The Chaser Report - How To Make Podcasts That Aren’t Extremely Boring (Live from SXSW Sydney)

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Podcats gurus Rosie Waterland (Just The Gist), Glen James (money money money) and Rachel Corbett (Nova's Head of Podcasts) join Dom in a chat from SXSW Sydney last month about how to hook and keep listeners through the power of oversharing, respecting your listeners, and making things genuinely fun.Recorded live at SXSW Sydney on October 15, 2025.Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to a special edition of The Chaser Report. Very special indeed. This is a live recording of the Chaser Report at South by Southwest Sydney a few weeks ago. They got in touch and asked me to put to you to the recession at the last minute. Given that you did one last year without me because I was sick and you were overseas, I thought, what a perfect opportunity to do the podcast without Charles.

So I thought, what do I want to know the answer to? And the question was, how do you make a podcast that isn't extremely boring? Now, I asserted that we were experts at that in the Chaser Report. Oh, yeah. And I'd like to think our listener stats suggest that either that we're good at that or that we've managed to accumulate a bunch of people with low standards. Well, we did a survey a few months ago. I think it was just a sort of general listener call out.

It was. And what I found interesting was I don't think people actually listen that much. They like to have it on in the background. Yep. But like it's more about just it being there as sort of wallpaper. Sure. We're very good wallpaper. We're very good wallpaper.

Yeah, absolutely. So on stage I have three people who've done excellent things in podcasting. Some might say more than us. Rosie Waterland from Just the Gist, which has usually been, which has recently been magnificently resurrected. Go and subscribe to that. Glenn James of the Money, Money, Money podcast, who has a very successful business doing finance podcasts

that are actually fun to listen to. And Rachel Corbett, formerly head of podcasts at Mamma Mia, and now head of the Nova Podcast Network, where this podcast actually started a long time ago. So the three of them are on stage and me essentially just trying to learn from them and surreptitiously take notes. So we recorded the whole thing. Go and enjoy this.

And please don't go and start a podcast after you hear it because, frankly, there are already too many. Well, a very warm welcome to this session at South by Southwest, Sydney. We are recording live for potentially several podcasts, first of which is The Chaser Report, which is usually two increasingly old men rabbiting on about the news. But today is a special episode called The Chaser Report Presents How to Make Podcasts that aren't extremely boring. And because our podcast, frankly, often is extremely boring, as particularly as we get older and grumpier about the world,

I thought we'd invite three experts in making podcasts excellent. My name's Dom Knight, by the way, if I haven't met you. Thank you so much for coming out. Rosie Wardland, let's start with her. She is one of the funniest writers, commentators, people in Australia. Her podcast is just the gist. It's just been resurrected after several years in corporate jail in a way. We can talk about that.

We'll talk about what Rosie's versions are, which are coming out. But many people will know Rosie because she somehow made The Bachelor incredibly entertaining back doing her column for Mum Mea. That's when I first met her. And since then, the stream of amazing content has not stopped at all. Did you meet your wife on The Bachelor as well? No. Wow, that would have been amazing to be a contested on The Bachelor. But anyway, so we also have with us, Rachel Corbett,

who is the head of networks at, head of, what is it, sorry, head of network director. Sorry, I've got it here. I know, I know, I know. It's a boring title. She is, well, she was head of podcast. She's now network director at Nova Podcasts, but has done a million other things, including founding PodSchool, making her one of Australia's leading experts in teaching people how to do podcasts.

PodSchool is also a podcast, which you can absolutely listen to, subscribe to it right now haven't already and she has done I think 15 or so podcasts me and my tiny human she's doing at the moment to chronicle her journey with motherhood and essentially she's the guru on making podcasts excellent and also runs a podcast network so we'll get some pro tips from her and finally Glenn James whose podcast is money money money and he brilliantly manages to make money not extremely boring so a fantastic panel of experts here today will take your questions at the end end. But let's start with you, Glenn. Let's talk about, just give us the brief overview of your podcast and particularly how you came to make it. How did you come to podcasting? Yeah, so I was a financial

advisor for, I think, 15 years and I always wanted to make this really short and then proceed to make a long story. I only got a few minutes. Yeah. It's a podcast. That's right. In school, I always wanted to have a business, be a radio presenter, and I loved photography and IT. They were like my subjects. Fast forward, I'm doing that now. I was sick of telling people that would come into my office, oh, we want financial advice. I'm like, no, you don't need financial advice. You need to spend less than what you earn.

Get a frigging budget. Save some money, then come back and get some advice. And I was sick of doing that over and over again. And in the background, I was getting bored of being a financial advisor. In the background, I wanted to always have an online business. And I would tell people, you can do my online course, it's $100 or you can pay me $5,000. I don't care. I still make money, pick one.

And then I thought, stuff it. I created a podcast called Sort Your Money Out. And that sucked, so I killed it. And then I re kind of thought, I need to, what works? and that's the FM radio vibe where you've got two idiot guys and a woman who's like that's the formula right so when we started my millennial money it was me the money guy John the property guy and Aaron who was a lawyer not even in property and I just copied FM radio and we started in the comedy section because I wanted to attract people who might open their podcast player

because no one knew what a podcast was in 2017-18 and they're like oh I'm on the train I want to listen to something I wanted the listeners who wouldn't automatically go to the business section who would go to the comedy section and that's where because we were just you know riffing and having fun and not being too serious and it really started to take off and then I sold my financial advice business really scary had all this money in the bank and didn't have a job and I just went all in online and now I've got the I think there's seven or eight podcasts that we produce that said you've got an amazing voice for FM radio what do you do yeah can you say icy cold cancer coke very very good now Rach you've had one of the longest journeys with podcasting of anybody in

Australia. Yeah. Well, I started in radio originally back in like 2001 and worked as a on like a host on air for 12 years. And then when my last sort of full-time contract wrapped up, I moved into podcast. It was about 2013 because I was like, oh, I have all these skills. There's this great thing. I don't have to get a job to do it. I can just do it myself. It felt so natural to move into. And everybody in the industry around me was so, oh, that's so sad. You can't get it. at another radio job, what are you doing? And to be fair, the radio industry thought that about podcasting for a long time. Like self-publishing a book.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, it's so cute that you're doing that. And so I then started to teach radio and podcasting at afters. I was developing courses for them. And then I was like, why don't I just do this for myself? So I built pod school. And then interestingly, the kind of industry turned around and started to take notice. Mama Mia was the first place to contact me to sort of say,

hey we want to really professionalize our podcast department would you come in and be our head of podcast and so I did that for three years there and then moved on to do it again at Nova so it was really interesting it's like 2017 I sort of looked around and when people were looking for head of podcast wasn't a thing here in Australia and at that time I sort of ended up being the only expert in the space and people like how did you know I'm like I didn't know this was going to happen like I just did what I naturally had the skills to do and then all of a sudden And it became a big thing. So, yeah.

