Uploading... Ben Bradbury
For sure. I appreciate you guys having me on today. So story starts back in 2017. I got off the tube in London and put up a LinkedIn post, which was five apps you can use to be more productive. Post ended up blowing up. Little did I know I got into the content game at a good time where LinkedIn was favoring organic content and made a bit of my name for myself there and then started ghostwriting content, which led to hiring people, which led to becoming a freelancer, which led to starting a content marketing agency called astutely, where I'd pretend to be founders and ceos on the Internet, ghost writing for them, ghost writing a bunch of organic content. As you guys know, the kind of merging of organic and owned media has been converging over time. And for people who love sharing their voices online, the podcast is kind of the next natural extension of that.
So in parallel, I started my own podcast, subject matter, which I've run for five years, seven seasons, 150 plus episodes, which is really how I've learned the medium. And then just over two years ago, was approached by Adam and Becker, who were at the hustle and are starting this new media company called Workweek. And they said, we're looking for a podcast advisor to help us out. Maybe you can help us there. So I started as an advisor, which led to them acquiring my content agency, astutely, and my team, and then we built out the podcast network of work week. So kind of two years later, eight shows under our belt, four, five with content market fit and a bunch of virtual events and YouTube videos in between, it's been quite the roller coaster.
So we're really excited, especially to talk about a couple different things. Right. I think you've got tremendous experience working with content, producing your own shows, working with different founders. And the things that we really want to cover in this show are what it takes to make content successful and what it takes for someone who's creating content to be able to grow with it. So I think, why don't we start with if you were to launch a show, right, and you hadn't developed a show, you're going into a new show. Let's start with talking about what it actually takes to launch a new podcast, because I know it's something a lot of people do, but what's really important is going into thinking about what's my show about, how are we going to execute it, what are the concepts, how is it structured? So why don't we talk a little bit about what goes into creating a successful podcast before you even recorded the first episode?
Sure. I think there's three parts to launching a successful show. Start with the audience. Number two, figure out the creator's unique strengths. And number three, package it in a positioning that's going to differentiate you in the marketing. So first of all, we start with the audience. Great media operations. Think audience first.
So you need to understand their pain points. You need to understand where they live online. Is this a b, two b audience that's going to be on LinkedIn? Because you can bet you're going to be promoting your content using social clips, text graphics on that platform. Same if they live on Twitter X. If it's more consumer, perhaps you live on reels, on TikTok. But you need to meet the audience where they're at. You're never going to change their habits per se, so you get a sense of the audience. This will also potentially involve going on calls with them understanding their pain points, but getting a really good sense for who they are.
We understand before we launch a show, we know our audience's pain points. For a b, two b audience, we know their purchasing power. Our education team does a bunch of audience research to understand annual budget, potentially per employee, if it's an HR podcast, for example. But whatever the demographic information is, it's going to be contextual to your industry. So make sure you have a pretty deep understanding of who the audience is before you're going to launch. The key question that I'm then looking for is, why would an audience member tune in to your show over every other podcast out there? And in my mind, that really starts with your creator's unique strengths. So at workweek, what I think is really cool, and one of the reasons I love my job is that I get to work with creative talent that has lots of different strengths. So if we take Daniel Murray, he hosts the marketing millennials.
His superpower is creating space for experts to open up. He is a marketing deep generalist. He understands marketing as a category and then leans on his empathy, curiosity, and ability to ask great questions to tease the insights out of his guests. This is very different to limited supply with Nick Sharma and Moise Ali, where Nick is sharing proprietary tactics from Sharma brands, his agency, and Moyes is sharing proprietary stories from the research and the P ls and the bankruptcy statements that he reads as part of his ongoing lifecycle as an operator and investor. So for them, that's two very different shows, right? Daniel is relying on curation and guest selection. Nick and Moyes are relying on good research, topic selection. And so the ethos of the show and the way it's developed is going to be very different because of who they are as a person. And then the third piece of the puzzle, before you hit record, is positioning.
