Dee Patel: We wanna meet people where they are, and how do we do that
without taking the brand, without stomping on the brand, with still
giving the credibility to the brand.
So it's how can podcasts lean into the Wharton School brand and how can Wharton
School brand lean into podcasting?
And I always say podcast is sort of a treat for your
ears when your eyes are busy.
Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education
podcasters to learn and get inspired.
I'm Neil McPhedran, founder of Podium Podcast Company and Higher Ed Pods.
Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee, the founder of JPod Creations,
podcasting is broadcasting.
And we want you to know you're not alone.
In fact, there are many of you higher ed podcasters out there, and
we can all learn from each other.
Neil McPhedran: Speaking of learning from each other, Jen, we had a really exciting
conversation with the team organizing Higher Ed PodCon, and we're moving to a
two day versus one day we had in year one, so we're moving to a two day and we're
expecting to have a lot more people there.
We're talking about the tracks of what we're gonna focus on
for all of the sessions, all the panel and speaker sessions.
So it's pretty exciting to start to think about it and expanding
what we're gonna talk about.
I think one of the things this year that we didn't do in year one is we're gonna
have more content for higher ed folks that are just getting into podcasting.
So I think that'll be really interesting.
We're trying to infuse more beginner just getting started content for year two.
Jennifer-Lee: Which is great because we learnt from our next guest, Dee Patel,
that it's not that easy to start a podcast and then eventually start a network.
Neil McPhedran: That's right.
Good segue, Jen.
In this episode, we are chatting with Dee Patel, who is the Director of
Content at Wharton in the Marketing and Communications department.
And she has just launched the Knowledge at Wharton Podcast Network.
So I think what's really interesting is, as we know, Wharton has a very
robust business journal, and so as part of the business journal there is
a lot of, there's their website and a lot of other content that they produce.
They originally had a SiriusXM radio station.
And that's no longer in existence, but they have spun out two radio shows
into podcasts, and we're gonna get into this, all about the larger network that
they have actually built, this larger podcast network, that lives under
the Knowledge at Wharton umbrella.
So I'm excited to get into this conversation and Dee is a former
broadcaster, so we definitely had some fun stuff there, didn't we, Jen?
Jennifer-Lee: I love former broadcasters, but it's interesting with that SiriusXM
thing, because she is a former traditional broadcaster, it doesn't seem that easy
to move something like that over to a podcast and is a little bit complicated.
But we'll find out what they did and what their expectations for when
they moved it from XM to podcasting.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
Let's get into it.
Welcome, Dee.
It's so great to have you here on Continuing Studies.
Dee Patel: Oh, thank you both.
Really great to be here.
Hi Jen.
Hi Neil.
Thank you for having me on the podcast.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, Dee is another one that we met in Chicago.
You and I met early in the morning.
We kinda just like bumped into each other over the pastries and the coffee, and then
I introduced you to Neil and obviously we bonded over my favorite topic, which
Neil knows 'cause I mention it all the time on this podcast, but broadcasting.
Because Dee actually worked for CBS at one point and I was like, oh,
that was like one of my like bucket list items was to work for CBS.
So I was like, love it, broadcaster connection.
Dee Patel: Yeah, absolutely.
We definitely bonded on that and it was like high octane energy.
I just saw somebody coming at me, Jen, you probably just saw
a lot of hair coming at you.
We just instantly bonded and it was so lovely to meet a fellow
broadcaster who is now in podcasting.
Uh, it's almost like a natural transition.
Not sure if people realize that, that that's where sort
of podcasting originated from.
So Jen and I just kind of geeked out a little bit next
to the pastries about that.
Um, but it's okay.
Jennifer-Lee: Neil was actually looking for you.
He was like, we've been chatting with someone from Wharton.
He's like, I need to know who this is.
And then I coincidentally, I was talking to you and then I was like, hey, Neil.
You're like, oh, I was trying to find her.
So, brought you guys together.
Dee Patel: Yeah.
That's awesome.
I didn't know that I was slightly popular and I think, Jen, you made me popular.
And then Neil was like, I was looking for you.
I was like, oh no, what did I do?
I was like, I hope I'm not in trouble.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
So Dee, we've got you here today 'cause we would like to chat with you about the
podcast network that you have been busy building at Wharton, and that's part of
the Knowledge at Wharton whole platform.
