Dear listeners, we are gathered here today to reflect on a podcast that is no longer with us, podcast principles. The show dismantled podcasting barriers, guiding others on their journey by outlining the principles of podcasting. What's going on today is its creator, Ryan Sullivan. Launched in January 2022, only 10 episodes were ever published before the show was left to perish just three months later.
On this episode, we'll learn what caused podcast principles to be yet another headstone in the podcast great image. We'll celebrate the highs, lament the lows and discuss whether it should be late to rest forever or be brought back to life. From one fine play, this is podcast graveyard. Welcome to this service. I'm your host James Bishop and I've been producing podcasts for years. What I've learnt is that one of the hardest things to do is keep your podcast alive.
There's nearly 4 million podcasts available today, but fewer than 8% are alive and kicking. I'm curious to learn more about these lost shows. Why did they start? What led them to stop? And what can we learn from their untimely demise? Who knows? Perhaps we'll even bring some back from the podcast graveyard. Have you ever felt overwhelmed in the vast shadowy web of the creator economy?
Like a phantom drifting through countless tools, products and websites, endlessly seeking out ways to bring your podcast alive? Hours become days in this relentless quest and time continues to run out. But we've found a way of breaking you out of this curse. Deep within our creative layer at One Fine Play, we've crafted a blessed directory, a treasure trove, where thousands of enchanted products and services for creators are gathered, waiting to end your eternal search.
Engage with fellow creators, comment, upvote your favourite listings and save the most bewitching finds to your personal dashboard. And here's the spellbinding twist. The directory will cost you nothing. It's entirely free to use. So brave souls, break the curse and step forth from the shadows. Find up at OneFinePlay.com, slash directory, and find the best creative services and product today. All completely free. Let's begin proceedings. Hi Ryan, thanks for haunting the show today.
James, very fitting for the season that we're in. Not sure when this episode's going out, but we're approaching Halloween here. And it makes a lot of sense and I love the idea and the concept. So let's see if this, you know, reckons are revival or a complete put to rest, we're going to determine that today. I can't wait to find out. And as a fellow podcast professional, maybe we can get into a bit of discussion at the end, see how you're feeling after talking it through.
Maybe this will be a bit more like therapy than anything else. So tell me, why did you want to make the podcast in the first place? The idea was I didn't think that there were any good podcasts out there about podcasting in terms of like how to actually do it. So that was the impetus like we know what to do. And we at least have a framework based on what we've done with clients in the system that we've created to launch podcasts.
So we essentially wanted to create a free version of our system with just the highlights and the takeaways and the actionable stuff. And so that's what we set out to do. We didn't really think about the execution and like what it would look like to make that. We knew what the work was going to be, but we obviously didn't know the work until we got into it. But that was the gist. Create a podcast about podcasting that's actually practical. And what are the shows of your inspiration?
All the bad podcasts about podcasting basically. We won't name those then. Nah, now we're good. How keep them out? So when you started out, what were your expectations and what did you hope to achieve? I definitely didn't have like a downloads number or a follower, listener count number or anything that I was going for. I wanted to create repurposed content that would be easy to post on LinkedIn.
Just yeah, just wanted to like create this podcast about breaking things down that seem to be a little bit ambiguous or like the things where you search the how to start a podcast. And there's like, you know, two million results on Google. And we just wanted to make it so you can just kind of watch this podcast and at least have a way to start. So it wasn't like a metrics thing or a followers thing. It was really going to be for like repurposed content.
And I guess just to do it and just to break down the podcast principles like to also uncover our own principles that are in our system that we might not be able to even see or recognize. So it was yeah, it was kind of a multi-purpose thing, but it was definitely not for like the metrics or anything like that. It was almost to do it and then to do it for, you know, the market and to hopefully help people.
And we did have listeners and people did mention it and take value from it and they really enjoyed listening to the episodes. So, but yeah, that was the gist. It sounds like you kind of wanted to learn by doing and in making it, you might actually learn what you already knew if that makes sense. Like you yeah, or will also the fact that we don't I don't do scripted podcasts and I've never done one. So this was also a really good chance for me to learn how to make a podcast like that.
So then if I do ever advise somebody, I can say, well, for my experience, this is what we did. And then it actually, yeah, it did end up being a pro because then we can go, hey, we launch one like this and we ended up stopping because of XYZ. So then these are the things that you're going to want to fix if you're going to do that too. So it was kind of a win, even if you fail type of thing.
