Podcasts are hard to listen to, and that is one of their superpowers. When you find a good podcast, you hang on for life. This is a really smart way to structure a podcast. You are very savvy as a businessperson.
Podcast listeners listen, they pay attention, they are specific, the kinds of people that advertisers want to get in front of. I was looking for all the Multitude shows, and they are all in at least the top 5% of shows.
How do you grow a show from zero? By far, my top tip for creators is- Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast.
Today, we are speaking with Amanda McLoughlin, who describes herself as a part-time podcaster and full-time podcast businessperson.
She is the CEO of Multitude, a podcast studio and collective, and co-host of the shows Spirits and Attach Your Resume. Let's get right into it. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. How are you, Francis?
I am so good. It's good to see you again. Um, we should say too before we get so into it that just, I think it was, like, a month ago, I had your spouse, Eric Silver on, who is the head of development at Multitude. Yes.
So this is sort of a part two to that, a sister episode. Exactly.
You can see how, uh, our opinions overlap and how they differ, and, uh, we both brought very different professional experiences to what we do now at Multitude, so it's a, a great view of, um, our kind of holistic perspective.
Mm-hmm. I, yeah, I'm excited to... I'll go back [chuckles] and compare when I, when I write the newsletter- Mm-hmm... accompaniment to this. Um, okay. So I do wanna talk about the, the YouTube of it all. Yeah.
As you say, the, the prospective title to your memoir, I Was a Teenage YouTuber. Yeah.
Um, you vlogged through your teens, your early college years, and also into your early years as a professional, and I understand that, like, the main thing that this did for you was building a network and a community.
So tell me about that. Yes. Uh, I am not one of those people who was interested in film, unlike a lot of the people who were on YouTube in 2006, '7, '8.
Uh, I wasn't trying to, like, publish my short film reel from college, A, 'cause I was 15- [laughs]...
uh, and B, because video just happened to be where a bunch of interesting, creative people were trying to connect with each other.
The, the beauty about video blogging in the early, in the late 2000s and the early 2010s, um, was that it was people who got to show you a slice of life in wherever they lived. Mm.
This is before Instagram, before Twitter, when Facebook was only allowing college students, and just being able to see what someone else's room looked like halfway across the world, how they laughed, what they thought, and to have literal conversations back and forth, where it wasn't just posting a video into the void- Mm-hmm...
it was posting a video and then doing this thing called a video reply, uh, which used to be a feature on YouTube. Uh- Wait, I actually... That's something fully wiped from my memory if I ever even knew that.
So, uh, it began, I came up in this sort of, like, Nerdfighter, like, Ze Frank adjacent, you know, video blogging universe.
And, uh, if someone posted a video and you had something to say about it, you could obviously make a comment, but you could also post your own video and then say, like, "Re," or, "In response to this other video, here is my take."
Uh, my first video- So YouTube was doing this, like, a, you know, a decade and a half before TikTok, 'cause this is something I s- I fully associate with TikTok. This is basically stitching, but before. Okay.
And like all good features on YouTube, it was invented by the community, and then years later, YouTube supported it with metadata, but worse.
[laughs] So for a fleeting period of time, you could see the metadata of what video YouTubers were replying to- Oh...
um, but they stopped supporting that feature, um, you know, when it didn't prove to be monetarily valuable.
Um, but for us YouTubers, it was amazing because you could have a back-and-forth conversation with people you actually got to know, not just as usernames, but as individuals. And so that was the beauty of it for me.
And I kind of fell off of YouTube in around 2014 to '15 when I was working my way through college. I had a full-time job.
I was watching my peers either fully commit to YouTubing, either as a way to get into entertainment, hosting, traditional media in Hollywood.
Uh, my colleague Akilah Hughes spoke about it really beautifully on Attach Your Resume about what that journey looked like for her. Um, or they were trying to make a living as a creator, before we had that term.
And so that involved, at that time, basically daily vlogging because YouTube was all about raising watch time on their app. This, tell me if that sounds familiar at all.
Um, and at that time, it was long-form daily uploads. So I was like, "I'm not gonna be able to, like, essentially YouTube full-time, make money, and finish school."
So I let vlogging become kind of a, a hobby instead of a career passion, and it wasn't until podcasting came around really, and I started getting into it in 2015 and '16, that I saw that same spirit of community, of people who maybe didn't even grow up listening to the radio.
I never listened to the radio growing up except Fordham University's Irish music hour on Sundays, which my dad tuned into religiously. Um, so I was never a radio kid, but I loved podcasting for that same reason. Mm.
Interesting people having conversations, doing collaborations, building community, and that has led me to where I am now. Okay. So you got into podcasting in 2015. To be clear, I hadn't...
I didn't listen to a podcast, I think, until 2020, right before the pandemic. I was like, "You know, I'm gonna start listening to podcasts."
Um, I understand that back then it was a lot more of like, like Serial, you know, this kind of more narrative, serialized production style, as opposed to the extremely dominant conversational or interview style today.
Um, maybe I'm totally misunderstanding that, but tell me about what the industry was like when you got into it and how that's changed. What's, what's most different about it compared to now?It was really a mix.
So the earliest podcasters, people who've said that they have podcasts for 20 years and running, are for the most part technology bloggers, where, one, they were the early adopters of technology and understood RSS feeds such that they could code their own distribution systems back in the early 2000s.
Um, but also because it was just a way to check in with someone each week.
Um, and way before shows like This American Life started putting out radio reporting and high production value, very expensive prestige style shows in podcast form, it was the Savage Lovecast, right?
It was, like, the weekly distribution from, you know, this tech blogger who also had a weekly podcast.
I started listening to a show all about comedians talking about their mental health and mental illnesses more specifically, um, in probably 2011.
Uh, and that was, again, just every week it's part of your life, and it becomes a part of your routine.
Um, and that really is the beginning of podcasting, and then it was the mainstreaming of Serial and shows like it in 2014 that helped bring this to attention in the same way that, you know, sometimes a true crime documentary sort of breaks containment, and, like, my mom is talking about The Jinx, and I'm like, "How do you know about The Jinx, Mom?"
And, like, that... It takes kind of like a, a prestigey, you know, widely accepted and listened to, um, or watched medium to help mainstream the word podcast. That was a big change.
In 2014, Apple also started including the podcast app by default on people's phones. That was really big.
All this time, data speeds are getting faster, phone memories are getting bigger, and also phone plans are getting cheaper relative to the amount of data you can access.
So in the olden days when you had to, like, sync up your iPod with that, like, 16-pin, uh, you know, cord to your computer to actually download the podcast, um, those days were behind us when we could start downloading and streaming on the go a lot better.
And then finally, Spotify came around and started accepting and serving podcasts to people, which was when my mom, the normie I tend to use as my, like, you know, everyperson, um, was able to actually listen to my podcast despite me having made them for four years.
Um, so all that is to say that in 2014, the community was a mix of longtime people who had hosted conversational or interview shows, uh, weirdos, art weirdos, which I would put myself in that, uh, in that group.
One of the first podcasts I fell in love with was Welcome to Night Vale, a wonderful, very well-known fictional podcast that came out every week from a group of experimental theater makers [laughs] from the New York New York Futurists.
There was also Lauren Shippen and The Bright Sessions, a individual, really talented writer, director, and actor who, while waiting tables and not getting jobs in Hollywood, decided to make her own show about a super-powered therapist or a therapist for super-powered people.
Um, so those were the kinds of projects that felt so alive and fascinating.
It was about niche identities, about, like, queer people talking about queerness and queer identity in a way that I had not found outside of blogs, but hearing people talk about it was just, like, a different level.
And then- It was a really niche format that, like, you only would get into if you were, if you were some flavor of, like, of, like, nerd really. Exactly.
