Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Monetizing and Increasing the Intellectual Property of Your Podcast with David Segura

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of The Radcast. Ryan Alford, your host. We're getting radical. We're getting radically meta today. Talking with the founder, the CEO of Glassbox Media. What's up, David Segura? Doing great. How are you? I'm great, man. Appreciate you coming on. I'm excited to talk podcasts.

Starting point is 00:00:37 Hey, anyone that's coming on to tell me that podcasts are exploding, it's the smartest decision anyone can make, it starts to stroke my ego a little. So I appreciate it. Yeah, happy to do it. I'm being sincere. So it works for both of us. I know exactly. It's good for you. Good for us. I know we'll get down that road. I know you're in Manhattan there. I both we talked pre episode. I both miss it and don't miss it a bit. Can't deny the energy, but it grows on me. I'm glad to be back in a little bit of slower South Carolina, but it probably does fuel the energy daily, I'm sure.

Starting point is 00:01:11 That it does. New York is unrelenting after seven years or so. Like still not totally used to it, but I've learned to embrace it. You have to. It's the only way. And I loved it. I like the frenetic nature of it, but as you get older, you want to. And raising kids, it's not the best. And I loved it. I like the frenetic nature of it, but as you get older, you want to.

Starting point is 00:01:27 And raising kids, it's not the best place to raise a family. Not because it's, like, bad or you'll give it a bad rap about being dangerous or something. I never felt in danger. But I need some more green grass and certain things. So raising the family here in South Carolina. But it's not about me, David. I want to hear, and I know I can't wait to get to talk more about Glassbox and all the stuff that's going on there, but let's set the tape for everybody and tell them a little bit about that backstory on you, man. Yeah, definitely. So I was

Starting point is 00:01:54 born in Houston, but I grew up in El Paso, Texas. Really enjoyed it. Smaller town, moved a lot slower, nothing like New York. Then I wanted to change a place. And I ultimately went to University of Chicago. Loved it out there. Had a great experience, good education. But it was too cold. For a Hispanic guy from West Texas, I just couldn't hack it. So the first chance I got, I was out of there. So I moved to Los Angeles.

Starting point is 00:02:20 Really enjoyed it. Did some consulting, which was not the best fit. Hats off to anybody working at a big company but for me I learned early on that that wasn't really like my bag and I wanted to be a little bit more entrepreneurial so started out as a junior employee at several media companies had a good experience and that all eventually led to me starting this company called Giant Media Giant Media was like this native video exchange, which in plain English, we used to help companies and like entrepreneurial brands create videos and tell stories. We would

Starting point is 00:02:51 find out essentially the best place to propagate that, whether it was a publisher or alternatively these apps coming from this new social network that people probably have heard of called Facebook early on. Yeah, it's a great outcome for us, but we had no other choice. Like we get some credit sometimes for being innovative and embracing Facebook early, but as a small company, like we just decided to bet the farm on it, ended up being right. So we scaled that out with some amazing help.

Starting point is 00:03:18 People like Mike Dubin from Dollar Shave Club and others. And as a result of that, had amazing clients like Heineken, L'Oreal, you name it, and eventually got acquired by this big holding company called AdMillage. That was itself backed by TBG and JMI. So that was an amazing outcome. We worked our tails off, but it was almost existential. We achieved what we wanted to do. And I was thinking like, what the hell do I do now? And so that was the story of Giant basically. That's cool, man. Fascinating. When you start talking about the video network platform, it was reminding me, it's kind of like early programmatic

Starting point is 00:03:51 in a way. Would that be a good way of summarizing it? Very much. It was all built for scale. Our biggest clients were all on the demand side. So they were those huge media agencies, which I know you're familiar with, the OMDs of the world, all those guys it was personal and it was strategic but it was also very transactional it was for the most part automated self-serve and then we did do some contextual buying as well with them so it scaled nicely we learned a ton and eventually we got bought by this company that had ambitions to scale over the world an amazing set of people funny. I spent my two years after making sure the integration went through, but then immediately after that, I decided to take some time off. I was mildly burned out, and I felt I needed to do that for myself, and I'm glad I did.