And you have one of the rare skills, which I can't do at all, which is having a podcast just with you talking. Oh, yeah. It's really interesting and entertaining. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how you do that, but that's maybe a tip of people might want to get because I was listening some of your podcasts on the way in.

Yeah, they're just really bite-sized, but really succinct. And, yeah, you somehow make it. I appreciate that. I would say the radio sensibility is a very good thing to like, because then in a podcast, you have all the time in the world, you shouldn't use all the time in the world. Like, you should be disciplined, you know? Yeah, which is why, I mean, PodSchool is so useful because it answers the questions that everyone has.

And we use a lot of Rachel's resources. Well, I should admit at the University of Sydney where I take podcasting as well. Some of Rachel's articles make it up, and we share them with our students because they're just so expert. Rachel's done it all. She solved it all for herself. So we're very lucky to have her here.

I appreciate that, Dom. Sorry? I appreciate that. No, not at all. We appreciate stealing your stuff and charging students for it. It's capitalism, baby. I'm not going to tell you what our students pay per semester. Now, Rosie, you, as we mentioned, started life writing and got known for making that.

How did you move to podcasting? Well, yeah, I was at Mama Mia also. And I remember when a friend of mine who produces on my podcast now, Kate Lever, she brought up the concept of a podcast to the team and everyone was just like, what? Like, what is that? And she sort of very much cobbled something together before she moved to the UK.

And I think that's when they brought you in and were like, we have this thing that we don't know what it is. But yeah, I was writing at Mamma Mia. I had gone to drama school for three. I had a performing arts degree and then I had a creative writing degree. so I had studied for six years and I was qualified to be a waitress and yeah then I got plucked out of nowhere started working at Mamma Mia and yes did Bachelor Recaps and

invented the genre at least here in Australia it wasn't a big thing until you yeah yeah well they went very I mean bachelor recaps got me a book deal man like I'm not it still gets brought up in every bio that's ever given about me and I don't forget it at all. They were exceptional. You taught the nation to laugh at Oshah Ginsburg, and even harder. You taught Oshed Innsberg to love us. We love him.

Osh is actually here today. No, Osh is a beautiful man. Speaking of me and your wife on The Bachelor, though, she actually did. She was, yeah, one of the house of us. But anyway, I, the first podcast I ever listened to was Karina Longworth's. You must remember this extended series on Charles Manson,

which I loved. And then, to be honest, I did a little bit of podcasts at Mamma Mia before I left, just appeared on some of the ones they were developing. And then a listener at the time was podcast one was launching in Australia. And I'm pretty sure they just went around to a bunch of different agencies to ask if any talent had podcast ideas. And they came to my agency and I pitched them, mum says my memoir is a lie, because I'd written a book about my very tumultuous, difficult

childhood with my parents who were addicts, and when my mum read it, she insisted I made it all up. And having worked at Mama Mia, I saw content in that. Think what you will about women's websites in the mid-2000s, but they teach you what's compelling content. And so, yeah, I pitched that idea to them they liked it and mum says went crazy nuts big and um then they said to me after that was done do you have any other ideas and i um came to them with just the gist and we should say yeah the rosy's memoir the anti-cool girl is an extraordinary read which you can be downloading as we speak but but also it's amazing how important titles are and this is something i wanted to talk about very briefly because i cannot stress enough how important titles are now as the chaser report

very lazy just leans on and a now nearly extinct comedy brand from about 20 years ago but I mean all three of the people on the stage are clearly brilliant at titles who would not want to listen to Mum says my memoir is a lie I mean that is just a compelling pitch

whereas you know the memoir experience or I don't know else you'd call it but it just stands out it jumps at you Glenn you recently renamed your podcast to Money Money Money which is just fantastic Yeah. And, well, I'm not allowed to talk too publicly at all about legal issues. However, I, we started My Millennial Money, and that was a shower thought, because at the time in 2018, Millennial was like, how do we approach, and that was the word. So I'm like, oh, money, my, my millennial money, Triple M, and our voice. Yeah, our voiceover guy, we used to have this tag. You're listening to Triple M with less foo fighters or, no, not that triple m and so it just worked and then a few years ago I'm like oh millennial it is dead

so chuggy now you're oh but if i if i was like so yeah we moved and then I had to move again within a matter of six months and if you own a copyright in Australia it doesn't mean much at all I'll let it that out in post and yeah so I just thought in the whole rebranding I wanted to keep the MMM because our listeners, we could call it M3. So it just kind of money, money, money. It was a rush thought. But it sort of sounds fun too. I don't know what it is about that,

but maybe it's the song. I'm not allowed to talk about that. But also, I can imagine thinking back to when you started, my millennial money, if I was a sponsor looking to reach a market segment, if I was from a bank or a neo-bank or something like that wanting to get 20-something, things. My eyes would light up and I would sponsor you. And there wasn't really, I think we were the first personal finance podcast that went big in Australia for Aussies by Aussies. And it was just right place, right time, right thing. And someone said to me the other day, I'm like, yeah, maybe. They said,

well, no, it actually still had to be okay and good to keep going. Yeah, absolutely. But look, it's we're here now I just be myself and I want to every time I pick up a microphone and I share this before we started I just pretend I'm sitting around with a group of people I'm not talking to people I'm talking with people I always want to make sure I can do at least two of three things give practical advice give valuable help and have fun and if I can do two of those three things sometimes I scrape the barrel and just have fun um It's a success for me. And Rach, you must be pitch titles all the time.

