Know Thyself - E73 - Aubrey Marcus & Samir Chaudry: The Secrets To Creating A Thriving Podcast With Purpose

Starting point is 00:00:03 Podcasting has become one of the most fulfilling things in my entire life. Today we have the privilege of sitting down with two friends who are very successful podcasters in their own right. And we really dive into the intricacies of the shift from podcasting starting as a hobby to it eventually blew me into a full life path that can feed you back in so many ways. It's rare, actually, that you sit down with somebody and you have their radical full attention. To have that conversation is priceless in and of itself. It's not about just having.

Starting point is 00:00:33 a good show. The days of that working on its own, it's not really around. Don't ask the same in questions. You have to be able to prove that you're going to be able to package their time in a way that's going to be effective. Your own mastery, when crossed with the mastery of the guests that you have, that creates some of the most magical moments for me. People struggle with this balance of the artistry of what you want to create versus what the algorithms reward you for creating. If your goal is to have a successful show, your goal is to make a career out of your creativity. That is a different thing from just self-expression.

Starting point is 00:01:09 This is important to talk about because people can have real value that would be supportive to so many people, but because you don't know how to package it, it's not reaching those people. It's very much, how do I stick out in the sea of content? What's the number one thing that's contributed to the most growth of your show? Hello, beautiful beings.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Welcome back to the Know They Self podcast for every single week. We get the honor and privilege to sit down with someone the most brilliant minds to learn more about the true nature of selves. and the world around us at deeper levels every single week. Now, today's episode is going to be a slight departure from our typical programming. We have a compilation with two separate podcast guests, Aubrey and Samir. And this episode is specifically for anybody that's in this audience that's tuning in right now

Starting point is 00:01:59 that has a podcast, wants to one day start a podcast or is a content creator and is trying to share their message in the world through video long form podcast creation. Because I know for me, at least, this podcast, has become one of the most fulfilling things in my entire life. It's such an honor and privilege to be able to sit down with these guests every single week and learn so much about myself and then get to be able to produce it and share it with you guys and provide lots of value for the world. So today we have the privilege of sitting down with two friends who are very successful

Starting point is 00:02:29 podcasters in their own right. First, we have Aubrey Marcus, who has had a top philosophical podcast in the charts for many, many years, garnered tens of millions of plays and downloads. And we really talk with him about the journey of landing big guests. the importance of clarifying your mission of really why you're doing what you're doing when it comes to the podcast journey, the power of consistency and staying at it for years.

Starting point is 00:02:50 And after that, we sit down with Samir Chaudry to do a deep dive. He is one half of the Colin and Samir show and we go into the dance between catering to our creativity versus the algorithm. The important factor is when deciding to grow a video podcast, the back-end monetization side of things.

Starting point is 00:03:06 He also bust out his back-end to show you how much money a channel with millions of views per month actually gets. And we really dive into the intricacies of the shift from just being a podcaster to it growing to eventually being a full-blown business model. So just as a reminder, as always, we have timestamps chapters in the description below where you can hop around and choose the specific topics that are going to be most valuable to you. We do about 30 minutes with Aubrey and then almost an hour with Samir diving into some more of the back-end business side of things. And so go to wherever is going to be most serving for you. And before we do that, I just want to quickly announce our first product, really, her first course that.

Starting point is 00:03:41 know-the-self that myself are putting out there and I'm really excited about it. If any of you have desired to create a show, I know firsthand how fulfilling this has been for me. I've had so much experience in back-end first working with Logan Paul and launching the impulsive podcast with over 200 episodes. I then went on to create Maraki Media, my production company where we produce other people's podcast. And then over the past 16 months or so, launching know-the-self, getting to understand what it's like to be a host and the interviewer and then also growing this channel to almost 200,000 subscribers now and having over 10 million plays, it's been incredibly rewarding, incredibly fulfilling. And for the first time ever, I've condensed all of my knowledge, experience, and expertise

Starting point is 00:04:21 into over 40 videos, which is a downloadable course that's called podcast with purpose. And so if you guys are interested, I'll just leave it there. Go to podcastpurpose.com and you can get more information what that's all about. I'm very excited about it. I feel very confident about the curriculum and that for anybody that has the itch of creating a podcast or has one who wants to take it to the next level or is a content creator, there is so much value in each module packed in to really give you what you need to separate yourself above the noise and really thrive and being able to share your message with the world. So we'll leave links down

Starting point is 00:04:53 in the description for that as well. We'll go ahead and start with Aubrey and I'll see you on the inside. Aubrey. Andre. What has been the most rewarding thing about podcasting for you? It's the conversations themselves. Like there's it's rare actually that you sit down with somebody and you have their radical full attention for however long it is an hour two hours three hours however long your podcast is is just you and that person and not another thought matters and to have that conversation is priceless in and of itself like as they say in the hebrew lineage lishma for its own sake that type that type of conversation for its own sake is worth it. So if I had to eliminate everything else, I would still keep it just

Starting point is 00:05:45 for those moments. So rewarding. And it's just a bonus that it gets to get shared with people and then it's valuable for them. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, and that's also beautiful as well because you get to share your wisdom, your gifts, your experiences, your art sometime, whatever it might be. You get to share that. And you also get to share other people's ideas, even some people that nobody knows. knows and you allow them to be able to speak and reach an audience. So that's also beautiful. But the conversation itself is where I really, you know, find the greatest value. Well, it's one aspect of podcasting that has been unexpected, but like very fulfilling that it's, that's a part of it. I think it's when I have a guest that I'm like, yeah, all right, maybe. And then that guest just comes on and blows my mind.

Starting point is 00:06:37 And that guest then becomes like an ally, a friend. It becomes someone who I connect with. And, you know, there's been a lot of friendships that have been born from strangers who I've just interviewed on a podcast that there was such connection that it developed into a relationship. And relationships are what I treasure, you know, more than anything in life. What do you feel like, because you've been podcasting for a long time, what do you feel like is the number one thing that's contributed most to the growth of your show?

Starting point is 00:07:05 I think that one, it's, you know, I've just been at it for a long time, you know, and that consistency of just continually putting out shows. And I'm only one show a week, but nonetheless, it's like consistently for the last, I don't know, I guess over 10 years, 12 years, something like that, I've been doing shows. And there was periods where they were more intermittent. but nonetheless, like for a really long time, I've just been consistently doing it. And I think that's allowed me to become better as a podcaster. And I also have my own style. I don't do things exactly the same way that everybody else does. It's more of a conversation.

Starting point is 00:07:52 And I really was baptized in that style by Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan doesn't come with a list of questions. And he may talk to some expert about some field and end up talking to them about wolves for 45 minutes. bears or bears pretty frequently yeah and he doesn't care you know he just is having that conversation and uh and i think that's that's my style so it's to to know your style and then to you know just choose interesting conversations and to continue to get better and to evolve and to stick with it i read some stats somewhere that some 93% of podcasts quit before episode 13 you know because they're just not seeing the results they're looking for but I think if you really if you really want it you got to stick with it you got to have a good plan

Starting point is 00:08:39 and and then just keep going yeah the one updated set that I saw is 93% of all podcasts don't make it past episode three and of the podcasts that do 90% don't make it past episode 20. Damn! Like you're getting to episode 20 you're in the top 1% of podcasts. Wow. But it's so for people to hear that obviously you've been doing it for 10 years and no matter which way you cut it, podcasts are a slow burn. And that's why it's really important for you to have that Leishma, that joy for it in and of itself.

Starting point is 00:09:13 Otherwise, you're not going to have the longevity for that consistency, which is so necessary for it to actually grow. Because, I mean, people see that you have a big show now. And 10 years is a long time to be doing that consistently. Yeah, it is. You have to love it. You have to love it. You know, you really have to love podcasting. You have to look forward to it.

Starting point is 00:09:33 It's not like, oh, I got to do a podcast today. You're like, oh, I get to do a podcast today. Yeah. Sweet. What? So you spoke into it a little bit. What does your preparation for shows look like? I have a kind of general rule that if somebody's going to be talking about a book,

Starting point is 00:09:49 I'm going to read the book. I have, you know, I have an ability to read very fast. So that allows me to actually move through a book really quickly. Some books, I can't. I actually have to move really slow. and but that's one of the things that I always that I'll always do is if there's a body of knowledge that is contained in a book I'll always do that sometimes with some people that's just they don't have a body of work so I just trust myself or trust myself to navigate and listen

Starting point is 00:10:21 and as I podcast you know for me I always see a forking road of possibilities and one of the challenging things is to know all right I have to take one of these roads do I circle back to this one place where we might get find ourselves in this kind of bracket for a little while do I indulge in that or do I stay on the through line of the conversation? And so, but I'm always kind of, I'm staying present but also seeing ahead to the forking paths. And I'll have typically, I'll write out like landmark, like destinations that I want to get to. And I'll just look at those destinations and I want to make sure that one way or another, I'll find my way to those destinations. Anchor points. Anchor points. I also, I mean, for me, especially if there's a more,

Starting point is 00:11:08 if it's a bigger guess, like, Despenza, I got kind of a notice. There was like seven to ten days before he was going to come on. I read all of his books, but like on three times speed on audio while I was reading it. So listening and reading at the same time. And I felt like that really allowed me to go through it and still digest it and highlight it. And I feel like it's really important to honor your guests. Like they're giving you your time, all the people that are tuning in. And they can tell. They can tell if you've actually. read their book and when they don't and when you have it and it makes a big difference for them you know and also when you don't ask the same fucking questions that everybody that everybody asks you

Starting point is 00:11:45 like if i get asked one more time so what made you what made you decide you wanted to build on it i'm like oh my god how many times can i answer this same fucking question but really good interviewers like yourself and like you know some of the best out there they will approach that even if curious about that. They'll approach it in a different way. So it'll elicit a novel response. And to me, that's the territory I like to get to. I'd like to get to territory that hasn't been well-trodden. You're like the captain of the ship as the podcast host, right? You talked about how you're present, you're listening, you want to engage to what's alive in the moment and you're feeling to where it can go next, right? And so you're kind of the steward in this conversation. And so I just love for you to

Starting point is 00:12:27 share, as you've done it so many times, obviously by from episode one to 50 to 500, your comfort and ease that you carry within yourself and really trust that you can rely on just the unconscious stored memory and information to yourself that you can do it. The process of the interview, I'm just curious if you have any other more insights for guiding that process. I would say that there's occasionally times, right, if you're podcasting, where you're going to get stuck and you're going to lose what question you had. And it's important to, you know, to know and to have the experience of how you maneuver out of those situations where you get stuck or you get a, you get into a place where some big thing erupts.

