Gatekeeping the Podcast Industry, Monetization & A Decade In - An Interview with Mark Asquith

[Mark]: 00:00:03

What was the podcasting industry like all those years ago when I first started? Ten

[Mark]: 00:00:08

years ago, to be precise. And what does it take to run a podcast hosting platform and

[Mark]: 00:00:14

try and keep on top of an educational podcast like the podcast accelerator? Well,

[Mark]: 00:00:20

I figured I'd give you a look behind the curtain, go a little bit deeper into really

[Mark]: 00:00:26

what it takes to kind of do all of these. podcasting endeavours and stay on top of it

[Mark]: 00:00:31

whilst also keeping it fun because that of course can be the challenge but instead

[Mark]: 00:00:38

of forcing you to listen to me harp on about the good old days of podcasting, how

[Mark]: 00:00:43

it used to be and what it is like to do a few of the things that I do. decided to

[Mark]: 00:00:49

bring on someone who loves podcasting probably more than I do. Someone who can truly

[Mark]: 00:00:56

say he spends his time trying to make the industry better, enjoying the podcasting

[Mark]: 00:01:01

industry and getting to know everyone within it. It is of course my wonderful co-host

[Mark]: 00:01:05

and interviewer, Mr Danny Brown of course from Captivate, our fantastic head of support

[Mark]: 00:01:12

and experience and the founder and host of the wonderful Pod Chat amongst many other

[Mark]: 00:01:18

podcasts. What's up dude, how are you?

[Danny Brown]: 00:01:21

I'm good, I feel kind of strange sitting in Gary's seat, because normally it's

[Danny Brown]: 00:01:24

you and Gary on the old Spark Rebellion and all the cool nerd stuff. So it

[Danny Brown]: 00:01:27

feels kind of weird sat here.

[Mark]: 00:01:30

Well, you are a lot better looking than Gary, a lot more charming and of course a lot

[Mark]: 00:01:36

funnier as well. So Gary, if you're listening to this, I mean everything. I mean

[Mark]: 00:01:40

it all. But yeah, we're talking about the Star Wars show that Gaz and I do, which

[Mark]: 00:01:44

is a hobby show, sparkrebellion.com. And this is weird because I'm going to put

[Mark]: 00:01:48

this out the week commencing the 8th of May, but we're actually recording this on

[Mark]: 00:01:53

May the 4th, dude. So happy Star Wars Day to you, my friend.

[Danny Brown]: 00:01:56

Happy Star Wars Day. Many many years. What's that 40 plus years now? 77, 78?

[Danny Brown]: 00:02:02

Good grief.

[Mark]: 00:02:02

Wow, it's insane. I actually went to watch Return of the Jedi as well in the cinema

[Mark]: 00:02:05

the other day. It was fascinating to see. It was fantastic, man. Really loved it.

[Danny Brown]: 00:02:11

That'd be cool to see that. And I saw there was like some little Funko toys

[Danny Brown]: 00:02:15

there and some original Star Wars memorabilia.

[Mark]: 00:02:19

Yeah, they were throwing all that out. And then a local guy to us, Matt Ferguson,

[Mark]: 00:02:22

did the worldwide global poster for it, which is on Disney Plus as well. So he's

[Mark]: 00:02:26

a guy from Sheffield, Matt Ferguson, does a lot with Disney, and it's just been

[Mark]: 00:02:29

really nice to be a part of that. But something that we're a part of every single

[Mark]: 00:02:32

day, of course, is the now big world, a bigger world of podcasting. And I just wanted

[Mark]: 00:02:40

to bring on someone that I know, someone that I trust, someone that I class as a friend,

[Mark]: 00:02:44

someone that I knew would do a good job of chatting through. what it's like to

[Mark]: 00:02:49

do the things that we do in podcasting, just so I had the chance to, I think, share

[Mark]: 00:02:53

some of the things that I rarely get to share. So I wanna thank you for doing this,

[Mark]: 00:02:55

mate, but I'm actually, I'm just gonna hand over to you. I'm gonna let you run the

[Mark]: 00:02:59

podcast accelerator. So for you, the ever-present listener, you're in fine, safe

[Mark]: 00:03:06

hands with Mr. Danny Brown.

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:09

Thank you, Mark, and I will try not to break your show.

[Mark]: 00:03:12

Hahaha.

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:12

So yeah, I think what I'm looking forward to is picking your brain about, obviously,

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:17

you've been in podcasting for 10 years, at least now. You've got the scars

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:21

and gray hair starting to show for it. So I'm sure you've got a lot to talk

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:24

about. And I know with the podcast accelerator relaunching, it's a good opportunity.

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:29

So kind of a catch up of the show, the industry, what's coming down the

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:32

line, that kind of stuff. So thanks for inviting me on to be that kind of

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:36

co-host for this episode.

[Mark]: 00:03:38

It's a pleasure, there's been a lot of change just even in the hiatus the year

[Mark]: 00:03:42

off from this show so it's been a big a big industry shift you know a lot of things

[Mark]: 00:03:48

kind of been tweaked some things have stayed the same that I think will inevitably

[Mark]: 00:03:51

always stay the same but yeah I'm looking forward to digging him.

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:55

Yeah, and also the show, I mean, it's four years old now this month. So Happy

[Danny Brown]: 00:03:59

Birthday Podcast Accelerator,

[Mark]: 00:04:01

Thank

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:01

probably

[Mark]: 00:04:01

you.

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:01

about the same age as Cactiway, I would have thought. Four years old, 2019,

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:05

and it's got over

[Mark]: 00:04:06

Do you know what?

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:06

300 episodes.

[Mark]: 00:04:07

Yeah, sorry to interrupt on that. You're right. That shocked me a little bit. I forgot

[Mark]: 00:04:10

about that. Yeah, we launched Captivate into like an alpha. Ian Anderson-Gray started.

[Mark]: 00:04:15

He was the first user on Captivate. And I forced Kieran to let him on in April

[Mark]: 00:04:20

2019 when Kieran had gone on holiday. I was like, it'll be fine. Just let Ian on.

[Mark]: 00:04:24

It'll be all right. So yeah, that's weird. And actually, I think on May the 4th

[Mark]: 00:04:29

as well, Spark Rebellion launched as well in 2019, which is.

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:34

Wow.

[Mark]: 00:04:35

Yeah, how bizarre. Never thought of any of that.

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:37

a lot of birthdays and obviously your little girl who obviously we'll mention

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:41

later, little Dory, she must be approaching her first birthday now I think,

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:44

or over her

[Mark]: 00:04:44

Oh

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:44

first

[Mark]: 00:04:44

she's

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:45

birthday.

[Mark]: 00:04:45

beyond it, she's 15 months in 20 days, which is

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:48

Oh my

[Mark]: 00:04:49

terrifying.

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:49

lord. So as I mentioned, I mean, congratulations, happy birthday on the fourth

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:54

anniversary, fourth birthday of podcast accelerator. What was the initial

[Danny Brown]: 00:04:59

goal when you initially launched the show and how has that changed over time

[Danny Brown]: 00:05:03

for map ideas, etc.

[Mark]: 00:05:08

I think for me, the goal has always been the same with any kind of content that

[Mark]: 00:05:11

I've put out and not only content, but any kind of product that I've put out, whether

[Mark]: 00:05:15

that's my original excellence expected content, whether that is podcast websites,

[Mark]: 00:05:19

which we still have and we still run, whether it's Captivate, whether the Accelerator,

[Mark]: 00:05:23

my old shows, or Seven Minute Mentor, Spark Rebellion. Number one, first and foremost,

[Mark]: 00:05:28

to have fun. We've both been in corporate, we've both been in jobs that we're not keen

[Mark]: 00:05:32

on. We've both, even when I wasn't in corporate, I left the corporate world. 18 years

[Mark]: 00:05:38

ago now, which is terrifying. And even, even, even having clients at an agency, you

[Mark]: 00:05:46

do a lot of work that you really just aren't that keen on because it's just the way

[Mark]: 00:05:51

of having your own business. So everything, my entire goal, the whole thing and the whole

[Mark]: 00:05:55

idea for me in podcasting was to get into this thing because I love it. Similar

[Mark]: 00:06:00

to you get into this thing because I actually love it. And I'd still podcast. you

[Mark]: 00:06:04

know, even if I didn't work in it. And in fact, I have podcasted, even though I've

[Mark]: 00:06:07

had the podcast accelerator down for a year. I've still done Spike Rebellion. I've

[Mark]: 00:06:10

done the new show, It's How Old, which you kindly shared yesterday, which is launching

[Mark]: 00:06:14

shortly. So for me, it was very much about like, find that fun first. And then when

[Mark]: 00:06:19

it comes to, you know, can we make a living from it? Let's see how that goes. And

[Mark]: 00:06:24

I've always been quite sensible with that. So when it came to launching the podcast

[Mark]: 00:06:28

accelerator, it was sort of a continuation of that. And it was really focused on Like

[Mark]: 00:06:34

you know me, I'm pretty anti-guru. I think there's a lot of people that see an opportunity

[Mark]: 00:06:38

in industries or in things that are doing well, dive in, sell a load of snake oil

[Mark]: 00:06:43

and smoke and mirrors, and then bail again. Like you see all the time, the people

[Mark]: 00:06:47

in 2008 that were social media gurus, 18 months ago were NFT gurus and guess what?

