Inside the Mind of a Senior Podcast Producer

We have mainstream celebrities come on, and they say to me afterwards. You know, whenever you're starting something, you're always, always, always going to be cringed. Really, the success of podcasting comes down to. I am Ben Hancock, currently working as a senior producer at 7X Content. I've worked on shows over the years, like Modern Wisdom, Currently Man Alive, a really new, cool, mental health podcast. Okay, Ben, I want to read you a quick quote from Mr. Beast, and I want to ask you how it correlates to the podcasting world. Oh, okay. Ideas have the highest leverage on growth. Picking the right idea matters more to the success of a video than its execution. My question to you is, what has the highest leverage of growth or success in the podcasting space? It's very, you can tell I'm from podcasting because I'm about to say it's nuanced and not give you that clickbait social media answer. As podcasting grows, you see celebrities come in and a lot of the time dominate. However, that doesn't always happen, which has been something very interesting about podcasting. You'll see quite a big famous name comedian will start a podcast, and it's almost slightly embarrassing for them because it hasn't immediately taken off. You know, they haven't had to put in the hard yards. I'm sure they have previously to get their career up to where it is, but when they're on television or on a panel show, things are set up for them, and so they enter the podcasting space, and the ones that keep viewers coming back is where the formats are, the ideas are. So in that sense, I think he's correct. If I'm hearing this correctly, you're saying the idea of the show as a whole is probably the biggest leverage on success, or are you saying on a more episode by episode basis? I think on the whole, because real success in podcasting is building community. There are so many ways of organically driving viewers, but my favorite way, and I think still the most effective way, is when you find something that you enjoy, you build it into your weekly routine, or wherever whenever it releases, and then you recommend that to a friend by word of mouth. What is a show that you have worked on or that you're working on, where you're really proud of the idea as a whole? I'm curious if we can illustrate this point a little bit more. A big project in my mind at the moment is Man Alive with Dr. Jeff Foster. It's a men's health podcast that I do as part of 7X Content, the agency that I work with. That is a beautiful podcast first. It's like really cool what we're doing with it, but also we've got those formats and segments that we build in, and we kind of had a mixture of how do we have it so that people want to come back, because they're like, "I want to see this guest in the context of Man Alive, while also having authentic conversations, and unlocking things that no other podcast would be able to unlock." So I'll give some context on it. It's a health podcast for men, where we have celebrities come on, and before they come on, they do a blood test, and we reveal their results live on the show. I'm really enjoying that because it's new, it's a complex production to lead on, and I always feel like health channels have a bit more complexity with strategy, trying to get them to break them old, but we've seen success with that. And my favorite thing is that we have mainstream celebrities come on, and they say to me afterwards, "I get so bored of having to do all of these podcasts to promote stuff, but I really enjoyed this experience, and that means everything to me." That is a really strong idea for a show. Like, I come from a YouTube background and the way that I tie that together, where my mind goes, "Is the show hot ones?" It feels like it has a similar vein in the sense that people are coming on, maybe challenging themselves, I don't know if that's exactly the right word, but learning something new about themselves, and these celebrities, they go to junkets from a thousand different places, and they answer the same questions over and over again, "You're bringing something new." So that's actually cool. And does that correlate to stronger performance? Did that show succeed quicker? Do you have a stronger, deeper audience because of the format? Is that proof that the idea is really strong? It's an interesting one because the host didn't have an established following. So, like I said before, when you come into that, you have to have really strong ideas. And so, I've been working for years on kind of guest strategy and guest research, to be part of what I did for Chris Williamson, constantly researching guests and recommending. It's what I'd done before as well. I'd grown some podcasts primarily, I would say, through guest strategy. And so, something I could bring was almost the knowledge and how do I put this? I'm happy with rejection. I don't mind it. I was a Christian missionary for two years full-time. You know, I've learned what rejection is. Part of your wheelhouse style, yeah. I do not care about it. And so, I'm someone who can go out to 200 guests and get rejected by most, and it not get in my head. So, I think that has helped it to be elevated quicker, and as well, we're applying all the strategy that we know on social media to get clips, and five months in, we've had several