When it comes to finding the right guest to be on your show, you have to do the legwork of research to see how they fit into your podcast sphere. Who is this person? What do they have to say? And what is their experience and knowledge that they’re going to bring to the table for your listener? 

Today’s episode is going to highlight some really important aspects of how finding “good” guests is integral to your show. Joining me today is the host of Podcasting Made Simple and the founder of podmatch.com, Alex Sanfilippo. He shares some insightful insights from his journey in podcasting as a host and professionally as well in the podcasting space.

Tune in to hear about:

  • How to evaluate your audience and hone in on your ideal listener.
  • The importance of having a strong “why” before starting your podcast.
  • Alex’s exact pitching process landing him A-list authors to be guests on his podcast.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Engage with Alex:

Connect with Mary!

Our Conversation:

Mary

Now, in my previous episode number 39, I talked about how to be a guest. But what about the host side of things? As a host, your choices in who your guest is reflects a lot about who you are and what you stand for. Because how you jive with that guest can really reflect your personality and who you truly are behind the mic. So one of the main questions I always tell my clients to ask themselves when picking a guest for their podcast is, Why would my ideal listener care about this guest? From there, you’ll understand why you’ll bring this guest onto your show, and if they have a perspective to share that aligns with your podcast values. Sure, you can say yes to all the requests that you might get to, that comes into your inbox, but what’s in it for your listener? Don’t bring on a guest just because you like them or you had a great conversation or networking meeting. What is in it for your listener? Just because you can fill a slot for an episode, it doesn’t mean you need to pick the next person that comes through the door. Today’s episode is going to highlight some really important aspects of how finding good guests, and I’ve got “good” in quotes there, of how finding good guests is integral to your show. I’m bringing on the host of Podcasting Made Simple and the founder of podmatch.com, Alex Sanfilippo. Now, if you know me, this is not going to be a sell, sell, sell about podmatch.com. Yes, I use it from time to time. I mention them in my last episode, and it’s an excellent resource. But as I’ve said before, you still have to do the legwork of research to see how any guest that comes across your desk fits into your podcast sphere. Who is this person? What do they have to say? And what is their experience and knowledge that they’re going to bring to the table for your listener? So we’re going to dive deeper into this as well with Alex. So, no matter how you find guests for your show currently, Alex shares some really insightful insights from his journey in podcasting as a host and professionally as well in the podcasting space. I love how he was so transparent in this episode by talking about the mistakes he made when he was starting out, but also the lessons he learned. What are his best practices now for producing his show? You’ll learn all about that. So get a pen and paper or your favourite note-taking app, if that’s handy for you. Or as usual, we’ll have all the relevant links in the show notes for you as well. Time to put those headphones on. Listen in for Alex’s podcasting journey and how doing the back-end work is essential to having great guests.

Mary

Welcome, Alex, to the show. I got to know you from your service podmatch.com, matching hosts and guests for podcasting. It’s such a genius, simple idea. So tell me, what did you see in the podcasting space that really necessitated you to create this business?

Alex

Mary, first of all, thank you so much for having me. We had a call right before this. I feel like we’re friends now. That’s how you got to know me. We got to know each other better from a pre-call that we did. But anyway, I just remember when I first started in podcasting and maybe we’ll dive into that a little bit even. But when I first got started, I had a very small network of people that were going to be good guests for my show. You see, I came from like a bit of a corporate background for a while, and this was a show for entrepreneurs. I was like a side hustler, so I wasn’t like, even a true entrepreneur. So when I, like, added up the people I had, it was like eight people. And so, you know, I was like, I need more than eight episodes. So that was like an issue that I had. And later on, obviously, as you’re aware, as the show grows you can find more guests, your network expands. And that’s one of the beauties of podcasting. But I always remember that in the back of my mind, and I reconfirmed that when I was actually speaking at a podcasting conference years later, I just kept on asking the new podcasters that I met what they were struggling with. And I continuously heard, Alex, I’m having trouble finding the ideal guests for my show and or some variation of that and that was inspiration alone for me to go build something like this, a tool that would really help solve that problem because it really, I like to believe it was a big problem in podcasting. And now that we have a solution for, it’s been a lot easier for guests and hosts to get connected.

Mary

Did the pandemic change this idea at all?