[Mark]: 00:06:53

Now they're AI gurus and each one of them has been a podcasting guru and people

[Mark]: 00:06:58

like that are cropping up all the time. So for me, with the accelerator, it was sort

[Mark]: 00:07:02

of a different offer. It was. almost a promise of no hyperbole, no BS, no like getting

[Mark]: 00:07:12

over excited about things that might be a flash in the pan, getting over excited,

[Mark]: 00:07:16

like remember Clubhouse, like we're not

[Danny Brown]: 00:07:19

Yeah.

[Mark]: 00:07:19

getting excited about that, we didn't get excited about that, we did it sensibly.

[Mark]: 00:07:24

So it was very much a way of keeping things grounded, but also I think an important

[Mark]: 00:07:30

aspect of this is, I podcast, I've done... I don't know, 1,300, 1,400 episodes of varying

[Mark]: 00:07:36

podcasts, plus countless interviews on other people's podcasts at this point. And

[Mark]: 00:07:42

it was very important for me to understand that I'm a podcaster, but actually what I really

[Mark]: 00:07:46

do is I'm a product guy. I'm a sort of lapsed developer and I'm really a brand

[Mark]: 00:07:53

marketer. I'm not a technical marketer, I'm more of a brand marketer. So all of those

[Mark]: 00:07:57

skills, maybe outside of the development part. are really things that people need to

[Mark]: 00:08:04

grow their podcast. So it was how can I fulfill all the promises, no BS, no hyperbole,

[Mark]: 00:08:09

no getting people excited about things, thinking it's a silver bullet, or I'm gonna

[Mark]: 00:08:12

10X this and 50X this if you just sign up for my 97 bucks a month course. But how

[Mark]: 00:08:18

can I also take all these things that I do every day with Captivate and that I've

[Mark]: 00:08:22

done for the last 18 years for myself and bring them to podcasters because they are

[Mark]: 00:08:27

skills that podcasters need, even though... No one tells you that they need them. So it

[Mark]: 00:08:31

was, that's the goal with the accelerator. And I've tried different formats. I've tried

[Mark]: 00:08:35

short form, long form, we do interviews and it's about being adaptable. So that was

[Mark]: 00:08:40

the goal was to just give some no BS education from the other, you know, I suppose

[Mark]: 00:08:47

the elements of what I do for a living that people don't see when they see me on a

[Mark]: 00:08:51

podcast because they don't realize I do these, you know, the actual nine to five

[Mark]: 00:08:55

is this stuff. Bring that to podcasters, help them to learn from it. and be there to

[Mark]: 00:09:00

answer questions without trying to sell them anything. So yeah, that part of it is

[Mark]: 00:09:03

important.

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:05

And you'd mention, obviously, experimentation with formats, length, frequency.

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:09

I mentioned you've had over 300, 332 episodes, I think, if I've got the exact

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:13

number right, in the space of four years, which is more than one episode

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:17

a week, if you do it on an average. So you were very, very busy, for want of a

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:23

better word, with the show and all the other stuff. You've got Captivate,

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:26

you've got your other hobbyist podcast, et cetera. But it went silent for

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:30

a year, a complete year. It just went switched off. And you did publish an episode.

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:34

about taking a hiatus back last April, I think maybe March. And it did go quiet

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:39

for a whole year. And you launched, relaunched with a bonus episode last week about,

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:44

you know, they talked a bit about the hiatus, you know, why you took it. And

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:48

you actually mentioned that you had come super, super close to actually just

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:52

closing it all down, switching it off, sending out a final episode. But you

[Danny Brown]: 00:09:56

changed your mind and here you are with the new revamped relaunch show. And

[Danny Brown]: 00:10:00

I know you're, you know, you've got a lot of ideas for how that's gonna look.

[Danny Brown]: 00:10:04

with a new format. So what changed your mind? What excited you again about this,

[Danny Brown]: 00:10:08

the short and your insights?

[Mark]: 00:10:13

I think the thing that excited me about bringing the accelerator back, and I do want

[Mark]: 00:10:16

to kind of bookend this with, and I mentioned this in the episode last week, I

[Mark]: 00:10:21

legitimately recorded a This Is Finished Goodbye episode. I recorded it, I wrote the

[Mark]: 00:10:27

script for it, I'd done everything. I think the reason that I brought it back and

[Mark]: 00:10:33

the reason that I couldn't bring myself to publish that was, I've always got something

[Mark]: 00:10:37

to say. You know me, I'm always pretty mouthy and I still do a lot of other people's

[Mark]: 00:10:40

podcasts. But I was just burnt out. You know, the reason I took the hiatus that

[Mark]: 00:10:45

I mentioned in last week's bonus episode was I was simply burnt out. There's only so

[Mark]: 00:10:49

much content you can do about the same sort of thing. So I think I had to restock

[Mark]: 00:10:55

the mind a little bit on actually what is important to people? What do people want

[Mark]: 00:11:00

to hear from me? But also it was, we had a lot of transition. behind the scenes,

[Mark]: 00:11:07

even probably you didn't see it as even part of Captivate, you know, when we integrated

[Mark]: 00:11:12

with Global, there's just a lot of things that you've got to do, just stuff that, you

[Mark]: 00:11:17

know, with the best will in the world, you wanna put an episode out on a Monday, which

[Mark]: 00:11:21

is like the worst time to publish an episode, because it's Monday. And that was,

[Mark]: 00:11:25

I think, highlighted by the fact that someone just needed something from me on a

[Mark]: 00:11:29

Monday. So there was that element to it where I thought, I thought, look, enough

[Mark]: 00:11:38

time has passed now where we can, you know, we're integrated well into global. We've

[Mark]: 00:11:42

got brilliant product releases. We've got a mega release coming out next week with

[Mark]: 00:11:47

Captivate, which is a huge release, which we'll talk about after it's been released.

[Mark]: 00:11:51

But the ability to do the day-to-day stuff, the stuff that I enjoy doing, has come

[Mark]: 00:11:57

back a little bit more flexibly because that major integration... Interglobal was done.

[Mark]: 00:12:02

Also, of course, I had such a big personal year with Doc being born and just kind of helping

[Mark]: 00:12:09

Sam through that transition, me going through that transition and just the bandwidth

[Mark]: 00:12:15

and the brain space required to produce good content, it just wasn't there. And I think

[Mark]: 00:12:20

this is the thing. I went through so many changes with the podcast Accelerator because

[Mark]: 00:12:26

I wanted to keep producing good content. And to me, that was reflective of how the industry

[Mark]: 00:12:30

shifted. Like I started with a, I think it was a daily show and then a five, five times

[Mark]: 00:12:34

a week show and then twice a week. And it went from short form to getting progressively

[Mark]: 00:12:38

longer to the point where when I stopped the show and went on hiatus last year, it was

[Mark]: 00:12:44

very long form. You know, there are some eight, 9,000 word pieces that I recorded

[Mark]: 00:12:48

as audio, which are great, but they require a day to do. And that to me was reflective

[Mark]: 00:12:55

of like where the industry went. There's enough podcasts now that you can get content

[Mark]: 00:12:59

on anything that you want. So in order to stand out, you've got to be really good.

[Mark]: 00:13:02

And that was that evolution of the accelerator was short form was good. Back then, it didn't

[Mark]: 00:13:06

have to be as well thought out and well planned because I still had a lot of good to

[Mark]: 00:13:10

give and a lot of value and a lot of actionable stuff. But as the industry has progressed

[Mark]: 00:13:15

and more listeners come on board and the industry started to fracture in some ways,

[Mark]: 00:13:20

but unifying in other ways. I had to just keep refining that and refining that.

[Mark]: 00:13:24

And I didn't... Last year when I went on the hiatus, it was sort of a, how do I keep

[Mark]: 00:13:31

delivering this really good content at a time where we've got a new child, we are

[Mark]: 00:13:38

integrating into a much, much bigger business than ours that thankfully leaves us

[Mark]: 00:13:42

alone, you know, we still, we were pretty autonomous, we do great work for everyone,

[Mark]: 00:13:47

but still requires my attention. How do I give the best content to the listener?

