The three things I love about it is that it's free, I don't need a login, and that it looks good, and so I think it's sexy. We wanted to build this to be the sexiest podcast charts thing out there, and I think that was my goal. Well, I also just, like, the description of a product is sexy, and that might be enough just to get me bought in on the thing. Right on. All right, that's. That was my goal, is I want this to be just really that sexy. Just like, yeah. I want
people to look at this and be like, oh, that's. That's hot. That's hot. Why do we as podcasters willingly subject ourselves to hours of editing, awkward ad reads, and the existential dread of shouting into the void? If you've ever asked yourself that, or if you're just here to revel in the weird, wonderful world of podcasting, then you're in the right place. Welcome to Sound Strategy with Lucas Dicke. Without a doubt, this is the most meta podcast about podcasts ever.
I'm your host, Lucas Dicke, founder of deepcast. I'm your podcast producer and occasional co host, Allison Melody. And today's guest is the CMO of the leading podcast marketing agency, hands Down, Mopod. Hey, how's it going? So glad to have you. You're also my favorite podcast conference karaoke partner, so we're really excited to have you, Joe Rubin, on the show. The feeling is mutual. Thank you so much for having me today. Really appreciate being on here. I love
it. Show notes, actually say, Lucas, ask for first question. Allison, I'm going to say you've got such a good popcorn question. I'm going to let you take it today. It's a popcorn question. What's a popcorn question? You know, just like, picking out of the mix, the whole sort of, like, grab from the hat. All right. A softball sort of. Yeah, exactly. They're fun. They're sexy. It's this or that. All right, let's. Yeah, go for it. Well, the reason I was going to have you ask it is because I think I
know the answer, but let's see if I'm right. What is your Go to karaoke song? Oh, man. Oh, God. I, I, I would say a Smith, but I completely screw those up every time because I'm usually a little drunk singing that one, as I'm sure you are. Everybody is. Yeah, I do like the crooners. Like, I, I'll, I'll do a little bit of that. I like rock, especially when I'm Drunk. I've done the occasional like,
Disney song, but not too many of those. So I, I think the easy ones are rock and like a little bit of crooning just because those I can knock out pretty easily. Now I really want to know what are your Disney go to songs? Is this like, let it go and you're. You're deep in your princess land or are you Moana with Alessia Cara? Well, I do have a 13 year old daughter who I. And I know the entire Frozen soundtrack, obviously. So I watched
that movie like 700 times. And as all parents do, I do sing that even still with my daughter all of a sudden, like we'll, I'll pop that on the car and she'll sing it with me and like we'll do at it and everything. She, you know, it's fun. So, so I, I do know that entire soundtrack by heart still. So favorite Go to duet. Duet is anything with your daughter. You know, she is fun to sing with, so it's good. Amen. I love it. And what is the origin of karaoke love with Mopod?
Karaoke love with Mopod. Well, it is actually our, our, our own podcast. So we're in. So Mopod is in podcast growth, but our podcast, our actual own podcast is called Friday Night Karaoke. And we started that when we started Mopod. We started the Friday Night karaoke Facebook
group and doing karaoke long before that. But when we wanted to get into podcasting, we set up Friday Night Karaoke as a podcast and practiced on that and like learned the ins and outs of podcasting, how to record things, like where the record button is on your stream yard, like how to do that. Right. And we still screwed up even to this day. But like, we wanted to learn about podcasting and get into it and make our own podcast. And that's
what we did. I love it's the whole, you know, engine engineering term of like eating your own dog food. Not the best terminology. I think someone else tried to turn into drinking your own champagne. Yeah, didn't quite stick. So it's still dog fooding. But you guys were dog fooding, right? Eating your own dog food. Yeah, it is. I mean, we, we learned by advertising our own podcast and we screwed up a lot in the beginning and lost a lot of money and kept doing it wrong and wrong.
And finally we got some things that started to work and we went to our initial customers and we said, hey, listen, we're kind of not that great at this yet. Why don't we just do it on performance and just pay for what you get. And that's kind of an easy offer, you know. And, yeah, it cost me nothing. I'll do it and then I'll pay you when you give me numbers. Yeah. If you screw up, yeah, I owe you nothing. We're like, okay, great. So we did it like that and it worked.
