Buzzsprout Conversations
Welcome to Buzzsprout Conversations, the show where we dive into the real-life stories of podcasters in the middle of their podcasting journey.
You'll hear stories from famous podcasters as well as everyday podcasters, just like you, share stories about how podcasting has impacted them and the things they've learned.
Buzzsprout Conversations
Jordan Harbinger: Growing a Podcast to 6,000,000 Downloads a Month
Jordan Harbinger shares his top tips for interviewing guests, growing your podcast, and turning your show into a meaningful side hustle.
Links:
- Watch the conversation on our YouTube channel
- Listen to "The Jordan Harbinger Show"
- Jordan's mini-course on how to be a great interviewer
Subscribe to Buzzsprout Conversations on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.
Do you know somebody we should interview on Buzzzsprout Conversations? Reach out on Twitter.
If you don't have a good show idea and your show idea is just this vague I'm going to talk to interesting people because it's fun for me. Go ahead and do it, but don't trick yourself, don't delude yourself into thinking I'm going to monetize this and I'm going to be able to quit my job.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm here with Jordan Harbinger. Jordan, you are the host of the Jordan Harbinger show. Your podcast was best of 2018 by Apple and you've quickly grown to over 6 million downloads per month. While interviewing people like Kobe Bryant, malcolm Gladwell, chelsea Handler, neil DeGrasse Tyson, you are at least like. Sometimes I go to podcasts, but you're like podcast royalty. You are the podcaster OGs. Yeah, it's kind of funny.
Speaker 1:I mean there was no such thing as the podcasting industry when I started really. You know, there was like a couple of small, small, small, basically hobby businesses that later evolved into hosting companies, but there were no networks to be had. There was nothing like that. There wasn't even YouTube. So nobody was thinking about repurposing content when For what Twitter? I mean there was nothing that was going to happen and a lot of people who were podcasting called the internet radio and other people who were podcasting were just like this is where I upload my talks from my journalism course or whatever right, or my IT course. Like there wasn't the concept that you would have a show like a radio show that was designed to be downloaded later and never livestreamed. That was kind of brand new back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you actually started podcasting in 2005. So, depending on when you started in the year, that might mean that you actually were podcasting before iTunes even had podcasts, right?
Speaker 1:I think when we started it was, it did have podcasts, as far as I know, but it was all a text navigating. It was a text directory. You couldn't just like type in something into the search bar At least I don't think so and you, if you did it, you had to match like an exact title and then all there was no cover art or anything like that, like album art, that you wouldn't see that for podcasts. So it would be like you'd click on podcasts and it would open up this little sheet that'd be like arts, entertainment news, what's that? Like Entertainment news, whatever, and then you'd click on that and then it would sort of like go into the next thing. It was really just a text based.
Speaker 2:It was just a tree where you kind of directory tree that was the word.
Speaker 1:I was like it was a tree and you'd have to dig seven categories deep in the tree and there I don't even know if there were rankings or anything like that back then. There was just a list of available shows and there were like five in the category that I was in five.
Speaker 2:That's incredible and you've actually got some super interesting stories of. When you launched, you were like you weren't on a hosting platform because there was pretty much nobody around. You were doing this all yourself on like an FTP server.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a shared GoDaddy server that was like a virtual server, which is probably, you know, like a 486 or something like that or quad core, whatever it was back then, and I remembered like the downloads were slow because the internet was slow and most people still had dial up anyway. And you know, we'd just put our files up there on what was essentially a web server, that we didn't have CDN hosting platforms or anything like that. We would just put it up on the same server where we'd be running I guess it was WordPress even back then or whatever the God was it WordPress, whatever it was back then and then you just link the MP3s and the MP3 files would be in the same directory as, like, all the images for your website, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was wild, and people would be like, hey, this is going really slow for me, and you'd be like, oh, I'm kind of out of bandwidth. It's the end of the month, try trying three days.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that's awesome. I definitely remember those old days of downloading podcasts and you're putting them on to your iPod and then you go out and you listen to them for a while, and it was definitely just a different world, cause if people listened to podcasts which almost nobody did, it was like the same three podcasts that you were listening to at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, there were. There were so many people that told us well for Well, first of all nobody knew what podcasts were, and then it was like people listen to something with tech, and then they'd have like one or two other shows and there were a lot of like gimmicky video podcasts back then too, with people making drinks or like ask a ninja, where there's, like you, some guy in a ninja suit just filming himself in his garage or whatever, and he would give ninja answers to whatever question. And it was just bizarre because like that was huge right. And I remember hearing that that guy had gotten like thousands of downloads and I was like mind blowing oh my gosh, that's amazing. But like I don't think anybody sponsored it or anything, it just kind of slowly died, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've totally forgot the days of where it was like cool to talk about ninjas and pirates and the early 2000s. So you've seen podcasting grow from when you started like a thousand podcasts to now we are at like 1.5 million, and I know a lot of our audience are new podcasters or people who are just about to launch a podcast. Is there still space for these people?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that there is, because, look, everything starts off hyper niche. The Jordan Harbinger show is not very niche anymore. One week I have like a mafia enforcer, and the next week I've got some retired general who's talking about cybersecurity and cyber warfare, and then the week after that I've got somebody talking about election interference, and then the week after that I've got a celebrity on or some kind. So it's very much a variety show. I don't necessarily recommend people do that. That's too general. That's a personality driven show which you get.
Speaker 1:You kind of build the ability to do that over time, right? So like that's the same reason I named it the Jordan Harbinger show, people go, oh, you should have named it something descriptive. People are actually doing enough searching for Jordan Harbinger in I to or in podcast directories that it makes sense. But if you're just starting out, you shouldn't have the John Doe show, because no one's really searching for that. You should have the indoor interior decorator show or whatever it is that it's about, because and that's what you should generally stick to doing. So, yeah, there's a million and a half podcasts, but there's probably only a handful about pickling vegetables or beekeeping or whatever, and you can compete in those niches.