So Knowledge at Wharton that's been around for a while, right?
Like that's like a magazine and an email.
And if I have it correctly, at one point in time it might have
even been a SiriusXM radio show.
Maybe we could just sort of start there and just give us a little bit of an
insight into what Knowledge at Wharton is.
Dee Patel: Absolutely.
You're absolutely correct on all of the above.
Knowledge of Wharton is an institutional brand at Wharton disseminating content.
It's a website, disseminates faculty research.
It's also a newsletter.
It used to be a show on SiriusXM.
Predates me.
But that is a brand that has such deep roots at Wharton and
credibility and the reliability.
So yes, absolutely, it's the anchor that we are building the podcast network upon.
We kind of went back and forth a little bit like, should we call it the
Knowledge of Wharton Podcast Network?
Should we call it Wharton Podcast Network?
We decided we landed on Wharton Podcast Network 'cause if we want
this to grow, and it will probably grow, it is faculty oriented,
faculty based research surrounding anything that has to do with faculty.
Whether we are interviewing them, they're interviewing each other, or they're
interviewing industry experts, we may wanna expand it one day to students.
So we decided, let's call it the Wharton Podcast Network lives in
houses itself, mainly like its main house is, Knowledge of Wharton
website, that's its landing page.
So you know, it obviously is on Apple, it's on Acast,
wherever you find your podcast.
So it is everywhere.
But that is where it is.
And that's sort of the, where the strategy comes from.
We set out to build this, it was a lot of research.
We're certainly not the first ones to do this, right?
We're absolutely honest about that.
But what we wanted to do is play in this space that has grown exponentially
probably within the last five years.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah.
Dee Patel: If I could even throw some statistics at you, but as of this year,
there's approximately almost little over 4.5 million podcasts worldwide,
and we're talking active ones, you know, which creates a massive opportunity
for quality content to stand out.
And the number of podcast listeners, a little over 500 million in 2025.
That's expected to grow to over 600 million by 2027.
So we wanted to really play in this space, but like how do we do that
with all of these podcasts out there?
Like why would somebody want to come to our podcast as opposed to the others?
Neil McPhedran: I love that you have given us some knowledge, but
it's obvious that it wasn't just a decision, hey, let's do a podcast.
Let's do a podcast network.
But you've anchored it in data, observations of opportunity, where
to take Knowledge at Wharton next.
If you go to the Knowledge at Wharton website, podcasts is a
main thing in the navigation.
So it's obvious to me that this is a main channel, podcasting,
for Knowledge at Wharton.
You've anchored it in, obviously you've done some research and
there was some real deliberate conversations and discussions on your
end to really lean into podcasting.
Curious kind of about that.
Was there sort of anything you can share there just about the
process to get to that decision, or was it just kind of a no brainer?
We need to go into podcasting more.
Dee Patel: No, I mean the process was, when you're in the process,
it's exhaustive and then you look back at the process, you're
like, oh, that was amazing.
That was fun.
We anchored it in, we don't do anything here without research.
So we research, research, research, and then we come up with a
strategy based on that research.
And you know, what we do is very subjective.
It's not math or science.
So two plus two does not always equal four for us because some people
may like this or not like that.
My supervisors and those that sit in chairs higher, are like, Dee
put, put a stake in the ground and just stick to it, right?
And give you a rationale as to why.
So I've had a lot of support along the way and sure, being Wharton, there is
funding, but it wasn't like a blank check.
It was, let's try to do this on a budget that seems reasonable and so
that we can see if it works because we don't know if it's going to work.
We don't know if there's going to be receptiveness.
We don't know if people are going to be listening.
We don't know how it's gonna be received by faculty, which in academia, faculty
governs academia, so we don't know that.
But what we realized in the research is that we wanna meet people where they are.
How are people consuming information now?
Knowledge at Wharton was strictly based on written content, digital content.
We certainly don't want to replace that, but we want to supplement that.
And how do we do that without taking the brand, without stomping on the brand, with
still giving the credibility to the brand.
So it's how can podcasts lean into the Wharton School brand and how can Wharton
School brave lean into podcasting?