Alex

You know, actually, it’s weird when we launched. So I had the idea on March 10th, 2020, that’s when I actually like whiteboarded it out. And that was, I’m in Jacksonville, Florida, and that was a week before our state shut down. So at that point, I still didn’t realize what was happening but I whiteboarded it out and we launched on June 15, 2020. When we launched we just had an influx of amazing guests, amazing hosts, and some of the, some of the guests, in particular, they were keynote speakers that were used to charging these massive fees to get on stages, but they didn’t have stages anymore and they just wanted to continue to get their voice out there. You know, I mean I love this is called the Podcasters Guide to a Visible Voice. They wanted to keep that voice visible and so many of them just joined the platform and we could not have planned that timing. We didn’t know that that was going to happen, but it really propelled us forward. So we kind of I mean, we launched during the pandemic, which was an interesting time to launch a business, to say the least.

Mary

Yeah. For sure. Earlier, though, you said, you know, for your own show, you were having a hard time looking for good guests. Can you describe what you mean by “good” guests?

Alex

Yeah, you know, that’s… “good” could mean anything for a different show. So I’m glad you brought that up, Mary. That’s smart. For me, a “good” guest was going to be someone who was at one point in a 9-to-5 or traditional corporate job that moved into something that was a side hustle at one point full-time, like they became a full-time entrepreneur. Finding the person that had made that journey was, in my definition at that time, a “good” guest. And that’s who I didn’t really know. Like, I was wanting to take that path and that journey myself. So seeking that person out took a little bit of work because a lot of people that have made that switch, they’re now really busy. You know, they’re running like a newer business. They don’t have a lot of time. So finding that person, especially in my own network, was… seemed to be nearly impossible. Like I said, I believe it was eight people that I knew that I could actually get on the show and pass that, I just had no idea.

Mary

What about now with podmatch.com? You know, people are looking for those guests. Is there a criteria that you think people should ask themselves to filter still? You know, even using your service, you know, not everybody would be a great match for their own podcast. So what would be that filtering process people should go through when trying to find that “good” guest for their show?

Alex

Yeah, this is, this is an important thing because I think a lot of us, we tend to even on these sort of, like, matching services… So just to give a little bit overview of it, basically when you join as a guest or a host, it’s going to ask you a series of questions, you’re going to create a media one sheet more or less and a profile for your podcast as a guest or host, you have either option. And then it’s going to match you with people that basically the algorithm says that you’re a good fit for or that would be a good fit for your show type of thing. And I find a lot of people not just on our servers, just in general, people try to go too broad. They have some hobbies. So they mentioned that, oh, I can talk about… Again, I live in Jacksonville, Florida. I’m right next to the ocean. So we talk about, like, I can surf, right? Like I talk about surfing, but I also talk about, like, marketing practices in 2022 and how to grow a brand on social media. Those two things don’t connect. And I believe that if you are a guest and you’re that broad, that’s going to make it very difficult for somebody to figure out if you’re the right fit or not unless they have a marketing surfing podcast, right?

Mary

Yeah.

Alex

And then it’d be a perfect fit.

Mary

That’d be awesome!

Alex

Yeah. On the flip side, if you’re a host and you’re saying you’re looking for a guest and you just have this broad range of being like, well, this, this podcast is for everybody. Here’s the thing. I found that podcasts that are for everybody are usually, I don’t mean this to be mean, but they’re usually for nobody because nobody is everybody. So you need to get really specific. You need to find out exactly what you’re looking for. Going back to my show, which ended up being a really big success, my network grew really fast, and I’m thankful for that. But the reason it did so well is because I knew exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for that full-time entrepreneur who left a 9-to-5 traditional job to get there that could give us a roadmap for making it happen ourselves. And by doing that, I was able to really identify people really, like, really easily, and that helped me understand exactly what I was looking for.

Mary

So is this the show, Creating a Brand, that you’re mentioning?

Alex

Yes, it is. Yup.

Mary

Yeah. So that’s been on for about three years. But earlier this year, you shifted that podcast. Tell me why you decided to change the focus of your podcast.