And as opposed to now where it's this mainstream thing, where it... now there's, like, the, uh, you know, the podcast bro stereotype. That wasn't really a thing then, was it? Uh, that was not as much of a thing.
I think the first, like, "Oh, yeah, let me tell you about my podcast," sort of, uh, trope was later on in the 20-teens.
Um, but it really felt like a thing that, you know, anyone who could afford a microphone and could figure out GarageBand, [laughs] which came for free on all our computers, you know, would be able to put out a podcast, and there's obviously so much more that goes into it.
Mm-hmm. But the idea that you could make something powerful, put it out there, find community, and just immerse yourself in that world, it's not the sh- it's not short-form video. Mm-hmm.
It's not a Tumblr blog that crosses your dash and you're like, "That's nice." It's not even an Instagram creator where you may have a parasocial bond with them, but they only cross your feed a couple times a day.
It's something that you have to choose, commit to, and fall into.
And like a good subreddit or like an incredible, you know, blog that you found in the early days of the internet on, like, StumbleUpon or maybe a columnist whose, you know, columns you lap up every single week or month in your weekly paper or magazine, it felt like you discovered something.
Mm-hmm. And podcasts remain a very, um, almost, like, archaic medium in its technology. We are just now getting to things like cookies and pixel tracking- Yeah... and streaming versus downloads, et cetera.
Podcasts are hard to listen to, and that is one of their superpowers because when you find a good podcast, you hang on for life, man. Yeah.
Podcast listeners are the, I, my brain wants to say stickiest because that's, like, a term we use in marketing. Yeah.
But they are the most engaged ride or die, will tattoo your logo on them, will come to your live show, will buy your book, will sign up for your mailing list, will subscribe to your Patreon, will buy the dang mattress that you're hocking.
Yeah. Like- Which, which is funny because-... podcast listeners are amazing... like you're saying, there's less metrics to, to track it.
Um, okay, I wanna talk about Multitude for a little while, but first, uh, I did find your, your YouTube channel, and I listened, watched, I watched the last video you posted, uh, which is from October 31st, 2018, and it was part of this VEDO series which I assume means vlogging every day in October.
That's right. Um- Originally it was April, but I did it for myself in October. There you go. VEDO. See, I, I love that, you know, taking the discipline but just- Mm-hmm... doing it in a month.
Um, so you're about to turn 27 and you're reflecting on your life, and I'm going to read part of the transcript. Maybe our producer, Tom, will cut the actual video, uh, in the edit, but, so bear with me.
I have a sort of trajectory for the future. I'm, like, on a path that I feel okay about remaining on. Five years ago I didn't really know about podcasting, and now it is so dominant in my life.
Um, and so of course there is a chance that maybe Multitude doesn't work out. Uh, maybe I get tired of it.
Maybe it's successful in a way I didn't plan and, and wouldn't describe to you right now as my goal, and I'm open to that, you know? So I don't really see this period of time as, like, the start of the rest of my life.
It is in some ways a, a culmination of what I've been working on for several years, and it's exciting, and it fits me really well right now, but I'm not-It's super tied to the idea that this is it forever, and I think that's a pretty healthy attitude to be facing this new future with.
So this is six and a half years ago. You have been in podcasting now for three years. That's kind of the year you formally start Multitude as a business. Mm-hmm. Tell me about that formation, how Multitude comes to be.
I, I was quite wise, 27, and, uh, looking back, the, the audacity with which, uh, I state firmly what I think and feel about myself, I, I admire looking back.
I, I'm less confident as, uh, as life goes on, but, y- I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that's very natural.
Multitude started because, uh, I was part of a bunch of different, like, colleagues and friends, some from my YouTube days, some from my school days, some that I was meeting for the first time in podcasting, who were making shows that they really cared about, that they treated really professionally, that they wanted to make their full-time jobs.
And because we were neither celebrities nor getting millions of downloads a month, traditional infrastructure of podcasting wasn't really set up to serve us.
So when our shows were making a couple grand a month on Patreon, getting several tens of thousands of downloads with each episode, I was like, "Okay, well, what's the next step? Is it to pitch networks?"
And so I pitched, like, Maximum Fun and Panoply and, like, all these networks that existed at the time, Earwolf. Um, is it to sell sponsorships?
I reached out to whoever I could find that was selling podcast ads, which is not a lot of people, and none of them were interested in signing some, like, podcast by weirdos and outsiders who didn't come from NPR, um, because for whatever reason, um, of size, of interest, of, uh, being too niche, of not being, like, a stand-up comedian.
Like, I love you, Paul F. Tompkins. Um, I really liked Comedy Bang Bang, but that was, like, every podcast coming out of Stitcher was, like, Comedy Bang Bang-like.
Um, so honestly, Multitude came from look, wanting to look more legitimate under a banner, under an umbrella name where we could band together and help inform each other's legitimacy, help each other look more legitimate, help each other grow our audiences, pitch events or festivals and have them say yes because we're a company who can bring six people and not just, like, Amanda and a bunch of her friends.
Um, and a strange thing happened, which is as soon as we made a name and a logo that my friend Allison made in exchange for editing her resume, um, and put up a website on my, like, Squarespace student plan that I was still hanging on to my student discount from NYU, um, people started reaching out to us as experts in podcasting, which on one hand we totally were.
I had spent the last three and a half years when I made that video, uh, growing a podcast from nothing to paying some of my bills, which was pretty incredible and supporting a few- You were, you were beyond the point of faking it till you make it.
You were just at a point of, like, "Okay, we've been faking it till we make it. Now we've kind of made it. Just formalize it, and people will come." We were doing it, and- Yeah...
in order for other people to see us as the professionally useful and successful individuals that I knew we were, we needed to appear as a company because in this society, people treat companies more seriously than they treat people, and that was not necessarily the design or the idea, but that is what happened.
Um, and so a radio station reached out to us and said, like, "Hey, we're making a podcast. We have never done one before. We know how to make great audio. We don't know how to get it out there and find an audience."
And so that contract is what let me and Eric quit our day jobs in summer 2018 to do Multitude full-time.
Soon after that, Sony Music was, like, googling production studio NYC, question mark, and Multitude's website came up.
Uh, and so we got our first branded podcast deal, um, doing a, uh, show that Eric, like, pitched on literally the back of a napkin in a conference room at Sony, um, for our first check, someone paying us to make a podcast.
That's awesome. Hey, if you're enjoying this episode, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss next week's episode. We release a new one every Thursday. Enjoy.
Um, okay, I was looking at the Listen Notes, which for any listeners who don't know is, like, the Nielsen rating system for podcasts.
I was looking for all the Multitude shows, and they are all in at least the top 5% of shows. Uh, I'm, I'm a little jealous. Curious Polys is only- [laughs]... top 10%. Um- We'll get you there.
Uh, w- w- we, yeah, we'll get there.
Uh, Spirits is the most popular with a score of 61, putting it in the top 0.1% of shows, which is really impressive, and I think there are, according to Listen Notes, 450 episodes over the last nine years. That's right.
Um, tell me about Spirits because that's kind of w- where you get your in starting this, Spirits as a wedge into the growth of the network. Totally. So Spirits was my first podcast.
Um, I co-created it with Julia Schifini, who is, uh, both my best friend, we went to kindergarten together, and a folklorist and historian. And so- So there's great chemistry on the podcast.
There is incredible chemistry on the podcast.
We had to redo the pilot three or four times to make sure that our dynamic as people who know each other really well translated to a microphone setting and- What did you have to change?...
to an audience of people who don't know us.
Well, uh, like anything, we talk a lot about our own past, and we have inside jokes, and we know how to make each other laugh, and that doesn't translate right away to someone who doesn't know any of us.
Um, and so Spirits, we wanted to do a project together.
