192 | From Lawyer to Podcasting Pro: Alban Brooke's Journey & Buzzsprout Insights

[00:00:00] Hey, have you ever thought about ditching your career and chasing your passion? Who hasn't, right? Alban Brookes did just that, leaving law behind for podcasting. Now, as the head of marketing at Buzzsprout, he's telling us all the secrets on growing a killer podcast, why audio still reigns supreme, and wait, check this out. Did podcasting really save him from a life of reading asphalt contracts? Well, let's find out.

[00:00:31] What are you doing? Sound matters. Be heard. Welcome to the podcast where you get exclusive behind-the-scenes tips to make your own show sound truly spectacular. This is Podtastic Audio. What's happening? How are you doing today? Thank you so much for being here. I am Chris, and yeah, this is Podtastic Audio.

[00:00:59] You know, I designed this show and I created this show to help you create your amazing podcast. And one amazing tool to help you make that happen is Riverside.fm. Today's episode is brought to you by Riverside because when you're passionate about podcasting, you want every episode to sound its best. And guess what? Today's guest? Yeah, it was recorded entirely using Riverside.

[00:01:25] No matter where they are, your audio sounds crisp, video is sharp, and the conversation, it just felt effortless. So that's why I trust Riverside to bring my passion for podcasting to life. With Studio Quality According, your voice comes through loud and clear. Riverside's brand new AI-powered one-click video editor makes editing such a breeze. It removes the silences. It adds captions.

[00:01:53] It even does these cool, like, magic clips, which is great for social media. And you also can do this whole, like, multi-editing, multi-track editor so that it lets you fine-tune every detail so your passion shines through every single episode you do. Hey, if you love podcasting as much as I love podcasting, Riverside.fm is your tool that you need. Try it for free right now if you want to.

[00:02:18] And when you're ready to upgrade, use my discount code PODTASTIC for 15% off any paid plan. Because when you love what you do, and you should sound amazing doing it, Riverside.fm is where passion meets quality. So, hey, speaking of loving podcasting, have you ever wondered what it was like to leave behind, say, a high-powered career in law to dive headfirst into the world of podcasting?

[00:02:47] Well, today I'm joined by Albin Brook, the head of marketing at Buzzsprout. He went from analyzing legal briefs to helping thousands of podcasters build their shows. And he's here to share his incredible journey. So, here are some things we cover in this episode. We're talking all about the evolution of podcasting. Let's see, what makes a great show? We always want to know that.

[00:03:14] What about the power of audio over video? Yeah, you probably scratched your head wondering because everyone's saying YouTube is the next big thing and video, video first. We're going to talk about why audio is also probably even more important. And since Albin works directly for Buzzsprout as the head of marketing of Buzzsprout, I know a lot of you host directly on Buzzsprout.

[00:03:38] So, we dive into all about Buzzsprout and all the cool new features that Buzzsprout has put in place for you as a podcast host, especially that really cool text the show feature. It's super cool. If you haven't tried it yet, you got to put it in place. If you are on Buzzsprout or your listeners can text you directly, hey, they got some super cool things going on over there at Buzzsprout. You got to check it out.

[00:04:01] But the very first thing I want to know is how do you transfer from being a lawyer into being a head of marketing for podcasting at Buzzsprout? Like, how do you make that jump from lawyer to podcaster, now podcast professional for a podcast company? How does that happen? I did go to law school, practice for probably a year and a half. And I'd been a paralegal before that and been around the legal field.

[00:04:28] But pretty quickly knew that it wasn't the life for me. I think just quite a few things made it pretty obvious in the beginning. Worked with a lot of good people, but did not enjoy the work one bit. So, I was fortunate enough about 10 years ago, a little bit more now, made the switch. And I knew I wanted to be in software. And luckily, I really enjoyed podcasting back then and found Buzzsprout. What year were we talking here? 2014. So, it's like 11 years ago. Yeah.

[00:04:58] I think of, you know, when Serial was just about to launch is when I said, I'm moving over to podcasting. So, it was a good time to make a move. But how do you make that move though? Like, were you already listening to podcasts or did you just like say, that sounds like something good I want to do? So, the first time I remember listening to podcasts was probably like 2006 or so. So, I used to subscribe on iTunes and then load up an iPod and go for a run.

[00:05:26] And then I taught school overseas in rural Haiti. And we really didn't have electricity, let alone internet. But every once in a while, I'd get to like an internet cafe and I would just download podcasts onto my iPod. And I, you know, listened to a handful of shows. There really weren't all that many shows in iTunes back then. But I'd listened to these shows and really enjoyed them and kind of became a super fan of a few podcasts.

[00:05:56] And, you know, just the happenstance of life, one of my good friends is, was a programmer at Buzzsprout, still is. And we would talk all the time and I'd be like, man, I love podcasting. And, you know, talk this big game about how much I disliked my job and how cool his job was. And I was like, you know, if you ever got me an interview there, I would crush it. And one day he came home and said, hey, the guy who's leading marketing decided to leave. Why don't you come in for an interview?

[00:06:26] And everything got very real, very fast. And so I decided to leave law. It was a very big shift. I was newly married, but it worked out really well. So what kind of law were you covering? Was it like divorce law? Was it criminal law? Was it what? Well, everything I ever did was commercial litigation. Sounds like fun. It sounds like a blast, man. Lots of, I mean, the last year and a half of my law life was spent reading.

[00:06:53] Millions of documents about the port that had been built in Jacksonville that had some issues with the asphalt. Oh, really? It was just this kind of mind numbing work. And I, you know, a lot of what appealed to me about podcasting and about software is if you do a couple hours of really good work in, you know, software, that could be the game changer for you.