And I always say podcasting is sort of a treat for your
ears when your eyes are busy.
And so we started the podcasting.
Jennifer-Lee: You know, I have a lot of discussions about this because
traditional media, and you know, this is, like when you have a company or
an institution like Wharton and you're trying to create your own narrative,
you're trying to get, press is very difficult sometimes on traditional media.
And especially now where it's more paid to play than ever, than having that authentic
press release that gets on someone's desk.
Now, I tell people, your podcast is kind of like your own media platform where
you're controlling your narrative and you are putting your brand out there on their
awareness and you're creating your own station to broadcast your message out.
Dee Patel: Absolutely.
I completely agree with that, and I think that is a space where, you
know, we need to make sure, like our podcasting is informational,
educational, and entertaining.
'Cause it's not really those three things I don't know that it would
be able to play in this space.
So when we first started this, it was, we had one podcast, so we call
it our flagship show, which is the Ripple Effect, and that was something
that was just started from scratch.
It was an idea that came from our dean's initiative to elevate faculty research.
These faculty are doing great research, amazing, incredibly intelligent,
but who is reading the 25 page plus papers that these research come in?
Like, how do we do this?
We can do it in a story.
We've been doing it in this story wise, but are we really
getting their research out there?
And as part of the marketing and communications department, literally
in my job description is to help faculty market themselves and help
get the research out there and why somebody wanna come to Wharton, right?
So we started the podcast Ripple Effect, which is elevating faculty research,
and it's about 20 minutes long.
It's a weekly show.
We put some funding behind it and created a studio where we
record these podcasts in person.
And I do feel like an in-person podcast, you can sort of vibe off that energy.
So it does have a different energetic feel to it when it's in person,
but we can certainly now do things remotely as we're doing here.
That podcast started off, difficult to schedule faculty, right?
Trying to get people at the same time in the same place nowadays, everybody
being so busy, that's a tall order.
It's not difficult, just a tall order.
It's just a lot of back and forth happens.
So, and then also, you know, maybe reluctance to be on,
well, what is a podcast?
So what I did was, you know, just made sure that I had kept up with the
consistency of it, made sure the content was something that was Wharton forward,
so that we were being very honest with their research and we were taking
great care with their research as well.
And having that commitment to do it weekly.
And know in my back of my mind that if I do this consistently
the audience will grow.
If I do this correctly and provide great content, at the end of the
day, great content is great content.
You can put glitter around it, you can jazz it up, but people have
the ability to X out of a content more easily than ever before.
So those things will win out.
But that's a slow and steady race.
This is not a overnight success business.
And so when we did that for like a year and then we realized that faculty
were coming to us saying, hey, we would love to be on Ripple Effect, the tables
turned a little bit and that was great.
That's what I would hope that would've happened would measure success.
And so now with the podcast network, we have been receiving inquiries and
saying, hey, I would like to do a podcast.
When can I do a podcast?
I would like to do a podcast.
And, which is amazing.
And again, we did research.
I made documents.
Sort of a gateway of like, okay.
Yes, you wanna do a podcast?
It's not as easy as it looks.
Everybody thinks it's easy, right?
Everybody here on this call knows it's not as easy as it looks.
And there's research behind it.
There's scripting, there's the technical aspects of it, and then you take this
content that you record, and now what?
What do you do with it?
So I said, okay, here's my three Cs for a podcast.
Like more than 90% of podcasts fail after episode three.
Neil McPhedran: Right.
Dee Patel: That's hard to imagine.
'Cause you're like, really three?
Like that's not a lot.
I get it.
It's not, but after three episodes, most people find out
they can't provide enough content.
So that's one C. Is there enough content?
Is the content good?
Are you able to even, you know, provide that?
The commitment, yeah, I can do it.
I did it for three Tuesdays in a row, but like the fourth Tuesday,
I gotta, I gotta go somewhere.
I gotta do something, I can't do it.
And then there's that commitment to it.
Like, are you committed to see this through?
Even if you know, you're not seeing like millions of listeners right
away, which I doubt that you will.
So those are the three C's.
Can we do this?
And it is my job as a person who heads up the Wharton podcast network to see like
does this person who is coming to me and say, I wanna do a podcast, that's awesome.
