The State of Podcasting with Rob Greenlee VP of Content & Partnerships at Libsyn

Can you believe that Libsyn now has 75,000 podcasts hosts on their platform? In addition, Rob is the chairperson for the Podcasts academy. Can you believe this? The Podcast academy, yo people there's a podcast academy. It was created about a year ago. We're going to dive into that today. Okay. But instead of me just talking rambling away, let's introduce and have Rob on Rob. Thank you so much for joining me. You are awesome.
It's great to be here, Katie. Thanks for the invite to join me on your podcast.
Yes, yes, definitely. My pleasure. My pleasure. Wow. So, okay. You have a podcast for about 10 years now is called the New Media Show and you have a cohost Todd Cochran and you guys do that together. It's everything Podcasting. So if anyone wants to know about tech Podcasting, things of this nature, everyone should check out the New Media show, subscribe there, log-on bingeing and get into it. I know that's what I'm going to be doing over the next few weeks myself. So yeah, take it away. How is it being the VP of brand partnerships that
It's fun. I am, I enjoy, I've been in Podcasting for 16 years, 16 plus years now. So this is just a, you know, a stop on my journey over the last 16 years of working to help Podcasters to Podcasts. The really at the end of the day, that's what I've done. My whole career. I've worked at places like Microsoft and Podcasts one and Spreaker, which turned into box nest, which recently sold iHeartRadio, helping Podcasters and being an evangelist for the medium and, and doing podcasts like this. Katie, you know, talking about the medium and, and getting to know more people out there that have an interest in this medium and being a resource to them. So that's, that's what I do. And I worked with the big companies, Spotify.
I was involved with Spotify and Pandora are early in their journey into Podcasting and I work with Google. And like I said, I used to work for Microsoft and Podcasting as well. So, you know, I've really scan or span the spectrum, right? Working for the biggest companies in this medium, down to working with individual Podcasters. So in a bin, a long time Podcast for myself, I had a six year radio show that turned the old Podcast back in 2004. So I've had a variety of my own shows and I just enjoy the medium. And I especially enjoy the people of the medium. They're very creative, energetic, fun people to be around. And it's energized my career and my, my life. And it's really transformed my life. You know, I didn't start out in this.
I started out in the grocery food marketing business. So that's how I started my career out of college. 16 years later, I'm, I'm all into audio and doing more video.
Where did you go to college? And what was your degree?
I went to college at Pacific Lutheran university and that's up in the Seattle area and got a degree in a bachelor in business administration and a concentration in marketing. So my orientation towards everything I do is marketing and slash sales. I don't think of sales. Like I used to think when I came out of college where you're just out there trying to hock a product and, you know, you say just about anything that you need to say to get the sale. That's not my philosophy anymore. My philosophy is more solving problems for people. And that's how you drive sales these days and building relationships and trust.
I love that. I love that. And it's all through the voice and the authenticity of what people say and being accountable of their words and then their action, and then hearing their soul and connecting on that sort of level with, without even seeing the person in, in face-to-face in life form, you can just do it like how we are right now on a podcast and just building that trustworthy relationship.
Yeah. And it's all about scale too. So if you can do a media, just like what I did with Radio in the early days is that you can scale your message, scale your brand scale, your reputation, across large numbers of people in a fairly efficient method. And that's kind of what Podcasting is, is it's an efficient method of sharing a marketing message or a relationship message and trust, build trust with large groups of people very rapidly and potentially has the potential to improve people's lives and change people's lives. And I've seen it happen over and over and over again, over the 16 years of just helping people get off the ground with being a content creator online and how that's transformed their lives and their lives generally have been much better for,
Yeah. I wanted to start my podcast six years ago and I didn't know how Rob, I wish I would've known you six years ago. I would've been like bigger than Joe Rogan by now.
Seriously.
Hello. And then it's like serious, but it's like, I wish I would. So the people who get to know you now that one day they're going to, or hopefully now they'll just be in such deep gratitude and then they'll look back and be like, oh my God, this is the moment I met Rob. And I found out about Rob and it's like, seriously, but six years ago, like I wanted to do this and I didn't know how to get on the train track. And just because I'm literally all over the place involved in so many different things, the through line of step two, set three set four, you know, for a lot of human beings, there's so much noise and distractions. It's hard to, even though you want to do it, but what you just said is so imperative because I'm a voice that loves to share and talk a lot and inspire people and for, to take massive action. And so I'd like put my energy here, put my energy there.
I put my energy in so many different places, like literally in spread myself so thin. But if I would've had the podcast as my platform, it's like, if someone would ask me, I could be like, oh, here's the link. Listen to this episode. Or like here, let me enrich you by doing this, but it's a way to really pay it forward and it lives on it totally lives on. And so it's, it's such a big, impactful thing. If you want to have a voice and share with people. And I mean, I'm getting chills because this can happen all around the world. And obviously it takes the, the faith, the passion, the mission statement, if you have a lot to share with people and it's not for everyone, but you know, there's different pockets in different niches.
So diving kind of right in what are some of the popular trends in Niches you think are, or that you see that are very popular in the podcasting space?
Well, I think that there are the niches that are important are really the niches that are important to the creator. And I think any niche or niche, however you want to say it has its value. And because there's other people out there that are going to have the same passion and interests. So I think there are differences in Niches and, and Niches from a scale perspective, how many people out there have a passion for let's say audio books, or for doing a certain, you know, hobby or something like that. I think there's a certain limitation there that exists, but generally, you know, identifying what your passion, what gets you excited to talk about?
What's your expertise? What do you know the best? Right. And focusing on that is really where your opportunity is. And I think at the end of the day, Podcasters need to be fairly selfish. They need to think about what drives them and makes them motivated to create content and focus on that. And what you'll find is that other people that will have a common affinity to that will gravitate towards you. If you've done a good job of marketing yourself, getting out there, being seen, being a leader, being a thought leader, you know, helping people. I think those people will be magnetically attracted to you. And this is a little bit of what's happening around the whole life phenomenon of people doing live shows, live videos, live, whatever is that they're connecting people at various levels of interest, right?
And in the power of a podcast or is to network people together and to connect with people and share value and share connections with others. And I think you're starting to see that happen a lot more as more people have gotten online because of this COVID situation.
And then in podcast movement, which was a 10 day conference, we both participated in, it was told in a form that there's 1.5 million Podcasts, and 1 million of them are inactive. So there's only 500,000 podcasts. And out of the 500,000 podcasts, if you have 150 downloads per episode, you're doing you're in the 50% category of popular podcast.
Right. Right. That's true. That's true. And if you've been Podcasting for any period of time, you will have done what they call pod fade, which means you start a podcast, you do it for a while and you change your mind about doing it or life gets in the way, or you don't like doing it anymore. Or you ran out of things to talk about. And a lot of people will just stop Podcasting. Those episodes will still stay in an apple podcast or whatever, and be part of that 1.5 million and they'll move on and start a new podcast or they'll drop Podcasting altogether. And those, those episodes will still live on. So, you know, there's a constant churn of content creators in this medium and that's healthy for the medium that gets P you know, the people that are creating new content are the ones that have the energy and the passion to keep it going.
Right. And those are the focal points, the archive episodes that are out there. And the other million that you were talking about, some of those have great value too. And some of them are, if they have some evergreen value is a common term for it, people will still keep listening to those they'll binge listen or whatever those archives, right. And then other stuff will just fade away and nobody listens to it anymore. So, and that's healthy for this space. I mean, just think about how many blogs there are out there compared to how many podcasts there's only a half a million active Podcasts, but there's like 20 million blogs out there. So we're still early in the Podcasting medium.
