My First Million - Behind The Scenes Of The Pod

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Episode 368: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Producer Ben (@BenWilsonTweets) go behind the scenes of My First Million talking about how the pod started, how it has grown, and what it takes to build a good podcast. ----- Links: * My First Million * How To Take Over The World * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (01:35) - King Edward's story (04:05) - numbers of the podcast (07:10) - advertising on the pod (09:20) - cost of MFM (12:30) - how MFM came to be (16:00) - finding your niche in podcasting (18:50) - how to build a good podcast ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

We're going to talk about one thing that I think everyone will find interesting. It's like inside baseball. It's like behind the scenes of the pod, what our current numbers are, the revenue we're making from it. And like how we grew it and things like that. And also yours as well, because you're earlier in your journey. So that would be interesting to people. We've got Jonathan on here too, who Jonathan's our numbers whiz. He knows all about growth and how we grew it.

I'll kind of say what the high level numbers are for my first million. and you can do the same for your pod. So I just looked in Megaphone. That's the software we use. So every number I'm going to say is the trailing 30-day numbers. So trailing 30 days for my first million, when we say the word downloads, we mean YouTube and also like podcast downloads,

which is basically Apple and Spotify and then a much smaller percentage is like Stitcher and all the other podcast stuff. And so for that, for the podcast downloads, we did one point, round up 1.3. So 1.255, it looks like, million downloads on like the podcasting platforms. Then our YouTube page right now has 110 or maybe 112,000 subscribers. And in the trailing 30 days, we did 2.7 million views of which a lot are YouTube shorts. So maybe maybe 1 million to 1.5 million is actual episode, episode views, which is like any,

video that's more than like six or eight minutes long, something like that. Previously, not this past trailing days, but the one before that, I think we were at 3.6 million. So we're down a little bit, because we had a few shorts go viral. So 1.3 plus 2.7. That's 4 million. So that's about how many people saw us up. And then there's like all the social stuff. So my personal socials have been viewed. I just looked this up over the trailing 30 days on TikTok. I think I have two or three million views. And then on Instagram, I have like another two or three million views. So that's like the total reach right now. What are you at for how to take over the world?

So right now, monthlies are at about 70,000, sorry, 80,000 downloads. And then my per episodes, you know, stuff that's mature. So like a good example, Walt Disney has been out since January. So it's been out for a while. And that's hovering around. That one's got 39. Alexander the Great has 43. So around 40,000.

my biggest episode is now almost it's 54 so like kind of 50,000-ish per episode and my number is like obviously the totals are way different and weird because my volume is so much lower. What's our volume? What's my first millions volume? Well, as you mentioned, so we're going three times per week and then we've got the shorts on YouTube and then we've got the clips on YouTube, which drives a lot of the videos. volume as you were mentioning. My First Millions downloads per episode.

That's the number that matters most. It ranges from like 50,000 to 150,000, right? That's right. Depending on if you include YouTube, because if you include YouTube, we have some that pop up to the like half million, maybe a little less. But like the Darmesh episode did really well. The Peter Levels episode did really well. And those have hundreds of thousands of views just on YouTube.

loan. What are you doing to grow? For me, the big thing is just fixing my production process, which is totally broken for how to take over the world. It's really just a volume game at this point for me. Are you making money from it? I'm making a little bit of money. I'm at least, I am making money. I was negative for a long time, and then I was neutral for a couple months, now I'm positive. How much you charge for an ad? About a thousand bucks per placement. So everyone asks my first million. I get messages all the time. time saying, hey, can we advertise on the pod? So my first million, I said, we're going to talk about how much revenue it makes. It makes zero revenue because HubSpot, when they, so the way the

our process worked with my first million was the hustle owned my first million. So Sean actually came up with the idea. And he goes, hey, can I do, I want to create a podcast. You guys want to meet my publisher? And I said, yeah, but we're going to own it. And he said, that's fine. And so we we did a revenue split. I don't remember what we did, but I think we did 50-50. So let's say the hustle sold $10,000 worth of ads. The hustle gave him $5,000 and we kept $5,000. And then we also paid for it, which I don't know if that's actually a good deal for him or us. I don't know. But when we sold the company, HubSpot bought the hustle and they bought the podcast with it. And now HubSpot is the only advertiser on the pod. But we don't make any money from it. So directly, although they

