Neil McPhedran: Welcome to a live recording of Continuing Studies,
a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired.
I'm Neil McPhedran, founder of Podium Podcast Company.
Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee, founder of JPod Creations.
Broadcasting is podcasting.
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: Jen, we are fresh back from the first inaugural Higher Ed PodCon.
Speaking of learning from each other.
Wow, that was incredible.
Amazing sharing of podcasting.
So much learning.
So much community forming.
It was fantastic.
I've had so many emails, so many LinkedIn notes.
It's just been phenomenal.
Jennifer-Lee: I'm really proud of you and the team.
I know it's something that you have been working on for a very long time, and it
was really great to be there and do this live interview, but I felt pretty proud.
I was sitting there as like, I know the people that put this on.
Neil McPhedran: That's awesome.
Yeah, I mean the, the conference was amazing.
This episode is quite special.
It was actually a lot fun to be on stage.
Yeah.
Long time coming.
And it was fun to be up on a stage doing a live episode.
I mean, I've been involved with live episodes before on the other
sort of production end, but this is my first time recording a live
episode of a podcast up on a stage.
And we had almost 150 people that we were speaking to.
And if you're curious, on this one, we speak with Matt Abrahams
from Think Fast Talk Smart.
Matt is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he
teaches strategic communication and we've been wanting to have him on for a while.
And what better way to do it than to have him on live in front of an audience.
So this was a really cool episode.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, it makes me wanna do more live's too.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, me too.
I, I did come outta that feeling the same way.
Like, we should do more, do more live.
I liked it.
It was fun.
Jennifer-Lee: So, let's get into it.
Gregg Oldring: So we have, for us today, the hosts Neil McPhedran and Jennifer-Lee
here to interview and record as an episode.
Our keynote today has had 215 episodes over five years.
68 million plays, 2,600,000 followers.
It's the number one careers podcast in 125 countries.
The host of Think Fast Talk Smart, Stanford GSB Lecturer, Matt Abrahams.
Jennifer-Lee: Hello.
Matt Abrahams: Hello.
Neil McPhedran: Hello, Matt.
Matt Abrahams: Hello.
Neil McPhedran: Matt, are you ready to get started?
Matt Abrahams: Let's get started.
Yes.
Neil McPhedran: Let's go.
Matt Abrahams: That's an inside joke.
Yes.
Jennifer-Lee: I am not part of it, so I don't know what's going on.
Neil McPhedran: Let's start with why did you launch Think Fast, Talk Smart?
Matt Abrahams: Well first thank you all for being here.
Some of us had quite the time to get here and I appreciate people being here.
So Think Fast, Talk Smart started as an experiment.
I lectured Stanford's Business School.
I'd been there probably five or six years, and I had done a talk, and
the whole story behind the talk is interesting in and of itself, that
ended up doing pretty well on YouTube.
As a result, the school marketing comms team at the GSB
wanted to get into podcasting.
They'd never really done podcasting.
They'd taken classes and edited them and called them podcasts,
but they really weren't.
And they said, hey, we want to try it.
And you know, when it comes to trying it, we know that there's
an interest in communication because of how this talk had done.
And I teach strategic communication.
An area of focus is around how to manage anxiety and stress
and communication situations.
So they figured this guy probably won't get too nervous if we have him do it.
And so they asked, do you want to try it?
And I said, sure.
And so it was really an experiment to try new ways of getting information
from the school out to the world.
Jennifer-Lee: And has your vision changed over the years of doing it,
or is it kind of still the same thing?
Matt Abrahams: Well, we learned a lot, and I assume all of you working on
your podcast have learned a lot if you listen to what the listeners tell you.
So we started thinking we were a business podcast and then the world
told us we are a careers podcast.
And while similar, they're slightly different.
So our direction changed a little bit knowing that we really want to help people
hone and develop their communication.
We'd gotten a little tighter in the way we approach each episode
in terms of length and things.
But our, our experimental vision, I think is still there.
We still try lots of new things.
Our goal is to help people and to have fun as we do it.
So we've stayed that course, but we've become much more professional for sure.