And we sort of kept fine tuning it and fine tuning it, and then we got pretty good at it after a while, but we kept that sort of payment thing where we work on just performance, where you just pay for what you get. And we still do that today. So it was a good model then. And it sticks today. We liked it and
we kept it around. Yeah, I love it. Before we switch to the about you and Mopod, because we're on this subject, I think part of the goal of the show, Joe, is like sort of practical takeaways for folks, whether they are podcasters or service providers or whatever it happens to be. And I've been advocating with my internal team, go create a podcast from start to scratch. Pick an RSS host, Figure out the software you're going to use to record. Yes, you can play
around with 11 labs and do that if you want to. But I want you to understand the tool stacks. You understand what you don't know or the things you would learn along the way. And in the process, they're like, learning like, in the only way you can, which is by doing right in this sort of practical application. Curious if you feel the same way about it
with sort of anyone in the space. I 100 support that. I think that if you're in this space and you don't have a podcast or didn't have a podcast, like, how could you be like, really good into a space if you, if you aren't in the thick of it, right? Like, so we do the whole growth side, right? Like, it's our business, everything. But we sit there and talk shop with all these podcast hosts and owners and producers as well. Like,
we know all the things. We have played with all the tools and we use a lot of them and we use the hosting and we know the cost involved and we know what works better on some than others and that we've tried because we're like, you know, this is good, pretty good, but it didn't really work well for us, and here's why. And like, you're on Streamyard right now. We use Streamyard. I love it. It's great. We have a good time with it and we can talk about it with other Podcast hosts, when they say,
hey, by the way, what do you use for recording? We're like, hey, here's why we use streamyard. Here's why we like it. Here's the things that are a little difficult to use. Here's the things that are great about it. And so we can give, you know, good feedback and understand the industry. Yeah, I love it. I was gonna say in my case because I came to the industry later than you did. Although I had like digital music background and media background,
having done radio. Right. It was a way for me as like, somewhat an expert outsider of sorts. Like, I've done monetization, I've done media, I've done content creation. Like all the things, but not within the world of podcasting. Right. So I said, how do I like the terminology within, like, software development? Be like an agile stack or a spike. How do it go top to bottom on this very specific thing? So my son has, who's eight, has a podcast for him. I have another One that's like AI
opinion keynotes that are blog posts. That's 11 labs. Nice. We have sort of like, you know, other variants thereof, but sort of forcing the team to learn. All right, enough about me. I want to switch back to you. So we talked a little bit about mopod in a sort of folks understanding and know who you are. But a lot of people are new to podcasts in a given day. Yeah. Since we know that there's a lot of attrition and churn and then folks who can figure
it out, how to write it out do, and we'll talk about that. But tell us about you and how you got into this space. I know you're, if I recall correctly, professional investor before, if I'm not getting that inaccurate. And by the way, Joe, we're raising a safe note imminently if you want to talk, but. No kidding. Yes. What do you know? All right, so, yeah, so I came from the venture capital space. I worked in vc, doing entrepreneur conferences and run an early stage,
a seed fund, an angel fund in New York. I started that in like 2000. So I was doing it for a long time. I spent many a year doing conferences around the investing space. So basically bringing in entrepreneurs, starting companies, bringing in investors, VCs, angel investors, putting together panels, putting together exhibits, bringing in food, drinks, you know, making cocktail parties, like doing the whole thing to get those entrepreneurs in
front of investors. So I did that for a long time. It was a lot of fun. 2000 in New York. Yeah. Does that mean Union Square Ventures and First look were sort of like your people. They were all around. Yeah, there was, there was definitely a lot of really cool brand name VCs. That were, you know, early in, in the mix. Yeah, so it was,
it was such a fun time. I had a lot of really good entrepreneurs there, really good times, good investors there, and eventually started to invest in some of the early stage companies that I was meeting and finally was like, hey, let me put something together. So I, I met with a couple of friends and we put together something called Archangel Fund and it was really the first sort of angel fund in the New York area, investing in C deals.
And we since then have invested in probably 60 early stage companies, many in New York, but like in the outside area and even some, you know, pretty far away. Some really cool tech ones. You know, just about all technology companies, we invested in things like, like a 3D printer on the International Space Station, making parts for the astronauts.
And yeah, we have this really co, like software platform that powers satellites and it gets, it's in like, you know, tons of satellites that are floating overhead and just some really cool things and it's been a lot of fun. I've met some amazing people over the years and, and then when I had the opportunity to start this, we took it. We were focusing on newsletters at first, so we got our start with newsletters like Morning Brew and the Hustle. Ah, that's Austin
Reed at Morning Brew. Yeah, so we, we worked with them before they got acquired and worked with the Hustle before they got acquired and it's been pretty cool in the newsletter side. And then we said, we started getting asked about podcasting and finally we decided to get into it. But like I mentioned earlier, you know, we had no idea what we were doing, so we set up our own podcast and yeah, yeah, that's how we went. You and I speak some of
the same language because it's sort of like lean methodology. So I was. You came from startup land. How do I do this thing in the leanest, fastest possible way to sort of find minimum viable and then minimum lovable and then how do I grow it from there? Yeah, that, that I love doing. I love prototyping and just like coming up with something cool and then just doing it and building it for sure. Building those things out and just really cool tools and then seeing it work and seeing people use
it is my favorite. Yeah, I was going to say this same common theme across virtually all podcasters is that they're like a generalist or they do lots of things. So Investment background turned, you know, I wanted to learn about this thing, got into it and now that' that's part of what I do. Amongst other things I do. You have mopod. Yeah. But you also have Mo Media. Yeah. What's the
division and difference between the two? Sure, yeah. Mo Media. Mo Media is the corporate company and that was what we started with the newsletters. So it was Mo Media. And then when we did the pot, we got into the podcasting. We're like, let's make it more podcast sounding. How can we do that? We just added the word pod at the end of it. So. So it's Mopod. And so that's, that's sort of. And then it's really the bigger
part of the company now. And now you have Mopod Charts. I know we just launched the charts, which is pretty cool that we were like, you know, obviously Charitable went away several months ago and you know, and there was a bit of a gap and you know, there's a few other companies that are doing it, but we're like, let's make something that's really cool and beautiful and free and just pop it out there. So we built charts.mopod.com and it's
just a forever free tool. You don't have to sign up or have a, an account or anything. You just go there, type in your podcast that you like and it'll give you charts. Now you can of course enter in your email and we'll email you. Update your daily. Yeah, your daily chart rankings or weekly or. We're about to launch that. Stepping back for a second real quick again, because we have the industry insiders and then we have the others. Right. So charitable disappeared. Wtf?