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So this one Podcast I found, cause I'm into Kundalini yoga, Kundalini is a rising the energy, right. From dense energy. So if you're out drinking or something, which I'm not a big drinker, but then your energy is really low and dense. Or if you're around people who are speaking low vibrations and you're not in a positive circle, it's like negative vibes, very low, but to be high vibes and so excited like this conversation, you know, it's the pool Delaney, we're raising the energy, we're uplifting others and we're inspiring others. So I just typed in Kundalini, Delaney. I mean, this was probably like six months ago, but I just typed in Kundalini and this person has been posted in like three years, but I was, it was evergreen. So I was able just to listen to their short 15 minute episodes and just lie there and just be inspired and cool to know that it's there.
And it served me for the purpose for that moment, which was really cool. I didn't subscribe or anything, but I was just like, I just kind of like took a mental note of that. Yeah.
I mean, that's, that's a fascinating kind of contrast, especially when I think of you and what I've seen you do as well as it you're a high energy fast burner yourself. But the fact that you're focused on, you know, these kind of, you know, self-reflective kind of calming kind of yoga type experiences. It's an interesting contrast with you. That must be how you cope with the ability to live in a fast burning lifestyle.
Yeah. The balance being able to go high and get back to the balance. Right? Yeah, definitely. So, yeah. So moving right along here, you were the one that told me that pre COVID, there was X amount of Podcast per month, but during COVID,
And then there was like a little spike of the listenership cause everyone was finding their new patterns and the, and then the listenership like kind of went up cause they, people were finding their new routines, but during COVID there was a spike in how many podcasts per month. What was that number again? Well, for a couple of months, I believe it was, I think it was March, April and may. The podcasting space grew about a hundred thousand new shows each month prior to that. And this was this past year. But prior to that, we, we had been growing like maybe 25,000 a month. Yeah. So you can kind of see where it kind of quadrupled and the amount of growth of new shows, right. This new series shows not new episodes.
And I would imagine that a big percentage of those were kind of kick the tires, kind of starting up a show that maybe aren't still active anymore. There's a certain amount of churn that happens right. Where people start and then they don't continue. Right. They may be create a couple of episodes or whatever. So I think we had a bunch of people come in and kick the tires on Podcasting and some of them stuck around I'm sure. But now we've seen the numbers kind of drop off again, back to more normal levels, right. At 2020 to 25,000 new shows across the industry every month. So, and that's that's normal. And then listenership actually went down a little bit for a while when we were going through the COVID cause people were not in their cars as much. They were not on the train. They were not on the bus. They were not on, they were not moving around as much.
So they were more at home and it just took a little time for people to readjust their schedules and their patterns to get back into normal. So we saw a drop in listenership for a couple months. Not everybody saw drop, but many shows saw a drop. It depends on what the genre was. If there was a podcast about COVID it probably was doing okay because people were interested in that. Right.
Like wanting to know the news and the pulse insight information from neuroscientists and doctors and things like that.
Exactly. Things that are kind of timely to what's impacting people's lives right then is what people were interested in. Right. And that's not unreasonable to think that that would happen, but I think over time, we've kind of normalized a little bit and the listenerships of across many genres have started to go back up again. So that's a positive trend line.
Yeah. Well, I was also thinking, because like of all the quote, unquote years now out of like fake news and people not believing what's on TV and it being censored, it's like they probably found Podcasting as an outlet and a source to get some authenticity of things that the normal commercial networks weren't going to tell us. Right.
It's, it's more, I would say it's a little bit more user generated content. So, you know, I think you're seeing those patterns happen in YouTube and, and other online kind of platforms too, or people are expressing themselves and creating their own shows. And, and I'm trying to share information with people that I think people may know, maybe trust a little bit more and whether or not that's justified and trusting. That is a whole other question. But I believe that that's kind of the trend that we're seeing right now is that a lot of the social media stuff and a lot of the mainstream media stuff doesn't have as much trust as it used to. And part of the reason why I think Podcasting and people doing live shows on YouTube and doing live shows on, on lots of different platforms now are where people are starting to spend more of their time,
The barriers to create the new and also like quote unquote, that thing that created and happened that cancel culture thing. It's like, oh my God, you know what I mean? And then that takes me to the next thing of like, you know, I own my IP IP address. Do you own your own IP address?
I do not own my own IP address, but I do own my own domain name. Yes.
Yeah. So I own my own IP address. And so like now, you know, in podcast movement, they were saying a lot of celebrities are getting involved in Podcasting and they're getting all these followers and they're getting all these like deals with Spotify or whoever, but it's like sometimes it could be in authentic because they're not keeping it real like, like the whole thing about Podcasting, the raw format kind of like stand up comedy it's its own breed in Podcasting it's its own breed. So it it'll always, I think, live that way of that rawness of being able to say what you want, put ads on, put ads off, speak to ads that actually aligned to the purpose of your brand instead of like selling out to, you know, whoever and doing certain logistics.
So like how do you feel about those kinds of things
That there has been an impact of companies with their terms of service, right? You look at Facebook or Twitter or you look at even some of the podcasts listening platforms. They, they do have terms of service that they have legally put out there as what they adhere to around content standards and what they allow or don't allow on their platforms. And I do believe that we've seen some pressure there with some of those terms of service being challenged by some of the content creators. And then you look at Facebook and Twitter feeling like they have to fact check things, right? There's a lot of claims that they're getting called to be accountable for on both sides of the political spectrum.
That in some ways they really can't kind of win because if they, if they sent her something it's always going to be against one side or the other, and they're going to take criticism on either side. So, so what we've seen is that crackdown content creators have wanted to own their own IP. Just like what you were just saying. And that allows them to be persistent online without being controlled or cancel culture, like you said, from these big platforms. And I think one of the interesting situations that happened is when Joe Joe Rogan kind of, and he's in the middle of it right now, he went from Lipson over to Spotify, right? Yeah. I mean, a lot of his episodes that he created on Libsyn, the Spotify told them he couldn't pass over to spot, you know, to Spotify because they were, they were on topics that were against the terms of service, Spotify house.
So, you know, and now, you know, I think recently Joe Rogan has had on some controversial guests again and, and it's just caused a little bit of an internal turmoil at the company as well on this topic. And, you know, employees, don't like, you know, the topics that he has on his show. And it's about a lot of the Spotify people that are subscribers like those topics and a lot of people in the open internet, like those topics too. And the fact that he went behind, you know, on a exclusive deal with Spotify is gonna cause him somewhat to be a, to say it, but censored to some degree. I mean, he's not going to be able to say anything he wants to say, but if he was on a open RSS speed, he could maintain that independence.
I'm sure he might be taken down from listening platforms, but he would still be able to keep doing a show. And I think in some ways maybe he's a little bit, he's paying a price because he, he took the money from the man, right?
Yeah. I mean, I, and a brush stroke, I just heard like blatantly, like obviously the money you take the money and you run or, but the money wasn't worth it for the price you have to pay of not being authentic and talk about the cool things that you can talk about. I mean, I saw one of his podcasts episodes. Oh my God. It was about this guy who like went to Africa when he was 18. And they, it was a four hour one, and it was on YouTube. So I even watched it and literally they were talking about like how these biochemists go and they get the fecal matter of these, this rare African tribe, because they're like supermodels and they're ripped, but it's like, what are they eating? You know? So to like get, to bring back to, I mean, it was just, it was just extraordinary, the whole EV everything they were talking about.