[Mark]: 00:13:50

It just wasn't fair. to give substandard content. Like I'm pretty open with that. And

[Mark]: 00:13:55

I think part of, part of the responsibility as someone that educates in podcasting is to

[Mark]: 00:14:03

be really open and honest when you can't give good content out because there are that

[Mark]: 00:14:07

many podcasters out there that think I wanna do great content, but I just don't

[Mark]: 00:14:13

have the time to do it. What should I do? Should I stop? Should I carry on? Should

[Mark]: 00:14:16

I hate this? And I think I could have sort of BSed my way through it. and produced

[Mark]: 00:14:23

content that other people would have thought was good enough, but I wouldn't have

[Mark]: 00:14:29

been happy with it. And I didn't see the point in doing like, you know, let you

[Mark]: 00:14:35

carry on with PodChat because it's brilliant content. Let the other people that are passionate

[Mark]: 00:14:40

about the industry give that amazing content at a time when I wasn't able to do

[Mark]: 00:14:44

it because there's enough space for everyone. So. What I think what reignited me

[Mark]: 00:14:49

was, you know, all that burden disappearing, you know, we settled into every... all the

[Mark]: 00:14:53

new facets of life have been settled into now. And I had people asking, you know,

[Mark]: 00:15:01

I literally had people asking. Two things actually, when are you coming back? Brilliant.

[Mark]: 00:15:05

That was amazing to hear. The second thing was, I got people asking, Mark, what

[Mark]: 00:15:12

do you think about this? So it might be like, what do you think about YouTube and

[Mark]: 00:15:17

podcasting? What do you think about this course I've been offered? What do you

[Mark]: 00:15:20

think about this sponsorship deal? What do you think about X, Y and Z? And I get a

[Mark]: 00:15:24

lot of emails and DMs about this all the time. And I thought to myself, people still

[Mark]: 00:15:30

seem to want that straight talking advice. You know, they're not looking for the, you

[Mark]: 00:15:36

know, like when someone asks what microphone to buy, they're not looking for the, well,

[Mark]: 00:15:39

here are 10 and I'm not going to commit to one in case it's wrong and you think I'm

[Mark]: 00:15:42

an idiot. I'm not that guy, I'm the other guy that's like, well, these nine aren't

[Mark]: 00:15:47

very good, use this one. You know, I'm very straight talking with that and people

[Mark]: 00:15:52

seem to want that and the appetite didn't disappear. I'll tell you what's fascinating,

[Mark]: 00:15:57

a lot of people think that when you go on hiatus you lose all your listeners. You

[Mark]: 00:16:01

do not. I've had the highest download episode last week when I put the bonus episode

[Mark]: 00:16:07

out, the first six hours were the highest downloads. that I've seen across the show and

[Mark]: 00:16:14

that's with barely any promo.

[Danny Brown]: 00:16:15

Hmm.

[Mark]: 00:16:16

It wasn't featured in pod news on that day. There was nothing special about it. I've

[Mark]: 00:16:21

had the highest number of downloads and the back catalog has continued to grow.

[Mark]: 00:16:27

It has continued to receive downloads that the high just that hiatus episode that

[Mark]: 00:16:32

I put out like March 22, April 2022. Thousands of people listen to it, which is

[Mark]: 00:16:39

styling and that's continued to grow. So I think that was the final factor was that

[Mark]: 00:16:44

the appetite was still there. Because I will tell you this just to long windedly

[Mark]: 00:16:48

finish up this answer. The landscape gets busy. All right. Everyone now has an opinion

[Mark]: 00:16:56

on podcasting and you know, there are podcasts about podcasting and how to grow your

[Mark]: 00:17:00

podcast and this, that and the other. And I think one of the other things that I

[Mark]: 00:17:03

didn't mention in that episode last week was sort of maybe the feeling that I didn't

[Mark]: 00:17:12

have enough to say to compete with all that other stuff because a lot of people, like

[Mark]: 00:17:17

there's great people in the industry like yourself and a lot of people like Ariel

[Mark]: 00:17:21

and people like James and Sam and putting out really good content, but there's a lot

[Mark]: 00:17:24

of crap. There's a lot of people that have got really dodgy clickbait titles that

[Mark]: 00:17:29

are podcasts about podcasting. And I thought to myself, can I really be bothered

[Mark]: 00:17:34

trying to quote unquote compete with that? And I just thought, no, there's no point,

[Mark]: 00:17:40

you know? And that changed. That changed this year when I realized I got my bandwidth

[Mark]: 00:17:45

back. I've got everything back that I needed. I'd seen people asking for it. And

[Mark]: 00:17:49

I thought, do you know what? It turns out people do want that straight talk. And

[Mark]: 00:17:53

so, you know, sort of screw the gurus. I'm going to come back and be a pain in their

[Mark]: 00:17:58

neck again. So, yeah, a long winded answer. But there was a lot to that. It's quite

[Mark]: 00:18:03

a, it's quite a thinker that, you know.

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:06

And I think to that point, it goes back to your ethos of putting only quality

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:12

content out, not just being like the other 20, 30, 40 podcasters that talk about

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:16

podcasting, which shows, you know, if you've got quality evergreen content,

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:20

the audience will remain. You build up a loyal audience because they trust

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:23

your content beforehand. They'll remain there for you, but you mentioned, obviously,

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:28

they're waiting for that to come back. That's awesome to hear. We talked about,

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:32

obviously, that the show is four years old. but you've been in the industry

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:35

for 10 years, let's call it a good old simple decade, a nice decade, nice

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:39

round number. And there must have been some, well we know there's been some

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:43

changes, but for you specifically, what have you seen really different between

[Danny Brown]: 00:18:48

podcasting today and podcasting in 2013?

[Mark]: 00:18:53

There are so many things that have changed in the last 10 years, I think, of me being

[Mark]: 00:18:56

in podcasting. The first thing I think that has remained, that's the first place to

[Mark]: 00:19:01

start, I think, is the sense of community. I remember going to NMX in 2015 when we were

[Mark]: 00:19:06

just, we'd just, we'd launch podcast websites, maybe two months before, 18th of

[Mark]: 00:19:12

February. 2015, we launched podcast websites. And no one knew me. You know, I went

[Mark]: 00:19:18

out and spoke there. I spoke at podcast movement that the year I spoke at NME, NMEU,

[Mark]: 00:19:24

Mike and Isabella's gig 2015 and the community has remained. That was the big thing

[Mark]: 00:19:31

that struck me. That's what sold me on podcasting. You know, prior to that, I was

[Mark]: 00:19:35

at 2013 was myself and Gaz with our original show, Two Shots of the Head, Geek

[Mark]: 00:19:39

Culture, DC stuff, brilliant. really loved that show, just like really loved doing

[Mark]: 00:19:44

it, but it was a laugh, it was a hobby. And then 2014, I started my own personally

[Mark]: 00:19:47

branded show, which led to where we are today, being as a direct path between all

[Mark]: 00:19:52

of that. So the big thing that got me hooked on podcasting was the community, but

[Mark]: 00:19:58

in particular, the independent community. So I went to an NMX. Yeah, I went to NMX in

[Mark]: 00:20:06

2015 and there was Rob was there, Elsie was there, Todd, Rob Greenlee, Jess. Pretty

[Mark]: 00:20:17

much that's it. I can remember, obviously just eat and drink with them. I met Jonathan

[Mark]: 00:20:22

Oakes from Trivia Warfare who just started his show. So he's coming up on nearly a decade

[Mark]: 00:20:26

as well. Ramona Rice, a few other people, Jordan Harbinger, Pat Flynn, you know, all

[Mark]: 00:20:33

those people. were there and I was sold on this sense of community. No one knew me

[Mark]: 00:20:38

but everyone embraced me. And it was the same and I've always tried to foster that.

[Mark]: 00:20:43

So that's the thing that stayed the same amongst independent creators. That's why

[Mark]: 00:20:47

I did so much travel and so many conferences because of that. The thing that has changed,

[Mark]: 00:20:51

there's a number of different things. You and I have spoken about it before, and

[Mark]: 00:20:57

I've written about this, bloody heck I wrote about this about six years ago, the

[Mark]: 00:21:00

fracturing of the industry, and I wrote a piece a while ago, The Gap Between Indians

[Mark]: 00:21:04

and Big Podcasting. And this idea that the 99% of podcasting is made up of independents

[Mark]: 00:21:10

like you and I, trying to make our way in this hobbyist world. And then there's media,

[Mark]: 00:21:15

there's The Wondery, Wondery was like for me the big company that came in and- really

[Mark]: 00:21:20

set out their stall as being, we are a media company creating things with diverse

[Mark]: 00:21:25

IP that can then be made into other things. It's not just a podcast. And we've

[Mark]: 00:21:29

seen that much more wildly now. So whether it's, you know, whether it's Grim and Mild

[Mark]: 00:21:34

with Aaron, whether it's, you know. Pineapple Street, obviously Wondery purchased

[Mark]: 00:21:39

by Amazon, all the Spotify originals, Globals owned and operated stuff, the stuff,

[Mark]: 00:21:46

First Action Bureau by Jerry Anderson's crew, Jamie and his team. This is all IP that

[Mark]: 00:21:52

has been created to be media. And that's been the big thing because people worried about

[Mark]: 00:21:57

that. Like in 2017, I remember doing a talk at Podcast Movement. when all this really

[Mark]: 00:22:01

started to kick off, you know, serial was out, Sarah Koenig was the keynote or PM

[Mark]: 00:22:06

in maybe Chicago, maybe Fort Worth, maybe the one maybe where Kevin Smith was at,

[Mark]: 00:22:13

which was like geek heaven for me, I loved that. And it was, that was the time when

[Mark]: 00:22:19

Indies like You and Me and The Hobbiest that have got like 200 downloads an episode

[Mark]: 00:22:24

really started getting worried. And all these questions started coming out. What

[Mark]: 00:22:27

does this mean for me? How do I grow my show? How do I monetize? Then you had like,

[Mark]: 00:22:31

and there's nothing wrong with this, even though it's going to sound like there

[Mark]: 00:22:36

is like the entrepreneur crew that was like, oh yeah, you can make a pile of money

[Mark]: 00:22:40

from podcasting. Eh, eh, you can, but I can make a pile of money from being a brickie.