And positioning, to me, is answering the question of why someone would listen to your show over everything else. And the way I think about that is crafting a hook. And a hook has two parts. The hook is what you say and how you say it. So the topic plus the angle, what you say is typically way easier to identify than how you say it. So, for example, with our HR show, I hate it here, Heber is going to give unfiltered opinions on the workplace. Okay, cool. That's interesting.
She has a great personality. She's uniquely qualified to do that, given her background, given the fact she's chief people officer here at workweek. But the thing that really took us time to figure out is that actually in order for people to feel like they have a safe space to open up to, we had to anonymize those takes. And so now we have a segment in the show called HR Horror stories, where people anonymously submit their own questions and ideas around HR and actual real life examples that they've been in. Like, for example, my manager has been in relationships with two executives at the same time and crumbled my structure. That's something that's only going to come up when it's anonymous. And we had to actually figure out that that kind of anonymous story is what's going to make the positioning of the show unique. So at a high level, that's why I think it comes down to audience, the creator's unique strengths and positioning the show.
Ramon Berrios 00:07:36 - 00:08:15
Well, Ben, there's a lot that goes into planning that strategy, and I'm sure that also gets refined as you go, as you get to understand your co host dynamics, as you each get to understand strengths and weaknesses, if there's a co host. But I'm curious, the other end of the coin, which is what are some types of shows that creators shouldn't make? This is how you should. Basically, what you broke down is like what type of content you should make. How do you know what type of content you shouldn't make? Probably like what would be unauthentic to a creator?
Well, I think there's a difference between inauthenticity and formats that don't work for the show, so let's tackle them separately. Inauthenticity, which I think you're alluding to, Ramon, is more about, in my mind, stepping outside of your circle of competence. So in b two b, for example, we have a show called franchise Empires. The host, the Wolf of franchises, is the subject matter expert on franchises. And I was talking to him earlier today, and he feels like he's created a show that you can't listen to anywhere else because of the guests he has, the way he understands it. If we then go, okay, Wolf, now let's start talking about marketing or lead generation. It's way outside of his circle of competence, and it's not going to lead to a competent, to a good show. And so inauthenticity to me is speaking about things you aren't inherently qualified to talk about.
It's kind of like borrowing other people's stories versus sharing from your own experience. And keep in mind, my takes are very much kind of colored with a b to b audience because that's where I play the most. But I definitely think it applies to consumer shows as well. Being able to comment on culture that you're embedded into, like if you aren't interested in MMA, don't have a UFC show that covers the next morning of fights. Like stick to things that are naturally in your wheelhouse. So that's inauthentist. Then on the format side, I think there's this trade off between the resources that it requires to create original production and creating inventory that you can monetize off of advertising. So for example, one of my favorite podcasts is revisionist histories with Malcolm Gladwell from his podcast network, Pushkin Industries.
It is amazing investigative journalism. It is a storytelling podcast. It makes the history nerd in me so happy. Like, it is really well done. And I know that podcast is very expensive and time consuming to produce that podcast. Assuming they have two preroll, two mid roll, two post roll ads, gives you six inventory slots to monetize. Assume they have a ten episode season, you have 60 slots of inventory. Now, for that show to be produced, it takes exponentially more effort than if I was to get Malcolm Gladwell interviewing someone, which he does on other shows, and just talk to them.
I call that format talk. And so that's why I think when you're thinking about building a show, you want to really consider how this plays into your media ecosystem. If you're trying to monetize the inventory itself with advertising, I would lean towards leaner production shows that are talk formats where you can rely on the guests for distribution and pump up your inventory count. If you're using the show as kind of flagship marketing to prove what your agency or your service business can do or your SaaS company can do that's going to develop into enterprise contracts or hire AOV deeper down the funnel, then maybe you can invest in production on the front end. But I do think you want to be very careful of the trade off between resources that it takes to produce an original show and the amount of inventory that you're going to be able to free up with a leaner production.