What is Chartable and what did it serve to the ecosystem? And then your version of it, because, you know, analytics in different spaces are different than they are in podcasts. And particularly in podcasts where we have downloads and streams and, you know, views on YouTube and whatever it happens to be. So maybe spelling that out. Yeah. Chartable was, was really a. It was twofold. It was a play to see your chart rankings for your podcast. It also had,
in simple terms, like a little tracking bit of it. So that way you can kind of see who's using your podcast and where it's being advertised. So if you advertise it with a specific link, you can, you know, just kind of track and see how campaigns are going. We have not built that yet. I remember. So we used Chartable. And one of the big complaints was that it was always broken Right. It was always, like, down. It was never giving the right information.
It was great concept, and I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was great most of the time, but those times that it was down or not working, you know, I decided we didn't. Well, we decided we didn't want to do that just yet and be like, yeah. And have people mad at us for having their thing be down when they're trying to track something specific. So we just did the charts part of it, and you can kind of see where you're at in various charts and subcategories as
well. So are you in a main category in a subcategory in. You know, I'm ranked, you know, number 26 in Australia in music theory or something like that. So you can kind of see where you're at all across the globe in Apple. And we're going to be updating that as well. We have. One of the things that we did is we put in just, you know, give us feedback, give us suggestions. What do you want to
see? What do you like? And we're getting a ton of them. So we're launching the next rev very shortly and with a bunch of. Really, every change that we made in this last rev was from user feedback, which is pretty cool. So that is amazing. And knowing that we are going to be airing this a month later, Joe, if you feel like it, you can share what it is, but if you
want to keep it to yourself, you're welcome to do so. So it's built in dark mode right now with, like the black background and the white text and people like, can you make a light mode? So we made the light mode button. So we have a little switch at the top there. We just did that. Did you really portal? So I get it. Yes. That's awesome. You guys
have so much in common. I keep thinking about things. I want to mention that you're both, like, finding these gaps in the market, listening to market and making the changes more quickly than other people. And that's why I think both of these will be successful. But please continue. We also have. We're both beautiful and have great voices, so. Yeah, those things, too. Well, that just was obvious. So, okay. On three. Favorite movie? One, two, three Stepbrothers.
Oh. Oh, my goodness. That was interesting. You didn't even play you. Dude, we're not best friends. Never mind. I thought for a second there I was like, oh, my God. But nope, nope, not doing it. We could have been 12 monkeys. No. You didn't even answer or seven or. You didn't even answer, so my bad. It's all right. Well, I haven't had my caffeine enough yet, Joe. That's what it is. I'll put you in kind of. Kind of good friend category, but not best friend category, so. So clearly there was a gap
in the market because chartable evaporated. You guys are coming in. Do you? Yeah. Are there other players you, you know, you don't necessarily want to cast shade or aspersions, but other people who might be doing the same thing, or is it really like you guys are rushing to fill it? There's actually a couple of other charts. There's a couple of other charts. Things that are out there, and they're pretty good. There's nothing. There's their charts, you know, they work. It's.
In itself, charts is not overly complex. I mean, you can make it complex and add in a lot of things. And we're trying to actually add in a few other bells and whistles. So we overlay RSS data so you can see when you launch an episode and then how that affected your charts. So you can kind of see different data. On top of that, we're going to pull in some additional data as well, just to make it a little more interactive so you can look at it on
the surface and kind of get just, here's my basic chart ranking. Or you can go a little deeper and say, all right, a month ago, you know, here's where I was, here's where I am now after releasing episodes on more of a weekly basis. And you can kind of compare it to other podcasts that you are maybe competitive with, for sure. Yeah. So it's pretty cool out there. And. Yeah, but there's other services out there. You can, of course, check them out, but I just like mine the best.
You know, so well, we're promoting yours today. It's okay. Yeah, yeah. And just to repeat, charts.mopod.com and we'll have them in the episode description as well. And I intend on using it today to go do some validation. And Alison will tell you I have no shortage of feedback on everything, so be prepared. Please do. Honestly, we wanted to build this to be the sexiest podcast charts thing out there,
and I think that was my goal. The three things I love about it is that it's free, I don't need a login, and that it looks good, it's easy to read, it looks gorgeous. Like, that matters so much to me. And so I think it's sexy. It's the best one I've seen so far. So I'll give you that. You're not a sponsor. I'm just giving you my feedback. All right, perfect. But Lucas may have harsher feedback
because he looks at things that I don't look at. Well, I also just, like, the description of a product is sexy, and that might be enough just to get me bought in on the thing. Right on. All right, That's. That was my goal is. I want this to be just really. That's sexy. Just like. Yeah. I want people to look at this and be like, oh, that's. That's hot. That's hot. So perfect. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that for a second, because you're in marketing, right? Yes. That's what Mopod is
all about. You're marketing people's podcasts. But as a marketer, you have to market mopod. You have to market Mopod charts. What I think you guys do the best is everyone after a conference knows the name mopod. Why? Because you guys have the most creative booth. You do it differently, and you throw us these amazing karaoke parties. Talk to me a little bit about what kind of marketing strategies that you've used that independent podcasters or people launching an app.
Like, maybe some people on this podcast right now could. Could use for marketing strategies for their own apps or podcasts. Sure. That have worked for you guys. Yeah. You have to be out there. You have to be out there. And like you said, like, everybody knows us at the end of some of these conferences because we try. I try to really think outside the box on all of our marketing and our. Our booths, and we want to make them fun. Sometimes they are completely irrelevant. Like, we did pirate
theme. That was our booth. We were pirates. I really. I had, like, a patch and a pirate hat and a sash. And like. Like, that was our theme. Like, it has absolutely nothing at all to do with podcasting, but we wanted to just do something fun that people would walk over and stop and say hi. And I stopped by for some rum. I mean, it was great. Yeah, right? We were pouring rum shots with people in the morning. It was. It was. It was pretty good in the morning. That was my favorite part.
