[upbeat music] You know, if you talk about Barstool anytime, you're gonna get a lot of attention. Oh, yeah. That will bring people in to listen. They're not showing up for you, they're showing up- No...
for the Barstool commentary.
But you hope that they can stick around 'cause over time what happens is people do stick around, and I notice it with my own listening habits is first few times, you know, it might be like, oh, and then I start to say, "Oh yeah, I remember this person.
Yeah, they talked about this last time." And then you start to attach yourself to the personality. I always tell the same joke about Barstool.
Anytime we would write a story about them, there'd be a flood of traffic, and not only traffic, they would spend like seven minutes on page, and I would always joke that they were sounding out the word.
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show.
I'm Brian Morrissey. This week's episode is brought to you by Blueconic, the consumer data platform. The Rebooting and Blueconic recently partnered to survey over 200 publishers to understand the state of subscriptions.
We produced an illuminating report based on this survey, and the big takeaway for me was that subscriptions are maturing business at most publishers, or what Blueconic director of sales calls a forever business.
That means the quick wins days are over, and the focus inevitably turns to optimizing these programs for high performance while also shifting to a long-term mindset centered on average revenue per user and integrating subscriptions with advertising and other revenue streams.
Check out the full report. I'll leave a link to it in the show notes and also in the newsletter. Thanks again to Blueconic for its support.
[upbeat music] On this week's episode, I spoke to Matt Russell, the CEO of Colossus, a business podcast network that's home to popular podcasts like The Best Business Breakdowns and Founders.
I'm a regular listener, and I find them invaluable. I wanted to have Matt on to discuss the state of podcasting.
I obviously have a soft spot for podcasting since I think it's a media format based around conversation, and that makes a depth of engagement that's qualitatively different than other media types.
And I think we probably need more conversation, not less in the time we're living through.
But throughout the history of podcasts, the business has proven to be smaller than that attachment that audiences often have to their favorite podcast.
We discussed that gap, what will close it, and why subscription podcasts haven't really taken off. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
If you do, please consider leaving the Rebooting show a rating and review on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts, and send me your feedback directly to brian@therebooting.com. Now on to my conversation with Matt.
[upbeat music] Matt, thanks so much for joining my podcast after I was on your podcast. My pleasure. I like the home and away setup it seems. Yeah, exactly. Completely appropriate. Yeah.
So this is gonna be a podcast about podcasting. I haven't done [chuckles] one of those in a little while, but it is-- it's my passion too. I don't know how long I've been podcasting.
I think like a decade at this point, even longer. Sure. But I wanna talk about you and how you got into, uh, podcasting with Colossus 'cause you came into the media world, like you were in finance.
I was going through your LinkedIn. You gotta tell me and the audience a little bit about being in the last intern class at Lehman. Great. Uh, that's my story that ages- I was like two thousand and eight. Yeah.
Like fine wine, that story ages. Yeah, New York City, two thousand and eight was great.
Much different time to be going into the finance industry, but was a fun summer, and I came back with an offer that I thought, and then senior year was gonna be a ton of fun, and that changed very quickly.
But that was always the plan, was finance. Went through my CFA program, was working at Goldman for a decade, and never really had a plan to move out of that world, let alone into the world of podcasting.
But I was really an audio fanatic.
I started listening to podcasts right around fifteen, sixteen, the serial boom, and one of the big podcasts that I listened to was Invest Like The Best, which is part of the Colossus umbrella.
And I realized how much I was learning from it, and I thought to myself, "Well, this is interesting." Usually hobbies will stay hobbies.
But as Patrick, who had that podcast, started to expand out and started thinking about building a business around it, I thought to myself, "If I was ever going to move out of the finance world, at least move into something that covers a lot of finance topics and let me look at this business."
And oh, wow, this is actually a really interesting business model that can make a lot of money. Now, can it scale? That's a whole different question, but can make a lot of money.
And I took the plunge about three years ago, and it's been a journey ever since, and I've gotten to learn from a bunch of media people like you about the world that I've entered, which is much different.
But yeah, it's been a fun ride. Why podcast? And we'll get into the business, but what do you like about it as a media format?
To me, it's the highest trust media, which is a funny thing to say, but I think everything else now lacks nuance, and I actually still care about nuance.
And there's the shorter attention spans, which I completely understand. It's where do you actually get time to hear someone talk about opinions that aren't scripted, are off the cuff?
Is it proper back and forth conversation, not just a bunch of us talking at one another on Twitter and replies aren't really constructive conversation. It's like podcasts are, are the single place that you can get that.
And I think even comparing it to something like YouTube, with YouTube, there's very clearly a fourth wall there.
With audio, there's something different, where, you know, if I were to go up to Troy, you know, from your other podcast, I would feel like I know Troy.
I would feel like I know opinions that he has and a little bit about him- I think that's actually fair... in a very weird way. Yeah. Actually knowing Troy and doing the podcast with him- [laughs]...
for better or worse, that's Troy. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. And if Adam or Troy-- Troy's not listening, so it's fine. I can talk about him. Fair game.
