Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee on the Future of Podcasts and Growth Trends

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. I think the other big trend that's happening right now is monetization. I think as the audience, and I felt this way for many years, as the overall audience listening audience grows in podcasting, the monetization opportunities should correspond and grow as well. I think we're starting to see the beginnings of that around what's called programmatic advertising, which is more auction based, more automatic buys. You buy on a platform as a brand

Starting point is 00:00:28 and then you run the campaigns and it automatically goes into podcasts based on that genre fill and you can run real-time campaigns and podcasts, which has always been able to be done in streaming radio. Welcome to PassionStruck. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people,

Starting point is 00:00:49 and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 125 of PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 125 of PassionStruck. And thank you to each and every one of you

Starting point is 00:01:31 who comes back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you didn't catch last week's episodes, I interviewed Dr. David Vago, one of the foremost experts in the world on meditation, and how meditation can be used to promote health outcomes, transcendence, and meta-awareness. In my solo episode, I discussed why it is so difficult today to find the proper balance and eight ways that you can take action in your own

Starting point is 00:02:00 life. And tomorrow we have a special bonus episode with 12-year-old animal conservationist Kate Gilman Williams. She is a fireball of energy and you don't want to miss that episode. Now let's talk about today's guest podcast Hall of Famer Robert Greenley. Rob is the VP of content and partnership at Lipson. He is a current board member and former chair of the podcast Academy. He started on radio in 1999, and in podcasting in 2004, I wish I would have started that early. And that first podcast was the first

Starting point is 00:02:36 nationally syndicated radio show called Web Talk World Radio Show. Rob and fellow podcast, Hall of Fame and DuckD, Todd Cochchran hosts the new media show where they interview luminaries from the podcasting space providing deep insight into what is actually happening in the podcasting world. In today's discussion, we go into how Rob launched his first radio show that I mentioned earlier, which later became his first podcast, his tenure at Microsoft,

Starting point is 00:03:05 working on their podcast strategy and products. Why he thinks Microsoft entered too early and got out too soon, the reason that podcasting became his passion, what he sees are the biggest trends that are happening in the world of podcasting and what will come about over the next few years. The advent of video in podcasting and where he predicts the feature of that and also live videos is going. It was such a pleasure to get to interview Rob and meet one of my podcasting idols.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Thank you for choosing Passion Struct and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. Well, I've heard so much about you from a mutual friend of ours, a Kate Chinakis. So I'm really glad she made that introduction. And that I can expose one of the first people who was actually in the podcasting industry all the way back 15, 16 years ago to the show.

Starting point is 00:04:17 So very honored to have you. It's great to be here. I actually, I started on the radio. So it's been for me, even how I think I think about it's almost close to 20 years now Yeah Well, I've got a interesting similarity to you. We both Have been around companies called web talk I was actually a board member for seven years for a company called web talk

Starting point is 00:04:44 Which does social CRM? for seven years for a company called Web Talk, which does social CRM, they've got probably at this point. I think I have heard of that before, yeah. Yeah, eight or nine million people on their platform, but Web Talk was the name of your first show if I've got that correct. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it actually started as Web Talk Guys

Starting point is 00:05:01 because it was basically a group of co-hosts. It was myself leading the show and I like four or five co-hosts, not five, I think it was more like four. And so it was like a group talk about the growth and development of the World Black Web and the Internet and then it evolved into Web Talk Radio. a more pair down to just me and my ex-wife did the show together for six years. So, yeah. Yeah, and how did you come up with that name? Well, back in those days, and when I started this, it was back in 1999. So, that time frame, the web was kind of the cutting edge, right, of what was happening with technology at that time. And so that was kind of the focus of what the show was about, was talking about the growth

Starting point is 00:05:50 and development of the world by web and the internet. And so that was the topic of it. And so that's why I talk about, I use that name, was to kind of symbolize that, that period of time when, when what was happening with browsers and email and and and online connections and stuff was really starting to really lift off and become something significant in people's lives and a lot of people not unlike what's happening with crypto right now. There's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding and just lack of understanding of what was happening with technology.

Starting point is 00:06:25 And that's certainly what we tried to cover with that show, but it actually spanned the whole spectrum from talking about wireless access to cable access, fiber access to what was happening more on the culture side too with movies and TV shows and things like that. I had some of the stars from the X-Files on the show and leaders like the fellow that created the Wikipedia platform was on the show very early. And so I was just trying to cover at the cutting edge of what was happening with the changes that the internet was bringing people to understand what was coming and kind of had a future looking lens on it.

Starting point is 00:07:07 And we talked a lot about wireless access for a long time way before it actually really became what it is today, basically ubiquitous across all of our experiences in life right now. It's pretty much, I had no idea back then how profound of a shift that was going to bring to culture and society. It's gone way far beyond anything that I even talked about on the show. I think it was just more, I was saying that mobile phones were coming with wireless access

Starting point is 00:07:42 because I was playing around with that kind of stuff more with Wi-Fi back then. But it was, it's just amazing how much of a change that that's caused the world in all of our lives. What's interesting back in the early 90s when I graduated from the Naval Academy, I worked for the NSA. And we were using one of the very first versions of the internet back then, but it was all around encrypted communications. But you could still send the equivalent of an email, but I would tell people about it

Starting point is 00:08:22 because the system itself wasn't classified and people couldn't wrap their head around. You're doing what? Yeah. So it's interesting how on a short period of time, relatively I happened to be there at the same time. You were with Microsoft, who was one of Dell's tightest partners. Partners, right. Yeah. I actually got to meet Steve Bomber multiple occasions on his visits to Toronto. But you were again on the early days of Microsoft looking at podcasting and I kind of wanted to understand more about what that experience was like. And then I guess the second part would be why don't we see Microsoft today up there like Spotify and some of the other big entities Apple were dominating the industry right now. Yeah, I think it's a complicated story,

Starting point is 00:09:25 or just because I think you have to transport yourself back to that time and how the market was developing and how media, digital media was evolving online as well. And you had, I think the big driver of it was Apple. I think Microsoft saw Apple as their primary competitor and was really trying to compete directly with the popularity of the iPod back in the early days. Microsoft has always had this ambition to get involved in mobile. They revert early creator of mobile devices, whether it be the pocket PC or tablets or mobile phones, frankly, and they just never got it quite right.