And there are seven million or so podcasts out there. I think something like four of which, four million of which are actually currently updating. But, I mean, how important are titles to actually stand out in the field and what makes a good one? I think they're really important because the first thing that somebody sees of your work,

that and the logo, then if they're sort of like, oh, that sounds interesting, they might move to your description and go, okay, that sounds interesting. interesting then they might go to your episode and say oh which of these episodes do I want to check out so it's really you know the despite us all saying like don't judge a book by its cover we do we you know we judge a podcast by its artwork and its title and I think it's about getting the balance right of search versus creativity like you don't want to be leaning so heavily on the search

aspects that you remove all aspect of the creativity you know because there are other things that you can do when you're you know using your description and things to to kind of put the stuff that you need, keyword-wise, in that bit. But I think the title, you need to get the tone of what you're trying to convey. You know, it's like, me and my tiny human, I could have called it my solo mum journey. Yeah. You know, my life is a solo mum. But it's like, me and my tiny human, you've only got like five words.

You haven't got a lot of space. But that makes it curious. Yeah. And it's a bit like, it's got a bit of tone, you know? Yeah. Because it's like, that's how I would communicate about me and my kid. It's not serious. It's not me and my daughter.

E plus one. Or even more like esoteric, like walking through life together. Exactly, exactly, you know. Holding hands. That's it, you know. Like, I really think it's important. And look, if that sort of vibe is the vibe of your show, then that's fine for that to be the tone of your title.

But I do think it's getting that balance of creativity and search. But the creativity and the tone is the most important thing in the title because there's plenty of other places that you can make keywords do the work for you, you know? So, Rosie, you had a big hit with the memoir podcast. You, obviously they wanted you to follow it up with something else. How did you come up with Just the Gist as a concept for a show? Because it's so endlessly repeatable, unlike the memoir one. You can do it forever if you want to.

Yeah, well, obviously, Mum Says, was designed to be just a standalone podcast, as 22 chapters, 22 episodes. But just the gist I was actually developing for a while. It was on the list that I originally pitched a podcast one. in that first meeting, but it was called something else. I knew that I wanted to do stories, like the podcasts I love. Like, you know, I mentioned Karina Longworth's 10-An-episode series on Charles Manson was the first thing I ever listened to.

And then I got really into Your Wrong About, which went into incredibly detailed breakdowns of, you know, cultural moments from recent history. I was really into those kinds of deep-dive podcasts. But, you know, I always call my three years at Mamma Mia as another three years of university. You know, I was a classically trained actor, then a classically trained writer. And then I went to the place that was like, take all that artistic skill and we're going to teach you how to sell it, which was invaluable for me to learn. So I understood that I wanted to tell stories.

I'd written two memoirs by the time I was 30 so I was tapped out like I was insufferable in that way and tapped out so I wanted to tell other stories and I thought well my older sister Riannan is a single mom she had three kids at that point and I would try to tell her cool stuff

I'd been listening to on podcasts I'd tell her to listen and she didn't have time she didn't have time to listen to that kind of she's not listening to a 10 one hour episodes on one topic. She also, you know, was, she left school at the end of year nine, so she's not traditionally educated, but she's incredibly smart and incredibly curious. And she wanted to know this cool stuff and access this cool stuff. So I wanted to be able to tell the stories that I

was listening to on podcasts that were the trend at that time, stuff like serial as well. That was so long and detailed. But I wanted it to be, I wanted there to be no barrier of entry for people like my sister. I wanted, the sort of ethos and the motto of what I was developing before it even had a name was, what would Riannon have time to listen to? Like, what would keep her hooked in, again, which is what I learned at Mamma Mia, like, what headline would hook people in, what, you know, caption would hook people in, what, you know, and so I think Rachel's so right, it is, you have to balance your creativity and your wants and desires in that way, but in a very practical sense you have to balance that with what people will listen to and what will sell and what

will get it out there and so I went through a bunch of different iterations but eventually I was like I just want to give my sister just the gist of this and I was like Bing bang boom here you go yeah which brings us on to the next thing that I want to ask about which is story selection and I think this is really key to making podcasts good and making them enduring so looking at Rosie's feed in the resurrected just the gist long story quick motto I think you'd agree Rosie is own your feed any podcast deal that you do just make sure you can change your publishers own your RSS feed own your master recordings own your IP yeah it's a very good lesson just make sure you own it all Rosie's doing a whole session about that tomorrow but that I agree and I'll share a war

story with you after but it's a dance because if if you've just got started and you're nobody quite unquote and someone from network sees some potential you might not have that leverage but I think it's important to put it on the table first. But if something exists, they shouldn't even ask. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah. It's a whole other thing, but it means podcasts get caught in limbo and no one can make any minute out of them.

But I mean, I was listening yesterday to Rosie's episode. She knows what's coming. The woman who fell in love with a dolphin. I mean, who would not want to hear that story? But the great thing for me about Just the Gist is A, that there's heaps of research. So the person telling the story knows a lot of things, which means they know enough. to answer questions

that the listener might have and the genius also was putting someone in that position so you have a co-host or co-hosts there was a beautiful hot mess of three co-hosts in the dolphin episode because you want an audience to laugh at all the inappropriate things that happened

but you want to know, hang on how does the dolphin get between levels oh there's a lift in the house so the dolphin goes up and down it was a whole house an aquarium even yeah it was an amazing activation South Byer style

but so having that dynamic of what podcast scholars call a chumcast where there's it sounds like people chatting around a table who are friends you feel like you're a friend and that makes that connection we'll get on about a little bit later but story selection i think is so important how do you pick rosy what uh which stories to tell the gist of um well very early on i realized we needed to something an elevator pitch succinct like pretty succinctly in the first 30 seconds of each episode. And so I said, we should start saying, like, we give you just the gist of stories that will make you sound impressive at a dinner

party. And so that's kind of how I pick the stories. I mean, I'm a performer. I'm a narcissist in that way. I'm mostly right now, but I miss the... Whenever I write, I imagine myself performing the writing that I am doing. And so I'm the person who at dinner parties loves to tell you, oh my God, I saw this crazy podcast, or I heard this crazy,

or I watched this crazy documentary, I listened to this crazy thing, and I will tell that at a dinner party. So I essentially pick the stories that I would want to tell my friends at a dinner party, and I like to tell it in a way that it is not just a one-way presentation. So that's why I will have a co-host, like we call them professional gistners, like instead of listeners. So I'll have a couple, one or two, or sometimes. times three if I want big laughs, to listen and they can jump in and ask like you would

a dinner party. But the point is there, though, because we're talking about how not to have extremely boring podcast content. It takes a lot of preparation to sound like something is off the cuff. You can't just try to remember a story and sit there and then tell it. Like, I will do between 30 and 40 hours of research for each story that I tell. And then it takes a lot of skill to really decide, well, what's important for the listener to know here, the gistner, to know here. Because often, especially in this, in podcasting, this is a problem I find in a lot of podcasts I listen to.