[00:07:20] You know, really a couple hours of really good marketing might be really, really impactful. But in law, everything is built around the hourly rate. You know, you're billing as many hours as possible. And so I just kind of kept seeing, you know, the smarter you are and the harder you work, it doesn't really matter as much as how many hours you work. Really? That's interesting.

[00:07:43] So I would end up, you know, seeing lots of people who were 10 years my senior and they're working very hard. They're very smart. They're very diligent. And yet it really, really mattered how many hours were they putting in. And so you'd have people who would work 12-hour days on a Saturday and people who'd call in to say goodnight to their kids at night because they were never home at night. And, you know, I just kind of kept seeing this.

[00:08:13] My dad's an attorney and he always warned me against going to law school. So everything had kind of combined to pretty quickly come to the realization, yeah, this was not what I wanted to do. But when you're still young, it's, you know, feasible to take the pay cut, make the switch and figure out a new path. That's usually not the case, though. A lot of people will, like, follow the career that puts them in the best position to make the most money as quickly as possible.

[00:08:41] And I would think being a lawyer would put you in a great advantage to have that happen and to kind of sidestep that and to go into podcasting. You must really, really love podcasting to make that happen. Well, so coincidentally, I think the big thing that convinced me to change, or at least one of the things I thought about a lot, was a podcast episode. At the end of law school, I passed the Florida bar and I'm looking for a job.

[00:09:12] And while I'm looking for jobs, I just need something to do. And so a guy at church had a lawn crew and I went and just mowed lawns. So it was something to do during the day just to kind of have a bit more structure. And I would listen to podcasts pretty much nonstop while I'm edging. And I listened to the entire or at least a big portion of the back catalog of the Freakonomics podcast.

[00:09:38] And they had an episode about quitting and about all this research about people who have kind of this sunk cost fallacy. You know the relationship you're in is not working and it's probably not going to ever shift. But you've been with someone for two years, you kind of feel like you should get married actually because you put so much time into it. The house that you're in, you've worked on a lot of projects even though it never will be exactly what you want.

[00:10:05] There's so many examples where we just kind of stick with something. And they talked about careers and quitting and shifting careers. And I remember this distinct moment. And I know what house I was mowing. I know where I was. And I remember thinking, well, of course I would quit. Of course I would shift jobs. Of course I would, you know, give up on the failed relationship and I'd find the right person for me.

[00:10:33] You know, and that idea went through my head. And I remembered that episode and that thought over and over again during that year and a half of practicing law. Where I'm like, I know with complete clarity, this is not what I enjoy. I enjoy the money, but I don't enjoy that. I have no time to spend it.

[00:10:54] And pretty obvious law has in law that lawyers will call it the golden handcuffs that you start making more and more money, but you accelerate your lifestyle. And so everybody eventually has their kids in private school and you're wearing really expensive suits and you're driving a BMW and you're a member of country club because you kind of need to be in a country club to get good clients.

[00:11:20] And before you know it, unless you're making $240,000, you're broke. And that sounds kind of nutty, but the idea is you are kind of amping your lifestyle so that you can be a better lawyer. But you got to pay to play, man. You got to pay to play. And I didn't really care to drive a BMW or wear nice suits or be part of a country club. And so I was like, those aren't going to be benefits.

[00:11:47] Those are only going to be things that kind of lock me in to I definitely can't quit five years from now. I won't be able to quit once I have kids. And so it's kind of a realization. I'm getting near the end of the time where it'll be easy to switch careers. Right. So how long were you doing that, though? You think before you made the jump? How long was I anticipating that I should leave? Yeah, well, that too. Yeah.

[00:12:13] I mean, I think I probably wouldn't have finished law school if I'd have been financially wealthy enough to just eat the debt. Right. But I only practiced law for a year and a half. Wow. Well, good for you, man. I'm glad that you're doing something you're actually enjoying and you love. Now, have you been doing the marketing side of Buzzsprout the entire time you've been there? Or did you kind of bounce around different positions? The position itself has changed. I think I probably had near the same title the whole time. But I've been doing marketing.

[00:12:41] But in the beginning, we didn't have a support team either. So I was doing all customer support. And it was really just, you know, four of us in a very small office. Four for the entire team of Buzzsprout? The whole employees is four? Four. I mean, I think that, yes. And we only had two co-founders, a designer. So I guess there were five of us. Still really small.

[00:13:07] Now, that early on in the stage in Buzzsprout's, you know, history, was there a lot of clients for Buzzsprout? A lot of people on podcasts were ever using Buzzsprout at that time? We, I don't know the exact number of, you know, people who were on free accounts and were actively using Buzzsprout. But it was something like a total of 2,000 active shows. Probably a bit less when I started.

[00:13:32] And Buzzsprout, when Buzzsprout was kind of like in the early stages, were there a lot of other competitors at the time? I know now there's a ton of them. But back then, you know, I mean, I know Libsyn was around forever, but I don't know how many other hosting platforms there were back then. There were. So there were the Blueberries and there was Libsyn and Podbean and probably Spreaker too. But there are also other ones like Podomatic that kind of faded.

[00:14:00] And they were pretty much the entire history of podcasting. And there have been new people who will kind of enter the space and start working in podcasting. And, you know, some of them fade away and some turn out to be pretty good. We've had a couple competitors launch since I've been in the space that have turned out to have some staying power. Anchor obviously being the biggest. But there were pretty good competitors back then. And, but Libsyn was the really big one. Right.

[00:14:29] They were significantly larger than us. In 2014, before I joined the team, two people went to the very first podcast movement. And they met one Buzzsprout customer at the entire conference. Wow. And they came back with two insights. One was, oh, we only had one customer there. So this market is much larger than we thought. And two, they saw the other software.