Starting point is 00:10:16 The timing of what they were doing was always a little off, but they launch what was called a zoom platform back in 2006. I think it's when they launched that. what was called a Zoom platform back in 2006. I think when they launched that, I, that was basically a portable media player that basically competed directly with the iPod, which had gained significant market share back then. And I think the sum degree Microsoft always had kind of Apple envy, the sum degree about wanting to

Starting point is 00:10:43 build the B as cool as Apple and have the popularity of their devices and their tools. And I think that's kind of like a common thread that's been around Microsoft and culminates with Apple for many years. And you can see pieces of that over a long time frame, but they launched the Zoom, and I joined the team to run the podcast area because Zoom initially launched as a music platform, obviously to compete with the iPod and iTunes. They wanted to add podcasts, which was to them back then, this was in 2007, 2008,

Starting point is 00:11:25 was a way for them to get some free content into the platform. It seemed like a fairly light lift to be able to do the technology to enable it. And so they chose to do that before they added TV and movies and stuff, which I also worked on as well. But podcasting was next on the docket. And so we added that. So I started building out a catalog of podcasts

Starting point is 00:11:51 back then. And that was in like the 2007 to 2008 timeframe. And built it out and started selling devices and and the platform, you know, I think kind of sputtered along because the initial zoom that they put out was kind of like this boxy device that was actually made by Toshiba, but it kind of had a negative social reaction with many of the technology evangelists out there that didn't like the brown zoom. There was a lot of jokes and it, caused a lot of controversy.

Starting point is 00:12:26 Even today, it shows up in movies and things like that and people's speeches and people make fun of the zone and point at it as like an example of Microsoft's failure. But the truth of the matter is is that the platform was a very compelling platform. It was really ahead of its time. As is oftentimes the case with things that Microsoft does is they're always ahead of the market. And sometimes they're not deployed in a way that is aligned with the market either.

Starting point is 00:13:01 And I think that's one of the magic tricks that Apple's been able to pull off over the years is being able to align features and functionality with the social conscious mind of the market. And timing has always been very, very important to Apple. Microsoft is much more of an engineering driven organization, which makes it, they want to deploy things based on there's, there's an ability to do it and we can do it and we can force it to happen. And it may not be as attractive or it may not be as cool or, um, and, and I think that's one of the things that you can see as a common thread across Microsoft's whole existence.

Starting point is 00:13:43 I've been a big follower and fan of what the company has done for many, many years, and that's one of the reasons why I really went after an opportunity to work there. And I spent seven years there, and it was a fantastic experience. I mean, working on the Zoom team was what one of the best experiences that I have in my life, even though it also had a lot of frustrations too. It was a very creative team and actually was breaking barriers and music subscription services. It was really pioneering that. And it was even before Apple had that or any of the other platforms. And actually with that

Starting point is 00:14:21 subscription, you get free tracks that you can keep. So really nobody else was doing that back then. And so as we added podcasts, that capability became a touch point for podcasting because it became the second largest podcast listening platform behind Apple. I think it captured, I think at the peak, it captured maybe like 20 to 25% of the podcast market from about the 2000, eight to probably 2010 or so, it was like in the position that spotifies in right now in the market today. And then Microsoft decided to shut down zoom to some degree, but before they did that,

Starting point is 00:15:08 they actually shifted it into Xbox. And so the whole zoom experience was built in the Windows Media Center and Xbox. Podcasting never made the jump to the console. So I started working with Windows Mobile and Windows Phone for the platform and then also worked a little bit with the Windows Media Center on taking video podcasts, which was another element of podcasting into that platform that people were using to watch television on big screens back in those days. And so I was curating that catalog of video podcasts, which was in the early days of the meeting was about 25 to 30% of the podcasting market. Not so much now, I think we're less than probably 5% of the podcasting market is

Starting point is 00:15:55 video podcast. That would be when I say video podcast, and this is kind of a confusing topic, but when I say video podcast, that is a, that is basically an MP4 file that's distributed in an RSSV just like the audio files are today. That was a popular thing for a lot of big media companies and a lot of companies to put content out. And I do think that we're seeing a little bit of a resurgence in that again, but when YouTube launched in 2007, it started to siphon that out of the podcasting market. People started publishing over to YouTube and we can also talk about if you want to the development of and how important video is today to the podcasting market. It's just

Starting point is 00:16:38 not in the same way it was when podcasting started. We'll be right back to our episode with Rob Greenlight. I would like to emphasize that this podcast is part of my hope and desire to bring zero-cost information to the general public regarding how do you create an intentional life. And keeping with that theme, I would like to thank today's sponsors of this episode. Today's episode is sponsored by Trade Coffee. I just finished a cup of their Panther Coffee, which comes from Guatemala, and I love how it tastes of chocolate,

Starting point is 00:17:09 black cherry, gala apples, and is so sweet and creamy. I love how they have a quiz that matches your taste profile with freshly roasted beans from 60 of the country's best craft roasters. Trade Coffee really does a fantastic job of bringing the freshest and best tasting coffee that was actually taste tested against thousands of coffees to provide you with the perfect cup of coffee that's matched perfectly to your taste. In fact, trade has delivered over five million bags of coffee with more than 750,000 positive

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Starting point is 00:18:20 and make it possible and free for our listeners. And I know these links can be difficult to remember. So we put them in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Now back to our episode with Rob Greenlight. In our last conversation, I told you I had a Microsoft story and because of the times I got to meet Steve, he actually recruited me to be the CIO at Microsoft. And the reason I didn't take the job for the most part was it was such a product driven organization that I just technical engineering driven organization.