can calculate how much money they would make off of it if they had to be. to go and buy those ads elsewhere. But I think, so I went and talked to a friend. My friend has a podcast in the health and wellness space. And I asked him, how much revenue do you guys do? And so they get 7 million downloads a month. And they are currently doing 3 million in ads, 5 million selling like programs, like fitness programs. And then like another half a million in like merch and affiliate deals. And so collectively, they're doing around 10 million in revenue with about 65% profit margin. So it's quite good. And so I think that our pod just off ads would maybe be in the 6 million range. So it would be around $75 to $125 per 1,000 downloads. And that would be

separated in like a bunch of different $30 per thousand downloads ad. So we could probably charge $25 to $40 per ad. And then you have like two or three ads in the in each podcast. and that's how you get to like that five or six million range, then another like three or four million just off some like courses or paid community. Yeah, and that's not taking into account costs because if we were selling our own ads, we'd probably have to get an ad guy to actually sell it

and he'd take a cut and stuff like that. What's our cost now for MFF? Jonathan, do you know? For production side, you know, between we got Ben, you know, producer, we've got Ezra, who does the video and audio cutting video and audio editing we have the short form clip folks we have our YouTube producer so between that whole team it's like 25k and then month yes and then if you include you know other ways to grow the show whether it's buying ads on other podcasts other platforms um

it could be anywhere between like 25k a month to upwards of like 50 to 100 just so like it our cost right now, not including me and Sean, it's like $500,000 a year. Roughly, yeah. I mean, and you can scale that up and down. It's just like we're being aggressive with our growth goals. So we're putting a lot of investment into that. And our growth is basically you buy ads on other people's podcasts. And that works decent, it seems, but actually hard to track, but that's decent. And the other thing, you tried like buying ads on YouTube channels and things like that, right? Do any of them actually work, you think? We ran some ads on YouTube and it definitely drives like a lot of views and some subs, but it's not necessarily sustainable.

And you always kind of question the quality of those subs. Yeah, I don't know. We've kind of tested everything. And like the thing that we're most bullish on is obviously the short form clips. It's also not easy to tell how well those are kind of performing in terms of viewers and listeners to like the RSS feed. But, you know, that's just like a long term play. And as you're seeing, like, your growth on Instagram and TikTok is largely driven by these clips from the show. And so it's just like you're not going to, maybe that viewer isn't going to convert the first time they see it, the second time they see it.

But hopefully by the 50th time they see your face, they're like, fuck, I just need to check out what he's up to and check out the podcast. Ben, are you doing anything to grow? No, basically just working on more production. That's basically it. But like my organic growth has been huge. Like, honestly, as long as I produce more episodes, like, it's going to keep growing. I've done a little strategic, like, who I choose in order to grow a little bit, like what I cover. And I think probably with podcasting, that's the biggest driver of growth.

And you are basically at how many, so the way that we found Ben was I was just, I was actually taking a flight at like 5 a.m. And I was like, I need some inspiration. and I think I looked up like Napoleon or something like that. And I saw your pod. And at the time, roughly, how many downloads did you have at that point? Monthly downloads would have been the like hundreds to maybe low four digits as getting like a couple thousand per episode. And then we mentioned you on the pod. And is that like the thing that was like the big up?

We did this like pretty big thing about you where I was like, Sean, this is like the greatest intro song and pod I've ever heard of. And how much did that boost? So I've gone from 2K to like 40K. And I would say that it's been like half and half. So half of it was like a big upswing. Like I immediately went up to like 10 to 20. And then since then it's been steady growth from 20 up to 40. Dude, that's the thing about pods.

Everyone talks to me. They're like, I want to do this. And I go, just so you know, it's very, very, very hard to grow. So at the hustle, we had maybe one point, between one and one point five million subscribers when we launched this pod. And so Sean was like, hey, I want to do this thing. He said, all right, great. He goes, in fact, I already have like a pilot episode. He sent it to me.

I was like, oh, dude, this is like great as is. I'll give you three weeks or four weeks to like get like ahead of the game. And then we'll launch one a week. And basically that first week we launched, I think that first episode got 50 or 60,000 downloads. the next episode got like 30 or 40 and then it just like ticked down until it was like 5 to 15,000 downloads per episode because we blasted it to the hustle,

got traction and this is how all pods and maybe like all, not all, but many products work. Your launch is like epic. Then you go down and then you just over a period of a couple of years slowly work your way up. And then one day someone didn't appear to one of his one of his guests didn't show up. And he was like, hey, you know how we do that thing? So me and Sean used to meet like every two weeks. And we would just like brainstorm in front of

a bunch of people. And he'd like, you know what thing that we do? Can you show up in like an hour and just come do it with me? The person didn't show up. And I was like, I guess. And the results were like decent enough that we're like, all right, I guess we'll just make this the thing. And we'll just keep trying. And from there, it slowly went up. And when we got acquired, we had acquired. We had acquired in February of like 18 months ago, I think we are doing 600,000 downloads per month. And then it like went up from there a lot. And I don't actually don't know why it went up. I don't know what happened. That's interesting. So like the idea for what my first million became was basically an accident. Is that right? Yeah. So it was like, first of all, I didn't want to do a pod forever.

