The Transcript

How to Start a Podcast Network

Why Our Grandparents Were So Much Cooler Than We Are

Robert Bruce: I’m reading a glossary of hard-boiled slang. This is an age, Brian, when a telephone was called a blower. A $100 bill was called a century. Death was the big one or the big sleep. Coffin is a Chicago overcoat, gun is a heater, and typewriter is a mill.

Brian Clark: This is why you make Ron Swanson look like a modernist.

Robert Bruce: It makes me realize how much style our grandparents had and how boring as hell our language is today.

Brian Clark: You think so?

Robert Bruce: Do you think about that? Have you thought about these things?

Brian Clark: Just a personal preference. You are into that retro stuff.

Robert Bruce: I don’t know if it’s retro. I think it should have lasted. I’m going to try to bring it all back.

Brian Clark: One man crusade.

Robert Bruce: Alright. We’re flipping things around a little bit today talking about the podcast network, specifically how to launch a podcast network.

Brian Clark: Yeah, a little behind the scenes episode that we do periodically after we do something and the dust settles, which I’m not sure the dust has actually settled. It’s even been 10 days.

Robert Bruce: It’s like a pigpen around here still. I’m not going to tell you that, even though I just did. We’ve talked a lot about why podcasting, why a podcast network. We’ve been talking about that for some time on this podcast and off. But we wanted to go, like you said, behind the scenes, talk specifically about what we did to make this happen and a little bit about what’s to come

Brian Clark: This episode, contrary to what people may think, I’m not giving the answers here. Robert, you are giving the answers here. I remember when we had the conversation, and I said let’s do it. Then you spent the rest of the day on the phone, calling people to see if they were interested, and they were. Then you spent the next three months on the phone, which you hate by the way.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, it continues. Yeah, that’s true. It’s a lot of coordination. It s all about people. In this case, it’s all about our people.

Brian Clark: We’ve done some big projects in the past. I remember the whole MyCopyblogger initiative where we switched from newsletter to the content library. That was a pretty massive project, but I think I had my hands all in there in your business, so to speak. This time, I did my best to stand back. Trust, but verify.

Robert Bruce: That’s right.

Brian Clark: Watch. Advise. Tweak.

Robert Bruce: That’s right.

Brian Clark: But really, you get the props. Well, a lot of people get the props because it was a major team effort, but you were the — I would ve called you the project manager, but I know you like to be called a producer, of course.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, it really is about, as you’ll soon hear in this episode, the coming together of all these different people, and it’s kind of staggering. The different kinds of skills, talents and everything that came together to make this happen. In our case, the way we did it, it was something that we, as a company, could do. But we’re also going to talk about how to do this on a medium to even a much smaller scale as well, and why it applies to those of you out there that are thinking you may want to do something like this.

Brian Clark: We’re going to say what we did, but then we’re also going to try to extrapolate that out into general principles. If you had to boil it down to one big secret shortcut to successfully launch a podcast network, what would that be?

The Shortcut to Launching a Successful Podcast Network

Robert Bruce: Here’s a short answer. You’ve got to faithfully serve your audience with a media-based approach to content for about nine plus years, and then you send them an email letting them know that you’ve started a podcast network.

Brian Clark: That’s so wrong. I mean, it’s right in the sense that we’re not trying to discourage anyone, but on the other hand, if you don’t have an existing audience, start today. If podcasting is the way you want do that, many, many people have built really amazing audiences just from one podcast and then added on from there.

We did it a different way. Not all our existing audience is audio people. It’s not like the entire Copyblogger audience is tuning in, but enough of them are to provide a catalyst that got us noticed a little bit in iTunes. I’ll let you talk about that, Robert, which helps us reach a new audience.

Despite the fact that it seem like we had this complete unfair advantage, which we never really apologized to, because we worked our butts off for almost a decade just on this. Never mind the six years before that. Start building your audience today. It’s our hope that this show will give you some insight how you can get rolling by leveraging multiple shows as opposed to just one, if that’s what you’re thinking about.

Let’s talk about how you put this together from our perspective, internally. Our company has its own unique characters, many of which are now hosting shows, and Demian. What the hell?

Robert Bruce: I don’t know.

Brian Clark: Demian s show is a home run.

Robert Bruce: I got to say, though, did I not call it?

Brian Clark: We used to not let him out in public. Now we’re letting him broadcast, and he’s killing it.

Robert Bruce: He is wildly public.

Brian Clark: I know.

Robert Bruce: Did I not call it, though? Did I not call it?

Brian Clark: You did call it. It helps that it’s four times a week.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, right.

Brian Clark: Frequency, there’s a lesson right there. John Lee Dumas was the man there. He just went out every single day and built this huge audience with frequency. Because showing up in iTunes, the more you hit publish, the more often you’re getting downloads., you’re getting exposure, and it really amplifies itself. That’s one tip right there.

The Critical Components of an Audio-Based Network That Works

Robert Bruce: I’ve broken this down into five basic things that you want to think about, look at. Most of them are going to be, if not all, relevant no matter what size project you’re thinking about in terms of the context of this podcast network. But it’s production, talent, technology, design, and promotion.

On the production side, that’s everything that it sounds like. It’s getting the shows produced, edited, transcripts, working with hosts, talking about their shows, getting the sound equipment together. This was kind of a monster job. First time, in some cases, I’m thinking maybe even in most cases, people working in audio, at least at this level, getting them set up to where they’ve got a basic, little, simple studio and a good microphone and good decent microphone technique.