Alex

Yeah, this was a bittersweet moment for me, Mary. Like it was, it wasn’t something that I was, like, excited to do. I just knew that it was time to. So evaluating the audience of your show, I believe, is just really important. And initially, you know, let’s imagine you’ve been launched for a month or two. It’s hard to really figure out who your listeners are going to be. But after two years, three years, like, it gets really simple to know who’s listening and who they are. And although the entrepreneurship side of it was growing, whenever I’d pull my audience or learn about them, I found that almost 75% of them were actually, they were podcasters and they were following it because they knew me from Pod Match or Pod Pros or PodcastSOP, right? Like my, my different businesses I do in podcasting, and that’s how I became a full-time entrepreneur is… is the podcasting industry. And so I just had this realization that, you know what? The people I’m actually talking to are podcasters. And because of that, I had to make the bittersweet move of shifting it, being away from entrepreneurship and into being a focus of helping a podcast guest or podcast host take their game a little further, get on more shows or get more guests or just grow their show, whatever it might be. The idea was I had to really shift that and again, it was bittersweet, but I definitely sacrificed the good for the sake of potential great to make that happen.

Mary

Earlier you said to know about evaluating your audience. How did you do that?

Alex

So there’s a lot of ways to do this. There’s definitely the… I just call, like, the metrics-driven way. So you can log in to Spotify, Apple, whoever your hosting provider is, and you can see some demographic information and that’s definitely very valuable. I don’t want to downplay that. I don’t recommend looking at those numbers daily because I think it can breed the wrong…

Mary

Yes, totally.

Alex

You know what I’m saying there, right? It can breed the wrong, the wrong, like, point of what you’re doing. But the other thing that I really got good at doing was talking to people in my audience. So if I would see on social media example, if someone’s always liking my posts or saying I really enjoyed this episode, I would do my best to get a one-on-one with those people or to see if I could talk to them. On every blog post about my, like, for my show, I would always have a little something where someone could connect with me. And so I just do my best to continuously keep a log of who these people are, who, what, who’s listening, and the more engaged people I kept on finding. Man, it’s the podcast hosts that are really the ones that are, that are listening a lot, and they’re the ones that are providing feedback. And then when I really just started doing an actual poll, I realized that… and you can do that simple through like Google. I think it’s Google forums or something like that, or Google Quiz or something like that, like a really free, easy way to do an actual poll. I was able to identify the fact that, you know what, it’s mostly podcast hosts that are my really engaged listenership, and so that’s how I was able to drill into those things. So again, using the actual data, this provided by hosting providers and directories and then also doing your own research, talking to the people that are actually listening to your show, I think that’s a really important thing. You know, if you’re not looking to make a change just to figure out if you’re on the right track, really talking to someone who’s listening can teach you a lot about your show.

Mary

So then in that poll or survey, what kind of questions did you ask? Because sometimes, you know, if you phrase a question a certain way, you get a different kind of answer. So how did you figure out which was the right question to ask?

Alex

Mary, that’s… that’s the key right there. Asking the right question. I have a friend named Rob Fitzpatrick, and he wrote a book called The Mom Test. Basically, his whole concept of his book is to teach you how to ask questions so good that even your mom couldn’t lie to you.

Mary

Oh!

Alex

I always give the example, like if my mom… if I told my mom I was going to make an umbrella that didn’t block out the sun and rain could go straight through she’d say, Oh, honey, you’re going to succeed. You’re going to do brilliant when everyone knows that’s a terrible idea. But if I just pull myself out of the equation, say, Hey, mom, what would you think if someone made an umbrella that doesn’t stop the rain from hitting you and it doesn’t block out the sun? Then, she’d just honestly say, That’s a terrible idea. Who would do something like that? So, like, it’s just phrasing a better question, right?

Mary

Right.

Alex

I have to say, Mary, I asked really bad questions, so I don’t want to necessarily give them out because it was pre-discovery of this book and I realized… it’s funny, I actually sent out the poll to a thousand people the night before I read the book, I read it and it was a shorter book. So, I read it one, in like a single day and I emailed the guy. I’m like, Rob, I made a huge mistake last night. Like I emailed a terrible question out, but some of the questions I think are good to ask is to find out how they found out about the show. So like that’s a good opening question. Like how did you find out about the Podcasters Guide to a Visible Voice? Like, that’s a good question to ask because then you can find out if they’re like, Oh, I found it on Apple through a search. Oh, my friend introduced me to it. I heard it on, I saw it on this website, this blog, and you can be like, Oh, I didn’t know they were talking about me. I believe that’s a really good opening question. And from there you want to ask positive things because chances are if someone’s filling out this form, they already like it. So one of the questions I had is, What do you not like about the show? I got no good answer because no one wants, they like me. They don’t want to tell me, Hey, I hate this part about it, right? I may have gotten one or two honest answers, but a better question is what could we do to make this show better for all the listeners? Like asking a question like that could really be helpful. So those are a couple of examples, Mary, and I’m leaving a few bad questions out, but making sure you phrase it properly in a way that it leaves people permission to answer honestly without breaking your heart is the best thing you can do.