We were total Motley crew when we started and it was all MacGyvered with duct
tape and everything, and now we're a little more professional as we do it.
Jennifer-Lee: I feel like that's how we all started.
Neil McPhedran: So when you launched, what sort of support did you get from the GSB
and how did you navigate getting attention at the GSB sort of in a sea of egos?
Matt Abrahams: There are no egos.
What do you mean?
In academia, there are no egos.
Uh, at first, I didn't know what I didn't know, so I thought we
were getting wonderful support.
They came to us and they said, hey, we have this team.
We're gonna do this.
Let's go.
And then as we started growing, it became very apparent that
we needed a lot more support.
Now mind you, we released our very first episode in January of 2020, and six weeks
later, literally the world shut down.
And so that, we were actually canceled.
So the business school said, you know, pandemic, we're shutting down.
No more podcast.
And we had done so much work.
We had six episodes in the can.
We released two on our first week and then we were gonna go
week after, weekly after that.
And because we were shut down, or they were shutting us down, and we were all
home bound, I said, what if you let me keep it going and I'll manage it?
And they said, okay, why not?
And so my two high school boys and I produced the podcast for six months
on my younger son's gaming computer.
And he would get pissed off whenever I'd have to do an interview.
He'd be like, you're taking away from my gaming time.
And my, and my older son knew how to edit audio, so we had
no support for six months.
And you can hear it if you listen to those old episodes, for sure.
If there was a silver lining in the pandemic, people wanted to know, how
do we communicate in this new world?
People had a lot of time to start listening because
there was nothing else to do.
So we actually saw a sharp increase in our listenership through the pandemic.
And when we came back from it and we were still around, that's when
I started to negotiate with some of the folks in marketing and
communications, and they saw the impact.
It is tricky to help people understand the value of podcasting.
I think today people see it regardless of your political views.
I think this most recent presidential campaign help people see the value
of podcasts and the relationship that podcasters have with their listeners.
So it was less difficult as podcasting became more prominent.
What was more difficult is we needed more resources.
As we grew it cost us more money to do the things we wanted to do.
Jennifer-Lee: And obviously you're really good at getting people to work
and using any of your resources around you, like your children, but maybe if
we don't have children, how do we, you know, when we're first starting out,
maximize people around us to help us?
Because as you know, they take a lot of time.
You said sometimes money.
They're a lot of work.
Matt Abrahams: Yeah.
Podcasts certainly are a lot of work.
I don't have to explain that to people here.
So I leverage, uh, this summer I have six interns from, they are undergraduates,
some from Stanford and some elsewhere.
So anybody who's interested, we put to work.
And that's a lot of fun.
As a teacher, I just like working with people, learning from
people, helping people learn.
So we have always had volunteers, people who we pay, not a lot of money,
who just want to get the experience.
Any of you who are on faculty, writing letters of recommendation
is a great incentive for students.
And students like being able to put on their resume that they worked
on a show that contributed value.
And I think it helps differentiate them.
So leveraging lots of resources.
Finding ways to collaborate with others at the university, talking to the folks in
marketing communications and their teams.
They have a lot of people who are great at social media and other things, and
they're always looking for content.
One of the things that we spend a lot of time thinking about is how
do we slice and dice our content and what can we do to make it one, to
help us, but also to help others.
So there are lots of ways to get people connected and involved.
Neil McPhedran: So let's talk about some of that growth and global
reach that Gregg shared with us.
Was there a tipping point?
Was there sort of a point where you, I mean, obviously you started in the
first episode, had a few downloads and a few listens, and here we are today.
What was that tipping point?
Can you point to anything along the way?
Matt Abrahams: You know, I've reflected on this for a long time.
I'm not exactly sure.
I know the pandemic helped, but we somehow, the appetite for
the topic, I think is really, is one of the big reasons.
We are very short bite size, 20 minute episodes.
Every episode the goal is that somebody can finish listening
and apply something right away.
I think it is the applied nature of it that really helped.
But I really can't say this happened on this date and
that's where we really exploded.
I just think it's, we always encourage people to share and to
let others know about the show, but it's really hard to tell.