Speaker 2:So how would you tell people to pick a topic? Because you started out in an issue where you were kind of doing just like relationship advice and you were kind of talking about psychology and talking to people and networking and then you rebranded from the old show to the Jordan Harbinger show. How did you decide to make that move and like how can people kind of follow that when they are trying to pick their own topic?
Speaker 1:Yeah, picking a topic was tough. Early on, I was actually teaching a course about networking and I kept having new people show up and I was like, all right, I need a way to get them the old lectures, basically. But I'm not in a classroom where these can be filmed. I don't have any resources for that. Why don't I record them? So I was recording them, but there was no way to distribute them, so there was nothing really for me to do, so I burned them to CD. I was giving away the CDs, asking for the CDs back. People weren't giving me the day in CDs back. So then I was like fine, they're five bucks and you get your money back if you bring it back. And then people were like great, I need seven. Then what do you need seven for? I want to give one to my brother, my roommate. So then I was like okay, I'm onto something here. So I raised the price to 20 bucks. People kept buying them and I thought I'm not going to get rich 20 bucks at a time. What I need to actually do is give this stuff away for free and then charge for more advanced coaching and things like that. So I started uploading the files to create what became the podcast and that was the beginning. And then that was like the very, very start of what became a lead generator for my business. And then I became essentially a coach for dating and relationships and networking and things like that.
Speaker 1:And then as the show evolved and I got sick of that stuff because I was engaged or whatever, or dating somebody for years on end, or just sick of it Because you know you grow out of that stuff when you're in your mid to late thirties or early thirties, whatever it was. I just started getting other opportunities where people would go. You know it would be cool. My friend does this really cool thing. You should try to test a new episode like that. And I remember interviewing this guy that I knew who was a drug, a former drug smuggler, not smuggler, but he grew marijuana. And then he got caught with like a huge amount of marijuana and then he told the story and people were like mind blown. They'd never heard anything like that, because you didn't put stuff like that on TV. It was too racy, certainly wasn't on the radio. There was kind of no place for people to tell those kinds of stories. So I was having them on my podcast and then I quickly found, when I asked people what they'd loved about the show, they like I like episode this, this, this and oh my God, the one with a guy who grew the marijuana and then barely got away with that was so interesting. So then every month or so I would have one of these sort of offbeat shows, and with a gang member or something like this, and people were like these are so cool.
Speaker 1:And then I sort of lost interest in all the dating and relationship stuff and I just became more interested in talking about whatever it was that I wanted to discuss with the guests, that I wanted to have in. The audience started to grow and I started to get a nice diverse group of people and I kind of lost 10 or 15 percent of people too, because they were like, oh, this used to be about dating and now it's like kind of a Popory and I'm not really into that. But I noticed that far more people were like hey, this is really interesting now that you have just more going on, because sometimes I don't want to hear about dating, relationships, networking. I'm just kind of in for whatever you want to do. You know, surprise me, jordan. And then it was like okay, now I've earned the right, I've got enough interview skill after at that point. You know a few years in when I can make a lot of interesting. I can find interesting people using the networking skills that I'm teaching, like I still teach on the Jordan Harbinger show. So finding people and then getting them to open up and tell their story, that alone was a skill. So I was like this is a perfect medium for this. And now we find that to be true with podcasts in general.
Speaker 1:Right, people love telling stories and getting stories out there. Back then they're just kind of wasn't a place where you could hear a drug dealer candidly tell his story because you'd Might get something on TV and then they black out their face. But with podcasting I'm like I'm just recording your voice and they're like well, in that case, let me tell you about being a cartel hitman. You're never gonna find me. I'm not even telling you my real name. So I get stories like that and people would just share them and I realized my audience was going way up.
Speaker 1:And then, when I would hit those same new people with dating and relationships advice, they were like whoa, that's really interesting, how do I buy your products and services. So that became a really good lead gen source and I did that for years and made a lot of money doing it. But then I kind of realized I'm not just doing this for lead gen. Lead gen is like the least favorite part. Sales Marketing, these courses, doing all these workshops that's actually the part that I like the least. I really like doing the lead gen. And then my partners and I slowly grew apart up and until I was like, hey, I really just want to leave. And then we had a split and I started the Jordan Harbinger show, basically from scratch, but not really, because I had my network, my skills, my guest roster, you know things like that. So now I I'm unchained, I'm unplugged, no strings attached.
Speaker 2:I Love where you're talking about. It was always to serve a purpose that you got into podcasting. You were trying to figure out a way to get a message out to the world that people are obviously already interested in. They wanted to buy the CDs, so you went, okay, it's easier to get this up on a website, maybe. It's kind of like, and it was what became podcasting. And then you were like, oh, I'm just testing out new guests, so then eventually that turns into the Jordan Harbinger show. I Think one of the red flags we see a lot and I want to hear if this is what you think is a red flag is people go. I'm gonna do a show like Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss or Jordan Harbinger and I interview the world's most interesting people. I mean, who are the people who shouldn't be starting a podcast? Maybe that's what I should ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really not a great idea, because that's kind of like saying, I just want to hear my own voice or use this as a Conduit to talk to interesting people. That is fair in a way, but it's not a good way to set yourself apart. It's not a good way to build value for your audience. You know, when I first started, if I wanted to use my podcast for networking purposes which I did all the time Great. But most people didn't know what podcasts were. They've never gotten invited on to a podcast before. It was a good audience for them to talk to.
Speaker 1:Now you got people with 19 downloads an episode and, you know, bless them, you got to start somewhere. But they're going and trying to pitch Celebrities and authors and they're like I have 4,000 downloads, you know, or 30,000 downloads, and they don't tell you it's 30,000 downloads over three years, right? They tell you. So there's all this sort of misleading data and they're not thinking my listeners are going to love this. They're thinking I'm going to get a killer selfie for the gram Yep, when I meet up with Some sort of you know, dwayne Wade or whatever, and that wastes a lot of people's time and sours them on this and it also doesn't really do anything for you, because people think I'm doing great networking with my podcast, but if people don't have a good experience with you or have a mediocre experience, or you commoditize yourself by asking all the same questions They've heard everywhere else, that person doesn't remember you. They don't have a great experience. So if you don't have a good show idea and your show idea is just this vague I'm going to talk to interesting people because it's fun for me Go ahead and do it, but don't Trick your, don't delude yourself into thinking I'm going to monetize this and I'm going to be able to quit my job. Um, you may do that, but it will take you seven or eight years. At least the first seven years that I did the podcast, I don't think we had any ads Really. In fact, I think the first eight years and some of that was a function of there just not being any money in podcast ads period.