But you want to. For any business, right? You want to just think a little bit outside the box and do something creative that brings people in. And by the way, I want to caveat that with. A lot of times people know the name Mopod and they met us, and sometimes they even have. They have no idea what we do. I was going to say, you know. Like, I threw the banner in. I was like, I don't know who these guys are, but they
seem really cool. And I'm going to do it. That's it. Like, we just, like, we, we soft sell things, you know, like, we're not like the, in your, like, hi, how you doing? Please come over, let me give you my presentation. Like, we don't, we don't do that. We just like, hey, come over, hang out.
Let's talk about podcasting. Just, you know, kind of check out our booth, come sing karaoke with us, have a beer with us, you know, and kind of know us personally and meet us and, and, you know, see what we're all about. And if, you know, we'll tell you what we do. Like, we're not, not selling. Like, we're there for, for business, but we're not overly in your face, aggressive sales. Like, we try to be really just cool about it. If you want to learn about what we're doing, we'll happily
tell you. If not, you want to just chat and have a beer. Great. And come sing a song with us, you know, it's. And sometimes I don't want to say that's exactly the right strategy because sometimes, like, people walk away that we probably could have done business with, that maybe we missed the opportunity because we weren't pitching too hard, you know, so probably maybe should have pitched a little harder. But. But I think it's been working well for us.
You know, we try to be really light on that front and, and be supportive of the industry and be there and try to sponsor things and throw things and make things fun. And I think as any podcaster, if you're just quiet, you're not really talking about what you're doing and you're not out there, you're not making friends and meeting people, you're not going to get anything done. You have to just step outside your comfort zone a little bit. I mean, some people are. We're extroverts,
totally. Between me, Mike and Chase, we're very extroverted and that helps a lot. But even if you're an introvert, you have to just be like, all right, suck it up. Walk out there and put your hand out and meet people. You have to do it. How do you think of that as like the corollary for the podcasters specifically, should they be building in public all the time across every social channel? Should they be doing feed drops to sort of like cross pollinate, or should they be giving feedback to
other friends? Or shouting out other podcasts that they like. What's the sort of. That's for you. What's the version for them? I mean, if. If you're doing a podcast and you're just like, listen, I just need to get some shit off my chest. I just need to talk to a microphone, and I don't care if there's six people that listen to it, then don't promote. Then just. Then just do it as your own therapy, that's great. But if you're like, I need to make this is. This is my new thing.
Right. I want this to be a business. I want to make money with this. I want the. I want to be famous with this. I want to do something. I want to sell this eventually. Like, if you want to do this as a business, you have to get out there. You have to get the word out there. You have to do everything. You have to have the social media channels,
you have to be posting all the time. You have to do the feed drops, and you have to make friends with other podcasters in a similar space that can get you as a guest on their show and you as a guest on. And them as a guest on your show. Right? Yeah. You want to, like, do these things and do everything you can as a business to get the word out about what you're doing. So if you're not.
If you're not taking advantage of things that are literally just free, like, posting on social media costs you nothing. Right. Like tagging people, bringing guests out there and reaching out to other guests and other podcasts and being like, hey, want to swap shows? Want to do a feed drop? You want to do something like, if you're not doing these things and they're. They cost almost nothing,
you're. You're missing out. Yeah. And if you can't find other places to be a guest on, there's services that are super low cost. Alex's service, you know, Pod Match. Right. Like, great. It costs almost nothing to join this thing. And you can go out there and find other podcasts that you can be a guest on or find other guests that you can bring onto your show for like. Like two digits a month. You know what I mean?
It's like, it's so inexpensive. And if you're running a business and you're not doing something like that, like, I don't know what to tell you, you know? Yeah. It's also something that I've, you know, as a come lately participant to the podcast ecosystem that I've realized is, is it's definitely a community led growth ecosystem. Right. So you join slack groups, discord groups, you know, you're interacting on whatever social platform of choice or
through things like podmatch or otherwise. And that's like a huge flywheel effect for your show is like rising tide floats all boats with your peers. And the ecosystem tends to be the thing that's going to like propel your sort of awareness amongst that audience. Right. Which this is a word of mouth business. So if Joe's on my show and then Joe talks about, you know, I was like, man, that was amazing. He was a great guest. So we should talk about Friday night karaoke every time
we do this show. You should, right? Indeed we should. Sounds like I'll settle for every other episode though. But if you, if, if you have, if you ever in this thing for a business, like even, I mean the expensive thing is like some of the conferences, they could be, you know, hundreds of dollars. Right. But it's not still like bank breaking money.