And I mean, they're even like crying and he's about so many different things. And when it was just like, it was, it was really intense, but yeah, so he started up doing a standup too, and he has his podcast and it's doing really well. And then, you know, he's one of the ones that sold the Spotify, that's his choice. And depending on his deal, I would assume it's an exclusive deal because you would think he would think, oh, I have an X amount a year deal. I don't know what the deal is, but just do that, ride that out and then just create a new podcast. You know what I mean? It's like start from scratch and do your own thing, but who knows? You never know. He might be heading out. He might be doing another, you know, standup or new chapters with his life or district tiring.
Who knows, who knows we can't, we can't say, but
Mr. Howard stern did in the early days when he left syndicator Radio to go over to XM satellite radio network, so, or serious. Yeah. It was where he jumped over to. And, you know, he had, he had problems on syndicated radio because he was being censored. Right. And there was a lot of things that he wanted to talk about on his radio show that the FCC didn't like, right. So, so he went over to serious because serious didn't, wasn't going to center him as much. So, you know, content creators, I've always had this tension between what they can do and what they can't do. And who's, who's trying to hold them back. Right. And Podcasting is, has kind of broken, you know, broke that mold to some degree, but you know, censorship still comes into podcasting.
It depends on how you strategize your distribution strategy to be less vulnerable to it. Yeah.
Thank you for sharing. So I'm really thinking, so there's the different ones, right? There's anchor pod beam. There's Libsyn, like how many, and then your friend, Todd Cochran has one. It's called blueberry spelled with a U, but as blueberry. Okay.
B L U B R R Y. Right. It's a misspelling.
How do you, how do you know which one to go with? Like, if someone's like, oh my God, I want to do a podcast and they're doing some research or they're overwhelmed, or maybe they have ADHD and they can't read all this stuff and it's overwhelming for them. But like, what do you w how would you direct someone to make the best choice? What's the best choice for them, depending on who they are, you know?
Yeah. I mean, it is a complex problem to solve and come up with an answer. A lot of people just look at a couple and they just decide to go with one, right. They keep it simple. But if you are going to do analysis on it, what I usually recommend to people is that they really look at what they want to do, right. With their show, at least to get started with most podcasts is when they start, when they put their plan together to launch a show, they think they're going to do something, but the first couple of months or whatever it's going to change. Right. But just kind of get a basic idea of what you want to do with your show. And then look at those elements that you need to be able to do that show, right. And then go out and look for technology solutions.
And this process applies to the equipment you need, the hosting that you need and the marketing that you need for your show too. So I tend to not just look at it from a hosting platform perspective. I, I try and look at it from a little bit bigger picture of what you're trying to do with your show, because each of these platforms, the ones that you just mentioned all have their strengths and what they do well, what they don't do well, what their cost structures are for doing certain things. And you need to be able to have some sort of an idea of what you want to accomplish when you start shopping. Right? And you start looking at each of these shows and compare that to what you want to do with your podcast and, and pick the one that's the best price for that's the best value for you based on what you're trying to accomplish.
Right. And then also factor into it. The next layer is, is reputation and recommendation of prior people that have used that platform. And, you know, those are important things too. And also kind of a last piece is how long have they been around? Is it a platform that you can trust? That's going to be around? Because if you look at the duration, there are 16 plus years of Podcasting. We've had a lot of podcast hosts come and go, come and go. Right. They, they start up, they're all cool. They're saying, we're the next thing. And then a year later, they turn off the lights and they go away. Right. So, so you kind of have to weigh the balance between who you trust.
Who's going to be around, who's got the most reliable platform, right. And then who's which platform is catering to the needs that I have of what I want to do with my show. Who
Do you think are the top three from all the ones that could be
Out there? Well, I think that the basic ones have been good choices for, you know, Libsyn has been around the longest. It was the original podcast hosting platform that basically pioneered this whole medium. So it, it was the first back in 2004. So that's when
Libsyn stand
For liberated syndication, which is the founders of the company back in 2004, where we're three guys that were kind of rebels that came out of the Napster movement, you know, the early file sharing days of MP3s around music. And so they were, they were looking to just like Napster was to kind of stick it to the man, right? The, the big dollar guys out there, or the corporations or whatever you want to call it. They were looking to break the model that was out there. The stranglehold on control right. Of this medium and the internet was kind of like, it was breaking molds all over the place. You know, driving companies out of business, newspapers were struggling.
The music industry was struggling. So Podcasting started out of that. Right. And then social media started up right after Podcasting started to, and kind of took a lot of the, the attention away from Podcasting, but that's how it started. And, and it's really been the driver, I think, of the industry over the 16 years of its life. And, and so in each of the platforms, you know, pod, bean, blueberry, those are probably the ones that have been around the longest and has probably have the most stable infrastructure in the most stable platform. I know a lot of people were on SoundCloud, but I'm not necessarily recommending SoundCloud anymore. They don't really sound cloud doesn't really care about Podcasters anymore. So they haven't for probably a good five years now.
So I, I would shy away from SoundCloud. There has been new platforms come up like anchor that were free podcasting platforms, but I caution people against free too, because if you're not paying for a professional service, you're paying for it with something else like with Facebook, right. Or these other platforms that are free, you are paying for it. But in ways that maybe you don't know that you are so, and that's always something that you have to weigh against, you know, is it worth paying $10 a month to get something that you know, is solid versus paying nothing? And you're not really sure if this is really the right tool for you. So,
So it's really important. You probably talk about that on your New Media Show podcast too. So, and people can dive deep into those episodes and just do some research and do some reading and just, you know, block out maybe like two or three hours just to research, you know, some of the ones that we've mentioned that you've talked about. So like, there's people like me who are venturing into the ad space where I've had I've independently got sponsors, which has been really cool. And some of it's been for trade or, and then building repetition with, with those clients, you know, one at a time building, building them out, say, Hey, I'm in season two right now. Boom. And then putting people on for season three and then building it out that way.
And then also there's also companies out there who already have ads. And they're even within the hosting platforms where they have ads and you can have them automatically be in there, or you can manually select them, whether it's going to be in pre-roll mid-roll or at the end decide, Hey, does this align with my brand? And so making, so it's not just like, oh, I'm going to have a podcast. And here we go. And let me get some technical equipment. I mean, there's like you said, the bigger picture and people have to really like, before they're like, oh, I want to do a podcast and you just do it because it's great. Like Gary V Sean Cannell, they're all just like just the imposter syndrome. Just get started. Just like, don't let, don't have everything like perfectionist syndrome and don't do it, but know that there's like so many elements to Podcasts.
Well, it's like anything it's like trying to start a business. Right. You know, you there's, it's not a bad idea to, to walk before you run in this area as well. And that's, what's great about Podcasting. You can start for very low risk, right? There's I mean, you can get plans, you can start off for free to some of these platforms and other ones like even, even ellipse, and you can start for $5 a month, right? So it's not a huge risk to get started. We're where some businesses are actually most businesses. Actually, if you think of your podcast, as a business is a little bit riskier, right? Cause you have to invest in and getting business licenses and you have to get organizations with the IRS and things like that.
And that can cost a little bit more money, but you know, starting a podcast doesn't have to be a business. It can just be something that you start, you play around with it. See what you like to do. The good thing about starting a podcast is that when you start, there's typically nobody listening. So you can, you can play around with it. You can have fun with it. You can figure out what is comfortable for you to do. And then guess what happens the better you get, the bigger your audience grows. And that's, that's typically true. And so, so getting into podcasting doesn't have to be something that you fear quite as much as I think a lot of people maybe worry about.