I thought it was a total waste of time. I was like, we have to focus. And he was like, I have this thing. And basically, Sean at the time was not a content person. He is now and he's great. But at the time, he was just like my friend who just like was, you know, he wasn't on, I don't even think he was on Twitter. He was a startup guy. He's more of an operator than a content. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was just my buddy who had a company in the gaming space. And obviously he was always charismatic and he was pretty good at storytelling, although I would say that's even improved a significant amount. But he was like, I just interviewed my, our buddy, Sully, here. Just here's the pilot. And I heard it. And I was like, oh, dude, this is, this is ball.

This is awesome. It wasn't actually that different than anything else. It was called My First Million because he was going to talk about how people got their first million users or revenue or profit, whatever. And he was all about the early days, which frankly isn't that unique. But he was pretty good at it. And then like six months in or three months in, someone didn't show up. And he was like, hey, come do this. And me and Sean loved this podcast called The Fighter and the Kid. And it was Brian Callan and Brennan Schaub, two guys sitting on chairs just like goofing around. And like, oh, I think we could do that. And so we just kept doing it.

That's interesting to me because a little bit, when I started my podcast, it was the same thing, just that it was kind of an accident. I was sitting there. I had been reading this Napoleon biography. And I thought, I want to remember this. Like, I want to retain more of this information. I should create something. I should make like a blog post or a tweet storm or something.

And then I had all this audio equipment lying around. I thought, I'll just do a podcast. about it. And I bet people would like to hear what I learned from reading this biography of Napoleon. And I think a lot of really good podcasts start that way of is not someone sitting down and like gaming the system of like, all right, where's a niche that I want to make a podcast,

where's a niche, but people who are just kind of doing stuff and then it turns into a podcast and becomes successful. Do you think that's right? Maybe. I think you can like, I think there are worlds like, IHartMedia does this nicely. I think Parcast, which is a, podcasting company does this nicely. Gimlet Media does this nicely. Who else does this?

There's a Wondery does a decent job. Some are still better than others, but basically where they come up with ideas and then they launch them almost like a movie where it's like planned and hopefully successful. And then other times it's organic. I think the problem with podcasts, there's a bunch of upside. I'll talk about the upside in a second. But here's the problem. The problem with podcast is the same problem that I have with copywriting and hiring writers, which is everyone can talk. And everyone can talk. And A lot of people like talking with their friends. Therefore, the noise to signal ratio of people who want to do it versus who are good at doing it is like really, really hard to determine who's like great.

And so you have a ton of people launching podcasts that are A, they're not committed to like the long term. Like they're not committed to making this and being treating it like a job where you, you know, me and Sean, we record every single Monday and Wednesday and less of an emergency. So they're not committed to that. B, they're not actually good at, they don't actually have the skill or the talent. And they think they do because they talk with their friends a lot. And so there's like a lot of crap out there. And C, it's not really like well thought out where it's like, you know, Sean and I joke where like you need some attributes, man.

Like you either have to have this like crazy, like interesting niche or. And I would say this is definitely in Sean's case, slightly in my case, you just have to be really charismatic and good storytelling. Or you have to have like some crazy experience. So like you're just an expert in X, Y, and Z or like, you know, you're in the NBA for 20 years so you can talk about like what it was like being in the NBA. Like you have to have something that's intriguing and a weird angle or you have to be super talented, like a Malcolm Gladwell or something like that.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So you've touched on something that there's this guy, Eric Newsom, who's his background is in public radio. And then he was kind of one of the OGs of podcasting. And he's got this framework that I love for creating a hit podcast. So he calls it a diamond. And there's really four attributes on which you can be unique. And you need to be unique on at least, well, really two of them in order to be a successful hit podcast.