I have people do it to me, where they reference things that I've said, and I think to myself, "How do you know that?" And it's because they're a listener of the podcast.
So there's something very interesting there, and then there's something interesting about it's really hard to build a successful podcast. This discoverability is terrible. Yeah.
There's not really algorithms that you can hack.And that to me is actually great because it means if you do make it, you have a very sticky audience, and it's barriers to entry, which are very interesting, so.
Yeah, I think a lot of it, the shortcomings of podcasts are some of its strengths, right? Mm-hmm. So discoverability, for instance, is terrible. It's really difficult to find podcasts.
That's why everyone's, like, begging you to rate and review even if they have no idea if it does anything. But it's just, unlike YouTube, it's just, it's terrible, right?
But unlike YouTube then, you're not trying to constantly do the MrBeast and try a multivariate test of 15,000 different permutations of a thumbnail. It's not worth it.
And so you end up just, like, going with what you wanna do, I think, in some degree, right? 100%. And you can be more thoughtful about the content itself, but it's not hacking the thumbnail.
It's very different things that go into that, and I think you're exactly right. We often say when it comes to people, the genius sits right next to the dysfunction. Right.
Jobs was so maniacal, and it made these incredible products. At the same time, he burned pretty much every relationship he had. And if you look at [laughs] most people, Elon, another one.
Genius sits right next to the dysfunction. In this case, it's just kind of a medium, and the, the great thing about it is also the toughest thing about it.
For me to want to listen to somebody talk about a variety of different subjects, it's gonna take some time. I need to listen to them several times, and I need to have a reason to listen to them several times.
So you can understand the challenge there. But to me, that's, like, a very interesting opportunity because once you build it, things can really take off from there. So let's talk about the, the content.
I mean, Colossus is geared towards investors. I would guess professional, but also people more like myself who listen to... I have to bring this up, Matt. Who listened- [laughs]...
to Web3 Breakdowns and then got into some crypto, which has rebounded since the time I was giving you shit about this on your podcast. So now I wanna instead talk about Business Breakdowns, the Moderna episode.
I, I totally got suckered in by that. That one's not coming back. I don't think that's coming back. These are business breakdowns to understand a business. These are not stock breakdowns. I know.
You guys- And w- But you, you do the warnings, and so I'm like, "Oh, it's a warning. That means totally disregard it and use it as investment advice." Many of these can be actual great short pitches.
If that is the best that somebody can speak about a business, and that's all they've got, that might just mean the opposite of what you think it does. Yeah. So I'm, I'm just joking. But yes, we kept a lot of flack. Yeah.
But g- give me the background with... I mean, so it's geared towards investors and business in general. What... How do you guys think about who the target audience is? Yes.
It's very much professional investors, institutional investors.
And my mindset was, I would go through this exercise quite a bit, where my head of research or my portfolio manager would come up to me on a Friday afternoon and say, "Hey, so and so is talking to me about XYZ name.
Can you do me a favor and just do a deep dive on that over the weekend and present it to me on Monday?" And what I would then go do is look up an investor presentation or a 10-K, which is not really digestible content.
Yeah. There's not a lot there, but that's was my starting point. It's a little repetitive, I gotta say. Yes, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But- I know...
there's something there in terms of just being able to get from zero to 6 out of 10 or 7 out of 10.
And that was the idea with Business Breakdowns is let's give you the most densely packed 45 minutes to an hour with somebody who really understands this name.
Usually, it's an investor in whatever company, Disney, Netflix. Even very random ones like Olin, a, a chemical company. And that can act as this kind of guide towards understanding that business.
Now what's become interesting is, you know, I was talking to somebody who's coming on the show, and they were saying, "Yes, we use this in terms of our investment committee meetings."
So if somebody is actually pitching this name, everybody will need to come into that pitch with an understanding of the industry and the business to some extent, some foundational knowledge.
That's exactly where they'll look to get some foundational knowledge. So it becomes this tool, this interesting resource, and in some ways, in the investment game, every piece of information can offer some advantage.
So it becomes table stakes in some ways, not that they necessarily should, but that's also interesting.
I know if a name comes out on a transportation company, pretty much every transportation analyst will need to listen to it. Yeah. So it's almost like prosumer to some degree. That is, we...
It's very much- I mean, investment always has that, I, I feel like, because the, the line between... I mean, look, I'm not an institutional investor. I gotta be honest with you.
But I'm still listening to the BlackRock episode because I'm like, "Wow, this is, like, fascinating." I had no idea of the backstory of, of how BlackRock came to be. Exactly, yeah. There's something for everyone.
We definitely try not to dumb it down too much. We try not to make it trading oriented. It is targeted with that specific audience member in mind, but anyone can listen to it, and anyone can benefit from it.
And a lot of these business breakdowns, there's so much story involved that it's not too in the weeds with the numbers. Yeah. I mean, yeah. But people are gonna invest. Tiga's, they're good.
See, I remember the advertisers. It works. And that's why podcast works. The problem is, and let's end up just, like, talking about this.
There's no click a- in, in podcasting, and the metrics are, like, all over the place. So when you first... I mean, you know, and advertising in general is a screwed-up industry, so which I'm sure you've- Yeah...
you've recognized fully at this point. Learned that fast, yeah. Good that you didn't know beforehand. What has it been like getting into?