Speaker 1:Now, though, you still need something like 5000 to 10,000 downloads an episode before even the even those like automated platforms will really Put an ad on your show, because it's just too much work for them to monitor any other way. And bear in mind you know this is no secret to your audience, probably. But you're getting 25 bucks cpm and that's gross. That's gross. So that's like what you share with the person who sold the ad, right? So if you're getting 25 bucks, let's call it. You're probably getting 15. So you're getting 15 bucks. You need 10,000 listeners to get 150 bucks for that ad.
Speaker 1:You're not quitting. First of all, 10,000 is a lot more people than it sounds like. It's not like getting 10,000 instagram followers. This is that. That could take you years. Most people never even come close to that. Uh, the top 1% have 30,000 listener downloads per episode. I think is the top 1%. And so let's say you have 30,000. You're in the top 1%. Now you're getting 450 bucks an ad.
Speaker 1:If you're releasing a weekly show, you're not even probably paying. Your mortgage depends on where you live. You're probably paying your mortgage. That's great, but you're in the top 1%. Imagine being in the top 1% of basketball players. You're making millions of dollars in the nba. You're in the top 1% of attorneys. You're making a huge amount of money as a partner at a major firm, you know. So you have to be in the top 1% of podcasting to like break even. Break over your hosting. Yeah, to cover the hosting fees to, and forget about having a co-host, you know, and forget about like going out to eat more than once in a blue moon, like this is not a way to make a living. Very much in the beginning, and I don't again. I don't want to discourage people, I just want people to be realistic because I think a lot of people look at Joe Rogan and go, oh my god, a hundred million dollar Spotify deal, how hard can it be? He just smokes pot and talks to people. I can do that.
Speaker 2:I smoke. That's not quite what's happening.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, like that's not quite what's going on there, you know.
Speaker 2:All right. So I love you're already starting to kind of hit towards this. Growing a podcast to the level that you're at is Remarkable. Most people are not even within Two standard deviations of this. I mean, you are way at this tip and you're six million downloads a month. What should people be thinking about? I mean, I'd love to hear, like what are your growth strategies? What have you done to grow the Jordan Harbinger show?
Speaker 1:So I've done everything that you can possibly imagine. I tried social ads. They don't convert very well. You end up paying a lot for like a click that maybe the person subscribes or maybe they don't even download anything, they just go. Oh, that tried to open, I don't know this podcasting app on my phone, uh, close, right, that's not what you want.
Speaker 1:I've tried Going on a bunch of other shows. That works, you know, going on as many shows as possible, but it's also not scalable, right, like, if I'm going on a show, let's say, I get a hundred new listeners every time. I go on a show that has Over 10,000 new listeners. I've got to go on a show that's in the top, let's say, 5% of podcasts in terms of size. I've got to do that. How often to get a hundred new listeners? I'd have to do that like twice a day To get reasonable growth of my show. That's really really, really, really tough. It's not possible, period, it's just not. You and also you run out of shows that are willing to interview people After a couple of weeks at that rate, because you know the logistics of hiring. So the thing I've really settled on right now and this is not for necessarily like beginners.
Speaker 1:Um, the thing I've settled on right now is advertising on other podcasts. That's what I've been doing. Um, I actually I wouldn't say I started an agency, but I have a couple of big clients that are interested in growing their show. But you do need a budget of like $10,000 a month to really move the needle in a way that makes sense to have somebody like me Help you. But I use products like chartable to track attribution. Um, I buy and I negotiate bulk rates on networks for my clients, because if everybody spends big, then you can get the cpms Down really low. That's how agencies work. So I've started doing that and at large scale I realized, oh my gosh, if you get the cpm down low enough, you can get 300 400 new listeners per day. And if you get enough impressions going, then you start to see a real snowball effect and nobody else is really doing this.
Speaker 1:Right, like that's some of the ways that I do. That is quote unquote trade secret, but it's not rocket science. I'll tell you it's been very tough to get it going. The tools are really rudimentary. Even things like that I'm using to buy or track the ads are not necessarily finished products yet, but that's the stuff that really works. And again, not for beginners, but for companies and individuals who happen to just want to grow their show.
Speaker 1:Like, if you own a solar company and you do lead gen with your podcast and you can afford to make it a loss leader, then growing with ads, don't the whole like repurpose content and post it on LinkedIn. That is, it's a really small game. It sort of works but it kind of doesn't. You know, you pay 1500 bucks a month to get everything repurposed to Twitter, linkedin, instagram, tiktok. You get a couple hundred listeners for it. Just buy ads. You're gonna get twice as much ROI. It's all trackable and you don't have to have six interns in Malaysia posting things and making noise on social media, right. So it's a messy situation right now for that landscape.
Speaker 2:I, so I actually went and I was doing much of research across social media. You are not doing a ton. You're most active on Instagram, but since, like the last few months, you haven't been posting almost at all. Is that intentional that you're just like this? Social stuff doesn't get a good ROI in my life, or for my podcast or any of my stuff. So you're just taking a step back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find social media largely be a waste of time. I like social media for the one way communication I guess it's two way communication that I get with show fans. But I'm not trying to be an influencer, because I know a lot of broke ass influencers, you know, and I know a lot of them that are making good money but every day, every moment of their life, is trying to figure out how to monetize them. Going to the freaking dentist, you know, and it's a game that you lose as you get older, or you can't scale, or the algorithm gods go, they look left instead of right. And now suddenly you're de-prioritized or you're demonetized because you said one thing that a bunch of people didn't like about something, and it doesn't have to be anything serious. Or Google just says you know, we don't really like people that do selfie videos too much, let's try people who are driving this week. And then suddenly you're like why is my YouTube channel basically dead? I don't get it.