[Mark]: 00:22:44

I can make a pile of money from tech. I can make a pile of money from golf. I can

[Mark]: 00:22:47

make a pile of money from anything that I put all the practice time, effort and professionalism

[Mark]: 00:22:51

into. That's not like, that's not rocket science or wizardry, is it? So that element

[Mark]: 00:22:58

fractured it where big podcasting came around. And then the second thing that happened

[Mark]: 00:23:02

around the same time for me, and this is another big change, is tech started getting

[Mark]: 00:23:07

interested. So like VCs, and we've had it with Captivate, you know, I still get it

[Mark]: 00:23:11

today, would you like investment for Captivate? No, I'm good. And people trying

[Mark]: 00:23:16

to buy tech, and we saw all these crazy acquisitions, we saw Simplecast, we saw Stitcher.

[Mark]: 00:23:22

change hands, we've seen all sorts, glow, we've seen obviously, captivate become

[Mark]: 00:23:27

part of global. And all of these acquisitions. made the industry interest into people that

[Mark]: 00:23:37

thought they wanted to be in an industry where they could make a quick book. And that

[Mark]: 00:23:43

was the big change. Now it's a bit different, you know, that I think I actually think in

[Mark]: 00:23:46

the last year that's changed. Maybe we'll get to that. But so we saw all that go

[Mark]: 00:23:51

ahead and that scared a lot of the independent people. Those people, the very same people

[Mark]: 00:23:55

like embraced me through community were worried. What does this mean? So I think in

[Mark]: 00:24:04

short, the way to summarize that is when I got into podcasting, it was. It was

[Mark]: 00:24:11

the best way to phrase this. It was a media that had a foot in different industries.

[Mark]: 00:24:18

So what I mean by that is it was sort of like I can create my own content. This is

[Mark]: 00:24:22

great and anyone can listen to it and it doesn't matter what I talk about because

[Mark]: 00:24:25

it's my podcast, but it's not an industry as such. There's a little bit of ad revenue.

[Mark]: 00:24:30

There's maybe like 180,000 shows. But we're really like in the tech industry, because

[Mark]: 00:24:38

we're a hosting company like Libsyn or whatever. Or we're like a radio company,

[Mark]: 00:24:43

so we're in the radio industry. But now, podcasting is the industry. It employs

[Mark]: 00:24:50

that many people and it's the, if you're a digital marketer, you've probably got, for

[Mark]: 00:24:57

if you work for a large enough company, a budget for podcast sponsorships where you

[Mark]: 00:25:01

didn't before. The whole programmatic side has really matured. the whole way that

[Mark]: 00:25:05

we measure things continues to mature. So I think that's the big change. It's become

[Mark]: 00:25:12

an actual bonafide industry. And there's a lot that goes along with that, but I think

[Mark]: 00:25:19

that's the biggest change. There's a lot of sort of sub headers beneath that, but

[Mark]: 00:25:22

that's the headline, I think. And I think one of the pieces of advice that I think

[Mark]: 00:25:32

I would give to anyone getting into podcasting is to sort of ignore that. Like

[Mark]: 00:25:41

if you create a YouTube channel, you don't think, oh my word, I'm not gonna create

[Mark]: 00:25:45

a YouTube channel because it'll never grow because Netflix exists or movies. You

[Mark]: 00:25:51

know, so why would you, I get people all the time and you'll be the same, wow, is

[Mark]: 00:25:55

podcasting too busy? Is it too late to start a podcast? I know, of course not,

[Mark]: 00:25:59

we better stop writing books. If that's the way you think, you know, we better stop

[Mark]: 00:26:03

making new films or. better stop creating new Netflix series. All right, it's not, it's

[Mark]: 00:26:08

not about that. And it baffles me, especially the hobbyists. You know, a lot of people get

[Mark]: 00:26:14

into podcasting and ask genuinely as hobbyists, and they'll say, is it too late?

[Mark]: 00:26:21

Are these good numbers? I'm like, well, if you decide to play golf, right, if your

[Mark]: 00:26:24

neighbor comes around and says, do you wanna go out for a knock? You say, well, I've

[Mark]: 00:26:26

never played before. And they say, well, here's some spare clubs. Let's get into it.

[Mark]: 00:26:31

You are literally not gonna go home the next day and go, right. time to create,

[Mark]: 00:26:36

grow and monetize my golf game.

[Danny Brown]: 00:26:38

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

[Mark]: 00:26:38

You're just not, it's like, it's nuts. And it's so, I think that's another thing that's

[Mark]: 00:26:44

been a, like a bit of a, almost like running with a parachute on. It holds a lot

[Mark]: 00:26:51

of people back, this idea that you have to monetize the thing. When we all know that

[Mark]: 00:26:58

to monetize something, you've just got to be passionate about it, because then you

[Mark]: 00:27:02

get good at it, you know. competence leads to confidence and confidence leads to

[Mark]: 00:27:08

consistency and consistency leads to people starting to notice you and people noticing

[Mark]: 00:27:14

you leads to money and that's just like marketing. So yeah, that's been such a huge

[Mark]: 00:27:21

shift, people worrying about it's now an industry, is it too late for me to get into

[Mark]: 00:27:27

it? How do I make money doing it? And you know, better than anyone else, you know,

[Mark]: 00:27:31

the way that you build fandom and the way that you make money from fandom is like

[Mark]: 00:27:35

to genuinely focus on building fans and friends. And to bring this right back to

[Mark]: 00:27:41

the beginning of the question and the answer, like that's what people were doing

[Mark]: 00:27:47

back then is embracing the people around them and building them as an audience and friendship

[Mark]: 00:27:52

group and so on and so forth. So it's sort of ironic because a lot has changed, but

[Mark]: 00:27:55

so much has stayed the same.

[Danny Brown]: 00:27:58

I wonder if part of that is down to, and I know you've spoken about this before,

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:02

we see the community, the community is awesome, but you also see maybe some old

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:06

guard podcasters or old guard tech leaders, etc. The industry is what you

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:14

mentioned as the teenage stage. You know, we've gone past the baby steps, etc.

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:17

We've sort of got a, we're a foothold in the media entertainment industry.

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:21

We know what podcasting is, what it wants to achieve, what we want to achieve.

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:25

But it's still very much all down to... you need an RSS feed with a podcast

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:29

host or some kind of hosting solution and an MP3 file for your audio. And

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:34

that stayed pretty much the same since the first days of podcasting. And I wonder

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:39

if that reliance on RSS or the idea of reliance on RSS might be holding the

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:47

industry back when it comes to new podcasts coming on, other companies getting

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:51

involved, et cetera. Do you think that's the case or? You think that we're just

[Danny Brown]: 00:28:56

talking about or concentrating on the wrong thing there?

[Mark]: 00:29:00

Well, someone's after some social media clips, aren't they?

[Danny Brown]: 00:29:03

Ha ha

[Mark]: 00:29:03

I like this.

[Mark]: 00:29:07

I think the idea of RSS being at the centre of podcasting is brilliant and open

[Mark]: 00:29:12

podcasting is super important. Captivate supports that through podcasting 2.0 and being

[Mark]: 00:29:16

part of the PSP, whether you agree with those initiatives or not, there's no harm in

[Mark]: 00:29:21

them at the minute.

[Mark]: 00:29:25

does an RSS feed harm the growth of podcasting? I wouldn't say so because, like,

[Mark]: 00:29:32

sort of who cares as a listener or as a tech company? So take someone like Spotify.

[Mark]: 00:29:39

And I've said this before in interviews. I wrote a piece ages ago, like five years ago,

[Mark]: 00:29:44

saying that Spotify did not need RSS feeds and, you know, maybe they wouldn't use

[Mark]: 00:29:48

them in the future. And I got absolutely battered by all of the... People that are friends,

[Mark]: 00:29:54

that's the irony. You know, you're silly, you're naive, you don't know podcasts, and

[Mark]: 00:29:58

they're like, you don't know tech. You know, and it was, guess what? Spotify don't

[Mark]: 00:30:03

need RSS feeds, they don't. Neither does any player. They could choose to accept

[Mark]: 00:30:09

via any other method, whether it's JSON, which they wouldn't do because it's pointless,

[Mark]: 00:30:13

it's essentially an RSS feed again if, you know, for all intents and purposes. They

[Mark]: 00:30:18

could choose to ingest via API. that it literally makes no difference to the listener

[Mark]: 00:30:24

experience whatsoever. But it's not podcasting, right? So I see this on two hands.