Starting point is 00:13:15 And it's like, oh, wow, we're really off the threat of this thing and like what to bring back. And so and also to make sure that if I close down a category, like let's say a guest talks about something and I want to expand that, I'm comfortable like, okay, before we go. on to the next thing. Let's bracket this next thing you're going to talk about. We'll circle back to it. But I want to go deeper into this, into this one thing. Let's really explore this. But then when you make that promise that you're going to go explore that thing, do it. Like have that mental note. Like you've got to close that loop. At some point, don't leave the listener hanging about something. You know, like take your time exploring what you're going to explore, but close the loop that you're going to explore. And if you find yourself in one of those kind of brain,

Starting point is 00:14:02 fart moments where you're like where do I go like that you have something that you've patterned a place that you could go that even if it's a little bit non sequitur it's like you have something stored you have something chambered I imagine I'm not a comic but I imagine comics have that as well where they could get in a flow but they always have some fallback joke maybe it was from some old material or something like that but they got something in you know chambered and ready that if they and maybe it could be even a question that you ask multiple different guess.

Starting point is 00:14:32 You know, like, and so to have that ready, so if you get in a position in a position where you're stuck, that you're not worried. Like, you know that you have a plan. It feels like the podcast, at least in my own experience, and I want to hear yours, the podcasts that are most impactful for the listeners is the one where you can almost kind of, you crack this code of authenticity and vulnerability and take people into uncharted territory where they haven't gone in conversation. And is just, is there anything that comes up from you when you look at the podcast that

Starting point is 00:15:01 have really stood out. How did you angle things in a way that that brought people to more vulnerability and kind of opening up in a way? Sometimes it can be a question, but it has to be a question where, because there's a kind of emotional adaptation and emotional tolerance to answering the same thing. And so both as a guest, you know, you want to be able to, you want to be able to, navigate to a place that you haven't spoken about, you know, before. And there's usually fresh emotions there. So as a guest, like, those are moments that are special to be when I'm a guest. And we just did a podcast. You navigated me into a place of my father. And it was a surprising place where I got emotional. I was talking about, you know, playing three-on-three basketball and

Starting point is 00:15:52 remembering how my dad used to play that and just remembering that moment that I had with my friends. I've never talked about that moment. So that moment was fresh for me. And it was a common of your question but also my willingness to go into that and so as a host you can try to just queue up the opportunity to get people into by maybe going really slow maybe unpacking a little bit more detail and maybe just leading with your heart and compassion and you know also expressing your emotions emotions are contagious so like if you get really emotional you know that will bring in a field of vulnerability. So a lot of the great shows, you know, like I've had deeply emotional moments.

Starting point is 00:16:38 And once I have a deeply emotional moment, then there's a permission field for the guest to have a deeply emotional moment. So it's really kind of leading by example in that way is what I've found elicits kind of the most powerful responses. Because a lot of the best podcast guests, you know, best by like they get the biggest reach and have such a powerful impact. someone like let's take joe dispens it's one of my favorite people to interview but he has he's practiced what he said so many times so i go into that show and i'm like all right how do i get him off course

Starting point is 00:17:12 how do i get him into uncharted territory because he's genius in the uncharted territory but if you aren't careful he'll say the same thing that he said on a lot of other podcasts and so it's like all right let's find a way let's navigate let's develop some you know some pathway that can lead to some insight that hasn't been shared. Yeah, it really feels like, I mean, it could be a little bit more fresh and clunky in the beginning. If you're doing it with cameras and mics, a lot of people listening to this might be exploring probably remote podcasts. There comes a point when like the technology, the mics, they kind of melt away. And then it's just two people having a conversation, opening up their

Starting point is 00:17:49 consciousness to each other. And you become that steward for the conversation and energetically whatever you allow to open in the space. I feel like within yourself, you also give that permission like you're speaking to with a guest. In the growth of your show, how have you navigated getting bigger and bigger guests? And what does your process spend? And yeah, getting people that you want on the show that you don't have access to initially in the journey of that. You know, the bigger you become as a personality, the more discretion you have about

Starting point is 00:18:19 which shows you're willing to do. So in some cases, it's just because they're your friend. you know like Aaron Rogers did my show twice because we're brothers we're friends so that's one way the other way is typically maybe they really resonate with your message but oftentimes they haven't heard of you you know it's just going to be the reality so then you have to kind of show some of the big shows that you've done if you have anything that's really done well whether it's cumulative like I've gotten this many total views or whether it's yeah we did this show and it got you know two and a half million views so if we do this i think this show could be really big and impactful so

Starting point is 00:18:59 you know it's just the it's just the cold truth out there that you know you have to be able to prove that you're going to be able to package their time in a way that's going to be effective you know for them to actually share their message and also that they're going to enjoy the conversation how big is your team that you have working with you behind the scenes for your own podcast to make it come to life at the stage so just for the podcast team so I have my podcast technician, his name's Derek, and then I have somebody of Christian who works on guest curation and trying to look at the field, kind of scout the field for interesting guests, correspondence with those guests, and then he works on, you know, cultivating the assets and the YouTube

Starting point is 00:19:46 and how that's kind of packaged and optimized. And then, you know, we have a kind of general other, you know, kind of team that works on a lot of other things that will pull in for special situations. But really, it's mostly, mostly those two people, you know. And so the podcast team is kind of small. Now, I did a podcast with Diary of a CEO, you know, Stephen, and man, he's got a big team. He's got like 15 people working on a show. And it's like, whoa. You know, like this is like impressive. It was like going to a movie set, you know. And so I think it can be done a variety of different ways. And you go, someone like Duncan Trussell, he's got a big show, and it's just Duncan. Like, that's all there is. It's just Duncan. He knows how to work his gear. He knows how to set it up. And so,

Starting point is 00:20:35 you know, there's a variety of different ways that I've seen it done well. Yeah, it feels like so important to like we spoke to earlier, find that lane, that niche that, and it's part of a self-discovery process, this whole process of, you know, expression and clarifying who you are and the messages that you want to share is such a big part of clarifying who you have on your show, the name of the show, the branding of the show, the conversations that you have in Steward.

Starting point is 00:21:04 And so, I mean, we spoke to a lot in our previous podcast just now, but of like how important it really is to clarify who you are and what you want to create in life that will inform all the manifestations of the podcast and how it, you know, shapes.

Starting point is 00:21:18 So anything else. I think that's a really important, it's, you have to decide whether you want to, whether you want to have a theme for your show or you want to base it around yourself as like the complexity of who you are now my show began as before anybody knew who the fuck obri marcus was it began as the warrior poet project because to me i wanted to approach the show using that as a frame of like here's what i want to talk about i want to talk about the bringing together of these two ideas that

Starting point is 00:21:50 people think are separate but are really actually the same you know really can be brought together in a single individual and are important as synergistic properties but then eventually I got like well this doesn't really have anything to do with warrior poets what I'm talking about at this point and actually the only thing that makes sense for me is to call my podcast my name because I don't know what I'm going to talk about I might talk about business I might talk about romance I might talk about psychedelics I might talk about you know mindset I might I don't know what I'm going to talk about I don't know what I I'm going to talk about. I might talk about health, you know.

Starting point is 00:22:24 So there's just different ways to approach it. And I would say that if you're starting out and you don't have a name that's built and people that understand it, I think having a concept for your show that gives people an idea about what the show is about is, I think, probably the better way to go. And then if you already are a big named type of personality, then naming the show, you know after yourself eponymously is that the word but naming the show after yourself

Starting point is 00:22:58 is also like a pretty good idea obviously Joe Rogan's a good example of someone who's done that really well Arby Marcus. Yeah exactly Aubrey Marcus podcast yeah no I think it's really beautiful for people that are trying to create the name for the show to feel

Starting point is 00:23:14 into what is the categories that I want to explore without pigeonholing myself too much Right. You know, if you love personal development, but you just make your show about only inner child healing, maybe that's something that you just want to cover. But if that's just one aspect of a larger array of topics that you want to cover, then maybe you find a name that kind of is more all-encompassing and a bigger umbrella, but still defines kind of the themes that you're going to explore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. How have you dealt with sponsors and like the money of the show? And, you know, obviously for you, you've had businesses that have kind of fed also your own podcast. You haven't need to in a traditional style, you know, make money from the show as many people would like to, you know, a few years into it, perhaps. But I'm just curious your journey with sponsorships and in dealing with the revenue that comes from the business of podcasting. Right. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:05 I mean, I don't think my podcast has ever been really a driver of revenue purely in the show itself. It has, we've made some money. We've had different sponsors. And for me, what's really important is, you know, the core ethereum. to me is authenticity. So I have to go through like a in-depth approval process for any of the sponsors that, you know, I'm working with. If it's a mattress, I got to sleep on it, you know, like literally, you know, they got to send me one. If it's a whatever it is, if I'm, you know, mudwater is one of my sponsors. I got to like mudwater, you know, and like the people who,

Starting point is 00:24:40 who are behind it. So, you know, that limits some of the revenue, but it also like keeps the integrity of what I'm offering. But really what I've found is my own products, my own books, my own programs, my own things. The podcasts are incredibly valuable for like really exposing the world to those. So that's where I think the real revenue is. And, you know, YouTube has, we just turn ads on and that money comes in and, you know, that money comes in. And I think when you get really big, that money can get big. But that's kind of like more hands off. It's warned about just optimizing your channel, optimizing each video and making sure that you're getting the reach. But that's been kind of a more hands-off approach. But yeah, we have, we work with,

Starting point is 00:25:29 you know, somebody who helps line up sponsors and work with sponsors to bring them to the show. And sometimes you'll be able to make individual separate deals and things like that. But it's pretty much just like, all right, these are the potential sponsors? Which ones do you like? Yes, yes, no, no. I mean, just figuring out. Yeah. Okay, beautiful. I think we covered a lot. And I mean, there's a lot of nuance in the back end of podcasting that I'll probably cover on my own on this podcast or other other shows. But for you, I mean, we look at the podcast of industry, which has been booming over the past decade, billion billion dollar industry. And it can feel intimidating to think it's so saturated, which to a degree it is. There's so many shows. There's so many podcasts. And so for people that are, they have this desire to raise consciousness, they want to be conscious content. creators, they want to start their own podcast. Is there any other words that you have, you know, whether, you know, empowering people into it or to like almost scare them out of it. Like, do you really want this? You know, do you understand what this is going to take out of you?