So you made a scripted podcast and then you realized how hard scripted podcasts are and thought, yeah, I'm never going to get into that again. That's not fun. Not in this capacity. It was me and my partner doing it. He helped a lot of the scripting. I was the, you know, person talking. And yeah, yeah, exactly man. I mean, I didn't, no, I didn't realize what it would be. I've done scripted videos, but one offs and stuff, but I'm not, that's not my vibe. But it really is not my thing.
Uh, now that I know that there are some formats in podcasting that I could not get down with. That are so hard work and it involves so much development that they're just on another level. I, my hat, I tip my hat to those people. So let's get down into some of the details here. It's first off talk about, you know, the hot topic everyone brings up when they explain why they're finding their podcast hard, time and money. Firstly, how much time do you think you put into this? Well, let's see.
We got 10 episodes. Let's say two hours of planning per episode. So 20 hours of planning, maybe two hours of recording each. So 20 hours of recording, maybe post production, two hours each. So now you're at like 60, I'd say like 60 to 80 hours for the 10 episodes. If I already take a kind of rough guess on that. Alright, so six to eight hours in episodes. So not a joke. And I was doing all of the audio or the only thing I didn't do is the show notes.
I did everything else myself to and in the scripting. It was myself and my partner doing the scripting and he did the show notes and then I did everything else. So it's a full day of work per episode, basically. And how much money did you spend on the podcast overall? Zero. Zero. But we should mention that you own microphones, you have access to recording, you probably have podcast hosting. So you covered a lot of the costs. Zero meaning, yes, stuff I already paid for it, yeah.
And obviously your time. Yeah, yeah, the time's the big one. What would you say even as a podcast professional was the biggest obstacle you faced when making this show? Definitely planning formatting and trying to figure out what the, how was the best way to explain a podcast launch on a podcast that you know, that's five to ten minutes long. How do you take a pot full podcast launch and dwindle it down to a 15 episode series where the episodes aren't longer than six to eight minutes each.
So that was definitely the most difficult part of literally like taking a system we already built and then trying to form a podcast around it. And it's kind of similar to what we do in general. So we had an upper hand and it was in terms of like us versus the general public doing this, but it was still difficult.
But I would say like that's where we scratched our head the most on you know, the actual like formatting each episode, what to include, what to not include, how to explain things that are only auditory, how to explain things that are only visual. It was really those logistics that ended up being like pretty difficult. But that's one of the really tricky things isn't it is like working out what a good format is to tell a story.
So you've got like an idea or a topic or a theme or a, you know, something you want to do and the first way you think of telling that story might not necessarily be the right way. You know, just a asking B questions, you're standing in to be format might necessarily be the most imaginative style or structure for a show. And it's really coming up with that format at the beginning that can often be one of the trickiest parts. Yeah, definitely.
When you have like four, say you have like four topics in one episode, you know, breaking them down. Like yeah, you're scripting it, but you don't want it to sound scripted. So, but then there's like kind of, you know, complex information that you almost have to read off of, but you can't be looking at it. And there's no teleprompter.
And yeah, I mean, it's like, it's not just a formatting, but like it all ties in like the formatting, the execution, the output, like it's all kind of one ends up being one thing. Like everything affects everything else, you know. And then you also end up in that situation, which I think they find in true crime podcasts a lot, which is you really need the person to listen in order. But what happened if they find your episode four and you don't want to lose them all together?
And they might go back to episode one, but then you need to give them some context. But then how do you bring the context in and, you know, again, not the easiest thing, but also you, you know, the aim here is not to just get someone to listen to one episode but get to listen to them all. So or more than one at least. So then it's a case of what's the art or what are the hooks going to be to get them to go and listen to other episodes? You can't just pretend they don't exist.
Yeah, you got to loot, yeah, for sure. And that's what we did. You know, we would allude to, you know, different episodes depending on when we would like, say we're talking marketing, you know, you're going to the guessing episode was episode two, marketing might be episode 11, but guessing is pretty fundamental to marketing maybe. So yeah, there were we did have ways to tie the episodes together, which I think worked pretty well.
People did end up end up binging them for sure, just like from what I could roughly tell on YouTube because we did video and audio versions, which was also really good. At the end of the day, too, it's the episodes are still living there on the YouTube channel. They're a pretty good archive and they're a pretty good representation of like kind of our system. So it's it wasn't there are a lot of like for sure net positives, but yeah, I mean, it's difficult.
So what are the only embarrassing or cringe worthy moments in making it that you can share? The only one is like we spent like five hours on one and then we just ditch the entire thing. Like we spent a whole half day we're courting and making it and we just like did wrote and did a whole entire new episode the next day. So we wasted like two days. I love you showing that because it's embarrassing to you, but so valuable to other people.