Right. If you want to do this as a business and really take off, you know, you go to a conference, you'll meet tons of people and make friends and walk around to the booths and see what people are doing, you know, go to the cocktail parties, go to the breakfasts, go to the sessions and learn about this stuff. You'll be an expert in
like three days. Yeah. So you know what I found most interesting, especially in the podcast world, in business in general, in this entrepreneurial world that we live in, you can be the smartest person in the room, you can be an expert in your niche, but it's not about what you know, it's about who you know. So investing those couple hundred bucks to go to these conferences, you could book yourself on 100 podcasts just
by walking around and meeting people. And I think that even if you're an introvert doing that over paying for a bunch of Facebook and the Instagram ads that are going to reach people that you don't know yet, you, you really do form that know like and trust factor by being on a bunch of shows. How do you get on a bunch of shows, go meet those people in person and join the Facebook groups and do the online things. But I think meeting people in person is what
absolutely skyrocketed our growth early on. And now I've seen it again and again with my clients and friends. No, I totally agree, I totally agree. Like, and I've made so many friends at these conferences that I didn't know, you know, like, and it's been Pretty cool. Because then like, you know, all of a sudden you're like on Facebook with them. You're in the Facebook groups with them for the different, for the different associations, you know, and this
other professional. So if you're on the professional side of it, there's like the podcasters professional association that you can join and, and meet with other people who are doing production and producing and promoting and, you know, backend and PR and all sorts of things like that. So it's, there's definitely things out there. You just have to put yourself out there and it's not that hard. Yeah, I was gonna say the podcast academy sounds profitable and yeah,
all sorts of. Yeah, yeah. Like if, like I've met people who are like, oh yeah, I don't get any of the newsletters. I'm like, really? Like, you don't get sounds profitable or pod news? Like, how do you not not get these newsletters? And you're in podcasting. Right. Like they're free and you should sign up and you should learn everything. Yeah, it's. It's kind of silly. I agree. And it's so easy to find. So yeah,
it's all accessible for sure. Yeah, you were. You're getting to things around specific marketing tactics that I would think is like community and events driven. And then Allison was getting into sort of like programmatic, paid and other things. If we take a step like this is where we're going to go. Meta Joe. Abstraction layer higher. Are you ready for
this? Let's do it. You know, you're in the thick of marketing and sort of like evaluating all the marketing tactics that are working for podcasters at large. At least you know, those are your clients and otherwise. Yeah. Take this in any order that you wish. It's going to be a three parter, three part question. Hold on, let me get a pen. We need like a dun dun on music here and so I could just. Do it with my deep radio. Okay. Yes, yes. Right on.
What worked a year ago in marketing for podcasts that isn't working today. What is working today and what do you think will work in six to 12 months? So yeah, I'm curious as your thoughts across the board as a professional marketer. Sure. So I don't know what's working 12 months ago that isn't necessarily working today. The. The social media has changed quite a bit all the time. They're always having new rules and new ways to get the word out
there that work better for others. Like for instance, even like us, for we have our own Social media channels, of course. Right. And like my social media manager, Emily, she was like, okay, Instagram's got a new thing where you can like trial out a thing and trial reels. Yes. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. Like, but. And now all of a sudden, like, we're getting more attention on Instagram in the past month than we have in the past,
like five years. You know, I am obsessed with trial reels, by the way. It's crazy. And she's. And she's rocking it, by the way. She's the host of our other podcast, the podcast top five. It's one of the top marketing, like a top 50 marketing podcast. And she just like, love it. Gives like the, like some basic cool news on podcasting. Like, here's some cool tools. Here's podcast of the week. Like it's. It's a five minute podcast episode that she puts out almost once a week,
but sometimes every other week. Oh, we'll have to have our own then. Yeah, she's. And she's great. So it's called the Podcast Top Five. So I just want to promote that a little bit. I said the name twice. So the Podcast Top Five. So there you go. All three versions. One, two, three. And then we'll put in the show notes as well. Exactly. I also realized, by the way, Joe, we introduced Allison as producer and occasional co host and she alluded to, by the way, she is also a podcaster and has her own
show. Allison. Yeah, briefly tell folks what it is so that we can make sure in the mix and folks understand that you bring to bear a bunch of industry experience as a podcaster independent of me as maybe a career technologist. Sure. I've had my show food heels for 10 years. We're on year 10. Oh my gosh. 10. Crazy that we made it this long. So we didn't pod fade. That's one thing I help my clients not to do is pod fade.
And so I went from being in the world of film, film production, and then I went into the podcasting world and they overlapped for a while and I was like, podcasting is easier. It's more fun. It's more lucrative to spend less time. But that wasn't everyone's experience. So I realized I also had something to offer to help people with their podcast production and marketing. So this film girl went to her own podcast, went to podcast producing and marketing.
I love it. That's awesome. 10 years, by the way. You're like an OG in this space with a 10 year old podcast. That's sick. She's an OG for sure. Yeah. Now compared to the OGs, when I was an OG, I'm not, but now when I go to the conferences I am and I'm like, I've made it. Yeah. The generational thing of just sticking around long enough that it works out that way sometimes for sure. Right? Love it. Yeah. Let's see. Just a couple of other things. So things that weren't
around that are not around. Another company that's sort of in our space is called Pod Roll. They're really good. I love those guys. They're. They do. They have a great product that kind of helps you discover other podcasts within podcasts. You mentioned like Feed Drop before. It's along those lines a little bit different, but along those lines and it's, it's pretty cool. So that there we met them probably maybe a year and a half ago and as they were just starting out and they're
doing great now and you know, highly recommend them. Let's see other things that are working. Really, man, just. So social media is, is good. If you have a podcast, if you're not posting on social media, you're missing out. And if your audience is on there and you're paying a little bit for it and you can do these boosted post things as well as I mentioned the Instagram, but like, you know, other paid boosted posts that, you know, for just a few dollars it, you know, it can get a little