And as Neil knows, Neil helps me produce the show, every time I think a show's
gonna be really bad, it does really well.
And so I'm not really good at understanding that kind of thing.
So we just are riding the wave.
Jennifer-Lee: And because you've had such huge growth, and congratulations on
that and the number one careers podcast.
That's amazing.
You're now moving the show.
You've just recently done this.
You're now independent from GSB.
What was your decision around that?
Why did you do that?
Matt Abrahams: So we, in September, it will be a year as an independent podcast.
If you would've asked me at my age, would I be a social media entrepreneur,
I would've said, you're crazy.
But apparently I am now.
The problem was this, all of us who work in academic
institutions, things move slowly.
And we, podcasting does not.
And so we were constantly running up against issues.
It was, I call it a conscious uncoupling.
The business school was very kind.
We negotiated a separation.
We are working very carefully and closely, hand in hand.
They are just not paying the bills.
We are now paying the bills.
We're still supporting them, and they still support us.
So it's actually the best of both worlds.
We can move with the speed with which we need to move, we can
make decisions more quickly.
They still get the benefit of us helping bring eyeballs and ears to content.
So I think everybody's very happy with how it's come out.
Jennifer-Lee: That's great.
Something else that you've started adding, which I know there's a lot
of conversations at every conference about this, video to podcast.
Now you're doing video.
Again, why?
Because that's more work, more resources.
Matt Abrahams: Yeah.
Video is expensive, and for me, what's important is high quality video.
It's where podcasting is going.
YouTube is the biggest discovery engine.
I believe YouTube will very much lead where podcasting is going.
Spotify and others are certainly involved in it, and so we're moving towards it.
It's harder to edit.
You have to think differently as a host and how you interact with
people when people can see it.
But I actually like it.
It's fun.
We get to do some more creative things and it certainly allows us to do more on
social, which has been very helpful to us.
So we're slowly there.
Not every episode we do is video.
We are getting more and more to that point, and we've made some recent
decisions to really lean into it.
The biggest challenge is cost and venue and figuring out how to do that.
Neil McPhedran: So what's your strategy then for video?
Produce full episodes, and then are you producing shorts and clips?
Matt Abrahams: Yes.
So we record in video, we use Squadcast.
Some of you use Riverside, use Zoom, whatever.
If I can, if the guest is local or I'm proximal to them, we'll actually
go into a real studio and do it.
We record it on video, edit it in Descript.
We create an audio version of the podcast.
That audio version then serves as the guide for editing the video version.
And then we clip and cut, and we're trying to get very creative with that
and the folks who do that work for us are in the room, so they can give
you more input on how they do it.
But it just takes more time now.
We have to post across all the different platforms and then when
you post, you have to respond to people who respond to your posts.
So there's this whole machinery that you have to build to make it work.
But it's been fun and I love engaging with our listeners.
There's nothing more satisfying to me than when a listener will write and say
how the podcast has impacted their lives.
'Cause that's really why we do it.
For four and a half years, we were non-profit and we're not making any money.
We're barely covering our costs now.
So we do it to help people.
And so video is another way of reaching out to these folks.
Jennifer-Lee: And whether it's recording in a studio or recording virtually,
obviously there's a lot of challenges to video to make it look professional
and polished, and you always wanna make sure you have good sound regardless.
So for people thinking in this room, hey, I don't have video yet to my
podcast, but I should probably do it.
What do you think the advantages are of it and why?
Matt Abrahams: Well, certainly a disadvantage is people get to see
this, and I can't tell you the number of people say, oh, you don't look
the way I thought you did, or would.
So there are many advantages.
One I think is people are more engaged by it.
We live in a world where attention is our most precious commodity,
and video draws more attention.
And so I think that's one.
Two, you can do some really interesting things with video.
You can cut in other video, you can put in animations in
ways that you can't with audio.
And what's important to me is the educational aspect of what we do.
There are just more tools in the toolkit when you have video.
So it, it opens it up to help us achieve our goal more.
And I mean, bottom line is it's where all of the providers want you to be.