Speaker 1:So, with podcasting, since it's an open ecosystem and there is no algorithm, yes, there's nothing that goes viral, but there's also no, there's no like, hey, the wind changed and now your entire business is completely broke and useless and there's nothing you can do about it, which is what I see with people on YouTube or TikTok the algorithm changes or their audience just migrates to the next, like funny guy who jumps on tables full of food as a hilarious prank, and now you're just a nobody again and nobody sponsoring your stuff. And look, if social media ads were really that valuable, the CPMs wouldn't be like three or four bucks. Right, podcast CPMs are like 30 bucks. I'm getting $30, 25, 30 bucks CPM, you know, and then you get to give a cut to the salespeople.
Speaker 1:Like I mentioned before, If you got Google ads running and stuff like that you're getting, you're lucky. If you get three or four bucks, you need to have a YouTube channel sorry, not even a channel, because subscribers don't matter. Right With YouTube. Right With YouTube, you have to have millions of people watch every single one of your videos to get even remotely within the realm of the amount of profit that a decent sized podcast makes with like three people working on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like to. I really push this point all the time because we do YouTube, we do podcasts, we do blog, we do a course everything on the same stuff. But I go to podcasts movement and the only people who come up and say I'm so excited to meet you, you taught me how to podcast they all listen to our podcast episodes. Almost none of the people who've ever watched our YouTube videos come up and talk to me, even though those have 10 times the plays that the podcast has. The level of engagement there is a total, another level. I mean it is something totally different when someone listens to you for 10, 20 episodes, versus they were drunk on a Saturday and so they just decided to scroll through YouTube for an hour, exactly like TikTok.
Speaker 1:And I know these people that go dude, you gotta get on TikToks, you gotta get on TikTok. I have 300,000 plays on my last few videos and I go great, how do you reach those people? Oh, I just make another video and they'll make a course or something and they'll put it out in the video and they're like dude, it's just like no one cares. And I go of course they don't care, they're on the toilet scrolling. They're not fans of yours, they're literally the algorithm. Put your crap in front of them because you said something funny in a video once or because, like you, had your cute puppy in the video, no one cares about you on here. But then you go to the podcast and you put up your first 10 episodes and you find people that have listened to you for 10 hours and they feel like they've known you for that long and they've got this parasocial relationship with you. That's sort of like a one-way friendship and they're really excited to meet you. To do that on YouTube. Not only do you have millions of people literally competing with you for that, but you've also got a much shorter attention span. You've got a younger and less sophisticated audience with social media and YouTube and for a show like the Jordan Harbinger show. Yeah, broker audience For a show like the Jordan Harbinger show. I've got educated, affluent professionals. You know I talk about global affairs, world events. I've got great stories on there. I've got neuro scientists and psychologists. Those are usually like educated, affluent professionals generally you know not everyone, but generally and that's a much more desirable audience than casting as wide in it as possible. Also, there's something that I've called the Jerry Springer effect, where when you're on YouTube and you're really sort of subject to the algorithm and not YouTube but social media in general I always use YouTube as the example, social media in general you have the Jerry Springer effect, which is back in the 90s.
Speaker 1:I don't expect you to remember this, but Jerry Springer was actually like a really serious talk show host. He was really, really smart. He was like well-spoken he still is well-spoken when he wants to be and he had intelligent discussions on his show. And his daytime talk competitor was this guy, geraldo Rivera, who's just a Yahoo, who's on Fox News all the time making up, you know, baloney generally all the time and he's just kind of like a professional wrestler of journalism. He's not like a good journalist in my opinion. And so what Geraldo did was he had white supremacists on and black panthers at the same time and he got hit in the face with a chair and his ratings went through the roof. And it was totally unplanned, supposedly.
Speaker 1:And then everyone watched Geraldo Rivera and then he was like, oh, I'm only gonna have a circus on my show because that's how you get ratings. And then Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake they went from like serious, like good talk shows, to crap. Guess I gotta act like an idiot and have dumb people on here who throw chairs and like say you're not the father or you are the father and do paternity tests. Live, mori Povich. Like all those people used to be serious. That's because they have to follow the algorithm which were the Nielsen ratings on TV. So they all ruined their brand. And now I think, like Jerry Springer was like I'm gonna run for governor and everyone's like, bro, sit down.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:Sit down. Yeah, sit down there, buddy, not gonna happen. So that's a huge problem for your brand and unless you are willing to do the professional wrestler thing and be subject to the Jerry Springer effect, then you should not be trying to compete on a lot of these social media platforms. That's why you see people who have really good it start off really good on social media. Suddenly you're like why are you just filming funny, funny in air, quotes, things now? Or why are you trying to do shows? You used to do shows with scientists and great thinkers and now it's like out of work actor, that's still good.
Speaker 1:Looking next week on whatever talk show that I have on YouTube. Or like next week another influencer who has a lot of followers who they will send to my channel Cool, no one cares. Like people care for a second, but you have to constantly be adding fuel, throwing gasoline on that fire, otherwise you crash. Or as a podcast, you can say this is what I talk about. It's smart stuff. Share it with people who like smart stuff. If you don't like smart stuff, you're gonna be bored. Leave and over time you build very slowly a really good audience. And then when you're like hey, if you want me to keep doing this. You gotta buy a freaking mattress or I'm gonna go broke. People are like give me a mattress, right. So they want that stuff because they wanna support you. But if I see an ad on YouTube, I'm usually like, eh, and it's not that they don't work, it's just that you need a hell of a lot more volume.