It can't always be what's exclusively interesting to the podcaster to tell. It needs to be what the audience will find interesting and what the audience needs to know and that often means killing your darlings about there are certain things you really want to put in but it's just not worth the time it's not it's going to slow the pace or whatever it may be so it really was just I pick things that I would tell at a dinner party

and that I hope other people will listen to and go and retail at their own. Rosie how often are you publishing if it's taking a week of time to prep like do you have a weekly cadence or a fortnightly well it's on the go so i'll do i'll be doing a bunch at once so it'll be like something bigger on the backburner yeah listening to audiobooks watching documentary just consuming everything i can about a thing because like dom said questions come up and i answer and um but at the moment we're doing them in advance so um

the beauty of like just the gist is that it's evergreen content so So we're trying to bank them about a month or five or six weeks in advance if we can. But then I'm, you know, ADHD in a way that I hyperfixate on a thing that I'm really fascinated with and then I change my mind and we're doing something else next week. But yeah, it's we try to bank them about a month in advance. And then we also have breaking news, which is more current. That's like week by week, but that's very easy to, yeah. Yeah, well, that's another thing is how you can then, once you've got a feed that's popular,

you can put in new episodes. So Rosie's got a book club, there's bonus content for subscribers as well, but the main core is these stories. And a lot of the content is the same stuff we've actually covered on the Chaser report with much less research and detail. Not nearly as well, but stuff that Charles and I absolutely love, things like the Ocean Gate mini sub that was piloted with a Logitech gaming controller. You know, the whole Elizabeth Holmes story. And they're minis as well, so we've started doing minis this time around where, because there were often stories that. I really wanted to tell, like, one that dropped just today, which is about the Dave Matthews band band bus incident.

I'm not sure if any of you know about that, but it's otherwise known as the crappening. Please go and listen. I'll buy it. And that story is only about, would take 15, 20 minutes to tell. So, and a general just to just story is about 40 minutes to an hour. So we now do minis, so we can, like, slip in ones like that, too. And I can see you've ticked the Aaron Patterson box. Of course.

Much request. You've got to ride the mushroom wave, truly. Yeah, much requested. I think my favourite podcast story of the last 10 years is the fire festival, so that's already been re-recorded. Whenever there's any new fire festival developments, Charles and I just drop whatever we're going to do and do an episode on that. But no, but you do them in such detail.

And because it's done for someone who doesn't know the story, it's really perfect for putting a listener. There's never any assumed knowledge. Like, I still to this day think, like, my sister needs to be. has five kids now and she needs to be able to listen to this in the car without having any barrier of entry of anything she needs to know so interesting having a particular listener in mind that is key like honestly listening to rosa like that's why you're really good at this and why the show is really because so many people think about their ego like you said what do i want to say

what am i interested in it's got nothing to do with you it's got absolutely nothing to do with you because it is all about the people that you're and having that idea of like that person is so helpful because you will make better content decisions, format decisions, you know, because you've got that person in mind. But Rosie said it well earlier about Mamma Mia and your story and good content. Now, when you look at this,

I don't think a story about a royal wedding is quote unquote good content, but I'm not the listener of that whatever ecosystem. So I think it is subjective to your audience. If they think it's good content, guess what? It's good content. Yeah, and there also needs to be a point of difference

in the way you tell it. Like, there are 1,000 million podcasts that just retell interesting stories from history. Just The Gist, I think, has a point of difference in a lot of people come to listen to the way I tell it specifically, but I think also it's more just the stories themselves and the way they are, you know,

40 minutes to an hour is still giving you a bit of detail, but it is just the gist. it is telling you just what you need to know in a very conversational way and so we you know there might be something about the royal wedding that you're not interested in but when we do it it's good content for your angle yeah yeah and that's the thing i mean i just went to buckingham palace yeah yeah so there's that so with a good podcast you can't work out which episode to start at because they all sound interesting and that's certainly the case with rosies i was thinking looking at it too how much it is in you know a sense like the rest is history

which is another one of my favorites, one of the biggest in the world. They're playing next door in a few weeks because they also have one person who's the narrator and the other person's asking questions and they've plenty of time to have a light moment to have a bit of a joke around. Almost all their jokes are about moustaches on that podcast. Your range is greater than theirs. But, Rach, for you when you're, I guess, choosing stuff for yourself but also working with teams who've got a new podcast, I feel like this story selection is just absolutely vital,

particularly in the early days. What's your advice on how to choose which episode, you know, what do you put in an episode? I think, like, really listening to Rosie Talk Through it is like a really great way to think about it because everything stems from your original idea and the ecosystem that you're playing in. And I think if you've really thought about who is this idea for and you've thought to yourself, does this idea have legs long term? Because I think that's the biggest mistake people make.