bit of attention to your podcast. You don't have to spend all that big. Where do you sit on the sort of like video centric social platforms may or may not actually drive immediate sort of like activation. They're more like brand affinity and awareness up here. Definitely a lot of that. Like, oh, you need to see something, you know, seven times before you, you know, like there's all those theories on it. But if you do a good job,
I mean you should definitely be doing this. Look, we're in podcast with like that's my main business. That's what we do. We work with some of the biggest podcasts out there and help grow their show and get more listeners to their show. But we're not the only thing that you should do. We never tell people, like don't do anything else by the way. Just use us. Like you should be omnichannel. You should be across all the channels. Yeah, like you should
definitely be using other things. Like you should not just be doing one specific thing. So, you know, obviously we think we're Pretty good at it, you know, so certainly use us if you want good results. We, we really take pride in doing a great job. We are results driven. Like I mentioned earlier, we're success based. So a lot of times you'll, you know, you see in, in anything and not just in this industry, but anything. Like I, I paid a whole bunch of money for this and you
know, I got nothing. Yeah. As a result. Right. Like, we are totally not that. Right. Like we are. You just pay for the results, which is nice. So. And we take pride in that. And it's, it's our job to do a good job. Right. Because that's how we get paid. So, so we work really hard at that. And you know, I love, I love the business. I love what we're doing. I love my team. We're at like 16 people now. It's just a fantastic group of people and we, we all take pride in
just doing a great job. But you should not just use us as part of your marketing plat strategy there, you should not just use us there. There's other really cool things that you should be doing. I love it. And the, the, this is again where I feel like it's the podcast ecosystem or just good sales, which is, we're not everything to all things, which many people aren't willing to admit. So that's very big and humble of you, but I'm sure it works to your advantage as
well. Just being transparent. Well, it's just, it's just true. Like, I would, I would hate if someone's like, listen, I just relied on you totally and no other channels and I didn't make any posts at all on social media and I didn't do anything else. And you know, I didn't get results that I'm looking for. Like, I like, you know, I mean, look, you'll get the results that you pay us for. Like. But yeah, but you, but you know,
like I, I would never tell people, don't do anything else. You know, it just seems silly. You talked about representing some of the biggest shows out there. So are there any tactics? I'm thinking sort of like category subcategory, show structure format, sort of like where tactics that work for one of your clients doesn't work for the other, or vice versa. Or maybe it's just, oh for sure works particularly well in one versus the other. Do you
have any good anecdotes for that that you'd be willing to share? Oh, yeah. I mean, like this, this podcast that have completely, wildly different audiences, right? Yeah. The, the same ads and types of ads and looks of ads that we use for one podcast is completely wrong for other ones, right? Like, you know, true crime and, and politics and, and, you know, something about, you know, food, heels or, you know, anything like karaoke,
right? These are completely different things that need different fine tuning and different, you know, wordings and different looks and feels, right? Like, so you want to do something that's, you know, that fits your thing and you want to target the right demographic for this, right? Like, you know, I remember we had this one thing. It was like this OSHA compliant, like, back in the day, it was like, it's like, we do OSHA compliance for blah, blah. And I'm like, like, this is going to be a fun
one to, to. Try to promote the hell out of. Yeah, like, this is gonna be great. You know, like, it was, it was just hard to do, like, to get the right audience for that because it was so targeted. You know, if you have something that's in true crime, on the other hand, you know, it's wildly popular, right? That's it. It's more of a slam dunk, right? But you're also competing against, with a lot of folks, tons of the other really good true crime ones as well. So,
you know, it's. It's hard to make yours stand out. Like, yours has got to be really good. You know, the OSHA one probably didn't have to be all that good. Like, just give me some, some facts about, you know, compliance and safety issues and stuff like that. And like, it doesn't have to be all that entertaining, right? It doesn't have to really draw you in and make you want to hear episode two, right? It was like, it was like, all right, it's a completely different
kind of podcast. So you want to target your podcast, your messaging, your marketing to your audience. And if you're going to jump into something that's like true crime or comedy or politics, something like that, you better be good. It better be really good, right? Because the marketing that you do only takes you so far. Like, gets you to the door, right? Like, and then like, when people see your product and they're like, this sucks,
like, they're just not gonna stick around, right? So no matter how good your marketing campaign is and your social media presence around it, if your product sucks, like, it just, it's just not gonna happen for you. So make sure it's good. Yeah, this, the. The film industry sort of thing where, you know, Disney decides to pump $100 million into advertising for a film, but the film's garbage. And the box office reviews come back really quickly. Doesn't matter how much
you're going to spend into it. So quality is fundamentally still the thing. I also think, Joe, you're getting at that like, it's not a one size fits all in particular because of, like, your goal for the podcast might be different. I have a friend who does. He pulls in from the National Atmospheric and ocn. The NAO or whatever the acronym is. Yeah, no, exactly. And he pulls in weather data and, like wave patterns and creates a six minute surf report for like 18 markets in the US and automates it.
He doesn't have to heavily market this thing. Surfers want this. Like, the tools that they use aren't particularly good. And this comes directly from, you know, the agency itself. Yeah. So he's like, man, my marketing mechanism is actually pretty easy. I hopped into some Reddit channels that are dedicated to surfers and said, here you go. And they hit it and they ran with themselves. Yeah, tell one surfer. And like, he's telling all his buddies, right? Like, yes, that works out well.
Provide the value for sure. And Joe, can you break it down a little bit for our listeners, how Mopod does their advertising? I know when we did some for food heels, I sent you some audio trailers and you marketed that way. But I know you have a lot of different ways that you market. So if someone was coming to you and they said, hey, I have this show, I want to get started, what would you. How would you get started with them? And what are some of your methods of marketing?