So the four ways you can be unique are what the podcast is about, who hosts it, who it's for, or the way you tell the story. Okay. So it's how it's told, what it's about who it's for or who it's by. So basically, like the concept or the person. Exactly. And most people only do one. And that's where they fail. They're like, oh, I'm going to make a podcast about gorillas because there are no podcasts about gorillas. And it's like, well, are you Jane Goodall? Like, are you an expert? You need that second thing to make it successful. And maybe you don't have to be the expert. But if you're not the expert, then it's like, then you have to differentiate in terms of how you tell the story. You have a really high production value. Or, you know, you need to like have gorillas on the podcast or something like that. But most people are just, think of one new idea and stop there. Whereas I think my first million is successful because, A, what it's about is unique in that it's kind of an entrepreneurship podcast that covers everything from like little side hustles all the way to like big, you know, tech ideas that could be,

you know, hundreds of billions of dollars. So it's unique on what it's about. It covers everything. And then the who, you and Sean have the experience and are really funny and super engaging. It's like the all in pod. Like people talk about that. And I'm like, you know, I think that they're like pretty okay host themselves. I think Jason's pretty great, but like you're going to listen to anything that they say because they are so successful. Their worldview is so much grander than mine. And, you know, they're hanging out with like ex-presidents, CEOs of, you know, Fortune 500 companies. Like they've built billion dollar companies. Like they have access to things that I don't. Therefore, they don't even need to be, and I'm not saying they're not

charismatic, but I'm saying they don't even need to be that charismatic in order for it to be awesome. Right. Exactly. They have that. that second angle. The second angle doesn't have to be that you're a great entertainer. You could have very unique insights like those guys do. But you got to have something for that second angle. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history. Call, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago. I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better. But let's talk about the upsides. So the upsides to a pod is I have never experienced, I don't, I'm not popular. I mean, I'm somewhat popular on social media, but I'm not like that popular on the video or picture based social medias. And so I've not experienced what it's like to have fandom there. But for our pod, the benefits of having a podcast, and I noticed this to myself, I'll listen to other people is I truly become like fans of these people because I get to know them so well. And that is like a huge.

benefit. And so, like, I'll mention, like, sometimes people will come up to me and they'll say, yeah, like, I eat this food because you talk about it or I read this book. And I'm like, I don't even remember mention that. Like, I just said, I talk so much, like, I don't even remember all of it. But people, like, listen so much that they get to know you. And it's like, creates true fandom. I think you probably could get that at other platforms. But I think it's more so this, because if they're 30 to 60 minutes long, they really get to know you. And also the, the hard part, though, is, you know the best way to circumvent someone bullshit detector is just not bullshitting. And that's the hard part about that's the hard part

about podcasting is when you talk for 45 minutes or an hour and a half, five or three days a week or whatever it is, you can't lie a lot. You can't lie at all because it's going to catch up to you. You have to be authentic. Or if you're going to play a character, you got to play that all the time. I mean, like you really have to be authentic. The greatest thing and the worst thing about podcasting is such an intimate medium. Like you're in someone. ears, when they're doing the dishes, when they're commuting, they feel like they're friends with you. I think more so than YouTube, Instagram, like any other media format, TV, whatever, people really feel like they have this relationship with you, which is a little weird. And like,

as you alluded to, I think the most difficult thing about podcasting is that it's really difficult. It's like hand-to-hand combat to build a big audience. But the best thing about it, the best thing about podcasting is that you can build a really valuable following with very few followers. If you have 35,000 followers on YouTube, you just can't do much. Like, you're nothing. And I talked to someone the other day who has 35,000 downloads per episode on his podcast and is making a half a million dollars a year from it. One genre or category.

Productivity. Yeah. All right. So 35,000 downloads an episode and he's doing half a million in ad revenue? Yeah. And then he could be doing way more off like courses or whatever else he wants to sell. He could be doing three or four times as much as that. Yeah.