So you're gonna get more love.
I can tell you very specifically that we have been told by some platforms that
if you're aren't on video, if you're audio only, you're not gonna get the
love that will help you expand and reach.
So it is in their best interest to push video and therefore
we're playing that game.
Neil McPhedran: So let's talk about what's next.
What are you and the team focused on?
What new channels, innovations, what's on the horizon?
Matt Abrahams: So I've been reflecting a lot about AI and its impact on
everything, but podcasting in particular.
And I am convinced, and I would love to have a discussion and debate
with any of you, 'cause I'm really trying to formulate these opinions.
I think the role of podcasting and providing content is
a ice cube that's melting.
I think that creating content is now commoditized.
The value I believe we bring is in curation and in community.
And where we are taking our podcast is more, we're still gonna release, we're
gonna do everything we've been doing, but I really wanna focus on curating
content, helping the listeners who've chosen to listen to us find the content
that's important and relevant to them.
And then build a community where like-minded people can
come together and interact.
I really think just putting out content is, we're on a cliff.
I think there's so many places and so many other ways that
people can get content now.
What we have to bring is the creativity and the curation and the
community that breeds connection to really make the difference.
So we are really focusing on that.
We're building out a community hub where people will be able to access it.
And when I say community, I wanna be very clear.
I'm not talking about a premium offering where you get to listen to more content
without ads or anything like that.
That's important.
And we have one of those.
But I'm talking about a place where people can come together and interact.
I'll give you a few ideas.
We have a lot of guests on who have books.
We're gonna start hosting book clubs in our community.
We have people who are very interested in very specific skills
that we cover in our podcast.
We're gonna have threads and channels where people can meet with others,
some will mediate, some we won't.
We might offer courses.
The whole idea is to bring people together where they can interact.
That's what makes what I think all of us do special, and it builds a
moat around the ubiquity of content creation that AI has now allowed for.
So that's where we're headed, and I'm excited about it because I
think we can really help people in a deeper, more connected way.
Jennifer-Lee: And that authentic communication connection is something
that I don't think anyone can replace.
But that being said, you did touch upon AI.
Are there other things as higher ed podcasters that we should be
thinking about in the next two years or trying or experimenting with?
Matt Abrahams: I would love to hear from all of you, 'cause I'm still
trying to figure this thing out.
We certainly leverage AI in the work we do.
It helps me create the questions I ask.
It helps me find guests.
I know for sure it helps us create some of our social posts we create
with Canva and AI, we put together things that our audience is digesting
and liking much better than what we used to do because of AI.
I would love to hear from all of you how you see using AI.
We're still playing with it and trying to figure it out.
I know that because we have so much content out there that we've been
able to create our own chat bot.
So we're gonna release a chat bot soon where we've ingested all of
our episodes, talks and writings from my guests and that I've done.
And you can actually go now and query the podcast in essence.
So if you're somebody who has a job interview coming up,
you can go to our chat bot.
We're calling it Chat Matt.
I wanted Matt GPT, but I couldn't get the URL.
You can go type it in and you'll get a response from the collective
learnings of the podcast, and it'll also spit out the episodes that it
drew from to give you that answer.
So it's a way of driving more listens as well.
I'd love to hear how others are using it.
Neil McPhedran: What about other languages?
Are you exploring that?
Matt Abrahams: It's so funny.
He's asking questions he knows the answers to.
Uh, yes, so we have quite a global reach.
We have many more people who listen to us outside the US than inside the US.
And we are exploring translating the podcast.
First audio, and then we might explore doing video.
We're looking to do Hindi and Spanish first.
Primarily because we know we have large audiences in those regions,
and the tools that we're looking to use are better in those languages
than some of the other languages where we do well internationally.
It's exciting.
We have worries about translation.
We don't want to cannibalize our English language channel, so we're trying
to be creative on how we do this.
But we think we can help more people if we translate.
And of course, for what we do, our topic is communication.
We have to be very sensitive to the cultural differences and norms.
We don't want to imply that the way we do it here in the US is the right
way to do it in other cultures.
So there are a lot of issues at play.