Yeah, I think that's a really fascinating point. I have a lot of friends that also work in the production space and the amount of sheer time research that goes into some of these higher produced shows, it's a completely different format than like you're talking about in terms of talk. So I think what you alluded to and knowing who you are, what you have budget for, why you're creating the podcast is a really important thing to understand before you just start creating for the sake of it. Understanding why are you doing this is a really important part. And now, Ben, I kind of want to segue out of what we've talked about or towards. Let's talk about the people who already have shows up and running, right? Because just like there's a lot of people who are looking to start a new show and nail all those concepts, a lot of those things you talked about still apply. But I'd also love some of your feedback and how an existing podcaster who already has a podcast, how they can think about using some of these tools you just alluded to, as well as others to improve their show and continue to grow their audience and achieve whatever goals they're trying to create.
Sure. So I think the first insight is that there's never been a better time to be a creator in terms of the tools that are available to you. With that said, there's never also been a harder time to stand out because of that availability. And so really we are kind of pressed into this reality where if you're not using tools and labor to keep up, you're probably getting left behind. The way I think about it, running Workweek's audio video content operation is we're really there to scale our creators digital surface area. That's why at Workweek we're probably always going to hire more operators than creators and we're a talent driven or creator driven media company. And so what I'm able to do is one of my team can help with guest scheduling, another of my team can help with social clips like this whole suite, and we use tools that stack onto that. Castmagic is an excellent example.
Opus is another excellent example, descript as well. There are ways you can bring down your cost of goods and cost of production by integrating the software. So I would say that's probably like the low hanging fruit. And then in terms of how to structure the people that you work with, I like using a generalist specialist split when it comes to the team. This is kind of counter to traditional podcast industry wisdom. I know a lot of kind of institutional brands will have this producer who is expected to be the jack of all trade, swiss army knife, who does everything from reaching out to guests, booking them, cutting the tape, like editing the audio itself, stitching together the narrative. And I think that's a badly deployed skill set in my mind. Creative strategy in figuring out how a show should function is different to the production and the specialist elements of that.
And so my first move for anyone who's growing a show is looking to scale themselves, would be, number one, install a generalist project manager who can help you with scheduling, who can help you with managing the rest of the team, and really kind of protect your time as an asset and be that shield. And then within that, figure out the creatives that you need to execute your operation, who are going to report to that project manager and make your life that much easier. So, for example, maybe the project manager, you say, okay, we want to get this number of clips, data. Then the project manager goes away and says, all right, copywriter, let's put this through Castmagic, let's put this through Opus, and then we're going to get this number of posts and videos that come out the other side of it. But they're very much the integrator that goes in the middle, that protects your bandwidth. And then the specialists underneath are there to produce the creative assets, which would be audio, video, copy, and graphics that then report into them.
Ramon Berrios 00:14:48 - 00:15:25
Yeah, I absolutely love that because that's why we built cas magic. It's because we realized that not only it was overwhelming to understand where to begin tackling growth from, but that we realized that if our operations aren't in place, it's just going to be impossible to grow. And there are certain things you can outsource and use AI tools for, and there's just certain things that you just can't and someone should do, and that is that operations person. So, Ben, given what you just mentioned, I have a specific question for you. And that's, how do I know which channel to choose for growing my show?
Sure. I think, again, you need to look at where your audience lives, where your unique strengths are. So this is kind of like the funnel that I filter these kind of questions through. It's like, where does the audience live? And then how am I uniquely positioned to reach them? So, for example, limited supply. I know a lot of the direct to consumer guys. They live on Twitter. I also know that Nick especially and Moise have embedded followings on Twitter. So it's natural for us to produce the podcast there.
Hr professionals spend a lot of their time on LinkedIn. So Heber, we post a lot of our assets there. We ask our guests to distribute there. We have a very much like social first distribution mechanic when it comes to our network, just because the podcasts are skew in the media companies that we're building. However, if you were going to do an audio only play, then I think that you can also have success by doing a lot of cross promotion, where you have a certain number of inventory slots on your show, going to another podcast and vice versa. With that, the key is having matching audiences where you can assume that the content you put out is going to match what they have. The average American only listens to about seven to eight podcasts in their rotation, which on the surface might look like a low number. The reason I think this is my kind of Tim foil hat conspiracy, but this social scientist a few years ago did some research.
