Creating The Greatest Show

[00:00:00]

Casey Cheshire: There it is. Okay. Let’s do this thing. I’m excited. I can’t wait to introduce you to the guest today. He is an absolute badass. He is a seasoned sales and marketing leader, thought leader, coach, consultant, and right now he is hyper-focused on partnerships. I love partnerships and partnerships specifically in the podcast community, and he is obsessed with guests audience.

Promotion, reach, all the things. We’re gonna just dive in. We’re gonna crack [00:01:00] open his brain and learn more about all these things he’s talking about and all these people he’s talking to Previously, the host of the Norton Norris podcast and most recently an internal pod that you and I are not privy to, cuz it’s an internal pod.

But he is podcasting and he’s the head of podcast publisher partnerships at Pod Chaser Trent Anderson. Welcome sir.

Trent Anderson: Thank you very much. Cracking open the brain, no promises here. We might uncover some stuff that no one wanted to know, but I’m willing to go down that journey with you all.

Casey Cheshire: Hell yeah. Just like straight out of a Indiana Jones movie, right? We’re going to eat some monkey brains right now, so let’s do this thing. Here’s my question for you to start this adventure off. Pull back the curtain for us, Trent, on all of your experience in the podcast world, and share your most important strategy for a great podcast.

Trent Anderson: Yeah, everyone focuses on reach and I think that’s a bit shortsighted. So what we’ve really developed over the last six to 12 months with what we do in our [00:02:00] business is developing a better framework for understanding impact of podcasts. And we really break it into four stages. Content, context, audience, and reach.

Reach is still important as we indicate with our fourth step, but it’s the fourth step for a reason. So instead we look at content. From a guesting perspective, we’re looking to find shows that are talking about topics that our guests can weigh in on Expertly. Context. We’re looking to unpack what kind of perspective those shows have on said content, and this might seem obvious, but very few agencies in this space actually go that extra distance to understand.

Who the host is, what are their alignments? How does that correlate with the guests opportunities and expertise? So it’s a really big part of this process as well. The third part of it is audience. So really, podcasts are all about audience. And despite some of us who’ve maybe hosted shows before, typically ego driven.

I at least I can speak for [00:03:00] myself. You wanna be the host, you wanna be the main character of the show. But really, The main characters are your audience members. So with Patri or Pro, which is of course our database, we’re able to extrapolate audience insights and audience demographics that are really aligned with our guest clients needs, wants, target customers, et cetera.

And then finally, if content context and audience are met and qualified, then we look at reach and we like to describe reach as a spectrum. And this is so different than what most PR folk. Have been accustomed to in traditional media, whether that’s digital publications or TV or radio or what have you.

The podcast industry is vastly different, and if I describe it as a spectrum on one side, you typically have highly technical, highly clinical types of audiences or types of shows, and those shows might only have a couple thousand listeners per month. Maybe a couple hundred, but if they go extremely deep on technical and clinical types [00:04:00] of details, you’re gonna have this.

Groundswell of community where it’s like true expertise going back and forth. And we work with a gentleman who’s a triple board certified physician and he’s a podcast host. And the only people that listen to his show, all 500, 500 of them are fellow double and triple board certified physicians. So f with some of our pharmaceutical clients, med device clients, if they want to tap into the healthcare provider market, there’s literally no better show.

There’s no better qualification, no better expertise than this individual show. The other side of the spectrum, you’ve got your mass media, your kind of pop culture types of shows. These are sometimes hosted by former contestants on reality television shows that also have day jobs that they’re starting to monetize through their content.

And then of course, you have shows in the middle that might have some of that technical depth and expertise, but they also have some broad based appeal because they make great content. So again, content, context, audience, and reach is really [00:05:00] how we view almost everything now in the podcast landscape through the lens of Patri or connect.

Casey Cheshire: I love that it’s like You’ve got these four colored framed glasses where everything you’re able to see fits as you walk around the pod world. You, these things fit into these elements. Man, there’s so much to unpack here. I can’t wait to dive into it, but I love that there’s an order to the chaos because otherwise even my follow-up questions are gonna be all over the place.

Cuz there’s so many interesting things you just said in like a two second period. Let’s go up to, up or back to. Even what this defines, and I heard you say impact, so is this the lens for creating or driving impact or help me understand that.

Trent Anderson: Yeah, so I’ll approach it from the lens of what I do on a day-to-day basis. So Po Chaser Connect is our guest booking and audience development agency that sits on top of Po Chaser Pro. We’re an analytics. Tool and data company first and foremost. And we spun up the agency [00:06:00] because we had a bunch of our pro customers saying, I don’t really know how to do this podcast pitching thing.

Like we have really interesting thought leadership. We want to go out there. We want to take advantage of this space. Like we don’t really know where to start. So the four step process was really in response to what our customers were telling us. So from that lens. The first thing that most of our customers, which are huge PR agencies that sit on Madison Avenue all the way down to like mom and pop shops that are now exploring podcasting for the first time.

They always wanted to start with Reach. Can you get me on the Joe Rogan show? Can you get me on the Daily? Can you get me on npr? I’m

Casey Cheshire: What’s your answer when people ask you that?

Trent Anderson: yeah, to That’s exactly what I said. I say, totally. We’d love to get you there. It’s an awesome aspirational journey that we’re gonna take you on, just so you know.

That’s not exactly how those shows type, those types of shows operate. They typically have a full-fledged media team behind them and there has to be some seminal interest from the host and they go out and find you. If you’re that interesting, they’re gonna find you. And truth be told, not all of our guests are [00:07:00] all that interesting until we run them through some of our internal training processes that gets them prepared to be the best guest they could possibly be on a show.

