Ideas on how you can use your podcast to reach your goals:
Private feed just for your team / employees
Q&A: get users, customers, audience to leave you a voicemail. Answer 1 question per week.
Interview your customers: interview 1 customer per week. Ask them about their business, how they’re using your product.
Expert tips: if you’re a professional (lawyer, accountant, coach), give your listeners an actionable piece of advice every week. Give them one thing to improve every week.
Read your blog posts: already writing a blog post ever week? Just read it “audible” style for your audience.
Recycle your best talks / videos.
Conferences: give attendees a private feed of all the talks!
Ideas on how you can use your podcast to reach your goals:
Private feed just for your team / employees
Q&A: get users, customers, audience to leave you a voicemail. Answer 1 question per week.
Interview your customers: interview 1 customer per week. Ask them about their business, how they’re using your product.
Expert tips: if you’re a professional (lawyer, accountant, coach), give your listeners an actionable piece of advice every week. Give them one thing to improve every week.
Read your blog posts: already writing a blog post ever week? Just read it “audible” style for your audience.
Recycle your best talks / videos.
Conferences: give attendees a private feed of all the talks!
Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.
Jon:
Okay. Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2018. I'm Jon Buda, a software engineer.
Justin:
And I'm Justin Jackson. I'm a product and marketing guy. Follow along as we build transistor dotfm. So, John Cool. I hope I didn't bum you out in our hour long conversation we just asked.
Jon:
Our our prerecording? No. I was, my blood sugar was low. I think I didn't even know.
Justin:
I'm the kind of person I get something in my head, But until I express it in a just an outburst of verbal garbage, I can't quite process it. So
Jon:
Okay. I usually need to ruminate on it for, like, 2 to 3 weeks, and then And then I can get
Justin:
it out. Unfortunately, this is part of my technique which is I I and maybe I'm I'm not Doing it correctly for you, but I I'm like, okay. I'm just gonna drop this bomb on John, and it'll just, like it'll shake him, and then he'll think about it for the next couple weeks, and then he'll he'll synthesize it and then come back to me. And then
Jon:
we'll That's good. That's good. Yeah. I, I wasn't I wasn't I don't think I was mentally prepared.
Justin:
For the bomb.
Jon:
For the bomb. Yeah. To talk about things that I hadn't thought about yet. But I also hadn't hadn't eaten enough. So
Justin:
These are the things. These are especially the things I think about as the year starts to come to a close. So
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
As soon as it's November 18th when we're this. And as soon as I start hearing Americans talking about Black Friday and Thanksgiving, I go, Okay. Year's done.
Jon:
Yeah. Not a lot of people get a lot done, I don't think, in the last month of the year.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
It's, like, holiday season, and everyone just I don't know. They just check out.
Justin:
Drop out. Now my friend, Paul Jarvis, who writes a really popular Sunday email called the Sunday dispatches, He, just sent his his email yesterday is, hey, folks. I'm taking a break until the New Year. See you later. And so every year about this time, he stops rec he stops writing.
Justin:
Well, he's still writing, but I think he's just preparing for, you know, next year.
Jon:
Okay.
Justin:
And, you know, as That's a good thing to think about. I I know we have a lot of folks who listen to this that have their own podcasts. And, that's Something for you to think about. Maybe you should give yourself a little break.
Jon:
Taking a bit of a break is good. On that note, we should wrap this up, and we'll see you in the mirror.
Justin:
We just spent so much time planning this episode. Yeah. We could just we could just, like, Leave it. I mean, maybe we will. We're we are gonna do an episode next week, and it's going to be an experiment.
Justin:
So, folks, if you're listening to this right now, I want you to go to transistor.fm/voicemail. This is just something I built in WordPress. This is not something John built in Rails, but it should allow you to record a voice mail on your computer or your phone. We want you to ask us your questions, or you could leave us a comment. If you've had a burning comment that you feel Deserves to be heard.
Justin:
You can leave it for us. And, next week, we'll answer your questions from your voice mails during our American Thanksgiving show. So don't fail me. I'll I'll be really disappointed and and sad if no one leaves a single voice mail. So you even if just come up with a question.
Justin:
And, if you're listening to this and go there right now, you might be the only one.
Jon:
I'll I'll I'll call her and leave you one, Justin.