Julia moved back to New York City after going to school in Boston, um, and we were both working day jobs that were really annoying, and we met, uh, about once a week in Times Square, which was, like, in between our commutes, um, at the Jekyll and Hyde Club, uh, the late great bar that was themed like Jekyll and Hyde, had animatronics slowly raising and lowering bar stools.
It was very trippy when you had too many martinis, let me tell you that much. Um, and they had an incredible two-for-one cocktail happy hour, two incredibly large cocktails for $15. Um, so we did that very often.
Different era. Different era, for sure. Um, 15 was, like, Times Square prices for a cocktail, and now it's, like, 25. Anyway, um, we wanted to do a project together.
We wanted, uh, infrastructure and an excuse to stay in closer touch to kind of remake our friendship as high school theater kids that are together, you know, 18 hours a day to adults that need to choose to spend time together.And so at first we had ideas around audio fiction.
We both loved The Bright Sessions, Limetown, Welcome to Night Vale, all of these incredible shows. Um, and that is an incredibly ambitious thing to start.
And so we thought to ourselves, "What is a version of a podcast we could do that plays on our dynamic, our interests, that we could reliably make every single week, and we could see ourselves doing 100 episodes of?"
And the answer was Spirits, which is us having a drink and talking about a different story from mythology and folklore every single week. Such a good name. Julia's the researcher. Thank you.
I am the layperson, and I am there... My qualifications to be on the show are being interested in what Julia has to say and liking learning about this stuff. So wait, this, I actually wanna talk about this for a second.
This is a really smart way to structure a podcast. I often hear people, you know, when I read people writing about podcasting, about, like, how that is a big appeal. Mm-hmm.
Um, so I, I forget where I saw this, but like a week ago, somebody trying to explain the appeal or the massive popularity of, like, a Joe Rogan, where it's like this is just a guy who is a proxy for the audience's curiosity, where he has these people on.
He doesn't really know anything about any of this, but he asks the questions. And so not that... [laughs] I guess I'm comparing you to Joe Rogan here.
Uh, but, but that, I, I love that, and I, I think that is, like, such a tried and true and foundational podcast partnership, right? The, the non-expert and the expert. Exactly.
The wonderful thing about a dynamic where somebody is sharing something they're passionate about and someone is receiving it enthusiastically is a tale as old as time. Uh, and that worked on so many video series.
That worked on so many blogs. It's the, it's the advice columnist dynamic. Um, it also allows us to change the show over time. We, I think, didn't imagine ourselves doing this still nine years later.
Every single week, Julia and I meet up and record an episode of Spirits. Um, and it's, it's incredible, but when the audience shows up, they, they think they're there for learning.
They think they're there to learn mythology, folklore, urban legends, ghost stories.
What they stick around for is our dynamic, is our way of processing the world, our viewpoint, getting to know us as people, and growing with us.
And so that is the, the great thing, and I think one of the lessons I took from YouTube because people would get famous, um, or notable or grow an audience doing something really specific, right?
They auto-tuned the news. They did a daily video diary back and forth with their brother. They did a, you know, vlog about being a new parent, and every day showed you a slice of life.
They did a makeup tutorial, whatever. And like any person, your interests change over time.
Also, especially on YouTube, a platform that is so monopolistic that its interests dictate the content that people put on the platform. Mm-hmm.
When YouTube decided to prioritize short-form video, guess what happened to all the people posting 45-minute daily vlogs? You have to adapt or be left behind. Mm-hmm.
And so the great thing about podcasting is, one, there is no algorithm [laughs] that is, that is determining what interests my audience and therefore who will get shown the stuff that I make.
But also, number two, we get to expand the definitions of our show or revise them over time in a way that keeps us interested. Mm-hmm. And ultimately, that is what keeps the audience interested.
For example, I'm working on an episode now on Spirits, uh, interviewing a Marxist scholar about capitalism and its mythos, right? That sounds awesome.
Like, ultimately, Spirits is about the stories human beings tell each other, how we use those stories, and what they say about society. Mm-hmm.
And sometimes that is about the ancient Greek god Anubis, and sometimes it's about, you know, narratives of ability. The modern Western god, capitalism. Exactly, right? Or, like... or disability in fairy tales- Mm...
or, uh, sex positivity in fairy tales, like, right? Any possible thing that you could imagine. Um, and the, the structure of our show allows us to just share something with each other that we are passionate about.
Um, and that- Wait, so I, I wanna, I wanna talk about that- Yeah... the YouTube algorithm of it all for a second, how you...
You know, obviously, you said YouTube introduces short form, and, and, and that people, people stop making long form vlogs. They make short form. And the great thing about podcasting is the, is there's no algorithm.
So I think I talked about this with Eric. Part of why Creator Spotlight is a video-first podcast is because I don't know how to grow a podcast, right? Mm-hmm. I had never been...
I mean, it's been, like, 14 months or so now since I started.
Um, and I was told that the best way to launch a podcast and grow it from zero is to use YouTube because there's the algorithm, and that can help you grow, um, which, uh, we've had some success with so far.
It's taken a little while, but we- we're having more and more momentum. Uh, but my, my question for you is, like, how do you grow a show without the al- without the algorithm?
Um, and I say that, again, Listen Notes, all the Multitude shows, and there's, like, I don't know, 15 of them. I probably have that number wrong. They're all in the top 5%. Mm-hmm.
They're all doing really good, and I'm, I'm sure... I mean, besides all your expertise, but I know that's partially because of the net- the network and cross-promoting across the network, et cetera.
That's a clear way to grow a podcast. But, um, yeah, how do you grow a show from zero? I think you focus on the areas of connection and the mediums that make sense to you.
So for example, if you're a YouTuber and you wanna launch a podcast, of course it should be a video podcast. Your audience are used to watching you on video.
You are presumably fluent in producing video, and you understand how to make stuff that is meant for video.
I love that you describe this as a video-first podcast because the thing that really gets on my nerves is [laughs] when people assume that every audio-only podcast is like a video podcast but without the video.
It's like, it's like getting a burger without the meat. It's like, oh, it's like- Different media. They're different media. They're different things. An audiobook is not a book. They're different media.
I think reading an audiobook via audio is totally a book, and it's different experiences to get it via reading versus via audio.
So I think that short-form video is the sort of trend, uh, of the day of so many social apps right now.
So Multitude shows record our podcast on Riverside, and our very talented Gen Z video editor pulls some clips from each podcast to post on social media. I also have a Gen Z video editor. [laughs] Listen, they're great.
Shout out, Bren. They know what to do. I don't know what to do. Um, I am a, I am a mid- middle-aged millennial.
Um, and so we use them not to totally pivot the entire structure of our podcast because, listen-Spirit started in 2016. Join the Party started in 2017.
These are shows that existed and were built for audio, and I love audio, and I'm passionate about the power of audio itself.
And we can also put some effort into marketing assets, into tools that'll help show and not just tell people about what our podcast is.
So I love showing and not telling who you are, what your show is, what you have to offer. That could look like, you know, me writing a column for a magazine about my views on a subject matter or even on podcasting.
They get to know my voice, and someone who reads the column might be like, "This person has something to say," and then come and listen to my podcast. Maybe it's going on other shows.
It's going on a friend's podcast, going on Creator Spotlight, and people who watch and like the approach I bring to the world being like, "Maybe I'll listen to Spirits. Let's see what she has to say."
Or third, maybe it's someone seeing on their TikTok, YouTube Shorts, you know, Instagram Reels a clip of Eric making a silly voice and making a great joke in their Dungeons & Dragons game, and then being able to say, "You know what?
I'm gonna listen to Join the Party."
So the advice is really get in front of people who are interested in what you're saying and how, and the medium by which you do it is gonna be different for, like, a psychotherapist who is using a podcast mostly to, like, find new clients and book speaking gigs and a, you know, creator or a YouTuber who wants to have a long form thing that has fewer editing expectations than a, you know, hour-long YouTube video essay.