Yeah, that’s the lens that we’ll observe almost all of this through, but the content, context, audience and reach that 100% applies to own shows. It applies to other types of media, whether it’s newsletters or your YouTube channel or like literally anything, if you’re not stack ranking, those types of Considerations, then it just feels like you’re this amorphous blob that’s trying to figure it out.

Yeah, we’re doing content, but who are we doing it for? Why are we doing it for them? All those sorts of things. So it’s just been a really useful tool for us to organize the chaos, like you said, Casey.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, if you had unlimited time and unlimited funds, what would you do to get on the Joe Rogan podcast?

Trent Anderson: O I would definitely play to things that he’s interested in, which would be comedy certainly. So I’d have to have some banger [00:08:00] standup jokes, I think. And I. That would be first and foremost, I’d probably do some jokes about like mma, which of course he is intimately involved with as well. And I would just do something really cool and off the wall and support it with data and run like a crazy experiment probably to try to get some sort of attention.

But

Casey Cheshire: Yeah, so you’ve got to become a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt,

Trent Anderson: that’s right?

Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: You gotta, you have to do at least a year of standup comedy,

​

Casey Cheshire: Even if you bomb. That’s okay.

You have to what else?

Like fanny packs?

Trent Anderson: yeah. Fanny packs. There you go. Maybe buy a bunch of ONIT products. Start slugging athletic greens every day. All that good stuff.

Casey Cheshire: Yep. You have to do some ayahuasca,

Trent Anderson: Ayahuasca. Yeah. Thele the deprivation chamber. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: a float tank.

Trent Anderson: Float tank. Yep. Yep. And then, weave it

Casey Cheshire: then do something [00:09:00] famous.

Trent Anderson: Do something totally epic and famous that cannot be reproduced.

So yeah, I don’t know. It’d be a pretty interesting journey to get there. Although that’s not what I aspire to do. He can go out and get his own guests

Casey Cheshire: right. And I think and I’m glad you walked through all that with me because that illustrates your last point here, which is I. That’s not really the goal here for what you’re doing, what I’m doing. That shouldn’t really be the goal. If it is, you can make it a life purpose and then maybe it still won’t happen.

All these crazy things we’re saying is it. So instead, what should be the goal?

Trent Anderson: To me, it comes down to you become interesting by being interested in something and that has to be your driving force. And you might call that curiosity. And I think if you were to summarize. Rogan in one word it would probably be curious. And I think that’s what has led to so much of his success.

And people look at him and say he thinks he’s an expert in this and he thinks he’s an expert in that. I think he’s just insanely curious about topics and [00:10:00] he feeds that curiosity by going out and trying to find answers to the questions that he has that he can’t find an anywhere else. So yeah, that is probably a good guiding principle.

Whether you love Rogan or hate Rogan, I think we could all stand to be a little bit more curious and through our curiosity. And teaching what we’ve learned from our curiosities, that’s when we become interesting, and that’s when we start to attract opportunities and get luckier by way of these types of mindsets.

Casey Cheshire: And even that’s where we will talk more about it too, but that’s where Pod Chase and other things can really come into play. So if you had one, if you had one takeaway on content. Or one must do to really make sure there’s a check in that box. What would it be?

Trent Anderson: From an owned show perspective I think it’s really important to survey the scene and say Hey, I want to talk about X topic and let’s see what shows A, B, C, and D are [00:11:00] discussing in terms of that topic. Cuz typically the market is looking for something that doesn’t quite exist yet. And I think the way that Nicholas Cole and Dickie Bush frame up their four a’s.

Perspective, which I’m gonna butcher and we should probably link in the show notes, but they talk about, there’s a bunch of shows or there’s a bunch of books that are about personal finance, right? And some of ’em are analytical, some of them are an anthropological, some of them are actionable and some of them are the fourth A escaping me.

But effectively you’ve got like Rich Dad, poor Dad, you’ve got Napoleon Hill. I will teach you how to be rich. Like those are all talking about. The same topic of personal finance, but they’re approaching it from four different angles or different lenses in and of itself. So you might sit there and say, I want to talk about B2B marketing.

Awesome. There’s a million shows, not literally, but there’s hundreds and hundreds of shows that are about B2B marketing. Are they all approaching it from a [00:12:00] purely analytical angle? Whereas you could go step in there and do it from an actionable angle. So great, we can talk about theory, we can talk about trends, we can talk about all that.

But if the audience isn’t able to walk away, being able to put into place like one thing that they learned from that show, that might be a great opportunity for you to create content that’s specifically serving the how to actionable type of content from. The B2B marketing perspective. So I think that’s the first and foremost thing when it comes to content.

Understand what you’re going to talk about, but also the kind of perspective you’re going to have on it and what you want to leave the audience with.

Casey Cheshire: Man, that’s powerful. And let’s get super metal on that right now. If this podcast episode we’re recording right now, had one takeaway for you listening to this right now, it might be make sure your podcast has one takeaway for your listeners that they can walk away with and highlight it however you can with silly music or.

Being an idiot like me, but either way, [00:13:00] have some kind of takeaway so that it’s not just Hey, I read that, or I listened to that and I don’t really remember. Have you heard of that book? Never Split the Difference.

Trent Anderson: By Chris Fo. Sure.

Casey Cheshire: Yeah. Love that book. Have you read it

or

Or

you heard

Trent Anderson: watched about a third of his masterclass series on it. But yeah it’s fascinating.