I'm really excited.
It's really freaky if you've not done this to hear your voice
speaking a different language.
So they'll actually take your voice and do it.
I heard myself speak German, French and Spanish.
They sent me the file.
Just bizarre.
Jennifer-Lee: So no one's dubbing you.
It's all you.
Matt Abrahams: Well, it's my voice that they've programmed to do it.
Jennifer-Lee: Awesome.
Well, speaking of communication, we're kind of having a meta moment
right now because we're interviewing an amazing interviewer and I've been
wanting to interview for a long time.
Neil knows this, so I'm very excited about this.
But what do you think makes a great interview?
Matt Abrahams: Curiosity.
Curiosity and listening deeply, and combining those two.
If there's anything that I have really worked on to help, I really work on
paraphrasing and trying to take what the person has said, digest it, and then
share it in a way that helps, I hope, drive home for people the key point.
And then connecting.
So I think it's, it's about listening, being curious and
paraphrasing, and that's what I really try to do as I interview folks.
And editing helps.
Let's face it.
You know, people say, Matt, you're so fluent in everything.
And I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of editing that's going on behind the scenes.
Neil McPhedran: Any rituals, little techniques that you can share with the
audience here when they're interviewing?
Matt Abrahams: What are you trying to get at there?
Jennifer-Lee: The secrets.
Matt Abrahams: So I do a few things.
One, everybody who helps me who's in this room knows I'm perpetually
late, so they are often sitting on the call with a guest before I show up.
One of the reasons I'm late is I always warm up before I do an interview.
For me, doing interviews are very exciting, but they're draining because
I'm super focused on what's going on.
So I warm up.
I, I say a tongue twister multiple times just to get my mouth and voice going.
And I really take some deep breaths and do some things to really help.
So there is a ritual that I go through.
I, I'm superstitious and ritual bound, so I make sure to do those things.
And I always challenge myself.
We always record the tease at the beginning.
The way our show starts is I start hopefully with something provocative,
and then I introduce the guest, and I, I always challenge myself.
To me, it's a game.
What's the tease going to be?
So in the interview, I'm constantly thinking, what's this
one thing that will get people excited to listen to the episode?
So that's part of my ritual as well, is I'm always playing this game.
What is it that I'm gonna tease?
And so those are the kind of things that help me keep focused.
Jennifer-Lee: Love it.
We're getting trade secrets right here, right now.
So I've interviewed a lot of people and sometimes this happens, not
in this interview, but sometimes you have an interview that
goes sideways or lacks energy.
So how do you as the interviewer, kind of take control and make it a better one?
Matt Abrahams: No offense to anybody in the room, but academics
can be dry sometimes, and so trying to make it more exciting.
My trick is I really try to, uh, get people to think about how what they're
talking about has direct application.
So what does this mean?
How has this played out in your life?
Getting people to tell stories, uh, and inviting them to
tell stories I work on a lot.
All my interviews, people know the questions in advance to help them be
focused, and then I tell them these are just starting points, so they
come prepared, which helps as well.
But there are times where I'm in the midst of somebody's answering for way too
long, and I'm just thinking, we're gonna cut this part, we're gonna cut that part.
And I actually, well, the next question, knowing that I will have eliminated the
previous answer, can to the person feel very abrupt, because I know we're just
gonna get rid of everything they've said.
So it can be hard.
Neil McPhedran: So speaking of preparing your interviews, you end all your
episodes with three of the same questions.
So we have tweaked your three questions to be focused on podcasting instead instead
communication, 'cause that's what you do.
Matt Abrahams: Before you ask the questions, Neil, we determined early
on because we were running on a shoestring, that we would want to
reuse our content as much as possible.
And so we built in, and this is just a best practice that
we have really benefited from.
So those of you starting things, I might encourage you to think about this.
We built in that we ask similar questions at the end of every episode, and we
have gotten a tremendous amount of leverage out of that because we can
then slice and dice our episodes and reuse content from different places.
So there are lots of things.
You create a lot of content and we, I think, have done a pretty
good job of thinking about how can we reuse that content in different
ways, creating infographics.