Starting point is 00:26:33 And if it's something that would be more simplistic and is a hobby and that's a passion for you, that's beautiful. But if you want to, you know, grow into something that is really sustaining you one day, then it's something to really understand what comes into it all. So. Yeah, I think the, the big question that what i'll always say i always say the same thing is like if you're doing this because you want to have great conversations then do it you know like that's the only thing that that i'll say like that you have to be doing it for that otherwise unless you're just a real wizard at you know kind of and you have a real gift and you're able to you know really make make moves happen fast which you know is possible we were just talking about that in the kitchen it is possible to come out of nowhere and just

Starting point is 00:27:16 just really make a splash. But you have to have a lot of technical details down. You have to really understand the field that you're playing in to a great extent and understand all of the different channels and the ways to promote. You have to understand a whole variety of different things. So do the podcast if you just want the conversations. And otherwise, it's like, you know, buckle up. It's going to be a real ride. And it's, you know, I don't necessarily recommend podcasts to most people other than just to say like do it for the conversation because it's it's a difficult game it's a difficult game to break into and uh but when you do it's not only and you're doing it for the conversations not only do you have the conversations but it can develop into something

Starting point is 00:28:03 really rewarding yeah the potential for you be to be able to make a living having the conversations that you want to have and have it being offering to the world feels like probably one of the best jobs you could possibly have on the planet. It's so beautiful and so rewarding. And there's those moments where your first year, like your listeners were so probably so small. Same for me. So many of the big podcasters, it came from that excitement initially of just the love of it. And then a lot of times it can blossom into something beautiful in the years to come. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, and you really have to be willing to, you really have to be willing to know the technical elements of like, It's not about just, it's not about just having a good show.

Starting point is 00:28:48 Like, that's the days of, you know, the days of that working on its own, I think those, that's not really, it's not really around. You do need a good show. Like, that is a, that is a requirement. You have to be able to produce good content. But you have to be able to package that content. And you have to be able to deliver it in a way that works with the systems that actually deliver and disseminate.

Starting point is 00:29:12 and you really start to see, you know, you really start to see growth when you can hack into the different elements like audio podcasting is also different than YouTube podcasting. You know, growing audio podcasting is really difficult, but it's kind of like if you're in the top 100 list frequently, then you're growing frequently because that's typically how people are finding audio podcasts still, I think. Yeah, it's so hard to grow in audio. It's like YouTube had, there's no really discovery feature on Spotify. or Apple. Spotify especially is optimizing for a lot of really cool things and new features.

Starting point is 00:29:47 But YouTube, you can have a video. And if you know how to package it, you can blow up with knowing how to package it. Yeah. But on the audio side, really, the only discovery is the top list. So it's difficult. And it's difficult to pierce into that. So I've seen a lot of growth on YouTube, but very, you know, very kind of stable, you know, stable viewer listenership on audio.

Starting point is 00:30:13 Now there's variance depending on that because there's a lot of subscribers and there's a lot of content. So they'll choose which show. People are choosy. But it's not like I'm experiencing an overall lift because I'm right at that cusp where maybe I'm making the top 100 with a really good show. But I'm also not the way that Apple, you know, the way that Apple works is it's a combination of, you know, especially for your show.

Starting point is 00:30:36 If you do three shows a week, well, you're going to get higher up in the rankings than me who does one show. So it's going to be very difficult. So single episodes will get up there when I have a big guess. So it's complicated to grow audio, but YouTube has a lot of potential. And then if you're already doing podcasts on YouTube, do other stuff on YouTube. Like look at YouTube as a whole category, and podcast is one category within your YouTube channel and then really make cool shorts. I've seen some people just blow up their whole business, their whole life, just doing shorts. you know my friend stephen jaggers breath work you know breathwork coach fucking blew up on youtube shorts huge subscriber numbers and and uh and his business is really blossomed because he just figured that

Starting point is 00:31:22 he figured that one piece of of that platform out and really just dominated with it yeah learning those ancillary skill sets that complement you as a podcaster in the packaging and the marketing and the editing and and that's that's super important if you desired the real growth of your show again, if you don't really care the size of your show and you're just doing it because you just want to do it, like that's another thing. The problem with that is though you really want to have conversations with the most interesting people. And the most interesting people are only going to do your show unless you're already friends with them or you met them through a mutual friend, which then they'll be like, no, you're my buddy. I'll do it.

Starting point is 00:32:00 I still do shows with my buddies, even if they have a really small show, you're my friend. Of course I'll do your show. But for the most part, it's like, no. I'm sorry. Like I have, you know, there's a lot of things I can do with my time. And I love you and I love what you're doing. Keep going. And if you reach, you know, if you reach certain thresholds of numbers where your shows can reach hundreds of thousands of people, like, all right.

Starting point is 00:32:23 Right. Let's fucking go. And so I always leave the door open. But, yeah, I mean, and so the most interesting conversations are going to happen when you have growth. So even if you're in it for the conversations, paying attention to your growth and your reach is important. because then you'll have even more interesting conversations with more interesting individuals who have deeper levels of mastery in certain subjects. Yeah, it's like that shift from just having a show and like asking for favors and begging for bigger names to come on your show to creating a platform that those individuals would be stoked to come on because it's special and it's got reach. Right.

Starting point is 00:32:58 So, so yeah, I fully, I fully love that. Is there anything else within anything that we didn't touch that you want to share? No, I mean, I think that it's a it's a journey. you got to enjoy each part of the journey, you know, and don't think that when you reach a certain level, you're going to be satisfied because you're not. You know, like, you got to be satisfied with every step of the way, but you have to have a, you have to know the trajectory, the telos of where you're going. You have to enjoy each part of the process and also be patient and not take it personal.

Starting point is 00:33:28 You know, like, you know, I'll reach out to, I've had some amazing, you know, really big name guests. And there's other guests that, you know, I haven't got yet, like Russell Brand, for example. I really want to do a podcast with Russell. And I'll reach out to him and I'll be like, you know, Russell's not doing shows. And then I'll see him on like, he'll be flying to Austin to do Joe's show. I'm like, you are doing shows. You know, like I know you're doing shows.

Starting point is 00:33:51 It's okay. That was a nice thing to say. I understand the courtesy of saying that rather than saying, sorry, Aubrey, you're just not big enough yet. And I'd take that like, all right. Well, one day, you know, one day, like, I'm going to keep going. And one day, you know, one day I will be that irresistible. show that you're going to want to go on and uh and whenever that day comes i look forward to it and

Starting point is 00:34:13 and it's just it's not being it's not being afraid or worried or or worried about the rejection that may come but building building building and and just being that magnetic irresistible force that one day will draw you know your your dream guests to be a part of your show i love that discovering what that magnetism you personally have what is your unique unfair advantage in a way because of the life experience that you have or maybe you have background in editing or interviewing or there's something you can lean into that is uniquely you that isn't uniquely other people. Yeah. And for me also being a guest on shows has been also really helpful. So I've had, you know, I saw a lot of growth when I published Own the Day on Your Life, which ended up being a best selling book. But that got

Starting point is 00:35:00 me on a lot of shows because podcasters also want to know like, what am I going to talk to this guy about? you know like what are what are we going to dive into and so when you have a book and especially a successful book that really is a as a tide that can lift all ships and um so you know as i'm writing my next book i can see like all right this next book is another opportunity for people to really read my book because again it's important to give that to your guest to give them the honor of reading it so some won't read it but some will read it many will and they'll be like wow all right and then we'll really get to dive into some interesting subjects and topics so you know that'll be another level so other things you do in your life that make you an interesting guest also then helps grow

Starting point is 00:35:49 your show like my friend you know a good friend from us and chris williamson you know he's a great podcaster great podcaster really prepares well as really dedicated um but also has a lot of interesting things to say. And so Joe invited him onto Joe's show. You know, Chris couldn't get Joe to come on his show, but he was interesting enough that Joe invited him to go on his show. And like that, that combination of having enough to say yourself that you get invited on other shows helps your show a lot. Powerful. I think the last thing I'll say is to find an area of mastery that you can interact with your guests from. So whether that's a deep knowledge of, you know, Buddhist wisdom, Hebrew wisdom, Christian mysticism, Rosicrucianism, or something else where you can interact with the guests' body of

Starting point is 00:36:48 knowledge by your own, you know, kind of expertise in your own body of knowledge, like that's really cool because that way you can find the overlapping, interlocking points where it's like, oh, you're describing this thing. Well, let me explain what my body of wisdom, either experiential or otherwise can apply to that. And that could be lived through your athletic career. It's like, yeah, that reminds me this concept you're saying of this time we were down, you know, 17, nothing at halftime. And like this thing happened through me or I just experience whatever, like your own mastery

Starting point is 00:37:24 when crossed with the mastery of the guests that you have, that creates some of the most magical moments for me is finding those overlaps. Powerful. I think it's such a good note to end on and so valuable because for me also with this show, my deep devotion to my own spiritual practices and depth of Eastern traditions, like all of that informs so much of how I ask questions and who I have on and the depth in which we can go in conversation. And if I didn't have that, it just wouldn't, that there would be a depth that it would not be able to penetrate because of my own lack of experience or, you know, wisdom. And so you, with your various experience in life,

Starting point is 00:38:00 through business, through plant medicine, through relationships, all of that give you so much context to pull and to really dive deep in conversation and not just be question to answer, question to answer. It's so robotic, right? Yeah. And also you want to be in a position where, like, you know, we're friends, so it's a different type of thing. But fundamentally, like, you interviewed me today, but I want to leave this. And I've already wanted to anyways because we're friends that I know you. But I would leave the conversation that we had and being like, I want to interview you. So let's do a show together as well. So when you're interviewing another podcaster,

Starting point is 00:38:34 you get to have that dance where it's like, oh, we got to do a show. Right. You know, and like, and so it becomes this kind of reciprocal process. And that only happens when you've deepened your own well of wisdom and knowledge. So I look forward to having you on the show, bro. Oh, honored. Yeah, man. Let's go.

Starting point is 00:38:52 Beautiful. Thank you, man. Of course. Today I am looking forward to be sitting down with Samir Chaudry, one half of the Colin and Samir show. He's an individual that is being able and has the privilege to sit down with incredible creatives, the most successful creators in this economy of podcasting, of long form, of short form. And he's a brilliant mind when it comes to giving advice for individuals on their journey from zero to hero in the creator space.

Starting point is 00:39:19 And he's been a leading voice for millions of people in this whole realm. So I'm excited to dive deep into the business side of podcasting and YouTubeing and of long form, how to grow a successful show and then his own journey creating a beautiful platform himself. So Samir, thanks for coming on, bro. I'd need everyone to know that that was one take. That was incredible. Of course. Thanks. Yeah, it's good. You're here. You're floating. You're meditating on the chairs. Yeah, I don't know how long I can keep my legs up like this. If you're listening, my legs are crossed on the chair. But yeah, I'm here. This is beautiful. I'm excited. Yeah, it's good to have you here. We were just talking at length before the podcast. We were like, we just need to stop, shut up.