Starting point is 00:04:34 It's good. You have to recognize in yourself, too many of us don't get too far on the other end of that, and they can go south or further south quickly so that so hats off to you a lot to be learned out there for entrepreneurs like knowing and understanding how to take care of yourself so would you call would you classify yourself i had these discussions with clearly an entrepreneur clearly a marketer on many levels are you uh are you a technical marketer are you a visual marketer what where's your passion at? You seem like you got a little bit of both. I would say this, I'd probably be more of the technical marketer camp. But like everybody, I think I'm a visual person. I'll start by saying I'm not like a true

Starting point is 00:05:15 CTO. Like my co-founder at Giant is that guy. He gets it. He's what I consider to be a true technologist. That's not me. I'm more of a dreamer, like a big thinker. I like strategy. I try to fill like the gaps in the market and then obviously assemble a good team and push them really hard. So that's what we did. So our whole vision there was just trying to figure out how do we help people scale video? How do we do something different from pre-roll, something more personal and personalized? And we just happened to capture the trends a little bit quicker than a lot of other folks. So we were very fortunate to have our exit in 2014. And obviously, I think the choir did really well, too. So that's great. Awesome. That's cool. We exit there, we take a little break, we dabble in a few things. When did the podcasting start to hit your radar? And you know what,

Starting point is 00:06:06 start to hit your radar? And, you know, what, before we dive hard down the glass box, rabbit hole, talk to me about what you've been seeing, what kind of led to the podcast train for you? Yeah. So I'll say this is a little bit of cliche, but at least in my experience, it ended up being true. I did want to start another business. I know I'm more of an entrepreneur than I am an investor, but it took some time to get there. Like this whole break, for example, it was like five years. So it was a long time in between starting this business and kind of getting started. So essentially what I was doing during that time is investing in all sorts of companies from like CPG to media. The audience has probably heard of some of them, companies like Liquid Death, Hawthorne, the cologne company, Grove Collaborative, Ease, cannabis company, a whole bunch. And while it didn't relate obviously directly to podcasts,

Starting point is 00:06:49 later on it did. And seeing what people did well, what they didn't do well, I just started to get more passionate about getting back in the game. And then it was almost like having a heart to heart with myself. I have a lot of interest. I'm like literally ADHD. And so at a certain point in time, though, I just thought, you know what? I'm a media nerd. That's what I get to get back to. That's always been my sweet spot. And that's where I can add the most value. Let's do this. So in 2020, we essentially just got the band back together. A lot of folks from the giant media team were interested in doing something. It took us about six months to figure out exactly what that was. But multiple members of the founding team wanted to focus on podcasting, which I was passionate about.

Starting point is 00:07:28 But I'll be the first to say not an expert at the time. And the reason why we chose it is just that we thought is a really interesting way to improve the lives of creators, essentially the podcast host, and figure out a way to invest in them, sometimes literally to increase the value of their IP. had a way to invest in them, sometimes literally, to increase the value of their IP. So our whole vision for Glassbox is that we're extremely bullish on the concept of improving IP really quickly through podcasting. We think it's like a foothold or toehold into anything. It's great as a standalone product, but adaptation opportunities, whether it's books, live events, or TV, we really think it's endless. And we're just at the beginning stages of this now. Yeah. You're singing from the playbook.

Starting point is 00:08:09 We're in the choir together, or I don't know if you're preaching, I'm preaching, but I'm amen and in the back, hallelujah. In the good Southern Baptist church, when anybody was really like vibing with what the pastor was saying, want to make them feel good, they go, amen. So I gave you some digital and real amens from the pastor in the soapbox. But it's been fascinating to me with marketing. Everybody is tired of ads. Like everybody's aware more of marketing than they've ever been before.