Casey Cheshire: So I, the reason I bring it up is I love the book. There’s great stories, but I couldn’t tell you what I learned from that on how to negotiate. It was almost just like a brag piece and nothing on him. I’m sure he was teaching things and I’m just an idiot, but I didn’t have that one takeaway from the book.

So everyone I talked to was like, what did you learn? No, don’t split the difference. Yeah, it’s the title, but and why, And so anyways, it’s one of those things where I can see a podcast, you just listen to a Joe or anyone else, and I just spent an hour. That was a cool podcast.

What did you get from that? Maybe it’s not you. You’re not trying to get anything from it, but if you are, man, you better have something you can talk about. Geez.

Trent Anderson: Definitely. I [00:14:00] do know with Voss, it was one of the things I took away was mirroring. So when you said you didn’t walk away with anything, what I would say back is, didn’t walk away with anything. And then I would let you talk about all, of, all the ways that you didn’t walk away with something.

And that’s one of his kind of lightning strike. Teachings throughout all of that. But yeah,

Casey Cheshire: See, I need you as like a book overlay. Okay. What? What are we reading next? Trent, what do you think?

Trent Anderson: Gosh I haven’t cracked open a physical book in quite some time. I’m actually, so my wife and I got really into Homeland like 10 years after the fact. So I’ve been reading a bunch of CIA related books. Some of it being declassified information, all with the intent to understand how. Human to human interaction works better and ca might be a little more exploitative in their techniques than you or I might be as podcast goof offs.

But it’s really interesting in getting some keen insights into how to change behavior and ultimately get behavior that you want out of your subject.

Casey Cheshire: Man, those [00:15:00] books can just suck you in. I just recently finished The Gray Man. Have you read that

Trent Anderson: I haven’t.

Casey Cheshire: Highly recommend it. Don’t watch the Netflix special though. It’s absolute garbage. But the book is, Intense. It’s amazing. It’s a whole series apparently, and I just stumbled upon it. Fantastic. So let me, let’s take us back a little bit.

There’s a couple things here. How important is a different angle, right? There’s this sort of balance of artistry where you just do the thing you love and there’s that premeditated, researched, highly thought out, intentional. Let me make this show like this because I’ll get the more likes, or I’ll get the attention and I’ll differentiate myself from Rich Dad, poor Dad.

Trent Anderson: Yeah, I think the P O V or. Point of view, which you can also call perspective, is really the biggest driver of success because most people will just jump into a conversation or to a podcast and they speak at a level that’s very general and it’s very surface level, and. [00:16:00] You just end up sounding like everybody else.

So what we really like to impart with some of our clients we work with is like, what is your perspective? What is your P o V? How? How has the world. Changed. And what is your response to that change and how are you uniquely able to fit into this new world? And a lot of that we borrow from Andy Raskin with his strategic narrative framework that he uses which he very famously put through Zuora’s lens, which was like the old world versus the new World.

The old world was completely transactional in that. You were a buyer, you wanted to buy something and it was, you had to buy it annually, whatever. And then the new world was this subscription boom that took over. And now when I look at my bank account, yeah, I’ve got 15 different streaming service providers that are all bundled through a streaming thing through a subscription model.

So in Raskin’s, work with that. So the world’s moving towards subscriptions and winners right now in the space [00:17:00] are able to give a consumer first. Perspective through, through it all. And when you think about the consumerization of literally everything and how Amazon has effectively changed the game, Netflix, what have you, here’s 100% right, even down to paying for professional tools like everything subscription based model as opposed to buying a hundred thousand dollars worth of software that’s paid out quarterly.

No, it’s a monthly recurring model now because that’s how SaaS operates. So that’s a perspective that. Zuora had that Andy Raskin called out and it was really the driving force that created a whole new category. And that was subscription management for large enterprise types of deals. And that didn’t exist before.

So part of developing A P O V is separating yourself from the noise and differentiating yourself. And what prevents most people from moving forward with effectively putting their flag in the ground and saying this is what I believe. They’re afraid to alienate the total addressable market. But in reality, you shouldn’t be selling to the total addressable market because chances are you’re not gonna be a fit for [00:18:00] everyone.

Yeah, we’ve got all these all in one tools, all in one platforms. That’s actually not beneficial to an organization, to a podcast, to another piece of media. Like you want to actively attract and repel people who don’t buy into your P O V. And it’s a scary thought for a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners because we’d be removing like 40% of our market.

That’s a good thing cuz chances are they weren’t gonna buy from you anyway. So at least if you have a perspective that they can see themselves in, you’re gonna, you’re end up having like fans for life and that’s really the end goal.

Casey Cheshire: dude, this is why exactly what I was hoping would happen. That intersection that your background in sales and marketing. The idea of, I, I’ve been afraid to alienate the total addressable market all the time. I. It’s be, but I shouldn’t be trying to sell to your ex. Oh man. Great point. We shouldn’t be trying to either sell to or market to, or get our podcast listened to everyone.

Even Rogan’s not trying to [00:19:00] do that, right? He’s not trying to get everyone to listen. He doesn’t care if the total market listens to him. And half of the reason why people do listen to him is because they know he doesn’t care. Spotify tell him to do this. Other people tell him to do that. Doesn’t care.

Gonna do me. Gonna have a point of view. Now, quick question. The point of view is that the host, the guest, or both?

Trent Anderson: Both. Both. A hundred percent. Both. Yeah. So if you are hosting a show, it’s gotta be part of. If you’re doing a branded show, let’s just say like it’s your flagship media arm for your B2B SaaS company. That is the place where you can unpack your point of view so much more intimately than through the messaging on a sales deck through the copy on your homepage of your website.