clips hit over a million, close to a million, and then if you've got the correct conversion funnels, then you know that you're only helping yourself build that podcast. So, yeah, it's growing faster than a show that doesn't have that same. wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, yeah. What is your unfair advantage as an employee working in the podcasting space? On a technical level, I think just experience. I was very lucky to get into this industry at an early age, which is a competitive industry to get in and quickly rise up through just the people I worked with. So, there's that, but also, I think what that's given me is. I think I have a more holistic view to podcasting for it across shows that have completely different strategies to building things up. I did politics podcasts, and it was the kind of politics where I thought, to grow, people need to gather in person because they're all freaking out and they need. they need to know they have friends who listen to the same thing, and that was wild for that show, just amazing. Whereas there are some shows that are like, we really need to focus on the metrics here to get this out to the right demographics and whatnot. So, yeah, that's very boasting of me, isn't it? I've probably listed about seven unfair advantages. What I mean to say is that I've got a more holistic view of podcasting, I think that's what I feel it is, and that's what I feel brings me a lot of joy when I work in podcasting. Do you think that that's nature or nurtured? Good question. I think partly nurture because I witnessed, especially Chris Williamson, massively impactful for me, very formative time of my life when we were working on podcasts, and we didn't really dive in deep to many YouTube metrics. It was all about creating something beautiful and meaningful, and I remember sitting in the recording with David Goggins when we did that episode in Vegas and thinking, the people who listened to this and care about it, they'll remember this conversation in 50 years because of what they've talked about and the production, quality and things, and just the care and devotion that the whole team foremost, Chris, put into that. That's kind of where I see the nurture side, but also nature, just the, I've always been a bit of an outside thinker. I'm not a normal, I would say, I'm not a normal 27-year-old. I think I'm probably different to most people in some ways bad and some ways maybe positive. I like it, and I like that you know that about yourself too, because then it allows you to leverage it for work. Like, you know that you see the world differently from most people. You brought up Chris Williamson. It would be a shame not to talk about him for a little bit. Give me the TLDR of your working experience with him. How long were you working with him? What was your role? I worked with Chris for four and a half years. I think it was, and so essentially he was a hiring and assistant. It was him and Dean, the video guy, creative director. It was those two guys running modern wisdom for, I think, they'd been doing it for, I want to say two years already. And I think it was just at that point where it was that was starting, you know, every few episodes that would have a kind of good hit. But it was still very much, they were 150,000 YouTube subscribers. And it was the time where they were finally expanding the team. And so I was the third team member of modern wisdom. I basically did anything that was needed of me, very much a generalist role. And I enjoyed that. And then as that grew and grew and grew and became just crazy, then I moved more into content management because the output that we were doing was just huge. And so it was my responsibility. I kind of was responsible for the quality of every single thing we put out. In terms of if something wasn't quite right, it was like, did Ben miss this? Or, you know, for clips and things like that, if I felt it wasn't really aligned. I was a brand champion because I really cared about it. So when more people come to work in, I saw myself as a little bit of a, a kind of brand gatekeeper of like, this has been built over several years. That's not kind of ruined the reputation over a clip, that's a little bit cheap for, for what we're building kind of thing. His dedication to his craft is unlike any other podcaster I've ever worked with. I'm still inspired by that after it's almost a year since I stopped working at modern wisdom. Do you recognize the name Mark Manson? Yeah. So I worked with him for three years. And Mark has appeared on Chris' show a bunch of times. And I've always found it a really rewarding experience working for somebody like Mark because it's like genuinely helpful for people. People looked up to him and appreciated the advice that he had. And I think there's crossover between Chris as well. He's bringing, you know, good positive energy into the world and helping people improve their quality of their lives. Yeah, and, you know, in content creation, there are so many faceless channels, AI channels now, and channels that are, their motivations are purely financial or or clout chasing, whereas for Chris he was genuinely cultivating an audience that he loved. Why would you cultivate an audience that you really don't like if content creation and podcasting is something you love, then you should be able