Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of In and Around Podcasting. This is the inclusive podcast industry show that is here to highlight powerful podcasting perspectives and in particular to give everyone in and around podcasting their chance to shine. It's really important that everyone has their say. This is, of course, a bonus episode where I'm going to talk to the wonderful Danny Brown, my co -host here on In and Around Podcasting about why we created the show.
kind of vibe that we want from the show and just, you know, we're going to elaborate a little bit more on what you can expect. My name is Mark Asquith, the co -founder, managing director of Captivate .fm. And I highly recommend if you're new to this show, tell your friends they can listen in their podcast app of choice at inandaroundpodcasting .com slash listen or even on the YouTube mon... what a modern world we live in indeed. And I hope you enjoyed the last bonus episode about the music.
with the wonderful Katherine Rannis. If you haven't heard that, go and check it out. It's there for you to tune into right now. Enough of this. Enough of me waffling on. Danny, hello. You all right, mate? All good, all good. And yeah, I like the music. I'm looking forward to that episode. I haven't listened to the episode, but I've listened to the music and I really enjoy it. So that'll be a fun one. Yeah, it's a curious one, actually. I want to talk.
We'll talk about that first, actually, because the brand of in and around podcasting, I think is important. And you and me are plugged into podcasting pretty hard. I mean, you run the customer experience at Captivate, but you do a heck of a lot in podcasting. You got your one minute podcasting tips. Like you're just generally one of us in podcasting, aren't you? That's what you do. That's your day job and your night job. Yeah, you've got more podcasts than probably anyone that I know.
And then I know you're going to say that I've got more podcasts than you. So I'm taking that away. back at you mate, with your golf and Star Wars and this and launch accelerator, I guess, still there, there about. So yeah, yeah. But yeah, I hear you. But it's like a two, right? You get one and that's it. You're done for life. Now you just want more and more and more. Yeah, I get that. That's pretty cool thing about it. That's why I actually wanted to bring this show together.
We had this idea for the show a long time ago, and it was it's always been interesting to try and get this out there because. I've as you know, I've got the podcast accelerator for three hundred and twenty four episodes, plus some bonuses that have expired now, and it's I love that podcast, but it gets difficult doing it on your own. And because the podcast industry has grown so much, I was finding it really difficult to do. that all the time and to be really good at it. Like I'm a fan.
I don't think you should do if you're going to try and do podcast industry stuff. I don't think you can do it half heartedly. So I really struggled with that, which, which, which gets us to this podcast, which I'll talk about in a sec about how the heck do you keep on with your one minute podcasting tips and everything else that you do? Do you, is it, do you find it tough being solo sometimes? Yeah, definitely.
That's why I mean, I've got a new show coming out in March and I know you took the piss out of me on Twitter when I announced that or X if you want to be late, you know, whatever. Yeah. But yeah, I do find it hard and that's why I gave up my Podchap show. I really enjoyed doing that and you were on that and you were one of the first guests on that and that was awesome. Really good show to do. But it's just a lot of work. Right.
And as a solo indie podcaster who can't really afford to outsource editing and producing and all that stuff, it's a lot of work. So you do get burnt out and you do suffer pod fade. And I think it's okay to recognize that step back and really focus on the stuff that you want to do. So that's why I focus on one minute podcast tips because it's super simple to do. It's a short show, very little editing, very little production needed, et cetera.
And it gets that love of the genre back into you, right? Yeah, that's the thing that you will have podcasting that much. And that's one thing that I want to really stress with this show. Everything that has been done, we outsourced the cover art. I got that from. I want to say, I think I got it from 99 Designs, which I'm not always a fan of, but I tried it. I'm not a fan of speculative design, but I did. I did try the first time I used it and the result was good.
And then Catherine did the music for this one and it is. This has really come from that love of podcasting. Like I love podcasting a lot, but I stepped off the content for a while. We had our little girl and it was difficult to stay on top of doing good content. Being a solo, not just a solo like production company where we're doing all the editing, because we're doing all the editing here. We're not outsourcing any of the editing or any of the social clips or any of that stuff.
We're not, none of it is being outsourced. None of this show now is being outsourced apart from those two bits that I mentioned earlier. The... The difficult thing about being a genuine solo presenter is that like you're doing the ideas, you're coming up with, you've got to always have that vigor. And it's hard sometimes, even though you love doing it, it's hard to keep the energy up.