The interest is there.
I get it.
Is there content, enough content that we can do?
When I help them think that out, can they commit to this?
And I really present the realities of that to them.
This is a commitment it's going to take.
I need you here on a consistent basis.
And then can you commit to this?
'Cause you're not gonna see the results right away, but can you commit to what
you are doing, what this concept is?
It's not just sitting in front of your laptop or a microphone
and just talking, because that goes away after three episodes.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah.
Sorry, what was the third C?
So it was content, commitment, and?
Dee Patel: Consistency.
Neil McPhedran: Consistency, right.
Oh, I like those.
The three Cs.
Jennifer-Lee: I just like that you're setting the expectations, because I
think nowadays everyone wants to, for gratification, especially with the younger
demo, and so it's like, no, you gotta commit to this and you gotta grow it.
Because that's the thing, even in broadcasting, it's like you're not
gonna just start talking on the mic and your ratings are gonna go to number
one and everyone's gonna sponsor you.
That's not realistic.
Takes time.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, I, I also like your approach.
You started with the Ripple Effect.
You applied your three C's.
That commitment and consistency then opened up the door for faculty to go
like, oh, I see what you're doing.
Oh, I wanna be on that.
Oh, I see my colleagues are on that.
I have great research that I want to have amplified as well, versus
we're gonna launch a podcast network.
And why don't you all chime in and tell us what we're gonna do.
Like I think that was a really interesting path that you took there.
Start with the one, get the faculty on board, and now they're on board.
And as you said, you flipped the script there and now they're coming to you.
Jennifer-Lee: And I love the fact that, yeah, you guard it.
I don't think we vet enough in the podcasting space, and maybe it's
because it's super young still, but I like the fact that you're vetting
it because I think it does create better have to quality in the end.
Dee, did this role exist before you got there or did this role kind of happen
when you got there and you're like, we're doing all this because of my background.
Neil McPhedran: Good question.
Dee Patel: My role as it is, was newly created based upon a need
as the Director of Content for Wharton Marketing Communications.
And then all of a sudden it's like, yes, I have a background in this broadcasting,
so obviously please utilize me, right?
And so it kind of grew into that one podcast and I came in and said, okay, yes.
The way we, you know, in broadcasting, if it's not a streamlined
process, it just doesn't work.
If it takes 12 people to do one thing, it's not going to work.
So like we can streamline this process and make it work like a well-oiled machine.
And so kind of doing that with one, you create a formula for the others.
Neil McPhedran: Right.
Dee Patel: With a different concept, different topic.
Sure.
Maybe it's a different host where it's like the Ripple is one host
talking to a faculty, you know, just a faculty as well, and then you can
grow that to something different.
And so it wasn't, I wasn't initially brought on for podcasting.
It just grew as the need for podcasting grew, as the popularity for podcasting
grew, as the audience dictated how they want to receive information.
And so now we're meeting them where they are and ability to
sort of shift resources as well.
'Cause we did not just hire 10 people for this.
Barry, myself.
We, I have a audio producer.
I have a showrunner.
I have a video content senior producer who does other things, be on podcasting and
podcasting was in addition to the role.
So those are the four that sort of fall under a purview.
Pretty low lift there for at least as far as resources, but
it's also to see if this works.
And we have five and I'm like, okay, now it's five.
I am already getting requests for more.
I think I received, once we launched it, we put podcast episodes on our
platforms before we did the official launch, so to speak, because we wanted
to provide content when we actually said, send people to go to the
place that we're sending them to go.
Saying, Hey, we have a podcast network.
If they only see one show, like they're not much of a network.
Neil McPhedran: So there's five shows now that are part of the network.
So the Ripple Effect was the first one and now there's Where AI Works.
There's a, This Week in Business podcast, Marketing Matters, and Moneyball podcast.
So those other four, those are fairly new shows then is, is that correct?
Dee Patel: So, yeah, Ripple is our flagship show, sort of our, you know, kind
of like our baby, but our other flagship show is also This Week in Business.
It's what happened when I said, okay, how do we play in this space
of, we are in a very unique time at the moment where mainstream media
may not be trusted at the moment.
Or the credibility of it has decreased just because of the way
the world is and what's happening in the world at the moment.