I think a lot of people know about Spotify, a lot of people know about advertising on podcast player apps, but if I came to Mopod blindly, I wouldn't know how you're going to market us. Sure. So to give you a background, though, the one that we were doing with you, I was totally experimenting. Right? Like, we were totally just trying to build other products. We're always trying to experiment. Like, I'm experimenting right now with like, two other kinds of ads. And so we love doing that. We love
just trying things out. Sadly, the one that I was trying with you did not work out. I did not get much results out of that. And so we kind of just. We tried it a few different ways and it never panned out. And I kind of just put it back on the back burner to, like, one day maybe I'll try to revisit something and do it totally differently, you know, so. So thanks for being my guinea pig there. I will always do anything for free press. Right. So I'll try to get one that works next time so it'll
be a little more fun. But we have a few different methodologies where we have a, an enterprise level setup where companies can call us and we'll work with you and sort of handhold you and white glove the entire process the entire way through. We'll set up everything for you and put it out there. Or for smaller podcasts, we set up a, like a self serve platform. So it's called Boost self serve. And if you just go to mopod.com and you click on the self serve button, you can just add your podcast
in there. You type in your RSS feed, you cut and paste your RSS feed. Don't type it in. It's really long. Cut and paste your RSS feed, it pulls in your, your podcast, and then you can choose which episode you want to promote and then just set up things like your demographics, where you want this, to promote it, to what kind of people you want to promote this too. And then we've got AI, right? We got AI. No, that's the first time we've said
AI on this whole podcast. It's been 39 minutes, right? I am shocked. I know, I know. It's crazy. So, but we didn't build the AI, obviously. We have like the chat GPT API thing, right? The integration. So it, it takes your podcast and it formulates headings and subheadings for your ads and it pulls in, it lets you choose which ones you like. So you can, you know, choose through different. Three different ones or. I don't like any of those three. Let me try it again. Do it again.
Or just take one and build it as a stepping stone. And so it helps you create your ad for you. And then we charge as little as $100. So you pop in your credit card and for 100 bucks it starts promoting your, your podcast. And obviously, you know, you want to spend a little bit more. The, the, the cost goes down with scale over there. But it's a pretty cool. Actually, I'm not pretty cool. It's a really
cool tool and I'm super proud of it. We had just the enterprise model at first where you had to call us, and it was more expensive. Bespoke. Yeah, it was, it was more, it's more expensive and it's meant for bigger podcasts and we were going to things like, like Pod Fest and hanging out there and throwing parties and having fun and having drinks and having a great time. And people like, cool, how do I work with you? Were like, you can't. You know, like, that sucks. Right? So it was,
we were like, all right, how do we solve that problem? So we built this thing. We buy so much media. So we built this thing. We're like, all right, let's just build this self serve platform that kind of piggybacks on all the media that we're already buying at the, at the good rates, you know. And so we came up with the self serve product and it took a little while and testing and everything, but it, it runs on the same platform as, as all of our very large
podcasts. So it's pretty cool. I love it. What, what media channels are you spending against as part of these programs for folks? It's actually all over the open web, so it's pretty much everywhere. Right. We're not, we're not buying. So a lot of podcasts buy on other podcasts. That's, that's not what we do. So there's really good services out there for that. Like, like Acast has a fantastic service for audio ads where you can pick and choose where you want to run an audio ad on another podcast.
Really cool platform, but that's not the aspect. We're more on visual ads. So our ads are graphic based, so they're native ads on the Internet and you know, between graphic and, and video as well. So we have that, that kind of ad out there as well, but it's not an audio ad. So ad tech junkies or agency folks that are listening, we're talking real time bidding on display. Real time and yeah, DSPs and SSP and all sorts of fun things like that. And it's, it's pretty cool.
Perfect. Yeah, Joe, that's the area where I can nerd out. I was an ad tech VP for four years where we did RTB bidding on both SSP and DSP side. Nice. And we did 15,000 queries per second that we evaluated. So it was a lot of fun at the time and I get to bring that experience to bear ideally in this business. So. Nice. That's awesome. So one thing that I'm curious about. Yeah. Is promoting the
show. I think you were getting at this. Ultimately, folks kind of want to move from hobbyist to sort of part time job to full time job to bigger than that. Could be the different route where it's like Goldman Sachs is sponsoring a thing and they do the whole thing from scratch. But assuming you're in the former bucket, how much do you guys think about sort of, like, monetization strategies for your clients. When they ask, do they say, is, is this all ads? Is that the only way I can make money?
Should I be doing sponsorship? Or should host red? Or should I be doing dais? Or should I be doing, like, merchandising? Or should I be doing, like. How do you answer those questions to your clients? Yeah, the, the, the dynamic ad insertion is, is the easiest thing to set up, right? But it doesn't pay all that much, right? Like, but if you have it and you want to, like, instantly start making a few dollars or a few cents, you know, you can set that up in your
podcast and get going. And I've actually seen a case study. I'm blanking on, blanking on who it was. But they did this thing where they put the, the dynamic ad insertion on all of their hundreds of back episodes. And even though this episode from three years ago gets like, you know, a couple of downloads a week or something like that, added collectively, they were starting to make a few dollars, it was pretty cool. But there's,
there's, there's definitely better ways to make money. And getting a sponsor, easier said than done. But getting an advertiser, getting a sponsor is definitely a good way to do this. And especially if it aligns with the message of your podcast. Like, if it's, if it syncs well with the same audience that you are talking to and you can like, proudly talk about this product, then great. A host read ad is fantastic. There's very few ways to make
money on this, right? Like, you have to promote some other product, right? Or if you're hired by people to, to do this. Like, there's, there's the corporate sponsors, I'm sorry, the corporate podcasts, that the entire premise of it is to promote a brand, right? So we have, we've seen a lot of those where, you know, it's done by a corporate brand to promote what they're actually doing and then get the word out.