And he's talking about doing that stuff. He's not doing it yet. So like I don't even feel like that's the limit of what you could do with that many followers. So I do think that's the beauty of podcasting is if you can like grind it out to get a decent following of a few tens of thousands, you can make like real money in podcasting. Yeah. And the best way I think you do it is if you are. have a business. So, for example, I didn't know this, but you know that guy Patrick David

Betts? I think his name is. He's got that YouTube channel called Value Tame it. So I just thought that he was like a personality. And he recently had a life insurance, I think it is, company that he sold for like $300 million. And I didn't even know about that. And that's way more valuable than, I mean, his YouTube channel is very valuable, but not $200 million dollar valuable. Same with Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey, I was researching him. His company's worth something like seven or eight hundred million bucks. And it's a collection of real estate and selling like personal finance stuff. And the radio show is definitely awesome, but it's not, it alone ain't worth that. It's not the monetization engine. And so if you already have that

monetization engine and you build a podcast, I think it's lights out, man. I think you can crush it. And what's interesting is our pod's not even big. So let's just say we're between one and three million downloads, depending on a combination of YouTube or not YouTube. I, and it's, it's not YouTube first. So like we, we, our faces aren't out there. If I'm walking around a top 10 city, so like a New York down to like a Denver, I will get recognized maybe once a day. And that is a very small audience. That is not, there's 350 million people in America. And we only reach one or three million of them a month. And I get recognized probably five times a week.

Or, like, yesterday, I went to Ludule Lemon, and I had to give her my email, and my email is my name. And I told her my name, and she looked up, and she goes, wait for my first million? Are you saying for my... I was like, yeah, what's going on? She goes, I thought I recognized your voice.

And, like, that happens all the time. And that's one of my biggest surprises is that we get recognized on such a small audience. And the people are, like, pumped. They're excited, which I would be, too, If I, if I, you know, like, Brendan Schaub is someone I really admire and you probably have no idea who that is. And he's not like famous, A-less famous. If I saw him, I would be like, dude, can I get a picture?

You know what I mean? It is. So, that's the interesting thing about podcasts. Do you get like Instagram models that slide into your DMs? So that's funny. I surveyed my Twitter audience and I said, what gender are you? And it was 93% dudes. And if you go to our meetups, we had a meetup in New York.

we had 1,500 people, RSVP. I don't know how many people actually showed up, but let's just say 800 or 500 people showed up. I'm pretty sure it was 90% men as well. So my stuff is mostly all men. And also on all of my social media profiles, there's a picture of me and my wife is as either the main picture or the cover picture. So most everyone, and I always talk about her.

So most everyone knows that I'm married. So do I get like women DMing me in the sexual sense? No, but that's not really. Like, it's happened like maybe at most once a month. But like you have to remember that A, this is like a tech and business podcast. And B, I'm like a Midwestern seven. So like, you know, I'm a Missouri seven and like a New York six. Do you realize that like 99% of our audience, if they had Instagram models sliding into their DMs once a month would not be like, it's not that much.

They'd be like, I got Instagram models sliding into my DMs once a month, baby. I'm rich. I'm famous. Well, I get, now how many fake profiles do I get sliding into my DMs once or five times a day? So I don't know how many of these women are actually real. But I would say maybe one time a month, there's someone who, like, I'll even, I'll be sitting next to Sarah my wife. And I'll be like, hey, this is crazy. Check this out.

And like, we'll laugh about it. And I'm like, you know, I ain't touching that. But just so you know, like, this exists. I was talking to someone who is more conventionally famous. than either one of us. And they were talking about how they get like real, like verified models sliding into their DMs all the time. This person has a girlfriend.

And is in a long-distance relationship. It's very hard for them. That just like all the time these people are sliding. That's crazy. No, I get like the hand models. I don't get the face models or the body models. No, I don't exactly get that. But what happens a lot is when it's white,

I'm outside. I always work out outside and I'm always shirtless. There seems to be a like just an unlucky pattern of I get recognized shirtless a fair bit and I always put my shirt on right. Because like me and Sarah have been on walks where I've been shirtless and like a guy will come up with like with his like four year old daughter and say like what's up and I'm like, oh dude, I'm totally making this little girl uncomfortable being this shirtless dude right here. So like that's our joke is like I try. If I ever going to be shirtless, I'll wear like glass or something because I don't want to be like that one time that I see someone that it's like uncomfortable for them. But that happens all the time. It happened yesterday. So you're saying your body's more famous than your faces? No, I'm saying it's

coincidence that I usually, when I'm outside during the day, I'm shirtless and again, my body's maybe it's not a coincidence. Maybe they're just, and maybe they don't recognize your face, but they're like that those are Sam Pars pecks. I can tell those are Sam Pars abs. I was and like I've got like, I've got like a New York 7.5 bod. So like it's. It's not always embarrassing, but... So the other day, we released an episode that was about, like, fitness. And so we had it before and after. People loved it.

People loved it. It's a great episode. But Sam DM'd me and was like, hey, can we change my after pick? I don't think I look ripped enough. And started sending me, like, five to ten shirtless picks. It was like... Dude, if I'm going to be shirtless... What does my body look best?