Because, I mean, you've got, like, advertising as a whole is a screwed-up industry, and then on top of that, podcasting has, in some ways I feel like it has never lived up to its potential as a...
Okay, I guess it's lived up to its potential in that it, you've got some unbelievably influential podcasts within the, uh, uh, our, our culture and niche and broad, et cetera.
However, as a business, it's the same story of media, big brands, tiny businesses to me.Meaning how's-- When you say that last part, what do you mean by that? Monetizing podcasts is really difficult.
Okay, I'll give you like an example. It's very difficult, yes. I think when I'm writing this up, I was thinking I'll probably use it as a lead. You know, Defector comes out with their annual report, right? And- Mm-hmm...
you know, they're mostly subscription, but they have Normal Gossip. It's one of the top fifty podcasts in the United States, and it's popular all over the world.
It, it generated s- about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That's [laughs] one of the top fifty.
Now, that tells me that in January we're gonna be twenty years into podcasting, believe it or not, and, you know, the, it, it hasn't taken off as a business.
We see with the cutbacks at Spotify, and, and we can talk about that and how they probably just went too much into celebrity and stuff.
But, you know, for the depth of engagement, I feel like in podcasting, for a bunch of different reasons, it has never fully realized its potential as a business to some degree. Yeah, I would agree with that.
I think there's a lot of things that underpin that. You mentioned that in the very beginning. Being able to attribute a sale to a podcast is very difficult.
And in media, post-Google and Facebook, there's just this mindset that you should be able to draw a direct line for everything and be able to- Yeah, yeah...
measure the click-through, and it's, boom, it's done, and it's simple, and we can just do this. The performance marketing goons. It's all a mess, yeah. They're, they're to ruin it for all of us [laughs].
And listen, I certainly understand that, but most of the biggest deals in the world are not done that way, and- It makes no sense... coming from the finance world. Yes. It honestly makes no sense.
And what the craziest thing is Google and Meta do tons and tons of brand advertising that they cannot actually track. I mean- That's not to say that it is necessarily generating the ROI- Yeah...
that balances out with the amount of engagement that it has. Look at Tiga's, like we just jump in. I never heard of them before. They have no idea that ad actually worked on me- Oh, they-...
because I've heard them on- Right... uh, your podcast. Now I'm like telling them, like repeatedly, so you can put it in.
Well, they've been a very, very successful story from our podcast, to the point that they bought out all of the inventory years and years into the future. Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna grow old with them. You are.
And- I already am old, that's true [laughs]. You got a long way to go, a long way to go. And so they saw it. Now, what did they do in order to see the performance? There were a few things.
One, they had a better system for measuring the performance, and this is something that's tough to tell an advertising partner.
But, you know, if it's just, "Oh, here's the landing page, fill out the survey, where did you hear about us, or put in this code," that might not be enough.
You know, you might need your salesperson to ask that person on the call, where did they hear about it? And you're telling them work to do, but guess what?
That's actually going to drive better performance on your ad spend if you are actually measuring, you know, where they're getting the dollars in several different ways. So that's one big piece of it.
And then the other is just the association means something and the flexibility of different things you can do.
So Tiga's events, you know, we could be coordinated with different events that we're doing with them, and bringing that relationship outside of the podcast and doing more outside of it is pretty big as well.
But that's our ultimate goal is to find partners that are perfectly aligned with what we're doing, products that we believe in, very expensive. You know, it's a license that is going to cost you quite a bit of money.
So the economics change. It's not twenty-five dollar CPMs. You know, in order to get a return, they can spend a lot more money if they have the qualified people coming in. Explain how that would work.
Everyone wants to get off a spreadsheet, right, in media. Yep. It's like Squid Games, but with spreadsheets. [gentle music] And everyone at the end of the day ends up on the spreadsheet for the most part.
[gentle music] And that's the challenge of, of media because, you know, when you have, and particularly in podcasting, there's number disinflation going on everywhere in media since social has turned off the traffic taps and search is going through a very strange period right now.
And so regular web publishers have smaller audiences than they did before.
And in some ways, I think it should benefit podcasting because a lot of the industry is moving towards smaller and more durable audiences, you know, controllable audiences, Brigid Williams had said on this podcast.
And, you know, podcasting, you know, has always had small but durable audiences. People spend a long period of time with it.
I'm just wondering, you know, I think one of the challenges of podcasting beyond the tracking and the KPIs has been the fact that so much of advertising is based on raw impressions as a proxy.
Podcasting is not really that great at that. What it's great at is depth to me. So I'm just wondering, like, how do you end up building a business model around depth versus breadth?
Yes, it is totally dependent on finding the partner that understands that.
If they are going to be a media buyer that is purely looking at the content as a commodity, and I'm just pricing every impression the same, that's very different than someone who understands who's in the audience.
Now, how do you understand who's in the audience? You're probably in that audience. Uh, it's one of the interesting things about podcasts. Yeah. And who listens to a podcast about financial stuff?