Starting point is 00:19:01 Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, I knew from being at Dell, where you had 125,000 people who thought you were smarter than the internal IT department. Right. It was going to be much of the same. And I really wanted to get on more of the product side. So it just, uh, for me, I mean, it probably would have been a great career move, but it just didn't feel like the right move for me. But I was gonna tell you. I was gonna tell you. I think the company kind of struggled with products back then. I think they were primarily just making like,

Starting point is 00:19:33 mouses and keyboards. And that's kind of what they've evolved into over the last few years with the Surface device that put them right in alignment with going after Apple. So I was, yes, well. kind of surface device that put them right in alignment with going after Apple. Yeah, I was. Yes, well, I got to experiment with many of those products that you were talking about because that, that, as soon as I, because I was initially the CIO for the consumer group at Dell, we would get all these products to try for Microsoft.

Starting point is 00:20:05 And so I had one of those for a long time, but you've probably have never heard this story. Dell had hired a guy named Ron Gergs and Ron claimed a fame had been, he was an EVP at Motorola and he launched their first flip phone. And so, Bill, Michael Dell hired him to lead this consumer business and he was really taking it in a cutting edge way. And we had this amazing phone called the street that was going to be our first product to hit the street. And this product at the time, people said it was going to be our first product to hit the street. And this product at the time, people said it was going to be too big, but now it's the size of the most common iPhone, but at the time it would have been the biggest

Starting point is 00:20:55 thing on there. And this phone was amazing. And not only did he want to do that, but he wanted to create a ubiquitous sound cloud service brokerage underneath it so that other people could easily build apps on our platform. And they would be ubiquitous to whether it was a Microsoft platform Android or whatever he thought in the future. And we were going down this path and we were going to launch with Android. And we all thought this was going to be hugely successful. And then out of nowhere Steve visits has a one on one meeting with Michael.

Starting point is 00:21:34 Ron is called up to meet with two of them and then he comes down and goes, we're toast. He goes, Michael just made the move that we're gonna launch with Microsoft and this project is dead on arrival. And so literally just because of the user base of the Windows devices at that time, it just didn't have the penetration no matter how good a device it was. And by the time months later,

Starting point is 00:22:04 we were gonna move on to the Android, unfortunately since all this technology is made, you know, in China, to South Korea, it all gets copied so quickly that it had already been replicated. And that whole idea that could have put Dell completely on the map was lost. Wow, wow. Yeah. So were you at Dell, was lost. Wow. Yeah. So were you at Dell when they made the the pocket PC device? I don't think I was. You are okay. Now I was at, yeah, I had a Dell pocket PC. I was basically running the the window software on a little, I think I have it somewhere, but yeah, it was a great, it was a great little device. I get this little card that I could slide into the top of it that connected to Wi-Fi. So, yeah, so it was kind of cool back then.

Starting point is 00:22:52 I was able, actually, I was on with my own show. I was on a platform with Microsoft back in those days. It was called Syncon Go. And it was a add-on pack to Windows XP. And it basically, I mean, from all the functionality of it was an exact replica of what podcasting is, or what podcasting developed into. And this was something that Microsoft developed back in 2003 to 2005.

Starting point is 00:23:26 And my show was on and it was one of only like two or three audio shows that was on this platform. And it basically had it like a, the POCOPC docked to this docking unit that was connected to your PC via USB. And it would synchronize video and audio files to your portable your pocket PC. So you could subscribe to them and Windows XP and it would transfer via this device, just like what podcasting was.

Starting point is 00:23:53 So Microsoft actually had podcasting before podcast started. And I got paid 25 cents per transfer to the pocket PC. So it was a perfect kind of premium royalty platform for me. I was making like five grand a month or something like that, just making my radio show available on the Sync and Go platform. So it was, you know, so, and then podcasting

Starting point is 00:24:23 or the Sync and Go product was actually dropped by Microsoft in 2005, which was right after podcasting started. So yeah. Just a little bit of time. Just a little bit of time. Yes. I mean, it's just another example of what I was trying to say earlier is that Microsoft in times is it's the same thing with the tablet, right?

Starting point is 00:24:43 They were very early with it and and it just was too early, and they didn't have the right form factor, and they hadn't thought through the social implications, and the use case scenarios, quite as well as, I think, Apple does. Yeah. The whole major purpose of what we're trying to do on passion struck is to educate our listeners

Starting point is 00:25:06 or watchers if they're viewing this on YouTube on how do you become more intentional in the direction of your life. And I think you're a perfect example of this because you have kind of been in this podcast lane now as long as anyone has, if not longer, what I'd like to understand is how did this become kind of your life's passion and what keeps feeding it? Well, I think it goes back to the very early days of my background and stuff. I think I have a marketing degree. I got it back in 1986 and back then marketing was a very different animal than it is today, but that took me down this path of having an interest in media, right? Advertising, all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 00:25:56 So that interest came from that plus just kind of consumer marketing too, was a big part of what I was. My background in my education was kind of focused on that. And I got pulled into the grocery industry right out of college and started working for companies, big brands on the sale side. Like, Chiquita brands, John Morrell, I've worked on Butterball, I've worked on Nathan's Hot Dogs, I've worked all that stuff in the

Starting point is 00:26:36 grocery aisle and then spent five years working at the Florida Department of Citrus. So I was working on promoting orange juice, grapefruit juice, and fresh citrus up in the Pacific Northwest, up in Western Canada, Alaska, and Oregon, putting advertising campaigns together