Yeah, very, very much fewer editing expectations. Um, okay, let's talk more about Multitude for a second. Yeah.
So one of the things that Multitude handles is ad sales, and again, I think this is something you are very savvy as a businessperson, which I, I, I forget if you or Eric said this to me first, but it...
You said it's much easier to teach creative people how to use a spreadsheet than it is to teach, uh, businesspeople how to be creative, right?
Um, and so- That is a shared insight among us with him as a creative person and me as a spreadsheet person. Yes. We're like, wait, this... It is way easier to learn Excel- Our superpowers combined...
than it is to, like, t- teach a s- teach a suit to have a creative thought. Mm-hmm. Like, that, that is much harder.
[laughs] This, so this is one of your great strengths as Multitude is that, and, and both of you specifically as people, is that you really understand both sides of this equation or this coin, whatever.
Um, and you can help creators monetize. This is one of the things you offer.
So tell me how you pair creators with advertisers or, like, you know, however you think about that, um, how you price those ads, how much of this flows to Multitude. How do ad sales work for you? 100%.
Ad sales is not the passion of my life, but it is the thing that has become my professional calling card because I am convinced that podcast audiences respond better to their trusted friend, Amanda, the cohost of Spirits, telling them, "I tried this thing, and you'll like it, too."
The rates that we can charge in podcast advertising are between three and eight times more than things like video ads on YouTube, display ads on the web, even pop-up ads in the wonderful little fruit iOS phone game that I play on the subway.
Podcast listeners listen. They pay attention. They are specific.
They are overall the kinds of people demographically that advertisers want to get in front of, and so it is a no-brainer to match an advertiser, a product, a service, a company that sells something that my audience, who I know so well, might be interested in via a trusted source.
It's not a banner ad interrupting your news article reading. It's not a, you know, video ad for Hyundai interrupting the, like, Let's Play that I'm watching.
It's someone you know telling you, renting out my expertise and my trust that I built with the audience, to convince them to do something, and I'm describing it this way because it's the same thing that makes me say to people, "We have a Patreon.
If you have money to spare, I'd love your support to make this show work," and makes them say yes or makes them listen to the newest show from Multitude. "This guy sucked."
They don't know anything about it except that I said they should listen to it, and they're like, "Okay, I will."
Like, that is powerful shit, and renting out that relationship to a sponsor is both a thing that I wanna make sure I price fairly and s- secondly, a thing I do with great care.
[laughs] Um, early on, one of the things that made us different is, um, creators had final say over what advertisers go on their show. That remains pretty unusual.
Um, we also prioritized advertisers we felt decent about, um, and turned away the credit cards for kids and, [laughs] like, pay-to-play phone games and pay loans. Okay, wait, wait.
So the creators having final say, I mean, the, the implication there is the ability to say no because there's money coming in from other sides, too. Yeah. So I wanna focus there for a second. Yeah.
All of our creators, everyone we work with at Multitude, has a Patreon for their podcast. Multitude takes no cut of that.
Um, our only financial relationship with the shows that are in the collective or shows that we handle ad sales only for is a commission on money we earn them.
So our split is 70/30 for every single client we have, no matter how big or small.
Um, and it's something that I feel really strongly about, that we put a lot of effort into finding high-quality sponsors that hosts can stand behind and that audiences will be excited to hear about, and that is more labor-intensive [laughs] than, uh, putting any old shit onto a show.
Um, so that is... That, to your point, means that creators can prioritize the long-term trust and, um, understanding with their audience.
Uh, we never wanna push a creator to iHeart, put 15 ads in a 30-minute podcast for any old shit that's coming down the iHeart pipeline because iHeart needs to post a profit right now this quarter- Yeah...
in order to keep, you know, a podcast going. For most of us, like, there are people who listen to my podcast that started watching my video blogs in 2007.
Like, that is long-term relationship building that, uh, listen, I wasn't really in a position to turn down millions of dollars.
Maybe I would've made different choices if I had, but I sure can turn down the payday loan, cryptocurrency- Mm-hmm... NFT, you know, bullshit sponsor. Um, that also can be lower earning.
Uh, and so our whole thing is helping creators understand their options, make smart choices, and by smart, I mean ones that benefit them in the long term and don't rely- Mm-hmm... on needing to, like-...
milk a quick buck out of a sponsor or a creator or a trend in any given moment. I really try to be in the business of teaching creators how to make sustainable livings online. Mm.
And maybe I would ha- be a podcast millionaire like Alex Bloomberg if I didn't- [laughs]... have that perspective on the industry. Uh, but it sure is what helps me sleep at night, and it's what I want.
It's what I want for myself. I'm a creator first and foremost, and being weirdly business pilled, where I had to understand- [laughs]...
business and finance to pay back my student loans, uh, when I first got out of school. I feel like- Totally get you... it's my, it's my business and my duty to translate that to creators and to educate- Mm-hmm...
them on the choices they're making and why there are pros and cons to both. Okay, there's a couple things I wanna get into there. One, um, to quote something you said on the Podcast Perspective show, uh, very recently.
You said, "From a business perspective, the most powerful word in my vocabulary is no," which is what you're talking about right there.
It's, it's like wh- uh, having the ability to say no and knowing why you wanna say no, what you as a person, as a show, whatever, uh, uh, as a person with values, what you say no to.
Tell me about dialing your, your no sensor, as it were, your, your knowledge of when to say no and why. Saying no is, um, is an economic privilege, and it's really, uh...
It's, I think, important for me to say that I only started saying no to potential advertisers, clients, uh, ways that we could make money when I had some other money coming in, such that I wasn't depending on each and every gig, each and every job, each and every advertiser.
So for us at Multitude and for us as podcast hosts, that means, like, ultimately I can count on my audience support, on my membership, on my Patreon to have that money coming in, where people are supporting me and my work, and they trust me.
And I have some sense of what I'm gonna be making throughout different months of the year.
The second thing is slowly getting more clients, such that I can tell them when we're first sitting down and starting out, "This is what I can do really well for you, and this is what I can't do well for you, or what I think you can find better with someone else."
Kind of in the way that, like,
negging, uh, is meant to make people lean into you on dates or whatever, um, it is really powerful and, um, and makes you seem more desirable to tell a client or a potential partner- Mm-hmm...
what you do and don't wanna do. Um- This, no, I, I, I fully agree with this. Yeah.
Last time I was looking for a job, it was like I, I was applying to too many different things, maybe a little too much variety, and thus my resume and the way I was presenting myself were- Yeah... a little too broad.
And I, I spoke to a mentor about it, and they were like, "You're doing too much. Like, you have to know what you can't do, and, like, make it very clear that that's not what you're offering."
And I, I, honestly, as soon as I applied that advice, I, I had a job within, like, three weeks.
Which is amazing, but also you're not, like, in a position where, like, you need to start a job this week in order to- Yeah... like, cash the paycheck to, like, make rent.
You're not gonna walk in with the same attitude and confidence of- Yeah, I was unemployed... "This might not be for me." You know? Like, that, th- that's, that's a really real material circumstance.
And so part of that was by having so many ways that we make money, it, it en- enables us to be choosier- Mm-hmm... to not, again, like, follow trends just sort of mindlessly, which just feels better psychologically.
It feels good to be able to make that decision for myself- Yeah... and not because I feel like I need to for my job.
Wait, also real quick, we probably spoke about this when I spoke to Eric, but what are all the ways Multitude makes money? When, if- Yes...
if that's separate, Multitude, and then also you specifically, if those are separate. Yes.
So Multitude has our commission on the ads we sell for other podcasters, work for hire, so we produce and edit and post podcasts for a variety of clients. Um, and then third, we have a studio here that we rent out.
Um, and- Great place. I've been there. Thank you very much. Um, and those are the three lines of business that Multitude the company is in.