I, I'm always amazed at what someone is willing to put out just in the desperation of having committed to putting it out even if it's not worth it. We often, well, it's the same with guests.
We as a production company, I've worked on shows where you do a research call with a guest and then you don't put them on the show and you have to find a reason that you don't want them and we've recorded episode so that we don't use Mr. Beast the YouTuber talks about spending literally millions of bucks on videos that he then doesn't post is like if it's not exactly good enough, it's not going out.
So embarrassing to you, but I appreciate you sharing because I think there's someone listening to this who will think about the next piece of content they make and go, yeah, that's not a scratch. I'm not going to put it out. If it's not too emotional, why did your podcast die? Yeah, so, you know, this is what happened, right? So February, we're doing well, you know, we're doing all right. February of this year, podcast is wrong. LinkedIn's wrong. We got content wrong.
We got clients coming in just landed a 12 episode contract. Cool. March comes around. What's going on? Things are slowing down a little bit. I'm realizing or like recurring revenue is like at a not at a good place. And so from kind of March to like really from like February, March, April and May, I was like ignoring a lot of the business side and I was really focusing on this content. But I didn't ignore the business side because I was focused on the content.
It was just two things that were happening. And I kind of like woke up like a couple months later and was like, oh, wait, like I need to like build this business. So that's, you know, really kind of what happened. We just, we just stopped doing it. It wasn't really, it was a decision. It was, we have to put this on hold because we literally have to focus on the business right now. And this podcast is not bringing in a ton of business in this moment.
And if we, we also realized that the, we let the business take it over at the same time because we would just, we would be ahead and then we would start being weak by weak. And then it would be literally like Sunday night when I'm doing the edit, right? And so it started to slip away from us. And at the same time, it wasn't like the business was thriving. You know, at least like it has been recently in terms of like how we're doing now versus how we were doing then.
So that's was the, you know, ultimate reason in terms of like we needed to refocus. We, it was too much time. And it wasn't doing, it's not like this was something that was bringing in ex-amount of leads per week or anything. It would have later if we were to just stuck with it. But in the moment we couldn't, it didn't make sense and made more sense of folks on the business.
Was there an exact moment that you could remember that you knew it was over that you knew you had to say, I can't keep doing this for now? And we said, we'll just do this last episode and then be done with it. And then I never even edited that last episode like it's just there in raw form. That's when it was like the reality set end of like I'm not even doing this.
Yep. Quick interruption from today's service to remind you that you're listening to podcast graveyard from one fine play with me, your host, James Bishop. A quick break from today's proceedings to bring you a message from the heavens. Making content can sometimes feel like an epic battle against the forces of darkness, sapping you of your motivation. But I have something that can increase your vitality, a source of energy like no other I present to you, Eilah.
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And if you dare, seize a special spine tingling offer of 20% off at checkout by using the code graveyard. That's meatilah.com, M-E-E-T-A-I-L-A.com. Now back to today's service. Coming up, I ask Ryan about the long-term viability of a show like this. Ryan explains what he would have done differently and how he plans to bring his personality out more in future projects. But first, I wanted to ask him about the worst decision he made when making the show. This is what Ryan had to say.
Just not badging the entire thing. That's how it should have went. Everything should have been completely done the whole entire season before we click publish. What do you mean by that? Just finish the entire season. So 15 episodes. Done promotional material show notes, blog posts, everything done and written, then click publish for episode one and just schedule the entire thing out over the course of the 15 weeks or whatever.
That is an incredible bit of learning that I really hope people listening take on board. And I can completely relate to it. One of my hard rules when running a production company as a producer was nothing is going out until the entire thing is finished.
Because I like a stress-free life and get myself in a position where it's got to get turned around in eight hours or three hours or I need it tomorrow or that never has happened because I've I've been in a costus money and time and probably lost work and all sorts of things. But hard rule, you finish it, you make all the promotional stuff, you release it in the last in the right way. It makes it much harder for always on content if you're making something that's 50 episodes a year.
But in that case, we're always we never get to a position where there's fewer than 10 episodes ready to go. Yeah. I always say if you could be a hundred episodes ahead, do it. If you got the time and the money and the bandwidth, do it. It's going to help. It's it would be incredible. Now you wouldn't have the ability to adapt, you know, to the to the current landscape of anything. But if it's especially if it's more of an evergreen show, hey, be a hundred episodes ahead, man.
What do you think the worst piece of podcasting advice you've ever got is the fact that consistency will save you above all because it won't. If anybody says that you need to podcasting success is dependent on X, it's definitely, that definitely means it's not right. Like it has to be everything. A guest isn't going to save you, you know, a consistency isn't going to save you content isn't going to save you. Your Instagram's not going to save you. Your TikTok's not going to save you.
