Podcasting margins aren’t what they used to be. Once an easy win, podcast production has become crowded, commoditized, and ROI-pressured. But here’s the truth: podcasting still works when you stop treating it like “just content” and start focusing on strategy, systems, and conversations that drive real business results.

In this episode, I talk with David “Ledge” Ledgerwood—serial entrepreneur, podcaster, and founder of Listen Network, Riggg, and Add1Zero. Ledge has hosted over 400 podcast episodes, guested on 100 more, and built multiple companies that help agencies grow, look great on video, and close more deals.

We dive into:

• Why the COVID boom changed podcasting forever—and how ROI now drives the game.
• Why podcasting isn’t a noun, it’s a verb—and what that shift means for your business.
• How to build systems that free you up to be a strategist, not stuck in content slog.
• What separates podcasts that fade out from the ones that actually fuel growth.

If you’re a business leader, agency owner, or founder who wants to get podcasting right in today’s tighter market, this episode is packed with insights you can use straight away.

🔗 Reach out and connect with David on LinkedIn

it's just not enough anymore to be able to, you know, make episodes and make repurposed content and clips and reels and blogs.

Thank ⁓

we have hundreds of agencies all selling exactly the same thing. And that is ⁓ a recipe for commoditization. And I don't like seeing that

Hey there, this is Pod Junction Podcast, the show where business leaders share how they use podcasting to grow, connect and build their brands. We also explore smart strategies that can make your podcast even more powerful. I'm Sadaf Beynon and today I'm talking to David, Ledge, Ledgerwood. Ledge has spent the last 20 years building and scaling B2B service businesses, founding more than 10 firms, wearing every C-level hat and closing millions in deals.

These days, he runs three companies, Listen Network, Grig, and Ad10, helping agencies grow, look great on video, and close more deals. Oh, and he's also hosted over 400 podcast episodes himself, guested on more than 100 others. David, it's so good to have you here.

It is so good to be here. Thank you for asking me.

You're very welcome, David. We started chatting on LinkedIn back in January. And I remember one of the things you said to me was that podcasting margins have tightened a lot since COVID, since the COVID surge and thinking about it, that's a pretty big shift from the days when podcasting felt like an easy win. So I was wondering, can we start there? What's really happening in the podcasting and agency world right now?

We did.

You know, as we record this, I just posted about that today. And so I welcome anybody to look at my history there. And, know, I, ⁓ there, there had been this recent story about, probably saw it where, ⁓ some point something AI or one of these companies came out. It's a former person from wonder E and they're making all AI podcasts for like a dollar an episode. And they're just flooding with episodes, fake hosts.

Amazing.

So well.

fake content, know, just everything is AI generated and they can make a bunch of money on ads. And, you know, I use that as a entry point to say, you know, not to pat myself on the back, but I've been saying this for, you know, well over a year now that as podcast agency owners, you know, it's not 2018 or 2019 anymore. And I got started in this space back then and it was new and novel.

Hmm.

to produce podcasts for clients, you know, at that point people started to really get into it. And I know this because I sold it, you could pretty much mark up just producing content, you know, a hundred percent, like just, you know, make, make good money on that. And it, that ran pretty hot until 2022 ish and things started to really fall off there. And there was consolidation and you know, all the big money was not being spent and

Hmm.

I think that being a relative expert in agency economics, you need to make a 40 % gross margin as an agency in order to really, you know, get sort of stay alive and profitable and, know, have some kind of future with it. And if that, if we can't mark up creating content at least that much, then you're going to have a problem. And I see that happening. And I've talked to hundreds of agencies.

Hmm.

in podcasting and content and, you know, sort of strategic content consulting and different things like that. And it's just not enough anymore to be able to, you know, make episodes and make repurposed content and clips and reels and blogs. And, know, so all the stories that we've been telling for six, seven years, AI, offshoring, you know, people flooding the market with all kinds of cheap content. ⁓ I don't think that playbook.