Starting point is 00:08:41 And they don't want, we're interrupting. marketing than they've ever been before. And they don't want, we're interrupting. And so where podcasting plays for me is in this alternative media world for brands and opportunities for like how you bring content to life in a way that maybe promotes a person, a brand, a product. But it's kind of like the notion Pepsi's, Pepsi will have a TV station one day. Like, like you're seeing this convergence of media and brands and commercialism and all that stuff. And podcasting to me is like at the forefront of like this alternative media opportunity because it has so many arms and legs, because once you start creating content and doing what we're doing right here, the offshoots of that are endless. Like you said, books, other adaptations, but there's just, it is IP.

Starting point is 00:09:30 It truly is. It's a unique piece of content that could be used in different ways, manipulated in different ways, and then turned into alternative forms of media things. So it's really fascinating time that we're in. I'd agree. And just to give you another example, I've mostly been a digital guy. Obviously, that's what I'm passionate about, your classic startups. But I've also dabbled in investing in TV catalogs, and probably the most well known is Doctor. And don't get me wrong, I'm not supervised, but it's a great show.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Who doesn't love Cesar Millan? But the fact of of the matter is it's been almost 15 years since it's been on tv and even with that we've been able to license that old catalog to pluto tv overseas latin america and europe and here in north america with at least right now disney plus so the reason i bring that up is that even though it sounds bombastic impossible almost borderline wrong i really do think podcasting is evergreen and i really think that the staying power is there so with a straight face i'll tell you that i think podcast catalogs will eventually rival tv and music catalogs as well so i think that realization is a new one but people with much bigger checkbooks and bigger brains than i am have started to realize

Starting point is 00:10:44 that really recently. So I'm excited to see where this goes from here. I love that. The Radcast started five years ago, and I always saw it as a media entity. Maybe I had the cheat sheet being a marketer and kind of riding that, starting that train. But we've started the Radcast podcast network. We've got three or four new shows coming under our umbrella. And so I look at it the same way it's like that ip and like it's it and that the more shows you get under the umbrella the more opportunities like i the high tide raises all ships right and so those synergies with

Starting point is 00:11:19 sponsors with content with the interplay of guests and hosts and different things, even if they're not exactly down the same line or vertical, there's just so much there. And I think you saw this trend with COVID and things like that where podcasting went high because a lot of people had maybe more time, and it started to level off a bit. But I think now we're probably just what we've done is we're just kind of back now on that natural growth plane for the media and I like I both like and don't like but that it's cooled a bit with just new players coming in because a lot it takes a lot to build a show it's a lot of work

Starting point is 00:11:59 that's it's just complex and it's easy to get started. It's hard to have longevity. Yeah, it's all things in life. You got to be consistent. And I will tell you, at the risk of annoying you, I was that guy working with like really star creators. Our team and myself, especially just underestimated how many man hours goes into doing it from research to practice, to production, to editing.

Starting point is 00:12:24 It's just like mind blowing. So my hat's off to anybody who does it like a year over year, much less like five years. That's amazing. Yeah, we just hit three. It's going to be like episode 350, somewhere in that range. We do two a week for, and look, I started, I worked for others for 17 years and then started Radical, our ad agency.

Starting point is 00:12:46 I started the Radcast and started really going heavy with my personal brand. Those three things all started really about the same time five years ago, almost to the day, like right here, March, April, May of 2018. And if you put them on an axis of time and growth, they all three are almost identical. The revenue of the agency, the growth, popularity, listenership, and sponsor opportunities of the show, and then the popularity of my personal brand, because we've interplayed all three and leveraged one against the other. And so it, but it takes that consistency.

Starting point is 00:13:25 I had one client and I was recording two podcast weeks, which in some ways made no sense at all. It wasn't like impacting, but people just thought I was freaking crazy. But five years later, they don't. But people have to, but it's still early. And I think people just need to realize the opportunity is there. I agree. I agree. And that's a big part of our vision. So just taking a step back, because a lot of people do ask us, like, what is Glassbox? There's a lot of folks in this space.