And I don't know about you, but what I find is that the industry is moving that quickly that you do sometimes need as well, like alternative opinions. I'm not known for being quiet and not having opinions, but I'm not always right. And I think it's important that... as this show moves forward. It's not just you and I, it's, you know, we've got, we've got industry thinkers and we've also got indie podcasters. So yeah, I don't know.
How do you feel about that whole, the idea of being able to challenge the thinking in the space, because it's not just a series of two or three people now. It's a, it's actually an industry. Yeah, exactly. And I think the main issue is you see a lot of co -hosted podcasts that are talking about the industry, for example, and generally they're agreeing with each other's points and nothing wrong with that. They're making good points about it, but you want to be challenged.
You want to be questioned. Well, why do you think that when there's this other, you know, whole other subcategory of the industry that doesn't think that way and they're doing great stuff. So I think it's, it's really important for listeners to get multiple viewpoints that doesn't just buy into, you know, the two co -hosts of been doing it for years and think they know everything. It's really important to get that from industry insiders, but also new podcasters.
Podcasters are just really getting started in space or just dipping their toes in and are confused about all the tech jargon that a lot of people love to talk about because it's super sexy, but doesn't mean anything to me as a new podcaster trying to find my way in this space. So I think it's super, super important. And that's why I'm really looking forward to doing this with you. Yeah, the echo chamber is real, you know, and it's not just in podcasts. I see it in a lot of industries.
It's in the golf industry where I do a lot of content. It's where it's in like the pop culture industry where we do a lot of content. Echo chambers exist. And I think it's super important for development for us all to move forward that we step outside those echo chambers. And that's really, that's actually part of what catalyzed this show. So the idea for the show is that a lot of industries shows and I love them and they're often run by friends.
And and don't get me wrong, I don't think there's a bad podcast industry show because everyone's doing their thing how they want to do it. But I think very often it's the view from the top. And I think what we sometimes see is that it's very difficult sometimes for the independent creator that sat here in the bedroom, you know, doing what they want to do and enjoying it.
They don't really care that much about the industry, but that might, you know, just have feelers out on Twitter, maybe in some of the Facebook groups. And they're just seeing these things. What is podcasting 2 .0? Holy crap. Like all the time it's going to add. I don't know what it is. I'm scared of it. And wow. Okay. It's great that the average CPM is this, but I'm at 50 downloads per episode and I love podcasting. What the hell does that mean to me?
So I think the view from the top is sometimes quite scary. So I'm keen for the mission of this podcast to be positivity. All right. I think it's very important that you and I bring on industry thinkers, but also even on the same episode.
bring in independent podcasters that might just might not care about whether it's delivered via RSS or whether it's on YouTube or whether it's this, that or the other, because all they're trying to do is get the thing out and just make sure that they can keep going. So that's really important. And that's in the lyrics of the intro. It's in this not just for the geeks and the OGs shows for those in and around podcasting. And the important part is.
the around bit because 99 % of people aren't in podcasting. They are around podcasting. You know, we're in podcasting. We work in podcasting, but a podcaster, the chat that runs the local podcast here in our village, he's around podcasting because he podcasts. And every time I see him in the pub, he's like, what's this V for V then? Well, this is not for a Friday night. It's not for a Friday night. So I just find that that makes up the vast majority.
And people like that sort of get a little bit a little bit left out sometimes when it comes to thinking about the industry. Positivity is key, man. You're really good at that. You're massively inclusive. You really go out of your way to help people feel included in that. Do you see that? Do you see that trending? Are we getting more inclusive? Are we getting more? Are we getting friendlier as an industry? How do you feel about that? I so.
I mean, you mentioned online, I mean, I'm highly involved in the Reddit community on the podcast and sub threads. And there's a lot of positivity there. You know, people ask questions and the newcomers to the space and nobody you get, you'll get the odd one that's a bit high and mighty. Oh, blah, blah. If you don't do this, blah, blah, blah. But most people, 99 % of them, going back to your number, want to help and want these.
It's like the old saying, you know, if you rise of a ship or every ship rise or whatever that saying is, you know what it is. So I think it is generally a helpful space compared to other mediums. I'm a video gamer and I look at the video game social accounts and a lot of the aggression between consoles still and owners of Xbox and PS5 and Nintendo whatever and there's a lot of put downs.
I don't really see that in the podcasting space which is great to see but I think we still have to jump over that little hurdle of making it super accessible and super easy to understand for a the layman podcaster and the listener. Because let's not forget, if we don't have listeners, you know, does a podcast even exist? It's like got that RSS question, right?