[Mark]: 00:30:37

On the first hand, I see the people forging ahead without RSS regardless. And so

[Mark]: 00:30:41

people like Spotify, who cares? They're just going to do what they're going to do and

[Mark]: 00:30:43

they're going to do it really well. And guess what? I'm really sorry to say, but

[Mark]: 00:30:46

they are going to make money and get users doing it. because it's not a bad experience.

[Mark]: 00:30:53

And you get a lot of people, I don't like listening to podcasts in Spotify because

[Mark]: 00:30:57

it's not the best podcast app. My mom doesn't care. She ain't downloading Overcast

[Mark]: 00:31:02

or Pocket Casts or Good Pods. She's got an iPhone, she doesn't even know Apple

[Mark]: 00:31:06

Podcast is on there. And I ain't telling her because she thinks I work with computers.

[Mark]: 00:31:10

So that's just a wasted Sunday. So the point is that it... The tech companies that

[Mark]: 00:31:16

are going to do it will take the lambasting that they will get and they've weathered it

[Mark]: 00:31:20

before, they will continue to weather anything that the industry throws at them because

[Mark]: 00:31:24

they know what users do. That's the annoying thing to a lot of people in podcasting

[Mark]: 00:31:30

is that people like Spotify come along and they know what users do because they're

[Mark]: 00:31:36

really good at it, because they're massive and they've got billions and billions and billions

[Mark]: 00:31:42

of events logged and data points tracked to analyze. So of course, you know, they're

[Mark]: 00:31:49

going to forge ahead without RSS. That said.

[Mark]: 00:31:54

The goal of podcasting and the point of originally being a podcaster was to syndicate

[Mark]: 00:32:00

things yourself using an open RSS feed that anyone can read using a simple reader

[Mark]: 00:32:07

and that should and will not ever go away. And that's fine. And that is how it should

[Mark]: 00:32:15

be and it will continue to develop. It relies on a lot of other things developing,

[Mark]: 00:32:20

so the apps developing, hosting companies like Captivate developing. standardization

[Mark]: 00:32:26

which is sort of happening. It relies on users like caring which is the classic tech

[Mark]: 00:32:34

adoption curve. They're not going to care for a long, long time that we've introduced

[Mark]: 00:32:37

a new feature. They don't care. They don't care about value for value. What the

[Mark]: 00:32:39

hell's that? Just give me some money. You know, that's like again, you know, my mom

[Mark]: 00:32:44

doesn't care. Like take it down the next level. My brother who was more tech literate

[Mark]: 00:32:48

and you know, much more tech savvy than my mom. Go and spend this Satoshi. go do what?

[Mark]: 00:32:56

Alright, ok, well it's sort of like a pound, but imagine if a pound was really

[Mark]: 00:33:03

not worth that much and you needed loads of them, and you can't really grab them. So

[Mark]: 00:33:10

you know that sandwich you're going to get at dinner time, you can't get it with

[Mark]: 00:33:13

that, sorry mate. He's not fussed, he don't want to do that. So to him it's transient,

[Mark]: 00:33:18

it's like yeah that's cool, that's for the geeks. And that's a standard adoption curve,

[Mark]: 00:33:21

like that always happens, look at Uber 10 years you know, to versus where it is now.

[Mark]: 00:33:26

Look at podcasting 10 years ago, look at AI, look at the blockchain at large, you

[Mark]: 00:33:32

know, so that's not, there's nothing wrong with that. That's just the normal adoption

[Mark]: 00:33:35

curve. It's the cutting edge people, the early adopters and so on, and that's just

[Mark]: 00:33:40

how adoption works. So I don't think RSS hinders it. I don't think RSS is going

[Mark]: 00:33:46

away. I think we... all need to probably stop whining about the fact that it's not a

[Mark]: 00:33:52

quote unquote podcast if it doesn't have an RSS feed because

[Mark]: 00:33:59

like that is something that will hold our thinking back and I'm not saying we get

[Mark]: 00:34:03

rid of RSS I would never say that like what would I do for work but the point is that

[Mark]: 00:34:09

we can't I don't think we can close our minds and our thought processes down by

[Mark]: 00:34:16

saying that this is not the thing because So here's the irony of that. If you start saying

[Mark]: 00:34:24

things like, it's not a podcast unless these conditions are met, and this coming from

[Mark]: 00:34:29

a big, big, big advocate for open podcasting and RSS feeds, but if you start saying things

[Mark]: 00:34:35

like that and you advocate for the open podcast ecosystem, by saying things like that,

[Mark]: 00:34:41

you become the gatekeeper

[Danny Brown]: 00:34:44

Hmm.

[Mark]: 00:34:44

that you never... ever said should exist. You are Anakin Skywalker becoming the very

[Mark]: 00:34:49

thing that you said you were going to destroy. And that's the problem. That you,

[Mark]: 00:34:54

the balance is so tough with that. And I think the only way that we can solve that

[Mark]: 00:34:59

is to continue to be open minded and say, look, you know what, maybe 10 years ago,

[Mark]: 00:35:05

podcasts couldn't do this thing. And whatever that was, like, oh, podcasts don't

[Mark]: 00:35:09

have adverts. Podcasts don't have programmatic adverts. Well, not right now they don't, but

[Mark]: 00:35:17

who knows what's going to happen? Who knows where they're going to be in 10 more

[Mark]: 00:35:20

years time? So yeah, an interesting, insightful question. And I think to summarise

[Mark]: 00:35:26

it, we shouldn't get too caught up on RSS. It's in its rightful place. It can develop,

[Mark]: 00:35:31

it will develop. And that is the core of open podcasting, which should and will remain

[Mark]: 00:35:36

for the vast majority of podcasters. However, those that feel less strongly about

[Mark]: 00:35:42

open podcasting far less stronger than you and I do and the other hosting friends

[Mark]: 00:35:46

that we've got, they will forge ahead regardless of RSS and that just comes down

[Mark]: 00:35:51

to that fracture that we talked about between indie and big podcasting and that's

[Mark]: 00:35:56

just the way of the world. It's just tech. That's the way it goes. So interesting.

[Mark]: 00:36:02

Maybe we'll do this again in 10 years.

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:06

I might still have some hair by then.

[Mark]: 00:36:08

I won't mate, definitely not.

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:11

It does remind me though, and I'm glad you mentioned the open podcast project.

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:15

I can know you've got the podcast in 2.0. We are involved in the podcast standards

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:19

project, et cetera. And it does kind of go back to the community where we should

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:24

always should be thinking about as a listener in the community. What's the

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:26

benefit to them? They don't care about what happens behind the scenes. It's

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:30

like if you go to the movie theater and you watch a 3D movie. you get the 3D specs,

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:35

it looks amazing. I went to see the original avatar, and that just blew me

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:38

away. Like the 3D, that was probably one of the best, only good one about 3D. But

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:42

as a watcher, I don't care that you need X amount of lenses, you need them

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:47

all focused at the same time, you need these colors lined up, et cetera.

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:50

I just have to put on the glasses, and I've got 3D. So it's like podcasting. I

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:55

open my app, or I press play on our web player, and that's it, I'm good

[Danny Brown]: 00:36:58

to go. So I think, yeah, it's like you say, I'm hoping that, you know. the

[Danny Brown]: 00:37:04

vocal counter advocates, if you like, I guess, aren't the ones that are listened

[Danny Brown]: 00:37:11

to the most, because I think that would maybe, you know, possibly hinder

[Danny Brown]: 00:37:15

the industry as far as audience and listener benefits go.

[Mark]: 00:37:19

Yeah, I agree. I think that the way to progress podcasting and the way that podcasting

[Mark]: 00:37:24

should and will continue to progress is through balance. I think it's the only way,

[Mark]: 00:37:28

you know, the... I don't think you can think in any industry in such binary terms

[Mark]: 00:37:35

as this is the definition of X because it might have been, and I think that's why

[Mark]: 00:37:39

people get upset by it because that's what it used to be and that's the only thing

[Mark]: 00:37:43

it used to be, but now it's such a diverse... set of opportunities for businesses like Spotify

[Mark]: 00:37:49

that want to come in and challenge it. And like I said, I'm not advocating for Spotify,

[Mark]: 00:37:52

but nor am I advocating for RSS. I'm advocating for balance. I'm advocating for

[Mark]: 00:37:58

let's progress the things that we are passionate about, but don't close the doors

[Mark]: 00:38:02

on other things. Because if we do, how can we take the best elements from everything

[Mark]: 00:38:09

to... give the very best to our creators, to our listeners and so on. And you know, you've

[Mark]: 00:38:14

only got, like you said, 3D. That's a great example. We had the, you know, avatar

[Mark]: 00:38:21

in 3D. It's fantastic. It was pretty good. It looked well. But then guess what?