Justin:
Also, let's, we have a new Patreon supporter, Colin Gray, who is, We know him because he runs the podcast host.comandalidoo.com. So thanks, Colin for supporting us on Patreon. And we we act we talk with Colin behind the scenes sometimes because he's Building his own little podcasting startup, and so we have similarities. We also have Samori Augusto, Mike Walker, Brad from Canada, Darby Frey, Kevin Markham, Adam Duvander, and Dave Giunta.
Jon:
Got it. Nailed it.
Justin:
Yes. It's always like, I I wonder if that's gonna become a thing with listeners like they say it. You know? We go through our Patreon supporters, and they start to learn these names. And at the end, I just I just imagine thousands of people saying all at once.
Jon:
I hope so.
Justin:
So, Yeah. I think we're gonna have a good episode this time. In my In my head, this episode is gonna be about 30, 35 minutes long, but we'll see what happens.
Jon:
We'll see what we got.
Justin:
I thought it'd be interesting to talk about kind of ways you can use a podcast. And we've now have oh, man. I don't know how many I think Hundreds of users now. And Yeah. We don't have thousands of podcasts yet, do we?
Justin:
I don't think so. We have 421 shows. Okay.
Jon:
Okay.
Justin:
But over those, you know, that's given us quite a bit of data to observe and see, oh, well, we can see the different ways people are using podcasts. And so, yeah, I thought we would talk about that. Before we talk about all the interesting ways You can use podcasting. It seems like we should talk about and and this is actually it would be a great question for us to ask our users when they sign up. Yeah.
Justin:
What do you want to do with podcasting? Like, why are you here? What what is your objective? What do you wanna achieve? Right.
Jon:
Yeah. What is your motivation for, you know Mhmm. Spending time time and money to look into recording a podcast?
Justin:
Actually, the way you put it was great because it matters actually a lot for even us as a business. If if what motivated you was you listen to, reply all and you thought, oh, I would love To be like those 2 guys, I'm gonna start a show, and you do it in a fit of inspiration, but you don't you haven't really thought through, like, What do I wanna get out of this? You know, if if if you're just kind of bluntly saying, well, I want to be podcast famous.
Jon:
Yeah. I suppose that's a that's an appropriate question to ask in most things in life. Right? What what do you I wanna get?
Justin:
Yeah. What what's our motive what's our motivation?
Jon:
So for so for us, we have a show, obviously. We're recording it right now. What What was our what what's our objective? What do we wanna get out of it?
Justin:
It's a it's a good day.
Jon:
Have we answered that ourselves?
Justin:
That? I think we talked a little bit about it. I mean, the big thing
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Was we knew that we would have to have some sort of show. We wanted to dog food our own product. And so Mhmm. We knew that it had to be something. And we thought I I think I had a couple thing Thoughts.
Justin:
You know, 1, I thought while our our kind of initial Target market are people building businesses, and we're both connected to the tech Industry. And so Mhmm. Talking about building a software as a service that might Connect with eventual customers. It'll also connect us with a bigger community of people who are also doing what we do. So kind of a business objective and a non business objective there.
Justin:
I think the other thing for us and this this resonated with me. One of the things Alex Bloomberg said after he did the initial series of startup Was he was surprised by how helpful it was to record an episode every week documenting their journey
Jon:
Mhmm.
Justin:
Both for synthesizing their thinking, but also for, You know, just moving the business forward. And he said, in retrospect, it was one of the most helpful things he did. And so, You know, I think we've experienced a bit of that. This is often the only time you and I talk.
Jon:
Yeah. It is. Yeah. I mean, I think that's been sort of An unintended consequence of it. I don't think we initially set out for that to be the case.
Jon:
But, yeah, it's it's one of the only times that we talk and and reflect on what we've been doing and what we've done. Mhmm. I
Justin:
think also the way that I've traditionally done business is I want to connect with people on a human level. So my favorite businesses are, you know, businesses like Basecamp and, you know, ConvertKit and buffer. These companies that have been sharing their journey from the beginning in a really kind of transparent way or a real way, And I feel invested in those stories. And I felt like I wanna do something like that with this new thing that we're building, you You know, to be able to share our journey and have people, you know, and feel invested in Our story kind of following along with what we're doing.
Jon:
Yeah. Definitely. I know. Yeah. Early on, I know we talked about transparency and That this is obviously part of that.