Starting point is 00:39:58 to start. Two podcasters talking is tough. It's tough to know when to turn the mics on. Yeah. What I want to start with is something that I think as you grow into becoming a more and more successful creator, a lot of people struggle with this balance of, you know, the artistry of what you want to create versus what the algorithms reward you for creating. And I've heard you talk about this balance of like what you want to create versus what your audience wants from you versus what the platform rewards. How do you navigate that balance and dilemma of staying true to what you want to create, but then also realizing that certain content performs well

Starting point is 00:40:31 and you want to have a successful show. How do you navigate that? I think that it's that last part. If your goal is to have a successful show, if your goal is to make a career out of your creativity, that is a different thing from just self-expression. And I think that's the most important thing to take a step back and go,

Starting point is 00:40:48 what do I want to do with my creativity? Because an artist doesn't really care what the audience thinks, right? an artist makes something and then says, here, interpret it. On the other side of that spectrum, we have people who are distributors. So that's someone who works in a movie studio who says, you know what, we should make another Spider-Man because Spider-Man puts butts in seats. And I think as a creator on the internet, you're somewhere in the middle. And what I think you have to realize is, yes, you are the creative, but you're also the programming executive of your own

Starting point is 00:41:22 network, right? Like this platform that you have, you're making decisions on what episode to make, partially because of what you want to make, but also you're empathetic towards people on the other side. And so I think that's where you just have to understand your own creativity. Not everyone has to turn their creativity into a career. When I first started, when I first looked at YouTube, I was like, oh, that's a great place to monetize your self-expression. But that's actually not what it is. That is a part of what it is. But what you're actually doing is your you're building a media property with a ton of empathy towards the environment, the audience and the platform. And you are a piece of that. If you hate what you're making, it's not going to

Starting point is 00:42:02 work. You have to like what you're making, but you have to take into account what the audience wants to watch and what the platform wants at the moment too. That's the reality of building a business doing this. I'm excited to dive deeper into that business side of things as well. But for people that are starting out as whether it's a podcast, a YouTube podcast, which is a slightly different beast, you know, or different styles of content, you know, there's so much power in discovering what your lane is, you know, what really lights you up the most in terms of what you want to create in your avenue of creativity. And then the monetization side of things can, you know, come a little bit later. How important do you feel like it is to

Starting point is 00:42:39 clarify what your niche is and what you're going to be talking about and what people know you and your brand as? Yeah, I think we've gotten a little bit far away from the opportunity to practice in private. You know, Like you think about when you were a kid, did you make videos? Yeah. And who did you show them to? Maybe my sister. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:59 And the pressure of that is very different from the pressure of uploading a YouTube video. And I think this distance between having an idea and sharing it, that gap has closed so much today, right? You have a thought. You record it on your phone. You posted it on your Instagram story. Like that is within 60 seconds. You go from like, ooh, this is cool. I want to film it to, oh, I'm sure.

Starting point is 00:43:22 sharing it with thousands of people. And I think that, you know, there, I don't know how it happens, but I would urge every creative to explore what it feels like to practice in private, of making things and just not having the pressure of sharing them, just looking at it, feeling like, is this who I am as a creative? You know, after you get through that hurdle, I do think the most important thing to ask yourself is, who is this for? It's okay if the answer is, this is for myself. but then you can't expect it to be for a lot of people, right? It's okay for it to be like, I'm making this because I like to make it. But again, if you're trying to do this and reach a lot of people and build something out of it,

Starting point is 00:44:03 you're going to have to answer the question, who is it for? And I think you have to get really hyper-specific with that. You know, when our platform started to take off, both from an audience perspective, but also from a revenue perspective, it's when we took a step back and said, you know, this for and let's define that into three hyper-specific audience segments. And so we said, okay, this is for aspiring creators, people who know they want to create, but, you know, are trying to figure it out for themselves. Right now, they can film, they can edit, but they don't really know how to turn that into something. Professional creators who are doing it, they're making income from it, but now

Starting point is 00:44:39 they're trying to get an edge or, you know, build upon the business that they already have. And then people who work in the creator industry. So that could be agents, managers, people who work at the platforms. Once we define those archetypes, the next step was to say, what's the value each of them is getting? Why are they watching? What is their transformation? Who are they before they watch an episode and who are they after? And once we dug into that, then our decision making towards the show changed a lot. And we were able to develop kind of a mission and go, okay, this show exists to educate and empower the next generation of creators. So now everything goes through that filter. And I do think that that intentionality and that focus on value creates a really sticky audience

Starting point is 00:45:20 and does create a niche. You know, you have to build yourself into being singular within a category. And you have to answer the question of who's this for? Why do they watch? And why me? Why am I the one to deliver it to them? And if you can answer those questions, you start to get into a space of really understanding why your show exists and what is the return on investment of time people are getting for sitting through an hour of your show. Yeah, it feels like it's that cross-section between what you love to explore and talk about and then also what you're good at or what expertise do you have. And that kind of creates an area of, you know, topics of exploration to talk about and people that you want to invite

Starting point is 00:46:01 on your show and corresponding to that because I feel like that's what uniquely makes us, us, and nobody's qualified to be in this podcasting game. You know, there's no qualification. but what makes us be able to find what our niche is and get clear on who the avatars or the individuals that we're going to be speaking to, I think that's a beautiful breakdown. And so for you, I know with Colin and Samir, the show that you guys have created,

Starting point is 00:46:26 it's been a long time coming getting to the point where you discovered actually there's like this area of creators that we found that we uniquely can contribute to that really we don't see other people contributing in the way that we can. And because you discover that, then I feel like, life, all that in the audience, all that just kind of matches up to respond to that as well. So

Starting point is 00:46:45 anything else want to share and just like really clarifying and discovering that and how it's a process. The dots connect looking backwards. Like the reality is it doesn't work unless you're like actually that person. And, you know, I always say this is the show we wish we had 10 years ago and we first started creating together. So creating force yourself or your younger self is a great space to start of like what is the thing I was missing or what am I missing in my life. And then the other reality of it is like the reason why people were sitting down with us is because we were very much a part of the community. We were working with other people on, you know, their own content. We were behind the scenes with a lot of creators. We were very much

Starting point is 00:47:27 from within the community. And I think you have to look around and go, who is the physical community I'm a part of and how can I impact them? Because like impacting digital. can get really intangible and get really confusing, right, of just numbers on a screen. And so thinking about like your physical community, that's kind of how we approached it was like we're spending time with a lot of these creative people who are really into YouTube and really into this modern landscape of creativity. Be awesome to sit down with them. And then if we sit down with them, other people in our community will likely want to hear what they have to say and hear our conversations. And then that just starts to organically grow. So like, you know, we can look at this from a strategy standpoint,

Starting point is 00:48:11 and that is what you have to do over time as you're trying to grow it. But there's the beginning of it always starts with like, okay, who are you actually? What community are you actually part of? What do you actually want to do? Because like you said, it took us almost six years for this channel to take off. So you have to have like this almost unconditional love for your own creative work because it's going to be a while until it loves you back. You know what I mean? It's a good way of phrasing it. Yeah, it's going to be a long time and it might never love you back.

Starting point is 00:48:39 Yeah, I guess the point is to find that thing that you don't really care if it loves you back, right? Ideally, it's great if it does become that revenue source for you and can feed you and you can just focus your time on that. But you're like doing it for the love of it, which ironically is going to be the differentiating factor for you having longevity to continue to see the growth.

Starting point is 00:48:58 Yeah. So that's really interesting. Now, to talk a little bit more specifically about long form and podcasting, what is the difference you see with audio-based Apple, Spotify, podcast, and then YouTube? Because they are a different beast, but there is some overlap. Yeah, I mean, the number one difference is Discovery, for sure. And that's like, you know, it's much more complicated than that, but the simplest form of it is like Discovery. If we are exclusively an audio-based show, we're probably not reaching the amount of people that we can reach when we take it to YouTube,

Starting point is 00:49:29 especially with the subject matter we cover being creators who are popular on YouTube. the complications of adding video is one thing. The complications of putting it on YouTube is another thing. When you put it on YouTube, you are building in a direction, and I'm sure you know this, of packaging, titles, thumbnails, right? And that is, at the beginning, what has to lead it, until you build enough trust with an audience to say, hey, you know what, I'll listen to whatever Andre has to say.

Starting point is 00:49:59 And if he has a guest on, I don't know. It's okay, I trust him as a curator. That takes some time. to build that trust with people. So in the beginning, as you're building a show on YouTube, it's very much, how do I stick out in the sea of content, right? What is it? Is it going to be just purely the guests I can have on?

Starting point is 00:50:19 Because that's also a challenging thing. Then every week now you're evaluating a guest based on their clickability. Is it the subject matter I'm covering? Is it some quote I can pull out of them? You know, what is it that is sticking out and suggesting to someone they should invest an hour into this. But the discovery that you can get from YouTube is unlike, it's unparalleled, right? Yeah. It's unparalleled to anything else. One of the biggest, most substantial differences and now having a show that's across both platforms, and maybe you see this too, is the watch time and

Starting point is 00:50:51 completion rates. Yeah. Completion rate on audio is very high. Way high. It's like the triple. Yeah. Yeah, triple. So people trust you in an audio environment different than they do on YouTube. Yeah. They'll click on your show and just be like, I'm here. I'm not walking out the door. A YouTube video, if 70% of the people are still watching, like, you know, 10 minutes in, that's pretty substantial. And you think about that in the context of a movie.

Starting point is 00:51:19 Imagine if you went to a movie and like 10 minutes in, 30% of the people just walked out. It would be so weird. But that's really normal on YouTube with the amount of choice that people have. And I think I look at audio as a permission based. environment where I've given you permission, maybe I've subscribed to know thyself on the RSS feed, or it's just part of my weekly routine that whenever you put out on an episode, I'm going to listen. So I've given you permission to like come into my world. On YouTube, as creators, we're trying to interrupt the audience. It's more of an interruption based environment where just because we have

Starting point is 00:51:54 1.3 million subscribers does not mean 1.3 million people are seeing our thumbnail. Absolutely not. That's like, that's like not the case at all. As your, I don't know what your numbers are, but I feel like it's around five to 10% of what your actual, like your views come from your subscriber feed. It's very little. Yeah, it's very little, especially from the subscription feed. Most people are shocked to hear it because I think once you have a lot of subscribers, then you just have a bunch of views. Yeah, it's not the case. It's just you have to create something that's going to interrupt someone's feed, right? Someone is scrolling and then they're like, ooh, Colin and Spirit just put out a new episode.

Starting point is 00:52:25 Ooh, who's it with? Oh, that looks like an interesting subject. Click, right? And then now we're in the next phase, which is, are we going to capture your attention for the next three minutes? Once we get three minutes, do we have you for the next 10 minutes, 20 minutes, right? And so editing a show for YouTube is very different from editing a show for audio. And having them live in both places has been challenging. And I think now we have a level of trust with a core audience. But to find new audience, you're still playing that game, right? with all the choice in the world, why am I going to click on this?