[Mark]: 00:38:26

All TVs became 3D for a little while. And then people realized it was crap. But what

[Mark]: 00:38:33

else came out of that? iMacs, which is absolutely brilliant and it is stunning.

[Mark]: 00:38:38

And when it's used well, It's amazing as an experience. There are certain films,

[Mark]: 00:38:43

Spider-Man, No Way Home, any Star Wars that you are only gonna see in IMAX because

[Mark]: 00:38:48

it is that good. And that's like the bit that came out of 3D. The rest of it didn't.

[Mark]: 00:38:53

And that's the thing with podcasting. It's like, it sort of iron sharpens iron sort

[Mark]: 00:38:58

of scenario. You know, you have to put up against something to develop, but the risk,

[Mark]: 00:39:03

I think, for a lot of people in podcasting, especially the industry, It doesn't sharpen

[Mark]: 00:39:08

iron. What it does is it forces that thinking to retract and to become stagnant,

[Mark]: 00:39:14

to hold on to the things that were as opposed to looking at what is possible. And

[Mark]: 00:39:18

I do believe that's why we're fortunate at Captivate to have such good balance. You

[Mark]: 00:39:22

know, we implement a lot of great things, but not rashly. And we did that with the podcasting

[Mark]: 00:39:30

2.0 stuff. A lot of people, including our previous advisors, were saying, you're

[Mark]: 00:39:34

behind the curve with podcasting 2.0. That's cool. Like, I'm behind your curve, behind

[Danny Brown]: 00:39:40

Hmm.

[Mark]: 00:39:40

actually your curve, but our users, the people who will, if we introduce something

[Mark]: 00:39:47

that is difficult and new for them that they've got to spend time learning, may well

[Mark]: 00:39:50

stop podcasting because they're worried that they can't keep up. I'm actually in front

[Mark]: 00:39:56

of their curve, and I know their curve, and their curve is not where your curve is.

[Mark]: 00:40:01

And again, that's how industries work, that the early adopters, they're the real bleeding

[Mark]: 00:40:06

edge people. There are the people that are toeing the line between being interested

[Mark]: 00:40:10

in the industry and sort of just kind of being in it by accident because they're

[Mark]: 00:40:14

creating it. So there's a lot that's going on there. And I think the risk with the

[Mark]: 00:40:19

podcast industry is that it becomes not becomes, but. Some of the more prominent

[Mark]: 00:40:25

voices remain binary. It's this or that. And. you know, that's only a risk to them.

[Mark]: 00:40:37

They're gonna be the ones whose curves no one really cares about if they're not careful.

[Mark]: 00:40:42

So you gotta watch that as a founder. That's one thing that I'm conscious of. You've

[Mark]: 00:40:47

gotta be sensible and you've gotta listen and you've gotta be empathetic with things.

[Mark]: 00:40:51

So yeah, again, a lot in that, but I mean, we could probably do 10 episodes on that,

[Mark]: 00:40:54

I think.

[Danny Brown]: 00:40:55

Hmm. It's like comparing the Pirelli calendar to the Michelin calendar.

[Danny Brown]: 00:40:59

That's

[Mark]: 00:40:59

Ha ha ha

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:00

like

[Mark]: 00:41:00

ha!

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:00

a little bit differences there for anybody that knows these calendars.

[Mark]: 00:41:04

That is, that takes me back to like 1989, taking my car to a garage

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:10

Mm.

[Mark]: 00:41:10

in like Barnsley in the north of England, yeah. I get that, that's a reference that not

[Mark]: 00:41:16

many people are going to get.

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:16

I know, no, we might have to make this a video segment just to like, you

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:19

know, just throw that out there on a snip or something. Now, mostly you mentioned

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:24

that the industry from a podcast point of view, we're now looking at kind of

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:28

three distinct podcasters, hobbyist, serious indie podcaster, then the multi million

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:33

dollar media companies. And one of the biggest for all, especially the serious

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:38

indie podcaster and the media companies is monetization. monetization, especially

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:45

the last couple of years, from working with advertisers and sponsors to Spotify

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:49

paying for exclusives, with an eye on attracting bigger advertisers to the

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:53

platform. And there's been mixed results. I'm curious why you think it's been

[Danny Brown]: 00:41:57

hard for so many to effectively address monetization.

[Mark]: 00:42:08

My microphone wouldn't unmute then. I was gonna edit this out. I thought I'll edit

[Mark]: 00:42:11

that out, but then this is an interview

[Danny Brown]: 00:42:13

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

[Mark]: 00:42:13

with me. So I'm just gonna leave it in. That was funny. So podcasts, well, monetization

[Mark]: 00:42:22

of anything, not just podcasts, is very, very difficult because you have to get people

[Mark]: 00:42:29

to do different things in a reasonably standardized sequence. You have to get them

[Mark]: 00:42:36

to look at something, listen to something, move from one place to another to look at something

[Mark]: 00:42:43

else or listen to something else, and then do a number of different things to quantify

[Mark]: 00:42:49

and qualify whether or not what they've heard or seen or read or whatever results in

[Mark]: 00:42:56

some ROI. And that's a really, like, high-level marketing thought process. But it's

[Mark]: 00:43:03

the same with everything, whether you're selling software, whether you're selling cars,

[Mark]: 00:43:06

whether you're selling Star Wars figurines, guitars, or your audience on a podcast. And

[Mark]: 00:43:12

the challenges, I think the challenges came in the earlier days where there wasn't

[Mark]: 00:43:18

much tech available to do decent programmatic, decent dynamic ad work within podcasts. That's

[Mark]: 00:43:27

getting better. That is getting better. You know, we do it. Every other host does it.

[Mark]: 00:43:34

But what happened was that the sponsorships became like the be all and end all. And you

[Mark]: 00:43:38

know, some people discovered the fact that you could do fixed price direct sales.

[Mark]: 00:43:43

And you know, obviously, Host Red was the real queen of the crop when it came to

[Mark]: 00:43:48

sponsorships because they performed much better. But what that did was it left

[Mark]: 00:43:53

creators with this problem. And it doesn't matter the size of the creator, it still left

[Mark]: 00:43:58

them with a problem. All right. So if I'm a brand. and I think I'm gonna take a punt

[Mark]: 00:44:02

on this podcast lark. I might allocate three or six months or even 12 months to this.

[Mark]: 00:44:12

But then I've got to go into a meeting later, or I've got to look myself if I'm like

[Mark]: 00:44:15

a small business that's took a punt on a smaller podcast, and I've got to say,

[Mark]: 00:44:19

what did that do?

[Mark]: 00:44:24

And it's really difficult to understand. Now, of course, we understand things like brand

[Mark]: 00:44:27

uplift. We understand the way to measure things like that. But again, like I said with

[Mark]: 00:44:33

my mum earlier, you know, the equivalent of my mum's listening mindset, which is I don't

[Mark]: 00:44:38

care what happens as long as I get the good stuff, is really, I don't care what happens

[Mark]: 00:44:45

as a marketer as long as I get the results at the end. But we can't show that, you know,

[Mark]: 00:44:52

so we started doing things like Go to this link with this coupon code, which is brilliant

[Mark]: 00:44:57

for some things and rubbish for others. Like, if I listen to a podcast, what are the

[Mark]: 00:45:05

chances of me mowing the lawn and thinking, oh, you bloody hell, you got me. That's right.

[Danny Brown]: 00:45:09

Yeah.

[Mark]: 00:45:09

I need this new mattress right now. I'm going to stop this lawn mowing. I'm going

[Mark]: 00:45:13

to get me a mattress. Doesn't work, all right? So it's very often about brand uplift

[Mark]: 00:45:20

and about recollection. And we know that, you know, from the Edison data, from

[Mark]: 00:45:22

the infinite dial stuff, We know that brand recall is really high amongst podcast

[Mark]: 00:45:26

listeners. For that reason, you get piping into the beret of someone. So yeah,

[Mark]: 00:45:30

I get that, but that's difficult to measure. So what that inadvertently did was

[Mark]: 00:45:35

it meant that in order to get the right number out of the bottom end, just standard

[Mark]: 00:45:38

marketing, you needed to put a pile of numbers in the top, which meant that in

[Mark]: 00:45:41

order to do that, you needed downloads and you needed shows that had big downloads.

[Mark]: 00:45:45

But that doesn't help you and I, the standard independent podcaster, that's doing

[Mark]: 00:45:48

this for a living. So that people to obviously direct sell at fixed price. That's

[Mark]: 00:45:56

great. I'm a big advocate of that model because I think there's a lot of power in those

[Mark]: 00:45:59

kind of niches or for our American friends, the niches, but you're wrong, the niches. And

[Mark]: 00:46:05

what went on then was people would, they'd find themselves having the same problem.