Starting point is 00:13:52 People even use like the saturated words sometimes, especially those that aren't involved in media. And I'll just take a step back and just say that we modeled this company essentially almost like a record label, like personal heroes of myself and my co-founder include folks like David Geffen, Moss, and folks like that. So the way we see ourselves and the way we see ourselves operating in the world is that for the most part, we're not building a tech platform from scratch, whether it's a Riverside, a Megaphone, or AdTwist. Instead, we're trying to sign up star creators across multiple thematic genres, comedy, citing culture, business and finance, you name it. And what we try to do is figure out ways to grow their audience where it's helpful. We'll actually make an investment in them to become a minority partner in the whole franchise.

Starting point is 00:14:36 And then, of course, we're also executing on large scale brand partnerships, whether it's like people that just are already spreading the gospel of podcasting like athletic greens and better help but also our former clients at giant which to us surprisingly even though they like the space they don't know a lot about it yet and they need more education than we thought but the good news is that the heinekens and the hondas of the world are not only buying through glass box but they're waking up to the idea that yeah you're right there is a lot of data and third-party analytics i can gather from podcasting. It should complement my social media and video investment,

Starting point is 00:15:10 which is obviously already long since established. So we're getting there. We just think we entered this market as a company maybe more soon than we did with Giant and video. We honestly thought we were going to recreate that whole experience, but we found out actually for the biggest brands in the world, brand awareness, things like that, we're evangelists and we're happy to put on that hat. We think we're well equipped to do that and we're well on our way

Starting point is 00:15:32 towards accomplishing that. It's so interesting, fascinating, and talking with David Segura, CEO and founder of Glassbox Media, glassxmedia.com. So a lot to unpack there with the platform. I have a lot of questions as a podcast producer, owner, et cetera, and trying to, with the best interest of the listenership, it's not all selfish here, folks. We're thinking about you. But in all seriousness, David, like how does when when a show when you identify a show or you're

Starting point is 00:16:08 adding do you guys own the ip or does the originator of the show on the ip are you just sharing profits or are you taking ownership of the entire ip of the show great question and there's no perfect answer in terms of like how do you structure it versus how you don't but I'll just tell you at a high level what we do. Part of the reason we've been able to grow so quickly, like literally January 2021 is when we really started focusing on podcasting. We've gone from obviously having zero podcasts with zero monthly listeners to having just under 80 under exclusive multi-year contract. And we collectively reached just under 12 million monthly listeners. So it's scaled up pretty nicely. The way we've organized the business is that we're targeting folks that already have a passion, have been doing this maybe for years in most cases,

Starting point is 00:16:53 and have an audience. Not always, but typically of at least 150,000 listeners or downloads every single month. In some cases, much more than that, like almost 2 million with Chris Fitton and Sleep Cove. But to get to the point, what we're typically doing is we are actually offering a revenue share, but the big catch in a positive way is that we're giving you the greater of that revenue share or a minimum guarantee. And the reason we're doing that is that we have to put our money where our mouth is. If you're independent, you enjoy that, you're your own boss, you're in control of your editorial vision. If you want to take on your own boss you're in control of your editorial vision if you want to take on a partner it's a risk of some sort and so to justify that we want

Starting point is 00:17:31 to show you that we're going to be able to accelerate your earnings and at the same time respect and leave you in control of your editorial vision so that's like the core of the business the complement to that and to tackle the ip question that's literally top concern for every single creator. That what you just jumped to immediately is like what they're most concerned about. And it's straightforward, but their biggest anxiety is that they're going to lose control somehow. So the way we structure our deals is they're twofold. We have our exclusive multi-year agreements that are rev shares with MGs. That doesn't involve any IP participation.

Starting point is 00:18:02 But we also offer typically typically, a development deal, which is this entertainment lingo, of course, for an investment. And we try to structure it so that we give you X dollars, and that basically entitles us to anywhere from 5 to as much as 30% stake. We try to keep things aligned. We want you to be incentivized. We also don't want to alter the direction of the show, but we want a mutual incentive to work together to develop opportunities,

Starting point is 00:18:27 whether it's in book publishing, live events, TV, or all the above. And there's a risk here. So in other words, it's creator-friendly, clearly, to be in the minority position, but some of our investors have rightly been critical, at least to some extent. And they've said stuff like like when push comes to shove, if you're the minority partner, let's say that you zealously argue that they should do something or not do something. You ultimately can't make them if you're a minority partner. They're right. But our bet here is that running a portfolio with many podcasters is going to be over the long term financially a lot more valuable than pretending we have the best taste and that we should do