Starting point is 00:53:02 Why am I going to give it an hour? Why am I going to give it any time of day? For individuals that are starting a podcast that want to grow their podcast, there's both the podcast audio strategy, which is just inherently much more difficult to grow unless you're getting on the charts. The discoverability, like you said,

Starting point is 00:53:16 just isn't as much there. On the other hand, on YouTube, it's great. Even if you don't have a bunch of subscribers, you can grow your show substantially by understanding how to package it. And so it's this balance of learning how to play the game on YouTube without letting the game play you. Yes.

Starting point is 00:53:32 Which is important. But I do want to talk about because YouTube is the place where if you are starting a new podcast and you want to break through in an industry that is very saturated and there's so many creators, we first talked about finding that niche and kind of clarifying that lane of what you want to create, but then understanding some things within the algorithm on YouTube and packaging will be a huge differentiating factor from whether or not your show takes off. And this is important to talk about because people can have a real value that would be supportive to so many people. And no matter what field of their industry you're in, but because you don't know how to package it, it's not reaching those people.

Starting point is 00:54:07 And so that's kind of a shame, you know. And so let's talk about if you had to boil it down to the couple key metrics for growing on YouTube, what would those be? First thing I want to say is that the definition of, you know, a high quality audience, which I think is what podcasting can create. can create a very deep relationship with a high-quality audience. That is different for different people. 200 people could be a high-quality audience for someone, right, depending on what they want their outcome to be or who they want to impact. And I think sometimes we get skewed with the numbers that we see, right? That does it need to be hundreds of thousands of people? Is there a reason why? Or is that pure based on like comparison and validation? I think you have to deeply understand

Starting point is 00:54:56 why you want certain outcomes. Like what does quote unquote making it mean as a podcaster? That's number one. The second thing, on the question around metrics, you know, I think there's some,

Starting point is 00:55:07 some ones on YouTube that are, have been talked about a ton over the past couple years, maybe largely because of our show and our conversations with Mr. Beast being one of the biggest creators.

Starting point is 00:55:18 The greatest quote from him is just, if they don't click, they don't watch, that's like number one. So that's click-through rate, right? So if you make a thumbnail, you're going to gauge based on how many people see this thumbnail, what percentage of people are clicking on it.

Starting point is 00:55:32 That's number one that you want to track, right? Which breaks down into thumbnail, title, and hook, really. Yeah. And then when you go from click-through rate, the next thing is average view duration. So you're saying how long, once they do click, how long are they watching? That comes into expectation setting.

Starting point is 00:55:49 Exactly what you're talking about. There's a title, a thumbnail, and a hook. The question that I want to answer as a viewer is when I find a video and I'm like, that does seem interesting from a packaging perspective. I click on it. I go in. Was this the video I was expecting? Right? Is the first question I want to answer? That will keep me watching a little bit longer. And then the next thing is, are there unanswered questions that I want the answer to? So the first unanswered question is the packaging, the title and thumbnail, right? We call that an unclosed loop. So essentially as like a consumer, you look at a title and thumbnail. And if the loop

Starting point is 00:56:23 doesn't close, you kind of get curious enough to click on it. Right? So Vox does a great job at Unclosed Loops. They make videos that are like, I don't know, like, why this chair was the most popular in 1956? And you're like, what the hell? Yeah, why was that so popular? You know, like, my mind needs to connect to that. It's interesting. I've never heard of it phrase like this as well. And so then the first loop that closes is you click on it and all of a sudden like you're satisfied by something, which is, okay, this is that video about those chairs from 1956. That's cool. And then within 10 seconds, you want to introduce something new, right, that I'm waiting for. It's like, well, these were the most, these are photos of every building in 1956.

Starting point is 00:57:03 Click, click, click, click. You see him. Notice these chairs? They're really popular. But what you didn't know is this guy and what he was doing at Delta Airlines. And you're just like, what was he doing? Right. And so I don't know, just coming up with these.

Starting point is 00:57:15 More questions that you want to buy them to answer. Exactly. There's a structure to scripting. And in podcasting, the way we both do that is through hooks from the conversation. right and so you're going to cut a montage of the different things that were talked about at different points in the conversation and that's going to now create situations where it's like oh i want to hear about that what was that about what did he say about that i want to i want to continue i feel like there's an important differentiating thing there as well as your job is to create murk and i don't

Starting point is 00:57:43 do this as good as we could on the show but to create more curiosity that just like too obvious on the button here's value exactly if you give too much of the value up top also then it's like, right. Well, then I just got it. Yeah, you have to create curiosity. That's storytelling, right? It's, there's a great bit from the creators of South Park. Have you seen this?

Starting point is 00:58:04 They say if your story goes, this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. Your story's terrible, right? It has to go, this happened, therefore this happened, but then this happened, therefore this happened. So if you think about it in that way, your story has to, connect to people and create enough curiosity if it's like unexpected twists, right? Of just this happened, but then this happened, therefore this happened.

Starting point is 00:58:31 And if you look at even your podcast, your line of questioning the way you're asking, you can story tell through that. You can ask questions in a way that builds upon that story rather than a fully linear narrative of this. Okay, so this happened, and then this happened, huh? And then this happened, huh?

Starting point is 00:58:48 And then you did this, huh? That's not as interesting as this happened but then this happened. Tell me about that. And therefore, that happened, huh? And so if you, if you build that as a podcaster, that's what drives average view duration. Not necessarily any other tricks or hacks, you know, it's just good storytelling is what makes people listen and watch. Yeah. That can be done in the edit, you know, if we're having this conversation and you're like, hmm, that part wasn't as interesting as this part. And it was a little bit too linear there. You can move that around. But yeah, approaching it as a storyteller is very important. for average feederation. The third thing I think we track from a metric perspective is engagement and we look at that

Starting point is 00:59:29 through the context of comments we look at through the context of just any level of engagement likes comments. We believe if we're not generating comments then we're not actually creating anything worth talking about. Right, it's not conversational.

Starting point is 00:59:44 And I think we want to be approaching our episodes in a way that drives conversation. And so we think about that a lot. So those are the three metrics I would look at if you're growing on YouTube is click through rate, average view duration, and then average comments per episode.

Starting point is 01:00:01 Beautifully said, that part about retention, it feels like as you're crafting the questions for your interview, it's the difference of just listening to respond and you have this kind of dry robotic flow that, and most people are familiar. If you listen to a podcast, you know the ones that are like, okay,

Starting point is 01:00:16 this person clearly has a plan versus the one where there is that more storytelling aspect and it feels almost more musical. It's like a dance, answer, witnessing with your ears. And one of the most challenging parts is to be present and to not like have your plan, because your plan is going to get thrown off, right, no matter what. And so to be present enough. And then again, over time, as you build your skill set as a host, your audience will

Starting point is 01:00:41 appreciate your presence. And if there's a little inroad that someone says and you go down that path and you didn't expect to go down that path, that's also part of the unexpected storytelling. You've been privileged enough to hang out and work and, you know, be around Mr. Bees for some time. And, you know, I think he's a genius when it comes to understanding this down to his science, right? And so one, another thing I want to just touch on with the thumbnail is what are the most important qualities to a thumbnail that is most clickable, you know, and what are some tricks and hacks that you've learned about why somebody's going to click a thumbnail over, you know, another one? Yeah, I think the most important thing is like attracting the right audience. So, you know, there's, you know, There's been a lot of times where we've over-designed thumbnails.

Starting point is 01:01:25 We've, you know, designed them to a point where we don't like them. They don't fit our brand, but we think they'll work. And I think that's the worst thing you can do. I think you really have to... One thing that Jimmy said to me, one time we were driving around close to his studio, we were talking about episodes, and he was like, pitch me the most sensational version of that title. And I don't remember what one it was, but we said it to him.

Starting point is 01:01:50 We pushed as far as we could me him and... Colin just started throwing out the most ridiculous. It would make us laugh how absurd these titles were. And he was like, okay, cool. Now pull that back to where you're comfortable with your brand. And it was a really interesting exercise to go, okay, that's fascinating. Pull this. Like, what's the most clickbaity, ridiculous, sensational version of this? Now let's pull it back from there. And that was kind of an interesting exercise to see, like, what are we uncomfortable with? What are we? So in terms of like what what types of thumbnail works, I think you have to think about the title and thumbnail as interacting with each other, not the exact same thing. Right. So if you said like an interview with Samir as the title, which is a bad title, and then it said Samir on the thumbnail and pointed to me, it's like- You just see all the time. Yeah, you're just like, okay, you just repeated yourself. So you now need to think about this as like a one-two punch. So think of about like the title as being complimentary to what's happening on the thumbnail. And the thumbnail,

Starting point is 01:02:52 whatever's on the thumbnail should just add context into what I'm about to watch or what the unclosed loop is that I'm trying to close. So if it's, you know, how, I don't know, how Samir built an audience of a million people. Okay. Interesting. Kind of an interesting title for some people. in the thumbnail, is there an additional layer there, which is like, it's not what you think, or, you know, it was this exact moment or a quote from me that seems really unexpected. Now it's like, okay, how he did it is actually something I couldn't have even imagined, right? Because the thumbnail is now reflecting something different. So that's a really important piece, is that those two things should interact with each other,

Starting point is 01:03:39 not be the same thing. Yeah, I see, I mean, we see it all the time. But often when people are fresh in the podcasting space on YouTube, they just put the episode number, the podcast name, the guest name, and then they just put the same thing on their thumbnail. And also it's like super small, you know, like you want to have an enlarged guest face and then be very high contrast. You know, like you you want it to contrast and pop out. I will say I'm impressed with the people who have bad thumbnails and get a million people to click. You know, I think his show's great, but Theo Vaughn, I think his thumbnails are insane. They're so busy. But the, what I want to

Starting point is 01:04:14 compliment him on is that just by doing that, having like what we call the anti-thumbail at times can actually be a thing in itself. Lex Friedman also. Lex Friedman. Yeah, I mean, at least they're like big, bold guests. Like it's like Mark Zuckerberg. That's why you can get away with it. Yeah, and Lex, I think those creators,

Starting point is 01:04:32 when you look at them, they've earned that right. They've done it for years. They've earned that right. And that is a true community. That's like where people are clicking no matter what. They just recognize it and they're like, yeah. So I think that the other piece is like a level of consistency. someone should, you should close your eyes and imagine, you know, a know-thyself thumbnail. Like right now,