Regardless of your political views, it just has gone down.
And so if I am looking at my retirement fund, 401k, it is
fluctuating, it has fluctuated up and down in the last year or so.
Who do I go to to say, why is it doing that and what do I do?
Who do I trust for that?
Like why my 401k might be fluctuating?
Yeah, you know what?
I might trust a Wharton professor whose research is based on quantitative
facts to tell me why it is.
Now, to be clear, they're not providing financial advice.
They're just telling you why it is doing what it's doing based on their
research that they have been doing.
I feel like that is trustworthy at the moment.
So it's like there's a momentum train here.
We need to hop on it and get the research out there for the professors.
So we created a This Week in Business, which is current events, trending events,
that Wharton professors can talk about.
So it's moves very fast.
It's short turnaround, it's twice a week and it's almost modeled after New York
Times, The Daily, but it's not daily.
Also, it's not just that podcast, but we use that podcast and whatever story that
was for that day, and we turn it into a story for Knowledge at Wharton as well.
So optimize the content into the different platforms that we own.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
So there's the five Wharton podcast network shows, and then there's
other podcasts from across Wharton.
Dee Patel: Yep.
Ripple effect.
And This Week in Business are kind of like our flagships that we've create,
totally own from the ground up.
And then the other two shows, Moneyball and Marketing Matters,
they were what I call the legacy shows that came over from Sirius XM.
Neil McPhedran: Right.
Dee Patel: And they were the shows that had the following, had the audience,
and had sort of that niche that we were not doing in the other two podcasts.
So sports analytics and marketing.
And really just had a really good vibe to them and the chemistry
to them, and also provided those three Cs that we talked about.
So we had that.
And they are faculty hosted podcasts.
Moneyball has four hosts and they have a guest come on every week.
Marketing Matters has two faculty hosts and has a guest come on every week.
Where AI Works is a analytics AI professor, and we pick a different
one each season, so to speak, A different professor to host these
depending on their research, and they interview industry experts as to
how AI is working in your industry.
Neil McPhedran: And then there's others what that are featured, right?
Dee Patel: So yeah, there's the Wharton Podcast Network, that's the five.
And then the ones at the bottom you'll see are others from across
Wharton are the ones that, you know, there's nothing that stops faculty
from just doing it themselves or if they want to fund it themselves.
The Adam Grant one has been around longer than the podcast network has.
So they're the ones that they own that they produce, but they also
have that consistency, the content, and leans into the Wharton brand.
So we help amplify that podcast on our page as well.
Neil McPhedran: Right, and some of those ones in that network have other
affiliations, like there's one in there that's part of the Freakonomics
radio and the Adam Grant one is part of the TED network, and we actually
helped launch All Else Equal when it was just with the GSB at the time.
I know that they moved it over to be part of Wharton versus Stanford at the time, so
yeah, that's great to see it in there too.
And then, because we're talking to podcasters here, let just get
a little into the weeds a bit.
How does each show kind of support each other and or the network?
So do you have call outs to the podcast network?
So if I just come across Marketing Matters, for example, will they
promote the network and other shows?
Is there drive back to this great resource, this great
website that you've created?
Dee Patel: Yeah, great question.
And all part of the strategy.
So when I put together the strategy before we launched the network, I
said, part of what we can provide them is this cross promotional strategy
because like we're owners of them, we're owners of these podcasts now.
And so if like, let's say a Marketing Matters host is on Ripple Effect,
or on This Week in Business, not as a host, but as a guest,
that's a cross promotion there.
And how do we, you know, proactively do this, but we have them, we
strategically have them on either once a month or once a quarter too, one,
talk about their research in something that might be going on in the world
or in a Ripple Effect topic theme.
And then we organically sort of promote their show and said, and hey,
if you like what you're hearing about somebody talking about, you know, retail
inflation, you can hear more about it in this X, Y, Z podcast as well.
And so we have another channel where we put in one podcast a month that
is a channel that is sort of a legacy channel from the XM days, but it's a
Knowledge of Wharton eight cast channel.
So it has years, 16 years of audience build up.
Neil McPhedran: They'll have all kinds of followers across
Apple, Spotify, et cetera.
That's a smart, yeah.