Starting point is 00:26:59 and working with like Tropicana and Minimade and other orange juice brands and the fresh fruit brands to put integrated campaigns together that involve television radio, sampling and stores, working with like Costco and those folks, you know, trying to get products moving in the market, you know, setting up displays and stores and really kind of funding that. trying to get products moving in the market, you know, setting up displays and stores and

Starting point is 00:27:30 and really kind of funding that. I had a I had a a multi-million dollar marketing budget that I could spend just up in the that part of the world that was funded by a tax on the growers in Florida. So so it was a state agency. So I was working for my boss, actually reported to the governor for five years. I was representing the industry. That's what started me down this path. That was right in the time frame of 1996, time frame 97, which was the early days of the internet. That's when Netscape or Mozilla started to do what they were doing. And that's kind of what took me down this path.

Starting point is 00:28:10 And I built a website for the Florida Citrus Department. I just kind of did it. I didn't, you know, that was another thing that happened a lot back in those days was people in corporations or large organizations because the organization didn't really understand what was happening to the internet. They just did stuff right. And then they had to answer for it later, but which is exactly what happened to me because I created this whole website up in Seattle for the Florida Citrus industry and it started to get traction. I started to give away sailboats off of the websites, who sweepstakes used to run billboard campaigns

Starting point is 00:28:47 in the Seattle market, you know, driving people to Floridajuice.com and trying to, you know, utilize this and do sweepstakes at the stores and back in those days, the sweepstakes were very popular in the grocery industry. And then doing couponing and that kind of stuff in the stores to drive attention to my campaigns. So this whole website started me down this path, and I worked with a website development agency in Seattle to build this out. And it started to grow and became kind of a national impact thing. And the leadership back in Florida

Starting point is 00:29:26 and the Florida Citrus Commission started to see things happening that maybe they didn't fully grasp the implications of. And they wound up having kind of like a, like what the heck is going on up in Seattle? Kind of a reaction to me. So I had this call with the executive director of the organization and he basically

Starting point is 00:29:49 had a million questions for me because the Flora Citrus Commission was like, what is this guy? What are they doing up there? They seem to be getting a lot of attention. So anyway, so that was my experience with the two, is I just did stuff. And that's what kind of

Starting point is 00:30:05 pulled me down this path of getting involved in realizing that the internet and the web was going to be just such a powerful marketing vehicle. And that took me down a different path here and then I I wound up consulting with smaller companies up in the Seattle area and helping them do search engine optimization and marketing and things like that and that's what pull me down this path and I started this radio show trying to drive more clients and drive more awareness of the kind of things that I was working on on the marketing side and what I learned from building the Florida Juice.com website and marketing that and seeing what the impact was of it. And so I just walked into a radio station in the Seattle market and said,

Starting point is 00:30:50 are you doing a show on technology? And they said, no, and I said, well, I'll do one. How do I get started? So I rounded up some of my friends and went in and did it and that took me down this path. And this was back in February of 1999 as when this all came down and started doing this show, I was horrible at it. At the beginning, actually, you can go

Starting point is 00:31:09 to my, my blog. That makes two of us. Right. It's two of us. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't a very good speaker back then. And I just, it wasn't something that was a big part of my life. I, I wasn't a broadcaster. I didn't come from radio. So I didn't have that education or background at all. It's just something. I wasn't a broadcaster. I didn't come from radio. So I didn't have that education or background at all. It's just something that I saw as a marketing opportunity because

Starting point is 00:31:31 I saw it as like content is what I learned from the website as content is a way to market as well. So content marketing is kind of an accepted thing now, but back in those days, it wasn't. marketing is kind of an accepted thing now, but back in those days, it wasn't. Utilizing this new medium to reach people in a different way and to try and digitize those relationships was something that was kind of still new. It wasn't something that many people were doing or understood. Even the organization that I worked for didn't understand what I was doing. So, but quickly, they embraced it and they took it over for me. I just said, yeah, you can have it and they turned it over to an agency and they took it

Starting point is 00:32:13 from there. And then after that, I built the world's largest class of orange juice and set it in a book, World Records, which also kind of said everybody on tailspin back there too, because that got all sorts of media attention and things like that too. So that's how I got into it. And then I just got sucked into the technology more and more as the internet developed beyond 1997 and on

Starting point is 00:32:38 and started working for, I left the Ford of Citrus Commission, got to work for a startup company that was doing photography, doing kind of digital photography around photographs. So I spent a couple of years working for a company like that that I work with like Kodak and, I can't even remember I can snap fish and other large companies out there, Walmart and things like that around photo gifts.

Starting point is 00:33:06 And so that was another part of the digitization experience that I had working for other companies. And then through that whole time, I was doing the radio show and growing that. And that's what got me into this. When I have another similarity that I didn't realize as I was in the epicenter of the digital keep on or when they started the paper keep on because I was with Catalina marketing.

Starting point is 00:33:31 So, I'm familiar with Catalina marketing, yeah. Inif listeners and familiar with that they at one time had the largest database of personalized offers kind of in that CPG pharmacy, mass grocery world. So on one side sits all the CPG companies. And on the other side was every single grocery and mass retailer, but Walmart and CVS. So I think I actually worked with Catalina

Starting point is 00:34:00 marketing a few times with all those jobs that I was at. Where did it be the Forest Social Commission and all the meat company roles that I had to back then. So yeah, there were a big player in the coupon space back then, ever. There were massive. I never thought of a paper printer,

Starting point is 00:34:18 networking and ad distribution network, but that was exactly it. And just like other ad networks, you could fill up that pipe in many different ways. Yeah. But interesting. So yeah, I had coupons that they're on the website that I built for a Florida citizen's commission that you could print off and then I also had recipes. And so that was part of the background of this whole thing was trying to give people a way to transact, right?