Starting point is 01:04:51 I can imagine that. And you can probably imagine one of our thumbnails, right? And that is super important because as you're perusing YouTube, you should be able to stop and go, oh, I did like that show. I wonder what this one's about. That's super important to settle into a consistency. Another thing that we just kind of mentioned is the guest selection in terms of growing the show, especially on YouTube, who you have on your show and also who you choose not to have on your show is going to be a big and important differentiating factor for, you know, who's going to click on your videos and for podcasting, especially, you know, you could have a horrible thumbnail title and yet if there's a good guest, you know,

Starting point is 01:05:25 you can grow a lot. So what has been your process of getting prominent figures on your show on the journey to getting to the point where now you can have most creators, you know, on your show? But on the journey, it's a process of making those connections, of figuring out your way to be able to have. And then, you know, once you have one of the, a big creator or a couple other, then you start to be noted, like, people start to recognize you as a platform that is worthy of having bigger creators on and then they want to come on. So what has your journey been with that? And then also

Starting point is 01:05:52 after that as well, you say no to. Yeah, our number one filter today is authentic interest. Like, we, it's very hard for us to have a two-hour conversation with someone we're not authentically interested in. And it's happened before, right? Like, where, uh, we found ourselves in those environments where we're like, okay, this is, we're not that interested in this conversation. So just because it's a prominent person or creator does not mean that, you know, we, we as Colin and Samir should sit down with them. We were really fortunate in the beginning that, again, we were embedded in this community. Like, our second episode was with Marquez Brownlee, who's like a very big tech YouTuber. You know, our fourth episode was with Mr. Beast. And so that was largely just because

Starting point is 01:06:40 these were friends and people that we had communicated with and had chatted with in the past and were super open to coming on the show. So I think when I say second and fourth, those are the second and fourth episodes on YouTube. We had been doing the podcast as an audio podcast for three years prior to that. So I think that practice and that, again, being actually authentically part of the community is what gets people to say yes? Like what podcast do you say yes to? To go. go on as a guest. Mine? Like, person?

Starting point is 01:07:13 It's very few. Very few. But if it's like your friend, you would say yes, right? Or if it's someone you respect or you know, you would say yes. So getting to the yes early on, it never happened through pure cold outreach.

Starting point is 01:07:27 It happened because these were warm relationships that people trusted us and they were willing to come on. And then that trust builds through social proof, obviously, right? So immediately it's like, okay, Marquez was happy with. this episode, he tweeted it out, he liked it, that's huge social proof. Now other people are interested. Today, it's primarily inbound of people reaching out to us. And we do go outbound and reach out to a few people. We have a dream guest list that we keep. But, you know, I think you have to

Starting point is 01:07:58 embody a value and an understanding over time that people can look at your show and go, that's why I would come on that show to talk. I think, I hope that's a good answer. I think, it hasn't been as strategic. You know, it's been very natural and I think so incredibly inbound at this point. Who do we say no to again? It's if we don't feel like we're authentically curious about that person or if we don't think that there's a story to tell there. And we do pre-calls now. We do pre-calls to just understand from the guest. It's a collaboration. So like what are we making together? What is this piece that we are making together? And are we both excited about it? Is there something new we can do? That's a super important piece of our process, is those pre-calls. They're almost like chemistry reads at some point of like, what's our chemistry like?

Starting point is 01:08:52 How should we approach the conversation? Do we make each other laugh? What is it about this that's going to be collaborative? And again, the most important questions we ask are, what are you not excited to talk about? What have you talked about so much? typically people say my origin story and that in podcasting is something you can spend an hour on right being like so how did this all happen

Starting point is 01:09:18 you know that's that's a question that a lot of people don't really want to get into so we've learned that and we ask that and then what are you obviously excited to talk about and then something that Tim Ferriss told us was he just it's a very simple question but he says what would make this experience a win for you it's a very simple question you ask it you start to understand their motives for coming on the show So, and there's been times where we've done pre-calls and the chemistry is not there and we're like, it's not the right time. Powerful.

Starting point is 01:09:45 What's one thing? Because you're someone who's very in the know with what's to come. I feel like in the creator space, I'll show interviewing, you know, topics X at YouTube and the CEO. And what's to come in terms of like AB testing that's rolling out or AI features and dubbing and like all this stuff just quickly because I want to go into the business side of things as well. But what are some things? Yeah, I think AI is like very. present, right? Like, it's a very present thing that's entering the creative workflow and space. You know, A-B testing, I think, is a precursor to potentially AI generated thumbnails, right?

Starting point is 01:10:22 I think everything in media is getting hyper-personal, everything. And AI is the introduction of how personal it can truly get. I don't know if you've seen the UI of ChatGBTBT, where, you know, you can explain to it a story and it can spit out images. I think about that in the context of like a kid and a parent and a parent basically creating a cartoon directly for that kid that looks like that kid that embodies the environment that they're in. And I think that if you're in the advice or how to space, I do think that's going to get into question. I think we as consumers potentially will trust computers more than we will people when it comes to how to do things. It already happens when it comes to directions, right? Do you remember the era where your mom would give you directions

Starting point is 01:11:16 and write them on a Post-Dette? I don't know how much older I am than you, but that was a reality in my life. If my mom gave me directions and run on a post-ed, I'd be like, that's insane. I'm going to use Google Maps. Like, Google knows way better than you. Or if I pulled over and said, how do I get to this place and a person told me I would not trust them as much as I trust AI, right, Google Maps. So I think there's a potential of the how-to genre or the advice genre could get put into question in terms of do we prefer that from a human being or do, are there elements of it that we prefer from a computer? And I think every tech platform is advancing very fast to roll out AI features. Some of it is really awesome, like dubbing. I think dubbing is super cool.

Starting point is 01:12:00 like the fact that this show pretty soon will be essentially available in every language, you know, through either Spotify or YouTube and that can be selected by the consumer. Like, that's, that's pretty amazing. That's part of the hyper-personal nature of the next chapter of media is just imagine that consumers have every choice to make what they want to do, what they want to watch extremely personal to them. I think as creators, we have to think about depth. And I would just imagine this. Like, if, The creators that are going to win in the next chapter are going to be the ones who can fill a room. You know, I know you did a live event and the room, you know, is packed.

Starting point is 01:12:38 That's really special. So as you're growing, think about what are you doing that's connecting to the audience at that level of depth that they would come out to an event of yours or that they actually would like to physically show up. I think that's going to become increasingly more important as AI enters into our world, that the creators that are going to win are not just going to be, feeding the content machine, they're actually going to be understanding that these are human beings on the other side that are looking for depth of connection, transformation, community connection.

Starting point is 01:13:10 Yeah, yeah, I think it's so important to prioritize that depth of connection. And especially as the exponential technologies such as AI are rising, the value of having that depth of the connection and then also the size of your audience, as those technologies roll out, which will just be like fuel on the fire for what you already have, is exciting. I mean, you know, people feel like podcasting is so oversaturating. and it feels like everybody and their mom does have a podcast. But the reality is that if you can find that uniquely and for you, cultivate that audience, those thousand true fans, whatever it is,

Starting point is 01:13:40 then when these technologies roll out, it's like, you know, it's just going to be even more accessible to more people on the planet, which is very exciting. All right, so I want to talk a little bit about the money and business side of podcasting. So we'll go kind of through some of these things. In terms of the pie of the business for Colin and Samir,

Starting point is 01:13:57 what is what percentage would you say is YouTube AdSense revenue? versus sponsorship dollars. That's changed quite a bit this year. For the first time, AdSense has become significant for us. I think, though, in terms of the pie, it's 10% 10% of our business is YouTube AdSense.

Starting point is 01:14:16 Got it. In terms of sponsorships on the show, that's probably closer to 85%. And I say 85% because some of those sponsorships include other pieces, whether it's a bit of consulting, or speaking engagements.

Starting point is 01:14:32 So partnerships fills out the rest of the 90% right now. So everything is advertising and partnership based. That's the pie chart of Colin and severe right now. And I think that'll change next year as we start exploring direct-to-consumer content, both through subscriptions as well as through courses. Those are at two different price points. That's a whole different business when you go direct to your consumer and ask them to take out a credit card.

Starting point is 01:15:01 But I do think there's a lot of power in having the community fund the content that they want. They are your number one. Like your community and your audience is your number one. The advertiser is there to access them. So if you're not fully focused

Starting point is 01:15:15 on your audience and your community, none of it matters. Right. And you do that through making content that's valuable to them. But yeah, right now the pie chart is 10% YouTube adsense, 90% partnerships and sponsorships.

Starting point is 01:15:28 Cool. I do want to talk about those creator-made products at a moment. But first, what's like a good CPM on a long-form podcast that you found? We don't sell on a CPM basis. And I'm very adamant about that. For sponsorships. Yeah. We flat rate it. What on the YouTube, Google side of things? Oh, on the Google side of things? I could grab my phone and just show you. Yeah, I'm happy to. It's out there. Okay. Okay. Okay. So the most important thing to recognize is that AdSense is pretty volatile. It can be very volatile. Just to give you some of the numbers from the past couple months, in May of this year, our AdSense revenue was $25,799 in the following month, June, which we did not

Starting point is 01:16:17 upload that many more, maybe one more episode, $42,679. So dramatic increase. Sometimes it's time of year, it's seasonality. Like, you're not in control of that. That is your relationship between YouTube and their advertisers. So, you know, you are in control of how much you're publishing and how much inventory essentially you're creating for YouTube. But the rates that sponsors are paying is, you know, somewhat dependent on Google and the advertisers and their sales team. Now, the things you can do is, I would say that the biggest thing that has changed and had us go from, averaging, you know, closer in the 20,000 a month to, you know, 40,000 plus, the biggest X-factor

Starting point is 01:17:06 has been length and the fact that we're more comfortable putting up a two-hour podcast. And we're more comfortable because our audience is more trusting of us to watch two hours. Our episodes used to be 20 minutes. And putting more mid-rules. Yeah. And that inherently puts more mid-rolls into it. Yeah. So it's like our episodes used to be 20 minutes long.

Starting point is 01:17:25 And a lot of that was fear. you know, there's times where we would record for three hours and cut it down to 30 minutes. And it's taken years to build trust with our audience to say, if it's a two-hour conversation, we're going to shepherd the conversation in a way that's valuable throughout, you know. And then also being okay with that, some of the value is the in-between moments and the fun stuff and the laughter and the, you know, there is some value to that. And the reality of just sinking into the conversation exactly how it happened. So that's been really great for us.

Starting point is 01:17:58 The CPM right now that we're trading at, like 20. Yeah. Yeah. So in the last 28 days, let's see. Yeah, it's about $22. Okay. Yeah. And so then your RPM is like what?