Might be you, but a lot of people in finance listen to podcasts about financial stuff, and a lot of people in media probably listen to this podcast.
You, you are attracting a very certain type, and if the audience isn't, you know, significantly huge, it's probably made up by people in that specific niche, and they understand who else is listening as a listener.
So that's one piece of it. And then it still is math at the end of the day.
But a twenty-five thousand dollar piece of software where that's per seat license, multiply that times the average amount of people atThat fund or wherever that pay for that, and let's say it's three to four people, you know, now all of a sudden we're starting to talk about close to $100,000 in terms of what they're generating in revenue from a lead that converts.
And that should be very different than a razor blade that's, you know- Yeah... a $10 a month subscription. So it-- not everything is created equal.
Now, it's to the benefit, you know, just in terms of industry structure to price everything the same.
But at the same time, it doesn't make sense to spend your budget that way if you are a advertising partner looking for very specific qualified leads. So how do you prove that you have the qualified leads?
That's one of the biggest things, and that is you could start to bring them direct to those people, you could start to do creative things off the podcast.
But I think at the end of the day, it still is math, and it still is understanding that they can get to that math. But there is not a wide amount of businesses that I think view it that way.
And we have, let's say, 25 partners that we've been working with over the years that have viewed it that way.
But once the floor falls out from them, you know, this year I tried to understand a little bit more traditional media and doing things- Yeah... the way that the rest of the industry works.
I don't know that was a great idea. It d- [laughs] it doesn't seem like- Why, why, why?... moving to that norm would be beneficial. But- Tell me your adventures in this.
Yeah, I mean, it is-- it all comes back to a spreadsheet that has zero context for anything that's related to the audience. Yeah.
Now, I understand it, it's an agency issue in terms of what people are getting paid to do and what they're not getting paid to do.
So you need to find the people with the incentives that make sense for them to actually want to drive the highest return on their ad spend. And listen, if our ads don't work, they roll off. That's fine. Yeah.
Sounds like you've figured out the industry [laughs] to be honest with you. Misaligned incentives, stuff on spreadsheets that has nothing to do with the actual [laughs] goal. Yeah. A- and it's not specific to media.
This is the ca- in every industry. But- Yeah, no... yeah, the industry structure thing has been more and more apparent over this year, and it's very interesting, I will say.
Something that I've long struggled with podcasts, and maybe you could help me out on this, is why, broadly speaking, subscriptions have never taken off with podcasting, because there is such a depth of connection, I feel like, with good podcasts and between the audience and the host.
And you know, anyone who's done a podcast will probably tell you that my experience, like the kind of responses you get from people when it comes to podcasting and newsletters is just completely and utterly different than anything in my experience of, of creating media in different formats.
It's personal in nature and all the different reasons, and people spend a lot of time. You know, those who do listen spend a lot of time listening.
It would seem like that would point, because the numbers are smaller than just a fleeting impression on a webpage, that it would seem like that would point towards subscriptions and memberships versus impression-based ad model.
Yeah. I think we've seen people try the subscription model, but it's usually not taking everything behind a paywall. And in that case, it's a matter of, what am I getting, and is it any better than what I get for free?
So I think that positioning is one thing. Usually, you see a three to five percent conversion on that. I think five percent's at the high end from what I've heard from- Yeah... a small, like n of three.
But three percent of people opt into that subscription-based membership for a podcast. And the rest of the audience will just take the free version, whatever that entails.
I think over time, you could see more businesses transition to that, more podcast businesses transition to that, but it's a matter of you need to have the audience already.
Trying to build a podcast audience with a paywall is next to impossible- Oh, yeah... or it's gonna take an insanely long time because it's hard enough to do it as a free version.
It's a true li-- [laughs] that's a, that's gonna be a true life's work, and you better start when you're young. Exactly. I long had this view that once something was free, you couldn't make people pay for it.
There was just too much of a psychological thing. The only thing over history was, like, bottled water. The internet has actually disproven that.
You know, people ask you, "What have you changed your mind on in the last five years?"
That's actually one big thing that I've changed my mind on, and we've seen a lot of businesses where the internet was kind of just this frenzy, and it took a while to find the right industry structure that was gonna work.
And not everything should be free or, you know, if it is free, there's gonna be a lot less of it, and people aren't gonna do it, and it's gonna decrease the output, and you'll see what's worth it and what's not.
So I think that could happen with podcasts, and I think you'll see more subscription podcasts over the years. Very interested to see how The Economist move goes with them putting things behind a subscription.
But I think the reason why it hasn't happened yet is because it is so hard to build that model.
And the other thing is, there are a lot of benefits and value, and not dollars and cents, but value that accrues outside of the walls of the podcast.
So hosts are getting a lot of benefits beyond just the dollars and cents of advertising. And I think that's another big piece of this.
Is it just a funnel into something else which could be monetized even better than what you would get from the advertising on the podcast? How would that work? Explain that. So I host a podcast.
The people that reach out to me that are listeners are very interesting people, oftentimes ranking high in organizations or, you know, are part of interesting clubs. They will invite me, give me access to things.