to have an audience that you genuinely admire and think, wow, I've got my people with me. And I felt that Chris's people are the ones who listened. That was so cool when we eventually got to see the live shows and actually it was people rather numbers on the screen. The first few were quite trippy, it was like, wow, these are real people, but it was also just a wonderful experience that I'll never forget. What are three things you learned about greatness from working with Chris Williamson? Ah, well, let me get my notes up because I've written this down, actually. Whenever I work with people, I like to write down why I've learned from them. Okay, this is an exclusive, number one, data is very useful, but don't compromise your tone of voice and values for slightly higher optimization. Number two, all aspects of podcasting should be enjoyable and uplifting. Number three, eventually the best will always rise to the top. Number four, interviewing is a craft, a form of artistry. Number five, the worth of beauty is beyond purely its function, therefore strive to create something beautiful. Number six, success is on the other side of cringe. Number seven, cultivate an audience A that you love and B that you love creating for. Eight, no researcher can or should replace an authentic thoughtful conversation born of earnest curiosity. However good the team around you is, the host must personally prepare wealth for each interview. Number nine, I was dedicated, obsessed with and devoted to my work, but Chris was more so. If I missed anything, it was Chris who would pop up and remind me nicely. He cared and was personally invested in the success of the minutia. When we're talking like pinned comment, tiny things, Chris would just send a gentle reminder because he just, maybe to his own detriment sometimes with his mental health or something, stress levels wouldn't be quick to relinquish his grasp of podcast minutia. But at the same time, that's what made him so successful and he was genuinely dedicated to it. I'm so lucky I asked that question, nobody's ever answered it with such intimate detail. That is a really strong list, obviously you've put a lot of thought into it and you think about it on your own end. We have to include all nine. It's the only way. Yeah, and let's dig into one of those that I think was a hallmark quote for me working with Chris, which is success is on the other side of cringe. That was a very much thing of like when we're creating stuff, we have to be conscious that it's still cool. It's quite easy to slip into, especially when you've been doing it for years and you're complacent and we're all getting older as well, we're not the young twenties that we used to be. It's really important that it doesn't become cringe. And as part of that, with say thumbnails merchandise, you know, it's still so hard to get Chris's merch because for years, you are going through different kind of things because it needed to be top quality and needed to be the best. Same for thumbnails, descriptions, everything, everything was really carefully thought over. And I remember one time Chris coming to the team with kind of plans for the new year and this in big bold text, it was still, we need to make sure that we're never cringe because that's when we'll start kind of dropping it. And I love that and it was a great north star for everything that you did. It was a great way to be as a team. We were a cool team and I think I was probably the least cool in the top stop stop stop. You were the taste maker of the entire show. You were the most cool. No way, that was definitely not true. But nevertheless, they took me in any way and from a pretty young age, I was still in university and I was there for a long time and it was a privilege and honor and just grateful to play a part of it. I actually thought you were going to take it in the direction of you have to be cringe in order to succeed, but you are saying you can be successful and still fall into the trap of becoming cringe and that's when things become problematic. Yeah, and to be honest, I don't know if other people think Chris's early episode of cringe, I don't that I didn't necessarily think that, but I think as a host and a creator, you're always going to look back and cringe at your early episodes, you will. That's a good thing because it's a sign that you've come on so far from it. I look at my early episodes of the podcast, I've a faith podcast and I look at the early episodes of that and I think, I've learned a lot since then, that's the beauty of the podcasting and that's that's why I don't want to lose in the industry, I don't want it, I don't want those first episodes to be polished perfect. Do you recognize the name Ira Glass from NPR? No. So he's the host of this show called This American Life and he said, you know, whenever you're starting something, you're always, always, always going to be cringe because your expectations of yourself don't meet your taste and you enter the podcasting industry or you become a YouTuber because you think you have good taste of like what it means to be a quality artist and he says, it's just impossible to meet your own expectations as you're first starting out and so you're inevitably cringy and his answer, which sounds kind of similar to what Chris is saying in a certain degree, is you just have to