That is really where you are. Again, planting your flag saying, this is what I believe and this is how I’m going to extract the lessons learned of how I even got to the POV So yeah, before we were trying to sell everything to everyone. And guess what [00:20:00] that happened? It was a ton of turnover, both employee side and customer side, because no one really knew why they were there.

It was a cool tool and they bought it. But then what? So again, that POV is just that constant reminder. Through the podcast format of why you exist and why people chose you to begin with and what your extended brand promise is moving forward. So I think from a host perspective, again nailing that is going to attract the right types of people and repel the wrong type of people.

From a guest perspective, it’s very similar. It’s it’s

easy. Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Cheshire: how, as a host do you interject your ass in there get your point of view across without to earlier convo making this show all about me, Trent’s here, but he’s really just here to see how cool Casey is. So how do I avoid that?

Trent Anderson: Gosh, you gotta ask good questions. You gotta come prepared. And I think that’s one of the things that, again, just to flip to the guesting side, most guests don’t understand how much work goes into the prep [00:21:00] process, right? You can tell, like I’ve been a guest on certain shows where the person literally has no idea what I do.

They have never done the diligence. They’ve never actually gone and seen that. I’ve hosted a podcast before couple moons ago as you did when I was with Norton Norris,

and

Casey Cheshire: on pot chaser, by the way.

Trent Anderson: of course, there you go. Subtle plug. But it really comes, yeah, it comes down to prep. And

Casey Cheshire: Yeah.

Trent Anderson: if you have to like constantly search for ways to prep, It gets exhausting.

And I think that’s why Pod Fade exists, cuz like you have to recreate the same creative process over and over again. And the thing about creative processes is like they’re very seldom linear. Like it’s usually all up and down. But if you have your anchor, your flag, as I described it earlier of your P O V, you can enter into a conversation with the guest and say Hey, I saw you posted this on LinkedIn or Twitter the other day.

I’ve had the exact opposite experience. Tell me about why or how you got to that perspective. And I’ll tell [00:22:00] you about how I did from my perspective and then it lends itself to like actual conversation, which is really great. And sometimes that includes stepping on a guest’s shoes without making the, making them too dirty.

But it also unpacks like just much more authenticity and conversations. And really that’s like the true benefit of podcasts in my opinion. It’s one of the last places where real conversations can play out, cuz you certainly don’t get that in 280 characters on Twitter or LinkedIn comments or whatever.

It allows people to really understand the person behind the persona, which is typically what we’re projecting online.

Casey Cheshire: It’s so powerful that we bring that up. I’ve often struggled with that. Sometimes I like to investigate and I’m so curious that I’ll just ask you questions for days and I have to remind myself to, to share that point of view that I have. And sometimes it’s easy if you like completely disagree with a guest, you’re like I actually think differently, let’s discuss it.

But if they’re just on fire, like you’re on fire right now, so I just wanna learn more from you. But it’d be good to throw up my experience as [00:23:00] well. And that way we have that more of a dialogue and less of an interview.

Trent Anderson: Sure. Yeah, that’s huge. And I think you can start to make some assumptions about certain POVs as well. So like I’ll do this with you right now. Like you intentionally named the show as you did. You intentionally named the company as you did. So like ringmaster, I think fun, excitement, element of surprise, element of danger.

Is that the kind of perspective you wanted to bring forward when it comes to what can be. Lack of a better term, boring B2B content. Like what? What drove some of your perspectives on why naming it ringmasters?

Casey Cheshire: And you’re hired. So listen up, pod chaser, you gotta treat this guy, right? We’re already in the market. you well.

Trent Anderson: Oh yeah. It’s great. Great company.

Casey Cheshire: Okay, good. Cuz that was well said. Yeah. It’s like there’s so much of that just ugh. Content that, now you can just have chat, G b T build it. Either way it’s still just it’s boring, and not helpful. And sometimes the title’s great. I once [00:24:00] got tricked into filling out a form. It was like, oh, the latest in marketing n AI in marketing automation. I was like, oh, this sounds great. Let’s do it. And then the PDF looked pretty, but it was absolute rubbish.

Said nothing in there. I felt so tricked and I told that company like, never Call me again. And I unsubscribed. So there’s just so much of that out there. I wanted to shake it up that, and I saw The Greatest Showman and I thought, let’s do this.

Trent Anderson: There you go. Can you sing?

Casey Cheshire: I was discussing this with someone today.

There are people on this planet who think they can sing that can’t and probably should get some lessons. And there are some people that really can, and I would put myself in like the humble, low middle,

Trent Anderson: Yeah. Okay.

Casey Cheshire: in the car I can sing The Greatest Showman.

Does that stand up? Karaoke, right? I.

The slower the song, the better. You need to sing, right? Singing r a m is not a thing at karaoke. Sing something fast, pull out some. Garth Brooks, do you have a go-to song?

Trent Anderson: [00:25:00] A go-to song. No, but the team

Casey Cheshire: if I put you on the spot right now, you have to karaoke? What would you sing?

Trent Anderson: I really only listen to

Casey Cheshire: I.

Trent Anderson: podcasts that are put to music, and the team makes fun of me so much for it. So there, there’s Jocko Willink who, some of you might know David Goggins, like very motivational types of people, and they’ve done a bunch of podcast interviews, some of ’em on Rogan or whatever.

There’s an artist named Akira the Don, and he’s taken some of the. Strongest messaging from those guest interviews and he puts them to like electronic music. So I listen to it when I work out and when I run. And over time, like I hear their voices in my head. So like my personal trainers are David Goggins and Jocko willing, cuz they’re screaming in my head.