Starting point is 01:18:14 $10 to $11. Yeah. Cool. So if people don't know that, you know, CPM costs per millie, what the advertisers are paying for 1,000 views. And so then the RPM comes down to 10. So if you get a million views on a video, that's 10 grand. And people don't realize how the cumulative amount of views that your channel is getting over the course of a month,

Starting point is 01:18:33 you know, if you have a thousand videos doing a thousand views per month, that's a million views per month. Right. Which would, yeah. Yeah, I think the catalog is undervalued as you're approaching it. But it's why everything should build on itself. Like the goal is that an audience member can watch an episode and then watch two months. more, right? And then you turn one person who's coming into someone who can consume a large part of the catalog. Or if someone, you know, we just saw a tweet recently that someone like

Starting point is 01:19:04 found the show and then they said they watched every episode over the past month. And it's like, that's a hundred plus episodes that that person is watching. So the goal is that the catalog is and the biggest difference between YouTube and any other platform is how valuable your catalog can get over time. And I think that is something you have to recognize is that it also helps you zoom out and look at performance of episodes and say if this one didn't perform, it's okay. It's like putting a book on a shelf of a library that you own. The goal is as more foot traffic comes into the library, people have books that you're proud of that they can pick up and read the stories, right? And that's a YouTube catalog or library. Great. So I mean, you spoke into how, you know, the YouTube

Starting point is 01:19:52 bad revenue can be pretty volatile. And I see a lot of creators that pin all of their income and revenue just on that. I would not advise that. So much stress that comes from it. That's a good amount of revenue if it's especially only 10% of the pie or whatever it is roughly. So going on the sponsorship side of things, you said that you don't do CPM based. How do you approach? Because I know you're pretty well versed in this whole space of bringing on sponsors for the show and this whole industry. How do people navigate getting sponsors for their show? And then how do you price yourself? Yeah, pricing is interesting, especially in the beginning. You know, how I thought about it was, I was very confused about this as we started to pick up traction.

Starting point is 01:20:34 The first thing I did is actually say, how much does it cost for us to operate? I just didn't know the answer to that question. Like, what is the operating cost of this YouTube channel or this show? And at the time, it was just me and Colin. So the operating cost as a creative or a creator is also your living cost. like I'm just it cost you to live. And both of us didn't know the answer to those questions. And so we just literally took to pen and paper and I wrote two columns. I wrote outs and ins. And outs was write down everything that goes out of the bank account, you know, both our personal and our collective account. And then on

Starting point is 01:21:08 the inn, write down everything that is regularly coming in. And as I looked at that, you know, in the beginning, it was probably like, I don't know, 10,000 bucks a month that we needed to generate. to just comfortably pay our rent and live. We wanted to operate at a 40% margin. I kind of just came up with that, you know, and was like, that seems like a healthy margin. Okay, so we need to generate $14,000 a month. All right. So how many episodes are we doing? We're doing one a week. Okay, cool. So what's 14 divided by four? That's our price. You know, that's literally how I came up with our price when we first started. And then to build in some healthy, you know, wiggle It was like, okay, let's charge $5,000 in episode.

Starting point is 01:21:52 Okay, let's go out to the market. Does anyone want to buy? No? Okay. Which, to give some sort of context, I suppose, if you get 100,000 views on a video, do you feel like 100 CPM is aggressive, is like fair? I think it depends on the audience you're building. You know, and the brand, I think that's undervaluing the brand that you build.

Starting point is 01:22:14 Yeah. You know, like I think brands trade at exceptional rates at times if they're really good brands. And I think you have to focus on that, you know, and let let your actions have the market catch up to the price you want. I feel like creators are so familiar with undervaluing themselves. Of course. Yeah, of course. We're riddled with self-doubt and, you know, that's who we are. We're creatives. We're like highly sensitive people. And yeah, we're just, it's challenging to be confident in your own self-worth, especially when there's a dollar amount next to it. But yeah, my, my strategy for this was to say that's how much we need to do this show.

Starting point is 01:22:54 I'm not going to sell ads into the show until the market meets that rate. And we would go out and we built this pitch deck that was, you know, largely what our, what our course is about is building that pitch deck for yourself of saying, who's my audience, what's my value proposition? How do I find brands that are looking to give that value to that same audience? how do I explain to them the show I'm making? How do they explain to them the rate I want? And then we wanted to sell in packages of three episodes

Starting point is 01:23:26 to say, listen, the portfolio will perform. That's our opinion. It's really important also to get the data and have the longevity there to know where the partnership can go. Yeah, totally. Also, we do it on this podcast. And I'm like, yeah, three to six episode package minimums too. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:23:41 And again, like, it's not that the market was there when we first asked for those rates. So then we continued doing oddball free. freelance projects like every creator does. You know, like you just... Figure it out. I just felt that I didn't want to start off selling at a lower rate that I was comfortable with and that the show should be, you know, in the market at a certain price.

Starting point is 01:24:04 And then that accelerated pretty rapidly because the show was accelerating in growth in brand, in, you know, just position in the space because we were hyper-focused on audience in value. And today, you know, it's the same thing. It's, there's not typically maybe, actually, I'm pretty confident to say never in our conversations are we talking about viewership or listenership. And that was really important to me, was that we are building a brand that represents something and we're finding brands and sponsors that are interested in associating with that message. That's important because we can get caught in the transactional narrative. Yeah, totally. I'm getting this amount of views on average. So that,

Starting point is 01:24:47 equates this amount of CPM. And it's like, no, I'm creating something that is extremely premium feeling that has a lot of value with the audience. And it's not just necessarily, and I know some brands need to have conversion numbers minimums for the hit, which is understandable. But then at the same time, you're getting a part, you're getting to be a part of something and attaching yourself to a brand that is extremely valuable. And that inherently has so much. Yeah. And we've also said no, when we talk to a brand and we're like, what are you expecting out of this? And if it's an expectation that we don't think makes sense for our show, then we're like, okay, it doesn't make sense.

Starting point is 01:25:19 Because we want renewals. We want annual partnerships. We want a few long-term partnerships, not a ton of short-term partnerships. So you spoke to just creating a media debt kit and then, you know, doing your reach-out or oftentimes as you grow, the company start reaching out to you

Starting point is 01:25:36 and then you can have those conversations. We'll kind of leave it there because I do want to mention about the creator-made products, which is something that has been, you know, we've been seeing with Mr. Beast and Feastables, Logan and Prime, you know, on the core side of things like Ali. Yeah. It is crushed it with his courses.

Starting point is 01:25:54 You part-time YouTube Academy. You're creating your own course now. I'm releasing my own podcasting course now. How do you feel into this whole creator made product space? Yeah. I think you have to know again, like what is your value proposition that you're providing to your audience? And then you have to build an extension of that. Now, when you're at the size of Jimmy or Logan, like there's a, you know, you're, you're,

Starting point is 01:26:13 We spoke to some very knowledgeable people in the space and they said, listen, there's consumables and there's collectibles. And the people at the top can create consumables, right? Emma Chamberlain, Logan Paul, Mr. Bees, they're all making consumables. And consumables are for mass market. And Logan is a mass market creator, right? He can do something and millions of people will just tune into it. And Prime was like, I mean, I think I think there's probably most. potentially the most successful creator business to date. And I think the outcome of that will shock a lot of people, the people from within the community, it won't shock us, but it will shock shock a lot of people when the outcome of that comes to a head. But I think as a creator, I think you just have to deeply understand the value you're providing to your audience. Like, if the value you're providing to your audience is a sense of community, a sense of identity, maybe it's merchandise, right? Maybe people do want to wear shirts and, you know, Danny Duncan has built an incredible merchandise business. And those are

Starting point is 01:27:19 kind of collectibles, right? That's like, you know, items that that signify that you're part of the community that, that you are, you know, inside of that. If your value proposition is education and self-development, then yeah, a course or an extension of education and self-development makes sense. So I think you have to really understand, like, why are people here? And then what is an extension of that that I can offer. Now, what we're going through, what I think a lot of people go through is when your primary customer is your audience or your primary kind of person you care about every day is the community in the audience, but you never ask them to take out a credit card or pay and that all of this has been funded by brands and sponsors, it's a very different

Starting point is 01:28:04 relationship when you say, hey, now here's something I'm going to do that you have to pay for, especially when it's something they're not used to paying for, like videos. Right. Like if they're not used to paying for videos, it feels way different than saying, I'm selling a hat. So yeah, okay, I pay for hats from other people. I'd like to pay for a hat from you. But you're selling videos, which is something that you show up in videos for them free or ad supported.

Starting point is 01:28:30 And now you're saying, take out your credit card. That's a challenging thing to navigate. And you have to really figure out how to communicate to your audience. And we're figuring that out right now. You know, it's not, it's not a, it's all learning, you know, process of figuring out, like, how do I, how do I show you that I have good intentions with this? You know, because I think the brand of releasing paid content is very much like there's been too many instances of it being not valuable actually just to, you know, some level of cash grab, some level of, you know. Yeah. And so it's, it's hard.

Starting point is 01:29:08 It's just so interesting to navigate having that authentic conversation and dialogue with your audience because we've seen when spoke to some creators that have made a course and their audience did not react well and it's like especially within this like cancel culture online of YouTube, it's like you're guilty and proven innocent. Totally. And you don't want to

Starting point is 01:29:26 over justify yourself either because then it's like are you underconfident about this thing? Right. Yeah, it's tricky to navigate but I think it's you just have to honestly believe you're actually providing value. Yeah. You know,

Starting point is 01:29:39 and then you have to back that up and, and be like, there's a reason why I'm asking you to pay for it. And some of that for me, when it comes to education, is like, I'm,

Starting point is 01:29:49 I've done improv classes. And it's like, yeah, sure. Can I learn improv from watching free YouTube videos? Sure. But there's something to, you know, taking out my credit card,

Starting point is 01:29:59 paying for it, going to the class, having it be like structured a framework, a curriculum that I, I think it's super valuable to pay for that. And I think that in developing curriculum, in developing a course, we're creating something that is for the people who would like to take out their credit card, pay for it, be a part of a curriculum, be a part of a framework. And if you don't want to do it, you absolutely do not have to. There nothing will change about what we're doing. But yeah, it's an interesting dynamic to shift the business in that way and say, you know, we're going from being a business to business company, right? We're actually, we're actually, we.