Dee Patel: We want to provide content to them because the followers already there.
We don't want them to go away.
But they may not know about the five podcasts that are in the network.
So we put a episode a month into that.
So that was part, again, part of the strategy.
'Cause once a wheel start going in motion and there's no strategy in place,
you're just like, oh wait, what do I do?
But I kind of outlined what we were going to do.
And we can certainly pivot from that, right?
We can pivot from it.
But if you get it down on paper, it kind of makes it easier to pivot 'cause
you know what you're pivoting from.
And then if we have events, like we had a sports summit, AI Sports Summit
just this past week, and I brought in a speaker from that summit to be on
Moneyball, which is a sports podcast, and which increased the attendance.
So like if all things work and hopefully increase the listenership
of the podcast, I don't have those metrics yet, but hopefully that's
what the cross promotion strategy is.
So that we can all play in this space, but also help each other out.
The faculty have been very receptive in doing all of these things, so
that has been good on my end, I have not received any pushback on that.
Jennifer-Lee: I love that you're leveraging the audiences of the
other podcasts that you have, because I think that's what a lot
of people don't necessarily do.
I always tell people, if you're a podcast for a business, but you have
friends in the similar space and they've got podcasts that have a
significant listen, do cross promos.
But everyone sometimes is a little scared to do that.
So I like the fact that you guys are able to do that.
Obviously you do have a bit of a team behind you.
When Neil and I do talk to other institutions, sometimes it's just one
person and it's an extra job on their desk that they're doing all this.
What would be your advice to people that maybe wanna approach their
institution to garner resources and other people to help them grow a
podcast network or just a few podcasts?
Dee Patel: I think it is really deciding, and regardless of the
resources that I do have and seem to have, they're still limited.
And also bandwidth is limited, right?
Like hours in the day are limited and,
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, and they're not all yours.
Like that video editor for example you mentioned.
That they've got a whole bunch of other stuff they're probably doing.
Dee Patel: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
We're doing one in person, so I gotta pull 'em off of something.
One would think five podcasts is somebody's full job.
I have a whole other set of things that I am required to
do, but I honestly enjoy this.
Regardless of whether it seems like you have the entire Wharton school behind
you, or very limited resources with one person, it's deciding where to put your
resources, where do you wanna put these?
Do you wanna create a amazing studio space, but you're not gonna have
the bandwidth of the resources to fill that studio space, right?
Or do you want to do it in going after the A-list guests?
'Cause that requires a X amount of bandwidth, or should you go after,
maybe at first the B team of guests and then build up your reputation?
So that you can get through the firewalls of the gatekeepers that
the A-lister guests come with.
Like it's usually you can get them, great.
It's their PR people that you have to go through that is the
hardest and it's the tallest order.
So those that are just starting off, you know, my great advice would kind of
come back to just really the three Cs.
Like what kind of content are you trying to provide and what
is the competition out there?
What, you know, how can you commit to this?
Like what is your commitment level to this?
Are you trying to do this every week or are you trying to do this every day?
Or are you trying to do this every month?
The audience will get used to whatever consistency you give it, and the
audience anticipates that consistency and better show up when you say
you're going to show up for them.
And then really just kind of trust the process a little bit.
It's hard work, like nothing, this is not an overnight business.
This is not something that you can just kind of be like, oh, I can just
sit in front of a microphone and talk.
I mean, as a broadcaster, sure, we are trained to do that.
Like Jen and I will tell you we're trained to do that, but even we know
that unless you come to the microphone with a script it doesn't work.
Script out.
Script out your intro.
Script out your segment.
Script out your,
Jennifer-Lee: Be prepared.
Dee Patel: Yes, be prepared.
The best people that make it look easy did so much preparation just to make it look
like I just came in and talked for this.
Even for myself to come on this podcast.
I asked for some questions that you might be asking, and then I wrote out
some bullet points I have up here on my screen, some of those statistics,
the podcast page that you were referring to so that I can make sure
we're both looking at the same thing.
You know, you're really wanting to respect somebody's time.
And also what are you building?
Are you like, are you building a brand?
Are you building reputation?
Are you coveting those things?
Are you building a, a community?