Thank ⁓

Hmm.

you know, really hits anymore. And so I've been a big advocate of can we at least as an industry start paying attention to that? You just simply cannot make as much money as you used to. And we have hundreds of agencies all selling exactly the same thing. And that is ⁓ a recipe for commoditization. And I don't like seeing that because I love this space and I've been in this space and it adds a lot of value. But I would like to at least call attention to this idea that ⁓

Hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Let's take our heads out of the sand on that.

Yeah, yeah. So where would you say that podcasting still earned its keep?

I think of podcasting, I've been thinking about this a lot and thank you for asking. I think we use podcasts and video and things like that, like as a noun a lot. But I think the critical way to think about it is like as a verb, right? And in the sense of, and there's this whole debate about, you know, audio and video, right? Should I do an audio podcast? I do a video podcast? Like, how about we all just say, we want to cast our ideas out into an audience.

Hmm.

space that people can consume it because our ideas are valuable. So the verb to cast, I don't really care what format that's in or what channel I use. The idea is I'm distributing ideas and my ideas are valuable. And if we, you know, kind of think about it that way, when has it not been the case that a business or a professional or a personal brand or whoever it is, nonprofit, anything like

We've always needed to cast our ideas out and try to get people to pay attention to them. And so in that sense, where does podcasting matter? It matters the same way as all talking, as all conversations, as all strategic valuable things we have to say to our potential market or potential donors or anybody, Like the underwriters, sponsors, like we must put ideas out there. We must cast.

the line or cast the message out into the space. So it's critically valuable. And it's in a world where you can now generate unlimited writing that may or may not be good. ⁓ You know, how often are we going to get to soon? We may be in this spot where this conversation is just, you know, ⁓

you

our two AI avatars talking to each other and we don't produce anything, you know, sort of human anymore. And I don't like that. So I think that in that sense, podcasting of whatever form and conversation, that's what really matters, right? It's like, it's just critical. Like soon the least amount of content or, you know, sort of the, the special content will be the

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

messy ones created by two regular humans talking to each other. I mean, that it's really important. think everybody needs to do that in the same way that in 2008 or 10, you know, you would have made a blog, right? Like you finally could do that. ⁓ Having a social profile, having different social media, like you just can't not do that. That's what podcasting is going to be like. You have to do it. And if you want to have a relevant reach into the space.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Hmm.

no, that's good. Just if you don't mind just unpacking a little bit more about what you said about to cast. So using as a verb rather than a noun. What does that mean in terms of where you're so, you you talked about audio slash video, which one would you go for? Do you do both? Is it about going where your audience is, where your customers are? How do you make that decision?

Yeah, don't, mean, personally, I would always go video first, right? And I would say that the, the, the capture, not unlike we're doing now, it's, it doesn't matter if you're going to use necessarily all of the video in long form discussion format. The reality is that capture video because it's a better way to have a conversation and it starts all the way at the top of that sort of content waterfall.

whereby, I mean, all these things are still true, right? Like I can derive audio from it. I can derive clips from it. I can, you know, move down that chain into all the way down to, you know, if you still wanted to post on, you know, short form sites like X or Twitter or whatever it is now, I don't do that threads. But you could see that all those ideas are better expressed in long form, right? So then, okay, yeah, where is my potential customer?

Hmm.

or the person I wanna reach, where do they live? Where do they hang out? Reddit is probably ignored in that sense. There could be a lot of good work there. ⁓ LinkedIn, well, we met on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn posts can ultimately be derived or at least start with the idea that I'm gonna put the most advanced version out there and therefore I think it should be video. Obviously YouTube is video.

Hmm.

And maybe there's too many shows that are just two heads talking to each other in little windows and we need to be more creative. don't know, but I think yes, try to reach the audience that you want to reach. And it goes to my, my bigger point for our podcast space in general is.

Hmm.