But it's really meant as a, a corporate marketing channel. But if you are just doing a podcast and you're like, I need to bring in some advertisers, bring in some sponsors, like, that's definitely a good way to do this. Two final questions that we're asking of all guests. So, okay, answer them in whatever order you wish. How is podcasting broken today? Or if you want to put a positive spin on it, what are opportunities for improvement
and how is it really working today? Opportunities for improvement. I think that there's just too much fallout sometimes I think people start this. It's almost too easy to start. And the amount of podcasts that are created to the amount of podcasts that are active and alive is, like, a. Ridiculous ratio, you know, 385,000 compared to 4 million. Wow. Nice job, Rain Man. That was awesome. I just did a talk on this. You didn't come to my talk, Joe. Oh, wait, I told you not to.
You did tell me not to, so I did. I did. See, I listened. Yeah, I know you did. Thank you. 385, 000 podcasts are active. Four million is what it's quoted, but it's not accurate. So. Great. I think that is a huge opportunity right there. Right? I think it's. It's almost. So it's almost too easy to start a podcast, and it makes it. It easy to stop doing the podcast. Right. It's almost like it's almost no bar, no barrier to entry to even
starting one up. And I feel like. Like, not that it should be harder to start, but it should be easier to continue almost, right? Yeah. If you're able to do a podcast and. But then you hit this. All right, so now I got a podcast. Now what? And then, like, you have to figure out a lot more right from there. Like, you. Like, there's. You're almost like, all right, now I'm in this thing where I got this podcast, I got a host, and. And. And I listened, and my buddy listened
to it. And now what, like, what do I do next? I think that the 0 to 1 is fairly easy to get it right to start a podcast. But, like, I think one to two. Yeah. Is a big opportunity for sure. I think in this space, like, getting. Taking it from there to just slightly. The next level, I think, is. Is the big opportunity, I think, in this space because there's so many people that want to start it. So many people that started it, and then it's. That's where it falls off.
That's, I think, maybe a problem and an opportunity. Yeah. It feels like the. The analogy that exists within businesses with your investing background, where, like these days with AI, I'm going to mention it for the second time, like, nice. You can spin up an app really quickly, like, low code, no code, tool. Fun. Zero to one is great. Ideas are cheap these days, but how do you turn that into an extensible thing, a functional thing at
scale, how do you acquire customers for it, et cetera? Then you're moving from idea stage to actual execution. Execution. Right. And execution's where the. Where it's at right. So I think it's the same within podcasting. Yeah, ideas are a dime a dozen but like actually executing it and doing it like that's where it's worth it. Right? Like that's, that's the, that's the money. Or in the chat GPT chat GPT era ideas are far more than a dime a dozen. You can get an interest in a number for
for a couple cents. Right. So cool Joe, really appreciate you having rather you being here on sound strategy early guest of ours. I enjoyed the conversation. I intending on asking you millions of of questions over email. Thereafter we'll see you at conferences.
So I, I'm super excited to have you here. And just to repeat mopod.com Joe being CMO and co founder of they have a new product charts.mopod.com we'll include these in the show description or episode description for folks to find with links out. Allison, am I missing anything? No. Where can everyone find us online? Lucas? Yes, we will be at Deepcast Pro SoundStrategy. I'll probably buy a domain to forward it over as well. @ SoundStrategy
FM. I like that better. I also happen to be Joe like a domain junkie, so I probably have a couple hundred in my account right now. All right. Oh, here's another opportunity but we'll definitely end up doing SoundStrategy FM and it will figure out which one we're going to set out settle on. But cool. Joe. Right on. Love having you here. Anything else you want to plug before you leave? No, that's it. Allison, Lucas, thank you so much for having me on one
of the very first episodes of your podcast. This is a really, really a lot of fun and it was a great conversation and I look forward to seeing how your podcast evolves and goes to the next level here. So keep me in touch. Perfect and independent of his own business. Remember Friday night karaoke. Oh yeah. All right. All right. So I gave a
plug for Mopod, obviously. Let me give her a quick thing. So if you are, if you are a karaoke enthusiast and you want to sing online a little bit, go to Facebook and go to the groups and look for Friday night karaoke. Okay. And it's free to join. We just ask a few couple of questions, qualifying questions, and then you can post songs online. You can click like and click comment. It's negativity free. It is ad free. It is mostly gimmick free. And just that's, that's it. And of course,
whenever we actually decide to do an episode. It's kind of tough to do, but whenever we decide to actually do an episode, we pick from that community and pull in 10 songs every quarter episode. And our last episode got like 57,000 downloads. It's, it's a, we've been usually a top 10, but now we're like, nice number 80. Podcast and music on Apple. But still, it's a, it's a cool thing and I'm glad I got to throw that plug in at the end there. But check it out. Friday night karaoke on
Facebook and. And of course, rate us five stars in the Apple Storm, please. And download. Make sure you follow us on Apple as well. Or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right. And I was going to say you also have another podcast that one of your 16 team members does that's roughly five minutes every two weeks that you should plug as well. Yes, the podcast top five. There you go. The podcast top five. Check that out and we'll try to get here as a guest on this
show in the near future as well. Very cool. All right, thanks, Joe. Appreciate it. Thanks, Joe. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to Sound Strategy with me, Lucas Dicke. Find everything from Today's episode at SoundStrategy FM. Transcripts, takeaways, key quotes, and links to all of your favorite podcast players. I hope you enjoyed our deep dive into the wild world of podcasting today. Check our show notes for all guest details and contact
info. Sound Strategy wouldn't exist without these amazing guests. So a huge thanks to everyone who shared their wisdom with us. And most importantly, thank you, my podcast obsessed friends, for listening. Come back next week for another edition of Sound Strategy with Lucas Dicke.