[00:14:59] So they saw other competitors. And they're like, this, our competitive landscape is we are much simpler. And we're much easier to get started. And we're much more user friendly. And everybody else has these incredible features for an extremely techie audience because they all grew up in 2004 with people who were like, I'm manually coding, you know, writing this RSS feed. But if you're going to do it for me, that's a benefit. So a very technical audience.

[00:15:29] So our benefit was, oh, we have a little bit more of an idea of who our audience is, who our target market is. And overall, this market is much larger than we thought. Yeah. That's one thing I love about Buzzsprout because I've used Buzzsprout. And you guys have a very simple user interface. And even today, I don't know what it was like back then, but today it's incredibly easy to use. I've used probably four or five different podcast hosts that I've played with.

[00:15:58] And yours seems to be the easiest and simplest to use. And the layout's very good. It's always evolving. I love you guys that you're always evolving your layout and your features. And some of the cool features, like you have that amazing text feature built right into the app. Was it text to show or whatever? Does that work with the podcasting 2.0 features? Or is that something different than that? I don't know, you know? No, it doesn't work with the cross-app comments.

[00:16:26] I think the cross-app comments are kind of this holy grail. That would be just an incredible thing that if we could get that to work and all the apps would respect it and people could comment and then the comments would show up somewhere else. But that just was born out of us podcasting. So we were on Buzzcast and there's an episode where Kevin, I think, says something like, for the new year, we got to figure out a way for customers to reach out.

[00:16:54] And we tried PodInbox and we tried people recording messages and sending them in and email. And we tried everything. We had Twitter conversations. Anything we could do to try to get our audience to reach out. And I just had this account where I'd been using to send mass text to people when we went to conferences just to message the 200 people from Buzzsprout and say,

[00:17:23] hey, we're all going to meet up at this bar. We'd love to buy you a drink or something. And so I had this system set up. And so I just put into the show notes, hey, shoot us a text. Tell us what you thought about this episode. And we talked about that. And that was our little experiment. And whatever the number was, we got so many responses that for the next episode, we didn't report how many people wrote in because Kevin had already, who's on the show,

[00:17:53] had already said, oh, we're going to have to build this into Buzzsprout. This has got to be our next feature because it was so effective for us. Podcasting really is a one-way street. You know, it's from the host to the audience. But if you're the host, even with fairly large shows, you may not hear back from people very often. I mean, go look anywhere on the web where, you know, YouTube, somebody might have a pretty robust channel,

[00:18:21] but they're not getting a ton of comments or newsletters with lots of email addresses that don't get a ton of replies. We, as creators, you don't get a ton of feedback, at least as much as I think audience fans think they would. Yeah, like when I first launched the other show, we started to put an email together. And I threw it on one of the episodes. I mentioned we have an email and it's their email address or whatever. And I'm like, the next day, log into the email, like looking for all the emails. Like, where is everybody?

[00:18:50] You know, not even there. But I do think the text feature, so basically the way it works is that in any single app, this little button shows up, right? Text the show or tech was it's called Texas show, I think at the very top. I've seen it and it happens on every single player that every app, I guess, has it. You click it and it opens up your messages app on your phone. And then you can send a message directly to the show and they see it on their Buzzsprout account inbox. That's the way I understand how it works. Yes.

[00:19:19] But it only works one way. It only works one way. And the reason it's beneficial is you can just have a link that went to like write a message on a message forum or something. But then everybody has to log in. People have to manage credentials. And then it feels like a big deal. Yeah. If there's a login, I click something and then I have to like log in with a password and account something. I'm like, I'm out. I checked out. That's my, I'm done. Right.

[00:19:48] And what does work is people will click that. It opens up the text messaging app that they already use. And it just says like, send a message and, you know, keep this little code on it so we know where to route that text. And people will then write something about the episode. And there's so many built in assumptions around texting. You know, it's mostly pretty short. It's casual. You don't have to feel overly formal.

[00:20:18] But when you send an email, you know, if I'm going to email one of my favorite podcasters, I'm thinking about it. I want to make sure it's perfect. I want to write it in a way that they'll like it. And now I've kind of blown this experience up to where I'm like, ah, I'll just, you know, move on. I'm not going to write them. But it really is powerful when it's just a text message and you go, oh, and you just write, love the show, exclamation point. And you move on. And we get a lot of those podcasts.

[00:20:47] As you say, I love the show. And you can kind of see like the same person wrote in four times over the course of a year. And I can kind of see their threads. It's great. Yeah. Now with that thing, can you actually send pictures too or is it just text? I think right now we've just got it set up to be SMS. So. That's just text based then? Yeah. And there's, you know, some kind of privacy considerations there too.

[00:21:15] If we start having photos come through, then we're more worried. Like are people getting spam? Are they getting inappropriate messages? Or. Oh, yeah. What do we have to start censoring? A lot of people. I think some of those like, let's just say more risque female type shows are probably getting a lot of inappropriate images. Probably emailed to them. I would think I've heard stories about that kind of stuff. So I only can imagine if it's incredibly easy to do with your phone, just click, click, you're done or whatever. But I think it's an amazing feature.

[00:21:45] I don't know if anybody else is using that feature. I think it's fantastic. I think you do have to tell if you are hosting on Buzzsprout right now, you have to let everybody know that you can text the show with the little link on the show notes. Otherwise, they probably won't know to do it because I don't know how many people actually look at show notes as frequently as or at least they're looking for links for the most part. That's probably the main reason people actually look at show notes.