We have all gotten really myopic about producing the content and maybe have lost track of why we ought to do that in the first place. And that is to reach an audience and have conversations and be strategic content marketers. So what's the business point of doing this? I either have a really expensive hobby or I have a thing that I'm paying for for a business purpose. There really, there's no other choices. And I

Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

like to help people figure out like, okay, why the what? are you doing this? You know, like, okay, well, it's to generate more thought leadership or awareness. Like, no, that's not why. Like, what is the business objective of why we're doing this? You know, otherwise, it's just a very expensive hobby.

Hmm.

Yeah, that's so true and so critical to really understand your why before you jump into something like this. Not just for thought leadership or whatever it might be, but it's also about for longevity, you have to also enjoy it. You also have to really own what you're talking about and what you are showing up for.

Yes.

Yeah, I think that's right.

I can tell you, I mean, I've done this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. It's exhausting for me. You know, like at one point I had a show that we did every single day and it was, it was a lot, you know, and I was so tired and I didn't even enjoy it anymore. So, you know, what is the thing that you want? I mean, I get bored of my own show sometimes if I'm not careful, because it's like, I keep talking about the same thing over and over and over again. That's the same thing happens in my content. But if you have a purpose,

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

you

You know, you're written content. Remember on LinkedIn, your unique ideas probably aren't going to get a lot of traction. So you got to post about the same idea, like over and over and over again, like one message, one audience over and over and over. Like if you are bored with that message, you're probably not doing good marketing. Now that's, that's a different disposition than having interesting conversations.

Yeah.

Hmm.

with people and having a wide ranging discussion pattern. So I get it. It can get actually really super boring. If you're doing marketing the right way, you might be saying the same thing kind of over and over again, which becomes exhausting. My last show, 200 episodes in, like, I gotta shake this up. I'm so bored, I don't wanna ask any of these things again. This is no longer interesting to me.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, I would caution people, you know, be careful with that and therefore have greater engagement with your audience outside of the podcast, know, polls, emails, ⁓ posts, conversations, like try to just do things that kind of jazz your brain back up again, because sometimes it's not that fun to sit down and record and turn it into, you know, other stuff.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. And I guess if you are if you are in your community having those conversations outside of the podcast Then you're also talking about things that are going to resonate because you know where people's head spaces are

I think that's right. Yeah, absolutely. Join

slack groups, you know, do do whatever you do to be a good community contributor. I had to learn, you know, to ⁓ kind of actively track my idea space in, you know, a notes app or whatever one of these things just like I would have a random interesting topic. And then of course, I would forget that I had it because you know, I didn't write it down and, then it would come up again a few months later. Like, yeah, I think I had that thought before.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You it doesn't always like you have to be strategic and and thoughtful about the storage of your own ideas as well. And then they might come out in your long form content where you can have more discussion.

Hmm.

Yeah.

David, you've built,

Listen Network and RIG and Add10. But you built these agencies in particular because you saw that something wasn't working. Can you unpack what those problems were that you set out to solve?

Yes. So that's a winding, winding path of six years ago. I left having done a bunch of different, ⁓ VP of sales types of roles at startups that I was a co-founder of. And I wondered at that point, why, why could you hire a fractional CMO, a fractional CFO, a fractional CEO? You could do all these things, but you couldn't hire a fractional closer. You know, there was all kinds of.

sales coaches, sales consultants, you could always get somebody to help you sell better, but you couldn't just get somebody to help to actually sell for you. And it wasn't about getting leads, it was about being a closer. So I just like, let's do that. Like that looks valuable to me. So we built Add10 for agencies and consultancies and businesses like that where the founder just didn't wanna do it. I don't want to sell, I want to...

go be a CEO or an operator and run my team and scale my agency. And I don't want to think about hiring a VP of sales either here, come in and be my sales division. And we can do all that. And so in the process of running sales to booking many, many millions of dollars for clients, I was therefore talking to their clients and seeing inside their company. And I did this so many times over and over again, I was like,

Hmm.

look at these interesting things that happen and I think we could solve some of those problems. So Listen Network came out of that because in the podcast agency space for which I sold millions of dollars of services, the number one reason that clients would churn would say, because what's the ROI and we can't justify this. And when I dug into that, the customer, we, as an agency, we had