Now we're really working on playlists that are thematic.
Once you have enough episodes, you can start doing things like that.
So I encourage everybody to think about this content you have as a
warehouse of content that you can then combine in lots of different ways.
So it's not an accident that we have, you know, 215 episodes with people
answering the same three questions.
That was very purposeful.
And in a world where content is so important, creating ways to mix and match
I think has been really helpful for us.
Neil McPhedran: So you kind of just answered the first question.
Matt Abrahams: Oh, okay.
Well, very good.
Neil McPhedran: But, the, the key part to the question though is if you
were to capture the best podcasting advice you've ever received in a
single sentence, what would it be?
Matt Abrahams: It's all about your audience.
You are simply a, a mouthpiece and ears for your audience.
So everything I do, I'm always thinking about how will this help the audience?
What would the audience want to know?
I often wanna know a lot of things, some of which is similar to what
my audience wants, but I really try to focus on how the audience will
get value, and I'm always thinking of myself from their perspective.
One of the things we did, when was that?
About two, two and a half years ago.
Neil McPhedran: This is more than one sentence.
Matt Abrahams: I know.
Okay.
Period.
I'm an academic who teaches communication, this is what I do.
I talk, people pay me to talk.
It's amazing.
We did a thorough audience analysis.
We actually had a company interview our audience.
We surveyed our audience and we have a much better idea of who
they are and what's important to them as a result of that.
And that really helped with know your audience, which
was the one sentence answer.
Jennifer-Lee: Well, now I'm gonna channel my best Matt Abrahams
and ask you who is a podcaster or interviewer that you admire and why?
Matt Abrahams: I really like Terry Gross.
I think Terry Gross is an amazing interviewer.
I like how it's very conversational, how she's vulnerable, how she
expresses emotion and gets others to express emotion.
Her interviews are very different than the type of interviews I do.
Mine are just sort of very matter of fact, but I really respect Terry Gross.
Jennifer-Lee: Good answer.
Neil McPhedran: Question number three.
What are the three ingredients that go into a successful podcasting recipe?
Matt Abrahams: Teamwork.
Podcasting is, at least in the way we do it as a team.
And I have assembled, I work with an amazing team.
Thank you, Neil, and others.
So, teamwork, passion, and curiosity.
I'm gonna put those two together.
I am infinitely curious and very passionate about what we do.
And while I am really poor at this, I have always tried to surround
myself and I certainly have done this with the team we work with, detail
oriented, being very detail oriented.
I am very bad at that, but you need to be detail oriented to make this work.
So those would be the three ingredients for sure that help, from my perspective.
Jennifer-Lee: Was that answer short enough for you?
Neil McPhedran: Yep.
Jennifer-Lee: Well, thank you so much, Matt.
We're gonna actually open up the questions to you, the audience,
because I know that you probably have some burning questions for Matt.
So let's get started.
Audience Member 1: Can you speak a little bit more about the specifics of how you
were gonna create the bank of answers that you have queried the AI database?
Matt Abrahams: So.
I can only share the level that I understand this at.
So one of the advantages of teaching where I teach is we have amazing students.
In a class, some, I don't even remember how this came up.
We were talking about AI and I said, it would be so great if I could somehow
take all the information we have in my podcast and share it through AI, and I
had a student come up afterwards and said, oh, I can have that for you by tomorrow.
And I kid you not.
He did.
He has written a program, I don't know the specifics of it, that allow us to simply
put in the URL of our episode and it will within 20 minutes add it to this data bank
that he has and you can query against it.
I'm not sure what he coded it in.
I'm not sure what he did.
We're in the process of, it's going to be beta launched to our
premium members in the next couple weeks to get their feedback.
As with all AI, it can do some silly things.
We're trying to, to learn all those silly things.
There are companies that will do this for you, they cost a lot of money.
Like I said, students, for those of you who work with
students, they're very eager.
And we have two students who are studying data science.
They came to me and said, we'd love to be interns.
I said, well, we've got some data science-y projects.
They got really excited because they do problem sets that are, you know,
data sets that they don't care about.