Mary

And you must have heard from so many new podcasters as well. And that’s why, you know, you made that shift to your podcast, Podcasting Made Simple instead. So with hearing from new podcasters and all your work in the podcasting industry now, what did you hear was the most challenging part for them?

Alex

First off, that the first thing I subconsciously heard from people is that they had a, and I want to say this is, like, nicely as I possibly can, Mary. I’m trying not to be rude here, but basically like a false expectation of what podcasting could mean for them. Again, I say as nicely as I can, but a lot of people who jump into podcasting have this false sense of, Hey, in six months from now I’m going to quit my job, or in a year from now, I’m going to have millions of people listening to my show and I’m going to basically be famous, right?

Mary

It’s gonna make me money!

Alex

Right. Yeah, and it is possible. That can happen, but it’s very unrealistic. And in all honesty, there’s a lot of easier ways to, to make money and much easier ways to gain some influence and get famous if that’s what you’re wanting to do. So the first problem I would see, and probably the most common, is just a total misconception of what podcasting is going to do. And in my mind, that comes from not having the proper “why,” Mary. Like, why are you doing this in the first place? And I believe that many people would answer, Well, I was looking to make a lot of money. Or, Well, I was looking to become a big-time influencer. And those are not good “whys” for starting something. There has to be a bigger, deeper, more meaningful purpose behind it, and it has to be directed toward the person who’s listening. So whose earbuds it’s hitting, right? That’s the person it’s really about, ultimately.

Mary

So now what was your “why”?

Alex

My “why” was initially… I had a wrong “why,” Mary. I’m going to go ahead and tell you that. When I launched, when we launched Creating a Brand, my “why” was because I was like, hey, I need some free coaching because I need to get out of this corporate job. I want to start something. And I quickly shifted that. People were very like, one thing I will say about the podcasting community, Mary, that you’re aware of is it’s full of super kind people. I mean, everyone has, like, an abundance mindset, in general, and wants to help each other. And people quickly told me, hey, you need to, like, have an avatar, so somebody that you’re actually speaking to and have a better “why”. So I shifted my “why” away from myself and made it about the people that are listening. Instead of saying, I’m going to get out of this job and something teach me how to do it, it was I’m going to extract as much useful information from these people as I can to help the listener get out of that 9-to-5 job that they’re wanting to leave to take their side hustle full time. And when I shifted that and kept my very curious attitude in it, like I was always asking questions because I was also looking for myself, but by asking the right questions, it was really able to have a really good “why” behind it.

Mary

And you also sound really great too. Like, what did your podcast sound like in the beginning and the type of equipment that you used versus what you’re doing now?

Alex

You know, I don’t want you to go back and listen to them. They still exist. You know, it wasn’t that bad. I was using a decent mic, so I did invest. My voice was probably a little bit shakier than it is now. I was definitely more nervous than I am today at this point, and that just comes with reps. Here’s something I’ll say to that. Don’t let that stop you. Like if somebody is listening to this and they’re thinking, but I don’t, I don’t sound like… especially, Mary, like I told you before we got started, you’ve got like one of the best voices in podcasting. And it’s like, if I compare myself to that, I’m comparing my day one to your year, whatever it might be.

Mary

Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Alex

That’s not okay. So when I first started, yeah, I upgraded my gear. I got better at editing, like I learnt all these things as I went along, but that’s part of the journey. And as a matter of fact, I believe that the listeners who stuck with me from day one, they appreciated hearing that journey because they felt like they were growing together with me.

Mary

So with that journey, what was the most challenging part for you?

Alex

Aside from changing my show, from Creating a Brand to Podcasting Made Simple because that was a tough move, that first… it was figuring out how to get it all done. Here’s the thing when we’re done here today, I love listening to your podcast and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being on it today. I’ve got nothing else to do. I’m going to listen to it in a couple of weeks or a couple of months whenever it comes out, but I’m done. You’ve got all this extra work to do.