Okay.

a marketer or somebody like that marketing manager or you know, some kind of CMO at a startup, but invariably that person would have to go to the budget meeting at some point, quarterly, every other half year, whatever it is, and make a presentation for why they should keep getting money to make a podcast. And always the budget holder would say, how many downloads do you get? And what's the ROI every time and

That person who was a passionate content marketer or podcast strategist or podcast owner, they got it. They knew all the things. Well, it's a long tail and we keep developing audience over time and you really can't measure it that way. And it's really about a small niche audience and talking to the, all the stuff that we say, right? As an industry, all of which is true, but that's not the language that the budget holder speaks.

Hmm.

The budget holder speaks the language of data and ROI. So we would lose sometimes 40 % of those clients would get dropped and like the poor marketers would get laid off who ran podcasts and then podcasts would get canceled. Agencies would lose clients. I'm like, this is ridiculous. Like, why are we doing this? Because what we're really trying to do is force this language upon budget holders who don't want to talk that way. They're, they would talk about performance marketing metrics and numbers. So.

Yeah.

Mm.

Lissa Network said, all right, we can make exact numbers and exact targeting for these downloads so that you can answer the question. You can say, I got a thousand downloads per episode from mid-level engineering managers at aerospace companies who happen to be exactly the customer that we were trying to reach. And each one of those required at least 300 brand impressions to get. And here's everything we know about them in a detailed report.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

We did that, we started keeping clients because the shows kept getting funded. And now agencies can use that same functionality. That's what Listen Network does. So it drives up retention of your clients, drives down attrition and allows you to provide a meaningful paid distribution model, which is even more valuable because social media doesn't reach as much as it used to. So five years ago, you used to get

Mm-hmm.

you know, tens of thousands of impressions on things that now get 20 and you're going to have to pay for traffic. So you might as well pay for traffic in a way that's designed for podcasts, not just randomly throwing a thousand dollars at LinkedIn and praying because that doesn't work. So that's what Listen Network does. We manage paid media campaigns and business intelligence for podcasts and podcast agencies can use that to keep their clients. And in the other case, I looked at production.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Okay.

Right.

And that's where our rig company came from, our IGG, ⁓ because we looked at it and said, you know, production is a thing that is, like I said before, it's kind of going to zero. Like making content isn't going to be the thing you can mark up anymore. There are a lot of people who are consultants, strategists, content marketers, executive producers.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

people who really aspire to work with clients on the strategy of why, again, the why of why we're doing these things for podcasts, like really be the high level strategist. All of whom need to have production because if there's not production, they can't do the thing that they actually want to do. But then they end up stuck in this loop where they have to manage production like a whole bunch of freelancers and workflows and project management and show running and all the back and forth and administration.

And it sucks their life out because what they really want to do is be a strategist or an executive producer. So we said, let's forget the old playbook. Let's build the full backend to provide production services and operations for those people who actually just want to be smart people and be strategists. So that's what RIG does. It allows people to actually do the thing they want to do and not get bogged down in having to manage operations and production.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

And it's built AI first, which was hard for a lot of agencies to go. Everybody's plugging AI on top now, but you still have the old infrastructure. We said, well, it's 2025. If we're to start an agency, let's presume that AI is going to stand around. Let's make all of that automation and AI the bedrock and then build on top of that. So.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

It was just happenstance that happened to be at the right time where we could say, let's build AI first as an agency and then provide these services. So as a result, it's much, much faster. It's much, much cheaper. And it can help people, you know, make, have the content produced for them in an excellent fast way so that they get to actually be the strategist they want to be instead of bogged down on all the production stuff, which isn't valuable as much as it used to be anyway.

Yeah.

That's right. I mean, I think AI has helped a lot in that sense, taking away taking away the weight of all the really tedious jobs. Yeah.

It can. Yeah. And

if you love building workflows and automations and you know, agents and all these things, like, that's a full time job, and by all means, do it. But I know there are people who don't want to touch any of those things and just want stuff done. They don't want to be managing an Asana board with five freelancers. They they want to talk about strategy, they want to talk about being an executive producer and advancing the craft for their clients. If

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Mm.