Robin Dunbar called Dunbar's number, and Dunbar's number is the number of people that you can have in your brain at any one time to have a relationship with. That number is 150. And so after you've gone through your friends, your family, your coworkers, everyone else, you know, there's not that many slots left. And I think a podcaster fills one of those slots. That's the value of podcasting as a marketing channel, is you really function as a friend on demand to that audience because you have that affinity, that emotional relationship and trust embedded. So if you think about that, that's quite a sacred value proposition. So when you're doing cross promotions, you want to be sure that the audience on the other side feels like your show is going to have that same emotional resonance, and vice versa, that their show is going to have the same with yours. The last thing I'll say on that is that, and there's kind of one other layer to this.
Cross promoting with ads is an amazing way to get exposure to other audiences. There's been research that came out earlier this year that suggests that guesting on a podcast is more effective for conversion than just running those cross promotions. And it kind of makes sense if you think about it, spending half an hour, an hour, even 90 minutes on someone else's show, if they're immersed in your ideas, if the show has a high completion rate percentage, they're going to stay with you a very long time. And so actually going out and seeking out other shows and thoughtfully pitching them and saying, hey, this is something like, there's a way that we can potentially work together. There's a match. A great tool for this is podpitch.com. They help with the outreach process. The team there has done a phenomenal job at building that out, and that's another way that you can kind of scale yourself and try to get presences on each of these shows.
Hey, Ben, my next question was going to be moving on to something that we'd talked about offline, but I think is very under discussed and very important for nailing a show. So podcasters, sometimes they go solo at it. They have a show, they're able to do it. But sometimes, like in the case of me and Ramon, right here, we've got two hosts, right? We like doing it because it gives us a different perspective. I have the different lens into things that Ramon does, and it leads to conversations we like having. But what you've pointed out is that host dynamics are something that's very important to nail and very important to get right. I'd love to talk to you a little about, a, should you have a co host for your show, and how do you decide if you should go at it solo or bring in a co host? And b, once you've decided if you're going with a co host, how do you set up the dynamics there to have a successful host co host relationship?
Yeah, I love this question. So the first thing I think about with whether to bring on a co host or not is chemistry. Chemistry is typically something that can be built over time, but not forced or faked. You either have it or you don't, and you'll notice it in the instinctive ways that people are able to read each other over time. And I think kind of deep down, everyone really knows if they have chemistry or not with someone. You just know from the vibe that.
Ramon Berrios 00:19:41 - 00:19:42
You can pick up.
If you're able to ask good questions, you're able to hold space. On a podcast, especially an interview show, you're demonstrating emotional intelligence. And so, so long as you're not kidding yourself, I think you can generally assess this. Some of the ways that I like to think about this on a podcast, assuming that you want to go with the co host, is, number one, assigning certain segments to each of the co hosts. So, segments are the way that a show develops. If you think about Saturday Night Live, they might have a comedian on, they might do a skit, then a musician, then an interview. Those are the discrete segments of the show. And in much the same way, I think, podcasts.
One way you can approach having a consistent narrative is having kind of three to five discrete segments that fill up the show. And so each co host, you can have a driver of those segments if there's something that you're particularly passionate about, and then someone who takes the backseat. So someone who's kind of pushing the tempo. The other way you can do it is taking a page out of a sports commentator's playbook, which is having play by play and color. So when you listen to a football game, basketball, baseball, you will typically have someone who kind of pushes the pace of the conversation as it's happening. That's what's called play by play. The batter hits the ball, he runs, and you have someone calling that action out in real time. That's your play by play.
Who's getting you heights, getting you energized. And they're typically coming in with that kind of big, brash personality. The color commentator then, is typically more collected. They are smoother, Stiller. They're typically kind of more downtempo. And what they do is when there's gaps in the conversation, they add texture to the experience. And so, for example, if we say there's a, I'm looking at books on my bookshelf, if we say there's a reading podcast, maybe you have someone who is asking what kind of books you're reading at the moment, why you chose those books. And then the color commentator will come and say, you know, it's interesting that you picked that person, because I've been reading this, and it connects to this idea.