Mary

Yeah.

Alex

And I didn’t realise that when I got started and I wanted it to be high quality. I wanted to really serve those people well and then be able to share it and that was something that helped it grow. And by doing that, you put a lot on yourself. Like learning to edit is a lot. Learning how to book your guests and schedule on time and have a pre-interview if you want to do that. Like all those things was a, were a lot like. So that was probably the hardest thing for me is learning how to balance it because initially when I launched, I had a full time job. And so doing all these things together, it was a lot and I was disorganized at first.

Mary

So what about now?

Alex

Well, I mean obviously I’m a little further along now thankfully, but the biggest thing I figured out how to do was actually create an SOP for my podcast, which something I knew from business and it just stands for standard operating procedures. Basically I documented everything that I did. I found that once I did that instead of having it on, I had it on whiteboards, sticky notes and I had, like, a laminated notepad with some of the, like, the things I thought that I was doing every time. It was, it was so many things, Mary. I think I had like almost 60 different steps in the process.

Mary

Oh my gosh! Wow.

Alex

It was too much. I mean, I didn’t realize what was actually important and what wasn’t. But as soon as I started getting it all down in one place, and it started off in Excel, when I wrote it all down, I realized, oh, like if I do this part of the intro and outro, if I add, create that, and then do the editing, I can just add it at the same time instead of doing it after. Like this might sound simple to some really organized people, but to most of us we just kind of go through all the motions and just say, Okay, what did I forget? Did I miss anything? What does this sticky note say? I gotta go look at my whiteboard. But when I go to all one place and then organize it in the way that I was actually doing all the things, that went from being a very, for lack of a better term, like something that caused a lot of stress and anxiety in my life to being a very calming thing because I could look at the checklist and say, You know what, I’m about halfway done. I’ve got… I even document the time, Mary, how long it took me to do each thing. So I could say, You know what? I’m halfway through. That means I’ve got 2 hours and 15 minutes left and then I’m done with this episode. That brought me so much peace and let me actually focus on what matters, which is producing good content for the listeners instead of the background production that no one saw anyway.

Mary

So then when you got to creating the content for the show, how did that play into your SOP?

Alex

Yeah, so the actual, like, what I was going to cover with a guest type of thing? Is that…

Mary

Yeah, mhm.

Alex

Yeah, so that’s something that’s always helped me, like, really stand out from other podcasters. Like I would interview a lot of authors and whatever topic I was going to talk to them about, I’d go find their book on that topic and I’d go read it. So that was one of the things that I would do. And I always tried to have, like, a very, an outline, but not one that I would really stick to if that makes sense. Like I’d have a broad range of where I want it to go, but I would let it flow organically. And again, my curiosity in asking questions that I believe are really important are what help the interview go in the right direction. But having an idea of where I want it to go, as you know, Mary, very important because if you just ask a bunch of random questions, you can start off talking about surfing like we were mentioning and end up talking about SEO. But that whole journey there could be hours and maybe not go anywhere beneficial for the listener. So it’s always very pointed, very focused, like I knew where I wanted to go with the guest and I did all my research. So the questions I asked… and there was never a time like, huh? Never thought about that before. No. The guest knew the answer to the question because I knew the path I wanted to take them on. So for me, a lot of my time went into, into that. Getting ready, preparing, learning how they like to talk, listening to their other interviews, even reading reviews of their book on, on Amazon, things like that. All those things went into it. And for me, the more time I put into actually working on my preparation for that guest, the better the interview ended up being.

Mary

Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realize how much research it does take to find out who the person you are interviewing is so that you know what type of questions you want to ask. So what would you say on average, how much time do you spend on creating an episode with a guest on it?