And I think that's what the Wharton Podcast Network was doing, is building
a community, whether that is a community of relationships between myself, Wharton
mark comp, and the faculty, which then ripples into the relationship that faculty
will build with the industry experts.
And then whether that domino effects into the relationship that students,
prospective students, current students alum have when they're watching,
listening to these podcasts saying like, oh, I may want to go here.
I may wanna take this class.
I may want to have this professor.
Or, hey, I'm an alumni.
I may want to donate back to the school.
So it kind of almost like a full circle of community.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
Jen and I have joked about this, and any of our listeners have probably
heard us talk about this, but we have introduced fellow podcasters at
the same institutions to each other.
I think there's just something, I feel like there's so much opportunity for
podcasters in a, in a school, in a institution, just to start collaborating.
And back to your question there, Jen, about resources.
You can kind of start to pool together resources.
I think if someone could put up their hand, take the reins, there's
probably a lot of opportunity for that because I think the others that
are out there in the other corners of the institution, podcasting, they're
yearning for the collaboration.
At least that's what we've seen over and over again.
And so it's just a matter of getting everyone together and then collaborating
and sharing those resources.
Like that's also something we've heard so much.
Your example where you've got your roles.
None of those people, that's their full-time gig, but it's like you
build it, they will come almost.
You've built this thing.
Now you've got interest.
You've got people that are doing other things, but they're working
with you and it just kind of like feeds off of each other as you go.
I have one more question for you.
I'm sure Jen has one too, but I noticed that in the Where AI Works, that's
in collaboration with Accenture.
How does that come about?
So did you like they're a sponsor for that show?
Dee Patel: That's exactly what it is.
So we were able to build it out and say, hey, you know, AI is a
hot topic at the moment, right?
Everybody wants to be part of anything artificial intelligence, and
we attach AI Wharton to that name.
Now it gives trustworthiness of what they might be saying.
And because it's Where AI Works, that's sort of like, we wanna make sure, like
if we're having that faculty talk about how AI is showing up in the workplace.
I think there were many sponsors on the line there.
And so we went with Accenture because I think gave us the best partnership and
collaboration and helping us provide the industry experts that are on these shows.
There's a little bit of say in it because it's a sponsorship, but at
the end of the day, we wanna make sure that it has the Wharton brand behind
it, and it is, make sure it's in line with the Wharton messaging and what
Wharton is at the end of the day.
So it's an advertisement, but it's more sponsorship to help get the word
out about what AI is doing and how it's showing up in the workplace.
And so they provide the industry experts for that.
So all different podcasts are all very, very different.
I seem to kind of live and breed them, so I just kind of know.
But like now I realize as I go to explain these podcasts to somebody else,
like yeah, they are quite different.
Like some of them are in person only.
Like Ripples, we try to do that in person only.
This Week in Business is twice a week, and it's a very short turnaround.
Where AI Works has a sponsorship attached to it.
So there's a different caveat to it.
Moneyball and Marketing Matters.
Yeah, they're the legacy shows that came over from XM, but
they're under our umbrella now.
They're both very different, even though I categorized them in
sort of the legacy shows of XM.
For Marketing Matters, we had almost all the guests planned
out until about December.
Everybody is motivated differently and each of the podcasts are
motivated very differently.
I try to make sure that I give them the treatment as
strategically as they possibly can.
Just cater to the needs of each individual podcast.
Jennifer-Lee: I love it.
With Moneyball and Marketing Matters, they came from XM, obviously
that is satellite radio station.
And did you find it hard to carry the audience over towards Wharton
and it on now being on like Spotify and Apple and the hosting platform?
Dee Patel: So I, we never knew the numbers of what their listenership was when
they're on air, and we just kind of hosted them in the other podcast realm before.
So it was like, if we're bringing them over to us and under the podcast network
umbrella, what can we provide them?
One is metrics, which is something that you know was not provided to them before.
But two is that cohesive branding.
And if you look at like the podcast page, they all kind of look like
they go together, like their logos and episode art is the same.
You know, the look of something kind of matters as well.
And then what we really wanted to provide them was like, how
people are engaging with it.
Because like, no, they were not, you know, there was not engagement with the show.
So social media.
Our social media team provides really great engagement by providing
every episode a video on YouTube.