[Mark]: 00:46:11

All right, I will fix price this. I've got 250 listeners per episode. Give me a grand

[Mark]: 00:46:15

a month. It's a super tight audience. You'll definitely sell some stuff. But then

[Mark]: 00:46:18

they didn't because that... that relevance at the right time is not right. I'm not ready

[Mark]: 00:46:25

to buy the thing, but I know about the thing. So I'm at the attribution back to the

[Mark]: 00:46:29

podcast might not happen for six, nine, 12 months because I'm not ready for that mattress

[Mark]: 00:46:32

until a year later, but I still remember hearing it. So that caused a lot of people

[Mark]: 00:46:39

to then fret about, and this is at every level, by the way, this is not like just the

[Mark]: 00:46:43

Indies. This is people

[Danny Brown]: 00:46:44

Hmm.

[Mark]: 00:46:44

like Spotify offering big MRGs, minimum revenue guarantees to like Joe Rogan and whatever,

[Mark]: 00:46:49

signing bonuses or whatever. That's all stopped or certainly there needs to be

[Mark]: 00:46:55

a damn good business case for that sort of stuff and it's much lower cost than it was

[Mark]: 00:46:59

two years ago because they're having the same problems. I thought, well, how do

[Mark]: 00:47:03

I quantify all this stuff? So what that has led to is what we've always advocated at

[Mark]: 00:47:08

Captivate and what any person with any common sense whatsoever in any business role

[Mark]: 00:47:15

in any business in any country in the world has always advocated for eggs and bloody

[Mark]: 00:47:20

baskets. Right, don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you want to make money podcasting,

[Mark]: 00:47:26

don't make all your money from sponsorships. So this is about diversity in monetization.

[Mark]: 00:47:32

And we're seeing this a heck of a lot already. We're seeing it through memberships

[Mark]: 00:47:36

and subscription models, exclusive access, early access, windowed content. We're seeing

[Mark]: 00:47:41

it through tips, listener support. We're seeing all that sort of stuff that all the

[Mark]: 00:47:44

best hosts are really doing very, very well. There are some rudimentary implementations

[Mark]: 00:47:49

of that. but it can still work. And the point is that diversity monetization, spreading

[Mark]: 00:47:55

your eggs amongst many different baskets, activates a range of different fans. So it

[Mark]: 00:48:00

will activate the casual fans that wanna chuck you a fiver. It'll activate the people

[Mark]: 00:48:04

like you do with PodChat that wanna subscribe to the premium feed and get exclusive

[Mark]: 00:48:07

or early access content. It will allow you to do things like be selective over your

[Mark]: 00:48:12

sponsors. And guess what? If you do good work, you will get direct sponsorship,

[Mark]: 00:48:17

which... Theoretically, if you carry on doing good work, you should elevate yourself

[Mark]: 00:48:21

to being able to do dynamic programmatic marketplace style sponsorships, like spot sales,

[Mark]: 00:48:27

where this is all fed through an ad server. We enter the big leagues and we enter

[Mark]: 00:48:32

the realm of CPM based, cost per thousand downloads based advertising. So it's a progression,

[Mark]: 00:48:37

it's diversity in monetization. And those challenges exist at every single level.

[Mark]: 00:48:42

I know some of the biggest podcasts in the world who could and do. have CPM based

[Mark]: 00:48:48

sponsorships, they bolster their revenue with predictable recurring money that comes

[Mark]: 00:48:53

in every month from their membership subscribers. Because eggs in baskets. So it's

[Mark]: 00:49:01

a challenge, but it sort of isn't as well. And I think this is one of the, like

[Mark]: 00:49:08

one of the frustrating things about all the kind of guff that was perpetuated by

[Mark]: 00:49:11

the online

[Mark]: 00:49:15

2014 to 2018 ish when it was really prevalent. Like the, create a podcast and you

[Mark]: 00:49:25

will monetize it. I know you won't. You'll know this better than anyone. Build

[Mark]: 00:49:30

a website and they will come. No, they won't.

[Danny Brown]: 00:49:32

Hmm.

[Mark]: 00:49:32

Open a shop, they'll come. No, they won't. Put a song on Spotify, you'll get listens.

[Mark]: 00:49:37

No, you won't. Put a YouTube video, people will watch it. No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Mark]: 00:49:40

It requires a lot of other stuff. Marketing. So I don't like, it's not any more complex

[Mark]: 00:49:45

than anything else, but the difference is twofold across the entire podcasting industry.

[Mark]: 00:49:54

Listening is passive. It's not active. Like I'm looking at you now and we're actively

[Mark]: 00:49:58

engaged. I watch YouTube, I'm actively engaged. I watch The Mandalorian, I'm actively

[Mark]: 00:50:02

engaged. Podcasting is passive. So I've got to really get someone, you know, recollection,

[Mark]: 00:50:09

boom, boom, boom, hit me with a brand, hit me with a brand, hit me with a brand, hit

[Mark]: 00:50:12

me with a brand, hit me with a brand. So when I need the mattress, I'm like, that

[Mark]: 00:50:16

bloody brand that I heard on that podcast, oh, of course, that's what it is. The second

[Mark]: 00:50:20

problem is that, you know, if you build a business, you need to do all this same stuff.

[Mark]: 00:50:27

You get your first sale through a lot of hard work, a lot of marketing, a lot of

[Mark]: 00:50:32

promotion, a lot of people knowing about you. But a lot of the time that's your business.

[Mark]: 00:50:36

90 odd percent of podcasters that we talk to. are doing it because they love it.

[Mark]: 00:50:44

That's the equivalent of me spending two hours a week on my golf tops, going out

[Mark]: 00:50:51

there after the two hours a week and being like, why do I still slice it then? Because

[Mark]: 00:50:55

I don't have the time to do anything else. Of course, that's fine. It's a hobby.

[Mark]: 00:50:59

So I think podcasting has these challenges across the board. It

[Mark]: 00:51:10

like literally learn marketing and understand that it takes time. That's why we exist, is

[Mark]: 00:51:17

to help people with that. So yeah, a big complex issue I think that we could, again,

[Mark]: 00:51:22

we could spend a heck of a lot of time on, but it's, I think it warrants further discussion

[Mark]: 00:51:28

probably later down the line. Maybe we'll do this again with a couple of other

[Mark]: 00:51:31

people on as well, but there's a lot, there's a lot to that. But the basic, the basis

[Mark]: 00:51:35

is anyone can only make money. if other people know enough to want to be exposed to

[Mark]: 00:51:42

what they do. That's it, that's just the rule.

[Danny Brown]: 00:51:46

And it does seem that you mentioned Spotify, you mentioned the CPI model of a lot

[Danny Brown]: 00:51:50

of the bigger advertisers. It does seem that a lot of the news that came

[Danny Brown]: 00:51:52

out of the industry where Spotify's cutting exclusives, Amazon cut exclusives,

[Danny Brown]: 00:51:58

podcast agencies or media companies are closing down or laying people off. A lot

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:02

of that's based around those that are only really involved in ad model as

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:07

opposed to multiple streams of revenue. And that's, I know Captivates Our

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:13

goal with Captivate is to really help the indie podcaster grow the shop, save

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:18

time, save money, but grow and make money. So as you mentioned, you need to

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:23

learn marketing and you need to allocate time to that to really bring the

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:27

audience in that helps you get these listeners and XYZ into sponsors, revenue,

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:33

memberships, etc. If someone asked you as a podcaster, okay, there's 10

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:39

different things that I can do. What are the two or three things that I can

[Danny Brown]: 00:52:42

really focus on now to try and get to that stage?

[Mark]: 00:52:49

If I was going to grow a fresh podcast from scratch, I'd focus on two particular areas.

[Mark]: 00:52:54

I'd focus on short-term, near-sighted marketing, if you like, and long-term gain

[Mark]: 00:53:03

marketing. So I'll start with that one, actually. So the biggest thing you can do,

[Mark]: 00:53:07

and you can even use, I'm sure there are gurus selling courses on this. If you'd

[Mark]: 00:53:13

like to know, there is some right charlatans out there. Like you can even use chat GPT to

[Mark]: 00:53:18

just say, right, what are people looking for in my niche? You know, and so think about

[Mark]: 00:53:25

this as keyword research because the best way to build anything. is to always be

[Mark]: 00:53:33

present throughout the research cycle or the buying cycle or the listening cycle

[Mark]: 00:53:36

or the whatever cycle is to be like, you want to be the obvious choice. I used to

[Mark]: 00:53:41

make an analogy when I was doing speaking gigs around startups and business where if

[Mark]: 00:53:46

you imagine a sale at the end of a corridor, so you've got a corridor, you've got a leisure

[Mark]: 00:53:49

prospect, the person buying the thing that you're selling right down a hotel corridor

[Mark]: 00:53:54

and at the end, there's a door at the very, very end that you've got to get them

[Mark]: 00:53:57

through in order to sell them the thing. But out of each other door, on each side of

[Mark]: 00:54:01

them, on the corridor, is someone shouting an objection. What about the cost? What about

[Mark]: 00:54:05

the guarantee? Can you really afford this? Is it going to be crap? Is it going to

[Mark]: 00:54:07

be any good? What about these missing things? What about these things that you might

[Mark]: 00:54:11

not need? Your job at every stage is to be present enough to close down those objections

[Mark]: 00:54:19

before they get to the door. All right. So it's like, what about the price? No brainer.