So I'm happy to see that a lot of podcasters and leaders in the space are really open to helping others climb up and get to where they want to go. Yeah, I love that. That was the thing I fell in love with in podcasting back in 2013, whenever it was. It was. And especially when I when I started attending conferences, everyone was really helpful. They were, you know, it took us a little time to overcome some of the coolness, shall I say, from some of the incumbents in the hosting space.
But I classed them as friends now and I have them for a decade. And it's it's it's interesting because I've always felt that inclusivity. However. think as this has become more of an industry as opposed to a more of a hobbyist environment, you know, it was unfair to say that it was podcasting was more of a hobbyist environment 10 years ago. Now it is just genuinely an industry.
I just feel like that separation, even though there's a there's an air of inclusiveness and people want to include other people, there's just that natural divide. There's the people that are doing it to build massive media. And then there's the people that are creators and thriving on the creator economy. And there's the people that just do it because they love doing it. And I want to try and unite as many people as possible, which is why we came up with these segments.
So if you're not familiar, if you've not listened to the Catherine Rannis episode, each and every episode of In and Around podcasting will feature at least one segment. And there's going to be some interesting uses of these, one of them in particular, which I'll start with, it's called the wave form. And the... The the the the wave form, the wave file is a little nod, of course, to audio to tech. But the idea of this is we're going to build this up. We've got a jingle for it.
We've got a segment jingle that Catherine did. Beautiful thing. And we're going to use Captivate's dynamic content insertion platform called Amy. And every single episode, we're going to dynamically insert our jingle and then we're going to dynamically insert a trailer for another podcast. And we might run trailers, the same trailer for a month, same trailer for two weeks or two, whatever. and we'll just highlight new podcasts. That's the point of this is to spread positivity.
That's the way file. But we've got we've got some other segments. And this is all about spreading number one, positivity and number two, just being really open and fair. Perhaps the most contentious segment. Is the stupid stuff in podcasting. Which we've got a great jingle for. But I don't know about you, there's always something that you think you see on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook. You think, what is going on here? What is this? And I just wanted a way to highlight that.
So I know you, man. You don't like stupid stuff in podcasting. I'm betting you're probably looking forward to digging into that segment. That's going to be my favourite bit, that's why I get up in the morning and I'm going to be looking for the stupidest stuff online and bringing it over. You will find it as well. You're known for your depth of research. No, it's a funny one, isn't it? fun. It's going to be good. Yeah. Yeah, it's a nice little segment.
And it's not to be, again, it's not to be crass or callous. It's just basically to say, look, we're probably going to get this advice from someone. This is probably not the greatest idea. It feels a bit stupid. Let's look at an alternative. So I'm really looking forward to that. We've got another segment which I'm really looking forward to, which is not. Normally in media, normally in industries, people like you said, there's a little bit of animosity and I see it a lot in the golf industry.
I see it a lot in pop culture. Like with Star Wars, you'll see it a lot in gaming. As you said, everyone's getting battered. It's all about being divisive, isn't it? It's all about sort of, you know, this is what I think and you're wrong. I wanted to go the other way with this one. So we've got a segment called the flattering ram, which I want to use to, I want to use to highlight good people. doing good things.
And that might just be something as simple as giving a shout out to Harry Durand's wonderful hair or James Cridland's wonderful tie, whatever that might be, just something to spread positivity. But in essence, all jokes aside, highlighting people that are doing great work, right, highlighting people that are doing good things. And again, I don't know about you, but I feel like there's just not necessarily enough of that in the industry. Yeah, we're all very good at complaining about stuff.
Like I know Neil, Neil Veglio, who's one of our podcasters, who's mentioned about Apple being slow today, not ingesting new episodes. And it's easy, and that's not a dig at Neil at all, but it's easy to go online and say, hey, this isn't working, as opposed to saying, hey, Apple's published 1 ,000 of my episodes so far for 10 of my clients. It's awesome. I'll give them all away slack this morning. So yeah, I think it's nice to, it's very easy to complain about something.
it's less easy to give credit where it's due. And I think that's a nice way, again, it's a whole inclusiveness of the space and really recognizing the people that are doing great things, but aren't necessarily shouting from the rooftops to bring attention to themselves. So it'd be nice to actually shine a spotlight on them. Yeah, I like that.
And I feel there's a lot of importance in the little micro things, the micro details that people do, just the little the interactions, the help that people give online and just be able to shout out to people on Twitter, you know, someone someone asking a question and someone diving in with an answer and then following it up. You know, these little things don't get credited that much in the industry, but that's where we came from.