And they're like, wow.
I mean, these are people on the other end of this.
So we have this one woman working for us that, she's
doing things we never imagined.
I mean, we're getting data on what titles of our podcasts
do better than other titles.
What time of the month that we released episodes, do they do better versus worse?
All that data exists.
We just didn't know what to do with it.
And you know, our students are helping.
So leverage students and see if they can help.
And if you really want more information about the AI, I can dig into it, but
I honestly don't know what he did.
Neil McPhedran: A key part of that though is the transcripts and all
of the show notes and the metadata.
So we spend a lot of time developing chapters and really good show notes
and very accurate transcripts.
So that's really important 'cause that feeds into the AI.
And when Matt says it goes to the webpage, each episode has its own webpage with the
transcript and all of that data on there.
So that's really, really rich data then that funnels into
that AI so they can pull it out.
So first and foremost, you gotta give it the data, and that's where
we spend a lot of time making sure it's accurate and it's all there.
Matt Abrahams: You see what I mean about detail oriented, surround yourself
with the people who know the details.
Audience Member 2: Now, you mentioned that you are working on creating curated
content through custom playlists.
Talk to me a little bit more about that, how you're doing that, how
you're sharing that with your audience.
Matt Abrahams: Again, I have interns who are doing it.
They're really excited about it.
Across our many episodes, there are certain themes and topics that we cover,
and we can see how they do in terms of listens, plays, views, whatever
you're monitoring, and so we know that there's an appetite for certain topics.
I'll give you an example.
We have done many episodes on the fear of speaking in public.
A lot of people have that as a fear.
Those episodes do very well.
We have 6, 7, 8 of them.
We're putting them together in a playlist.
For our premium offering we have a similar playlist, but I actually
put some additional content on it so it becomes a lesson.
I wouldn't say it's a course, it's a little lesson where I'll say,
listen to these three episodes.
Here's some specific things to listen for.
Here's how you might apply it.
That takes a little heavier lift, and that's why it's part of our
premium offering where people have to pay a little to get access to it.
But the normal playlists, we're just combining them and so
we post them on our website.
And in Spotify and YouTube, we've mirrored them.
So they have a name, they have a different show.
Art.
We're starting to tell people about them, and we are starting to monitor
how many people listen to them.
So we're practically tactically from a numbers point of view, it's just
another way to get people to visit your content, but to help people.
It really helps curate that content in a meaningful way.
Audience Member 3: So since a lot of the work you're talking about is going through
students, I'm always curious then, why engage with the students to have them
all start their own podcasts so that they can start thinking about how do we
bring guests on, start actually using the work you're teaching them, uh, to do
that, help 'em get jobs and everything.
Matt Abrahams: Yeah.
So a couple of the people we've had help us over the years have had podcasts.
And we're really excited about it.
And what's so funny to me is a couple of them will come and say, I wanna see how a
real professional podcast is put together.
And I laugh and I say, this is not professional, this is, this is not.
And they soon see that.
Some come from a podcasting background, which is great.
Others are interested in creating podcasts.
We help them.
The team has certainly mentored some of the students that have helped us.
Our original founding executive producer did that a lot.
Her name was Jenny Luna.
She really helped, and we are doing that today with some of ours.
So yes, we try to encourage podcasting and encourage them to do it.
The other thing I would encourage all of you to do, and I have just started
doing this at Stanford, is reaching out to the student community who are
creators and have their own podcasts, and we're starting to bring people together
and to really leverage each
Matt Abrahams: other.
We have a student who is one of the senior participants in Mr. Beast's group.
I mean, this guy does all of their partnerships for Mr. Beast.
He's a 26-year-old MBA student, and I met with him and he's
giving us insight, I mean.
Mr. Beast, it's nuts.
The numbers, they're talking in terms of views and stuff.
So harness in your communities, people who are doing this and leverage.
When we pulled the podcast out from the business school, I reached out to as many
podcasters as I could find very prominent podcasters, and I have been amazed.
Everybody has been so kind and collaborative.
No competition.
Everybody's just been really helpful in giving insight.