Speaker 2:And look Also, if you don't want and the way to get that volume is to be crazy and is to be crazy Is to be crazy To put up the next politics thing or go and be as edgy as possible, and I mean you hit on this earlier. If there is an algorithm between you and your audience, that is not your audience. That is YouTube's audience, that is Twitter's audience, that's Facebook's audience, that's Snapchat's audience or the actually the Chinese government's audience, but all of those are not yours. The minute that it's not good for them to have you be the person in front of this audience, they will just switch it and they will demonetize you or they will move on. And it doesn't mean you did something terrible, it could just be. Your interests are no longer aligned and I think that's like one of the incredible things you're kind of talking about for podcasting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point that if there's an algorithm between you and your audience, it's not your audience and people go oh no, well, they can subscribe to my YouTube channel. Man, I know a lot of people that have 4 million YouTube subscribers and they get like 6,500 views per video because now they're just filming themselves, break dancing or something, because they're just out of ideas. Or they get 6,500 views per video because their audience subscribed once when they had let's go back to they had Dwayne Wade on once three years ago they got a bunch of subscribers and then people went eh, I don't care about this guy's content at all. You don't really have that with podcasting, because nothing goes viral.
Speaker 1:In the first place, people have to share via word of mouth or via social media and they go look, listen to the Jordan Harbinger show really good stuff, here's a really good guess. Start with that. And then people go, oh, that's cool. And then it comes in their feed later oh, this person looks cool, this person looks cool With YouTube. It just doesn't really work like that, right, it doesn't really work like that. People subscribe to 500 different channels, they go to their homepage and they pick the thing on the top row and that's it, and they just eat their cereal and then they close it and go on with their day. There's not a whole lot of following.
Speaker 2:There are. There's so much more opting in for podcasting too. I'm going hey, I'm going to go for a run. I mean I did this today. I'm going to go for a run, so I'm going to listen to the Jordan Harbinger show and I downloaded a specific episode. I'm excited about it and I go for the run and I listen to the whole thing, versus the alternative, which is like I'm just sitting around and I have nothing to do. I guess whatever YouTube sticks in front of my face is what I will get into.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, and it's the same thing with TikTok. It's the same thing with Instagram. That's why I don't really mess with it. Like, I don't read my Twitter feed, I read my DMs. I don't look at my Instagram feed, I read my DMs. I don't look at my LinkedIn feed, I read my DMs. There are places where fans can reach me and people go oh, you're missing out. And I go look man, show me the top of your funnel. Okay, you have 10 million followers on all these platforms. Great. Why is your show smaller than mine? Oh, because they don't want to go and listen to your podcast. Why? Because they don't really care enough to consume it. They don't. You have like a very shallow audience that these people won't go and buy your book when you release it. They're not going to buy your course in high numbers anyway when you release it, because they're casual followers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's that great Kevin Kelly article 1000 True Fans, all about. All you need online is truly 1000 people who truly care about you. And just take those people and if you can monetize them well and they actually care a lot, you actually have a career. And it's just a totally different world when you go, hey, let's go on social media, I'll get millions, I'll monetize people to the tune of 0.01 cent and then maybe I'll have a career and really the math doesn't work out as well.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't. And additionally, then look at how many times social media platforms have changed since podcasting started. Which podcast builds brick by brick, year by year. Okay, instagram took over from what I don't even know, facebook, which took over from Friendster, which took over from. I was on MySpace MySpace, not Friendster. Friendster came before MySpace.
Speaker 1:So people migrate and then those things die. And now you've got all these other, now you've got TikTok, and so they're trying to compete with them. But like these things sort of come and go, podcasting doesn't do that and people might be going oh, it's only a matter of time. No, not really. It's an open ecosystem. It's not an app, so people can't. Some rich billionaire can't make one decision that screws the whole thing up or change the UI for everyone and people go.
Speaker 1:I don't really like this and like remember when everyone's like you better be on Snapchat. There were Snapchat influencers. Literally no one talks about it anymore, if it even exists. Still no one talks about it. So if you spent three years building your Snapchat following, you are totally screwed right now. If you'd spent that time building your podcast and that's why I only focus on the podcast, I just focus on there. Yes, if I hired 20 people, I could hit every channel Cool. Then my run rates $200,000 a month because I've got to buy ads and have managers on each channel Cool To then do what? Monetize it? 1% of the amount that podcasting can be monetized. No, focus on podcasting.
Speaker 1:When you're digging for gold in the mountain side and you find a bunch of, like other rocks, you don't go. Hey, dude, I found a whole lot of quartz down here, we should grab this too. No, you just get the freaking gold and the other stuff. You throw it down the side of the mountain Right Like you don't grab that other stuff. So I'm only going for the gold. Podcasting is where the money is. I'm not trying to get more TikTok followers. It's a vanity metric and I don't care.
Speaker 2:One of the other things that you have done, and I wonder if this is like an intentional growth strategy or if you even think this works. A lot of times people say the way to grow is by getting big guests on your podcast. They just shoot their shot and they send out emails because they know that Seth Godin reads all his emails, so they're like spamming everybody. Have you seen like you've landed guests like Kobe Bryant, malcolm Gladwell, chelsea Handler, neil deGrasse Tyson you just had a general HR McMaster on the show All of them like do you see them bringing in a new audience? And then, if they do, to the audience day?
Speaker 1:No, they don't bring in a new audience. And with certain types of people they might bring in some audience, but no, they generally don't stay. Like when I had Kobe Bryant on, I got a whole spike, but it's only like a 10 or 15% spike. But a lot of those people that's the only thing they ever listened to and they did it because they love Kobe and somebody's like dude, really good Kobe interview on the Jordan Harbinger show. You got to check it out, right, or it comes up in some search for something else, cause they're like, oh my God, this guy interviewed Kobe, I was just doing a report on him or whatever.
Speaker 1:That audience very few stick around. So whenever I see people go like, oh, stand on the shoulders of giants, bring in all these great people and then people will see you and then you'll have credibility and then they'll stick with your show, it's just not really realistic. You can do that on other forms of social media, like if you're a YouTuber and you do a collab, you show up in search results and things like that, and you've got all these other people that like they promote you. Kobe Bryant's not going to share your crap, general McMaster's not going to share your crap. Howie Mandel's not going to share your crap, it's not, it's pointless. Plus, you can so tell when podcasters are doing something where they're like okay, I just got to kind of like crap out this interview with a I don't even know Chelsea handler, right Cause then I'll get all these followers. They're not interested, they don't know much about her, they just Googled some stuff. They're mailing it in. You have to go with what you're interested in and what your audience is interested in.