Like nothing's going to save you, you know, and so I truly believe that consistency is one of the pillars. Like I don't think you can do much without it. But I also don't think that any one thing is going to save you. And I was asked on a podcast the other day, what's the work, what's the piece of just so I can finish this thought? What's the marketing strategy that you fundamentally disagree with? My answer was nothing. I don't disagree with anything that works.
So because you can't, then that's just a matter of taste and opinion at that point to say that organic content works and so does paid just because you're a paid guy. That doesn't mean organic doesn't work, right? So I, when it comes to podcasting, I don't deny anything that works.
My thing is more like these end all be all statements of this is the ultimate thing or this is the thing that's going to save you like, or this is the thing just because we teach organic content and we grow podcasts that way. It doesn't mean that these other things don't work, you know. This is so true. Podcasting and consistency always get tied together that you've got to be consistent. You've got to post every Sunday. It's nonsense. I have too many examples of how this isn't true.
By consistency, we mean volume and all the time. We don't mean Wednesday at 3pm without fail if you, you know, on pain of death. Like on LinkedIn, just post when you're passionate and you've got a great idea, just do it a lot. Don't worry about like every day at 1017 is the optimum time to post like just post if you got something to say and don't post if you haven't on TikTok post three, four times a day, but it doesn't matter.
That's consistency because you're doing it a lot, but if you don't want to post for two weeks, so what? Just before we started this call, were you and I were talking about the YouTuber Casey Nice that hasn't posted for two years. Just starts now randomly posting whenever he feels like growing 300 subscribers in 300,000 subscribers in a week. Mr. Beast says I'm only going to post when I've got a great video. You can tweet whenever you want.
Colin and Samir, my favorite podcast, it's about the creator economy. They post every couple of days, three days, four days, five days, but it's sporadic. It shows different like topics all within the same channel on random days. There's no real logic to it. Doesn't matter. Still listen to every episode because that freedom is what makes better content. So I'm with you on this consistency thing.
So on the other side of that coin, what is the best piece of advice you've had or what advice would you give to someone starting out? You've been on this podcast in Jenny, you've started a show frustratingly. It's now in the podcast graveyard. What's the best piece of advice you could pass on to the next person? Lean into you. So figure out your personality. Overall everything because it's either, and I've got this from music, right? Because I talk to a lot of rappers. I'm a rapper myself.
I get up on stage. I do it all that stuff. I know that at one point or another, you're going to have to be yourself and you're going to have to do it unapologetically. And it's actually going to be everything. The whole thing is going to just be you. And it's super cliche. I do get this, right? But my thing is like, don't try to adapt to a niche or adapt to a persona or adapt to an audience just because you think that's what they want or that's what's going to get you to the next level.
You really got to figure out yourself are most successful shows are people who may have a political bend, right? They leaned into it. They didn't shy away for a minute because some people are going to get sad. So that's really my, you know, best piece of advice I think is just don't try to be somebody else. Like if you want to emulate what works great, but you got to figure out you're you. You're got to be you at the end of the day.
If you're putting on some kind of persona to be on this podcast, man, it's not going to last. If your podcast had a headstone, what would you put on it? Oh, like I would probably like the power of the podcast. And then you would have to infer from that. Whatever you want to infer. I love that. I like the open ended take from it what you want. So look, we're coming to the time of the show where we're looking at making a judgment. Should the show be resurrected? Should it stay dead?
And you know, I feel like this might sound a little bit tough, but I'm going to be honest. I feel like this is a show that should probably go to the heavenly afterlife because I feel like this is something you did when you started out. You've learned a lot. You've evolved. You've developed. You've got new skills. You've got new understandings. And my take on this show is that it's not really a podcast. It's more like an audio learning experience.
It feels like what you were trying to make was a one off piece of like audio online learning to educate like a resource, not so much the mechanics of what's going to make a killer podcast, which I know knowing you, you have the capability to do.
So whether it seems harsh or not, maybe it's unfair, but for me, I feel like this is one that should go to the afterlife because I know that inside you, there is a wealth of creative wisdom and you've got the talent to bring something more compelling to the world in podcast format. And what you had made here with podcast principles, you should still do, but you should manifest it in an audio experience, but not give it the strap of podcast. Is that fair? That is where we're looking to take it.