[Mark]: 00:54:25

Look at all the value. What about trusting these people? Yeah, hello. They've answered

[Mark]: 00:54:30

all these other questions. These guys are the obvious choice for this. And it's the

[Mark]: 00:54:36

same with podcasting. If you are present for every time someone asks a question about

[Mark]: 00:54:44

anything in your niche and you've got a damn episode about it, you will gain listeners.

[Mark]: 00:54:49

That is it. That is a fact. That is a fact and I know that because that's how I've

[Mark]: 00:54:54

grown this year. That's how I've grown Captivate. Like how many times do we share

[Mark]: 00:54:59

the, here's a trailer format you can copy podcast episode, a

[Danny Brown]: 00:55:03

Hmm.

[Mark]: 00:55:04

lot of times, like if you Google podcast network business plan, one of my episodes is

[Mark]: 00:55:09

there just because that's the plan. Okay. So that's the first thing. short term,

[Mark]: 00:55:17

like near sighted stuff, you have to focus on not necessarily marketing but just

[Mark]: 00:55:24

promotion. Like just promotion. If you don't have time to learn marketing, get really

[Mark]: 00:55:33

good at saying, here's this new thing that I've released today. Here's how you get

[Mark]: 00:55:38

it and tell everyone you know about it. And that's really high level stuff. There

[Mark]: 00:55:42

are a lot of tactics that go with that. Do you use social? Do you use video? How, you

[Mark]: 00:55:45

know, what are your calls to action? How do you structure that? What toolkit do

[Mark]: 00:55:48

you use to do that? But that's the basis. Here's new thing. you enjoy it and tell everyone

[Mark]: 00:55:55

else that you know that might enjoy it to also enjoy it. That's why, like for Spark

[Mark]: 00:56:00

a Rebellion, a really good way to promote that is just turn up at Star Wars Celebration.

[Mark]: 00:56:06

Just turn up and have conversations. Guess what? How do we grow Captivate? All those

[Mark]: 00:56:13

speaking gigs, all of those conferences, all those friends that I've got so that when

[Mark]: 00:56:19

we launch Captivate, like the day we launched Captivate, we were... greatly profitable,

[Mark]: 00:56:23

literally the second that we enabled the sign up screen. We had people signing up

[Mark]: 00:56:29

because it was like, oh, it's Mark and Kieran. That'll be good. It's Mark and

[Danny Brown]: 00:56:32

Hmm.

[Mark]: 00:56:32

Kieran. Oh, that'll be good. And people told other people. So you've got to do the

[Mark]: 00:56:36

same with your podcast. So yeah, that's what I'd say. That's what I'd say. Again, a

[Mark]: 00:56:39

lot to that, a lot we could dig into with that one, but good question, dude.

[Danny Brown]: 00:56:43

So Mark, we talked about how you got your fire back right at the start of

[Danny Brown]: 00:56:46

the episode, which seems a long, long time ago. We talked about how you got

[Danny Brown]: 00:56:50

your fire back after a year away, and it's clear, speaking to you now about some

[Danny Brown]: 00:56:53

of the topics that we've discussed, there's a lot that you've got to say. So what's

[Danny Brown]: 00:56:59

next for the podcast accelerator, and what's next for you, and what's next for

[Danny Brown]: 00:57:03

Captivate?

[Mark]: 00:57:05

Well, for me and the podcast accelerator, it's more of the same. A lot of people say

[Mark]: 00:57:08

that, like, what's next for you? Now you're part of global. Are you off? Are you

[Mark]: 00:57:12

going to do different things? Like, no, this is just me. I could still be podcasting

[Mark]: 00:57:16

even if I didn't work in it. So it's just more of the same. It's, I said it last

[Mark]: 00:57:20

week on the episode, you know, we've got an amazing team with Captivate. You know,

[Mark]: 00:57:24

you're a huge part of it. We've got such a strong and confident team that I don't

[Mark]: 00:57:28

have to do a lot of the stuff that I used to do, a lot of the... The stuff that

[Mark]: 00:57:32

when you have a team, it's like micro management, but when you don't have a team,

[Mark]: 00:57:35

it's just getting your hands dirty. So I'm able to think like I used to do, like

[Mark]: 00:57:41

some of the big picture stuff, like the new features that we're putting out next

[Mark]: 00:57:44

week, some of the longer term planning for Captivate, some of the brand position with

[Mark]: 00:57:49

Captivate, again, some of the stuff that we're launching next week is very much

[Mark]: 00:57:51

a sort of subtle brand repositioning. So it's more of that, man. I love doing it.

[Mark]: 00:57:57

I am very fortunate. to work in an industry like you do that is just enjoyable. So it's

[Mark]: 00:58:02

more of the same. The accelerator, it's shifting to Thursdays from Mondays because

[Mark]: 00:58:06

it's silly to put out episodes on a Monday like what idiot thought that was a good

[Mark]: 00:58:09

idea. It's gonna be a mix of this stuff. So it's gonna be a lot of interviews with people

[Mark]: 00:58:16

who are genuinely great at what they do. It's gonna be a lot of my solo education.

[Mark]: 00:58:21

It's gonna be round tables. So it's gonna be very much education focused but probably

[Mark]: 00:58:25

an industry. level if you like sometimes you know bringing in education on the industry

[Mark]: 00:58:31

because I think that's the thing that the hobbyist podcaster sometimes feels alienated

[Mark]: 00:58:35

by is what's going on that I don't know about that I probably should know about and

[Mark]: 00:58:41

do I need to worry about it. So there's a lot of that going on. For Captivate, couldn't

[Mark]: 00:58:46

possibly tell you, you're going to have to turn up to the live stream on youtube.com

[Mark]: 00:58:50

slash Captivate podcasting at 4pm UK on the 16th of May. And I will say and I know

[Mark]: 00:58:55

you'll back this up. The new set of features that we're putting out next week are

[Mark]: 00:58:59

absolutely insane. They are, it is the most well done piece of kit, I think, on the

[Mark]: 00:59:05

entire market, dude. I think everyone's done such a good job of it.

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:08

Yep, no, I 100% backed that up. I've just been doing some testing this week

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:11

and I've been blown away and I had to share on Twitter. No screenshots,

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:14

obviously, because I value my life and limps. But yeah, it's super amazing.

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:19

I can't wait for the podcasters to get their hands on it.

[Mark]: 00:59:23

I love it man, I love it. Well listen, thanks for interviewing me mate. This has been

[Mark]: 00:59:28

a swap in roles which I'm fascinated by so I really appreciate it dude and we've

[Mark]: 00:59:33

mentioned it a few times but what are you working on? What's the thing? What's the

[Mark]: 00:59:38

thing? I know we've mentioned it a couple of times but what's the thing that you want

[Mark]: 00:59:41

people to get a hold of that you're producing dude?

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:43

Yeah, so thanks man. I enjoyed it. It's like it's different to be the interviewer

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:47

bit on someone else's show. That's like as a new one. I might have to look into

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:50

that as a niche niche, whatever. So yeah, you mentioned PodChat. Thank you for

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:54

that. That's fun enough on a little bit of a spring hiatus, but I'm getting

[Danny Brown]: 00:59:57

I've got a bunch of guests lined up for that. I do one minute podcast tips,

[Danny Brown]: 01:00:01

which I can't really explain any more than that. Just one minute podcast

[Danny Brown]: 01:00:04

tips and no deep dives. Nothing. They're just really short punchy things. So

[Danny Brown]: 01:00:08

you can basically find me whatever podcast I do. I've got some really fun hobby

[Danny Brown]: 01:00:11

ones that I do. Now and again, you can find all that at dannypod.com. And

[Danny Brown]: 01:00:16

obviously I'm on the Captivate team, so you can find me online. Any Captivate

[Danny Brown]: 01:00:19

questions, either fling them over at Captivate Audio on Twitter, or myself

[Danny Brown]: 01:00:23

at Danny Brown, CA.

[Mark]: 01:00:26

Legend, thank you my friend and to you the ever present and always appreciative listener.

[Mark]: 01:00:31

You are appreciated right back in return. We've got a lot of content coming up, I've

[Mark]: 01:00:36

produced a lot. We've got some great interviews coming up talking about YouTube,

[Mark]: 01:00:39

talking about community, talking about monetization and of course some solo education

[Mark]: 01:00:44

from me as well. So welcome back to the podcast accelerator. Keep sharing your

[Mark]: 01:00:49

voice because it matters to those who hear it. Until next time, take it easy, bye