Starting point is 00:34:49 And if you can give them a coupon through this methodology, the truth about coupons is that you can distribute 100 million coupons, but only like 2% will ever get used. So it's usually more marketing benefit than it is on conversion benefit, but. I'm taking us off this intentionality phase now because I can't have you on this show and not speak or ask about some of your podcast wisdom. If you're a listener of the show and you might listen to podcasts, but you don't really know what's going on in the industry. What is the state right now of podcasting and where do you see things going over the next 18 to 24 months? Well, I think clearly the podcasting market is maturing because you think about what's been happening. Amazon entering the space, Spotify, serious XM, IHR radio, you just go through the list of all of the big companies, Samsung's now

Starting point is 00:35:46 in the space, Google is all in, obviously Apple has been involved for many years. And I think the real big impact is a company like Amazon, getting involved in the space. And then also we're seeing a lot of companies outside of the US really start to jump into it. It's not all about the US anymore in podcasting. So we're starting to see these acquisitions happen outside of the US as well. Podcasting is expanding in Asia and big huge countries

Starting point is 00:36:20 like the country of India is expanding. There's billion people over there. So it's just huge. So I think that's the big thing is the globalization of the medium is taken off and it's also the professionalization of the medium. Podcasting at its core has primarily always been kind of like an independent crater medium, but we're seeing more and more the influence of these larger companies changing that to some degree. I think the key takeaway though is that they will change it to some degree, but the open

Starting point is 00:36:54 nature of what how podcasting is built on RSS will keep it a fairly open medium. I don't believe any company is going to be able to really dominate it as much as I think Apple has been able to to do Today, I think if anything, it's going to be more balanced out spotifies taking share away from Apple as far as listeners, but the truth about Spotify is that the people that they bring to the platform to listen to podcasts are not listening to as much content as users that use the Apple platform.

Starting point is 00:37:33 So there may be as many or more people that are using podcasts on Spotify as on Apple, but generally those users don't use as much content or listen to as much content as those that use Apple. So you kind of always have to keep that on and you'll see in the news, it'll be spun up like Spotify is now bigger than Apple or that they have more users or whatever and that implies that they're bigger but they're really not Apple is probably really not. Apple is probably, you know, four or five to one on actual downloads of episodes per user. So it's, it's a, it depends on how you slice the cake, but I think the other big trend is happening right now is monetization, I think as the audience, and I've felt this

Starting point is 00:38:23 way for many years, as the overall audience listening audience grows and podcasting, the monetization opportunities should correspond and grow as well. And I think we're starting to see the beginnings of that around what's called programmatic advertising, which is more auction based, more automatic buys that get you buy on a platform as a brand and then you run the campaigns and it automatically goes into podcasts based on that genre, Phil. And you can run real-time campaigns and podcasts, which has always been able to be done in streaming radio. But the past with podcasting has been mostly host reads,

Starting point is 00:39:08 which have been baked into the content, which are very labor-intensive and costly and slow to traffic and to create frequency. It takes a lot of labor, and that's what's driven a lot of that activity, the host reads, into big shows. And that's where a lot of that activity, the host reads into big shows. And that's what where a lot of the revenue is today is on the on the host reads side, it still is, because the the CPMs and that's the the fee that's paid per thousand listeners

Starting point is 00:39:36 has always been the highest with baked-in host reads. Because guess what, you know, you bake it into the content, it's always there, right? So even though an advertiser comes in and buys a campaign, they know that that ad is going to remain in the content forever, is what the assumption is. And so they're willing to pay a little extra for that. But with programmatic, that's more of like a dynamic insertion removal replacement type of a model, which has a little bit lower CPM. But it's also gathering steam because it's enabling,

Starting point is 00:40:09 because of the automation to traffic campaigns across larger numbers of shows. And though the CPMs are less, but that's a big area as well. And then there's premium. And you're starting to see this with the acquisition of like a one-dory or whatever by Amazon as well. And you're seeing audible getting into the space

Starting point is 00:40:34 as well more and more. That's more around premium content. And we're starting to see that area start to develop too. As we see studios out of Hollywood start to produce higher production quality type of productions, more fictional stuff, the true crime genres taken off and done very well. And that continues to accelerate out there as a popular genre. Mainly, I hate to say this, but mainly to women.

Starting point is 00:41:02 Women are the largest consumers of true crime podcasts. So it's a ponderous thing to think about of why that's the case, but it's interesting. So I think those are the big things that are happening in podcasting. And I think it's going to continue to grow. I think that there's also a likelihood that we may be approaching a plateau in growth

Starting point is 00:41:24 of podcasting in the US, because we're starting to reach a maturation point in the development and any growth will probably continue, but it will slow a little bit. And I think the growth outside of the US will accelerate. Yes, why? I've only been doing this for a year,

Starting point is 00:41:42 so no, no, we're close to what you have, but as I was thinking about getting in it, I can't tell you how many people told me not to do it. Oh really? Wow. Interesting. Yeah. Well, if you think about it, it is harder than you think to break into. If you want, because I didn't start getting sponsors until, you know, I could show I was getting 20,000

Starting point is 00:42:06 downloads a week. Well, I mean, you can get campaigns probably at a lower level, but is it worth it at that point, right? I mean, I think at the other end of the spectrum is, is what's the CPM trade-off? I mean, if you're getting paid per thousand and you're getting 5,000, that CPM times five is what you're looking at. But if you can get up to a higher number, then it becomes some real money at that point, right? Yes, well, what was interesting is I heard Jordan Harbinger, who's probably one of the biggest podcasters there is.