Justin:
Yeah. Totally.
Jon:
I think some someone at XOXO I forget who that was we were talking to. Someone was like, oh, you're gonna gimlet that shit as far as, like, recording a show about building the business. I was like, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Jon:
That makes sense.
Justin:
That's so funny. Yeah. We're gonna gimlet that shit. So, yeah, I've I've written down some ideas. I think we can work through these.
Justin:
Here. I'll do the first one, and you can do the second one. So the first thing you might wanna achieve is to grow your business, Get more clients, build your brands, do public relations, that kind of thing. So I thought of 2 examples. 1, Nate with the TechNest Real Estate podcast.
Justin:
We've mentioned him before, but he has you know, he started his show. And a couple weeks in, He had a a couple of leads. He's getting new clients from the podcast. And to achieve that, he doesn't need to get Thousands of downloads every episode. He can have, you know, a reasonable amount.
Justin:
But anybody that is searching for that kind of information and connects with him. He's teaching them on the show. He's building trust, and It actually has, a pretty quick it converts to email leads for him fairly quickly. On the flip side, a lot of businesses use podcasting to build their brand. And if you know what Mailchimp and Casper And all of these other businesses are, that is a good example of this.
Justin:
Mailchimp often doesn't have a coupon code even in their In their ads, Cards Against Humanity is actually, notorious for this as well. You know, Cards Against Humanity sponsored the show, But they asked us not to read an ad. So enjoy the show. You know? Yeah.
Justin:
Yeah. But that's branding and PR. And, we just had Drift Sign up drift.com, and they have a show called seeking wisdom. I don't think they're looking for, you know, they're they're not making Giving this direct attribution between putting out a show and getting more users, but it's helping them increase awareness about their brand. You know?
Justin:
So if you're in the market for a, chat widget on your website, they want Drift to be top of mind in the same way that Mailchimp is top of mind if you want a newsletter. What's, what's the second one we got there?
Jon:
So we got, grow your audience. Maybe you're not necessarily a business. You want to grow your audience over time, maybe get Sponsorships turn podcasting into a career, which I know has happened to, quite a few people. They become professional podcasters. It sort of Moved them into this other, I don't know, area of expertise that they maybe didn't have before, whether it's recording multiple shows or becoming a producer.
Justin:
Yeah. And so what would an example be of that? I mean, I can think of, like, Big names like Merlin Mann and and those folks.
Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. So on well, with transistor, we have supercomputer, which is, Matt and Alex, and they, you know, record about technology. Mhmm. And that's a topic that they're incredibly interested in.
Jon:
I haven't spoken to Alex directly. I know she is, you know, she's in our office all the time, and what her goals are, but, you know, I'm assuming she wants to grow the audience, you know, get sponsorships, maybe, start a Patreon page to support the show Mhmm. So that maybe she can move into that full time eventually.
Justin:
Yeah. And and you need a fairly big audience for something like this. So this is why I think it's it's it's important to be honest about what you wanna achieve. When when Nate set out to do his Tech Nest Real Estate podcast, I don't think he was thinking, oh, this is gonna be the next serial. Right?
Justin:
This isn't gonna get 100 of thousands of downloads per episode.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
But he didn't need that because what he wanted was to become be be known as an expert in a field and to get a reasonable amount of leads from the show. But if you're going to the other side and you want to get podcast sponsorships, like ads, or you wanna grow, you know, a full time income on Patreon. This is a big audience, and you have to know what you're getting into before you do this.
Jon:
Right. Right. I mean, it's yeah. It's not necessarily one of those things where you're just gonna start a show, open up Patreon page and then just be like, I'm gonna sit back and watch the money roll in.
Justin:
Money roll in. And, I mean, we can be transparent about our numbers. We this show gets On average, 2,000 downloads per episode. And, I will say that we are At least in well, we even know that industry wide, like, 80% of shows don't even get to 2,000 Downloads per episode. So we're in the top 20% at least, probably even higher.
Justin:
And, you know, we have, I know this just changed, but it's, like, nearly $200, a $189 a month And Right. On Patreon. Patreon. Yeah. And
Jon:
Yeah. No. We don't have sponsors knocking at our doors. We don't
Justin:
Yeah. It's not like every week we're like, Sorry, folks. We don't do ads.