That kind of we talked about earlier, that inclusiveness and that ability for everyone to kind of help each other was what attracted me. It's what attracted you. And I just don't feel like because we've become an industry in this big media. There's a lot of that that gets missed. So I really want to kind of find some of those and just highlight some of those, give people a big shout out.
And the last segment that we'll talk about, and it's important to note, we might not feature every one of these segments in every episode. It's really kind of a nice, flexible brand, which I really like. But the last one is the wonderfully whimsical podcasting wishlist, which I really wanted to get in there as a... You know, wouldn't it be nice if this thing occurred or wouldn't it be nice if this thing existed and just a way for us to kind of start to ideate. And I think personally that.
Everyone has ideas in podcasting, whether you're a bedroom podcast or whether you're someone running a, you know, a multimillion dollar media agency or whatever that might be. Everyone has ideas about progressing the industry, and I want to try and give as much spotlight to those as possible. So the. wonderfully whimsical podcasting wishlist is I think it's just a way of getting people to be comfortable sharing ideas. And that might be you or me.
It might be things that we've seen online and giving shout outs and credits, but also people that we have on the show, the independent podcast that might not feel like they've got a voice. You know, I really want to highlight those those those podcasting perspectives. And you must see this all the time in Reddit, you know, all the ideas and so on. But no one gets credit for it, do they? No, exactly. And there's a lot of great ideas there as well that saves time.
And for the indie podcasters, saving time is so, so key to enjoying podcasting. You don't want to be lumbered down, spending hours and hours on research and editing and everything. So there's lots of good ideas come from Reddit. Say, wouldn't it be awesome if I could do this once I uploaded my file? All this crazy stuff for me. Now, it might not be realistic, but why not think ahead? Well, and that's where we all develop. That's back to the all ships rise thing.
You know, when it when we think about the way that we've all developed as hosting platforms and some of the other technology that exists in the space, it didn't exist before. You know, everything that has come about in podcasting is born of a problem, which is then forced an idea. And we continue to do that. We captivate and all the other hosts continue to do that in their own specific ways. And it's I just feel like a lot of people don't get the credit for it.
We got on the other day was Stephen. And. one of our podcasters that recently hit a million downloads and he just, I emailed him to congratulate him. Just a really well done, man. That's amazing. Email back and said, you know, have you thought about this? And actually the thing that he'd suggested, it was very adjacent to a project that I'd just briefed for Captivate. And I was able to go back to him and say, mate, like I will, here's the brief that I wrote for this idea.
Do you mind if I add your bit to it? And obviously we'd love to shout out and credit you on it. And I just, I don't feel that that exists enough in the industry. So. I think it's just equalizing it. It's not driven by the thought leaders solely. It's driven by podcasters, people, everyone. This is everyone's industry. It's not for the top 1%, is it? Nah, it's always the end user that comes up with the best ideas because they're the ones that are using the product day in, day out.
Like we work at Captivate, so we might think there's a really cool feature coming out. But when you actually give it to beta testers and real life users, they'll come back and say, you know what, this part doesn't work that we haven't spotted because we've been embedded with it for so long. So it's always the end user, I feel, that makes a product better and comes up with some of the cooler ideas to actually help more podcasters get to where they want to go to as well. Yeah, I love that.
I love that. Well, I'm excited for the show, mate. Thank you for thank you for co -hosting it with me. It's not even it's not even something that feels like a chore, is it? It just feels like fun. It's one of those fun things. Yep, yeah, exactly. We have to, I mean, obviously I'm in Canada, you're in the UK. I was going to say we have to do one on a Friday night. Well, that might be a bit tougher to do, like have a beer in the other side or whatever. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to this.
It feels fresh, it feels fun and a little bit different from what's currently out there. So yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it. Good man, appreciate it. Yeah, we'll get some live recordings as well. If you ever see Danny or myself or both of us at a podcasting event, we will more than likely have a microphone recording something for In -N -Around podcasting. Now we're going to be releasing every episode every week on a Tuesday morning.
So it will be there in your podcast app of choice in In -N -Around podcasting .com slash listen. You can find us on the old Twitter. How are we allowed to say Twitter these days? You can find us on X. I never call it X. Yeah, find us on Twitter. in around podcast, go and find us. You'll see on my profile as well at Mr. Asquith. But we're looking forward to this.
And remember, this is the accessible podcast industry show that is here and exists solely to highlight powerful podcasting perspectives. So we'll see you on the first episode. Enjoy and tell your friends. Pod on. Pod on. I mean, does catchphrase pod.