And if you take, if I take my own advice, James, that wasn't me at my best. That wasn't me really being me. This is more me and probably a little bit like this type of thing, but in whatever version we create, but more so open so I can have the rants so I can have the opinion so I can have those points that just come out 13 minutes in that you didn't expect to and you didn't put down on paper, right? That's the, that's what I have to do.
And so what we are doing, the plan is myself and my partner, now he's going to be involved on the front end. He's going to be on the podcast as well. He's essentially going to be a co-host slash question, ask her, you know, he's going to be able to throw me the ball and I'm going to try to dunk it. And it's not all of them are going to hit, but we're going to have a more open, more conversational, more opinionated, less how to.
Or lean into ourselves and saying things about the market and podcasting that not everybody might agree with, sometimes going a little bit more high level and playing some inside baseball, but really having the ability to lean into myself, lean into our personalities and it's just going to feel much better that way. So yes, we'll put, we'll kill that version off throughout, we'll allow it to rise above.
And you know, we can, we can pray to it, we can respect it, we can walk past the grave and shed a tear, but this version is, is no longer and the new version will be batched ahead of time. We'll be batched. My man, I don't think you've left me much else to say you've taken your best piece of advice and put yourself in the middle. If you've taken your biggest learning, which is to batch for the future, you are channeling it around you. You're an awesome guy.
You are an inspiration to me about what's possible in podcasting in, I love that you have taken the best bits of this and you're channeling it in a new creative project. Thanks. So thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Next before we go in the words of Sean Evans, can you tell the world what you've got going on in your life? I love it. I love how he does that, man. Yeah. So, you know, I have a podcast.
It's called Bobcast. Like I said, it is somewhat localized, meaning the interviews are in person, but there are a ton of takeaways. You know, that the, what we talk about on the podcast isn't completely localized. So you can check that out. I interview outliers who are breaking the mold regardless of the status quo and pursuing their dreams in one way or another. So that's every single guest fits that mold. There's also some solo episodes in there that I like to go off my own tangents.
And then, yeah, man, we help people launch podcasts similar to what you do. We're really heavy on the consulting side and helping current podcasters. So if you have one and you're a little bit frustrated about where it's at, maybe we can help you out with that. So that's podcastprinciples.com and connect with me on LinkedIn, Ryan, or Sullivan. My mind, thank you so much. Appreciate you, bro. This is great. An emotional farewell, I think you'll agree. May Ryan's podcast rest in peace.
There are some powerful takeaways from today's service that we can all learn from. Number one, I think one of the great lessons is something Ryan articulated beautifully and that's having the strength to not post content if it's not right. It's so easy to get lost in the sunk cost fallacy of making content. We've all been there. We spend time and resource investing in something that shouldn't be going live in the first place. It's not failure.
It's natural to have a learning curve and the punchline is everybody involved will be grateful for your strength in saying no. That's you, the guest, and your audience. Just take the hit and move on. The second lesson, record in batch. Batch recording is great for efficiency and focus. It allows you to mass a backlog of episodes so that you never run out of content to publish. As Ryan points out, regularity in content publishing is vital for retaining your audience's trust.
Otherwise, they'll just go and look for something else. The last lesson centers on embracing your character as a host. Often, there's a preconceived notion of what a host should be, leading to imitation. It's essential to infuse your personality into the show as this is what keeps people returning. What your audience get to know you, share details about who you are, your likes and dislikes, and things that inspire you may be even frustrate you.
A distinctive style and character provides your listeners with something to connect to. Remember, you are the niche. Last time we were haunted by John Welch, host of the podcast Humans of LinkedIn. We delved into the show's concept, his realizations when the show was ending, and here with hindsight what he would have done differently as its creator. That's our next service. I speak to Carl Robinson from the Voice Tech podcast.
Carl outlines what his Achilles heel was with production, how he generated revenue, and how many listeners he continues to get to the podcast today. Carl also predicts whether he thinks the show will be resurrected. It's a candid conversation with lots of valuable learnings, so I really hope you can attend the service. As we bring this service to a close, we ask you to please pay your respects by recommending this episode to someone you think will find it valuable.
And if you, or someone you know, has a podcast that's been laid to rest and would like to give it a proper send-off, we'd love to have you on. Please email us at podcastgraveyardatonefineplay.com. A quick thank you to those who have helped make today's service possible. Casarif Arruzia was the producer and editor. Conor Foley was our assistant producer and Selena Christopher Des put together the visuals. People thanks go to Andrew Davie for the inspiration.
In parting, let us not dwell on the darkness of this moment, but instead let us focus on the light that podcast principles brought into our lives. Its memory will forever be a guiding star leading us through the night. I'm James Bishop and this is podcastgraveyard.