It's fun to be around others who do what we all do.
And reach out to that and help encourage young folks, like you
said, to create their own podcasts.
I actually think they have the energy and excitement for it for sure.
Yes.
Hi.
Audience Member 4: First of all, thank you for your insights.
What are your ethical conversations like with students
with regards to media and AI?
What are the questions that they are asking?
What are the resources you're bringing in?
Who are you holding up as examples of, look at these people for these
kinds of considerations or for examples of what has been happening
in regards to ethics and AI?
Matt Abrahams: I probably need to do more of that, to be honest.
So we definitely talk about AI and the use of AI.
So when I teach, we have a lot of conversations about AI, especially
when you teach strategic communication.
Our students take an ethics class, and so I try to tap into what
they're talking about in ethics and reinforce what they have there.
I share what I use AI for.
I share some of the challenges that I have with AI.
I encourage them to really leverage it as a tool to help, but to be very
mindful of where that content came from.
I mean, as creators, we are all creating content, and I think
we deserve the respect and the effort that that effort requires.
So I encourage them to do that, and I fear that AI will reduce
people's ability to critically think.
And so I really encourage my students to keep their critical thinking
skills sharp and to really evaluate and judge what AI produces for them.
Jennifer-Lee: We have time for one to two more questions.
Audience Member 5: What's the process, 'cause the fun note, you know, you've
got a popular podcast, so everybody and their brother wants to be on it now.
So what's the criteria of choosing your guests?
Matt Abrahams: That's a great question.
So one is, is it in alignment with our theme and is there value that
the person can bring to the audience.
That's probably the number one thing.
Two is, is there some unique perspective that the person brings?
You are right.
As we have gotten more popular, I think at least 5 to 10 requests
come in sometimes per day for people who have books and other things
that they want to be on the show.
And I just have a standard boilerplate thing I send back to many of them.
I would say probably 80% of our guests I solicit versus them coming to me.
Because there are certain themes and ideas that we want to cover.
Believe me, it's a nice place to be where people wanna be on the show.
'Cause I remember starting out and having to beg people to be on the show.
So that has been nice.
But it has to add value to the audience.
I have to, I will personally wanna learn from it and it has to be
some kind of unique perspective.
Those are the three criteria.
Jennifer-Lee: Okay.
So we're gonna go with the final question.
Audience Member 6: You may hate this question.
Matt Abrahams: Okay.
Audience Member 6: When the ice cube melts, what will you be doing?
Matt Abrahams: Ah.
So I love teaching and I'm curious.
So I'm gonna find, podcasting is, I mean, for those of us who do this, it's amazing.
It scratches so many itches that I have.
I love to talk to really smart people.
I love to learn.
I'm incredibly curious, so I will find other avenues for that.
I think there is always a need to create content.
I just think it's how we engage that content and how we bring value to people.
So I don't know what it'll be, but it'll certainly be me asking questions
and trying to learn from people.
Jennifer-Lee: Well, thank you so much, Matt.
We really appreciate it.
Matt Abrahams: Thank you.
I am, I'm happy to chat with all of you and learn from all of you.
I want to hear what all of you are up to for sure.
Neil McPhedran: Okay.
That's a wrap.
What a great conversation we had with Matt.
I really enjoyed that.
Lots of fantastic insights for higher education podcasters, no doubt.
Jennifer-Lee: And I just love the live element because you
know, you can hear the audience laughing, you can feel the audience.
It's different, like yes.
In the perfect world, the sound quality might not be there, but I like the
whole live element versus studio.
So I thought it was great.
Neil McPhedran: Yes, all in all, great trip, great conference.
Love this episode, and I'm so glad that we decided to record live while we
were there and we got it all to work.
Jennifer-Lee: And hopefully we'll be doing it again next year.
Maybe Chicago, maybe not.
Neil McPhedran: I think we're gonna be going to a different
city, different university for next year's Higher Ed PodCon.
That, that'll be decided over the next few months, but yeah,
it was, but it was great.
Jennifer-Lee: Perfect.
Thank you so much for tuning into the Continuous Studies podcast, our
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