific dates, they come across something interesting and look into if there’s more of a story there.
But your big takeaway: look for places where you can reuse what you create.
Slight Clarification here: I’ve since learned that as American History Tellers is owned/managed by Wondery, and History Daily is owned/managed by Airship/Noiser, these two shows don’t actually share any content resources. I’d still encourage you to think about how you can use the work you do in one area for your podcast, though!
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.
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.
👉 In this issue
Build in public. You never know who’s going to extract value from your story.
Cut down on research by picking a topic you already know, or are actively learning.
Consider lesser-known, niche-specific promotional channels for your show.
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:
Research potential guests and the topics you want to cover.
Book the guests.
Do more in-depth research so you know what to ask them and craft the story.
Record with them.
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:
Reduces the amount of instruction you need to give your editor.
Decreases the amount of time your editor needs to edit your episodes.
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.
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 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.
I totally thought they invented the term. But alas, much like a cover song, I learned about the original much, much later. ↩
Upgrade is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to for Apple and tech industry news. I think they have some of the most measured takes and don’t fall victim to hyperbole.
One interesting thing about Upgrade and many (if not all) of the shows on that podcast network, Relay.fm, is that the hosts don’t see each other. They keep video off, even for them.
As someone who likes keeping video on so I can read my guests’ body language, this seemed strange to me at first — but their reasoning is sound1.
As an audio-only podcast, they don’t want to reference anything they can see because they feel it will take away from the experience for the listener.
When I interview one of the hosts, Myke, on my show, it was the same deal.
While I’ll save that debate for another time, this does pose a specific problem for them if they want to leverage short form video: they literally have no video to use.
So what do they do?
They set up their iPhones to record video separately, then have a video editor edit the videos together with the audio from the podcast.
This is an interesting approach to me because it shows they’re dedicated to see if short form video works.
Looking at their numbers on Instagram and TikTok, it’s definitely working better than me — and some of their videos on TikTok get 5- or 6- figures.
So what can you learn here?
Picking the right moments can make or break the clips
You don’t need to use interview footage to make a good short form video
I stand by what I said on Day 6 — use AI clips in the beginning to take more bite of the Apple2. But perhaps you can try a combination of 4 AI-selected clips and 1-2 clips that you either create or select yourself.
Given how long the Upgrade guys have been doing it, and the level of effort their clips take, they definitely see the value in continuing to experiment with short form video.
I wouldn’t call myself an avid Jurassic Park fan. I was a little shy of 8 when it came out, and being a young boy I did enjoy dinosaurs…and man did those dinosaurs look real at the time.
There are a few scenes I remember vividly from the movie. One is the scene where they’re in the car, the water rippling as the T-Rex approaches. The other is a commonly memed (is that right?) scene of Jeff Goldblum’s character, Dr. Ian Malcom, saying this:
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could…they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
What does this have to do with podcast ads?
The main reason I went to Transistor.fm was because it had to important monetization features for me to leverage:
Private podcast feeds
“Dynamic” Ads
“Dynamic” is in quotes because it’s not really dynamic. You need to upload the ad, create a campaign, then explicitly mark a time stamp for each mid roll ad in the campaign.
Oh…and you can’t make changes to live campaigns. Which means if you want to change the ads in an episode, you need to either disable it, or create a new one to swap in.
Now, I can’t speak to how other — let’s call them “dynamic content” — systems work, but that’s not really DAI, which should require much less intervention to change ads once you mark the spots.
The whole reason I liked the appeal of dynamic content in the first place was so I could insert an easily changeable preroll spot in for whatever call to action I had.
But I convinced myself I should do it for my mid-roll ads too. And here’s the kicker…
I’m not even selling them as dynamic ads. They are sold as “more flexible” baked-in ads. And I’m not selling my back catalog, because I’d need to manually update campaigns for each and every episode.
But, to paraphrase Dr. Malcom, I was so preoccupied with the fact that I could do it, I never really stopped to think if I should.
I Should Not Use Transistor’s Dynamic Ads for Mid-roll Sponsors
The truth is I should not be using Transistor’s dynamic ads feature for my mid-roll ads. It’s a clever way to create flexible content, but ultimately it’s inconvenient, adds an extra step to my process, and it caused problems over the summer when I didn’t mark enough spots in the mid-roll for my ads.
If I truly want to sell dynamic ads and do DAI, there are other, better services for me to do it.
There might even be better hosting options, if that were my primary goal. But it’s not.
Like I said, I don’t sell my ads based on time or impression limits. I sell them as baked-in ads.
So…is there a time a place for dynamic content, if not for DAI?
I think so.
What I (and YOU) Can Use Dynamic Content For
I think there a few good, appealing use cases for dynamic content outside of ads.
A perfect example is for my locally focused podcast, Start Local. We’re doing a live, in-person networking event, and we want to promote it on the show.
Instead of having a baked-in preroll CTA for people to register, we’re doing a dynamic one, that will automatically end at the start of the networking event. That way, we don’t have a set of outdated CTAs after the event is over.
We’re also using the dynamic content function to insert it into every episode in the back catalog, not just recent episodes.
If you’re promoting an event, or time-sensitive product, service, or enrollment period, dynamic content is a perfect solution. You can have start and end dates for campaigns, and the episodes with the promotion won’t feel immediately dated after the promotion period ends.
You could also use it to promote specific opt-ins, freebies, or products. But I think at some point, the easiest option is just mentioning it in the episode. Most downloads for an episode happen within the first 30-60 days. So unless you have a super active back catalog where people routinely revisit old episodes, dynamic content for run of the mill CTAs is probably overkill.
Ultimately, there is a time and place for dynamic ads and content, but the best thing for you to focus on is not whether or not you could do it, but whether or not you should do it.
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