They love this idea. They're like right at the starting blocks. They're like, I can't imagine a time when I'm never going to be. going to be able to think about an idea for this show and six weeks in there like I've got nothing you know so whenever I'm developing any new show or I'm talking to anybody who's developing a show I'm like put 52 the numbers one to 52 down on a piece of paper and try and get as far down that list top of mind thinking about what you could do if you get into three and you're struggling find a new idea if you've got 15 20 25 and you're like okay all right

you've got something there and you can build on it and that so I think really it's about providing yourself a show environment that has the legs to be able to continue because you know seasonal is great if it works but if your ideal goal is long-term audience growth potentially monetization one time at a point in time you've got to be releasing episodes consistently ongoing you know any of the shows that we have in at nova like those shows are on 52 weeks a year we're never off and you know the talent go off but we're always pre-recording episodes so that the feeds are never dead. So that's really important that you can have enough content there, you know? Yeah, Glenn, I'm looking at your feed and it's, your numbering is so close,

you've got 840 but then 840B and you just have an endless fire hose of content. How many episodes have you got in this feed? That must be over a thousand, is it? Oh, yeah, there's lots. Yeah, yeah. The 840s season eight. Oh, okay. Yeah, all right. Yeah. And then B was the Thursday bonus show when we started to do a bonus. And that's just stayed. a legacy thing. There's a whole system. But what I love about your feed is that the titles are really specific. The descriptions are specific. And because it's financial advice, I imagine. General financial advice. Of course. Don't make any investment. If you make investment decisions based on what you hear in a podcast session, the South by Southwest. Frankly, you deserve what's

coming. That's my non-expert opinion. Because I've done calling finance sections on radio a lot. And the hard thing about that is that often things aren't applicable to most people. There's one guy who was used to really high net worth individuals and people would ring in about how to deal with offshore income and all this stuff. I was kind of going, how does this apply to everybody? But with yours, there's a really detailed menu and I can pick. And pick, for instance, should I buy an apartment in Sydney is relevant to everyone in the room, probably, on some level. If you can afford it. Yeah, yeah. But then there's some aspects of, you know, self-managed super funds might be beyond someone. So it's really, it's really.

clearly labeled. How do you pick the topics and how does the filtration work? Okay, so I, I've just, you get match fit as well. It's like the people who've got a podcast in the room, those weeks come around fast if you're publishing weekly. And I'm on three, four live, like weekly episodes that I'm on at the moment. In terms of content, I've always set out to be, as I said, I'm talking with people in my community. A lot of it's using, are generated. Who would have thought talking about things that your community are interested in would be good content. Wow. How do you get the suggestions? Yeah, so we've got a Facebook group. There's about 50,000 people in there. It's pretty active. There's about 44,000 active users a

month. 44,000, I think I said that. Yeah. And I just look for themes and trends, and then I get questions from the Facebook group. And because we are always on show and even, you know my ACAST teams in the room would they stop messaging me every year saying what are you doing over Christmas I'm going straight through over Christmas I'm not running reruns because my audience deserve me showing up on Christmas morning even with a 15 minute message Merry Christmas I know it's lonely out there for some people so really intentional and I take my audience so serious and because we are always ongoing and podcast it's like this revolution revolving door. The best compliment I get is, hey, Glenn, I used to listen to your podcast. And

everyone's like, ah, burn. I'm like, no, that's good. You've come in. You've got encouraged and you move on. We all don't listen to podcasts forever. So it's a revolving door. So I can get away with maybe every year I'll do two estate planning episodes, to insurance episodes, to super fun. So I'll do that. And because we don't always remember what was the year before, there could be new stuff. I'll do two expat episodes a year. And then, Within the feed, what I've done on our Tuesday show, it is a variety of questions. So what I wanted to do, instead of saying, all right, this Tuesday, apartments in Sydney, well, what if I open up the podcast app on Tuesday, I'm in Perth?

Apartments in Sydney. I'm not listening to that. So what I did, if you have a look at our feed after hit subscribe, you'll see that you, on the Tuesday, there's a different topic. Apartment in Sydney, should I get Bitcoin? is pet insurance good so the person who lives in Perth might see that same episode and go I've got a pet so they will click it so that's our Tuesday show our Thursday show is more of a deep dive interview with somebody it could be a topic so I've really wanted to mix that up that

way so if someone sees the feed they might see something that they like and then we try and keep our episodes to 45 minutes to an hour but we do these long campfire chats every now and again which are like close to three hours or we just talk any type of money topics and the true believers and the road trippers they love that stuff those are very googleable terms as well which is important and that's that's something that I again learned at mama mea um I learned all about SEO there you go um and when I first started at a listener which was podcast one then um especially with just the gist I saw the value in just the gist being something that our audience can grow by people searching for a topic because we

were doing very like, you know, we have an episode on Titanic, an episode on Firefest, an episode on like 9-11, an episode on how they made the Blair Witch Project, or I have a pet, like, what about pet insurance? Like, these are things that people are searched, like people started using podcast search bars like they used Google. I mean, I remember like our episode on Q and on ended up being our most downloaded episode of all time because we released it right around the time of like 20 like around when Trump was getting reelected and Q and on was a big and people didn't understand it. And so a lot of people I think were just going to their podcast app and going Q and on. And if you have put the right keywords in your description, like I've

been doing that for years. It's interesting. It's only the last sort of 12 months people are saying keywords in your description are really important. I'm like, adoy. Like I've been doing that forever. It's, you want your description to be pithy and hilarious. It's like, Chuck, those key words. And just finally on, so we've got our main show, Money, Money, Money. There's two, maybe three episodes a week. And that's a lot of content. But part of my business is, and one of our core things in the team is agility.

And we do a four-day work week and the team's agile. Our Thursday shows are pretty evergreen. I won't record out. and there could be six weeks in advance recorded. Our Tuesday shows, I do not record more than three weeks in advance because I want to be half current, but we've got the agility of something newsy drops. So on Monday, the government came out and tweaked the superannuation three-mill tax.

Yesterday downstairs, I did an episode to Securities Delight in the main area for our retireite podcast that's going up tomorrow. So we're prepared, our value is always prepared, always agile. You are a machine. I'm amazed at you. Well, it's credit to my team. It really, I can't do what I do without my team and without my listeners. But I think that's, again, to hear, you know, it's really good when you hear people

who have successful podcasts because then it's like happening and you're actually hearing what needs to be done in practice. It's because you care about your listeners. The reason you're doing that is not just because, like, I want to pull a mic out in the middle of South by Southwest and look like I'm recording a podcast, it's like, oh my gosh, this is actually really relevant to my listeners. I need to have something up to date for them tomorrow. I actually need to make it happen. Like everything's coming from that. Yeah, like everything we do is listener centric. Ask your listeners. If you've got a podcast already, ask them what they want

to hear. I know exactly who's listening to my show. On Harriet, it's a 31 year old woman living in a capital city, 60% of listeners, sorry, 67% of women. Capital City, 100K income, full-time job, wants to invest, doesn't have consumer debt, and is a professional. There you go. So I'm talking to that. Now, we'll take some questions soon, but we've covered quite a few things that I wanted to. But one of the questions we had at the start of the session, the thing I learned from Mum, me, yesterday, by the way, is that they start recording before the formal start of the podcast, which I didn't know, because there's often good stuff in those bits. Oh, yeah, we do too.