So they're adding depth to the conversation. So play by playing. Color versus owning segments are the two ways I would think about it. And then the last thing I'll say is, if you are considering having a co host, I think one of the things that can be intimidating when doing that is kind of feeling like you're giving up a certain amount of creative control of the show. And it's worth saying that all decisions are reversible. And so what you can do is test it for a certain amount of time. And what we like to do with some of our shows at Workweek is actually just have them on for a specific segment each month. So fintech takes, for example, with Alex Johnson, bank nerd Corner.
One format has a different co host that he comes on with, not fintech investment advice as another show. And what's cool now is that him and one of his other co hosts, those pairings, will get invited to speak at events or on other podcasts as a duo because people associate them together. So if you have someone in your network you're considering bringing on as a co host, number one is assess for chemistry, make sure that you guys have good rapport. You can read each other well, you can balance conversation well. And then second think, is there a specific format that would fit them well? For example, if someone loves giving hot takes, they're typically that kind of higher energy. Then maybe you do a community Q a style show where you source questions from the audience and have them deliver their takes, because that's going to allow them to kind of naturally fit into your show rather than pushing them into somewhere they're not comfortable.
I love that. Ben. My next question, kind of piggybacking off that was for people who have shows like, let's say we've got the show, we've started it up, we've decided that we're doing host, co host. It's starting to go well. What should I expect if I'm starting a podcast in terms of downloads? Right? I know we hear this idea that consistency is so important. So I'd like for you to flush out a little bit about how important is consistency when it comes to podcasting. And what should I expect when, if I'm a new creator and I'm putting out my show, am I expecting ten downloads? Am I expecting 20 downloads? How do I have a gauge of how well I'm doing as a podcaster when I've just launched?
Sure. So there's a few pieces to that. And to begin, we need to understand what being consistent is actually doing to your podcast on a mechanical or technological level. So podcasts themselves are built on a technology called the RSS Feed, stands for really simple syndication, which is a tool that collects information or aggregates information and links on the Internet. So if you've ever been on Reddit and you see the Reddit format, that is a collection of links built on RSS. And so what you're doing when you have a podcast is you're uploading your mp3 file. If you're listening to this, you're going to be listening on a podcast player, probably Spotify or Apple, maybe YouTube. If you're indie alternative, maybe you're listening on Castbox or Stitcher, shout out one of the third party platforms.
But you're probably listening on one of those sites. And what's happening is wherever Blaine and Ramon are hosting the show, that single source of truth is then going to be distributing with one click to all these other podcast players. So that's using RSS. Now, the reason that having people show up on your show is made possible by this is because every time you click follow or you subscribe to a show on Apple, especially the show auto queues as a download in your player. So if I'm subscribed to uploading and this episode drops, I am automatically going to get a download on my phone. So one subscriber equals one download. So that's why it's really important to push your audience to follow over time. And so now we add frequency into the equation.
If I have 1000 subscribers and I post three times a week, I'm going to be able to get, just from those subscribers, triple the baseline rate of downloads to a show that's posting just once a week. And that's why you pretty regularly see as a pattern shows that are on that exponential growth curve, what I would call the velocity of a show, which is the number of downloads times by the time length that it's on, they'll typically have multiple hits on your feed. Modern wisdom is a great example of that. Doing three guest interviews a week, Danny Miranda is being super consistent at the moment. Tim Ferriss is able to repurpose his episodes to keep feed momentum. And that's kind of what we're alluding to here, is what I call feed momentum. That's why it's important to have at least a weekly hit on your feed, and then if you can, get creative with chopping up elements of your show into short form content. So maybe Blaine and Ramon come back on December 25 and they say, hey, we're doing a look back over Christmas.
Here's some of our favorite festive highlights of the show. And then they chop up four to five segments from the show. It takes them ten minutes to record, but now they're getting half an hour more of quality content. The big caveat that underpins all of this advice is that the quality has to be there. If you repurpose too much or you're lazy with the content, it doesn't matter how many times you hit on the feed because people aren't getting the show promise. And that's the way to think about episode quality, is when someone listens to the show, what are they expecting to get from it? And make sure you're fulfilling that every time.
Hey, Ben.
Yeah, go for it.