Um, I am also a co-owner and co-host of three different podcasts, so n- all of those shows, Spirits, Join the Party, Attach Your Resume, um, any money that comes into the show, we divide equally among its hosts.
And so- I have stuff I didn't, I d- forgot to mention Join the Party- That's okay... in your intro. There's too many. [laughs] There is too many.
Uh, and the podcast CEO that's also on three podcasts is like, "I see myself. I, I know- [laughs]... that's a yellow flag." Um, but no. Mm. So the, that means that
ad sales and the fact that in April 2020 all advertisers canceled all of their podcast ads for the year- Mm...
because of the COVID, um, impacted me, but it was impacting a third of my business really severely, not my entire business really severely. Yeah.
It also means that if advertising is a little bit lower in a given year, in 2022, brands were, like, scared shitless, and they did not- [laughs]... buy podcast ads.
Uh, that affects all of our shows a bit, but it affects nobody's 100% of their revenue pie. We still have our Patreon support coming in. Um, so that is by far my top tip for creators, is diversifying your revenue stream.
It makes sense as- Mm-hmm... a business. It makes sense as an individual. Um, and for me, the checks I take home each month from Join the Party and Spirits remain, I'd say, about half my income. Wow.
Um, and the rest is, uh, whatever is left over after a year of running a business, paying other people [laughs] and- Mm... uh, being in the business of providing services to other podcasters. Yeah.
Uh, so I, I wanna talk about sustainable incomes for creators besides you, um, 'cause you, we just, we just described you.
[laughs] Um, maybe, I don't know, something, if there's a specific creator you know, or you can anonymize, blend them together a little bit.
You don't have to give a name, but I'm really curious if there's, like, a specific model, um, of some creator who's making a sustainable living that you really admire and think is something that people should aspire to that's also really accessible.
I think that there are a lot of really good examples of people who use a podcast as a way to have, like, a home base of a community, of a project, of a brand that they can control, and if it's a novelist who puts out a book every four years, it's maybe, like, a, a chef or a recipe tester who is able to work on a few cookbooks that, you know, come out every few years, but they can be on a podcast each week.
A game designer who puts out maybe one game a year, which is a lot, but also they can stay in touch with people each week.
Um, it, all of that stuff I think is soUseful because it really helps you make the most of what you have built in digital media, and then purlaying it to a book deal, a TV show, a hosting gig, um, hosting someone else's podcast, uh, some amount of a career that is, uh, difficult.
Maybe you're a features writer and you also have a podcast where you, like, talk to inter- interesting subjects.
Um, it really becomes, like, a site of community, a portfolio piece, and also a thing that may make some money in and of itself.
Um, so thinking about all of the, like, bloggers I followed, uh, I think Ann Friedman is a really good example. Um, she, uh, is a writer. She has books.
She was the, um, I think one of the founding, uh, producers and co-host of Call Your Girlfriend, an iconic podcast for mid and elder, uh, media millennials.
Um, and she was also one of the first people to make a living from a newsletter, uh, so I'm sure very big in your neck of the woods.
I think her career is really enviable because she has this base of support and can also spend time writing books, writing features, having a kid [laughs] right?
Like, taking time off, um, in order to do what she needs to do long-term, um, and then also have that weekly base. Similar, Dr. Moiya McTier is one of our hosts here at Multitude.
Um, she is an astrophysicist, uh, and she writes books. She does professional speaking engagements, and she has a weekly excellent podcast called Pale Blue Pod. Um, and all those things together feed into each other.
The podcast can be evidence- Mm-hmm... of the work you can do for a speaking bureau or a publisher. Working on a book can give you insight and material to then bring to your podcast.
So that's the kind of like diversified creative life that lets me engage in s- the sort of, like, short-term pleasure of making something and putting it out the next day or two days later- Mm-hmm...
and also inform and shape how I can work on longer form things. That- Mm-hmm...
at least for me, keeps me really interested because always making stuff in one form or in one mode of, like, only working on a novel and then switching three years later to another novel, like, God bless you guys.
I don't know how y'all do it.
So this reminds me of another thing you said on the podcast Perspective Show, which is there are lots of great reasons to have a podcast and call one successful that have nothing to do with profit. Mm-hmm.
That's kind of what you meant, right? Exactly. It can be, sorry to say the word thought leader, but it can be... It can help make you a thought leader.
It can help keep your, uh, your brand or your perspective present in people's minds. It can also just be a fabulous tool to organize community.
I almost exclusively listen to, like, leftist, socialist, uh, podcasts, and almost all of them are like, "Hey, give us some money on Patreon if you can-" Mm-hmm...
"so that we can, like, help our co-hosts take fewer Uber delivery shifts." Yeah. You know?
Um, like, they, they can just be a way to, like, um, offset some of the day job work that you do, or if you're an academic, for example, and can't make money on things related to your research, it can just be a good way to ex- to make more accessible the work that you do that's not behind a paywall or- Yeah...
in a book form or only coming out every five years. Well, and I mean, back to the, what we were talking about at the very beginning about what, what YouTube did for you when you were younger is, like, you meet people.
I, I know you now because of this, you know? Mm-hmm. A, a, a former guest that I interviewed a year ago introduced us a few months ago. I went to your studio. I interviewed Eric. I've, I'm interviewing you.
Like, this is purely because of this podcast. Um, anyways, moving on. For podcasters who maybe they have a podcast, maybe it started and they... Not that you are necessarily a distribution company.
I don't know if you would label yourself that. Maybe you are, but there are all these distribution companies.
For podcasters who want to work with distribution companies, how should those relationships be understood, and what does one usually need to have to make a distribution company interested in working with that po- with that show?
Excellent question. The beauty of the RSS feed is that it is a distribution mechanism. RSS is really simple syndication. It gets files, whether those are text files of blogs or audio files or now video files of podcasts.
It just gets it into a person's hands in a way that, or s- more specifically on their device, in a way that does not require the intervention of any centrally owned or operated platform.
And so I bring that up because to a certain extent, the word distribution means everything and nothing in podcasting.
There are certainly, you know, companies or individuals who will say to you, "I can help you do distribution," which means making your RSS feed, getting your podcast out there, doing initial marketing, strategizing about how you launch it, about how social media or marketing's gonna work for you, all those elements.
But fundamentally, you don't need anyone's permission or help in order to distribute your podcast, which is the beauty of it. Um, Spotify wants to own podcast distribution, right?
They don't just wanna be the place where you stream podcasts, where you endure ads or pay Spotify for the privilege of not enduring their ads.
Um, they also wanna be the place that hosts and puts out your podcast, not via RSS, but via their own internal streaming mechanisms that they can make as opaque or as transparent as they choose to, and usually it's opaque.
So I would say to creators, have a home for your podcast, a podcast hosting company, um, that you pay for, that is not owned by YouTube, Apple, or Spotify, and that gives you as much control over how your podcast gets different places and when as possible.
Never host with Spotify. [laughs] Never rely on a company that does more than one thing for your money. So I am definitely in favor of using monetization tools that are available to you.
I'm against relying on Apple's monetization tools only. Um- Okay, wait. I wanna butt in here. Yeah. So you, uh, again, on the podcast Perspective Show, um, asked- I hope you didn't feel scooped.
I, I hope this is an, a value add. No, uh, uh, absolutely.
Uh, so Jeff, the, the host there, asked you about common mistakes you see creator entrepreneurs making, and you said trading autonomy for convenience is the biggest one.
Choosing an all-in-one platform, an all-in-one- Mm-hmm... provider, a Swiss Army knife of platforms is almost always a mistake. Um, and I wanted to bring this up because I've heard the...
Specifically, this was in the context of newsletter people, but I think it's, can be broadened to any type of creator. The th- there's three jobs: createGrow, sell.