Starting point is 00:19:05 everything from the ground up and with less shows. That's our vision and that's why we're comfortable taking the risk and trusting creators and ultimately leaving them in control. Really interesting there. And hats off to you for seeing that vision and what would work with ultimately what makes it all run, which is the creators and the shows themselves. Congrats there. Thank you. And I can understand the risk side of it with the investors, too. I totally kind of see both. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:31 But let's explain a little bit, get underneath what Glassbox is and what it isn't. I think you've described what it is. But when people think about distribution of shows now today, and let's focus on audio just for the sake of simplicity. You've got all the distribution channels, Apple podcast being probably number one or number two, you've got Google's, you've got iHeartRadio, you've got all the Spotify, obviously. So this is where shows get distributed, listening to, and depending on the audience and depending on whatever apps people have on their phone or computers or whatever for listening.

Starting point is 00:20:10 Glassbox is not some platforms try to keep all the listens and watches happening on their platform. I'm not hearing that from you. their platform. I'm not hearing that from you. What I'm hearing from you is you're fine with it being seen and viewed and getting as much distribution on all those channels as much as possible. It's more everything around it, the ads, the sponsors, the insert service here. Am I understanding that correctly? You're exactly correct. And it's a deliberate choice of the team made, including myself, but also we tried to pattern match with other industries and where we think they're going but one comment i'll make that i'm sure you know is that podcast discovery is hella hard that still is a central issue i think of the whole industry and i've met a lot of really talented people whether they're producers or hosts

Starting point is 00:20:58 that know they're going to produce a kick-ass show they know they're going to do a good job and so they rightly assume that they're going to blow it out in terms of audience. But what they find out is that, no, maybe not, actually. It's very difficult. It takes years of work, some luck, momentum, you name it. So we decided that we wanted to be in the content game, but we wanted to basically piggyback off existing distribution. And it's exactly in those places you talked about. It's on iHeart, it's on Apple, it's on Spotify. So we signed someone up. I mean, to give you an example,

Starting point is 00:21:27 we signed a show up called Practical Stoicism with Tanner Campbell. Tanner's great. The show's about philosophy, but the message within the message is essentially that it appeals for whatever reason, mostly to young men. That's 90% of the audience

Starting point is 00:21:39 that want to figure out ways to level up, whether it's their personal life or their career, and apply these lessons of stoicism to that. Obviously, probably generously inspired by Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic Show as well. So starting with $200,000, which is material, we were able to grow that to almost triple that in a period of just three months.

Starting point is 00:21:57 So we make a deliberate decision that we're going to get in business with folks that have got some traction, have a relationship with the audience, and then we'll think of ways to make that more scalable, both on the marketing and modernization side. And that's the business decision we've made. We're seeing now, though, that other industries are exploring this as well. As an example, Bob Iger at Disney, now that he's back there, he was the first to admit that, look, in a perfect world, all our Disney IP, which he argues is the best in the world, would just stay here and use it.

Starting point is 00:22:26 We'll use it to grow Disney Plus and maybe the other properties they own. What they've figured out now, and he's very tactful, he's very professional, a Fortune 500 CEO about it. But what he's really saying is that if someone wants to overpay for something and license it for Peacock maybe or Paramount Plus, we'll do it. In other words, our content should live wherever we can get the highest return for ourselves and shareholders. And I think it just goes back to that classic marketing conundrum. Do you want to like use your IP to like basically grow this and only this? Or in some cases, does it make sense to propagate that in multiple places and take in the licensing fees or the additional audience which converts into revenue? We've made our choice. And so we very much believe in the fragmented model, the distributed model. And that's why when investors

Starting point is 00:23:08 tell us rightly, maybe we should explore building a listening app, et cetera. I'm like, we could. Maybe we can gather some really interesting audience data. But from a consumption standpoint, a revenue driver, it's not the strategy. We want to piggyback off of the existing distribution. And that's elsewhere. I'm going to be real transparent right the existing distribution, and that's elsewhere. I'm going to be real transparent right here. David, the reason I wanted you on the show once your team had reached out was of what you just said. I think it's smart. I think it's the way to go.