And then on the movement they were saying started Patrion before you even start your podcast. And I've known about patriarch for years. And I just was so hesitant because being an artist, it's like, oh my God, like, like support me, give me money. It's like such a, like a thing, like was a difficult thing for me to be like, Hey, support me. Like give me money. Like, let me do a crown funding thing. Now. I'm like, I'm emotionally detached from all that bull crap. So I'm in a whole new area now, but I did, I actually created even, I was looking at an email from may and my girlfriend's like, Hey, this would be really good for you. And I just responded to her. Cause I, I shared with you too. I'm like, Hey, I actually just got a Patrion account.
And I did, and I have zero followers. I just started it. Yeah. I have a new Patriana account and I just set up three symbol tiers and I'm going to get more detailed, but I wanted it just to get it up and get it going. I do, you know, and I'm going to put more time into it and see what it's all about. But I mean, that's a part of it too, having a Patrion so people could support your Podcasting on you do, because I mean, if you're a self-made billionaire or you come from a family who, you know, will just invest in yourself or you have the money to invest in yourself, you know, and that's the best thing. That's the, one of the things I would really like to say is like the best investment you'll ever make is on yourself. Before I used to being a producer and I've produced films in the past and learned about producing, I would always do the Hollywood talk and go around the world.
And I would be around the multibillionaires who had the money and they don't give the money. And then there's the multimillionaires who like dabbling with their crystal ball and they're there on the yachts and they're talking. And then there's the talkers, talkers, talkers who have no money at all. It's just fluffing buffing gas. So it's like, you've seen ever. And then you've seen like the diehard, raw artists, like who are like, they're so talented, but it's like if they just had like someone to help invest, you know, to have the investment. And it's like, you just have to find that balance we were talking about earlier, like, you know, being able to fuel your own fire and have it, doesn't have to be multi billions of dollars or gazillions with a macro, but just having some money saved up and just invest those small bit into things and getting on certain platforms, you know, to start your podcast, to do the Patrion, to get the support, even if it's let Amanda Palmer, she is a success story with Patrion.
And she did a tier where it's like, people were just giving a dollar, you know? So there's the ones that, that pay higher. So it's a new thing. And it's a, it's it's building blocks and you test things and you see what works for you and what works, what doesn't work for you. Do you?
I do not. I'm don't I don't really Podcast to make money directly from the podcast cause I I'm on a salary and my job is to promote Podcasting. So I don't necessarily, I'm not out there trying to drive income for myself directly from doing any particular podcasts. So that keeps me kind of neutral in people's eyes. We're I can be seen as someone that wants to be helpful, not taking advantage because I am in kind of a, a position in the industry that really it's important for me to maintain that level of separation from monetary direct monetary benefit.
So
Love that. It's so great. It's so great. Cause it just unhooks from all those other stigmas that people just don't want to deal with. And
It's all about trust. This is, this is a trust medium. And I can't really say that strongly enough is that that's the foundation. And that was driven into me. You in the early days of this medium, that this it's a trust relationship with your audience and trust relationship also involves Podcasters. Trust relationships involves working with media companies. It involves all sorts of levels. And that's part of how sales have changed over the years too, is that there's so many charlatans out there that are trying to sell you the next shiny thing. But to have somebody actually care about you and drive you in the right direction. It's like when I talk to a new podcast or I don't immediately start talking about, you have to be on Libsyn.
I want to find out what they want to do with their podcasts. And if I have to point them to Spreaker or to some other platform, that's better for them. That's the right thing to do because over the long-term, they will, they will appreciate that. And they'll likely come back to me at some point, it happens every, every week that I get people pointed down the path of solving what they want to do, and then eventually they will come back. They'll only come back and I only want them back as if what I'm doing will solve like their next step that they have and what they need. Right? And that's, that's the kind of sales and relationships that I'm trying to build in the
Not trying you're doing it. And you are a boss, man, rockstar in the podcasting world.
I'm just trying to help people at the end of the day.
Thank you. I really appreciate those words. That really means a lot. Thanks. So the next thing I want to talk about is marketing, where, what are some top platforms you think, and to go on and best ways to market ones, Podcast.
Okay. You know, if the, really the foundation of this is you as the Podcaster is the foundation to marketing your podcast. I think you need to focus on building your reputation. People love to follow people. Podcasts, topics, and Podcasts are really, at least my experience is that people follow Podcasts because they like the people. So marketing starts inside. And when you work with various platforms, all you're doing is you're extending your reputation and your brand to that platform. And so from a marketing perspective, at the end of the day, you are driving expertise, you are driving value based on your contribution to whatever topic that is.
There is a variety of ways that you can get that out to the world and that's doing like what I'm doing, you know, being available to people. I've always given my phone number out freely, always given my email address out freely. I don't hide. I'm accessible on all the social platforms, all the LinkedIn and the Facebook I will respond. And that's just, that's just who I am. So fundamentally, that's what we're, that's the foundation of the marketing, right? The, the next level is what you do with the topics that you talk about, right? To get you indexed in Google and get you found and you know, apple podcasts and a train. That's going by right now. Sorry. And
We're full on the train right now.
We are on the train going miles an hour, right?
They're gaining so much value from this podcast right now. Seriously.
That's what I like to hear. So yeah. So driving your message of what your expertise is and all the social platforms, as much as you can focus on building trust, building relationships with people and, and focus on topics that you care about and that you think also other people will care about because chances are, if you care about it, there's going to be other people out there. They're going to care about it too. So you can be a little bit, you know, strategic about it too. You can look at areas of things that are happening in the, in the bigger world and focus on topics that are trending, that are top of mind and you can go in those directions as well.
And so I, I think it's multitasking and Katie, I think you're a perfect example of that. You're like the prototypical, multi-tasker getting into all sorts of different mediums and getting your name out there. And, and I do believe strongly that that's the path to success these days, because there's so much noise out there being generated by so many people creating content. Now, how do you stand out? Well, you stand out by being everywhere. I hate to say it, but a lot of podcasts, creators don't sleep very much. I mean, just go listen to Gary Vaynerchuk. He'll tell you the same thing. You gotta, you gotta get in all the way, right? You can't hold back. You have to go all the way.
His podcast, where it was like, when I was like obsessively, just like, you know, bingeing it, I loved one of his Podcasts. He is walking down the street of New York city as a five minute podcast. There was taxi cabs. It was noisy. And it was like, it doesn't matter. Doesn't have to be silent. It's like, it's all about the content. You was like, yo, yo, yo, he was just like balls out doing it. Excuse my language. But he was just like, yeah. And it's like, it's like, it doesn't, it's like raw and real. And it's like, it's like, that's the authenticity. Oh my God. Speaking of raw and real you need, I mentioned it to you last week. You need to see weigh in on Amazon prime. It was a YouTube thing. YouTube dropped it, shame on them. And Amazon picked it up season one. Oh my God, there's going to be a season two. I reached out to the creator.
And so Sean Simmons, but yo, it's just like, so when you're a little girl or a person, you know, and then you're like, you have your hypnosis and then you have your circumstances and then you have your bubbles and blueprint of the world and you go out there and then you're taught about beauty and being proper and prim. And like you're taught all these things and you have your, your, your, your you're a diamond in the rough, like spirit about you and like all that you are. And then like, you know, you get so polished and you're so like in a bubble, especially, you know, being in Hollywood for over two decades, you get into this stigma in this bubble and then like shape shift to like get away from that illusion and kind of recreate yourself.
But this TV show, Wayne, it's just like, oh my God, it gives you that, you know, just gives you that, like that raw thing. Because, because the thing is like, it's like, there's like trashy, Florida in there. I mean, obviously there's just like cool, classy, whatever, like Florida different parts of Florida. But then there's like, like, there's like, just like this, like pun trash, like whatever thing about Florida or certain kind of people. And then there's like this love and this true romance. And there's just so much abuse. And there's like, so the circumstances of the kids are like poverty and they'd never had the chance and keeps getting in trouble. It's like, once you get into the system of the system of the system, you can't get out.