Jon:
Schedules fall.
Justin:
The it's a it's hard work. And and that space is getting more and more competitive. Not saying you shouldn't do it, but remember that you're not just competing with Merlin Mann, you're competing with Gimlet. You're competing with Serial. You're competing with This American Life.
Justin:
You know, it is A lot of work to get big sponsorship dollars.
Jon:
You're yeah. You're it's a lot of work to sort of be worth someone's time. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, there's so many other things I could choose to do.
Jon:
Yeah. You know, you and and you can listen to a podcast while you're doing other things, but, like
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. It's a bit it's
Justin:
it's tough. I think I should also mention something that Dan from Pacific Content said. And that is Podcasting is almost your your download numbers are almost always a reflection of an audience you've built somewhere else.
Jon:
Yeah. And I would say that's probably true for us with, you know, with with your audience that you have. Yeah.
Justin:
A lot of our listeners
Jon:
Coming coming into this.
Justin:
Came from an audience I'd built up. But you can look at anything, like Daring Fireball. If if he had just started that show called daring daring fireball, like, the listeners come from his wildly popular website. And Right. So when Dan is advising his clients, you know, one of their clients is Mozilla, He says, listen.
Justin:
This is not going to just grow organically. You need to be leveraging the audience you've built in other Places. It's almost like it's a it's a, a lagging way to build an audience as opposed to a leading way to build an audience. Maybe that's not quite correct, but it feels like there's something there. I think I think sometimes, Like, even Tim Ferriss, which is a show that I imagine grows via word-of-mouth quite Quite a bit.
Justin:
But he had an enormous email list and blog following before he ever
Jon:
did that. He, yeah, he worked his ass off for that. I mean, I don't even hear about him anymore. I'm assuming he's still doing it, but, like, he doesn't he's not making the rounds, like, promoting a book. He's not
Justin:
Yeah. And, I mean, there are ways to even him, he was putting ads on other popular shows. He was doing interview rounds. So This is just like anything else. If if you've if you're like, you know what?
Justin:
Building a YouTube audience is too hard. I'm going to podcasting. Or Building a blog audience is too hard. I'm I'm going to podcasting. I would say, oh, I I Yeah.
Justin:
You almost if you're looking for a really big audience, I would say build it somewhere else first to at least give you a head start and then go into podcasting because you're gonna need some you're gonna need to come to the table with something. Now if you're like Nate and you're just starting a little podcast about real estate, that might not be true because then if people are for real estate in the podcast app and they find your show, that might be enough. But if you want to build something big And get supported by, you know, Patreon or ads. You really you need a big audience for that.
Jon:
You need a big audience. Yeah. And and increasingly, I think, really high quality production. Yeah. There's so much competition out there now for, like, really high highly highly produced like, well produced
Justin:
Yeah. Concrete. And you're gonna have to bring something unique to the table probably with all of these, but especially, You know, it's not enough if like, I really like the Accidental Tech podcast, but there's It would be very difficult to just get together with 2 buddies and start recording a show like that and expect it to do as well. Yeah. You're gonna have to stand out in some way.
Justin:
And, if you yeah. If you've struggled to build a big audience already In another sphere, I would say, don't go into podcasting expecting that you're gonna just that's where you're gonna hit it big. I would try to Grow an audience on Twitter. Grow it, like, grow it somewhere else
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
And then bring that group to Podcasting. Podcasting is a good way to deepen a relationship with your audience. It's not a
Jon:
And maybe, you know, if if podcasting is your Strong point. Maybe start with that, but, you know, choose something that you're strong at.
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
And then add in podcasting later probably.
Justin:
Yeah. And this kind of connects with the the next reason you might want to start a podcast, which is to connect with an audience you've already built. And I thought of Taylor Jackson Photography. He signed up, and I I don't even know why I thought because When I see customer support requests come in, I don't have a sense of who these folks are. But I remember checking his his podcast page and then being Seeing he had a YouTube channel and just clicking on it and going, woah.
Justin:
This he has almost a 160,000 YouTube subscribers. And, he does we've talked about him before as well, but he he does these, he does wedding photography, but he'll put a GoPro on top of his camera and record the whole day, like, all of his camera settings and, you know, all of the All of the different, steps he takes to be a great wedding photographer. And he is using podcasting as just another way to connect with an existing audience. Right?