[00:22:09] So if you have a regular show, an ongoing show, you're just doing your thing and you never mention anything in the show notes, people probably won't go there for much of anything. Yeah. So for Buzzcast, we end every episode with one call to action. And it's we ask a specific question. And the way to answer that question is to tap the link in the show notes and send us what you think. And so we have, you know, a question.

[00:22:34] We talked about like creators journeys on a recent episode and how some people will start out as a blogger and then they start podcasting and then they move to video. And the point we were trying to make was you kind of just need to start somewhere. You don't have the fully formed idea of what you're going to do in five years. That's not likely accurate yet. There's going to be a lot of twists and turns you don't anticipate. And so that was the point we're trying to make.

[00:23:02] So we're trying to get people to share like what was your creator journey? And when you get it's the ease of a text message, people text and they fire off a message, then it becomes pretty easy to start collecting all of those. And people realize, oh, I can't text the show. So sometimes they're writing in answering the question. Sometimes it's just a thought about another segment. Right, right. So I did notice that when you do read them back, you'll say the location they came from.

[00:23:29] So when you see it on your end, when somebody texts the show and you're in, you just see the location and the message or do you see the name or what do you see? What do you see on your end? We are just looking at that area code and then, you know, figuring out. Okay, so it's an area code. Or that's a Jacksonville, Florida area code. And so we, that's what we'll display inside of Buzzsprout. Okay. Okay. Somebody from Jacksonville, Florida. And often I can see the same person is written in four times and we kind of will pull those all together.

[00:23:59] And maybe at one point they'll say, oh, this is Chris from Podtastic Audio. And then we go, okay, so you wrote that the first time. Now I can scroll down and still see who it is. So we'll, at that point, stop saying where you are in San Diego. Instead, we'll just say who you are. Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, for privacy reasons, does it show the number, the full phone number on your end? No, we don't do that. I think we show last four just to help you differentiate.

[00:24:30] That's kind of wondering because I guess you can get someone who always pulls phone numbers. I don't know if that's. You could, I would argue that's not really a privacy concern because if I click a link in the show notes and text a number, I kind of expect, you know, if I text your show, I expect you now to have my number and be able to respond. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

[00:24:53] But we didn't want, we went, let's launch something to start that we don't have to worry too much about spam. We don't have to worry too much about inappropriate content. We don't have to worry too much about getting a weird interaction between hosts and, you know, now somebody's responding through the bus route system. And do we now have to like monitor what people are saying to each other?

[00:25:23] So we just made it easy. The big problem to solve was we needed a way for podcast listeners to quickly and easily message their show and just say, Hey, I really enjoyed this episode. Hey, this is a something I really liked that you talked about or here's my differing opinion. And that's exactly what fan mail does. It's great stuff, man. Have you heard anything from Buzzsprout users about that feature?

[00:25:51] Have you heard me write in or any comments or any suggestions or anything like that? I mean, I've, I get messages every day. Wow. So for our shows, we don't read everyone on the podcast because some are not going to be pertinent to the discussion, but, you know, I'll even have people who reach out, you know, a different way, Twitter, text me personally. And I'll say, Hey, if you want this, this to be captured in the podcast and, you know, shoot us a text to this number,

[00:26:19] because then I'll have it, especially when I'm setting the outline for next episode, I'll see like, Oh, a Steven Robles from Riverside reached out. I want to make sure I talk about his differing opinion on video podcasting. And so we're able to discuss that in the next episode. So, Hey, speaking of video podcasting, I know you're not much of a fan for video podcasting as some other people are. I'm not really either. I'm more of an audio guy.

[00:26:46] What are your thoughts on everyone's saying that the future of podcasting has got to be video? Well, it's not that I hate video podcasting. It's that there's a lot of downsides to video podcasting that we are not really appreciating. And most people who start creating stuff online quit almost immediately. This is true for social media. This is true for blogging.

[00:27:15] This is true for newsletters and websites and video and YouTube and podcasting as well. It everywhere. We all think, wouldn't it be cool if I had a really awesome Instagram page where I shared stuff about my favorite baseball team and we do it like two posts and then we move on. And anybody who's created stuff online could probably tell you a dozen things that they said, I'm going to launch this. This is the big idea. And they quit very soon.

[00:27:44] In the same way we're talking about my journey through law or the journey for creators, you don't really know what the future holds for this project. You kind of just need to start and then evaluate again in a few weeks and in a few weeks and a few weeks and be okay that like the path won't be directly straight. It's going to meander.

[00:28:07] And so with that in mind, I think the big hurdle for most people is you've got to start something. And, you know, the worst thing I can do as somebody who writes a lot for Buzzsprout or creates content for Buzzsprout is when somebody shows up and says, hey, I want to learn about podcasting. The very worst thing I can do is say, great. So to be successful at podcasting, we've got to start the podcast. We've got to start video.

[00:28:36] We've got to start social media. And we've got to start collecting a newsletter. And maybe if you do a blog and a Patreon, then you could really be successful. And they go, oh, or I could do none of that and go back to my normal job that I do 40 hours a week. And I've got kids and I've got hobbies. So forget that podcasting thing. Sounds like too much work. So what is the downside of video? The downside of video is it's an order of magnitude more difficult. You have to deal with how you look.

[00:29:05] And you're going to now do your hair. And you're going to have to do makeup maybe. And you're going to figure out lighting. And you've got to figure out $1,000 camera and all of this equipment. Not to mention editing the video. And now we're getting a more expensive computer to edit the video. And we're uploading. And we're dealing with weird comments on YouTube. Endless number of tasks. And we're adding those on top of the podcast.