Create the stuff, grow an audience for it, and sell ads against it or whatever it is that you monetize.
Um, and I think what you're talking about is how I think about platforms like this that offer, that, you know, purport to be an all-in-one, is they pitch you that all you have to do is create- Mm-hmm...
and they will do the growing and the selling. Um, but there are a few problems with that, which is kinda what you were talking about, and I wanna hand it back to you.
Yeah, no, I mean my words not yours, but Substack is great for a very specific flavor of, um, now independent former journalist. [laughs] Yeah. Right?
Uh, and it is absolutely tempting to trade convenience for autonomy as a creator, 'cause you're doing a million freaking things.
Like, who wouldn't be sort of seduced by the notion that all I have to do is make stuff- Yeah... and then money will appear. Like, that is ultimately the dream.
But because we live in a capitalist hellscape, every time you accept a little bit of convenience from a tech company, you are giving up data, control- Yeah... privacy, autonomy.
And so while it is more work, it is so important that you have a domain name, that you have a website, that you host your podcast somewhere separate to how you make your money, and that when you make your money, you choose a platform, I think Patreon is the best one out there right now, um, that allows you to have direct communication with your f- with your audience and some amount of transparency over how you're making money.
Um, it is so crucial because that's our career capital. As a creator, you have the trust and power of your audience, and that's it.
And so as much as Substack is leaning into live video, vertical video in the feeds, uh, you know, they had social audio for a minute there. I remember when, like, Twitter Spaces was, like, meant to be everyone's thing.
Uh, every time a platform uses your audience as a guinea pig, every time they make you as a creator form yourself to fit their newest priority as a company, you're chipping away at the willingness of your audience to, like, download apps, make accounts, and try new features.
And so when those things line up, that's amazing.
Um, th- they, there was this company, um, in podcasting called Luminary in 2019, where the son of a hedge fund billionaire, um, made a podcast app where he spent many millions of dollars- [laughs]...
enticing, um, people like Karamo Brown from Queer Eye- Mm... uh, to make a podcast that ultimately almost nobody listens to. Uh, and so, like, those creators who got paid, go in, poet.
Like, anyone who's gotten an advance from Substack- Get those checks... or funding from Spotify to try their, like, short-lived live ra- they, like, reinvented radio and then, like, shuttered the app six months later.
Like, get paid, buddy. Mm-hmm. But those are never gonna be the sustainable, repeatable checks that you can control. Yes, okay, so this, I think, gets into a distinction between creators and media companies. Mm-hmm.
And I think, I mean, it's almost an ongoing joke at this point, um, on the show of me asking, "What is a creator?" "Would you define a creator?" Yeah.
Which I will maybe ask you that in a second, but to me, in the context we're talking about here in relation to platforms, I mean, creator is a word that every pla- it means something different on every platform, and part of what I try to do is find, like, a generalized definition for it, um, which, you know, I, the, kinda the best way, best one I've gotten to is somebody who is creating content to be distributed on the internet to an audience beyond just their friends and family, and they're also monetizing it.
Um, but specifically when it comes to platforms and the way platforms can view creators is a creator is some- Like, a platform needs content.
A platform is a vessel, and creators are the people who make content for it, um, usually then in just the creating side, not the growing and selling, where they're basically sharecropping within the platform, um, for a percentage of ad revenue, whatever.
Uh, the question I wanna ask you is not how you define a creator, though you might have to do that to answer this, but it is, what is the difference between a creator and a media company?
Every creator is a business, and whether or not you own the fact that being a creator who has some ambition to make some amount of money with your stuff means you're a business, I think is sort of, like, the, the logic gate between whether or not you go in a media company direction or you go in an artist direction.
An artist doesn't have to make money on their art to be an artist, right?
I'd say lots of artists maybe have a thing in common where they hate the idea of making money with their art, right, or they feel complicated about it, um, or maybe it's by necessity.
Uh, a creator who wants to do this at least semi-professionally, at least making money in some way, needs to view themselves as a business.
You need to know the tools of business to defend your worth, to quantify your worth, to do the work of growing and making money off of your stuff.
Because if you don't, a platform's gonna do it for you, and that might be worth the trade-off in some cases, but it is never going to be your choice.
[laughs] Uh, you are going to have the most options possible if you see yourself as the business that you are. Um, any freelancer, any Etsy creator, any small business owner is a business owner.
They have to think about things like profit, loss, inventory, you know, all these things, even if it's as simple as, you know, deciding whether or not upgrading to a new device or investing in, like, this lighting kit versus this one is actually worth it.
And so a media company, I think, evolves from that same structure.
I was a creator who made a media company, and the goal of my media company is to train as many people as possible and equip them to make a sustainable living online.
Other media companies want to put out stuff sufficient they can put ads against it and then make profits for corporate shareholders.
Um, the, the size and scope can differ, but to me, m- media company is not based on an individual personality and is instead based on an editorial tone or point of view.
For the Multitude Collective, all of our shows will teach you something while entertaining you.
They're going to bring a open-hearted, curious, but still critical perspective about history, space, video games, mythologyD and D to the table.
Um, I would argue that something like, uh, Malcolm Gladwell's company, Pushkin- Mm... started because there's the Malcolm Gladwell name, right?
There's like a tent pole of like if you're interested in Malcolm Gladwell or have read his books in an airport, like you will come and enjoy some flavor of the podcast that they're making.
And I think they're still, you know, working on what it looks like to have a non Malcolm Gladwell dominated media company. Um- Star shines too bright. Right? Like I, uh, I don't know.
I think that's one version of like the big name yielding more, you know, influence or platform to other people. Um, and for us it was, you know, we never had like a huge celebrity to base the company around.
We didn't have anyone's donor or venture capital money to say, you know, "Oh, well if you like product A, you're gonna love these like close derivations."
Well, which is, that's been a strength for you 'cause it's, it's, it's...
That's why you've built the sustainable bus- Not why, but it's like forced you in a way to build this s- this sustainable business that isn't just based off of this one, you know, star earner. It's by necessity. Mm-hmm.
And, uh, listen, if, you know, Sony Music wanted to keep cutting checks, uh, like they were in 2019 [laughs] um, I'd probably be here saying like, "You know what? The branded work, it, it pays the bills, baby- Yeah...
and we can do the rest around it." Um, that's, that's not how it worked.
And, um, returning to one of your questions earlier, I think like owning your narrative as, uh, you know, a person with a career that is like varied and weird and ended up where I am, not 'cause I planned it, but because looking back it's really logical, um, has brought me a lot of solace and I think that's what I was touching on in that 2017 blog of kinda like, you know, s- quitting, quitting YouTube-ish to work on Multitude, um, was like I dunno if it's gonna work, I dunno what's gonna be next.
Again, five years ago, the idea that I would like pick up my YouTube skills again to like be a video podcast producer was insane, and I don't know what technology companies are gonna be doing five years from now that are going to impact my life.
But what I do know is that running a company in digital media that prioritizes creators and our autonomy and audience's trust means that I am well qualified to sniff out the bullshit.
I'm well qualified to figure out what makes sense for me and what doesn't, when it makes sense to try or test or jump onto a new technology and when it doesn't, and no one is forcing my hand.
No one is saying to me, "McLaughlin, pivot to short form video right now." Um, no. Fuck that. Uh, we had a quarterly meeting with our hosts yesterday where we said, "You know what?
Uh, you know, Apple says X, Y, and Z about the podcasts that they will most feature. They really want you to put episode art on your, uh, on your podcasts now 'cause it shows up on cars or something."
Uh, and I'm like, "You know what? Take it or leave it. Like don't change your media strategy and your marketing strategy because Apple is into episode art right now, but if you're making episode art, chuck it up there.
It might help us." And that is- Can you speak more to, to what, what's on the, what was on, on, on the agenda in that quarterly meeting? Uh, yeah. You don't have to spill everything, but I'm- No... I'm really curious.