They don't want to do all those other things. They can talk to us about how to do them because we can do it for you and we can do it fast and very affordable.

Yeah.

Yeah. that's fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. Ledge, when you think about podcasting as a business growth tool, where does it fit best? Would you say awareness, authority, sales, relationships?

depending on how you arrange your variables, I guess, your chess pieces, it could be all of those things. And I would say in fact, that's the question of the why, right? Like where does it fit best? Like what do you want it to do? Because the way we arrange the pieces in this sort of mosaic first comes back to why am I doing it? What do I want to achieve with this? And it can be very specific. So like I want.

Hmm.

leader or C level leaders at certain types of companies to think of our brand first when they're trying to achieve this thing. Okay. Like let's go there. And then we say, what tools do we have available? And let's build around where first of all, are they aware of the problem? Then this is marketing stuff, right? Do they know that they have the problem that I'm trying to solve? Cause if they don't,

I have an awareness problem. I need to educate this market space that you probably don't know you're losing money by doing X, and Z. But if they do know I'm losing money and I really need to solve this, I know exactly what my problem is, who can solve it for me? That's a problem aware audience. That's a little bit more of a mid funnel type of marketing, which means great. I have a problem where audience and I need to talk to them about me being the solution.

They know the problem exists. They don't know who can solve the problem for them. If I can solve it. Okay. That's a different problem. Right. So I can have them as my guests because we can talk shop. So that might speak a little bit more to an ABM style approach or, know, something like that. So the answer is it's all those things, but you got to pick, like, I think of it like a, like a carousel at the amusement park, you know, like it's all one system.

Yeah.

Hmm.

I don't care which pretty horse you get on, just get on a horse because now you're in the system. And it's my job, our job as content marketers and podcast ⁓ systems thinkers to create a fun ride. So one horse is the email list, one horse is the podcast, one horse is my LinkedIn profile post, one horse is my LinkedIn live or...

Yeah.

Mm.

webinars and all those things. Let's make them chase each other. So it goes around and around and around and the ride is fun and it makes pretty lights. You know, mean that that's our job, right? So I don't care which horse you get on, but I need to know like, do they like the purple horse? Or do they like, you know, what, are we trying to do here?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

that you've sold podcast agency services for five years now, hosted, as we said earlier, 400 and more shows, you guested on 100 more. That's a lot of conversations that you will have had. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about what makes podcasting work versus just becoming content that no one possibly listens to?

That has definitely evolved. mean, it used to be enough to just, I used to think of it like, you I don't care if I even have an audience, like because I was very specifically invite inviting my target market executive to be my guest. So in a sense was it long as one person listens to it and it's that person. I don't care. And then, but it has evolved since then, you know, where it was. Let's, um,

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

create a little bit more conversation distribution, you know, it's kind of outside of the podcast realm. And so I think the most important thing now when I have my eyes to the new way of, you know, sort of more ecosystem based is I would be thinking most, and I am thinking most about a podcast working together, like I just said, with the carousel. So ⁓ the most valuable thing I think would be

If you do nothing else, convert your podcast listeners to your email list. And maybe there's a sub stack or community type of vibe built into there, or it's built around your LinkedIn audience or, and so do you, how does each one of those things feed the next one? We're sort of get like a flywheel of content that builds engagement. is definitely not enough to treat these as we used to do sort of.

open spoke type of thing. It's like, there's me in the middle and I have a podcast and I have a channel on YouTube. have email content. I have a blog, but none of those things really worked together. You know, so now I think it's more like I'm the brand or I am the thing in the middle. That's making sure that each of those talk to each other and

Yeah.

Hmm.