Alex

So including reading the book, I’d probably put in about 10 hours total of prep time. If there was no book, you could drop that down to like six, I suppose. Maybe it takes me 4 hours to read a book, probably something like that, about six. And that’s not all like active. So I’m not like sitting in a room, dark, like doing deep research. Sometimes, it’s literally listening to three podcast episodes they’ve been on just to hear how they talk and things like that. And here’s a really practical way that that helps. I had one guy in the show who’s really, like, serious. I could tell by listening to his other interviews he would not get my sense of humour. So I toned it back a bit because I was going to tell a joke and he’d be like, Yeah, Alex. And anyway, like I was saying, like, that doesn’t flow good, right? So I just made sure that I’d position, Okay, Alex, don’t make any super, like, weird jokes or anything like that because this guy is, like, really serious. He’s not going to think it’s funny, but also lighten the mood a little bit because I realized, Oh, he’s really into this sport. So if I reference that, he seems to perk up a little bit. So if he starts to get real monotone, I can just be like, Oh, like the Patriots? And he’d go, Oh yeah, for sure! Right? Like he’d go… Anyway, little things like that is what you’re looking for in learning and that makes a really, again, a really good interview. And there’s a couple of times, Mary, over time I’m going to go ahead and confess this here. It’s the only place I’ve ever said this. I took shortcuts, didn’t feel like reading the book, was tired that week, a new show came out I wanted to watch. I can go back to those interviews and look and be like, You know what? That wasn’t my best. Now, maybe the listeners won’t say that, but I can go back and say, You know, I can listen to this and tell I took a shortcut here. So I always made sure again to do that 10 hours of work that go along with it.

Mary

You mentioned that you were interviewing a lot of authors. Now, I know people are listening that are like, Wow, how did you get those authors on your show? Walk us through that process about pitching to an author.

Alex

Yeah, so Pod Match made it a lot easier once that, once that was out, but there’s some authors that are not on Pod Match, like some people that I just, you know, like really big name A-list authors. Let’s just call them that, or the people before Pod Match. And it really was a bit of a, of a journey of learning how to do this because initially, my outreaches were really bad, but it got better and better as time went on. One thing that I found that really helped, I’m going to give you a pretty cool resource here. So if you’re listening to this today and you’re like, I want to interview authors, you can go to a website, I believe it’s netgalley.com, but Net Galley is the name of the company. And what it does is it allows you to request access to books before they come out. And they don’t have every title but a lot of big titles, they do. So something I started doing and this is a risk, but I started reading the book and finishing it before I reached out to the author to see if they’d be on my show. Now, I certainly got some no’s, which you might be like, That’s a total waste, but in the day you probably read a really good book and learn something from it. But I’ll use the example of Seth Godin. I read his book, The Practice, is what it was called. I read that book before it came out through the Galley. I sent him a video of me talking about the book. It was probably a one-and-a-half-minute video, and I didn’t even ask him to be on my show. I just said, Hey, this is a good book. I’ve heard you on a couple other podcasts. Are you going to try to go back on them? Let me know if you would need an introduction or anything like that. And so I ended up introducing him to two podcasts that he had lost contact with, but he said he wanted to be on, and then he agreed to come on my show and I was for sure the smallest show he had probably ever been on. But the thing is, I read his book before it was out. It was an easy ask for me to be like, Hey, I’d love to talk to you about this book. So that’s like a little hack that I learnt that worked really well for me is to again read the book through something like NetGalley before it comes out and then reach out to the author about it.

Mary

Yeah, what I’m hearing here too is that when you reached out, you were trying to create a relationship first versus…

Alex

Yes, yes.

Mary

Hey, come on, my show. It will sound great, blah blah blah. Like no, like you wanted to help him out and to create that relationship to see what kind of collaboration you can have before you actually said, I have a show too. Come on board!

Alex

You’re absolutely right. And the relationship is key. As a matter of fact, my biggest claim to fame in life, somebody told me I should print this. I never, and put it on my wall, but I never did. I did like a random blog post one day and I got an email from Seth Godin saying, Hey, I really enjoyed this blog post. I was like, Are you kidding me? Anyway, it’s probably still in my inbox somewhere. I didn’t print it, but at the end of the day, that’s because I did build a relationship. I was willing to lead with value. So I, before I asked anything, I said, How can I help? By the way, I absolutely love your book, and I just think that’s really the best thing you can do. Now, if you need to be a little bit more forward because it’s like, absolutely most ideal guest, do it, but still, lead with value. But you can say, Hey, you have a new book that came out about marketing. It is absolutely perfect for my audience. I would really just be honoured if you’d come on the show like you can even do something like that and they’ll take a look at it and they’ll say yes or no. But it, also this Mary, like I reached out to a lot more people than were on my show like there was no overnight, Hey, I’ll… want to be on my show? And everyone just said yes, right?