get through it. You have to push through it and you will look back and you will say, yeah, I was absolutely cringe, but because I pushed through, I'm much, much less cringe now than what I was back then. Five years beyond that, you're going to have the same sentiment about how you are right today and you just constantly look back at yourself and say, oh my gosh, I'm so much better than what I was five years ago. Yeah, that's a part on the back moment and I doubt other people will think it's cringe from the start. Yeah, this podcast is a testament to that because when we first got started, I felt really uncomfortable and you know, there wasn't a lot of reward, not a lot of people were watching it or consuming it or listening it, but as I kind of like pushed through it, people much earlier than I expected said that they were enjoying the show and that was, you know, it was like one or two comments a week, a month and it really meant a lot, you know. Chris often talks about this hockey stick inflection point for his podcast because for the first two years, there was essentially nothing like, but it was very much, you know, it was a long time and Chris has said this on other shows, I think there were days when there would be zero listens in place and when you're doing that for two years, releasing what two episodes a week and not seeing much come back, it's like if people look at that podcast and think anything cynical, no, it's incredible hard work and dedication has been put into the, into growing to that, growing that show where it is now. Of course, and now modern wisdom is regarded as one of the greatest shows on the internet. So I think people kind of think, when they think of Chris, they only think of what it is now. So it's interesting to hear like, oh yeah, there was two year process where things were not good. Nobody was watching or listening. I think that's just the push. That's the push of becoming a creator. You just got to get yourself through that, you know, most people quit at that point and as long as you don't quit, you will eventually win. I think it's something like 92% of podcasts quit before 20 episodes. Yeah. And, you know, if we recall back to, we were speaking about Mr. Beast at the start and there was that principle with Mr. Beast that he's opened up about about how he would invest more and more into the show and he's dedicated to creating these epic videos. And although the content is very different, I mean, Chris has spent 100 grand before in a set, I'm pretty sure. I mean, I've seen. I was going to ask you about that, yeah, yeah, yeah, because Mark, the guy who I previously worked for, he was a guest on Chris' show. And I remember Chris really going above and beyond to make it this visually impressive looking set. I mean, I remember when we were working on, we were having these meetings about, oh, what's cool stuff that we could do. But later on, he said to us that he was booking this volume studio in Austin where they had filmed scenes from like the Mandalorian and stuff and going to have these tables and it's wildly expensive and you're sitting on a table, but you can project like they had created Unreal Engine graphics for the back of it. You're watching it. This is the Machumacana episode, right, where they recreated the set of interstellar. Well, that was later on. I mean, earlier on, we did, we went to that same studio and we had Dr. K. Healthy, Healthy Gamers. So that's what I mean is in that element, you're not necessarily thinking about click through rate, average view duration. You're just saying let's make something amazing that people will remember. And if you can get to that point, we're having such fun with it and you're really putting everything you can into creating amazing podcasts, that's what I love about the industry. I want to bring up a conversation I had with somebody who makes podcasts and his philosophy around it. I think you will challenge it. He says the way that he thinks about podcasting is as a series of shorts, because shorts are what is growing the show. That's where you get your organic growth. And so everything for him is one short, clipable moment, followed by another clipable moment, followed by another clipable moment, and you do that for 90 minutes. And that's actually your podcast episode. What role does shorts actually play in the podcasting world? Well, if I speak purely from modern wisdom, we didn't start doing shorts until really, late, you know, almost a million subscribers, I think, was when we started taking shorts seriously. So I don't think it's necessary. And it also doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I would agree. Depending on the lot of content. So here's where I see it. You have the content waterfall system, right? You take a, you take an episode, you have a 60 minute episode from that episode. get a newsletter, a blog, tweets, Instagram, Quote carousels, you get short form clips, you get medium length clips, the kind of 10-minute stuff that you can put on Facebook, you can put on YouTube. There are things in there that you know that will work and you're trying to expand your audience. So, therefore, you have a two-hour conversation with this amazing person and it's a genuinely authentic, meaningful conversation. Within that conversation, you can plant some questions that you know have