Connect,

keep driving momentum around, it's not community because I know people use that word differently, but it's around exposure and using the content in different ways. Like don't think it's repurposing because repurposing was again like a spoke of saying, I'm gonna put out reels so they're aware of my podcast, but it wasn't, it's not exactly right. Now I think it's like, I'm going to,

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

use different content for different purposes to drive to my other content, to drive to an owned audience, to then be able to actively engage with people that now have names and places that I can reach them. And that's not new for anybody that was doing strategic content marketing. It's just now, think, podcasting is starting to be, in good reason, I think, is being absorbed into the strategic

Yeah. Yeah.

content marketing type of space. And I think that's right. I think we should all be highly aware of that. And that's a good thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah. So just going back to what you said earlier about, you your analogy of the horses and the in the carousel, what would you say are, ⁓ I guess, maybe the top horses that we should be thinking about?

If I only had to, I think it would be email and podcasts. So in the sense of like one of these great platforms, know, like a beehive plus podcast and passing back and forth or something like that. So for example, a really quick trick could be in every podcast episode, you might say, you might run your own kind of ad and she's like, don't, don't worry about taking notes today. I'm going to provide you every,

Mm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

a checklist of every single thing that you need to do to make actionable stuff out. really want you to listen. And at the end of the episode, you can go to this URL, join my list. I'm going to make sure every single episode I send you like a very clear action list on email so you can just stop and think. None of us like taking notes, right? So let's just stop and think. Don't worry about it. I'll put the class notes in your email for you. Sign up for that.

Hmm.

And then in each of those, you're sending additional content that says, you know, remind people that the other lesson exists for a previous episode. So those two pieces can work together really well. If you give me a third one, I'm going to say LinkedIn.

So for things like reels, shorts, they're just awareness. They're not really actually part of the strategic carousel as you would see it. ⁓

I know that, I mean, I'll probably get hate mail for saying this, but I just, don't see it. Short-term video has never appealed to me as far as I can tell the reach is useless. It's, can understand it as maybe mini lessons, but I don't think they usually come out of podcast content. think you can make short-form video that uses some of those ideas and presents that well in a consumable fashion. So.

That's okay. Yeah.

Hmm.

Hmm.

that makes sense to me, but the idea of repurposing little blobs from your podcast, I've never been sold on it and I don't see that the engagement is that great, but I do think it can be valuable for ⁓ the standpoint of facial awareness, right? Or sort of brand awareness. Like if you look at how a lot of people consume these things, you just watch a kid do it. They don't even have the volume on. They just.

Yeah.

Yeah.

watch

a bunch of reels, but they know who everybody is. And I could see that being somewhat valuable, but I just think the idea that we're going to get meaningful business results out of being in a thing that gets a lot of views, maybe from a repetition standpoint, I don't know, not a fan. I know some people live and die by this. They love it. It's not my favorite channel.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm right there with you.

Well, you can make shorts of me though. mean, like this is going to be great, you know.

Yeah, and not to mention this really.

Yeah, of course, of course.

Not to mention they're always really tedious as well. They take time to put together.

I mean, I know the tools

help you throw together and choose clips down. I have never still to this day, you could go AI, start to finish on a lot of stuff. But I do not think that the clip selection is quite that good. ⁓ Maybe someday you'll be able to plug in and be like, find me the smartest clip that will make me famous. I don't see it. ⁓ That's the one piece that.

Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's not.

Hmm.

When we're building workflows, not the one piece, but one of the pieces that we go like we cannot trust any of these things. We have used AI to go, here's the selection of some stuff based on what you told us in your writing samples that came out in that episode that exists between these two timestamps. And we suggest that this might be one for you, but please approve this before we go and clip it. Cause it just doesn't, they don't hit.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

⁓ I don't know. Yeah, I don't get it. mean, you know, I'm glad you agree. I know some people swear by this and maybe for consumer things, I'm largely a B2B person. ⁓ I don't see it and I don't think it adds value.

Hmm. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm.

No, I wonder whether there's also the element of getting pulled in by the likes and the views, you know, just like, a lot of people are interested, so I better keep making them. But that doesn't necessarily mean... No, same here.