All of the audio episodes, obviously on the podcast platforms, but
also a social media clip from at least one episode a month.
And then we have a, when we launched the podcast network, we launched a
Wharton podcast newsletter that is all about just podcasting as well.
So, so we're able to get the word out a little bit more.
We want it to be realistic and set expectations that all of that
audience that might have been listening to you on XM is not
gonna come over and listen to you.
But there might be some that would just look for you, but to have that expectation
saying that we're gonna steal the audience from XM, that's just not the reality
and that's not how broadcasting works.
You know, people love their platform.
Even right now, like we all have a platform that we listen to, we all have
a station that we view or listen to.
No matter what that station does or what another station does, I'm
probably not gonna change my habits.
So it's like, how do you create something for those people?
There are, there's this audience out here that doesn't have a habit yet.
That's who you grab.
Jennifer-Lee: That's so interesting because that's, people might
be like, oh, they're so lucky.
They took these big shows off of Sirius and then they instantly got everybody.
But no, that's not how it works.
And you gotta be prepared.
So it takes a lot of time and thought, and probably it's beneficial now, but
it's not gonna be an instant success.
Dee Patel: A lot of conversations, lot of buy-ins.
And you know, as Jen, and I know I'm broadcasting, it's like almost very
quick decisions, but something that I had to get used to sort of in the academic
world is a lot of red tape, lot of round and round, lot of re-conversating
about something I just conversated about and I thought we decided on yesterday.
Yet we're talking about it again, but it does work.
We had an audience for about X amount of years.
What we were able to use from that was not really their listeners or their
audience, but the fact that they built this reputation for that many years
and all of those guests were on there.
So we were able to say, Hey, we had CMO of, I don't know, Yahoo or
this or that on our show, and we're reaching out to you to be on the show.
You know, people tend to wanna, like the CMO of DoorDash would more likely
to be on our show if they knew that somebody from Yahoo was on there as well.
We were able to carry that reputation over, which helped us build it out on
our end, but we were not delusional to think that those listeners
would come over on the podcast end.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah.
Well, you have been very busy, Dee, and I commend you on your
progress and what you've built.
It's really exciting to see and I think that there's a lot here that
you've shared with us and our audience that we've learned from, so really
appreciate you joining us today.
I'm excited to see how the network grows and what's next.
Dee Patel: Thank you, all three of you, for having me on this podcast.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
Something I forgot to say in the podcast is like, podcast should
feel like you're eavesdropping on a conversation, like just friends
talking and you're eavesdropping on it.
And you know, hopefully people felt like that here.
Like the comfortability level was definitely there.
Neil McPhedran: Great.
Well thank you.
Jennifer-Lee: Thank you.
Neil McPhedran: Well, Jen, that was great.
Another great conversation.
I really enjoyed getting into the nitty gritty of building a podcast network.
I learned a lot.
I think networks are such a big opportunity for podcasting
at the university level.
It was great to hear all that went into it.
It wasn't just a whimsical thing.
There was a lot of intention and planning, and there's a lot more
plans moving forward as they move from phase one into phase two.
Jennifer-Lee: And the fact that we mentioned earlier that she is a former
broadcaster coming from CBS, and so that is a huge traditional network and
now it's neat to see that people like her and other universities and colleges
that we have talked to are creating their own networks and kind of putting
their narrative in their own hand and creating their own media companies.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, that's a great way to look at it too, from a network
perspective where by networking a number of podcasts, you are, in a
sense, as you're saying, creating this bigger channel almost, right?
So, yeah, that's a good point, Jen.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, we're moving from traditional networks.
They're still gonna be around, but they're, they're
just looking very different.
We're in like the future.
Anyways, thank you for tuning into the Continuing Studies podcast.
A podcast for higher education podcasters.
We hope you found this episode informative and inspiring.
If you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to follow, subscribe to our
podcast on your preferred platform, so you'll never miss an episode.
But if you found this episode particularly valuable, please consider sharing it your
friends and colleagues who also might be interested in higher education podcasts.
We also invite you to join your peers on HigherEdPods.com, where you can connect
with other podcasters in higher education and learn from others in the field.
Thank you for being part of our community.
We look forward to continuing to bring you valuable insights and conversations
around higher education podcasts.
See you in the next episode.