Jon:
Yeah. Which is interesting because you'd think of a photography podcast as being a visual Yeah. Medium.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:
But, you know, I suppose there's probably plenty of people who wanna listen to, A photographer podcast on the road.
Justin:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It it's just another way for him to connect with his audience. And so he's able to tackle topics like, You know, what what gear does he bring on a shoot? What should I shoot raw versus JPEG?
Justin:
And so they're usually quite short. A lot of them, by the way, he just records on his iPhone. I actually really like the way he does his show. There's no intro music. There's nothing.
Justin:
He'll just use, you know, a really high quality, headset with a good microphone like AirPods. And he'll just find a good room. You know, even if you go into your clothing closet, like I said, record on the voicemail, the voice memos app, And you can upload directly from that to Transistor. And, his show is great. It's just a a stream of conscious kind of show, but he's talking about things he is passionate about and knowledgeable about.
Jon:
Yeah. And that's, you know, another way to sort of Position yourself as as, like, an expert in your field. Mhmm. You know, people will maybe You know, he he probably does it, I would assume, to get business, but he's trying also to connect to his other audience on his YouTube channel. But,
Justin:
Mhmm.
Jon:
You know, people are like, oh, yeah. This is Taylor Taylor Jackson. He's got this YouTube channel and this podcast, and he really knows what he's talking about.
Justin:
Yeah. He he also, releases a secret podcast on his Patreon, page. So he has 677 patrons. I imagine he's making a full time income from Patreon.
Jon:
That's pretty awesome.
Justin:
And, we'll put this in the show notes, but this is another good example. If you're trying to build a big audience And then, you know, earn money from Patreon or ads or whatever. He's a good example of kind of how you have to do it. You have to establish your expertise. You have to find a way to grow your audience fast.
Justin:
And then, you know, these these options are available to you. So, yeah, I think, that's a good example. So some folks are just, like, trying to identify themselves as an expert. You know, they want maybe you're, you know, trying to start a speaking career or you already have a speaking career, and you just wanna say, You know, this is another way for me to, yeah, establish myself as an expert, Have some social proof. Talk to interesting people if you're doing interviews.
Justin:
Yeah. The other thing we didn't talk about is there's ads, Patreon, but there's also selling your own products or services. So, if you listen to Seth Godin's podcast, Akimbo, he sells ads, but at the end of every episode, He sells, he promotes one of his workshops. And so that's kind of the other you know, It's a channel for him in that sense too.
Jon:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm sure he has a he has a big audience to sell sell new products.
Justin:
Now outside of outside of, you know, business and making money, what are some other reasons people might wanna start a show?
Jon:
Sometimes, you know, people just sort of wanna contribute to a community that exists or an industry or a culture to sort of Sort of build on that. We have this example of what Ashley Baxter's bootstrapping digest.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good example. Like, I don't think she gets a lot of business from that, but she's just trying to share her journey similar to the what what we're doing. And it's it's another way of, you know, her saying, well, this is what worked for me.
Justin:
This is what didn't work for me. You know, her, her most listened to episode is my journey to 250 customers. So she's just Yeah. Sharing. This is what it looks like.
Justin:
And, you know, this is one thing we've appreciated too about the bootstrapping culture. Because there's all these folks being transparent, and it helps When you're starting a company to to hear these real stories.
Jon:
Yeah. I'm sure, you know, I'm sure she's been through a lot. She's she's learned some Good lessons. She she has a lot to talk about. Maybe it maybe it's like a almost like a therapeutic Outlet
Justin:
for her? Yeah.
Jon:
I can I can certainly see that, you know, being the case for a lot of people?
Justin:
Yeah. That's actually a good point. Sometimes it's and Alex Bloomberg brought this up with Gimlet. There is a therapeutic part of it too, of just being able to, Yeah. Clarify your thinking.
Jon:
Yeah. Maybe it's like a it's like a writing in a journal, but other people can listen
Justin:
to it Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Jon:
To some extent. Yeah. Kinda related to that, there's, like, certain certain podcasts that just sort of wanna get their point of view out into the world and, like, Do some good without really any business motivation Yeah. Or or not maybe that's not, like, the main factor. So, there's, like, the rework podcast from from Basecamp.