Starting point is 00:42:42 Yeah, I'm a joint friend. He was on a friend of mine show and my friend Adam Posner said, if you were to say something to someone thinking about getting into podcasts and what would you say? He goes, don't do it. Yeah, I know. Jordan's been saying that for years. I just think to me, if you're going to get into it, do it for the right reasons and make sure that you have a passion for it because my experience is it is a heck of a lot more work than I ever

Starting point is 00:43:12 thought it would be. And it's really, I think, what makes a good podcaster compared to a mediocre one is you really have to be consistent. You constantly have to be looking out there at the trends. How do you make the show better? How do you become better? How do you research what different angles? And so for me, it's just this constant rethinking about what I'm doing all the time. And can we change it up? Can we make it better? Because you want to do what one else is doing. Yeah, I think it's a lot like starting a business, right? I think at the end of the day, you have to think about your strategy, you have to think about how you approach the market, you have to think about dedication, consistency, follow through, making promises,

Starting point is 00:43:57 and following through with those, and in this case, it's your listeners. Yeah, it's a serious endeavor. There's a question. And I think that's the biggest thing that I spend a lot of time myself and I work with podcasters is helping them cut through the noise that's around that because it can be very confusing with the myriad. It's almost like walking into a grocery store and having, you know, ten different or forty different brands of toilet paper, which one do you buy?

Starting point is 00:44:27 To some degree, that's the case with podcasting too, is it like what Mike to get? What platform to host it on, or do I need to be in all the listening platforms? It's just the questions are longer than a lot of people have time for. How you focus what you're doing and how it aligns with other parts of your life, because there's a huge amount of people that start these things and quit like seven, 10 episodes into it, because they either run out of something to talk about, or they run out of time, or life gets in the way, or it's not aligned with their bigger life strategy and it just doesn't fit and you know there's a lot of things we can cause somebody to stop doing this. I'm sure you probably went through that a little bit of that too

Starting point is 00:45:15 questioning what you were doing when you got started too. After 10-15 episodes and you're not seeing the traction and you're because you think you're going to put this out to the world and you're Over and I can have thousands of views You think even your family and friends are going to support you with giving you five star ratings and another bit So it really becomes you know, you got to check your ego and just make sure that What you're doing here is to serve a greater purpose than yourself. And I think if the audience isn't familiar with this, the other big thing that I don't think people understand is there's really two camps in podcasting. There's independent podcasters like myself, Lewis Hous, Jordan, Impact Theory, and then a lot of these podcasts that you're

Starting point is 00:46:01 listening to are syndicated under a kind of an umbrella, like Dave Ramsey, as probably eight or nine podcasts under his brand. And Dave Ramsey's brand owns the content, not the host of the show. And so that's the trade-off between the two. But when you're with one of those groups, you also have the advantage of them being able to throw a lot more dollars and to use the other shows to cross pollinate and promote which for me. And we're going to talk about your show here in a second. I'm a huge believer that none of us are really competing with each other because there's so many out there. So the more we can collaborate and help other podcasters out, to me, I think is a big win for everyone, because just like your show, your message needs to hit someone,

Starting point is 00:46:54 mind us too, and if we can introduce our messages to our audiences, then everyone gets better. It's kind of my philosophy. So on that note, you have a podcast. You host it with a fellow podcast, Hall of Famer, Todd Cochran. And I was hoping that you could talk about your podcast, what it's about and where the future is going with yours. Well, that show started a little over 10 years ago back when I was working at Microsoft actually. Let's show started a little over 10 years ago, back when I was working at Microsoft actually, and Todd was doing his Geek New Central podcast that he was doing, and we were collaborating

Starting point is 00:47:33 because that was in the time when I was at the tail end of my tenure with the Web Talk radio show, which I had actually worked with Todd when I was doing that show as well. I had streaming servers, I was doing a lot of streaming back in those days of my show and so I put on a bunch of Todd's shows because he built a podcast network back in 2005 and so I was streaming those shows. So he would upload the the show episodes to my server and then I would stream that for him. And so we started working together way before we were competitors. So like I work for Ellipson, the original podcast hosting platform to ever exist. He runs a platform called Blueberry podcasting, which is also a podcast

Starting point is 00:48:19 hosting platform that also has the PowerPress plug-in for WordPress that actually enables podcasting through the WordPress platform. And so we started just doing this show day. It was called the Saturday Morning Tech Show. And so we I started showing up on Saturday mornings. That was my habit because I was actually doing that with my radio show. I did that show live on Saturday mornings for years and so that Saturday morning routine of me doing a show was something that I continued and so I just did it with him and and over a period of years it transitioned. I just

Starting point is 00:48:55 mentioned on the show one day. We'll talk we keep talking about podcasting. We should probably change the name of the show from Saturday morning tech show to like the new media show or something like that and so that became the the name of the show from Saturday Morning Tech Show to like the new media show or something like that. And so that became the the name of the show. And so we made the transition. You can see the logo behind us. And so that that show just been steadily something growing. It always was a live show. It was a live audio and on-demand video and audio program. So it was an audio and video podcast. So it was distributed as an RSS feed.