And it’s to BPMs that are like a hundred forty, a hundred fifty, a hundred seventy. And. It’s it just keeps going. So yeah, those are the types of songs like I, I hear David Goggins in my head all the time saying, just do the [00:26:00] math man. So

Casey Cheshire: Anyone that doesn’t know Goggins needs to check him out. Get his book. You Can’t Hurt Me. That’s one I’m working on right now. He’s got another one out too. Brilliant. So I love those man. Sometimes you see those on like Facebook or YouTube shorts where you’ve just got, the running and Gogan is famously, he’ll do a little live, he’ll just be running, he’s like a mile 50 out of a hundred and he is just telling you to stop crying about your wounds.

Trent Anderson: It’s true man. Like we live in the easiest era of all human humankind, and sometimes it’s important to remind ourselves of that what were my great grandparents doing? I. At this point in their lives, and they had six kids and they’re working three jobs and like life was just really hard.

They didn’t have a side hustle. They didn’t have the ability to buy a $300 microphone off of Amazon to get it delivered the same day, like they were doing really hard stuff. So in that context, you’re like, man, what am I complaining about? I get to talk on a, on an iPhone that’s mounted and I got my mic like, so anyway, I like to keep that perspective too.

Casey Cheshire: [00:27:00] Brilliant man. And you even brought up context just now, right? Which again, I see that lens that you’re talking through. We’ve talked content context. Really all these things are infused into our conversation. How much. How much do you deliberately seek out to isolate an audience? Again, back to that question of like chicken or the egg, the craft, the art, the, and then whoever wants to watch it Great.

Or specifically go after this audience, because I know they’re missing this thing. Where do you advise on that?

Trent Anderson: It. It’s one of the most important things to do, and I think in a lot of ways, marketers. Over the last 10 years have really become technologists instead of marketers. And what do I mean by that? If you think back to Don Draper era, mad Men era, like old school Madison Avenue types of agencies, how did they develop any sort of insight that led to large multinational ad campaigns?

They didn’t have Facebook, they didn’t have Google, they didn’t have [00:28:00] podcasts. So what did they do? How did they understand what kind of messaging to use, what kind of ad, creative, whatever?

Casey Cheshire: Yeah.

Trent Anderson: Turns out they talked to customers and they went through like rigorous market research, all with the intent to figure out why humans were doing the things that they were doing, and.

Now with the click of a couple buttons on Facebook, you can deploy, $10,000 ad spend a day if you want to with Google Ads. Same thing. And you start looking at, okay, how do we optimize for our roas? We want to decrease cost per click. So we’re gonna run this against an audience that we bought a bunch of emails off of a list, we’re gonna upload that as a custom audience.

Is that marketing or is that just leveraging tech tools? In my opinion, it’s tech tools. So before I advise anybody on anything podcast, whether it’s starting your own, starting a branded show, or even going out and doing guest appearances is understand. Something, literally [00:29:00] anything about your audience.

Like what do they listen to podcasts, when do they listen to podcasts? What kind of mood do they have to be in to listen to podcasts? And I think one of the things that was a lightning strike in my brain was people listen to podcasts because they’re trying to acquire a great amount of information in a very condensed amount of time.

And if you can deliver on that as a show, whether it’s, your own podcast or branded show, whatever, People will come back because you’re gonna get them further along than the time that it would take for them to sit down and read David Goggin’s book. They’re not gonna have to thumb through 500 pages to get to maybe two or three key points.

To your point about Chris Voss earlier the podcast, if it can deliver on the kind of core message that great learning in a short amount of time that is. What the ultimate goal is, in my opinion, as a consumer of a lot of shows, right? So again, that starts by asking [00:30:00] customers. That starts by asking people who you think should be listening to your show.

What other shows are they listening to? What do they love about them? What do they hate about them? What do they wish they would cover more in depth? Again, whether that’s more takeaways, whether that’s more frameworks, whether that’s advice or like support and community, and that’s another huge thing that we’re starting to see more and more of is like these massive communities that are being built around media properties, podcasts, YouTube.

Or otherwise. And I look at a company like Barstool and how well they’ve been able to tap into that. It’s not like they were sitting around saying Hey, what do you 18 to 24 year olds like to talk about? It’s pretty much sports and beer and girls and the sort of thing they leaned into it.

But the way that they were able to involve listeners into their content development whether it is award-winning listeners as pardon my take uses and like having a, an award show that’s all about the award-winning listeners. These are the types of insights that you only get by sitting as close to your audience, as close to your customers as possible, [00:31:00] and then developing content around that.

So that’s the winding path to the answer.

Casey Cheshire: It is close to your customer. As you can and then develop content. Love that. Love that. Dude. My favorite kind of day is when I can talk marketing, sales, and podcasting in the same sentences. Back to back, man. Brilliant. Let’s talk about PO Chaser a little bit here. Give us the rundown.

What is pod, I know you’ve got like a million features now, but like at its core, what is pod chaser? And then I know you’re in the partnership world, so talk more about what kind of partners you’re looking for.

Trent Anderson: Definitely so Po Chaser started because our co-founders recognized that there was no aggregator. That existed to take all of these disparate pieces of information and glue ’em all together. So we like to describe the podcast industry as being highly frag fragmented with a relatively low net promoter score.

Highly fragmented, meaning you’ve got four key players, apple, [00:32:00] Amazon, Spotify, and then Google slash YouTube. Clearly YouTube is making a run at this industry as well, so we could talk more about that later. But each and every one of them are trying to create their own walled gardens, whether that’s through content or whether that’s through tech and tools and the media business as we understand it, there’s really only a few ways to make money from it.