Starting point is 00:23:42 I think these walled gardens that seem to make sense don't make sense for how the audience listens. It's scattered. And so why not tap into all that audience to build the IP? Because look, for a show to grow, more sponsors, more things, it needs more audience. And if you put it behind a walled garden, it's just limiting the opportunity, period. I think it's brilliant, and I think it's the smart way to be doing it.

Starting point is 00:24:02 You don't need me to tell you that. But as a creator and a podcast host, that's the way it's got to be. It just would make no sense. See these guys, like a couple of like peers and things like that. They go, I'm going to go over here on whatever it is because they get lured by some of these platforms. I won't name any of them. I'm not trying to badmouth like one person or platform. But I'm just like, dude, why are you going to cut your legs off? You're just going to you're alienating the audience that you've built, whatever it is.

Starting point is 00:24:31 You think they're going to follow you. They're not all going to fall. Maybe 10 percent will. And you have to start all over again. And so it's fascinating to me. I'd agree. And I think this trend will only accelerate because the thing that's happening behind the scenes is that as awesome as podcasting is, it's growing week over week, year over year. A big driver is also radio. Radio is still huge. It's almost a $40 billion a year industry.

Starting point is 00:24:54 And obviously that slowly atrophies when it comes to podcasting, as it should. But those advertisers, they want performance. They need it immediately. Hence the promo codes and everything like that. We love those advertisers. We're not trying to be disrespectful in any way, but I'll say that increasingly, the Johnson & Johnson's, the Heineken's, the Peloton's of the world,

Starting point is 00:25:14 those are the folks that are gonna dominate. And they're very preoccupied with reach. So even if you have a good incentive, financial or otherwise, to regulate your distribution to one simple listening platform, it's gonna hurt you in terms of the way the world is going. Because once they say yes to you, they say yes on everything. They want your back catalog, they want your current episodes,

Starting point is 00:25:33 and they want to maximize reach. So if you just have your audience or worse, you've literally just have your revenue opportunity. Bingo, man. And you started to go real close i'm gonna i'm gonna take you one step further is what people are realizing is and it drove me crazy like i we get approached with we have four title sponsors i do all live reads we have no other ads overlaid all individually negotiated and i only do brand to bad deals. What I mean by that? I do know we want to do your show for two weeks and we want to run this. We'll put a code if we sell something.

Starting point is 00:26:11 And look, they want the podcast to generate something that marketing can't do, which is someone hearing an ad one time and taking an action. Come on, man. If it worked that way, it would be too simple. You got to build brand and you need reach and frequency. And that's where I want to see more of the bigger brands come in

Starting point is 00:26:31 to seeing the exposure opportunity. And look, we all know impressions aren't all created equal, but I can tell you this, a two minute live read, which is where sometimes I go to, because I just get into whatever we're talking about, and I build it into the storyline. The impact of that versus your 30 second pre-recorded whatever, I would put it at 100x the impression level and what it does. And that doesn't mean that my audience goes and buys X product, but it's the level of the authenticity, and it's the frequency, and there's just not all impressions are created equal. I'd agree with that. And the market's evolving. Like you're obviously in a great position. If brands will embrace that, they obviously believe in your show. So they're willing

Starting point is 00:27:14 to do it. But the experience for most podcasters is a little different and they're going to be in that test bucket. In other words, anywhere from one X to three X, that's what they're going to test. And on the basis of that quick test, they're literally going to get a renewal for the rest of the year or they're not. So it's crazy, but that's usually the model. The one nice thing that we're pushing back on, and I think other people are too, to be fair, is that we've come to recognize in most cases we can't get them to switch off that model. That's fine. But what we do tell them is that we're going to serve the spots dynamically. model that's fine but what we do tell them is that we're gonna serve the spots dynamically so to clarify it's not gonna be like randomly in mid sentence or

Starting point is 00:27:47 anything but we do pre-record the host read ads so that when let's say sponsorship is over whether it's one month or 12 months we reserve the right then at that point to maybe switch out a Heineken for a Budweiser and that's one of the ways that we're able to keep things evergreen and keep that revenue potential going we've had some pushback but that's because of the ways that we're able to keep things evergreen and keep that revenue potential going. We've had some pushback, but that's because I think to your point about reach and frequency, I think they know that. But they know that even if they decide not to move forward with you, if something is baked in or there forever, they're probably going to get a few more hits on that. And then that might actually serve their needs.