They'll wanna talk to me. They might wanna pay me to consult on projects. They wanna pay me to speak. Right. They might want me to be part of their business. There could be equity things involved.
So there's that, whether you call it influencer, person of influence type thing that starts to go on, where you're capturing a lot of the value outside of the business- Yeah... of podcast advertising. Yeah.
I think podcasting has a lot of that.
I mean, media in general is shifting to that to a large degree because, again, I go back to, I think it was David Carr who said that media always had big brands and small businesses, and it's always been a tremendous way to get attention and to wield influence.
And that's why you see some very rich and powerful people, for some reason, taking time out of their day to become content creators. [laughs] Like, why would they do that?
That seems like a very strange-Itch to scratch, and it's just because it is a really good way to create leverage in a, in a marketplace. I assume that's why they're doing that.
But the reality is they're not reliant on advertising. They have totally different business models. Yes, and that's something that becomes an interesting game that you have to think about.
Of I could just squeeze out as many ad dollars as possible from this, or I can make it a better listening experience, have less advertisements, and look for ways to- Yeah... create value elsewhere.
And I think you'll see more people doing that as well. Yeah, I think so for sure. I mean, across podcasting, newsletters and stuff, particularly as the basic display ad impression going to near zero, right?
I mean, there's gonna be so much content that is going to be created with AI, so much synthetic content out there. It, it is going to be a race to zero at some point because there's just gonna be such an oversupply.
I mean, there already is, but it's going to reach its logical conclusion that advertising will be a really difficult model to have an entire business dependent on. That's just the reality.
At the end of the day, though, it feels like advertising can never go away. I mean, it's literally it drives commerce.
In the same way I think about finance as moving capital, and it's lowering the cost of capital, and it just creates an economy, in many ways, advertising is doing the same thing.
It's, you know, positioned to move money, move dollars, and, and increase the economy. So that can't really go away, and if there are more powerful media to drive that exchange of commerce, then those media should win.
And yes, there's gonna be even more content from AI, and I think it's gonna replace a lot of the mediocre content that exists.
But where is that sweet spot for the higher quality or content that's attracting a very different type of audience? And is there any way that can go up in value? That would be the extreme bull case.
But it, it does make me think, like, in a world like that, what becomes more valuable? I think in-person experiences become more valuable- Yeah...
because everything's a deep fake, and you don't know who you're talking to, whether they wrote it, whatever, so that's in-person experiences.
Curators, people that actually collect content and personally collect it and distribute it, like the aggregator, but a personalized curator of, of things becomes more valuable.
And then just, like, really high touch experiences, really in-depth experiences that don't feel AI driven.
But I, I do think about that a lot is just, like, any change brings opportunity, and there are gonna be some good things that come out of it. Yeah. So right now, the business model is exclusively sponsorships.
I mean, you have other things on the site. Talk to me about what the business model is. Yeah. So right now it is exclusively sponsorships.
Now, I w- what I would say is when you look at Patrick, who was the original founder of Colossus, he still hosts Invest Like the Best.
He has Positive Sum, which is a venture fund, large size venture fund, Capital Camp, which is an events business which runs events.
And you can kind of understand how between having a media arm, an investment arm, an events arm, you can attract ultimately what we want to attract. It's not just investors.
It's people that are domain experts, really understand whatever topic they're discussing. Talented people. How can we attract the talented people and work with them in whatever way makes sense to work with them?
That might be just hosting them as a guest on a show, giving them a platform, speaking to them, learning from them and doing it in public. It could be investing behind them. It could be advertising for their product.
So there's a lot of different ways, and you can understand if you just become the magnet for those types of people, it becomes a very interesting business where if you can serve them in a variety of different ways, you move away from just dependence on the advertising dollars.
Now, that can still be a great way to drive cash flow. But with the other tools there, I think that's what becomes really differentiating. Yeah.
I've been listening to you on a different podcast, and you said that really good podcasts could generate seven figures. Yes. You gotta have a really popular podcast for that, [chuckles] right? Yes and no.
I think that really great niche podcasts in industries that have big buyers, if you... You've talked about B2B media quite a bit- Yeah, yeah... on this show. You can do seven figures.
We've several podcasts that do seven figures in revenue, and that is from driving ROI for the advertisers. There's other things that we wanna group in there. And yes, maybe those dollars aren't just ad reads, you know.
It's a little bit beyond that. But if you're in the right niche, you can a hundred percent do that. Yeah.
It is interesting to see how influential a lot of podcasts-- I mean, obviously Joe Rogan is the poster child- Mm-hmm... for this, but even Joe Rogan has become like really...
You know, you see presidential candidates going [chuckles] on podcasts, which is, you know, kind of crazy to think of.
But as like a format, I do think there's something interesting going on when we're at a time when there isn't a lot of conversation that really takes place.
And to me, listening to a podcast that would be like Crossfire or Meet the Press would be really annoying. Something about the medium, and it's a conversation versus an interview- Yes...
to me, uh, that the best podcast, at least in this genre, and I think that is why podcasts matter to some degree because it's really differentiated for this point in time.
I completely agree, and as two people that podcast, I- Yeah... always worry about, okay, are the only people that's [chuckles] are saying this the people that are podcasting?