Jon:
And then, you know, more closely related To me is the good news podcast, which we host, which is a podcast from Cards Against Humanity, but they were as part of their holiday promotion, they sort of wanted to put something Good into the world Mhmm. During 2018, which is, you know, just been or, yeah, 2018, which has been kind of, you know, a a year. It's been a year. So they, you know, they wanted to put something out that's, like, a positive good.
Justin:
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And I think that's valid too. And, You know, there's going to be it it's almost like like, I know Malcolm Gladwell is making a big Kind of foray into podcasting.
Justin:
He just started his own podcasting company. And maybe I'm wrong about this, because he does get paid for it. He's He has advertisers, but it almost feels like for him, it he he has a point of view that he wants to get out into the world. And whether he was getting paid for it or not, he would still want to do that. You know what I mean?
Justin:
So I think, yeah, I think that's a totally valid way Valid reason to start show. Okay. So now let's talk about some kind of I don't know how unique these are, Here are some ideas on how you can use a podcast to reach your goals. And here's an interesting one actually that I I just wrote a blog post about this. I'll put it in the show notes.
Justin:
But having a private feed just for your team or employees So that's that's a we didn't even talk about that. But, you know, maybe you wanna have, you know, a weekly letter from the CEO Where you say you talk to your team about what's going on, you know, challenges, motivation, Things to keep in mind.
Jon:
Yeah. That would be, yeah, that'd be cool. I mean, you know, I work for a small company, but I I can see working for a, you know, a bigger company with several hundred Employees and that being, like, a really a really interesting way to hear from your CEO.
Justin:
Yeah. Even even in a small company, I think that, You know, I would appreciate that. Like, if the CEO is walking home from work and just turns on voice memos and says, Hey, team. Great week this week. Just thinking back on everything we achieved.
Justin:
I wanna, you know, highlight this. I wanna call out this person for doing a great work. And here's something I'm thinking about for next week that, you know, we might wanna kind of think about. And it just gives you an opportunity to share, in a very human way, with your employees. So I I thought that was a cool idea.
Justin:
And this is something we support On Transistor, you can have a private feed, password protected feed that, you know, you could share with your employees. I I would I wouldn't put, Like, really, sensitive material on there.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
But because there's there's no way like, it's just like putting it's just like sending an email. Once it's out, people can Forward it or whatever. But
It's but I'm saying it's still possible for someone to pretty easily get a hold of that. And yeah.
Jon:
Yeah. Sure. Right. You're not gonna disclose, like, financial numbers.
Justin:
Exactly. Yeah. And then another idea, q and a. So get users, customers, your audience to leave you a voice mail, which is what what we're gonna try this week, transistor.fm/voice mail. But I think that would be a great way if you're having a hard time coming up with a show every week.
Justin:
Just get people to, you know, get a queue of voice mails And then answer 1 question per week.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's great pipeline for material. Like, you're gonna you're gonna see questions that you wouldn't thought of, and then you immediately have an episode.
Justin:
In in fact, I think if we ever decide to, like, step back from the show in terms of, you know, Doing it like this and share it, like, really grinding through things together and being vulnerable, which is all great. But And an easier way to do the show might be to just say, we're gonna answer 1 question a week. And 1 week, it might be you answering A tech related question when we you know, it it it it's a way of actually making your podcast achievable, Which I think is one of the big challenges folks have. Here's another idea. Tell me what you think about this.
Justin:
Interview your customers. Interview 1 customer per week, ask them about their business, how they're using your product, You know, kind of almost like, an audio case study.
Jon:
Yeah. I think that would be great. I I think it would be great for us, And I also can see that being helpful for Black Box, which is my day job in interviewing, you know, our clients that we work with.
Justin:
The the other nice thing about it is in the startup space, everyone talks about customer development. But it's really hard to Be like, hey. Can I talk to you on the phone? Because I'm trying to get inside your head and figure out what motivates you. But, at a previous job, what I did is I created a magazine, and we did this exact thing.
Justin:
We interviewed our customers, And it was really win win for for the customer and for us. We were profiling the customer. We we wrote up this great piece with photos And, you know, formatted really nicely. And it it became a a really nice showpiece that, you know, went out on the web And told people about what they were doing. It told them, you know, the public about their story.
Justin:
But for us, we were able to really figure out what had motivated the customer to sign up for our product.