performed well on other things. Or it may be just something topical. So, say, "I've got Elon Musk on. Who am I going to ask? What am I going to ask Elon Musk about?" Is a few months ago maybe asking him about what he thought about this moon-spacing. I don't know. You can strategically have things in. But if those things supersede the quality of the conversation, I don't think that's very effective for community building. Really, the success of podcasting comes down to building a community around it and leveraging that community. I also think when we're using Modern Wisdom as a case study, I don't know, it just feels like it's a really saturated market now. And if you're not competing on the shorts level and you're not water falling your content as you described, it feels like you are going. It's going to take you longer to succeed. And everybody wants success in the shortest time horizon. If you have a holistic view, Devon, then that strategy will not work for every podcast. I mean, what podcast are we talking about with the short one? What type of podcast? I've worked with Money Creators and we all kind of fall in the same education umbrella, but I think Money Creators are unique in the sense that their motives are very, very clear and very different from some of the other educators that I've worked with. But there's also this thing of is your purpose trying to earn money from the content itself or get these. I think that's the case. They would not pursue that as a form of content. They would not do that if the ROI wasn't there. My understanding of that is, I can't remember the name of the creator, however, there's a creator that I'm familiar with who has a channel with 100,000 subscribers and he has a channel with 500 subscribers. The channel with 500 subscribers makes far more money because it's much more targeted, whereas this one is about viral and getting clicks, whereas this one is content targeted specifically to the audience that is needed to come into the lead funnel to then convert into actual customers. And a community. I prefer to look at a podcast, look at the specific objectives, and yeah, from that I would then derive a strategy that is bespoke to the aims and objectives of that podcast. That's not me discounting shorts, but I think will we experience some real shorts fatigue in the future? I think YouTube has just announced that you can switch off shorts on YouTube, I think maybe that was a bit older. So when I look as well, even with viral clips, the conversion, the conversion funnel, these platforms want to keep you on their platform, so I don't think it'll ever be the case where short form has a huge, huge conversion rate, unless you are specifically targeting that audience that you really want them to come across and this is really exclusive for them. I want to get inside your brain just a little bit. I'm going to pivot the conversation. Brands are entering the space more aggressively than ever before. I'm curious what you would do if a brand says I want to make a podcast that there are brands where I would listen to their show like sports teams I would love to listen to their podcast, but then there are other brands that are just kind of like all over the place. And so I wanted to put together a thought experiment and I wanted to ask you let's say that Coca-Cola approached you and said, I want to make a podcast. I don't know anything about it. It's a blank slate. Help me win. What would you do in that scenario? Well, I'm primarily nowadays work with brands. So I think there's absolutely room for brands and you see hugely successful podcasts that are branded. And so what I would look there is I would look at the successful ones. So one that comes up straight away in the UK is dish podcast by Waitrose. How has Waitrose as a brand approached their podcast strategy? They've got two really well respected celebrities. So they've got a cook and a broadcaster who come together. They meet celebrities. They cook their favorite dish and they're using Waitrose ingredients and there's a little props there. And there we have a branded podcast that is hugely successful. So who did who which company did you say Coca-Cola? Okay, so what's something really unique we could make with Coca-Cola? What's the Coca-Cola motto? What's it all about? Taste the feeling. Taste the feeling. Yeah, okay. So taste the feeling. So I'd probably come up with a format or an idea that conveys that feeling that creates that atmosphere. Maybe we could do a podcast on a beach. That would be unique. They have ice-cold crates of Coca-Cola sat around them and they're talking and thinking of something. Taste the taste the feeling. I don't know. Maybe it's kind of a desert island discs format where they give five songs that remind them of happy times. That's kind of a direct feel from them, but and then you know a repeated segment that is directly linked to it. Like that's where my mind would be going. Like you would pitch that to Coca-Cola and they would say great. I want my product on that beach. People are drinking it. But they're not necessarily talking about Coca-Cola. Like it's not a direct hey we should only make a podcast where people talk about our products. Yeah, no I don't think so. I think when you see why podcasting has become such an important piece in the spectrum of advertising and why it's