But I heard Bob Costas go on a podcast with Ethan Strauss and said that exact thing. "I never got a chance to tell my story about how I actually left." Yeah.
And this is what podcasts are for, nuanced conversations, not something that's gonna get recorded and then put into an article and, you know, made to generate clicks or a short TV clip. This is the medium for that.
Now, there could be people who think that people wanna hear everything about them, but there's a lot of really interesting people that don't say much publicly.
And if you have them on a few podcasts-Something interesting I always think about is like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, who just passed, anything they've appeared in, people will go to libraries in the most random states to find old articles to see if they exist 'cause they just wanna hang on to any piece of information.
So there's just something interesting about really nuanced conversation with people that go on to do great things, and then having that in the archives. Yeah. I get it.
As someone who's written many articles in my day and interviewed people and, and left ninety-eight percent of the conversation [laughs] on in my notes, I understand that. I mean- Yeah...
that's just a feature and a flaw of the format.
[upbeat music] If I was someone of celebrity, I would have real trepidation of agreeing to a profile.
I would rather do a podcast- Yes... 'cause I know how that goes.
It's a narrative for a reason, and anyone who's been an editor has gotten, like, an annoying story that was like, "Well, it could be this, it could be that, it could be this," and it's no, this is too realistic.
Like, you need to find a thread and a through line. Like, these are stories. These are [laughs] It started in her childhood, and that's what shaped her going- Well, the reality is you have to- Yeah. [laughs]...
you know, narratives sand off the, the rough edges. And to be clear, a lot of people in the tech who, who say, "Ooh, it's all for clicks," they are the biggest narrative peddlers I've ever seen in the world.
As if there's only upside and no downside to all the things that, oh, by the way, those are the things they're selling.
So they understand narrative all too well, [laughs] and they understand that you leave off some parts of it. A hundred percent.
Even with our show, Business Breakdowns, o-one of the things that we always say is tie numbers to narrative. Each is equally important. You can have great numbers, but guess what?
Numbers actually don't speak for themselves. They, they truly do not. I could show you two businesses that look very similar and one that trades at a drastically different multiple- Yeah...
and it's because there is a story there, and there's a reason for it. Right. You don't get that opportunity for nuanced discussion. There's a variety of different reasons for that.
There's a lot of reasons that make sense, like human nature has less and less reason to care for the nuance, and part of it is just, like, our hardwiring.
But there are people that do care, and those are very interesting people oftentimes. So I think that's interesting.
And then what it creates is influence or trust or just a willingness to say, okay, Tim Ferriss is a great example. Tim Ferriss talks about an eye mask. Like, I'm going to buy the eye mask. It's not an expensive thing.
Yeah. So there's, like, consumer examples of this, but there's also investors where if they tell me that they use a certain service, automatically I'm thinking that it's a valuable service. It might not be.
They might not use it that much, but their words carry influence. So I think that's a big piece of it. Yeah. So there are different, like, types of podcasts, right?
I mean, and I think the dominant type that people think about is, like, this kind of show that's more like talk radio really to me. But narrative podcasts took off with serial, right? And- Yeah...
it was the, quote-unquote, "I Love Lucy" moment, and a lot went into narrative podcasts. I don't know, how do you break down, like, the different podcast formats as far as which are the best for the medium?
'Cause to me, the talk radio format, or however you wanna call it, fits the best because the reality of the medium means that you have to have a lower cost of production.
And also, I think it works with the unique aspects of podcasting. 'Cause to me, it's ambient media.
A lot of times, I, I mean, you've mentioned this on that previous podcast I listened to, I mean, you're doing the dishes or running or doing something else at the same time, and I think that's, like, a feature, not necessarily a flaw.
I think that's generally the right framing. We kind of view that talk radio podcast in, like, a balancing of candy and vegetables. Yeah.
So how much is it just junk food versus how much insights are you actually gathering, and it's important to get that balance right.
I would argue we are very vegetable heavy with most of what we do, so we do not have much shoot the shit time. Right. Not much direct with the audience engagement.
It is much more let's get into the nuts and bolts of whoever the guest is and, and what they're talking about.
I think that the highly produced narrative podcasts, the costs are just insane, and there's not a reoccurring story to tell on a weekly basis. So therefore, as a business model, it just doesn't make a ton of sense.
And I can remember talking to people at big podcast studios when I first joined, trying to understand the business model, and they were literally doing those in order to get brought to Netflix or brought somewhere else.
Like, it, it was not going to make money on its own as a podcast. The only way that it made money was if it got optioned.
And you were hoping that if we did five, one of them would get optioned, and that would pay for the rest. But to me, that was crazy, you know, in terms of running the business that way. Yeah, it's tough.
Prestige podcasting is a... I, I mean, it's just been proven. I mean, the... there's a lot of bodies i-in the market, and it's extremely difficult. It's like deep long form journalism.
You know, these projects where you would go spend a month with some... Did it ever make economical sense? It's debatable whether it did. Certainly now, when there's so much content out there, it's hard to make the case.