Speaker 1:The idea that you're going to have all these high end people on and they're going to grow your show is delusional. It really is. The only time that would work is if you are exceptionally well connected. Like Dax Shepard is a good talk show host. He runs a good show, but also all his friends on his show are, like these A list amazing folks. So he's got millions of people or whatever is listening to his podcast. But that's cause he can call Ellen DeGeneres, he can call Michelle Obama, he can call all these super famous people to be on his show.
Speaker 1:Okay, fine, they're probably getting a bunch of search traffic. They're probably maybe even sharing it. That's great. I'm sure he's building his audience that way. That's not going to happen for you. Don't count on that. You're not even going to have. You could interview a dentist in your area and they'd be like I guess I'll tweet it, but it's annoying, right. It's not really going to grow your show and even when it does, the vast majority of those people who listen for one particular guest. They don't care about you, they're going to bounce.
Speaker 2:So I feel like I know the answer. But for you going ahead and putting together like a headliner or a wave or a Buzzsprout visual soundbite, that's not even worth it. You wouldn't put that together and send it to them, you just say they're probably not going to share it and just move on.
Speaker 1:If I posted on LinkedIn which is the only platform that we've just started testing recently just posting stuff on there because it does get decent engagement, because people are willing to sit down and listen to something, because it's LinkedIn, it's more professional than just doom scrolling, it's doing okay, but I tag them in that and then people will comment or they'll try and reshare it on LinkedIn or something like that. But at the end of the day, even if something gets an amazing amount of play like I posted a clip from my Kobe interview and it got like 130,000 plays very few of them went. Oh my gosh, I have to open up my podcast app and subscribe to this. They listened to that clip or they maybe listened to that whole episode. Very few of them went and subscribed to the actual show. On the other hand, when I go on another podcast, people go and find the show. They download five episodes that they're into and then they listen and they go.
Speaker 1:God, I'm so glad I found this. This is really great. You've got to find people who are already in the habit of listening to podcasts. There are millions of people listening to podcasts. Why am I going to go out and try and educate these randos on the internet who don't already have the habit. Why am I trying to educate the market? It's completely pointless.
Speaker 2:You're going to let everybody else get their friends say, hey, the purple app, you've not been paying attention to it. That's actually podcasts. You can download these shows. Once that happens, then you're happy to go. Hey, I'll pay you for a little time on the show and now you might come over and you'll now subscribe to two shows.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's why I'm appearing on other shows and people go. Will you be on my YouTube channel or whatever it's like? I don't really need to do that for the business, right? Because if a bunch of people go and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger YouTube, I'll save you the Google. It's pretty small because people go. Why doesn't this have more views? And I go because I don't care. I want you to find the content.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that people are watching, but at the end of the day, for me to produce video is 10 times harder and more costly than producing audio, first of all. Second of all, if you put one ad in a YouTube video, people are like, ah, it's so annoying, this ad is too long, what a bunch of A-holes. You put four ads in an hour-long podcast and people are like, great, whatever, this is the price I pay for great content. It's a completely different mindset when it comes to the content and you look at watch time versus listen time. You see listen time is like 86% of your podcasts are finished completely by something like 86% of people listen to the whole podcast.
Speaker 1:You look at YouTube. I mean, good, watch time is like two and a half minutes or something like that, I think, and I remember seeing my stats from my channel manager he goes you're listening time or your watch time is 18 minutes. And I was like, oh, that's awful, my videos are like 40 minutes long. And he goes are you kidding? That's like nine times the average watch time of a YouTube video. And I went, oh, so this is good. And he's like, yeah, it's really good. It means a lot of people are watching the whole thing. Some people only watch a few seconds and skip and I go well, that's normal, right. But most YouTubers, like even friends of mine that make their whole living on YouTube, they see my watch time and they're like, holy crap, how is that even possible? Their average watch time, which is really good, is like two minutes and 50 seconds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that's such a good metric because we really need to be optimizing for attention and engagement, and I mean true engagement, like somebody actually paying attention to you. They would actually remember listening to your show, versus on a lot of channels, and people are probably watching this on YouTube right now, so you're kind of looking at us a little scant, but on YouTube, there really it is. You get on, you bounce. There's 12 things on the sidebar always asking for your attention and it's very hard to keep someone for a long time. If I can, can I shift gears for a second and just kind of pick your brain about interview skills? You've done something like a thousand interviews between your old show and the Jordan Harbinger show and you've done a ton of incredible interviews. I mean, first off, who is your most favorite interview? Who are you most like nervous to interview?
Speaker 1:It's always really tough. I mean I'm I've never really nervous like beforehand. I shouldn't say never. Rarely am I nervous about the person. I'm always nervous about the tech right. It's always like, oh, is this going to crash, is this going to be unstable? Did they remember to bring their microphone? Why aren't their headphones working? That's the stuff that makes me nervous. But you know, if I got Malcolm Gladwell on there, I'm not nervous during really. I mean I'm ready. So it's hard to say. I've had Mark Cuban, kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram, kobe Ray Dalio. I just interviewed Steven Schwartzman from Blackstone. I've got a lot of really amazing folks coming up. I've had a lot of really amazing folks in the past.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things that that maybe makes me okay at interviews is that I don't really get nervous because I don't care about celebrities at all. They're interesting people, but I'm not under the delusion that I'm going to be homeboys with Duane Wade or Dennis Rodman after the show. So if I say and do all the right things, he's going to be like bro, we need to hang out more. That's not really in my list of things that I care about. I want my audience to have a good listening experience. So that's why I'm never really that worried about the guest liking me at the end. It's just like journalism. They're not going to call me and invite me to a party. It does happen but it's pretty rare. So I don't focus or optimize for that.