[00:29:34] And the podcast is, for a lot of people, that's pretty daunting. You know, I don't like the sound of my own voice. And I don't know if I sound like all that smart. And that's enough. That's enough to deal with in the beginning. How do I talk into a microphone? What's good mic technique? You know, just the very, very basics. And that's why I want to be the bit of a voice against video podcasting.

[00:30:03] It's not that if you're already shooting video and you're comfortable with video and you think it's not a big deal, I don't understand what Alvin's saying. Then I think you're totally fine. Keep putting on YouTube. But if you're a new creator, do one thing. Don't do two things. Definitely don't do six. You know, and if you feel like audio podcasting, like real podcasting, is where you're drawn to, go for it.

[00:30:28] But if you feel like what I'm really drawn to is writing and I really enjoy writing, podcasting was just another thing on top of it. Then let's put podcasting aside for a bit and just focus on the writing portion or the YouTube portion. But you don't need to do all of it at once. Just start with something so that you're very likely to continue doing this something for more than, you know, just one episode. Right, and the less complicated you make it, the easier I think it becomes for people.

[00:30:57] I know some people come in and they think they have to have like all this gear, all this stuff, all this, you know, like you said, all the social medias, like everything going, all the cool graphics. The graphics don't look correct or the intro or the lighting or the cameras don't look right and all this nonsense. I don't have the SM7B microphone, so it's got to be that or it's not even considered a podcast or whatever.

[00:31:19] But I like to call podcasting or I call it podcasting classic is what I call it because, you know, it's what really it is, audio podcasting, which I always thought of podcasting the way I looked at radio is that podcasting is the only form of media you can actually consume doing anything else at the exact same time. Right, it respects that you have a life. Right. Every other social platform is like, I need all your attention. 100%.

[00:31:45] I need to fully be present with YouTube and locked in on TikTok. And if you are around somebody who's listening to a podcast, you might listen to it together or they might be out for a run and doing something else. But if they're watching YouTube, they're not also going for a run holding their phone and they're definitely not on TikTok and also engaging with you in a conversation. Like they're mutually exclusive. So that's why I'm really drawn to radio.

[00:32:15] I'm really drawn to audio books and really drawn to podcasts. I think that's why audio books were invented because people were busy and they wanted to like listen to or read their book, technically, you know, listen to their book, which, you know, kind of like reading while they're busy doing other things at the exact same time. That's why I love audio. I love podcasting. I'm listening to podcasts while I do the dishes, especially at work because I drive for work for a living. I'm constantly in the vehicle. So that's how I got drawn to podcasting in the first place. How I got started was I listened to a lot of morning radio.

[00:32:44] I love morning radio. And then I went to working night shift. I'm like, well, I can't work for the morning radio anymore. But then I discovered podcasting and then morning shows were putting their broadcast on a podcast. So now I can listen to them whenever I want, like as convenient for me. Almost like if you remember when DVR is first hit the scene and everyone's like, I don't have to wait eight o'clock to watch my favorite show. I could record it and watch it whenever I want, which I think is fantastic. And then that's the beauty of podcasting. I guess it's kind of the same way YouTube works, too.

[00:33:13] But YouTube for me has always been, I'm going to go on vacation and show you what we did. Here's our vacation. Here's our stuff. Here's us at the beach. Here's us here. Here's a Disney world. Here's us doing something rather than here's us. Look at us. Talk about the thing we just did. You know, that's kind of where I look at the difference between video podcasting.

[00:33:31] I think some of the best video like podcasting shows are very expensive with studios and celebrities and they're all in the same room and they're highly produced. It's almost like a radio station, really, what they are. So now if you're going to jump into that space. Or it's a TV show. I mean, a lot of them. Or like any TV show. Yeah, like Night Show or Tonight Show or that kind of stuff. So now you're competing with that. Good luck. So, you know, it's much harder to get into, I think.

[00:34:01] And the nice thing about podcasting is because the barrier to entry is so low, you can get your audio quality to be relatively close to a very big show without much investment. You can get a lot of shows are unscripted. And so you're going to, you can, after, you know, a bit of work, get pretty good at good podcasting and crafting a good story. Now you're just bringing your own expertise and whatever is interesting to you.

[00:34:31] So if you've spent, like somebody I've met your whole life, setting up coin-operated laundry mats, and now you want to share that expertise. Well, podcasting, you can do it through a podcast. And pretty quickly, you're going to be good enough at the podcasting part that you're good because you're bringing this whole wealth of information about coin-operated laundry mats. Fascinating stuff, man. Is that still a thing, though? I think everything went to that digital cards now.

[00:35:01] I don't give any use of cones for anything anymore. I'm sure that now they're not coin-operated. They're all credit card-operated. But, you know, for lots of people, you're bringing this expertise to video or podcasts or some other medium. And what I want to do is help people get as quickly from, I am an expert or I'm an opinion person or something. I have something interesting about me.

[00:35:30] Help me get over the hurdle of learning the technical aspects of podcasting so that I can get my message out to the world. And we want to make that process as easy as possible. That's our job as Buzzsprout, but it's also my job as a marketer, helping write guides and also thinking through this problem that we pretty much only started seeing about 2020,

[00:35:56] which was everybody started hearing, oh, podcasts are really big on YouTube. Podcasts are really big on Spotify and they're video podcasts. So I need to be doing video. But now there's research that of the top shows in the whole world, a good portion of them are not doing video. And almost none of them are putting video on Spotify.

[00:36:19] Yet those are the stories that all of the experts and the gurus and the influencers were all handing each other. But if the biggest shows in the world aren't all doing it, definitely my small show about coin operated laundromats does not need to invest in $4,000 of video equipment. Right. Definitely. You know, 2020 was quite a year for podcasting. I got in just before that. And then next thing you know, it was a big wave.