And it's like so hard to get out of the system. Once you get into that, like system of like being arrested or something like that. So hard, it's like this kid, Wayne, he like never has this chance and there's this like love and they're 15 and it's just like knit.
It shows rod reel, right?
Yeah. It's just this like connection that they have. And then it's like, cause then you go through life and you're like looking for a partner who has this, there's a role like this and you want this. And then it's like these gateways and barriers and protection mechanisms, we put up for ourselves to protect ourselves. So we like, we can like be a part of society. It just, it really like nails in like cracks it all down. So that's, that's, I think it's just like raw, you know? And that, that's an important thing to always like, have that grit. So yeah. I feel like Podcasting has that when you have your own IP and the intimacy of it. I think Gary V has that as well.
Well, yeah, well, yeah, he has a lot of grit. I mean, it's not always the most flattering experience, but it's, it's like you said, it's about the content. It's about the passion. It's about the commitment and that that's, what's interesting about what he does. I've seen him up on stage at talking about Podcasting and he was talking to Podcasting at an event that I was at and it was the radio show. It was in Dallas. I think it was last year and he was on stage and he was just ripping need the radio industry, you know, a new, you know, we're in, right. He was just saying, you guys gotta change what you're doing, unless you're going to be, you're going to die. Like the dinosaurs you got up and say, oh, I was like, I'm glad I didn't say that.
But Gary can get away with that. Right. But, but that's, that's the message, right. Is, is you gotta change. You gotta adapt or you're gonna die. You know, that's, that's the bigger message. Right?
Totally. I was at this world event, this world's conference. Are you familiar with World worlds with the
Z? I think I've heard of it, but yeah, I haven't participated or anything.
I'll tell you more about it. But, so he was a keynote there and basically he got on stage and it was a 15 minute keynote and he basically described what he does is as a producer, he's just like, and he was like going out. He's like, I he's like I, before I got on the stage, I eat poop. I eat poop. I eat poop. I eat poop, but he was saying the four-letter word. And he's like, I, and that's what I do. He's like, I put fires out and he's like, I take it, I take it. He's like, I put fires out and I take the poop. I take the poop and he's like, that's it. That's what he was saying. And, and that's what he does. And he just kept like, keeps on going, you know? Right. So there's like doses of Gary V. So if you need that, like he can definitely give you there. And I was like, subscribing.
And then I had to be like, okay, rotation rotation.
It'd be a little, little bit intimidating, you know, to, to think you have to be like that. But, you know, I think if you really think about it, you know, I've been a content creator for a lot of my life now. And it is really kind of gritty. It's, it's not a perfect thing. And there's a lot of, you know, digging, if you know what I'm saying in, in the weeds of doing things and it's never a GLA, it's very rarely glamorous. Yeah.
That's why I feel like everyone should definitely be on your radar and follow you and be a part of everything you're doing because you come with truth, authenticity, the connection to keep on the up and up and keep through the, the positive line. And it's cool. Like you're open to people like calling you or shooting you an email and, you know, like gifting them, that advice and your experience for their journey. It's, it's like the, the best golden key you can have in life. You know? I mean, no one's going to do all the work for you, but you can be like, Hey, here's four options or here's two options. You can be like, you know, well, these are my thoughts on it from my experience from 1999.
Right. Well, I mean, and not everybody can do exactly like what I'm doing, cause I'm fortunate enough to have a company that backs me. Right. But I think it, I think we can all do it to some limited degree because we do have to look out for ourselves and we do have to, you know, try and make things work for ourselves to be able to pay our bills and to strive and get savings so we can have a healthy retirement, those kinds of things. So I think that they're always important balances to strike in your life. And it's never, it's never an easy struggle, you know? And I think expecting it to be easy is, is probably unrealistic. And it's not going to be a smooth road either. There's going to be a lot of zigs and zags along the way. And it may seem like you're not getting there, but you really, you really are.
You just got to keep going.
. And so with every, you know, we just talked about what are other responsibilities for being the VP of brand content partnerships? Like what else, what are other opportunities? What does that look like for you?
It's really at the end of the day, it's, it's about expanding the company's connections to the industry, right? And to, and to build those relationships, the business relationships, frankly, and drive value to Podcasters. So at the end of the day, that's what I always am thinking about. So a lot of the Podcasting that I, I do maps directly to what I'm thinking about all day long with my job that I have, right. It's thinking about, you know, how can I partner or how can I, we build something that makes things more efficient or more effective for our customers, right? Which are Podcasters. So those are the kinds of things that I, you know, whether it's, you know, looking at potential companies to, to, you know, to get in strategic relationships with, or companies that just do a partnership with, or just that I can talk about in my podcast to, to, to drive greater value or get involved in the Podcast academy to drive value.
And I've been pushing for a new podcast association in the industry beyond the Podcast academy for a long time. And I think that there may be something brewing on that as well. That can be more of an industry organization that can drive best practices to the industry across lots of different areas that need some consensus on how to do things. So we need to keep driving this, this message around helping people get started, but get started in the right way and to have a quality process, to get started with their content that is more likely to create success. Cause having a lot of turnover of podcasts where people start and then fail or whatever, have a bad experience with it, isn't good for the industry either.
So, so trying to minimize that as much as possible by making the industry itself much more efficient and much more able to share knowledge with new people to.
Okay. Thank you. And then speaking of the Podcasts academy that is new here. So let's talk about, okay. For one, just before we got on, I was sharing with you. I was just happened to be on the Twitter and Hollywood reporter posted the podcast academy. And I was like, oh my God. And then I retweeted it and I added you and I did some hashtags about Podcasting and it's like, that's you, you're the chairperson of the Podcast academy, like Hollywood reporters reporting this, this is like major, major, major, whole love. So like, what do you have to say to that first?
Well, I'm part of a team that's working over there on the podcast academy. So there's two staffers, there's an executive director of the Podcast academy. That's really doing the day-to-day work of that Dell organization. I'm the chairperson of the organization that is a sounding board for the actual, like I say, the staff and then there's a board of governors. There's currently 17 board of governors that are currently accepted into the board that we meet on a monthly basis to talk about what we're doing with the, with the Podcast academy. And we're going to be taking on three new of governors here very soon. And then we've got a podcast academy awards event that's coming up here, March 28th.
That's going to be based out of Los Angeles. So it's going to be a, a live stage event. That's going to be a virtual event. So we're going to have like a stage that we're going to do stuff on as part of the live virtual event. So that's the idea behind it. And w w we have a slate of shows that we're taking nominations for right now. So you can submit your show for consideration of the podcast academy awards coming up here in March. Yeah. You can submit it right now.
They want to submit their show,
Just go to the podcast academy.com and you can join the academy as well. We have a full membership organization there as well. So you can join as a podcaster or as somebody that works in the industry for my creation standpoint, from, you know, in front of the mic to behind the mic, right? So let's say you're an ad sales person, or you're a producer, or you're a editor, a podcast. You can join the organization and be a part of selecting the winners and selecting the, the officers I'm to my position. That's going to be replaced here in January. So the, the membership is going to vote in the, the, the new board of governors at some point here, as well as the officers.