This is going to be interesting, though, because I’m actually blown away with the quality of the sound that’s coming out. We’ve had some glitches. We’ve had some things that we’re trying to iron out, and we will. But the thing here is that I think about, in six months, when these people become more seasoned, and it becomes a part of their daily practice or weekly practice, it’s worth going through these bumps here. You’re going to see not only that, but like a comfortability behind the microphone that just takes a lot of time to get to.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting to me, we have a lot of people in the company that we thought were naturals to be hosts. They did, and they stepped up. But were you a little surprised by how nervous and — what’s the word I’m looking for here — because people like Sonia, I didn’t think twice about that. She’s going to show up, and she’s going to knock it out of the park. But she was a little nervous about it.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, I haven’t talked to her about that, but I think that was a bit across the board. Frankly for myself, too, I knew that these people were going to deliver, and we’ll get into talent in a moment. I knew it. But I was surprised at the level at which they deliver — not because of anything about them or past performance — but just simply because this is a brand new thing. It’s in the DNA of what we do as a company all day, every day, but it’s still different. Yeah, I was surprised at the level of how well things turned out overall because it’s a hard game. You turn on that microphone, you hit the record button, and most people, if not all people in the beginning, you freeze up. You sound like an idiot. The hardest thing is just to be yourself for some reason, but it just takes time.

Brian Clark: Well, what’s interesting to me because I don’t even listen to these current shows because I hate listening to myself, but I need to start because you get better that way. The interesting thing to me was that you said, You ought to go back and listen to us in 2010 because we were terrible. I’m like, “Really? We were that bad?” You just said, “Trust me,” or “Go listen.” I said, “No, I’ll trust you. I think that would just ruin me. But it’s everyone. You get better at it. The more encouraging thing recently was we just hired a new production assistant, Caroline, and she listened to the show for the first time. She’s like, “Wow, that’s not bad.” I’m like, “What were you expecting? Oh my God.”

Robert Bruce: It’s the idea that, too, this is media now. This is audio. This is radio. We’re not at the level of the major global players yet, but this is the future of it all. If you’re going to play, you ve got to play. Is there a lot of room to improve and grow and make things? Absolutely. There always is. But, if this is the future of audio, which we think it is, then you want to go big at all times. One last note on the production side of things, we’ve also done something that we’ve rarely done and I don’t think we’ve done, at least on a regular basis, we’ve outsourced the audio editing – so we’re not doing that in-house. It’s a decision we made early on to free up more time on the creative and creating media side.

But I’ve got Kelton Reid and Clare Garrett on the production side, who developed this entire workflow that every single episode for three, four episodes a day now, Monday through Thursday, which will rapidly become more, everything goes through this workflow. Every episode has about 15, 20 tasks attached to it that need to get done. Some smaller, some larger, and it’s working perfectly.

Brian Clark: You know what just occurred to me, that might make a great infographic.

Robert Bruce: That’s actually a really good idea. Alright, Kelton, if you’re listening – wait a minute – he doesn t have any time.

Brian Clark: Yeah, but I mean, that would be incredibly useful for people.

Robert Bruce: That’s a really good idea.

Brian Clark: One of our designers can probably visualize that better than I could. I was just thinking as you’re describing it, I wish I could see that, because when we talk about it, most of the time you say, “Don’t worry about it,” and I try not to because it’s working. I’d only worry if it doesn’t work. That kind of workflow, that kind of process makes anything doable. It’s just a matter of sitting down. I remember you and Kelton sat down early on, before we did anything and said, “What’s the process?” It took a while. It evolved. It s tweaked and all that, once you get into the trenches. But you started with a plan that made it manageable.

Robert Bruce: Kelton’s a pro. I mean, he’s been handling all of our multimedia stuff for Authority and company-wide for a while. A look at any one of his spreadsheets will make you want to run crying to your bed.

Brian Clark: I don’t do spreadsheets.

Robert Bruce: Me neither. Anyway, big props to Kelton and Clare on the production side. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. By the way, for those listening, that’s a lesson. An infographic out of a workflow that we created for the podcast network — repurposing content, useful interesting stuff. Almost anything you can do, you can make something else out of it.

Brian Clark: Yeah, Everything s content is our motto.

Robert Bruce: We’ll go through these other ones. Talent, I mainly put this under the category of the hosts themselves We’re in a situation, again, we go back to that unfair advantage where we look around our own company. We see all of this incredible talent that is available to us, and there’s more out there. There’s more coming. Not everyone’s in that situation. We’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Brian Clark: Well, I don’t know. I just think we think differently about people. I mean, who would look at Sean Jackson and say, “We got to give that guy a show.” But we know Sean is a character, and he knows his stuff. Sean’s show is not out yet.

Robert Bruce: He’s insanely talented.

Brian Clark: He’s our CFO.

I’m going to disagree. I think with a shift in mindset, you could find people in any company. I think most companies are just like, “I’m not putting Jane from accounting on the mic,” because they don’t trust her. That’s the issue. It’s not that there isn’t talent that can be developed, it’s just mindset.

How a Smaller Company Might Approach Creating Content Like This

Robert Bruce: Here’s the way to think about it because we’re still in the idea that, especially you and me, our generation, we remember the old days of radio. We remember the professionals of broadcast terrestrial radio, and we can’t get that out of our head. But Jane from accounting is a professional in her area, obviously, and she can talk about all kinds of things that are useful, related to whatever your business is. But here’s the thing. In new media, people don’t want the golden-throated radio professional anymore.

Brian Clark: Oh yeah, what about you?

Robert Bruce: People want to hear Jane.

Brian Clark: Says the guy with the golden voice, right. Yeah, thanks.

Robert Bruce: They would rather hear authenticity from her or him, talking about what