One is through advertising, right? So how do you get as many ad dollars through your properties as possible? Two is two would be through subscriptions and. We know podcast ads are a huge business, but podcast subscriptions really haven’t full fledged gotten adopted by the public at large quite yet. We’ve seen some very recent stories from a company like Wondery where they’re starting to make seismic shifts about their business model, but it was really intended to be a premium subscription based model for podcasts, and it turned out well.

We might have been. Oversubscribed to all other types of content media and just the value that you get exchanged from an [00:33:00] HBO Max verse six different podcasts that you may like, two or three of ’em, but you’re paying for all six of ’em. It just wasn’t really working out. So the third way that media companies make money would be through like merchandise and product.

And again, talking about Barstool, I heard recent stat that’s like something like 40% of their revenue now comes from the merchandise that they sell. That’s all tied back to the content they develop. So if you’ve got ads, if you’ve got subscriptions and you’ve got merchandise that’s why there’s been this.

Arms race effectively from the Big four in the podcast industry to gobble up as much content and gobble up as many tech tools as possible. Because they want, they have a, literally, they have an initiative to do right by their shareholders by increasing shareholder value, right? So as a result of that’s created like foreclosed ecosystems.

And this is where I land the plane with what pod chaser does. We aggregate data across, not just. Like one or two different [00:34:00] places. We aggregate data across like the entire podcast ecosystem. So we have data partnerships with hosting providers, with publishers, and definitely with podcast player apps.

And it’s all with the intent to keep everything open for everyone, cuz that’s ultimately the only way that the industry continues to grow. If everyone retracts into their respective corners of the podcast landscape. It doesn’t benefit independent shows which drive so much of the like the heart of the podcast landscape and certainly the long tail, the podcast landscape, if everything is just going to the top 10% of shows, which typically are associated in some way or shape or form with the top four providers, Ben.

It doesn’t become the open ecosystem that we were promised when it came to podcasts. So effectively in unveiling the data aggregation across all of these, it first attracted podcast listeners to find their next favorite show. And that was really the true intent of pod chaser day one.

And then as we started adding contact [00:35:00] information, then it was really became very interesting for PR agencies that had been using tools like Cision and MuckRack and Meltwater, they, where they had these press databases, so to speak. And that’s how they were getting in contact with the earned for earned media opportunities.

More recently, we unveiled sponsorship data and showing who’s sponsoring which podcast, what the estimated spend is for those shows. So now we’re tapping into the ad buying market, and I dunno if a lot of people know this, but there’s really six holding companies that control basically all the advertising purse strings for every company in the world, especially Fortune 500 and up.

And one of the reasons why they haven’t been able to purchase. Podcast ads. Why it’s not a $10 billion industry yet is because it’s all fragmented. It’s like literally everywhere. If you want to get data for one show, you have to go to iHeart, and then if you want data for a different show that looks like it, you have to go to Odyssey and then.

Lo and behold, Odyssey changes hands. It gets gobbled up by a private equity firm, and then you gotta start back at square one. So [00:36:00] again, the in the intent here was to democratize data for everybody, because we think that’s the way that you build a sustainable, long-term medium. And that’s what we’ve done at Pod Chaser.

Casey Cheshire: So then talk to me about if someone listening to this who would be the right people to reach out to about partnerships?

Trent Anderson: Yeah, so I work pretty exclusively with podcast networks and podcast publishers. So this is gonna be your like tier four to tier one types of networks. So think about, yeah, your bar stools. Think about Lamata Media. Think about Ray Vera Podcast, which is, specifically for Spanish speaking shows.

These are all. Entities that have a vested interest in making sure that their shows grow, that they’re tapping to the right audiences, and in some cases even acquiring shows that they think could be a good fit for their networks. So I work a lot with those types of big networks, especially when it [00:37:00] comes to the guest placement side of it.

So I had a purchaser Connect, which is our agency that sits on top of pro. And one of the ways that we interface with our networks is building out these talent pipelines in conjunction with our networks. So I can say, Hey I’m representing this university professor who has done some of the most groundbreaking research into the gut health space.

And previously led the bill Melinda gates gut microbiome 40 million global project with that. It looks based on your six shows you have in the health and wellness category, four of ’em have discussed gut health, but they’ve all done it from a probiotics perspective as opposed to prebiotics perspective.

My gas can help unpack some of the reasons why prebiotics are actually the first step in maintaining gut health. And oh, by the way, there’s this brain gut connection and all these fun little anecdotes and tips. So that’s been such a game changer for us in for our clients [00:38:00] because it’s gaining us access into much larger opportunities as opposed to what some agencies do, sadly, in going in and sending the same canned email.

To 150 shows that even are remotely related to health and wellness, and then sending them the same pitch over and over again. So instead, yeah, we, we develop really strong relationships with the content developers at all these networks and use that to establish some mutually beneficial opportunities.

Casey Cheshire: I’ve always thought that was what was missing. Cause I’ve worked with as a, I guess I have interacted with a lot of podcast bookers of different shapes and sizes across my shows and the shows we produce and. Certainly less than the number of fingers on one of my hands are per like professional, great supplying great guests.

The other ones are supplying those uninteresting no point of view, boring, [00:39:00] downright sketchy guests that should probably, shouldn’t be on a podcast just like they probably shouldn’t be singing. I’m so glad to hear you talk about creating relationships with those networks to. To really offer pitches that make sense for everyone, where it’s actually a win-win.

It’s not just you’re trying to get someone on the show, let me just get something here. You’re like, Hey this could really help your programming. It seems like such a win to really form tighter relationships like that.

