Sam and Shaan discuss listener feedback on the podcast, the tension between solo episodes (which listeners love) and guests (which help growth), and what makes a great podcast guest. They also discuss the strategy of guesting on other podcasts and the unique nature of the deeply loyal audience that a podcast builds.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Listener Feedback: Guests vs. Just Sam and Shaan [00:00:00]
Sam: I won’t give you feedback I got from listeners. Shaan, you ready? Is this harsh?
Shaan: Critical?
Sam: Okay, so what I’m noticing with this podcast — we have a similar amount of views each week. I think it’s the same people over and over. We’re part of people’s routine, which is cool.
And I think one of the secrets to growing a podcast is: do you have to have guests? When we had Andrew, he shared it, I saw people who follow him come and listen, and I hope we’ve got them hooked and they’ll listen from now on.
So the way we’re going to do this is just get more guests. But here’s what people keep telling me — they like it when it’s just you and I riffing and just making stuff up on the fly.
Shaan: Yeah, I felt that. And I think it’s even more pronounced on these Zoom calls because the Zoom pace is a little slower. In person it’s a little better.
I think it definitely depends on the guest — the guest has got to bring energy. You can’t just be successful and smart. That is not enough. You have to bring energy, you got to know what people want to hear about, and get to the point. That’s the rubric for a guest. Which is hard when you’re also trying to find famous guests, because famous guests help the show grow.
And for the record — Shaan and I have recorded a bunch of times with people I personally like, and it just turned out to be bad, and we just don’t publish. We throw it away and don’t even talk about it.
Shaan: Yeah, I’ve done that throughout the years — interviewed someone who was like an amazing operator and the content was wack and I’m like, well, trash it.
Sam: So the feedback we’re getting is that people like us because they say I’m more optimistic and you’re more down-to-earth, and they love that they can’t get that anywhere else. But Shaan and I are both like, let’s go get more guests — and people don’t like guests. Unfortunately, guests are what help us grow.
Shaan: Well, we’ll keep mixing it in. Dude, I had a call yesterday that I was like — if I had just recorded this, this would have been one of the dopest podcasts ever. It was just me and Furcon. We have a call once a week called “Cool.” And he lives on the edge of technology — he’s basically on the dark web, not in a legal way, but like he’s on the forefront of what’s interesting. He’s just a typical Silicon Valley engineer, but he knows reality in a good way. He knows me well enough and loves money enough that he knows how to take that stuff and bubble up the bits that are interesting and not get lost in the weeds of technology.
Sam: That convo was amazing, but unfortunately you didn’t record it.
Guesting on Other People’s Podcasts [00:07:00]
Shaan: The other thing I was going to say about guests: being a guest on other people’s podcasts is another way to grow. I had Shaan reach out to like 50 podcasts yesterday and just say, “Hey, I’ll come on and talk.” Like, “I just sold my company, I can talk about that. We built a podcast that did a million downloads in the first six months.”
I think guesting on other people’s podcasts is a good strategy. You did this with Gary Vee, with Pomp.
Sam: Yeah, probably. But there’s a caveat. Over the trailing six months I had it set on my calendar — 3 to 5 pm, that’s only guesting on podcasts. I’d do it, and some of the smaller ones drove nothing. Total hit or miss. I’d spend like three weeks doing it and the results were not always there.
But it is kind of like being a comedian — you say the same stuff over and over and you figure out what hits. It’s fun. It’s almost like therapy — you just talk about yourself. It gets a little repetitive and results aren’t always there, but sometimes they are.
The Loyal Podcast Audience [00:12:00]
Sam: You know, the thing you said at the beginning — for podcasting you get this sticky base of people who want to listen all the time, it becomes a part of their routine, they start to really love you. That’s very different from other products I’ve built where I want to get millions of users to visit a page or use something once a week.
This is the opposite. It’s like an army of 100,000 people who will go to war for you. I think there are people in this group that if I said, “Hey, I need you to beat this person up,” they would go beat that person up. People who really have your back.
When I started this, I was talking to Su Lee — the very first guest on the pod — and he was like, “You just sold the company, what do you think it makes you?” And I was like, you know, I really like this podcast thing. Is that even a business? In some ways it’s a step down — I’m going to make way less doing this than I did from my last business or any other business I want to do.
And I was like, look — I want to be in a million people’s earballs every morning. If I did that, I just know that’s a good thing. I don’t know how to get there, but I’m going to do that.
Shaan: Yeah. It may or may not be a business, but it definitely will lead to way more opportunity.
Sam: I went to New York and just tweeted — “I’m going to be here.” Two hundred people wanted to come. We only let maybe 20. Because we’re in people’s ears. These people think they know you.
The other thing I like is that the people who listen are actually really smart and successful. A lot of podcasts about business cater to the lowest common denominator. In our Facebook group I posted something for people who have a business doing over a million dollars a year, and there were like 100-plus replies just in that Facebook group. These are not the tire-kickers. The audience is mixed with a lot of interesting, successful people. There are VCs who listen to this — it’s crazy.
Shaan: Okay, enough about the podcast. Let’s give people some other topics or ideas.