Starting point is 00:49:30 There's separate RSS feeds one for the audio file, one for the video file that you can subscribe to in Apple Podcasts. And then it's also live streamed on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, let's see, I won't see the one. I think those are the main ones, but I think he's pushing it out to a couple others,

Starting point is 00:49:49 new ones out there, but so it's just something we do every Wednesday at 3PM Eastern, noon Pacific. And that's, we talk about the growth and development of what's happening in the podcasting industry primarily, but we also spend time talking about overall new media too. I keep asking this question at what point is this medium that we're doing here considered not new anymore. But I think until I don't know what that point is, but I think there's still people out there where it's still relatively new. So, I think we'll keep the name until the situation, I don't know if that's 30 years or however long that is. But so what we have on this show is, you know, it's Todd and I usually just talking about the trends and the latest news and the developments in the industry. And we get a little retrospective about the medium

Starting point is 00:50:47 at times because of our long duration, Todd started podcasting back in 2004 as well. And so we just both have a common kind of experience base. And I know him like the back of my hand, any topic comes up I can probably answer, you know, the question or the comment for him because I've seen him talk about things so many times. So there's a strong chemistry there and I think there's a takeaway from that too. If you're going to co-host something

Starting point is 00:51:16 with somebody, chemistry is a huge component of success because and personalities need to be different too. I've learned that in the two podcasts that I've done. I also did a show called The Spreaker Live Show and this one back when I work for Spreaker. I did like 200 plus episodes of that show too and that was a live show as well and just the kind of camaraderie that exists between cohosts. And people like one cohost more than another, typically. So you're basically, if you have different personalities, you can bring different energy to the show. I tend to be seen as kind of like the column cool and collected dude on the show and Todd has seen as a little bit of the the fire brand. I mean, I mean, you never know what's going to come out of his

Starting point is 00:52:05 mouth type of a situation. And I had that same type of relationship with my coast with my speaker live show too. So you have to create kind of a magic in the show that's appealing to different types of personalities. And I think it's podcasting is a psychological game too. I mean, it's Podcasting is a psychological game too. I mean, it's a hard thing to teach someone. You know, I think having years and years on microphone in all sorts of different situations really trains you to be able to adapt very quickly. And that's what this show has done for me for many years

Starting point is 00:52:41 is really caused me to really kind of become even a stronger life podcaster or media creator. I'm a lot more comfortable and it's turned me into being a much better public speaker too. I go do keynotes or go speak at a conference or lead a panel or just do Zoom calls too. I mean, these skills are transferable. And I think that's one of the big takeaways. I think from the last two years is that it's a lot of people that got forced into this that I has already spent years building this. So I hope that answers the question. I tend to go on a little long. I know it does. And I will tell tell you for me, I really enjoy these interviews that I get to do.

Starting point is 00:53:27 I also do a solo episode and I will tell you, I've already come up with the next 60 topics, but I still have to research and deliver them. So it's like almost, I mean, I guess for the audience in this light, I every week am having to develop, if you go to church, you'd be like a new sermon, or if you're a keynote speaker, I have to develop a brand new 15 to 20 minute keynote every single week that has to be well researched. So there's a lot behind the scenes

Starting point is 00:53:57 that people just don't get to see. Yeah, I have a question for you on that too, because this is something that I wrestle with with the Numer media show is that What we found in the data is that the shows that just have taught and I in them tend to get more downloads than the shows that I bring on a guest So it's interesting. I mean, I've had like the the folks that are working on the Facebook podcast platform be guests on the show before.

Starting point is 00:54:26 And that was a popular episode, but the week after that Facebook episode, we actually saw a big bump when it was just Todd and I. So it's caused me to think about interviews in a different way. I think the interviews need to be additive, not a replacement for you, as the host. And that's kind of what I kind of wonder about sometimes. So I think it's smart that you're doing some solo episodes, but it'd be interesting to see what the data shows for you are, those more popular than your interviews. So I've got the answer for you. You do. So I have, I guess through my research,

Starting point is 00:55:09 when I probably spent a good year researching and literally listening to hundreds of episodes to look at different styles, to see what other people were doing before I jumped into the game. Because I think you've got to really practice before you're gonna come out there and do it. Well, I think at the end of the day,

Starting point is 00:55:33 people I go and listen to Jay Shetty's podcast because I like Jay Shetty. Right, exactly. He could have President Obama and there are Michelle Obama, and he might get a few more listeners because of them, but generally people are coming there already because they like the way he asked them questions and the insights. Right. He shares along with it. So what I have found that has been very surprising is with the exception of a couple episodes. And for me, some of the biggest name people I've had on underwhelmed in audience, whereas people who don't have any social trait at all

Starting point is 00:56:16 have performed extremely well. And I think it's because people like their stories and they share them. But overall, I'm getting probably 25 to 30% more downloads on my own individual episodes than I am on the interviews. Yeah, that's what I found with our show too. And it's it's not that I don't like to do additive and it needs to be contextual to the goals of the show. And that's what I tend to do. It's like that's why I had the Facebook podcast people on the shows because that's additive to the conversation.

Starting point is 00:56:53 That's information that wouldn't have come from us because I'm either under NDA or whatever it is, right? It's a way to get around kind of the structural limitations that I have around content. So if you're a podcaster and you want to sort of show that's kind of doing like what you're doing here, here, here, John, and what I'm doing with the new media show is it can be powerful to have a co-host too that you have a real strong, you know, collaborative way of thinking about things and can create real conversation on the show. But being a solocaster is not easy too. As you'll probably, you know, I think you would probably agree with that. Trying to hold the attention of an audience. And

Starting point is 00:57:36 this is where the big talk, talk radio show hosts really earn their money. Those that do three hours of live solo, trying to hold an audience and hold their attention and be able to hold it from coming back from break and doing all this kind of stuff like that is a skill that not burn people have. And it's, I have a lot of respect for those guys. Well, God rest his soul, but like him or hate on Rush Limbaugh was like a master at it. Oh, no, he was. He was. He would just keep you hooked. He's constantly telling a story and he has a view and he'll share it and it can be politically divisive, but that was that was the game, right? Definitely the game. Well, one last question for you before we wrap up and earlier you touched on kind of the evolution of video and how video was going to impact podcasting and that I've actually by mistake uploaded my MP4 instead of putting the MP3 in there and then

Starting point is 00:58:41 the episode goes live and I'm like, what the heck? So I've done it unintentionally, but I do the thing where I post my episodes and then I chop them up and I make them into micro videos but all that goes on YouTube. But where do you see things going on the video front? Well, I think that clearly the video side of things is accelerating and importance. You know, I think I've become here with last year a pretty avid consumer of content on YouTube.