Yeah. And you go start rolling as soon as you can. is how you make it fun and this is the thing in terms of it not being boring when we teach podcasting students I'm always keen to say you need to tell me

in the first 10 to 15 seconds what the podcast is what it's about why I should listen to it because otherwise it's so easy to click through it's so easy if you click on an episode and it's really dull I reckon even beginning with ads is a huge turn off I think you need to

quickly get into something it's actually delivering on a proposition And that's my sort of two cents for doing that. We don't always do it on our show, but we try to. How do you make it fun through the show? How do you grab the listener and make sure that they seek with it, Rosie? This is not a super fun answer, but it's a skill. It is a skill.

You know, there are a lot of people, we're taking pictures at just the network at the moment. And I've had a lot of people come to me and just be like, if you just put a microphone between me and my friend, we just talk about what's going on this week and it's like it's so funny and it's like it's it takes a lot of skill um for it to be fun um you know but also and it's also people think um the you know I have people who listen to me tell the stories that takes a skill as well active listening on a podcast is very much a skill also um but I will say once you sort of have those fundamentals down the skills down the skill

skill of it takes a lot to make it seem relaxed and ad hoc but also go with it when it is like listeners very much they're humans too and I find that when there's mistakes when I mispronounce something or fumble something or I get facts wrong all the time like I like to point out I'm not a journalist I went to drama school it's just the gist we keep it in like we'll keep stuff like that in like we it's um i think willing to be vulnerable enough to sort of have behind behind the scene sounds cheesy but you know just little mistakes errors whatever it's it's um it's striking that perfect balance between putting the work in so that it's polished but being willing to be vulnerable enough to let it be a bit relaxed um even if that comes at um your expense yeah we we actually um

when i started podcasting i'm like i'm not editing, I'm just putting it up, right? Oh, God. You got it. My worst night. However, the proe is coming in. However, we, I remember I first went away overseas for six weeks. We had six weeks of episodes recorded and just crappy reviews for whole six weeks because we

didn't edit and people didn't care about the banter. Now, we still do the banter, but we do. it as an aft party. It's another way to put a dynamic marker in. Before, at the very end of the show, the credits roll, we do an after party and we just talk shop and people want that. So we give them what they want, but it's at the end. In terms of that hook, I've designed the production workflow, so as soon as you press play, you don't hear an ad. And I'll just show you an example in real time. This is our retirement podcast. Now, let's just do high level 101 on, center link so that there was at the very start of a podcast the music came in straight into the

meat and the way that our production workflow is now on our Tuesday show the first question that we answer I'll keep that segment to no more than eight minutes so you press play short intro bump straight into the meat then there's the intro bump with our music welcome to this then there's the dynamic ad pre-roll marker so people can get eight six minutes of content and then because we've redesigned a whole workflow around video my team know that first eight minutes a clip for youtube oh there you go so because i produced the show myself and very involved in it i've just made it really easy and there's a question about pet hates that you sent us yeah we'll wait it to the end you know i think it's um you can't assume that as

everyone is interested in you as a host, as a person, which is really, you know, we used to do, when we first started breaking news at Just the Gist, we had the episode that we would do, which was some evergreen topic, and at the start, we would do break in news, which was to keep, I was like, we should keep it current,

we should have stuff from this week, and we would talk about ourselves a little, but mainly like just funny stuff in the news, and then we'd get to the episode. Some people loved it. Some people loved hearing about me, my co-host at the time. Other people hated it.

They were like, I skip ahead to the story. And so then we decided to split it. And I thought, you know, we'll, some people will listen to breaking news on its own. But now we just have these very clear evergreen stories that aren't bogged down with just us talking shit about ourselves. We doubled our downloads because everyone listened to both. Yeah, really good now. But, you know, I think it's important to remember, like, not if people are searching a particular topic, We've got not everyone's interested in you.

No one cares about me. Some fans are, give them that content, but somewhere else. You also don't have to warm up your audience. They press play on a podcast. They're warm. Yeah. They just want the content, you know? And the warming up is always about the person behind the microphone.

It's never about the audience. We're getting onto the pet. Can I close a loop when I was shamed before? If you listen to all our podcasts this year, since I've changed the production workflow, because we don't shoot a podcast anymore, we shoot a show, it's all done for video, and we rip the audio back,

we do not edit our shows anymore. There you go. We top and tail them, and I've got a stream deck. When there's an ad break, I press the money button. It does a separate track that has beeps. If there is something that might go on as a good reel,

I'll press the flame button that no one here, so we've got it marked. That's smart. It's very good. Now, in terms of we don't edit, so usually you used to be like, oh let me say that again I will clean that up in post

we used to click so there would be a spike so if the editor was asleep they would see the spike so we don't do any of that anymore now if I say something catastrophic that could get me full on cancelled I've got an X button and that will do a long beep

to my team know Glenn said something that actually just needs to be cut out so you're marking up the waveform yeah we've got a third track or fourth track that's got beeps and we just line that up in the session file and a team know where the activity is.

That's very clear. So, but we're, we do not edit anymore. But remember, we're not pressing a record. Hey, how are you going? Good. Oh, I went to the markets on Saturday. Oh, and this guy saw me and it was fantastic. He was dredged wet wearing a suit.

Like, no one cares. Give that in the after party. So we end after doing podcasts for eight years, you kind of get broadcast match fit. So, yeah, we don't. I would say having to do it. started doing video more, just because that's what we've all got to do now. I, my shows do not require much editing because I'm doing it to film. Like, and my experience in TV, like, I actually realise when I've got the camera there

and I'm doing this for the camera, there's not, because I would pick up all the time just for the edit and just go back to where I was like, oh no, I'll pick that up. But I've actually, but again, that's a skill. It does take time to be able to do that, yeah. Absolutely. Well, let's just quickly do pet hates. Let's ask the group what their pay hates are as listeners. Yeah, look, I cannot stand preamble.