Jon:
Right. Yeah. It's I think it's, yeah, it's Easy to lose sight of that.
Justin:
Yeah. Totally. We've got expert tips.
Jon:
Expert tips? Yeah. So if you're, you know, if you're a if you're an expert or would like to be an expert or portrayed as an expert in a field, you know, Lawyer, accountant, coach, or, like, fitness trainer or, you know, engineer or software developer. Yep. I've seen this.
Jon:
I I know a guy used to live in Chicago who has a has a really big following in the in the animation community Or, like, effects animation?
Justin:
Yeah.
Jon:
He has a he has a podcast, and he just you know, he gives tips, or he has, like, a a video podcast But, like, here's how you would design, I don't know, liquid metal or something like that in Cinema 4th. Yeah. But he'll he'll do that, but and he'll also, like, sell plug ins that he has. But but he, he definitely has a podcast that's, like, Expert tips that are just like, here's how you do this.
Justin:
Yeah. Super com supercomputer is a lot like this too, actually, where when they're giving tips about Siri shortcuts. I think it's a good format, especially especially for professionals. If you're a lawyer, a doctor, like you said, like, That people will have questions, and it's it's easy to just be like, okay. Well, this week, I'm gonna give you advice on how to improve your marathon running, whatever.
Jon:
Yeah. Especially if it's easy easily digestible and, like, you know, kinda shorter. But, like, Even if from my perspective as an engineer, like, I it's hard to keep up. Mhmm. Yeah.
Jon:
Right. So you want you kinda want someone who is An expert in this field to just, like, throw you, you know, new developments in the community, in the industry That you're not as it's like continuing education without necessarily going to school because it's it's easy to get Sort of it's easy to get, like, locked into your job and and sort of Siloed in sort of short sighted, and it's kinda, like, lose perspective of what's going on in the greater community. So I think those are super, super helpful for Professionals.
Justin:
There's a lot of ways to think about this. Like, if you are a plumber, You're like, okay. Well, what could I ever do a podcast about? Like, that that's silly. But but homeowners have anxiety all the time about their houses.
Justin:
And so if you gave them one thing they could improve in their house
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Every week.
Jon:
Right. I mean, you see this on YouTube. Like, there's you can learn anything on YouTube.
Justin:
Yeah. Exactly. But and and the advantage of podcasting is, You know, if you you can't use you couldn't use the name home improvement that's already taken. But, you know, if you had the home improvement podcast And as a homeowner, it's like, hey, folks. This is, you know, Anne.
Justin:
And every week, I just give you one thing, one simple thing you can do inside your house To increase the longevity of your house, to make sure you don't have big, repair bills down the road. And this week, we're gonna talk about clearing out your evestroughs. Like, that's that's it.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
You know? Right.
Jon:
Sounds like you've recently done that.
Justin:
Well, I'm just thinking of the things that stress me out. But, yeah. So I think that's that's a good one that maybe you haven't thought about before. There's every industry has something like this.
Jon:
And and somebody is an expert. Everyone's an expert in something.
Justin:
Exactly.
Jon:
Right.
Justin:
Exactly. Another good tip, you know, ideas on how you can use podcasts to reach your goals is
Jon:
A lot
Justin:
of folks are like, ah, like, I I was reading a tweet the other day, and he was like, I just tried to do my first solo podcast. And he said, it is a disaster. And if you're doing a solo show, The advantage is you don't have to schedule anything. You can just turn on your microphone and record, but it is not Easy to be entertaining and engaging when you're just talking to yourself.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, you almost have to write a script at that point.
Justin:
But one thing you can do, and this is what Ashley Baxter does, is she just reads her blog posts. So she's she's she's already blogging once a week, and it's it's really easy to make it sound natural. Here. I'll give you an example. So let's go to our blog here.
Justin:
Transistor.fm/blog. And it takes a little bit of pro of practice to do this, but, I'm gonna pretend I'm gonna do a show right now just reading this blog post. So one of the more innovative uses for podcasting we've seen has come from, the CEO I know. He says, I'm doing a weekly podcast that I share only with my team. Now you can do this with Transistor.