Yeah.
Every quarter, um, the Multitude staff, which we have a team of six full-time staff and nine total employees, meet with all of the hosts at the company, which currently number I think 10 additional people, um, w- to share what we're working on, what our priorities are, projects that we have in development, and go around to each show to check in with something that they are proud of, something they need help with, and something they're looking forward to in the future.
Um, so just a way to stay, uh, for the host to stay informed as to what the, those of us for whom Multitude's a day job are doing, and also to go across shows and say, "Oh, well actually I'm working on this thing in July that we should totally work with to collaborate together to get feedback," and for people to ask questions like, "Hey, what's the deal with video right now?
Like should I care?" That's a question we answered at a quarterly a year ago. Oh, okay. Uh, thank you for sharing. Yeah. Um, okay, one more bit about platforms.
So I think this is the last reference I have to that Podcast Perspectives appearance, uh, but one thing you said was that platforms need creators, but creators fundamentally don't need platforms.
And we already spoke to that a bit with, you know, you talking about don't, don't go all the non-one platform, diversify. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, m- my sharecropping analogy, that applies there.
But I remember in November, I forget if it was like the, the Meta earnings call or whatever presentation, um, and Zuckerberg was speaking about this regarding Meta's various platforms, how there could be, you know, uh, AI characters, AI generate...
I mean, they had the AI characters. They shut that program down.
But AI generated content that the platform generates and populates the feeds that is kind of customized to the desires of, um, specific consumers on the app, which on my other podcast, Tasteland, around this time we were speaking to I think it was David Rudnick, the designer, um, about what that represents and what, you know, certain like VR things could represent in that it represents this solipsistic
consumerist view where you're not, you know, there's not this like centralized reality that we're all engaging with, i.e. you know, when there's only three newspapers. Not- Mm-hmm... that's a simplification. Um,
to try to land the plane here, uh, the implication there is there's a world where platforms don't need creators, and the platforms themselves are generating fully everything that the audience desires.
What do you make of that? That is a Silicon Valley investor's wet dream that is never gonna fucking happen. Every single lesson about media over time tells us that people don't want slop.
They want interesting, weird shit.
There is nothing like the gift of somebody choosing to spend time with my thoughts and stuff that I make, and there is nothing like, not replicable by any, uh, water-guzzling, climate change contributing, ChatGPT five point whatever, none of that shit, none of that slop is ever going to come across as real and compelling and worth coming back for for any person.People sniff out bullshit.
People know what they are getting. People want to talk to people.
I remember my dad reading me an article in the '90s from The Wall Street Journal, this is the kind of dad he was, um, of like, "Oh, there's this new thing where it's like a computer therapist, and you can like log onto the internet and you can ask the computer a question and say, you know, 'This is what I'm feeling today.'"
And then the computer had like four or five responses, one of which was like, "And how does that make you feel?" And so it was a joke in our household growing up that I'd say something like, "I don't wanna go to soccer."
He'd go like, "How does that make you feel?" And I'm like, "Fuck you, Dad." Um, and so like it is- this is far from the first cry a- at that stuff.
We have had like magazines printing lorem ipsum in some of their pages, and like people notice that shit. They notice when the quality goes down.
Reddit is full with threads of people saying like, "Did they change the Gatorade flavor? 'Cause this shit sucks now."
Like, people notice stuff, and ultimately we use media to learn more about ourselves, other people and the world, and nothing that generative AI plagiarizes from real human artists is ever going to measure up.
So like I would say like, Zuckerberg, let's go.
Let's see what you got because I promise you people are not going to choose to spend time with that shit unless you make it technologically or logistically impossible for them to engage in the world or human connection in any other way, which to be clear, they are trying to do.
Content. It's got what users crave, electrolytes. [laughs] Um, [laughs] anyways. Okay, let's... I know we're, we're, uh, nearing an hour here, so let's talk about Attach Your Resume a bit. Um, I did- Yeah...
talk a little bit about this with Eric, uh, but I'd love for you to give a little pitch, uh, because I know my audience would also love to listen to Attach Your Resume.
What is Attach Your Resume, when did you start it, and why?
Eric and I started Attach Your Resume in October 2024 as an interview series, an attempt at like building an oral history and body of knowledge about digital media from the worker's perspective.
Um, we are interested in talking to people whose jobs involve making stuff online about the reality and history and future and challenges of having this be our job. Um, there are some
sort of resources and oral histories and, you know, documentaries about things like BuzzFeed video exploding or, um, the blogging era bursting or Facebook's pivot to video and its impact on news.
But things are changing so quickly, and people's careers are moving in such unpredictable directions that we need and I really crave a place where I can hear people reflect about what this is like as a job and specifically what experiences got them there.
So we get to talk to people like David Roth, who was one of the people who walked out of Deadspin to then form Defector when G/O Media bought that blog and then like sold and rebought and resold and like told them to stick to sports and all kinds of stuff.
Huge. That really matters if you're talking to a certain media-brained [laughs] media-pilled person.
Um, and other people may not know about it, but those events and forces and these people shape the way the internet works and the stuff that we are looking at now.
Talked to Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon, who made Patreon because when he put several thousand dollars into a music video on YouTube, it got tens of thousands of views, and then he got a check for like 100 bucks.
He lost thousands of dollars on that video, and he's like, "Surely there's a better way." And now in 2025, the internet is fundamentally different than it was 12 years ago before Patreon was a thing.
So really zooming in on structurally, systemically as an industry, as people who want to keep doing this in some form, what we can learn from each other, share from each other, and what the just like job decisions are.
How do you choose what job to do next- Mm-hmm... when you're an influencer? You know? So- Like, it, it matters...
so, um, you and Eric split interview duties here, and you especially interview the CEOs like Jack Conte and, uh, Hank Green. Mm-hmm.
Tell me specifically from those CEO interviews if there are any ideas or things you learned that have been rolling around in your head and marinating that you have not been able to forget. We are the adults in the room.
Uh, I grew up watching and idolizing Hank Green. Mm. And talking to him made me realize that so many of the things that I assumed were a plan just happened.
So many people who are powerful in digital media, like Jack Conte, fundamentally thinks of himself as an artist, and he happens to be an artist whose day job is running a venture-backed tech platform [laughs] that has hundreds of employees.
Um, but the guy's fundamentally an artist. And so it both like helps alleviate some imposter syndrome where I'm like, "These people are out here doing this. Why can't I?"
And also makes me take my responsibility as a leader, an employer- Mm... and somebody who, you know, a few people listen to as a person- [laughs]... with thoughts on media. Um, it, it really matters. It...
My perspective matters, the things I say or don't say, um, however small or whatever that ripple effect looks like, every day I am shaping the media landscape I live in, and I don't have the same kind of reach and influence as somebody who can like use venture money to, I don't know, for example, make a socialist alternative to Stripe.
That would be great. Um, but I can choose to say, to criticize, to produce, and to lift up the stuff that I think really matters. Being someone's boss is a, uh, really big deal. Mm-hmm.
And, uh, most bosses need way more training about how to be a boss. I don't think I'm the best at it. I think I am the best boss that all my employees have ever had, and, uh, I wanna keep that streak going.
I wanna figure out how to make work a rewarding part of someone's life for as long as we have to labor. How can we labor in a way that is as, uh, rewarding as possible? Um, and no one is going to make me do that.
Capitalism does not invite me to do that. Mm.
No one is, uh, getting patted on the back for like, you know, taking trainings or like figuring out how their employees are happy at work, and yet it is so urgent to do so, especially in media, where often it's standout individuals, people who- Mm...
like were in the right place at the right time, had a weird idea, communicated well, were early adopters to a certain medium, um, get elevated and lauded as experts and like we don't know shit that other people don't know.