got such a great return of investment is the authenticity of the hosts giving that so I mean you look at a host red add it's far more effective than sure than a radio advertisement or TV advertisement especially in conversion. So if you can create something that that cultivates the atmosphere that increases brand reputation that's what I'd be doing I'd be making people more favorable towards the brand and then you've got a marketing vehicle from which you can do things like oh we've got a new product let's introduce a segment that announced that new product or you've got the host saying because it's Coca-Cola. Obviously Coca-Cola are a massive brand so I doubt they'd be directly selling like codes for products on on there but you know introducing why theoretically you could. Yeah, theoretically you could so I'd be creating something that is great for that brand and positions them more aggressively in a place where they want to be and that's kind of what we've done with man alive you know man alive is a branded podcast but it's not obvious that it is it's a health company. And what's the purpose of the podcast to get men talking more openly about their health and if as a direct result they want to get some blood tests and or be a bit more proactive then they've got a place to do that but for the brand it's really valuable as a as a piece that positions them where they'd like to be. Would you pitch hosts to them and say I think this person would be great for you or do they kind of have an idea like is this something you've actually done in the past. Absolutely I mean you can look at any brand and kind of pinpoint some dreams celebrities that you'd like to and then that immediately just credibility positioning it's a great way to do that. I hear what you're saying I think when I was thinking of brands being associated with podcasts it was much more of a direct relationship like the podcast would be about the brand it would be about dub soap and cleaning your body or be about Coca-Cola and consuming the product but it sounds like that's just kind of like an adjacent element to something that's. A central theme of each of those companies instead I think so and again you can you can do that but if the point of a podcast successful podcast is to build community then I don't think going in hard with selling is a great way to build trust right. I think this is about creating a deeper relationship with a brand and if you are creating a deeper relationship with a person what would you do you I think it's transferable I think it's the same if you if I came to you and immediately was wanting to sell you something that wasn't deep in our relationship. And it's the same with podcasting interestingly there was a study done from the journal of audio production or something like that recently and they they showed why audiences see podcasters as friends like the strange parosocial relationship and they attributed to three things in perfection spontaneity and personal confessions and I think if you can if you can have those three as a brand as well that's it almost sounds like the antithesis of a brand but if you can create a show that. Is associated with a brand and conveys these traits of relatability then that's amazing for a brand wow that's fascinating i've got one last question that I ask everybody and that is who is a creator or in your case a podcaster that's on your radar that deserves some kind of shadow. I'm going to be pretty pretty bland and go for stick to football and I'm a big football podcast listener but that is a podcast to me that they didn't just use the platform of sky sports this huge sports company and all the legendary footballers that are on there that wasn't enough they created a really great set that's quite unique it's like a bar they've created segments in there where you you see them all coming in and you see them coming out of the conversation. So the podcast actually starts about 10 minutes in but you're seeing them all interact with each other which I think people have really loved seeing I do they're really being thoughtful about everything that they're doing and I love to see that from a big company and I think other people who are smaller creators are doing the same and you see them pop up and you're like wow that's really intriguing I love when I see critics do that in the agency I work at seven X content we often bring up fashion neurosis where the guest is lying down on a couch and the camera is above them and they're like it's obviously. And they're like it's almost like a therapy session so I we love creative innovators stuff like that but for me. - Please stick to football is a great example of not being complacent when you've got massive resources and really relatable endearing content and segments. I love that. - That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for watching or listening. If you're new here, please consider subscribing or leaving us a review on the audio platforms. It really helps us out in the early days of this show. If you are a producer or creative director, head of content for a YouTuber or a podcaster that has over a million subscribers, please reach out. I think you would have a lot of knowledge to share and I would love to interview you. We'll see you next week with another interview. Thank you for listening. (upbeat music)