It's just hard to make the case, as like- Yeah... a pure dollars and cents guy. It's hard to make the case. Now, you start to shift into, okay, what are the alternatives to that?
There are the reoccurring people that you're gonna hear every week. Same voices, same personalities. I'm gonna show up for them. And then there's the interview show, different person each time. Right. Higher variance.
And I think that the same voices every week, those have more stickiness, more power over the long term, harder to build. You know, just to hear the same people talking about the same stuff.
Like, I need to have a reason, and if I don't know you already, why am I just going to listen to you talk about whatever?
With the interview style, you can get big pops because the guest is usually gonna bring their audience.And you can have a big guest, and they might br- like you, you bring a huge audience to our show, and I just hope that I can hold on to two or 3% of that audience, they stick around.
And if you do that with each different guest, you start to build up a show over time.
But you're always dependent on what the guest brings to you, and that is its own challenge in terms of sourcing, the amount of time that gets spent doing that. Yeah.
But that's how we think about things for sure, is, you know, how reoccur- like h- how can we do this consistently on a weekly basis? Everything we do is pretty much with outside guests.
We don't do many shows where it's just us talking. And how are we gonna build that? And there's a few different angles that you could take to building it.
Like early on, if you do have a podcast of people that it's gonna be reoccurring, just those hosts, you can pick topics that are very in vogue.
You know, if you talk about Barstool anytime, you're gonna get a lot of attention. Oh, yeah. That will bring people in, listen. They're not showing up for you, they're showing up for the- No... Barstool commentary.
But you hope that they can stick around, and I think thinking about things like that... 'Cause over time what happens is people do stick around, and it...
I notice it with my own listening habits, is first few times, you know, it might be like, oh, and then I start to say, "Oh yeah, I remember this person. Yeah, they talked about this last time."
And then you start to attach yourself to the personality. I always tell the same joke about Barstool. Anytime we would write a story about the, my last place, there would be a flood of traffic.
And not only traffic, they would spend like seven minutes on page. And I would always joke that they were sounding out the words.
It's something that I laughed about very hard when you told me, and still laugh very hard to the point where- I, look- Yeah. [laughs] They, they have an amazing hold on their audience.
I don't know if you saw, they did this, whatever, Surviving Barstool real- reality show, and they're selling it one-off. And they... Portnoy said they sold 57,000 $10- Yeah... passes to the reality show.
How many brands could do that? It's insane. Yeah, it's just, it's remarkable what they've been able to do. I, I think I could count on two hands potentially. Yeah.
It might even be one hand how many brands could do something like that and sell that amount. Yeah. And then you think about the channels that they're selling through, and it's super interesting.
Um- Yeah, I think it's no coincidence that they built a big podcast network because it's very personality- Yeah... driven and there's a deep attachment there.
And, you know, that's why podcasting to me is that's where it's at its strongest, I think. Yep. And sometimes, and look, everyone, it's taste to some degree. Mm-hmm. But I personally- Yeah...
don't like the podcasting that is a- an imitation of radio. I mean, like we had radio. Mm. Like I'm not sure why- Yeah... exactly we're gonna use the same... A- and it's a balance, right?
You, you wanna have things- Yeah. You, you can pull-... that are professionalized and produced and stuff. Yeah. But I don't know, I always, like, I just- You're not practicing your NPR voice?
You know, something about The Daily and the guy, like acting surprised about stuff all the time, and I'm like, "Come on, this is crap. This is ridiculous." But what do interest rates actually do?
[laughs] You're a journalist. [laughs] You know this. How do they impact the economy? You're telling Donald Trump- I, I-... is going to take revenge on his enemies. [laughs] Yeah, actually he is.
And I know this because he's been saying it for the last 10 years. Yeah, but whatever. Surprise. I, I, I do th- it's interesting.
With Barstool, they have now a platform where they can introduce new personalities, and they can catch on more quickly. We have someone, David Senra, who does the Founders Podcast. Yeah.
And he was d- you know, people now think about him in a certain way. He was doing that for years and years.
And he had a listener base, but it was tiny, especially in the beginning, and now it is like a cult following, and it is nuts. It's like the church of Senra with Founders Podcast.
Everybody glances over, or maybe they don't glance over, but I don't think we always appreciate. You know, people in the early days are grinding, and they're doing all types of stuff- Yeah... just to make it happen.
So to me it's, that's always the interesting thing is, we forget what people were like in the beginning, and then we just assume they were the way that they were and as successful as they were over time.
And a lot of people are probably just in the beginning. Yeah. And there's not a lot of overnight successes in podcasts. I mean, you'll hear about them because they're so few and far between.
But most even the bigger, biggest podcasts, you know, had to toil away [laughs] in obscurity for a little while, which, which, which makes the, the pivot to celebrity sort of all the more delicious that they, that just about all of them fail.
I mean, comedians are very popular and stuff, but the, whatever, Harry and Meghan, all that money that, that Spotify incinerated on celebrity, which doesn't seem...
It, to me it was, it always seemed a little bit like contrary to what the medium was about, right? Yeah. It's not, I don't believe Andrew Huberman was, like some, you know, celebrity before podcasting. No.