Starting point is 01:30:38 deal with businesses. YouTube is a business. You know, we're in partnership with YouTube to sell advertising on our channel, on our content. We talk to sponsors who are businesses. They pay for space in our videos to access our audience. That is a business to business relationship. When you turn your face over here and say, now I'm in a direct-to-consumer relationship with thousands of my audience, that's a completely different business. And you have to recognize those are two different businesses. Yeah, you got to respect them. You really do. Individually, yeah. Yeah, because they're two different beasts and has a creative, like you have this thing that you start out with that you're really passionate about. And then like the business side of things is a whole

Starting point is 01:31:18 different skill set. Yeah. And it's got to be, that skill set has got to be cultivated. So. And it's are you, do you have representation or you sell your ads yourself? No, myself. Yeah. What I did is just created a list of like the top five to seven companies that I love the most. Yeah. And then I just hit up their CMO or somebody on their team to, nice. Hop on a call and just pitch the vision of what I'm creating. I love that. That's great. I felt like I could get the most, you know, competitive rates, but then also keep the whole pie of the whatever the revenue is. Yeah, that's great. I think if you're not like that, it's like 10%, 15% even up to that. That's where I'd be comfortable. I'm not comfortable anything beyond that. That is worthwhile. Totally. If your brain doesn't work in the way of, you know, business negotiation contracts. Like that is. That is worthwhile. That is worthwhile. You know, you know, that is. You know, a, that can be a taxing thing on a creative. I just want a voice that it's like completely, it's a totally not only reasonable thing to do, but important thing to do if you are a true

Starting point is 01:32:20 creative to get representation. To find the right representation is another story, but to have representation as a creative, I do think is valuable if you do not think like that. Yeah, you want to stay in your zone of genius. And if there's some overlap there, that's great. I think you should understand the product you're selling and how it works and the ins and outs of that so that you can have an educated conversation with your representation, but you do not have to be on those calls. Yeah. Very last thing that we'll refund very quickly is just, you know, you spoke to Ali Abdali said like, I don't even want to sell in YouTube. There is so much power in building a newsletter or having an email list where you can have these conversations kind of off, you know, and typically

Starting point is 01:33:00 convert better as well. And so I'm just curious, the power of creating a free offering to start to build an email list is one thing that I wish I started even earlier on. And, you know, with published press and what you guys are created there, massive. So any, any words that you have just for recommending what people can do there. It's creating that. Yeah. I think that's another thing. Coming back to practicing in private, we wrote an internal newsletter, which was the published press just for our team for two months. And we wrote it twice a week because we wanted to see, is this a real thing we like doing? Does it carry any value? can we dig into the process of actually figuring this out? And once it was ready, we expanded the list a little bit and a little bit and a little bit. And I think that there's a lot of pressure right now to be like, I have a business idea. It's going to be big. But you can just dig into the process of it. So newsletters are great because they're permission based environments. You've subscribed to this newsletter. You've given us permission to be in your inbox three times a week. Amazing. That's great. That means most likely if you are the type of person who enjoys learning about creator, business, you're opening the newsletter, right? So now we actually have hyper-defined an audience in a permission-based environment, which is exactly what we want to do as a media company, right? We want to make sure that we're providing value to a specific audience in an environment that we can control. And that's why newsletters are fantastic, because we own that list. That's our audience list. They've given us permission to give them content and give them value.

Starting point is 01:34:31 If you are someone who's thinking about that and want to do it, like if you're thinking about it, I would write it and send it to, I've heard you talk about, and I've talked to Matt about this too, like your men's group. Just send it to those eight guys. And be like,

Starting point is 01:34:45 what do you guys think about this? Write it once a week. Get into the flow of writing, become a good newsletter writer, then release it. Yeah. You know, I think that's really important. There's a ton of value.

Starting point is 01:34:55 I think newsletters are so incredibly valuable. But to find your voice as a newsletter writer is another thing you should focus on as a craft and practice that in private first. And then, of course, then you can offer your sponsors a link in there, right? And then it's like another avenue to reach that audience that you're reaching. Amazing. Great. So we've covered a lot here. This has been all so fascinating. And I can't wait to ask you some other questions in private. But to wrap this up, I want to do a rapid fire. Cool. Let's do it. So just as succinct as possible, what is your favorite thing about podcasting.

Starting point is 01:35:30 Long conversations. Exploring myself and exploring other people through long conversations. What's one aspect of podcasting that you didn't realize would be as fulfilling as it is? The relationships, the long-term relationships

Starting point is 01:35:48 you develop with your guests. Yeah, that's incredibly fulfilling. What's the number one thing that's contributed to the most growth of your show? Repetition. repetition and practice. What does your preparation for each show look like? Can elaborate a little bit.

Starting point is 01:36:08 Yeah, that one's going to be hard to be succinct. It involves research. It involves listening, but the relationship with that has changed over time. Like, authentic curiosity is so important in a conversation. If you're over-prepared, sometimes you don't allow. And then I would say improv class has been super important in preparation. for episodes.

Starting point is 01:36:33 What do you feel like is the most valuable thing to outsource as you're starting to grow a team for your podcast? Whatever it is that brings you friction in your day to day. Yeah. Because if you enjoy the editing, edit, that's great. If you enjoy making the thumbnails, make the thumbnails. But you know, you first have to take a step back and say, what do I absolutely not want to do? What is energy depleting for me? And then outsource that. At this point, how big is your team? six in office every day and 14 total how do you deal with saying no when friends ask to come on the show if you've had that that's hard it's super hard um yeah navigating that but i think just uh as honest as possible you know it's it's hard though that's hard how how often are people reaching out to come on the show

Starting point is 01:37:26 like per day like how many people per day yeah i'm just curious like it's got to be Five to ten. Yeah. Yeah. And has there been any successful cold emails or people that have reached out that you've actually had on? Yeah, definitely. Okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:37:41 Cool. And you've just done research and found out more about them or maybe you already knew of them. Oh, I mean, typically we know about them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, actually, no, there's been a really successful one that was relatively cold. It wasn't, it's not, it can't qualify as cold because it was an introduction. but it was Miles Fisher,

Starting point is 01:38:01 who's Deep Fake Tom Cruise. That was like one of my favorite episodes of this year. And I just met him one time, and I was just like, you are so interesting. We have to do this episode. Yeah. All right, last final piece of advice

Starting point is 01:38:13 that you have for podcasters that are getting to the space that have the aspiration to grow the show and becomes successful and all the things we talked about. What's one thing that you want to leave them with? As you go into it, do some goal setting in three different categories.

Starting point is 01:38:29 of what you want podcasting to create for you. One is lifestyle. What do you expect the lifestyle of a podcaster to be? Do you enjoy the long conversations with people? Because that in and of itself is a reward. Like this right now, this is a reward. We just had a great conversation. It's done.

Starting point is 01:38:48 That is different from the next piece, which is you're going to edit it, you're going to put it out, the performance of it, the outcome that this generates, that's a separate thing. If you truly believe this is a rewarding experience to have long conversations,

Starting point is 01:38:59 Great. Understand that. The next piece is financial. What do you want the financial outcome to be? It's okay to be honest with that. You know, how much do you want to make from doing this? How many episodes do you have to do at what rate for that to happen? How many sponsors do you need per episode?

Starting point is 01:39:13 And then there's a creative side. Is this the most creatively fulfilling thing you want to do? How do you want your creative to impact yourself? How do you want it to impact others? How do you want it to transform people? Just taking a pen to paper and thinking about some of those questions is really important going into podcasting. because it's a long journey.

Starting point is 01:39:31 Yeah. It's a very long journey. I love that. It's beautiful to demystify the process of it and just give people the realistic advice of just, what do you need from your show, what do you want to create from it, or the numbers you need per episode to sustain yourself,

Starting point is 01:39:45 and then it's the journey of realizing it, which most people don't see the dog ears in the shadows of refining themselves, of you guys, of you and Colin, four plus years of just having really no big audience. Yeah, no audience, no audience, no sponsors, but it was a very therapeutic experience and talked to each other on mics for an hour a week. Yeah. It really was. We wouldn't miss it. So that's what, yeah, you have to love it.

Starting point is 01:40:08 Find the joy in it. And last one, I want to throw in here. Do you have any advice from myself and my own show that you've seen from afar that you would optimize that you think is good that I should lean into, just anything there? It's a good question. I think one of the things I would like to know more of is like who you considered to be your audience. Like who are you? who is your target audience if you were to break them down into three avatars out of curiosity. Yeah. What is that? It'd probably be somebody that's similar to myself and my age, a dude in his younger 20s,

Starting point is 01:40:45 that is discovering spirituality and more esoteric topics and finds to be, finds it comforting to find individuals on the same path that you can walk that life path. Another one would be. My advice is to know this answer. Yeah. Yeah. know the three different archetypes of who's in the audience and then why they watch and then have that come through through your line of questioning. That's valuable. I'm going to ponder on that.

Starting point is 01:41:14 I was thinking of so many different things. I look at my back on analytics and I feel like the people that comment, there's people from all walks of life at all ages that, you know, but I feel like the core theme is really just discovering more about themselves and living a healthy human life. Right, right. And so yeah. Beautiful. And that's a great invitation too for people to... My mom's in your audience. Yes. I've told you that.

Starting point is 01:41:38 Yeah, my mom watches the show. That's awesome. That's great. Let's go. Baba, what's your name? Savita. Mava Savita. Beautiful.

Starting point is 01:41:44 Thank you so much for coming on, man. I've enjoyed this and excited to continue the conversation. And good luck with your course and everything that's going on in your world. Thanks, man. You too. Yeah. All right. If you made it to the end, congratulations.

Starting point is 01:41:54 I have a little gift for you. First off, I hope you found some of that information valuable. There is so much depth and nuance when it comes to podcasting and what it really takes to create a successful show that impacts millions of people. And I love everything that both Aubrey and Samir showed. This whole podcasting journey is really a process of self-discovery. I've learned so much about myself and the whole process of what I really value, what I want to share with the world, who I want to talk to you, the conversations I want to steward. And so if you're somebody that's been feeling the edge of podcasting or content creation and

Starting point is 01:42:23 really just expressing and sharing your voice and message with the world at bigger and bigger scales, I highly recommend you listen to that voice and lean in. It can lead you to some incredible places. I know it has for me, and I know it can for you as well. If you made it to the end of this episode, if you go to podcast purpose.com, we're going to be giving away a couple of all access passes to the course. And so if you're looking for expert guidance to guide you through the whole process A through Z for podcasting and content creation and thumbnail generation, and what do I even name my show about? And what are the real secrets to growing the show? How do I scale it for audio versus video differently? How do I make money from the show and add sponsors and create my own

Starting point is 01:43:02 It's really a fully comprehensive course for anybody that wants to start a podcast or scale theirs. So just by going to podcast purpose.com, you can enter a raffle. And for the dedicated know-liself listeners, we're going to be giving away a couple of free all-access passes where you're going to be able to join the course for completely free. And this is just my gift back to you. I hope that you win. I hope that you enjoy. And I hope that you got some value from this episode. Until next time, be well.

Know Thyself - E73 - Aubrey Marcus & Samir Chaudry: The Secrets To Creating A Thriving Podcast With Purpose

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