My friend, Chaz, who I adore, but he does this three-hour-long podcast called PEP or Planet Extra podcast about US politics. It's at least three hours every week. And the first half hour is like answering letters from the audiences, emails and stuff. She's like, no, tell me what you think about the big news of the week, Chaz. But fortunately, he puts in time codes.

So you can actually, the way around that is, yeah, you can just click in the play. to the actual story. It's annoying, because if you, I don't, I need to resolve this, but like, when you do time codes, it can not be great when you're serving different length ads. I shouldn't. The time codes won't be dynamic, will they? Well, in the show notes, yeah.

I'm not sure. That's a good question. You vibe me? Yes, it is true. Yes. Well, he doesn't have, I don't think he has ads and he's an ABC podcast, but, um, he has any other, yeah, I mean, even smartless, I think smartless is excellent, but the, the, what have we been doing before they bring in the massive celebrity guests who I've clicked on to listen

to. Oh, yeah. And Will Annette once I'm listening to an episode and one of my pet hates, I can't tell you over the however many years of my career, how many times I've heard put someone eat on a podcast. And the number of branded podcast ideas that we get from food and drink company where they want us to eat or drink the food. No, nobody wants to hear somebody chewing and swallowing on a podcast.

But I was like, are you serious? I haven't wrapped that musely, but it is 30 seconds into the episode. So you could have eaten the moosey bar before you started. But again, that does come down to not thinking about what the audience wants to hear or is good for them to hear more about what you think is interesting. And I love smartless too, but those guys love to hear themselves talk and think they're very smart and they're very smart with each other. And there is a lot of preamble in there because they, you know.

Yeah, well, then again, the size of the deal they signed recently, hey, what do I know? Any other pet hates before we take questions from the audience? Well, my pet hate, which I was alluding to before, and for those who have podcasts and you do this, we all used to do it, try it. It doesn't feel normal, but when you listen to it, it's fine. You'll listen to tomorrow's podcast on a retireite that we recorded downstairs. My guest, I say, hey, Vince, welcome back to the show. Okay, today we're talking, I don't say, hey, Vince, how are you? Don't ask you guess how they are. Doesn't mean anything. Just get to it. It feels awkward saying, Welcome to the show. How are you going, Dom? I hate that. It feels awkward, but you don't have to. You press play back and it's fine. So you just got to get to the meat.

Yep. You don't, long intros with music, not 20 seconds, we're into the meat. That's why we do what you mentioned, Mama Mia said they do yesterday. We record, we'll sit down and chat and we'll chat usually for like 10 minutes. It warms us up. We record it just because sometimes something really funny and random comes out. but yeah we spend 10 minutes in the chairs in front of the mics just having a bit of a what have you been doing blah blah blah blah and then it's it's like it's almost like you've

purged it yeah the bit that the audience will find boring but you guys find interesting and then off you go and it helps with like i do that with a lot of guests so i usually try and have my team go and do the tech check so they'll go in at the riverside booking time they'll go on because if i've got a if they've got the mic that's not working i'm getting like stressed and worked up. I can't do this. I just need to do an interview. So I get the team to do a tech check, say hi, get the guests comfortable. Then if it's a listener of ours who's being interviewed, sometimes they get nervous because they're talking to their podcaster that they've always listened to. So I'll just chew the fat for 10 minutes and relax them, ask them, hey, do you have any questions

about the recording? We're not going to do anything to throw you under the bus. And yeah, and I think, all right, let's now press go. And it's much better. Well, let's press go. on some questions. I'm going to need to repeat them for the podcast listeners. Yes, back row. If you can be loud, we'll be able to hear. Amazing. Julia,

from Chief Encouragement Officer. Question two for Pete Brown and Independence in the room. How do we pitch to be on a podcast like your... How do people pitch to be on a podcast like the podcast here? As a guest. As a guest. Yeah, I think that's one for Glenn probably. Yeah, I get pitched multiple times a day.

And I would say, over the eight years that I've been pitched, maybe three have actually ended on the show. And it's not because of anything, I'm just like, okay, you want to get real? I'm an independent, right? And I've spent so much of my time, effort and energy and my team to build my audience. If you've got money to pay a PR person to go and get you out there, it's pay to play to come and be on my show if you want to flog your crap. So that's like one thing.

secondly sometimes the volume of pitches they're not good pictures in fact you know the two pictures that actually have worked right you know tim dougan yeah the author he wrote me an email himself hey glen released a book i'd love to come on your show i'm like yeah come on and then tracy hall who was doing the um the session this week um the last victim she sent me a instagram or a LinkedIn. Hey, Glenn, I've done this. I'd love to come on the show. I just think, number one, when you send me a pitch and it says, oh, we've been following your show for some time and it's really great. Nah, you haven't. Go away. Hey, Glenn, we love equity mates. No, you've copied to paste. Go away. I'm just really fussy, like very fussy. And my fussiness has actually

cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars because I turn away money, if it's a lot. I'm just a not good for my audience. So if you're a brand that's pitched to come on, my first question is, how do you make money? Oh, we're a free service. No, no. How do you make money? Oh, you get kickbacks in the background. How long have you been in operation? Oh, 18 months. Come back once your business has been around for three years. So I'm very strict. I've never done anything about chasing the money. I've always put the audience first. Do you have someone that needs to be pitched to me? Would you like to? Yeah, give me a pitch now. Yeah. I'm a fan, I don't have a PR budget.

Yeah. You know, most, a lot of us are quite small, you know, independent. So therefore, I was born in front of view of how will we get an audience? I think it's all about value. Yeah. If you've listened to a show and you've really listened to a show and I think that's the key, right? Listen to more than one episode. If you're like, I can actually provide valuable content for this person's audience.

Yeah. If you give them a pitch that's like, actually, this is going to be really good for my audience, it's a no brain. Yeah. It's always a lot of my life easier. Honestly, like, I, I, I, a lot of my followers. have a very parasocial relationship with me, so they will just directly message me on Instagram often. And we don't really, we haven't in the past had guests on Just the GIST,

so a lot of the time I'd get emails, and it just wouldn't make sense. So I'm like, you have no idea, you've never listened to this. The good pictures that I would have taken had we done guests, and we're going to start doing them soon, but were the ones where I could tell they listened to the show, even if they weren't long-time fans, but they pitched to me an episode that would work. Yeah.