[00:36:49] Everybody do a podcast. That's why this show launched. Because everybody was asking me questions about podcasting and stuff. Well, maybe I'll make a second show about podcasting. Here it is. But I never thought of the show being a video podcast. That's why audio is in the name. You know, it makes sense. So I know for me, video has always been great for showing people stuff and showing things. And I think that if you're going to do great, a great like talking head video, I think you have to run a lot of B-roll kind of effects and a lot of different things, showing different things.

[00:37:17] And even that, I think, this is my personal opinion. I think for YouTube videos to be successful because the attention rate is so low on a YouTube video that you have to be short. Like fairly short. Not real short, but maybe you can be like five to ten minutes short to the point and lots of different visual fluff being thrown on the screen. Just to kind of keep someone's attention for the entire time. And the thing I have about video, but especially YouTube, is that if you look at the YouTube screen, you got the video you're watching, then you got all these other videos.

[00:37:46] Hey, check these out. Check these out. And I think it was you or somebody else said something about YouTube doesn't care what video you're watching as long as you're staying on their platform. Right. And that's all they care about. They don't. And so they're totally fine when I'm watching my woodworking video. And they're like, hey, if you're happy, we're happy because we're going to get to show an ad here in a second. But if they think for any reason that I'm starting to wander, they're going to pop up any other types of videos.

[00:38:15] So there aren't even going to be related woodworking videos. It's going to be like the truck video. And it's going to be best cameras to buy 2025 video. They're just going to throw anything they can up there. And as long as I'm staying on YouTube and just clicking, clicking, clicking, then they're perfectly happy. They don't build audience loyalty as in some way that podcasting does. That's very true.

[00:38:40] We talk about podcasting having a discoverability problem, that it's hard to find new shows. But that is a bit our kind of the saving grace of podcasting. It's hard to find a new show. So when you do, you kind of stick with it and you're a bit more loyal. I have multiple podcasts that I've listened to for five plus years, but I don't have many YouTube channels that I've watched for five plus years.

[00:39:07] And I have, you know, the back, it's more similar to the age of blogging, where if you found a really good blogger, you kind of stuck with them for a while because it was hard to find somebody who wrote in a way that you found compelling. But with TikTok and with social and YouTube, they're all totally creator agnostic. And they're like, hey, you made that one good video one time.

[00:39:32] So we showed it to a lot of people, but you got to keep performing or we're going to, you're not going to get any audience at all. And you see. The algorithm just kind of like, it's algorithm on YouTube. All those social media platforms have an algorithm and you got to play nicely the algorithm and get on their good side. And one thing about YouTube is that I noticed I subscribe to probably a hundred different channels on YouTube, on different platforms. And I rarely see those being put in my feed or whatever.

[00:40:00] Sometimes I do, but I see a lot of the other stuff I'm not even subscribed to. Because YouTube knows like, hey, you like, you've seen videos on this subject matter. Here, we'll throw you a bunch of those ones. But with podcasting, the only shows I see pop up in my podcast app are the ones I subscribe to. Right. That's it. And the algorithms are always leaning towards the revealed preference. The thing that you are likely to click, not the stated preference, the thing that you say you want.

[00:40:28] And podcasting allows you to be a bit more of like the idealized version of yourself. You know, I want to be a good dad. So I really want to find, oh, I found a great podcast about becoming a better father. And I'm going to click on that. But if you are over on Instagram and you're all worried about, you're thinking about, oh, I'm going to follow these accounts because I want to be a better dad. They're still going to throw tons of like trucks in there as well. And you're going to spend all your time watching like golf recap videos and truck videos.

[00:40:57] Because when you're presented with them side by side, whatever you're more likely to click is what they're going to show you. And they'll pretty quickly hone in on that and just show you that 100% of the time. But with podcasting, it's not curated by the algorithm. It's curated by me. And so when I have a show that starts like degrading into being kind of like a political show rather than the tech show that I used to love, you just go, okay.

[00:41:25] And you unsubscribe and you're not, you can just go, I'm okay on letting politics invade all of my life and I move on to other things. Right, right. Gosh, politics, my goodness. So many of those shows, it came up and a lot of things pop up during the election year and a little bit after it now.

[00:41:40] It seems like with podcasting I've noticed too, or let's just say social media in general, there is a popularity with bad stories that pop up, I think, versus the sunshine and rainbows type of story. Because bad news spreads quicker, I think.

[00:41:58] And I wonder with podcasting, if people are leveraging that to get their podcast, hopefully marketed easier and quicker by having either damaging headlines or clickbait headlines or maybe just something along those sorts. Have you seen anything like that with Buzzsprout or anything in your travels? I mean, there's tons of podcasts that we see. So sometimes I'm sure some of them are launched on Buzzsprout and the way that they will try to gain a following is by being more sensationalist.

[00:42:28] It works less well on a podcast because you're not constantly getting tons of exposure to new people. You're going to do that somewhere else. So, you know, if you spend a whole episode diving into some political controversy, you still have to go out onto social media to spread it to a bunch of people to try to get people to click through and listen to your dumb opinion on your podcast.

[00:42:56] Hey, what are your thoughts on all the AI-generated shows with the notebook LLM that have come out? I think there's a bunch now. I haven't checked the numbers, but there's a lot. I think it's like slightly interesting, but only slightly. It's very impressive that it technically works. So you upload a ton of documents and Google runs through them all and then kind of simulates a conversation with the AI hosts.

[00:43:25] And if I was, you know, for some reason, I had these documents for school and I needed to learn a topic area, but I didn't have time. And I could throw them into notebook LLM and kind of listen to them on the go. That may be good. That may be somewhat valuable for me.