If I'm going to be shirtless on the internet, like, I would prefer, like, the best... I mean the best, like, so, like, that... Yeah. But, uh... So anyway, that's the update on the pod. Do we want to talk any more about that? Just like one other thing, just like a couple frameworks I think are interesting. So I've been thinking this for a little bit.

It's interesting. We do interviews, and it's always surprising which episodes actually pop off. Like, we'll get someone really, really famous, and their episode will do okay. And then we'll get Peter Levels, or we'll get Darmesh, and the episode will go crazy. We'll do super well. Dude, because we need more unique, weird people. We're cloud chasers. You need unique people.

And it's like when you get unique people that have a super engaged audience that want to hear from them, but don't get to hear from them often, then it totally blows up. So I've been thinking about that recently with my pod in terms of what I do. So I could go the route of like doing more episodes like Julius Caesar. Like I could do Charlemagne or Winston Churchill or Muhammad Ali. Bottom line is there's actually a lot of Muhammad Ali content out there. and you could probably find stuff that's as good as my podcast or nearly as good as my podcast out there. And so I've pivoted to doing stuff that's a little more niche.

And so I just did an episode on Brigham Young, who most people don't care about, but some people care about very, very passionately. And so it's actually on track to be my most downloaded episode. And so I'm trying to adopt that Peter Levels, Darmesh, like, unique episode kind of framework. of now I'm starting to think like, okay, Brigham Young, huge in the Mormon community.

Like, people want to hear about that. That's going to drive downloads. And then those people are into my audience. Who else can I do? Like, who is the greatest emperor of, of Cambodia?

You know, like, Cambodians probably don't get a lot of podcasts made about their heroes, right? So, like, can I do that? Can I drive something for that audience? And then those people become super, have you ever looked up?

Have you ever watched Bruno Mars? YouTube videos. Are they good? No, so that's my point. So a lot like, Bruno Mars is one of those guys who like everyone knows about, but not that many people seek them out,

even though he's pretty amazing. And I love his music videos and I was watching some of them. And they have like one, two, three, even four, I believe, billion views. Bruno Mars has four billion views. And I was wondering why. And I looked it up on Wikipedia

and then I looked it on the YouTube comments to see if it was like, if I felt like it aligned. But basically, Bruno Mars, his mother is Philippine. So he's part Filipino. And the Philippines, I mean, how many people live in the Philippines? Like, you know, a ton, I think, like hundreds of millions.

So it's not exactly, it's not exactly like a small little country. But in terms of the amount of people who exist in that country compared to their cultural relevance on a global scale, you know, they're not exactly represented a ton. And so when this American Filipino guy, it's kind of like Jeremy Lynn in the NBA. You know, there's a lot of Chinese, but there weren't a lot of Chinese basketball players. And so when Bruno Mars, like, got famous, like, the Filipinos were like, yes, one of us. They're killing it. And so they just, like, get behind that person.

Same with Bjork from Iceland. Iceland, like, not exactly incredibly relevant. You know, they don't exactly invent a lot of things, including entertainment that, like, it's recognized on a grand scale. And when Bjork, like, gets a little bit of love from America or Europe, they all pounce on that shit. And they go, hell yes, one of us. It's like, it's like Nelly in St. Louis.

In St. Louis, where I'm from, like, you know, my 60s. 25-year-old white dad is like, Nellie's the man. Sir Nellie. Like, people, everyone in St. Louis is like, Nellie's just our God. He's our mayor. We'll do anything for Nellie because he represented us. And we didn't have a lot of representation, St. Louisans.

So anyway, I think it's the same way with different topics, where if you find that one or two things that it's okay if it's not that many people, but they're like passionate about it and they can rally behind it. And they're like, finally, something for us. That just makes it so much easier to get popular. It's a little bit of the Amazon strategy, right? So Amazon is the store for everything online, right? But it didn't start out that way.

It was a bookstore, and then it was a DVD store, and then it was a dog toy store. And it's like actually just a collection of niches that all got bundled. And I think that works for content as well. You can just go out and collect niches. And then it becomes like a big, broad audience, even though you don't start that way. Yeah. And so right at this point, we're a little bit more broad, but we're more broad. and like we make dumber jokes

and we talk about Kim Kardashian every once in a while now but before it was just like this dude's making five grand a month on the internet you know what I'm saying All right Is that the pod?

That's the pod