Justin:
We already have customers using it for internal company podcasts. So that was now I'm not reading anymore. But that's an example of, like, There's you can make it sound fairly natural, when you're reading something, especially I mean, that's a pretty kind of, corporate corporately written podcast. But if it's, your own voice and your own journey or or what have you, You could read that out and make it sound like you're just talking from, you know, yeah, off the top of your head.
Jon:
Yeah. Absolutely. And you already have a you already have a transcript.
Justin:
Yeah. Exactly. It's already it's already ready to go. And then the advantage is you can put the audio embed the audio right in blog post. So
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
You can say, you know, hey. Here's the blog post, but, hey, do you wanna listen to this instead? Here's the audio. I think that's pretty much it. Is there is there anything else you you've seen that you think is kind of a a unique idea on how you can use podcasts?
Jon:
Well, there's, like you know, if you're a if you're a regular speaker, you can reuse talks that you've given in the past. I know a lot of speakers who who speak quite a bit will, You know, for, like, a few months or a year, they'll give the same talk in this speaking circuit. Once that's done, you know, it may or may not be recorded and released elsewhere, but you could, kinda recycle the audio From previously recorded talks and release those as podcasts or rerecord it and sort of edit it, you know, maybe produce it a little bit better than it would have been on stage.
Justin:
Yeah. That's actually a good one. The if you do any sort of regular event, the the most popular Podcast with the keyword startup is Seth Godin's startup school, which is super old, and it was just a conference, and they live recorded all of the talks and then released it. If you do any teaching, you could use this. We have a lot of churches that sign up and use Transistor to host, sermons.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
So
Jon:
I would love it if politicians did it more and just sorta, like, Gave you an update on what is actually going on.
Justin:
Oh, yeah.
Jon:
Like, from their perspective. Yeah. There's just, like, so much I don't know. So much you know, it's it's hard to really get a grasp on what is actually happening just by watching the news and stuff and, like, if you had, know, more of an insider's view. Mhmm.
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. Politicians could definitely use podcasting. Events, a conference event, I would love it if I went to an event, and at the end of it, they gave you a private podcast feed with all of the talks.
Jon:
That'd be great. Yeah.
Justin:
And unlike video, like, you don't need to edit them a ton. Just just slap the audio into a feed, and then on the plane on the way home, You can listen to all the talks again.
Jon:
Yeah. I mean, you have the audio from the soundboard, I would
Justin:
imagine.
Jon:
Throw in a little intro on it. And
Justin:
Yeah. Put it in a feed. So if you're a Converse organizer, sign up for Transistor. No. No.
Jon:
We'll, we'll build you a thing for that. We'll do a feature.
Justin:
Cool. Well, folks, if you have other unique ideas for how folks can use podcasts, or if you are using Podcasting in a unique way to achieve your goals. We'd love to hear from you. You can get a hold of us on Twitter at transistorfm. You can email us, shows at transistor.fm.
Justin:
You can leave us a voice mail. That's the the main channel I want you to use this time. Transistor.fm/voice mail. It's a little bit buggy. The the the UI is not great, but this is kind of our MVP.
Justin:
We're testing this out. And instead of John having to build something in Ruby on Rails, I just built it quickly in WordPress. But yeah. We'd And if
Jon:
and if it works very well, maybe we will do
Justin:
this. If if if folks really like it, Then, yeah, that'll be the motivation we need. The only other thing I'll say is in the show notes, I've got a link to this article by Jason Rigdon. And he talks about he says there's only 8 types of podcast formats. And so I think I think that's an interesting article, because he kind of gives an example of all the different types of podcasts there are, Fiction, explainer, round table, and then different examples of each.
Justin:
So if you're still on the fence, You know, thinking about getting into podcast or if you have a show, but you haven't really nailed down the format. Hopefully, what we've talked about today And also an article like that might be helpful for you. Other than that, we say happy Thanksgiving to our Yeah. American listeners.
Jon:
Happy Thanksgiving, Americans. Take some take some time off and spend some time with, those you care about.
Justin:
Don't talk about politics too much.
Jon:
Yeah.
Justin:
Just a little bit. Yeah.
Jon:
Just a little. Yeah. Just a little bit. You know, you gotta read the room. Make maybe make a
Justin:
Yeah. Listen. If your great aunt starts talking about politics at the table, just say, And just leave Justin a voice mail at transistor.fm/voice mail. I won't play it on the show, but I will probably listen to it. Apopie.