Ramon Berrios 00:26:56 - 00:27:13
No, I was going to say, you mentioned a few creators there, and I'm curious, who are the creators who really have piqued your interest recently that people should go and keep an eye on and use as inspiration? Who are you looking up to these days as a creator?
Sure. Yeah. I'll just add one final part to the other question, because I think it's a good benchmark when having downloads. Generally, if you can get consistently 5% month over month organic growth, I think your show is in a really good spot. The number of downloads you have is going to be relative to total audience and existing audience at the time and how you promote. But generally going for consistent growth. That's about 5% organic month over month. If you're doing really well, 8% to 10%, that's like a phenomenal outcome, I think is a good benchmark in terms of creators that are doing well with the show.
So running a podcast network at Work week, the thing that I really look for is people who are building their network in creative ways, and the one that really stands out to me is colossus, run by Patrick O'Shaughnessy. So colossus have a show. Their flagship show is called Invest like the best, and it's an interview style show, so the format is not particularly novel. But the way that Patrick asks the questions again to his unique strengths as the CEO of O'Shaughnessy asset management and positive sum, it leverages his proprietary expertise and so he's able to use those conversations or his insights to produce really high quality conversations under that flagship show. Colossus has then built a bunch of other shows underneath it. They have business breakdowns. What I love about business breakdowns is they use this rotating co host model. So when they did a breakdown on Shopify, for example, they brought on board Alex Danko, who is ex Shopify to come and talk about the inside of the business.
So they're able to lean on guests who have really high quality expertise so the quality of the content doesn't necessarily have to dip. And then the last thing is in terms of how they monetize, they're obviously using that podcast for deal flow. And so he's getting faster looks and kind of x ray vision into what's actually happening behind the scenes thanks to his content. And that to me, is like the sign of a really well run operation, like starting with the end in mind and what your kind of roi driven outcome is going to be from the show. And Colossus gets that right in a big way.
Ramon Berrios 00:29:17 - 00:29:22
Yeah, well, I love that example because they're a cast magic user. So that was perfect.
There you go.
Ramon Berrios 00:29:22 - 00:29:26
I'm curious, Ben, do you think every creator should have a podcast?
No, I don't think every creator should have a podcast. I think every creator should know what their strengths are and know the channel that is best suited to their strengths. I kind of think about this in a medium breakout, and that is between the medium of voice versus the medium of text. There are, having worked with a fair few creators now, I can confidently say there are creators that are world class at text who do not want their voice on the mic and vice versa. There are creators that are amazing with their voice who are not so good with text. And that goes across b to b, b to c, everywhere. It just depends on your natural proclivities. So the first question, whenever I'm jamming with a friend over coffee who is like, hey, I'm thinking of creating.
Where do I start? My first question is, do you feel more comfortable speaking or typing? Is it text or voice? And I think knowing that then dictates how you build your stack in b to b. If it's voice, obviously podcast and YouTube becomes the anchor. If it's text, then definitely a newsletter for the data and distribution and performance that you can get off of that. But that's kind of my starting point. And then build from there.
Ben, as we wrap up here, I had one last question about operations. Right. One of the things that we had chatted about and that you guys take really seriously is auditing time operations and really understanding the ROI of content. So for content creators who are either A, starting out or B, have a content operation going, how can you be better at understanding the ROI you get from creating content?
Sure. So the first thing is, depending on your goals, the ROI is going to look quite different. And so there's kind of two plays here. If you're a media company or you're building out a media arm, your ROI is typically in the short run, going to come from monetizing that media through advertising, sponsorships, through brand partnerships. So that's one angle that you can potentially take. The other, which I think is going to probably apply to more people listening to this podcast, is integrating the media that you're building into your company goals. So depending on your company goals, this is going to look quite different. If you are an enterprise company and you're looking to use the podcast to deliver ROI, it's probably moving leads through your deal cycle.