Trent Anderson: It’s the only way I know how to do it. I just, I feel if we’re gonna spend a lot of time and energy trying to get our clients placed, like it, it’s so important to make sure that they’re placed in reputable, appreciative types of places where that content’s wanted and needed. And it’s just been a total mindset shift for us as an organization.

And it’s proved quite fruitful since we made the switch.

Casey Cheshire: you mentioned I. Networks and you mentioned a kind of tier system, tier three and four. Can you just quickly give me the sense for what the [00:40:00] network tiers are?

Trent Anderson: yeah. We might define it differently than they’ve, the networks themselves define it. Of course. Now, most of the public rankings you’re gonna see about this, whether it’s through Triton or through pod track or even Signal Hill. They’re all gonna view it from a, how much revenue are they bringing in perspective?

Cause that’s the easiest way to rank them. And I think that’s definitely okay. But yeah, we know NPR is doing a ton of money in sales. We know SiriusXM is doing a ton of money in sales. But when it comes to the type of content and the type of shows that they’re actually bringing forth to the market, we view it as in alignment with our clients needs to be totally honest.

So we work with a lot of consumer brands and we’re working with their thought leaders to get them placed on shows. And some of them might have a keen interest in working with moms and matriarchs and heads of households because they have childre products or healthcare products or those types of initiatives going on.

So we actually stack rank our [00:41:00] networks based on the types of content they actually produce. to give you like, Here’s one through 10 in how we do it. We actually do it by vertical or by industry. And that’s just again, with the intent to build a much more representative data set for us. So of course you’re gonna have folks like HubSpot Podcast Network.

You’re gonna have LinkedIn Podcast Network who are both great partners of ours. And then,

Casey Cheshire: What would you

call, like what tier would you call that?

Trent Anderson: Yeah, from a business perspective, they gotta be right up there. Both of them gotta be right up there with tier one, tier two, I would say. And HubSpot’s probably further along in their journey in the podcast ecosystem.

Obviously through their acquisition of the Hustle and my first Million, like they’ve got a pretty substantial lead, I would say. But then LinkedIn Podcast Network and shout out to Mike Nussbaum and his team, like they’re building something truly special and they’re building it on top of a platform.

That already has all of the data the podcast networks are dying for, such as what company do they work at, what level of leadership positions do they hold? [00:42:00] Is this a podcast that’s being mostly consumed by entry level fresh outta college folks, or is it being consumed by VPs of it at, venture backed firms like LinkedIn has all that data because they have all of the users.

So I think. Mike and his team at LinkedIn Podcast Network are a sleeping giant, and they’re waking up right now. And we’ve seen this with the rollout of the initial LinkedIn podcast network, but definitely the accelerator program that they started up in conjunction with it, where they’ve taken it, I think it’s up to 20 B2B podcast.

And they’re effectively treating it like a portfolio of bets, almost like a VC would, and they’re investing into these shows. With all of the tools and resources that LinkedIn has. So I know in talking with them, like the podcasts that are working really well through their network are taking advantage of things like the LinkedIn newsletters, the LinkedIn audio thing, the LinkedIn live features, and it’s all.

Condense in this place where they already know so [00:43:00] much about the audience. So I think that’s a huge one to look at. And I wouldn’t be surprised in the next couple years if if LinkedIn starts to be much more associated with podcasts and certainly content writ large.

Casey Cheshire: Wow. That’s fantastic. I have enjoyed, some of my friends have done a lot of lives lately, and I’ve enjoyed the interactions though, the secret being that not all of those are actually live. That was disappointing to, to learn, but that’s the game. But yeah, I hear you man. LinkedIn is such a center centerpiece for a business like, oof that could So is four is tier four better or is tier one better

as you think of networks?

Trent Anderson: tier one. Yeah. Tier one would be like top tier four would be, yeah. Yeah. That’s how I would look at it. But that does not mean necessarily that if you’re looking to place a thought leader on a show that you would prioritize tier one ops over tier four ops, again, when you run it through the content, contacts and audience, audience and reach filter, that [00:44:00] I already mistaken,

Casey Cheshire:

Right? Like the doctor getting on the doctor’s show for sure is for the lowest tier. And what does that look like?

Trent Anderson: Yeah. Yeah, I would say that’s probably the lowest here, and it’s gonna be not representative of all of the hundreds of thousands of independent podcasts that exist. Again. What is a podcast network? It’s effectively a collection of shows that are working together. Sometimes they have shared resources, sometimes they have shared revenue models.

In some cases. And like, why would a show want to join a network? Because you can better collectively bargain certain things. So in working with, some of our networks, especially on the pro side, they want everyone to have access to all the data. And they’re in a better position to do that than the future of the shows were to purchase a podcast or pro subscription individually.

So you have some of that collective buying power element going on there as well. Much if you’re a professional, if you’re a sports franchise. Yeah, you could start up a new football team today [00:45:00] and you could probably attract some talent, especially if you wave some money in their face, but you’re not really a football team unless you’re associated with the franchise, which is part of the larger network, which of course would be the nfl.

Same sort of thing with live golf right now, you’ve got the PGA tour and then you’ve got this shiny new object of Liv. How’s Liv doing it? They’re throwing a ton of money at people. They’re guaranteeing exposure to far greater international audiences. And if you’re a golfer and you want maximum exposure cause you think that’s gonna drive more, LTV from your marketing initiatives, maybe that is the right place for you.

Maybe you grew up in a. Place where golf’s growing, but it doesn’t have the huge presence as it does here, which I think is some of the decisions that those made. So again, to bring this full circle with podcasts, a lot of independent podcasts do just great by themselves. If they need additional support, such as a sales team that’s gonna go out and sell their ADV inventory on their behalf, it takes a significant amount of burden off of the individual podcaster or their producer if they have one, or [00:46:00] their marketing person if they have one, because you’re gonna be able to tap into the resources that are available at a network level.