Mary

Yeah.

Alex

Some of it was like weeks and months of pruning and getting to that point where you can make that ask.

Mary

Now that you have gone through this whole evolution of podcasting and creating podcasting services for podcasters, you’re really in the thick of the whole industry. So as we close off what is really exciting for you about podcasting right now?

Alex

So it’s all driven from something that I find to be maybe a little bit too materialistic, but ad spend is just flying into the podcasting world, and wherever the dollars go, so does new technology, so does streamline processes. Everything seems to improve, which makes sense. The money is there, so it improves. So we’re seeing people like, it was actually the most recent one was Netflix just hired somebody to be a podcast director, which is an interesting thing because they don’t seem to have much going on with podcasting at this point. YouTube hired a director of podcasting. We’re seeing all these different platforms jump into this game, which for us as podcasters, what makes me really excited is our opportunities are going to continue to grow because now that the money is there, people are saying, Oh, I want to create something to serve podcasters as well. You’ll find that it’s going to get more affordable, it’s going to get faster it’s going to get easier. And at the same time, probably the best part is the listenership of podcast. I’ll speak specifically in the United States because that’s where I’m at, but I can tell you that it is climbing rapidly right now. As a matter of fact, the rate of podcast listenership is growing at, at least I’m not, I don’t have the stat in front of me, but at least double what the rate of new shows are. So there’s more people starting to listen every day than new shows getting created, new content getting created, which in my mind that is a great spot to be. Now, if it were opposite, more creators coming on board than listeners coming on board. That would be a problem, but we’re not seeing that happen right now. So I think that podcasting, although it is, I believe, in its 17th year, maybe 16th year, but it’s still extremely young and I think it’s a really exciting time in this industry.

Mary

Yeah, it’s the same thing too in Canada. We are seeing more and more people realizing the awareness of podcasting. They might not know how to listen to a podcast, but at least now when I talk to someone, they’re like, Oh, oh, I know what that is. You know, before I would have someone say, I don’t know what that is. Can you tell me what time it’s on?

Alex

That’s like a conversation with my grandfather, I remember I was trying.

Mary

Yeah.

Alex

He was trying to figure out what I was doing and finally, he’s just like, is this like AM radio? That’s literally what he said.

Mary

Awesome!

Alex

And he’s very old. I love the guy. And I was like, You know what? Yes, Granddad, it’s like AM radio. He goes, Oh, cool, I’ll have to tune in sometime. And then we just kind of left the conversation at that.

Mary

I kind of did the same with my dad because my dad’s much older, too. And after being downsized for my radio career, I decided to start this podcasting company, and he was like, Oh, you’re starting your own business. That’s great. I’m like, Yeah. He’s like, What is it? I’m like, Oh, well, it’s all on the internet, which he’s not on.

Alex

Right.

Mary

But it’s radio, but not really. And he’s like, Oh, okay. Well, as long as you’re successful.

Alex

It’s important to remember, Mary, the Internet is just a fad. It’ll be out before we know it.

Mary

Alex, it’s been such a pleasure. I’ve had so much fun chatting with you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Alex

Yes. Mary, thank you so much for having me. It’s truly an honour to be here. Appreciate it.

Mary

Oh, that was a good one. So what was your one takeaway from this? Okay, one might be hard to narrow down, but even for me, I learned something new as well. NetGalley. I headed to that website right away after talking to Alex. I did not know about this and I am all for personal growth and development, so I’m reading books or listening to audiobooks anyway. So this is a great way to read a book and also support the author as well by sharing their voice and their message and what they have to say. So when I looked on NetGalley, I found there are some topics and books I want to explore with you as well on this podcast. So those authors will be a great resource to pull from as a guest. So of course, I’m off to do my own legwork and research on the books I want to read or listen to and to see if they would be a good fit for this very podcast right here. So let me know what was your takeaway or if you have an author you’d love for me to interview, I’d love to hear it. What types of personal growth are you doing to become more visible with your voice? Maybe there was a book on that and you’d love to hear what the author has to say. So send me some feedback through the purple, ‘Send Voicemail’ button or email me at visiblevoicepodcast@gmail.com. Thanks again to Alex for sharing his podcasting journey. Time for me to go and read some more books. Always doing some research for the show. All right, chat with you next time.