So, you know, it's going to be, I was kind of appointed internally just as a, as kind of like the founding group to get this thing off the ground. But it was fundamentally going to be a membership organization that was going to drive everything in the organization and there's mentorships that can be obtained. So you join and you can get matched up with another professional in the industry to, to share knowledge there's member only webinars that you can participate in from some of the, the real high-end experts in the Podcasting industry that is provided to members as well. So it costs, costs about a hundred dollars a year to join the, the organization.
Great. And then when people submit Wednesday cutoff dub,
I think we're cutting it off in, I think it's the end of December. So I can't remember what the date is off the top of my head right now, but it says on the website, if you go to go to the Podcasts academy.com and go through the, the awards tab at the top, it'll give you all the dates and everything in there. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's going to be cool. It's going to be something that is hopefully the awards kind of like what you think of with film with the academy awards. Right? So that's the idea behind it.
How many different categories are there going to be?
We have 20, I believe it's 24 categories right now. So, and that's also on the website too. So you can go see all the categories.
I'm going to definitely look at that. So there could be like best new breakout Podcasts. Like they have it like
The most top hosts, the best podcasts of the year. Yeah. Yeah. Best hosts is what it is. Yeah. I don't think we have best voice per se. Is there
Like best co-hosts cause there's people who do like, co-hosts Like comedy drama, I'll give her mental health, all the different categories,
But there's also categories too around production to editing, you know? So as you think about film production, we tried to draw a correlation to drive awards to people that are not necessarily in front of the mic, but you know, behind the mic, doing stuff too, that's important to quality. Right?
Of course. And who was the brainchild of creating the Podcast academy?
I was hernia and Lopez. Who's the CEO of Wondery he's from the TV and film industry. And Hollywood worked for Fox for many many years. And so he, he, he had the idea, he's the CEO of Wondery, which is creating a lot of terrific scripted Podcasts, storytelling, more reality-based storytelling, podcasts that are a lot of more being converted into television series as well. That's actually, it's currently up for sale right now. So it may be purchased by either who knows apple or Sony may wind up buying Wondery at some point. But yeah, so Hernan was the, really the one that really started the whole thing, but like about a year ago.
So
Cool. So cool. So the people who are listening to this right now, you're like, you're getting the inside scoop of like the brainchild of like the inside scoop of like something that's gonna like be massive. It's so cool. It's like, it's like being in the, in the brainchild of the birth of like the academy awards or, you know, something like that. So exciting what an exciting time to be alive and just to be like in it, and I'm going to circle back around, because imagine if I would have started six years ago. Oh,
That's right. You'd be like this huge Podcast or right.
But I'm here now. I'm here now. And with all that ammunition oomph, I'm just going to like, bless the real with all that, with all that. Okay. So there's also something called the Podcast hall of fame and you have been inducted into the Podcast hall of fame
That was put on by the podcast movement folks that started in 2015, they started, they started out in 2015 with their own awards too. It was the academy of Podcasters awards and then hall of fame. So they started inducting. I think they've inducted like 15, 16 people so far, I think, into the hall of fame. It, that they haven't done it the last couple years for a variety of reasons, but this next year they're going to bring it back. So, and, and that's, that's going to happen in Nashville coming up in, in 2021. So yeah. So if you want to go to that, you can just go to podcast, movement.com and sign up for that.
Yeah. Podcast movement was amazing. A 10 day conference. It was just like nonstop.
Yeah. There, their virtual event was, was very, very good that's for sure. But you haven't been to one of their in-person events yet?
No, no, no. Cause it's been going on since 2014. So this was my first conference. And honestly, because of the Covid and the pandemic of what's happening, I've attended so many podcasts are so many podcasts. I've attended so many, so many virtual conferences this year. And it's like, if I wouldn't have been involved in so many conferences, if it weren't for this pandemic, but I mean, now that I know about it, I definitely, you know, would like to, you know, obviously be there every single time if I'm able to, for sure. Definitely.
It's definitely worth it. I think this next year, it's going to be really interesting. Cause it's going to be a little bit more of a hybrid event. It's going to be a little bit, a little bit more virtual than it was the last time they had it last year down in downtown Orlando. But even last year they did have a live stage. That was, you know, I did my New Media Show off of the life stage at the last podcast movement down in Orlando. And, and so they've always had kind of, I mean, not always, but the last couple of years they've had a live stage where they've had sessions that were available, live streamed online. So people that couldn't actually attend in person could still experience some of the events. But I think this next year it's going to be a hybrid. So you're going to have people that are going to be there in person.
Plus you're going to have a lot of people attending virtually all at the same time.
Yeah. Yeah. This is totally shaped. Shifted our whole entire world. Like world when Gary V was the keynote Kelly Slater, he got some kind of an award or something like that, but he had an injury. He was in Hawaii and he couldn't show up. So they just put them on the big screen. And then he talked for like five to seven minutes. So it was like, it was the same kind of thing. Like we, there were thousands of people in the room, like watching him on the screen and it was, I don't know. I think it was a prerecorded. I don't think it was Live. I think it was pretty recorded. So. Okay. So with the, with being inducted to the podcast hall of fame, because this is so major, did you get a gold award, a plaque? Like what did you receive pending?
Yeah, I got a it's actually right there. It's hard to see it. Cause it's transparent. It's it's it's, it's behind the, or right in front of the, the light behind me. So
Right in front of the light weight. Not that big painting.
It's hard to see it because it's clear. Oh, it's
Clear. It's clear. Okay. So we went, yeah, I can grab it. There it is. Oh my God. Oh wow. Wow. Hall of fame. Hall of fame. Wait, it says, wait, I thought it was two 17. It looks like it. That says 2 0 7 2 17
Is when I, oh
Yeah. It was 2017. Yeah. I thought I said 2007. Yeah. Hall of fame. Rob Greenlee
There's some gold
Trim on it. Yeah. Wow. And then how many people are inducted every year?
What they were doing was about, I think about six or six or six or something like that.
How many people are in it now? I think,
I think 16, 17, right
Right now. Oh
My God. Well, they've only done it. They did 15, 16, 17, and 18. That's it.
I'm going to have to like really think about how I'm going to title this podcast. Cause it's like pod cat's hall of fame. It's like the podcast
It's The State of Podcasting does call it The State of Podcasting.
Well,
I think we've, we've talked a lot about podcasting in a lot of different ways. So
The casting, because that's what I want to talk to you about next. Like, cause your hip on the SCL. So how do you know how to label your podcasts smartly? So it shows up in the SEO rankings.
I think you just have to think about the keywords of the topics that you had in your pocket. I mean, it needs to be consistent with what you're talking about in your podcast. So I would just use the best words to describe what you're talking about. And hopefully when you came up with the show topics, you maybe had a little bit of thought about what, what topics you would want to cover and how that maps to popularity of certain keywords. Right. Of what people are thinking about currently today, I know in the early days, the media and people were all fascinated about sponsored links and Google and keyword phrases and how popular certain keyword phrases were and things like that. And then taking that information and saying, well, I'm going to make a podcast just about that keyword phrase, right.
Because I know 10,000 people a day are searching for know green juice vegan. Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to do an episode based on vegan green juice. So it, you know, and I think there's still a place for doing something like that if you want to, but it's not a very targeted way of doing your show. Right. So, so think about what kind of show you want to make and then just make sure that the words that you're using have the as best context to what you're talking about and map best to what people are searching for in, in Google. And one, one way that you can do that. There's websites out there, keywords everywhere. Dot com I think is one that you can go to, to find out what people are searching for and how many, you know, that kind of stuff.
It's a subscription thing that you have to pay for. But, but platforms like that can help.
And there's a free version as well by installing the Chrome. I have the free version of it. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. I think, I think it was you that told me about it. I think
Maybe you already knew
About it. No, no. I think I, I think I shared it back to you.