Starting point is 00:28:23 But it may not serve the podcast or the audience's needs. So we're trying to balance that. And to be fair, we found that most brands, they're willing to play ball, media agencies too. They just want to be successful. So if you can convince them, they're willing to try things at scale. Yep. And the secret sauce is in the middle, like the big brands, they want that, the dynamic, they want all that. The ones at the bottom probably can't afford it. The middle brands, people, brands that are new, but already successful and have seen the success they want all that the ones at the bottom probably can't afford it the middle brands people brands that are new but already successful and have seen the success they can have a podcast they'll play a little bit of a longer game and understand some of the values of the impressions

Starting point is 00:28:55 over just pure volume and i'm gonna look we i think we have 130 40 000 downloads a month or something like that so we're up there, but it's, you've got, I don't know. Mine's a big authenticity thing. I think the next phase for you guys, which is what I've done is I get a lot of leverage because my personal brand, I'm verified on every platform. I have a million followers across all channels. So when you buy the show, you buy me. And so it's leveraging all of those things and getting your creators behind that would be a up shoot i'm sure and that's what folks want at the end of the day whether it's

Starting point is 00:29:30 a personal endorsement or not it is like when you agree to select something and you put it on the show people do read into that and so i think the brands just to be fair getting a great deal so that's why we're going after some of these new folks that we haven't signed yet, but knock on wood, we do. ConAgra folks like that, I think they get it. They understand that it's a special relationship and it's a great way to promote whatever they're trying to do, whether it's Annie's Popcorn or Slim Jim. Yeah. But your platform makes a lot of sense for people that have a good product or they're a good show but maybe they're not the marketing acumen is that not there and you're willing to invest in it again i read through it and once i understood it i'm like this is a no-brainer if you're like a show and you got a

Starting point is 00:30:16 little traction but you just need some ammunition behind you this just makes a lot of sense for the that sweet spot of shows and that and i think that's a good number because it's just a messy world out there and a lot of creators spend a lot of time doing things and they love the art of the craft but this stuff isn't is natural to them and so there's a lot of great shows out there that don't get the following that they should i think that's exactly it and in my experience most people have the chops to do it if they needed to. They're just not staffed to like really execute it. So most of the creators we've talked to have been doing sporadic, let's say host red ads with like shows that they respect and they're thematically relevant. But inevitably, there's only so much time for that it falls off and it's not consistent. So one of the things that we do is we make sure to not only continue that for them, but we also record trailers and then we swap those in an automated way. We basically track very carefully what they contribute versus what other people contribute, how much of those listens basically turn into either downloads or subscriptions to the RSS feed. And then the crazy part that blows people's minds is that we literally trade millions of impressions every single month with we jokingly call frenemies. So whether it's Malcolm Gladwell's Pushkin Media or Cast Media in LA,

Starting point is 00:31:30 we're doing deals where literally no money is changing hands, but literally we're mutually lifting each other's boat and increasing revenue simply by swapping relevant audience. And I think it works out really well for us. So let's give some value out there to our listeners. We have a good number of people that have started or have podcasts. And obviously, first selection would be let's get on Glassbox Media or at least talk to you, see if it's the right fit. But how can podcasters out there promote their show better? How can they get, obviously, some of the tools and technologies you

Starting point is 00:32:06 guys have but what are the any like at-home tactics for people that have a show they're trying to get some popularity any things in your checklist sure what i'd recommend for most people is to like go out and identify like-minded hosts that you think you like and you respect that are relevant and if you start basically swapping host reads for each other that are sincere and enthusiastic in nature, that'll help. The other thing too is to create trailers. And what they could do in theory is automate some of these swaps. So if you have, let's say, a mid-roll with three ad breaks on that, probably not all of them are sold out between host read ads and programmatic.