And it's an excuse to build affinity and trust with them, having an hour conversation with them. So very simply, again, if we do, and I like to think of shows and seasons because it lets you build a narrative, it works for selling brand partnerships as well, nicely. But if you have ten episodes of a show and you know that one out of every 20 of those shows are going to lead to an enterprise deal, you know that it's probably going to be two seasons of your podcast before you start to see ROI on the content that you create. And so that's kind of the enterprise spectrum. The other piece of it is being intentional with measuring the podcast advertising that you do. I'm a fan of direct response, and so using a code, which goes to a third party website that people can use. So you can actually measure the efficacy of the advertising that's being done there. And then the last thing I'll say on that is actually being intentional or carving out time with how you integrate sponsors into the podcast.
I think David Senra does an amazing job of this on the Founders podcast, where if he's being sponsored by Ripling, for example, HR software, and he's doing a podcast on Bob Iger from Disney, he'll say, you know, Bob Iger really understood the power of talent, and I really believe that talent builds teams. And there's one tool I love that makes talent so easy to use and mobilize in your organization that's rippling, and it doesn't sound like an advertising. It's not. This kind of, like, jarring insertion, which happens if you do it programmatically, it feels like it's organically integrated into the content, and the conversion rate, the ROI from that is typically going to be a lot higher. But the main thing is knowing what your organization's goals are and then building content that maps back into that versus just saying, oh, I'm going to start a podcast and then figure out how to make money. Sweet.
Well, Ben, we just want to thank you for coming on this episode of uploading. This is actually episode one, so welcome to the show. And to celebrate, I'd love for you to give us some feedback. Now that you've heard us. This is episode one. What can Ramon and I do to continue to grow this show and make this thing a winner?
Ramon Berrios 00:33:48 - 00:33:50
Roast me. Roast us.
I love this. Well, first of all, that's a big honor to be episode. I think I appreciate the prep that you guys put into this. I appreciate how actionable the questions are. I think that a good comparison of how I think this show could evolve is conversations with Tyler. Tyler Cowan is one of the best interviewers on the planet, period. And if you listen to early shows with him or he interviews these deeply thoughtful people, he'll ask an amazing question, get an amazing answer, and then just move on. And it typically leaves you wanting more.
And I kind of felt like that was the vibe of this show is that you ask thoughtful questions. Question, answer, question, answer, question, answer. What I would invite you to consider in the future is if there's a take that you feel like is really juicy or is adding value, don't be afraid to go two, three levels deeper into that. So, for example, if you really liked the take on the trade off between cost of goods for talk shows versus amount of inventory that you get with original production, you can be like, I want to dig deeper into that. How does that play out in your network? How would you think about launching a show like, like there's all these other kind of tangential questions. David Perel once put this well in article, he said, mining for gold on a podcast is like fracking. You ask question, question, and then it's usually like the third question which goes to the side is where the gold is. And yeah, I would invite you to lean more into those threads in the future.
And then the last thing I would say is, can you name the segments to create some more intentionality? So I think a lightning round fits this show really well, given how actionable it is. What is one tool that you're using that's driving the most productivity or leverage in your content stack right now? Who would you say you're creating content for and why? Who is that one person in your audience? I feel like those rapid fire questions lend itself really nicely. And then you could have a segment where you ask the guests ahead of time, you prepare them and say, hey, what's your one area of expertise that we can dig into when it comes to content creation, production, distribution? They tell you. And then you workshop that specific idea for 1012 minutes and get really deep into it. I think that would be really cool to listen to.
Well, I love all of that. And we'll have to have you on again. And we can do lightning round and we can go fracking. We're going to have a lot of fun. So, Ben, as we wrap up here, why don't you shout out where can our audience connect with you? Where can we find you? Are you on social? Shout out your links and where we can connect.
Yeah, 100%. Best places to find me are Instagram at Ben Bradbury. You can drop me an email anytime to chat. Ben@benbradbury.com and go and check out some of work week's podcast. We've got some great shows fintech takes if you're into the nerdy side of fintech, I hate it here. If you want to hear a sassy, unconventional take on HR or maybe limited supply, if you just want to hear two boys chopping up about ecommerce. But yeah, those are probably the main places.
Thanks so much, Ben.
Ramon Berrios 00:36:40 - 00:36:40
Thank you, Ben.
Appreciate you guys.