Speaker 1:And I think influencers who try to do podcasts, they optimize for that because they want the validation Once we part ways in the podcast. Yeah, I want to be able to call you next year when your new book comes out, but that's pretty much it, right? You know that's pretty much the only thing, no-transcript. It's better to optimize for the listening experience of your listener than to optimize for whether or not the guest really enjoys being with you in that particular moment. Yeah, you want them to be comfortable, you want them to think you're a professional, but beyond that, that's it. You just want them to go away going. That was pretty good. You don't want them to. You're not trying to impress them, you're trying to get them to like you. You know you're there every week. Your listeners are there every week. This guest is there once. Who's more important, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think Cara Swisher puts it really well. She says you should be mean to your guests a little bit. She's like ask them the toughest questions and you know what they're probably gonna. If they wanna sell their next book, they'll probably come back and talk to me because I'm Cara Swisher and she's always optimizing for her own shows, which I think is really good. One of the reason things I heard you talk about on another podcast was not feeling nervous because of the prep you do for all of your interviews. So can you kind of dive into what it looks like for you to prep for an interview?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I will, of course, read the Wikipedia. I read the entire book that the person has read. That alone, put that, already puts you in the 95th, 96th, whatever percentile of all journalists or interviewers. Nobody reads the book. Even the journalists you think sound awesome. They're reading a synopsis of the book. They're reading highlights that they got sent by a publicist. Rarely do they actually read the book. If you read the book and you study up on the person, you are already gonna jump. Nine out of 10 interviewers.
Speaker 1:Additionally, I look at the Wikipedia page. I look at their Amazon reviews, the negative ones especially. I look at controversy that they've had in their life, news results, especially old news results, not just the latest craze, whatever. That's the kind of thing that really gets down to brass tacks. If you can find their friends, that's really great.
Speaker 1:I did a whole course on this. Actually it's relatively affordable. It's on Himalaya. I can bump it, unless you don't want me to. If you go to Jordan Harbinger JordanHarbingercom slash how to interview, it'll forward you to whatever page it's on, because it's got one of those complicated URLs. But it's really affordable and it goes through all my prep process how to do it, how to conduct the interview. I did a bunch of stuff on there several hours on this, but I look up as many info sources as I can. I spend 10 to 20 hours prepping for each guest. That's what keeps me up there. It's not like, oh, this guy's so talented.
Speaker 1:I had to say very little of what I'm doing is talent. Most of what I'm doing is outworking everyone else because everyone else is thinking they're so talented or they're going. I don't have time to read the whole book. I'm going to read one of the chapters or two of the chapters the intro and the close and I'll be able to fake it. Well, maybe you can fake it for some of your audience, but you definitely aren't going to be as well prepared as me and it's really going to show. It won't show if they don't listen to an interview that I do with the same person, but it will show. You will show your ass.
Speaker 1:If you do listen to an interview that I do with somebody and then an interview that somebody else does with that person, you will be able to tell and I'm not saying that that's better or worse you got your own audience. Maybe you're funnier than me, whatever it is, but I'm not naturally funny. I'm not naturally talented. All I can do is outwork everyone.
Speaker 1:But honestly, what does the audience want? Maybe they want to laugh, maybe they want to chuckle, but they kind of want to get out of reading the whole book. Or they want to get such a good taste of the book that they want to know that it's definitely worth their time to go and buy it and then read it and spend 10 hours reading it themselves. So if they listen to me for an hour, they know I've read it and if that content is interesting there's more to be had in the book. And if it's like that was OK, then you've had your fill.
Speaker 1:But we can always sort of tell when somebody's faking their way through it If you don't really know what it looks like. When somebody fakes their way through an interview, watch a journalist on TV who has like 10 minutes interview somebody. They have no clue what they're talking about. They ask super general questions why is now? Could tell him to write your book? Why is this book? Why was this the book you needed to write? That's what they ask, because they can ask that of anybody who's ever written any book ever. And then the person tells two stories that they tell on every show and those are the sound bites. If you want to get a real interview with somebody, you have to go beyond the sound bites.
Speaker 2:I love when I hear you talk about that. To me that's depot prep. You're still an attorney and you're preparing for it Sounds like you prepare for a deposition. You've got one chance to get the record straight with somebody and you put those 20 hours in learning everything so that I mean this is this thing we always say when you're doing cross examination on trial. You say don't ask a question you don't know the answer to.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Does that feel like how you're conducting interviews?
Speaker 1:Definitely, yeah, I rarely ask a question where I don't know what they're going to say and sometimes, look, I haven't heard them tell the whole story. Or other times they'll give me a different answer, and there are sometimes even in the interview I did today with Steven Schwartzman from Blackstone. I'll ask him something and he'll go oh well, I don't know anything about that. And I'll go OK, here's a little aside On page something, something in your book. You talked about this and this. And he goes oh yeah, ok, now I know what you mean. Yes, ok, and then I go and keep going and my editor will snip it because I had to remind him about something that happened in his own life. Now that doesn't mean he forgot it, just means that I didn't queue him up well enough or whatever it was. But sometimes there are times where I'll ask somebody something and they'll say oh man, I wrote that book like two years ago. Remind me again what that is. And I'll go. That's the time you went to the bus depot and you met the guy who dressed in the clown suit. And then they'll go oh right, right, right. And then so we'll have to pick it up from there. You have to know their content better than they do. It doesn't mean you have to have a PhD in molecular cellular biology like they do. It just means you should be damn sure that you know what's going to come out of their mouth If the stakes aren't as high, if they say something totally different, and it's good, keep it in the show.