[00:43:44] But what we've really seen happen is a bunch of people automate, probably through like RSS readers, the collection of AI news. And then they take all that AI news and they throw all of it into notebook LLM and create a notebook LLM podcast about what's happening in AI. And they do nothing else.

[00:44:06] And then they want to upload that to the web and promote their AI news podcast, which is just regurgitating the same stuff. And I love all the things that these AI tools afford us. But you want to still have a person in the middle of it directing it like from a taste perspective. You know, you've got to be somewhat there saying what is valuable?

[00:44:36] What stories do you find interesting? Or you be the host and you discuss it so that there's something different. But if all you're doing is you're just collecting the same news source, you're throwing it into this generator, no one's going to listen to that. Who's the target market? You've just figured out how to create it. Well, I think it's very fascinating. I mean, I've toyed with it a little bit. But just to see what it said about my podcast as a review, I've dropped my podcast in there.

[00:45:05] And you guys review my show, let me know what you think kind of a thing, you know. But a very funny and fascinating kind of stuff. It always seems very positive for the most part. Yeah, I did hear one that somebody did a while back where they somehow tricked the Google LM show to realize that they were fake the entire time. I don't know if you heard that one or not. And they kind of like were almost crying at the end, kind of like, oh my gosh, we're signing off. We're not really real or something like that.

[00:45:30] It was very fascinating, like realizing that if AI realizes that they are not real or how they look at themselves, like how they look themselves in the mirror. Or, you know, it's kind of like some movies that are like that too, where the AI robot realizes they're not really a human or something like that. I kind of find that stuff kind of fascinating. And I think there's a good place. I think there's good uses for that kind of stuff where you're trying to summarize an entire document down. And you get like the summary version of it.

[00:45:59] And you get the quick audio version of it. And they tell you in a way that doesn't sound so robotic. It sounds a little more human-like and a little more conversation-like. I think people do listen to podcasts for that conversation feel and that kind of that organic feel that if you're just reading a textbook, you're not going to get that. And I think a lot of podcasters come into podcasting, especially the ones that do solo shows. They just read a script or whatever.

[00:46:26] And I've seen so many shows or so many podcasters struggle with doing solo episodes. Like they can't, like them it's like poison. They can't do a solo episode. They rely on having a host. What are your advice or your thoughts for anybody who wants to start a podcast that is thinking that the only way to do a podcast is to do an interview style show? Wow. Wow. So because of what you just said, I need to give a shout out to a podcast, TalkCast, T-O-K-Cast.

[00:46:55] It's the Theory of Knowledge podcast. And the guy who does it, all he started by doing was he was a huge fan of the physicist David Deutsch. And he went and read chapter by chapter David's book, The Beginning of Infinity and go slowly through it and just said, hey, chapter one, here's some bits from the chapter. Here's what it means. Here's what he's referencing. Here's why it's important. End of episode.

[00:47:25] And took one book and pulled it apart page by page and did a podcast and did like 50 episodes on The Beginning of Infinity. One single book. And that is really valuable. That's a he's done very well with the podcast. It's given him a ton of opportunities to work in the field that he's really interested in.

[00:47:50] But he's helping people who are trying to learn about physics and epistemology. He's getting to help them learn about it through podcasting. It's a solo show. But he's got very well structured. You know, here's what I should talk about this episode because chapter one is what he's going to talk about. So it's very structured for him.

[00:48:18] He has another mind to kind of bounce off of. He's got the author's work. And he just goes and he discusses it. And it's valuable in a way that I don't think Notebook LM is. If you were to read a physics book and the way that it was being presented from Notebook LM was to kind of NPR-ish style hosts going, hmm, so what is it about epistemology that we find to be really interesting? Oh, yeah. Well, let's dive into that on this episode.

[00:48:48] And it's just kind of the same, you know, jokey podcast talk. Right. Which I love shows like that, but that's not the best way to learn about epistemology. So I would recommend anybody who wants to do a show and maybe doesn't have a co-host who is a good sounding board,

[00:49:09] maybe consider is like they're a book or is there a TV show or is there some body of work that you want to interact with and share your love of? You can just go piece by piece and create it as a podcast. And that body of work is going to be really valuable for anybody else who wants to do a deep dive. Nice. So that would be, I don't know, my recommendation. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic, man. That is great.

[00:49:37] I know some of that stuff is very deep and I can think, I can see how the AI, you know, chatbots try to make it kind of a lighthearted thing about something a little more serious sometimes. And I think that you're right that sometimes you want to get in there and learn it. Maybe you understand it in a way that might make sense to you, the listener or to the listener, I guess you should say. And I just seen a lot of shows that are so afraid of doing a solo episode. They're just like deathly afraid of it.

[00:50:05] And I was kind of afraid too the first time I did a solo episode and, you know, it wasn't easy. I went in and started doing it. But the way I do it, what works for me is I feel like I'm talking to another person that's sitting right in front of me that's not really there. An invisible person. That's how I do it. And yeah, it's not easy. It takes some time. It takes practice. It's like anything. Practice makes perfect, you know. It's kind of the way it is.

[00:50:28] So knowing that there are a lot of new or newish indie podcasters that are using Buzzsprout that I've seen, what are your advice to the people starting out in podcasting? What advice for any new podcaster? Delay your criticism of your own work as long as possible. You've got to get something out into the world before you start critiquing it. Your taste in the beginning is going to be very good.

[00:50:56] You know, you've grown up listening to really, really well-produced shows. And then you show up behind your brand new Samsung Q2U mic and you're nervous. And then you talk into it. And if you go back and listen with the taste that you have that's really well-developed, you will be so critical of your own work. And so critical that you'll just go, oh, we have to throw that away and do another one.