Like, this is how I can do a just-the-just-just episode of whatever I'm pitching to you. I think it would be really good content for these reasons. Like, if you can just pitch how it would work as an episode for their show, you're giving them. That's content for them. Yeah. I would just really, you know, the volume of pitches, because I'm not represented, I'm independent. I don't have agencies or NOVA teams and all that. I see so many pictures

that come in on our website and my LinkedIn I see through the BS commercial crap now if you sent me a nice LinkedIn message hey Glenn I'd love to do something I would literally consider it I had someone come up to me the other day and said oh hey Glenn I've been following you for years I sent you a message the other like couple of years ago

to come on your show and you declined me and my first response was I rude and she's like oh no no you're fine And so it's a numbers game, it really is, but add value, don't just try and sell you crap. We're almost out of time and I don't imagine. Well, there was one pre-start question that I thought was really interesting around how do you make, if you're going to deal with a difficult topic, how do you make that fun and light? And I think to that, I would just say, sometimes people assume when they're dealing with difficult, dark, deep content, everything has to be serious.

and the only way I can give respect to this topic is by being serious all the time and if I'm lied about it people feel I'm being disrespectful when in reality the listeners are desperate for the light in the shade and if you can speak about it in a genuine honest way you're allowed to have fun you're allowed to have things are allowed to be funny because even in the darkest and deepest of situations in people's lives

they can there are some small nuggets of like oh my god this is like hell on earth but it's also just slightly amusing I've made a career out of turning my child's former comedy exactly exactly you know so I think it's about feeling like you have the permission to do that without feeling like you're disrespectful and I don't think you would be and people are yearning in any of in any content that I've ever done that's been like this is dark people are always desperately grateful that it wasn't too heavy as a as a host just be a person read the room like I'll be the biggest dickhead all day long on air

but if I'm interviewing someone about a DV financial abuse situation I can read the room like you build rapport you give that subject the gravity sure if they say something that's within that and they said oh we had to do this and I go oh that sounds amazing what happened like You'll be respectful about it, you know, but don't feel like you can't be funny. We did an episode on the history of Honey Boo Boo, last couple weeks ago. And you think that's going to be a really fun episode, but it goes to some pretty dark places in terms of the abuse that went on in that family. But the episode was mostly fun.

And I've had quite a lot of people ask me just because of what I've written for a living about some people have said, you know, I want to write about hard stuff, whatever, or podcasts, whatever, is humor, some people have told me humor is a barrier. Like, that keeps you from, or the lightness is a barrier. But I often say, for me at least, as a comedian, humor and light is the entry in. It's often the entry in. And that's okay.

Like, that's how you can do the respectful thing and use that as a way to connect with more difficult content. But I think it goes back to what you remit from the start is I set out to do infotainment. I still do. I'm an entertainment podcast. I'm not a money podcast. Now, if you're from the engineering and actuarial society of Australia, you're probably not having much humor in your content, but you're going to attract people that just want the numbers and just give me information. So who's your audience? How are you serving them? Context. It matters. Let's take one more question. Yes, sir.

Seems to me the difference between successful podcasts and ones that perhaps are a little more dull. Yes, the story selection, but narrative structure seems to be a great distinguishing factor. Is that something that just comes naturally for you guys, or is it something that you're deliberately intentionally considering as part of your pre-production process? So the question is that a lot of successful podcasts actually have a narrative structure with the beginning, middle, and end, I presume you're getting at. Does that come naturally, or is that something that's... you develop consciously as you're developing the podcast.

That's probably most applicable to you, Rosie, I'd say. It's both. I mean, there's, I will not deny that I have a natural talent for writing and storytelling that I have always had. But I also, you know, I started drama school in 2005. So I've been developing my skills as a storyteller for 20 years now. But, yeah, I do think very, I take a lot of time writing the episodes I write in this specific way. I write them, the narrative structure of them is everything.

And what's interesting about that to me is doing a lot of research now for topics at the moment. There are so many podcasts right now and also YouTube accounts that will tell interesting stories from history, but you can tell it's been written by AI. A lot of it's just getting churned out by AI. And that kind of thing will, it will just never be as good as, the way I can tell it. The reason the episodes of just the gist

that I tell are compelling is because I've taken the time to write them that way and I think it does take I think probably some natural ability but also a lot of hard work and a lot of intention behind it when you're doing it because there's a lot

of slop out there now and you know where people are what was announced a couple weeks ago there's an entire podcast network that's been launched that is literally just with AI hosts and AI personalities who are going to be telling all these stories, I think increasingly moving into the times we are now, the future, your skill, your specific skill as a storyteller is going to matter more than ever.

And that skill will come through practice. Yes. That natural skill builds just by listening critically to your work and going like, am I interested and trying to listen as an objective? Always listen to your episode. Yes, always. not tell you the amount of podcasts who say to me, oh, I could never

listen, oh, I'd cringe. You have to listen. I listen to the raw edit. I listen to the edit before it goes out and then I listen to the episode when it's there because that's how you get better. There's a lot of resources out there about narrative structure in podcasting and we teach this.

Starting with the action and then going back to the start of the story can be really good. A lot of people like Mark Fennell do that really well and I was going to point you to Transom.org but it doesn't seem to work. But just in that, and I know we've got to go, I don't tell stories, quote unquote, but I have a structure in all our Tuesday shows and Thursdays and all our podcasts, because as a listener we like to know what's coming up.

There'll be an intro, there'll be a bump, there'll be an ad, there'll be a, and I've changed the whole thing, A block, B, block, C block. So it's very structured, but it feels fast and loose because it is, because I don't really prep, but it's just have a structure. You've got to deliver on the promises that you make your listeners. Look, I've learned massive amounts from this panel. Please thank Glenn James, Rachel Corbett, Rosie Waterland. We'll put this up on the Chaser Report feed in due course and on your business podcast.

Yeah, this is business. I'll put it up next week. Well, we'll do it after yours. Please subscribe to all the podcasts and thanks for being here. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks, sir.