I have never been pulled in by the likes and views because nobody pays attention to mine. maybe I

would become a convert if anybody ever liked or saw anything that I did. But ⁓ yeah, I think it probably feels good. And I know on YouTube shorts, a lot of people say that like the reach on our shorts is amazing, but it's like, I don't know. It doesn't convert to anything. And I think that's because algorithmically,

Yeah.

swipes through and again, I know this watching my kids, I'm like, what are you even watching? I don't know. You know, like, and I think adults do it too. They just mindlessly flip to the next short or real and that counts as a view, but who cares? Like it doesn't, doesn't mean anything.

you

you

Yeah.

That's right. That's totally right. Why did you say LinkedIn?

Well, I quit all other social media several years ago and I'm glad I never went back. It feels very toxic and gross to me. I, so again, my own personal bias, I will say LinkedIn. mean, like we're doing it right now, right? Like we met on LinkedIn and we're having conversations and we're doing, you know, some business stuff. I, I just feel like it's where legitimate connections can happen.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

⁓ I hear all the complaints and, I have the same complaints about the algorithm and whatnot, but it forces you to do work to actually find the interesting people who are in your space. And, know, it's like, if you have the discipline, where else are you going to go that if people have real names, real places, they work, they're not just trolls. They're not just like weird bots. And so, I mean, I get all those problems exist, but we can have real conversations. It's it's the world CRM like.

I mean, what could possibly be better for business? So I don't really understand why anybody would not do that. Now I get it. Like people don't understand. That's like, if I post a post, nobody sees it. What's the big, like, that's not the point. Like get out there and comment and be a part of a conversation and actually chat with people. And I mean, my DMS are on fire all the time. And I also say that when I post meaningful content, even though

LinkedIn will tell me like, congratulations, you got, you know, 75 impressions. I just spent an hour on that. But for Listen Network and for RIG and all these things that I do, I can tell you that almost every single inbound, cold inbound that looks like nothing, like I don't know who this is. They will tell me, I read your content. So.

Ha ha

Hmm. ⁓

Hmm.

It doesn't matter if it's seven. mean, would I take 75 new clients? Like, sure. What if 10 % of that 75 impressions comes in as a cold inbound because they now trust me and believe me. Like that's pretty awesome for an agency. Like I'll take it. So, you know, think about like that, that stuff. That's why LinkedIn is important to me because I can, I can say qualitatively, I'm sure like I ultimately found you because it's like, I'm involved in the podcast space and I'm an agency.

Mm-hmm.

That's my client. So cool. Like I'm gonna follow, I'm gonna comment on your stuff whenever I can see it. I'm gonna make an effort to actually be a friend and be a meaningful contributor. And I think that pays off. And I see it all the time in my sales process.

yet.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I like World CRM, I like that.

Yeah, you can use that whenever you want. I don't know if I made that up, but LinkedIn, if you guys need marketing help, you guys give me a ring.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, then we'll talk. David, looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of podcasting? Where do you see the biggest opportunities?

First fix your algorithm now. Yeah. Yeah.

I think the biggest thing, I think the most exciting thing is gonna be that in a world that will, who knows what this is gonna look like, right? Like with the AI and avatars that can talk for you and all this stuff, like the people who actually do the work and have legitimate real conversations, like I just think that's awesome. Like I'm an interdisciplinary polymath nerd and I wanna talk about stuff with people.

Hmm.

Hmm.

And I don't get to go out and have coffee meetings with you're in England right now. And I'm in Nashville, Tennessee. And I mean, we're never going to get to sit down in the same room and like riff on coffee, but we can do this. And I think that's special and important. So, I mean, that's always the part that's going to be exciting. And when you only think of it as a business asset, you just don't enjoy yourself anymore.

Hmm.

So keep that, like the only thing, it's gonna be special that we make human content at all. mean, everything is gonna be fake. All this user generated content, right? UGC, right? Let's market with UGC. Like, don't you know, like, mean, people are like, you can't generate UGC, because it's not a you. It's not a user, like at all, it's fake. So real stuff, I think is gonna make all the difference when.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

most of the content is garbage.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we were talking earlier about AI and in this day and age of AI video first, tighter budgets, all that. What separates the shows do you think that grow from the ones that fade out?