[00:51:25] Oh, throw that one away and do another one. Because your skills have not matched your taste yet. Interesting. And so what I would recommend people to do is like, you got to just get something out there and start putting it out into the real world. And we'll iterate and we'll clean it up and we'll get better at talking into mics. We'll do that over time. But in the beginning, the only goal is to publish something.

[00:51:51] And then to just commit to like, just do 10 episodes and don't worry about the quality. Just get 10 out there. Because once you've done that, now you've gotten over the fear. You've gotten a lot better at just getting it done. You're getting better at, oh, what, how do I put a show together? How do I collect sources? How do I edit quickly? And you're building all those skill sets. Now you can start being a little bit more critical.

[00:52:19] What's the one thing that I could improve? And you'll naturally get better through repetitions. The opposite way of podcasting is what I've seen way, way too many times. Very first conference I ever went to, I met somebody and he was like, oh man, I'm just started this podcast. I did an interview with Pat Flynn was my first interview. He had like five interviews that were all pretty impressive. And I was like, wow, that's great. So does this show up?

[00:52:48] No, no, no, no, no. I'm tweaking them. I'm cleaning up the editing. I'm like, okay. Yeah, I'm launching. And I think he had like a day, a couple months out. So the next year I go back to the same conference. And I'm like, man, how's the podcast going? I remember we talked last year. And he goes, yeah, you know, I've got a bunch of interviews. I'm working on editing some of them. And I was like, weren't you launching it last year? And he's like, yeah, yeah. But I realized like, I didn't know what I was doing. So now I've gone back and I've cleaned them up. And we met a third time. It was the final time.

[00:53:18] No way. And he was doing the same thing. And it wasn't, he was, it probably was. He had such high standards. He had no ability to get to his own high standards. Instead, he stalled out and he quit. Well, you don't want to do that. What you want to do is you get a good interview, record it, launch it, move on. Another good interview, record it, launch it, move on. And let's just get some repetitions in.

[00:53:47] And by doing that, you'll get much better. And you'll grow way faster than if you were trying to grow through, you're kind of just sitting at home re-editing the same episode over and over. You know, I've seen a lot of shows that do big name guests, like you're saying or whatever. They will like hope that that is a silver bullet to get their podcast to be, you know, top, top 1% of Apple or whatever it is, you know, think that there's one big name.

[00:54:15] And then they get that big name on the show and the big name doesn't share the episode or whatever. And they're kind of, you know, crying and pissed about it or whatever. So I personally don't think that a big name is the answer to get your show. It may help a little bit, but I don't think it's the answer to get your show out to the top of all shows. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it might work really well, especially if it's a great episode and they decide to share it. But that's not within your control.

[00:54:45] The only thing within your control is, Hey, I'm going to do my best with the time I have allotted for this podcast. And if that's two hours a week, well, let's do the best work you can do with two hours a week and figure out how you want to allocate that time and go for it. What does not work is, you know, getting that one guest and then going, yeah. Oh, as soon as she shares this episode, it's all going to blow up.

[00:55:12] Even if they do share it, it can really just be a dud. And it was, you know, they didn't get much pickup and the link was deprioritized in the algorithm. And so nobody made it over to the podcast and you go, oh, I had all my hopes invested in this one basket of this one interview. And now I feel crushed, but much healthier is just to rely on. I'm trying to grow. I'm improving as a podcaster.

[00:55:41] I'm improving as a marketer or I'm improving as a, you know, a subject matter expert. And my goal is not to be blowing up the podcast this year, but to act in a way that I can be doing this five years from now or six years from now. Because in the future, if I've put in the reps for year after year, I'm going to grow so much more than in so many ways that I had not anticipated. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

[00:56:11] Practice makes perfect. Not the other way around. So Alvin, this has been so great having you on the show today, Matt. I really appreciate you stopping by today and all your great wisdom and all your stuff with Buzzsprout. What an amazing company and what an amazing podcast host Buzzsprout is. All kinds of cool features you guys are putting out there. And it's such an easy, of all the podcast players, it's like the easiest to use. Very user-friendly. I absolutely love it, man. Thanks so much for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Hey, really quick here.

[00:56:40] Where can we find out all about you and all your wonderful stuff? Probably best way to reach me online is probably on Twitter. And if you want to learn about Buzzsprout, come over to buzzsprout.com and you can check out all of our podcast guides or you could go to the Buzzsprout YouTube channel or any of our socials and follow us there. Wow, that was fantastic. I want to thank Alvin once again for stopping by the show today. What an amazing conversation. What a great guy. I've listened to his show. I've listened to Buzzsprout's show.

[00:57:09] I use Buzzsprout for my client's show. They actually post over there at Buzzsprout. So I'm well aware of how to use Buzzsprout. Navigating their system. I think it's one of the easiest places to actually host a podcast on. They got so many cool resources, so many cool things. They're doing great stuff over there. If you want to create a podcast and you don't know where to host at, give Buzzsprout a try. So thank you once again for listening all the way to the very end of this episode.

[00:57:37] I do these episodes for you. Everything I do for podcasting and podtastic audio here, every single thing I do is to create amazing content to give directly to you, including a brand new book I just wrote. What? Did I just blow your mind? Yes. Yes. I wrote a brand new book. It's called The Podtastic Playbook. I'm going to be talking all about it in the very next episode.

[00:58:02] But for right now, you can find it on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, all online. It's The Podtastic Playbook. I'll put a link to it in the show notes here below on this episode. But the very next episode, I'm going to be talking all about that, what's in the book, where you can find it. And maybe I might be generous and give you a free copy. That's right. Stay tuned to the next one. And until then, happy podcasting.