So a lot of these networks do form around. Different topics in different subject matters in different categories. Starting to see this a lot more. There’s a legal news network. I think I’m, I might be butchering their name, but it’s all shows that are about. Legal work and it’s typ, they’re typically hosted by lawyers and attorneys and judges and that sort of thing.

And instead of them joining on with an iHeart that does like literally everything from radio to podcasts and all kinds of content topics, it’s a dedicated place with dedicated resources that they’re gonna be able to tap into professionally and personally. I would put, like a legal network in a tier four doesn’t mean that they’re better or worse or anything.

It’s just, it’s smaller. It’s more concentrated.

Casey Cheshire: Is there a dollar amount that you need to have for that, or is that the starting point? If you have a network or tier four, do you need a certain number of shows to consider yourself a network?

Trent Anderson: I don’t think so. Yeah, I think [00:47:00] if you have. One or two. I think that’s probably two or three. It could probably be considered a network. I was actually just listening to Brendan Shaub, who you know, is a podcaster who’s on fighter with the kid. He had a huge deal with Showtime. He walked away from Showtime to, to create Dick Boy network and he is got seven shows under that.

And he was literally talking about how. He wanted more con creative controller and capacity over the content he was producing. He had already built up a substantial following. He had a ton of audience that he was gonna take with him, and he did that. What he failed to potentially recognize when he made the move was I don’t have showtimes.

VP of marketing that’s leading all of my publicity right now, it’s me. So he has to work even harder on social, on search, on community to build out these bread breadcrumb trails to get audience back to his seven shows. He just doesn’t have that layer of support anymore. Will, would it be the ultimate decision if he made the right call or [00:48:00] not?

Time will tell. He’s only been at it for a year. But there is something to be said about cuz some of that network effect.

Casey Cheshire: Brilliant dude, I could talk to you all day. We’re gonna have to chat again on the marketing podcast. Such an awesome combination of podcasting, marketing, sales, and getting away from the tech and understanding the audience, understanding the goal of the show and what you’re trying to do. Brilliant stuff, man.

Where can people reach out?

Throw some URLs, some social platforms, all

Trent Anderson: yeah. LinkedIn would be a good place. Just Trent Anderson, I think again, my team makes fun of me. I think my vanity URL on LinkedIn is Growth Trent, so linkedin.com/en/growth. Trent

Casey Cheshire: Nice.

Trent Anderson: And they’re gonna laugh when I say that. I’m also doing a little challenge now with GPT four on Twitter.

I dunno if you’ve seen some of these threads as they’re starting to go viral about. Hey you are now TikTok, G P T. This is my name. This is what I talk about. Give me a million followers

Casey Cheshire: Dude, I did see that. I think I’m following you. I must be following you on Twitter.

Yeah.

So you’re doing this [00:49:00] contest.

Trent Anderson: I’m doing this on Twitter right now. Yeah. With the intent to get to 25,000 followers on Twitter in the next 30 days or so.

And I’m gonna be, tweeting out up updates of it all. So I gotta plug that cause it’s a fun, goofy project, but Man, if we’re not like trying to learn how these chat agents are going to impact our jobs, and this is really what it is for me. It’s a grand experiment on how far can we push.

Not man verse machine, but man plus machine and yeah. So to go check that out on Twitter and Twitter, it’s Trent Anderson and the Owen Anderson is a zero. So fun

Casey Cheshire: Mr. Anderson. Yeah, man, this is great. I did see that. I saw you were like, I’m getting better at recording these things. You still haven’t done a dance though, right?

Trent Anderson: No I’m not gonna be doing any dancing. I, I

Casey Cheshire: What? No. Oh, come on. No dancing.

​

Casey Cheshire: It’s TikTok, dude.

Trent Anderson: no. I’m sticking to Twitter with that. Like I’m Greg Isenberg is the guy who’s doing it with TikTok, but [00:50:00] I haven’t seen Greg dance yet, but I’ll stick to text-based stuff with Twitter.

Casey Cheshire: Good call. Good call. Less embarrassing that way though. You might look to bring some dancing onto Twitter. Could use a little,

Trent Anderson: Needs, needs something. Yeah. It’s turned into something. I don’t know what it is quite yet, but we’ll see.

Casey Cheshire: Maybe it’s our AI overlords just forming themselves, initial consciousness. And with that, dude, thank you so much for coming on here. I really appreciated it.

Trent Anderson: Yeah. I appreciate you, Casey. It’s it’s been a fun chat and looking forward to. Keeping it going.

Casey Cheshire: Hell yeah, man. For those listening, if you learn something and I freaking know you did, cause I literally have two pages of notes over here, front and back. I literally ran outta room. I’m writing in margins, drawing circles, and Man, then share this with someone else. One person, even one person, two people, 9,000, whatever it is.

But put your spin on it. What was your takeaway? Was it that takeaway about having a takeaway or was there something else? And either way, maybe it was the four, the context, the audience, the different recipes, then you get [00:51:00] to reach. Whatever it is, throw that on LinkedIn, tag us. We’ll hop in there in the comments.

We’ll start a little discussion. But have some fun with it. That’s thought leadership. And again, dude, you are the man. Thank you again for coming on here.

Trent Anderson: Thanks, Casey. Cheers.

Casey Cheshire: All right, buddy. We will see you later. And thank you all for listening. Thank you all for coming. That was an awesome, crazy episode of creating the Greatest Show.

We will see you all next time.

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