Starting point is 00:32:45 Instead, what you'll do is just use some of that to basically swap with other people. And if you want to track conversions, what we use internally is Chartable, which was recently acquired by Spotify. And we're able to track in real time how well these spots are actually performing. So we treat them like marketing meets advertising. No money changes hands, but it's really critical to growing the audience and then not everybody has the capacity or time but pr one of the things that we'll do is leverage not only our pr team but we'll even reach out to apple spotify and while sometimes we don't get a response that's the nature of the business on a very regular basis we've been able to get some of our podcasts featured as top category, like in philosophy,

Starting point is 00:33:25 society and culture, you name it. Independent podcasters, I think, can do that, too. It's just difficult because at the end of the day, it's easier for them sometimes to build a relationship with a company that works with multiple podcasts for them to choose from. But ultimately, I will say I know a lot of indies get routinely selected for things like that. And if they're just after it, they believe in their show. When it hits, it'll hit. So I think that's another tactical way of creating value for yourself. I love that. I love the shared shows.

Starting point is 00:33:51 I've dabbled in that and I'm doing a mental check, like I need that more because I know I've met a lot. When you're in the business, you just start to meet the same people. Like they're like-minded or doing shows or whatever.

Starting point is 00:34:02 It seems to gravitate. You're in the same spaces and all that. And it tends to also bring like the listeners tend to always to somewhat gravitate to the audiences. So that makes a lot of sense. That's good. That's good tactical advice. David, what's the process for people learning more,

Starting point is 00:34:19 interested in the platform or just in general? Yeah, apart from visiting us at glassboxmedia.com or on social media, LinkedIn or Instagram, you can just send us an email directly, whether it's me at David at Glassbox Media or Matthew at Glassbox Media. He's our director out in Nashville. Even though we're in Soho, New York, he's out of Nashville, former A&R guy, which I think actually is an incredible skill set fit. And he goes out and identifies amazing podcasters with his team. They're constantly like listening, doing their homework. But obviously, a lot of people reach out to us, too. And what we find is that even if we feel like it may not make sense for us to enter into

Starting point is 00:34:58 a relationship, and one where we financially guarantee things to you, we could still potentially work with you as a marketer, figuring out swaps and different ways to like promote each other's shows. And more importantly, keep the lines open. And if a show does cross into that territory where it goes from a very kind of intriguing like passion project to, oh, holy shit, overnight, I have a real business here. Then we're happy to step in and really help and accelerate that. That's awesome, man. I really like your demeanor and personality. I think it makes it, I don't

Starting point is 00:35:30 know, you deal with a lot of CEOs, founders that have success like you. I don't know, there's just a really good energy from you. And I think it's going to resonate with our listeners. So I really appreciate you coming on, David. I'm just happy to be here. And I'm glad that comes across because part of the reason I'm an entrepreneur, I'm just a curious person and I love learning. And I'm just happy to be here and I'm glad that comes across because part of the reason I'm an entrepreneur, I'm just a curious person and I love learning and I'm continuously learning from literally our team, but also the podcasters themselves. So it just makes for just an awesome experience for everybody. That's great. Hey, guys, you're going to find us the Radcast.com. Search for Glassbox Media.

Starting point is 00:35:59 You'll find all the highlight clips from today and the full episode, as well as the 10 minute short episode for all you AD people out there like me. We got all of it. David Segura, CEO, founder of Glassbox Media. You know where I'm at, Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms. Just Google me. I'll come up and you'll learn about marketing, podcasting, and who knows what else. We'll see you next time on the Radcast. to listen or watch full episodes visit us on the web at the radcast.com or follow us on social media at our instagram account the.rad.cast or at ryan alford stay radical

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Monetizing and Increasing the Intellectual Property of Your Podcast with David Segura

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.