Okay. Well I have another one I have to share to you, but I don't even have it like on me, on my brain right now, but it's, it's something with an a, it's like awesome. I dunno. It's something really cool. I'm going to, I'm going to share it with you. It's another one that I'm gonna, I it's in my files that I'm gonna share with you, which I haven't used much yet, but it's, it's like, it's like, it's like a keywords.
Yeah.
And then, so kind of full circling around here. We went from like beginning Podcaster 1 0 1 through the arc of legendary Podcasting hall of fame with the plaque and the academy awards. Like, I mean, this is, this is a major arc here. Right?
Right. I'd say w where do we go from here? Right.
I mean,
Downhill from here.
Well, I have an idea. One just as quirky thing. What's your favorite color?
I think right now it's probably a, a, a
Gray. I love that right now. Gray. I love wearing, I think it's so sophisticated.
Platinum platinum. There you go. Platinum gray, platinum. That's more valuable. And it's a little richer color. It's not just flat gray. Like the shirt is right.
I need to get some more platinum clothes I'd been wearing, like Ray on gray, on gray, like gray socks, gray sweats. Great. Like great.
I mean, my car is platinum. The interior of the vehicle is black. I have a bunch of gray in the interior and it seems like all my clothes are either black or gray,
Black or gray. Right. Rockstar.
There you go. I don't know why.
Yeah. And then, and then the other thing I was wondering, so, okay. I mean, I guess we'll sit for I'll. I guess we'll stick on the Podcasting note for a second, but what what's a podcast maybe you're listening to right now or something that you liked in the past and you're like, oh, that's a cool Podcast. Something that you could just be disassociated with tech or learning podcast is something maybe you like for pleasure or something, a voice or something that you find entertaining besides she's all over the place. I mean, obviously, I mean, that's your number one, obviously.
Well, I'm on a lot of different podcasts, so it's it's I always liked the ones that I've been on. Right. So, you know, I listened to those a lot because I'm on like two or three different podcasts a week. So I do like the sound cartels, Podcasting essentials podcast, out of Australia. It's a podcast about Podcasting. I'm, I'm very meta in that way, but I also like, let's see Podcasters round table, which is another one, a podcast about Podcasting. So yeah. And I also liked the, the beetle moment marketing podcast on live with Emily binder. She, she talks a lot about how these smart speakers, you know, like the Google home and the Alexa thing.
And I won't say that very loud are changing audio discovery. So yeah. So that's a good one. And what's another one here.
Yeah. I've learned not to put my episode titles in the beginning because for the audio Alexa and stuff, it's not good to put it in the beginning. I was putting it at the end. And then I found out through podcast movement, just don't play episode, episode numbers are in the title, title, all that's like a big, no, no.
And I also like the Podcast talk tails and trivia too. It's good. It's a show that talks about various stories in history. And then also just about trivia things in various topics too. So it's, it's interesting. So
One of your favorite movies? I think the
One that I was the most impactful on my life is, was, was it the 2001 space Odyssey? Who is the director on that one? That one was a, it was very early. What was his name? I should remember this
It's okay. I need to go. I need to watch it. I know it's like a famous movie, so I need to,
I enjoyed blazing saddles too. I don't know if you remember that one or not comedy space.
Have you seen Amadeus with Milos foreman?
I have not yet. Oh. Oh, okay. Okay. It was written the 2001 space Odyssey. It was written by Arthur C. Clark and I believe it was directed. Was it Stanley Kubrick? I believe it was the 1968 epic science fiction film. So it was really a groundbreaking film. It really had an impact on me and then obviously star wars, which was back in the,
Okay, I'm going to share a secret with you. I just, during the pandemic I sell four or five and six. I haven't seen one, two and three yet. And then my dad's all about the Mandalorian. So he showed me what was up about Mandalorian. So I watched an episode with him the other day and it's so cool being a voiceover artist now because like, I'm like, oh, like, you know, so I can learn about the whole, the animation star wars thing that they did that I didn't even see it. I need to watch all those. It's trying to catch up because I have a 12 year old nephew. So he's like catching up so they can be on par with one another.
And now that Disney owns that series is investing buckets full of money into it to come up with new content.
It's been so cozy during this pandemic, just like watching these Disney plus shows, you know, Mrs. Banks, the story of Dr. Doolittle and all these little heartfelt, warm movies. It's been really nice to get cozy and kind of just do normal things. Like just like watch some shows. I've just been so busy traveling the world for the last two decades. I mean, this is a good time to get caught up on some stuff. So I'm going to watch the 2000 space Odyssey tonight
And then,
Oh yeah. And then I'm going to watch the blazing saddles.
You'll get a good kick out of that one. So have you ever done standup comedy yourself
Two years ago? And then I was, I was like, oh, I don't want to learn this stupid format of like setup, punchline tag, blah, blah. And then I'm like, I'm not memorizing like these jokes. And then I like, so I like revolted against it. And, and then I went on in my life, blah, blah, blah. And then about a year ago, because I became not emotionally attached to my previous, you know, life, you know, we like shed skin. And since I became detached because I was so emotionally detached because I saw these standup people, they were like talking about the real life and I was like public persona being perfect. So worried about what other people thought about me.
So I would never be vulnerable. Like, I mean, seriously, I've, I've I left home at the end of 2001, and I've had two people here one night. He did not invite my dad invited my ex-boyfriend. My dad did in 2007. And then I, I brought one person here because I was just so like protective of my family that like, I just, I'm just a very like private person, even though I seem I'm personable, but I'm very, and I'm open and I'm very private in a lot of ways anyway, but I'm like, now that like, I'm not that anymore. And I kind of know who I am. I gave it a whirl in New York city and I was going around to the open mics and I was doing some standup and I took a class on stand up October, what a woman did we right now, it was my birthday gift to myself.
I was in a six stand-up comedy class. I had a, a S a student performance with Zoltan, who I introduced you to, who has the innovative mindset who got me on the train track of my podcast on October 29th, one year anniversary. And so then I created the sophisticated psychos experience, variety show, and it was hosted at the pit and I'm a traveler. So I would do it once a month show in 86 person theater, beautiful theater, our third show, there was line and half the people I didn't even know, like on the second show, there was just like a buzz. And third shows like booming. And then the COVID happened. So it all went down, but I was, it was like a Carol Burnett modern day variety show.
And I was the host and I did, I did a standup bit, but as all the came on, she played the fiddle. I had some stand-up people in my class, come on, my friend, Joey Williams, he's in the blind boys of Alabama. He has a lifetime achievement award. He was the, like the youngest one to get a lifetime achievement award. I had him on the podcast. If the viewers want to go back and listen to that episode, but legendary, like gospel soul, the blind boys of Alabama, like Grammy award winning artists, like performs with prince tours around the world. Like he was in my show. Yeah. So I honored people who did improv stand up music, Nikki Scorpio, who I connected you with. He did some songs. We we'd done some songs together. So we performed a song.
I would do a standup it. And so I had this thing going and the pit said, the whole thing was like, we gave you a platform to get it going. Then you get it, you get the buzz going, you have it sold out. So you have to go to a bigger venue. Industry. People were coming, managers were coming. So yeah, I started doing the up and then this happened. And then I was going to do like an online kind of thing. And I'm like, let me just focus on my podcasts and let, just sit on the back burner. Let's see what happens with the way of the world. And then I just reflected few weeks ago that in the new year, what I'll do on a zoom is I'll have it prerecorded. And I'll do a one once a month show on the sophisticated cycle's platform and give, since I'm a producer, improv actors and people who perform opportunities to be on the show, even Podcasters.