Speaker 1:But I know what the audience is going to want, so I'm going to go and fish that out. I'm going to go and get that out Again. If I'm mining for gold, I'm not just digging in the side of a mountain going gee, I hope I find something in here. I know that there's stuff in there. I'm trying to find it. I'm looking for a very specific thing that is going to make this interview worth my audience's time to listen to in the first place. I'm not just fishing around hoping that something happens. We know what those podcasts are like. They're three hours long. There's 18 minutes of content interspersed with a bunch of tangents and nonchalant banter. That is not really a good use of your time. Even when professional comedians do it and the banter's funny, it's like how much of this do I need?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's when that becomes filler content that you're putting on in the background while you're doing your manual labor job and you want something to listen to. Very content you're seeking out. You're actually kind of happy it's three hours long because you're like I'm going to be here for eight. So I might as well listen to a couple episodes of this super long podcast.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that has its place. But if you think you're just going to go ahead and do that, great, now you're competing against people. Well, now you're competing against Joe Rogan. Ok, when you can do a better job than him, then you can do a three hour long show about nothing. But until then you're going to play Second Fiddle and you're always going to be your commodity. How many ways are there to fill three hours of your day? Infinite? How many ways are there to learn from TI or Mark Cuban or Malcolm Gladwell or Ray Dahlio? In a very concentrated format that's Q&A. Not many man, not many. And of those, mine will be the best prepared and executed.
Speaker 2:I love it If you were to give anyone, like maybe a final interview tip. I mean, you ask some of these questions. I know you don't really care if the guest is going to be a little bit annoyed. So you asked Dennis Rodman like what's up with all the crazy man, and actually got like a good response out of it. Yeah, how do you prep those questions Like, do you ever feel nervous that you're going to like annoy? I guess enough that it's over.
Speaker 1:Not really, because, again, I don't care if they like me and also it looks so bad when somebody walks out of an interview. Also, I do plan those questions in. So, yes, maybe the first thing I thought of when I was going to interview Dennis Rodman was what's up with all the crazy man? But I probably didn't start there and if it was, even if that question was early on in the interview, I probably, like, went downstairs, had lunch with the guy first, chatted about nothing, chopped it up with his team a little bit, got an introduction in the first place through a buddy, and then sat him down, had a diet coke and then said, all right, let's roll, and then went. Okay, so the question that's on everybody's mind what's up with all the crazy man? And he probably just started. I don't remember it, but he probably just started laughing or something like that. Exactly. That's because I didn't. He didn't step off the elevator, sit down and go okay, are we doing this? And then I go why are you such a weirdo? Right? That's not a good way.
Speaker 1:I built rapport with him first. There's other things that where I'll ask a guest and it might be the first question I thought of, but I put it towards the end of the show because I go. I need him to sort of like trust me before asking him this or I'm going to get a garbage blow off answer, or they're just going to go. Oh, is it going to be one of those? You don't want that, so it's it's. It's all in how you structure the interview. But you develop rapport with the guests. They trust you to do the right thing. Again, being trusted and liked, not the same thing. Being trusted to do your job well, be professional, represent them well that's one thing that is completely independent of whether or not they like you, and you shouldn't care if they like you. You should care if they trust you.
Speaker 2:Man. I think that's really good. Example, though, from your Dennis Rodman interview. You started out by asking him hey, you're a unique person. I see a lot of people are trying to be more true to themselves. You were doing this in the nineties, though, and it was not as common, and you brought it out as a very like you are true to yourself. That's a positive. Got that going and then ask the question everyone wants to ask in the way everyone wants to ask it, and so, with that context, he knew you weren't just hating on him, you were saying you're actually interesting.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, like you have to. There are ways to massage questions that are more awkward into something that is more palatable. You have to be careful, like you don't want to turn it up too much. I heard him interview with Matthew McConaughey in. This woman was like you're so beautiful, oh my God, and I just thought you're. I turned it off because I go. You have no idea what you're doing. You've alienated him. He already feels weird. You're making it weird. You're just kissing his ass. There's never going to be any content in here. You're not going to challenge him on anything. All you know is that he's hot and you can't control yourself. I'm out, click delete.
Speaker 2:Oh man. Well, I want to be respectful of your time because I know we only had you for an hour. Can I ask one final question? If somebody was a new podcaster, what is the one piece of advice you want to give them? If they're starting a podcast today, they're not already famous. They're not going to have access to big guests, they don't have a big budget. What would you tell them about starting a podcast?
Speaker 1:Just work on your skills for the first few years. Don't try and look at it as a business. Don't try and worry about monetizing it. That all comes years later. You need a huge audience to be able to do that. Treat this as a hobby. The best way to ruin a hobby is to try and monetize it and turn it into a job or a career or a side hustle. Just do this. If you enjoy doing it and work on your skills for the sake of getting better at your craft, then you will find yourself in a position to monetize it.
Speaker 1:Everybody who tries to monetize early ends up trying to figure out hacks and they end up monetizing too early, ruining the product, getting sick of not making any progress and not making any money, and they quit. A lot of people won't listen to this advice. That's fine. Those are the people that are going to quit, but the people who are really going to stick with this. You start off just doing it because you like it and then one day somebody says, hey, you could probably get an advertiser and it would pay for your hosting bill and maybe the drinks you have every week on your show. You go oh, that's cool. Then your show grows and grows and grows. Then you go, hey, this kind of pays for my vacation money now. Then you go, maybe I'll do this other. Then it grows slowly. People who try and turn it into a business right away, it's pretty much universally a disaster.
Speaker 2:One of the stats I pulled for earlier in this interview was only 23% of all podcasts that are out there. There's 1.5 million, but only 23% have 10 episodes and have released something in the last three months. We think of this massive world of podcasting. This is actually a ton smaller when you get people who are willing to stick with this for two and a half months and just consistently put out episodes. If you do that, you're in the top quarter of people. If you do that for a few years, a lot of great things can come your way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, think about how low that bar is. Just not quitting in under 90 days or whatever it is. When you're releasing one a week, just don't quit within the first three months of doing something. If you tell somebody that's advice for any other thing, they're like I want my money back from your coaching. How do I get better at soccer? Just don't quit within the first three months. Okay, dude, I'm out. Give me my money.
Speaker 2:Jordan, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on the show. I'm excited to share all of these growth tips and all of your thoughts on podcasting with our audience. Hopefully, we'll maybe get to catch up with you again sometime when this COVID thing is over and we're back in person.
Speaker 1:Looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the opportunity.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
How to Start a Podcast
Buzzsprout
Buzzcast
Buzzsprout
Podcasting Q&A
Buzzsprout