You just have to be saying interesting things and find the right audience. Right? mean, I, I, I'm a weirdo. So like I go, the very few podcasts that I actually consume, I'll go back to the beginning and listen from episode one all the way through. And it's because I find the thing that I like and I want to consume all of it. It's like binging content forever. So I don't know if other people do that. ⁓ but I will say that, you know, it's.

Yeah.

Hmm. wow.

Mm. Mm.

It's a way to get to know people that you might want to do business with. I anybody that listens to this is definitely not my marketing face. Like I'm, this is how I talk. This is how I work. And I try to show up in a place where I think my people who I might want to be collaborators with are also hanging out. So maybe it's not, maybe the obsession with growing a show is the wrong thing. Maybe it's I provide.

Mm-hmm.

information and useful, compelling stuff for a very small group of people, but I do it really well. So if I care about podcast agencies, then there's what like 800,000 of them maybe in the world. I don't even know. Like, do I care that I reach 100 million people? No, I care that I reach 1000 people. But it's the same thing that music went through in a lot of indie artists, like there's famous,

Yeah.

Hmm.

Articles, I forget what is, a thousand raving fans or something like that. Like I would focus on being the best in a tiny niche. If I cared about, you know, growing a show, I want to make sure that I know exactly who those people are and I want to be in front of them. And that's good enough for me. If you want to grow an audience because you want to monetize traffic, well, that's totally different thing. I'd still say you want to be a niche. And I'd still say that advertising is probably a horrible way to make money.

Yeah.

Hmm.

⁓ but maybe sponsors, you know, want to reach like you, need a compelling audience, an audience who cares about you and what you say, and you build a community with them because that's what sponsors want to buy too. So, ⁓ one way or another, you either, again, it comes back to you have a very expensive hobby or you have a business, which one.

Yeah,

yeah. Know your why, your purpose. And I like what you're saying, you know, the the distinction you're making of what grow actually would mean for someone. I really like that, because I think you're absolutely right that if you're in your niche and you're talking and delivering valuable content to people who need it, who want it, then that that's enough.

Mm-hmm.

I think that's right. Yeah.

Like, why are we doing this again? Like who, who do I want to care? Maybe I just want my mom to listen and still like me, you know, I mean, and that's fine. I can always count. I'll get one listen. Thanks mom. You know,

Yeah. Love it.

Let's one last question. If a founder came to you today worried about ROI, but curious about podcasting, what's the one piece of advice you would give them?

Yeah, the one piece of advice. Let's see, I would say, what does ROI mean? How would I know that if ROI dropped in my lap, what would it look like? That's what I would wanna know. So if ROI is I must generate some clients. Okay, cool, let's work on that. If ROI is broader awareness and recognition that I exist. Okay, let's work on that.

Hmm.

Hmm.

One piece of advice is just slow down. Don't just think I want a podcast. That's the same thing as like I want a car. What car do you want? Do you need to pull? You need to have a big truck because you need to carry rocks or do you want to have a sports car because you need to go fast and look cool? Like I mean, which one like what? Why you know? And so I guess yeah, the advice would be just slow down and think prior to giving yourself a prescription for.

Yeah.

Hmm.

disease maybe you don't even have. Don't be that person.

you

David, this has been such a fun and insightful conversation. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me, really appreciate it.

You're very welcome.

Before you go, if someone wants to learn more about your work or connect with you directly, where should they go to do that?

I definitely linked in. So David, ledge, ledger wood, you can find me. Look for the bald head and the beard that is not as gray as you'll see on this episode. I'm still faking it on the old headshot there.

Love it. Great. And to those listening in, thank you for being here. the links that Les just mentioned can be found in the show description. And here's what I hope you take away from today. Even in a tighter market, podcasting still works when you stop treating it like just content and instead focus on strategy, systems, and the conversations that actually drive growth. Thanks for listening and bye for now.