[laughs] The, the ultimate thing about Attach Your Resume, the qualification that makes you suited to run a digital media company or be a digital media creator, is making digital media, and again, nobody in any suit, nobody with any degree, doesn't matter how much money you have, doesn't matter how many employees you have under you, that doesn't qualify you to know more or make better decisions than any given person who has cultivated a, you know, cult following on Instagram for the last five years or somebody who ran a super popular Tumblr blog.
Whether or not they got a coffee table book out of it- [laughs]... that's fine. But we, we do the shit, right?
Like workers are the ones who know how to run companies, and digital media creators are the ones who know how to make and shape digital media. Preach. Preach. That was killer. Um, just a couple more questions here.
SoI was thinking of asking you, as an advocate for creators, what single issue is most important to you? But I think we've already answered that. I think it is probably either diversifying your income- Mm-hmm...
um, or making sure that you're not over-invested in any one platform. Diversification of platform and income probably.
But is there anything that you think creators, or the people who focus- who advocate for them, might focus too much on that is just not all that important?
It doesn't really matter where new creators are getting discovered if you have an existing audience. I see so many people freaking out about, like, "Do I need a TikTok? Do I need to make Reels?
Do I need to do short-form video? Do I need a Substack?" You know, like, seeing how others are being discovered is useful, but it's a data point. It's not an instruction manual. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And so focusing on doing things that feel right to you, that you enjoy or are interested in, and therefore your audience will enjoy or be interested in, or just serve your project, is the, the sort of, like, critical reasoning skill that I think is necessary to make a long-term living as a creator.
Because, again, there are always going to be new tools. There are always gonna be new companies trying desperately to convince you that their one thing is- [laughs]... the way to finally make it.
And of course, it is going to feel a type of way when you see- Mm-hmm... somebody saying, like, "If you're not making TikToks, like, you're a dumb bitch."
[laughs] Like, that's, that's essentially the, the, you know, tenor of panels- Of the message, yeah... at creator conferences these days.
Um, and the answer is, like, maybe, and maybe if I started my career in 2025, I would do it a different way. Goes back to learning- But you know what?... to say no. Exactly.
You, you have to learn to make choices because they work for you and your project- Mm-hmm...
because nobody else is going to be around, unless you're very lucky and have a group of trusted collaborators, like we are trying to build here at Multitude. Um, no one else is gonna say, "Girl, don't do that.
That doesn't matter." [laughs] And that is so often what I'm saying to other creators, is they're taking their anxiety about missing the boat, about being outpaced- Mm-hmm...
about being older [laughs] by, by two days or six months than, like, the next creator after them- [laughs]... um, and just saying, like, "It doesn't matter.
You get to decide what you put your time and energy into, and your audience expects you to do things that interest and excite you. That's it." Mm-hmm.
Uh, so I'm going to read from that last video you posted to your YouTube a- account- Oh... one more time. Francis, I love when you quote me at me. It's... Look, it's, it's easy. It's easy to do.
Um, and again, maybe producer Tom can cut the actual video in. Uh, and as a reminder- You're welcome, Tom... this was posted October 31st, 2018, so six and a half years ago.
I think you're speaking to your audience, but I kind of read it as you speaking to your future self. So I wanted to pass along that message and have you respond to it.
The world is, is a dumpster fire, but I'm, I'm doing my best to have fun and give back and make stuff along the way. So I wish you luck. I care about you, and I hope you're doing well.
Um, I would love to, to know what you think you would be discussing and reflecting on at the end of a period of creative output for yourself. You know?
Like, what's on your mind, what has been, um, occupying your thoughts, and what you're working on. Uh, incredible slay past me.
Um, I've been saying that I started Multitude during the first, uh, Trump administration, and now that we are into the second one, I'm like, I'm feeling the juice. I'm like, "What am I gonna do next, baby?"
Um, and so it is, it is a, uh, a, a gentleman's six and a half years that have felt like a- [laughs]... several decades.
I would say that the things on my mind are finding creative fulfillment in practical skills, in autonomy, in understanding the systems that we live in so that we can better navigate them,
advocate for our worth, and ultimately remake society in a better way.
Um, I love spreadsheets, not because I think capitalism is great, but because they help quantify your worth, capture data, and make real people in charge of our own decisions.
And so I would love nothing more than to be the person that people can look back on and say that I helped them materially or just encouraged them to, like, understand a thing that they think they're too arty [laughs] or left-brained or whatever it is- Actually, wait.
Let me just butt in for one second. Yeah. I think the way that, you know, when I was... We're around the same age.
Like, when, when, when we were in, like, middle school, high school, and it's like, "You have to learn to code. Everyone has to learn to code." Yeah.
"That's the thing," and I, I think that that's, um, still been going on for a little while.
But, um, now I would say the new that is everyone should learn the basics of marketing and business management, [laughs] which sounds- Yeah... so boring, but that's the problem is that it sounds boring.
But it's actually something that, especially if you're a creator, um, in this modern world, if you're working in, like, the information space, that's, like, a core literacy that you need. It is.
Uh, people take you more seriously when you can speak their language back to them, and sometimes that language is, uh, like, the stupid investment banker terms that, like, I was shamed as a 22-year-old woman for not knowing when I was working in finance.
If you don't know EBITDA, look it up right now. EBITDA. Oh my God. Yeah. We love EBITDA. EBITDA. Oh, that'll be my drag name, I think, is, is EBITDA- [laughs]... or, like, EBITDA You Better Don't. Yeah.
Um, I, um, I wish.
But it matters that you understand the tools people use to oppress you, [laughs] uh, whether those, uh, s- whether the people in, in question, the suppressors, are a, you know, the Spotify terms and conditions that say, "We can pay you whatever percentage of our Spotter- Spotify Partner Program earnings we want, but we're not gonna tell you what it is, wink."
Um, sometimes you have to say yes anyway. Like, all of us have checked yes to terms and conditions that we have no choice but to check yes to.
But it matters that you know, and it matters that you keep pushing back and saying to people and educating others on things that you've had to find out or come easy to you, whether it's marketing, spreadsheets, video editing, um, you know, like, doing enough makeup to look like an average 33-year-old woman [laughs] and not the, the creature that wakes up each morning.
Whatever that is.Leaning into the things that make you different, the, the believing in yourself and your peers that you can figure out for yourselves what you need to live interesting and autonomous lives, no one else is doing for us, baby.
And, like, it has never been more important. I thought it was dumpster fire in twenty eighteen. Hey, twenty twenty-five has some lessons to say. And- That was a hold down...
one of those lessons is [chuckles] it matters a hell of a lot who you're around, who you are helping, and who you let influence you. Um, and there is--
The, the most valuable thing that I have and that I've done, I didn't realize was valuable at the time, but it is investing in other people, helping them when I have nothing to gain, and being somewhat public about the things I'm learning, um, and what I can do better and what I'm trying to do.
Uh, institutions are crumbling. Our government is actively against almost everything and everyone I hold dear. And it has never been more important to turn to the people around us and say, "What do you need?"
And, "This is what I can offer." And fundamentally, I think that is something that creators can do and that p- digital media professionals can do to others around the world that no other job really can match.
That was amazing. Thank you. Um, I think we should end it there. What would you like to plug? If you are interested in my perspective on, uh, various subjects, listen to Attach Your Resume for digital interviews.
Join the party for a modern superhero teen high school game using the game system Masks. It's incredibly fun. And third, Spirits, where we have a queer feminist lens on mythology and folklore.
And if just overall you are into this whole shtick, into the creator economy, into what companies are doing, you should subscribe to Multitude's newsletter, uh, totally free at multitude.productions, where we keep you posted on what we're doing and also free resources and tools and advocacy for the podcast industry.
Killer. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, Francis. Listener, I will see you next week. This has been the Creator Spotlight Podcast.
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