And they do like a cool, like short, like three to five, everyone has five minutes and they do a segment. So like, I'm going to have you on if you'll come on. And like, you can be like, and then like, and like you do your thing and it can be comical. And you just give some like factual, insightful information or whatever you want. And it'll be a part of the variety show and it'll be a prerecorded. Yeah. So when I say since, so I think I'll do that in the new fear, but that's a long-winded answer, but why are you at,
I was just thinking of you. I saw the series, the marvelous, Mrs. Ms. Mays. And I was thinking of you because you remind me of, of her
Ever seriously, my friends, not a bunch, but a couple they're like, you're like the real life misses upper west side, like the whole like luck, like everything, like, yeah. So it's, that's a huge, huge compliment. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for saying that that's like beyond mind blown here,
Get up there and do your, do your stand-up deal and you'll reach your dreams. Right. Is that how that, how the story goes?
Yeah. I mean, she's brilliant. I haven't watched the, is there a third season? I haven't even watched that yet.
I haven't looked too recently.
I need to marathon it, but first I have the other two. Okay. Lastly, because wow. Thank you so much for being here. I would like to know it doesn't have to do with Podcasting or Kim. If there's a book, you recommend something that helped you along your journey in life. Maybe someone, a mentor, someone shared with you that enriched your life and gave you aspirations. And kind of like, for me, it's like the four agreements. Right? And so a book for you that really kind of shaped, shifted your life, or that you've maybe even read a couple of times that you want to recommend to the viewers.
You have to be a Frank about it. I'm don't I don't really read very many books. So I'm, I'm kind of like living in the, in the virtual world. So I'm not really reading that many books. So, but I do have, you know, there was a book put out by my colleague at Libsyn. His name is Dave Jackson and he put out a book recently how to profit from Podcasting. It's on my bookshelf back here. But, but yeah, I mean, if there there's book resources out there that you can get to, you know, especially if it's a fairly new book, right. That's come out about Podcasting that can help you learn about the medium as well, and learn about the culture and learn about ways that you can, you can potentially, you know, make an income from doing Podcasting.
It's not necessarily easy to do, but it's something that's open to anybody. It, depending on their level of commitment and talent and all the things that we've talked about on this show can be translated into a career for yourself or can. So, yeah, so it's, it's currently in Amazon, it's out of profit from Podcasting. So
There's a audible version of that as well.
I don't believe that Dave's done a audio version of it. No,
I'm really big into audio box.
Yeah, no, I think that's great too. And actually audible just got into podcasting too. You can go to apple and access all of the podcasts or actually many of the podcasts it's the catalogs can continue to grow. That's linked up with the Amazon music platform now.
So my Podcasts, I put my, my feet, the RSS feed with Amazon music it's live there. Should I do that with audible as well? Then that's an option.
It's the same catalog. So you're probably already there. So you're already probably, if you go into the, the audible search, you can probably search for your podcast right now.
Oh, that's so cool. That's so cool. And then lastly, so are you familiar with overdrive? Not sure. Okay. So I'll send it to you, but there's overdrive app coupla app and Frigo lap app. It's all free go like free legal, hoopla, and overdrive, and it's all through the public library. So you put your, you signing, you buy your, putting your whatever library are associated with the last four digits of your cell phone or whatever your number is associated with. You can download up to 30 audio books for free every single month. So if you are interested in a book, but you just don't have time to read all these books, which I love having a book in my hand, but I'm more in the audio digital space as well, but I like to be a sponge and like get the information you can download up to 30 audio books per month and, and get into some books maybe you want to listen to.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's always been a fair amount of audio books in the podcasting space too. So there's, there's complete novels. There's been scifi stories. There's, there's a lot of fictional stuff too that have been told in a serial format as well, that are very similar to audio books that maybe they have maybe more sound production. I do think that a lot of the newer audio books are getting more into sound production with their, with their audio books as well. So you're seeing this kind of this hybrid world between audio dramas and audio books kind of coming together a little bit. And I think we're, we're going to see that happen more. So there are free audio books that are available through podcasts as well.
So just kind of add, add to what you just shared. Right,
Right, right. That's cool. And then another thing I was just thinking about is I forget the series name. I would have to look it up, but it's scripted series. So it's these voiceover actors who are doing scripted series on podcasts. So does that have to be through the union? Do you need to be a union actor to do a scripted series on Podcasts?
I don't believe you have to be, it's not that restricted yet, but I do know that sag performers are being contracted for many of the, the audio dramas that are being created these days for Podcasts,
I've auditioned for a bunch. So what is the percentage? I
Don't really know off top of my head, how many shows are currently there that are, that are scripted at this point? I don't have a number that I can, I can access, but I do know that it's a growing area. And I do know that there's a lot more interest out of Los Angeles and well, and actually beyond Los Angeles, it's not just Los Angeles anymore that these pieces of content are coming out of. They're coming out from all over the world and other cities in Canada and other places as well. So I do think that there it's a growing area and I think we're going to see a lot more of it. I do. There's been some struggle in the area of fictional content and Podcasting. If you look at the history of Podcasting, generally, it's been built on reality-based stories.
So the fictional side has been a little bit, it's been a little harder for a lot of companies to, to promote. Yeah. But it's, I do believe that there's still pioneering going on in the fictional side, that's happening at places like Wondery and, and others, other studios down in Los Angeles that are trying to pioneer this stuff. But a lot of the stuff, if you really think back on it, a lot of the stuff that's come out is television series out of Podcasts have been true crime stories that have been reality-based stories, which tend to,
I don't know what it is. People just, you know, it's the authenticity thing, right? That is so, so much of a fabric of Podcasting that fictional, you know, it's a little bit like what I heart radio did with their, the movie character. Boy, I should have started no, remembered this before I started down this path, but there was a tell a movie that was done. Oh, I'm just drawing a blank on the name of it right now that they did, they created a, a, a podcast around that was like a right. And they created a podcast around a fictional character and the actual actor that portrayed that character was actually a very famous comedian.
Right. And the, the question that was around it was would that Podcast be better as if it was just a podcast by that comedian? Or was it better to have a podcast done by a famous comedian playing a, like a movie role in that podcast. Right. And that's, that's one of the tensions in this medium. That's, that's the, I don't know that we have the answer to yet if, if a fictional character is going to get the same traction as a real character. Right. Yeah. Definitely. Cool. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, I would love to have you back on in the near future, it's 2020 right now.
So how about in 2021? Awesome.
Well, hopefully we'll be out of this pandemic thing a little bit more by, by spring and then into summer and, and things will be a lot better. Yeah.
Many blessings on that many blessings on that. Any last words that you want to share with the viewers?
No. I just appreciate being on your show. And I know we've talked about a lot of topics on this. It's going to be a long episode, so yeah.
And then just I'll put it in the show notes, but real quick, best way to get in contact with you. LinkedIn, you mentioned Rob Greenlee
On, on Twitter as well at a Rob Greenlee and that's with forties. And then you're certainly welcome to go to my website, Rob Greenlee dot com. I'm on, on LinkedIn, under Rob Greenlee as well. So you can find me over there. You can also send me an email if you want to Rob G at Libsyn dot com and that's L I B S Y n.com. So I'd be happy to talk to you. If you want to, you want to start a podcast, it'd be love. I'd love to help you.
You heard it here and everyone reach out to Rob. Thank you so much for tuning in and joining us on she's all over the place. And yeah,
Well, I think we, we lived up to the, the brand of your show that we were all over the place all over the place. Right. That was good. And you were all over the place too. So that was good. It does. Right.
Thank You.
Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Kyriaki over and out.