Podcasting made him a celebrity. I mean, it's a thing that- No offense to The Fear Factor, but I think that Joe Rogan's similar story. Exactly.
No, and I think that with most new platforms, you want the celebrities to grow on the platform, not come to the platform. It's like social media, I think that was a big thing. Like, you want the people to be organic.
You want MrBeast to be grown on YouTube. He didn't come as a celebrity to YouTube. No. Same thing with Twitter and all the rest of them. You usually want the celebrities to be born out of the medium.
I think that the whole celebrity culture, all that stuff is also tricky and starts to get into other things and just in terms of the IP and who has control and who has all the power.
But it was kind of obvious, and it's still gonna happen now. You'll have people do really successful podcasts, but it's not always the most obvious people. It's like Jeff Teague was a decent- Yeah...
point guard in the NBA for a long time. He's a great podcast host, and there's a lot of reasons why. He's kind of self- He's funny. He's, he feels self-deprecating, funny. Yeah, and it's different.
It's just, you know, uh, not every great NBA player makes a great coach. Michael Jordan would probably be a terrible coach. Yeah.
There, there might- You know, there's some of that going on right now with athlete media, right? I mean, it's the same way- Yeah... as like when, like too many athletes tried to become rappers.
Allen Iverson, you know, big hero of mine, but he never should've rapped. Just, and a lot of guys, like probably shouldn't. You know, Jay Reddick should have a podcast, but there's a lot of- Yeah...
other people that shouldn't have podcasts. It's okay. Smartest- You're, you're great at basketball, it's fine.Yeah. And even if you look at the Kelces, they have a certain aura to them.
But also, if you learn about what they do for that podcast, there is a lot of work that they are doing themselves to prepare to make that an excellent podcast. And I think that's, like, a big thing, too.
It's whoever goes into the broadcast booth, how much work are they actually doing, or do they expect to just slide in and show up? And it's the same thing with anything, with any medium. Yeah.
And I think that's differentiating a lot of people.
SmartLess is kind of funny because [laughs] they make it fairly easy for all of them to do it, but I think that might be the improv and the history of what they do, and they came out really well. Yeah.
Yeah, that is for sure. Last thing is the, the nexus with video podcasts. I mean, because I understand why there's this crossover into video, particularly with YouTube's just distribution power.
But at the same time, I'm also... That's strange, 'cause to me, like, the nexus between newsletters and podcasts is more seamless than video and podcasts.
I understand people just keeping a tab open, and in some instances wanting to watch podcasts, but I was a little surprised by video podcasting as a trend. I am with you. I'm surprised by it as a trend.
I've heard all the various anecdotes as to when and where people watch it, and it's, "Oh, I'm on a Peloton bike, and I'll just have it up there."
I think it's largely a cash grab or an awareness type thing where discoverability is better.
So either I'm generating dollars from the YouTube views, which aren't as great as the podcasting rates, but you're still money in the door.
You have some awareness because discoverability is easier, so that's another piece of it.
If you could do something that's truly different in terms of you're actually playing into the video medium, I, I would take Barstool as an example of this, where there's a little bit more going on than just speaking into microphones.
There's actual activity. That to me is different than just us posting this video onto YouTube, which feels like it's just to check an extra box and bring a few things in. Yeah. It's not very strategic.
Um- Yeah, that's why I've skipped it. [laughs] One of the reasons I skipped it. Yeah, again, we really don't do YouTube, and I have heard nothing but, "You're crazy," for a while. Now, there's a cost to it as well.
You can make a really great [background music] sounding podcast for a really inexpensive amount. Once you get into the video game, drastically different.
So again, it's a little bit more of the, like, economics in my head and the business thing.
It just didn't make sense to me in the same way that narrative podcasts are very difficult, very expensive, and it doesn't make a ton of sense. But we'll see.
I think, like, the YouTube medium- So for now, you're staying away from narrative and from video. From narrative, yes. From video, if we're doing something video, I want it to be video specific.
And I think the most interesting thing with video is, like, Pat McAfee, where get a specific au- If we can get a big business audience that shows up daily for a specific hour of the day, and that then represents a very interesting asset.
Because I think to me, it's like when ESPN brought in Pat McAfee, yes, it was to have him on game day and the linear stuff, but it was also to acquire an existing streaming audience that was on streaming. Yeah.
Because the transition from linear to streaming and who's gonna watch and how they're gonna watch is not going to be without friction.
So I think big media companies could hedge in a variety of different ways, and talent specific to those media will be one way of doing that. Okay, cool. Matt, let's leave it there. Yeah.
For those listening, check out Colossus. Go to joincolossus.com. That's right, correct? That is correct. [laughs] Join the... Yeah, join Colossus. Colossus.com is not available, so. Okay, doc.
[laughs] I, I know all about the problems in getting URLs. Cool. Well, thanks so much, Matt. It's really enjoyable. Thank you, Brian. [background music] Thanks for listening.
Thank you to Jay Sparks for producing the Rebooting show. If you have a podcast that you're considering making, you should check out Podhelpus and what Jay can do for you. Go to podhelp.us.
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