Starting point is 00:59:15 It's really replaced most of my TV viewing, most of the big screen. So I'm finding that I can get more depth into topics over there. And I'm seeing more podcasters move that direction. Now granted video like I was talking about earlier about my work on the Windows Media Center and video podcasting, the very early days of podcasting. It was a different kind of content over there

Starting point is 00:59:48 around video podcasting. So now we're seeing shows like what we're doing because of platforms like StreamYard and Riverside FM and Zoom are enabling a different kind of video podcasting. One that's probably more pure to what podcasting is, but it's also important to the visual element more than ever. I think most of us, especially when I started

Starting point is 01:00:15 with the new media show, it was very geeky. You can see I have this big microphone here and it's very kind of geeky, but I've added colored lights behind me now and I've added these, you know, picture frames stuff on the wall to add a little more pizzazz to my background and the experience of it. I have studio lights now and I've got all that stuff right now.

Starting point is 01:00:36 I didn't have that stuff in the early days, but I did have high quality microphone, right? So now I've got a teleprompter. So I can actually look at you right into the teleprompter and look right at the camera because the camera is right behind the teleprompter. I don't always do that because I've got a screen in front of me that's bigger than my teleprompter so my eyes get pulled down to that. But yeah, I think video and I'm going to up my game with video too. I'm gonna, I bought a new home, and I'm gonna move over there and part of my house, I'm gonna convert into a kind of a video studio.

Starting point is 01:01:10 And so, because I wanna up my game on the video side too, because I'm also in the middle of trying to launch my own new podcast, it's called Spoken Life. And it's gonna be about audio, not just podcasting, but about the importance of audio. But video is going to be an important part of that for me as well. So I think what you're doing here, I mean, your background is very visual, it's cool, it's very clean. I think it's what the market is looking for now. And I think more and more, it's about the topics, it's about the

Starting point is 01:01:42 focus of the topics. I don't know what you get gravitated towards on On YouTube, but you can really see the kind of content creators that are really Excelling over there and there they are taking a little bit more of an extreme Position on everything. It's like I follow a lot of investing and a lot of real estate type of Topic shows over there and and they're always talking about crashes and they're always got the visuals on the thumbnails of them with the weird faces on with the big splashing graphics and things like that. It's almost like the old days of the banner advertising that was in the

Starting point is 01:02:20 early days of the web with the motion graphics and all the kind of stuff that was out there or the billboards or whatever. So it's an interesting phenomenon what's happening over there and video is so interesting and there's no reason why if you're a video creator over there they can't be an audio podcaster too. So that's an element that I'm working on too is trying to attract those folks that are successful on YouTube over to become, take that audio and put it out as a podcast. Yes, and I would have to say I'm on the same lines. I'm doubling down on getting better at video production. I'm also looking at turning a bedroom into a whole video studio. I have a 2500 square foot studio I have access to as well. And I want to get a lot more into live shows. I purposely didn't do it over this first year

Starting point is 01:03:14 because I just wanted to stay very focused at, you know, getting comfortable doing high quality podcasts. And I felt after that, because you never know during an interview, especially if it's live, what you might run into during a discussion. So I wanted to make sure I got really comfortable doing these. Yeah, I think it's compelling. And I think, as you think about kind of the technology

Starting point is 01:03:43 evolution that's happening too, I think eventually we will have autonomous cars that will drive themselves and I think we'll be more and more reliant on that. And guess what that presents is opportunity to watch video while you're in your car. Yes. So, I mean, already the Tesla cars have entertainment systems built into them now, so they're totally preparing for this new phase of media consumption in our transportation devices. So, it's where things are going, and I think audio is going to continue to become important too,

Starting point is 01:04:21 because there's just so many more places that you can consume audio than you can video. And that will always make audio a compelling thing to do as well. Yes, I agree. Well, Rob, you've been so generous with your time. And I know you are for many, many people who are in the podcast and community. So thank you for being so giving.

Starting point is 01:04:45 And if a listener was interested in learning more about you, I'll put this on the show notes, but I always like to give the guests a chance to put their information out there as well. Yeah, I think the best way to reach me if you're a Twitter user, I'm on Twitter as well at Rob Greenley, I'm on Facebook, the Instagram platform, LinkedIn, all of the major

Starting point is 01:05:05 ones I've been on there for many, many years. And I do have a YouTube channel, but it's not fully developed yet. But I can also be found on my own website, robgreenley.com. And that's g-r-e-e-n-l-e-e. So, last name. And if you want to send me an email, you're more welcome to do that too. You can send it to robg at lipson.com. If you wanted to reach out to me,

Starting point is 01:05:34 if you had a question or you just wanted to contact me, I purposely put my information out completely. I don't like to hide. So, that's just kind of a philosophy that I have. People have always been very respectful of reaching out. And, and it's just so many opportunities that you, you, you may be giving up by not putting yourself out there, right? Okay. Well, Rob, thank you so much for being on the show. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, thank you very much for having me on.

Starting point is 01:06:07 I hope you enjoyed as much as I did that interview with Rob Green, like what a pioneer in the podcasting space and a great mentor to anyone out there who is launching or well into their podcast and career. Now, if you're new to the show or you would just like to introduce it to a friend or family member, we now have episodes starter packs on both Spotify and the PassionStruck website. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by Topic, which gives any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything that we do here on the show. Just go to PassionStruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And in addition to listening to these podcast episodes,

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Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee on the Future of Podcasts and Growth Trends

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