How Much We Make From A Podcast With 3 Million Downloads/Month (#368)
Podcast Growth, Revenue, and Hit Strategies - September 29, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 31:46
Transcript:
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Sam Parr | We're gonna talk about one thing that | |
Sam Parr | I think everyone will find this interesting. It's like inside baseball—behind the scenes of the podcast.
We'll discuss our current numbers, the revenue we're making from it, how we grew it, and things like that. Also, yours as well, because you're earlier in your journey. That would be interesting to people.
We'll start with Jonathan.
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Ben Wilson | on here too who jonathan's our numbers wiz he knows all about growth and how we grew it | |
Sam Parr | I'll do... I'll kind of say what the high-level numbers are for my first million, and you can do the same for your pod.
I just looked in Megaphone, which is the software we use. So, every number I'm going to say is the trailing 30-day numbers.
When we say the word "downloads," we mean YouTube and also podcast downloads, which is basically Apple and Spotify. A much smaller percentage comes from Stitcher and all the other podcast platforms.
For the podcast downloads, we did approximately 1.3 million downloads on the podcasting platforms. Our YouTube page right now has about 110,000 or maybe 112,000 subscribers. In the trailing 30 days, we did 2,700,000 views, a lot of which are YouTube Shorts. So, maybe 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 of those are actual episode views, which are any videos that are more than 6 or 8 minutes long.
Previously, not this past trailing period but the one before that, I think we were at 3,600,000 views. So, we're down a little bit because we had a few Shorts go viral.
So, 1.3 million plus 2.7 million—that's 4,000,000. That's about how many people saw our stuff.
Then there's all the social media stuff. My personal socials have been viewed... I just looked this up. Over the trailing 30 days on TikTok, I think I have 2 or 3 million views, and then on Instagram, I have another 2 or 3 million views. So, that's the total reach right now.
What are you at for "How to Take Over the World"?
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Ben Wilson | Right now, my monthly downloads are at about **80,000**.
For my per-episode downloads, I have some mature content. A good example is the episode on **Walt Disney**, which has been out since January and is hovering around **39,000** downloads. The episode on **Alexander the Great** has **43,000** downloads, so it's around **40,000**.
My biggest episode is now almost at **54,000**, so it's kind of in the **50,000** range per episode. My total numbers are obviously way different and a bit strange because my volume is so much lower.
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Sam Parr | what's our volume what's my first millions volume | |
Ben Wilson | Well, as you mentioned, we're going three times per week. Then we've got the shorts on YouTube, and we've got the clips on YouTube, which drives a lot of volume, as you were mentioning.
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Sam Parr | My first million downloads per episode—that's the number that matters most. It ranges from about 50,000 to 150,000, right?
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Ben Wilson | That's right. Depending on if you include YouTube, because if you include YouTube, we have some that pop up to like half a million, maybe a little less.
But like the Darmesh episode did really well, and the Peter Levels episode did really well. Those have hundreds of thousands of views just on YouTube alone.
So, what are you doing to grow? For me, the big thing is just fixing my production process, which is totally broken for "How to Take Over the World." It's really just a volume game at this point for me.
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Sam Parr | are you making money from it | |
Ben Wilson | I'm making a little bit of money. At least I am making money. I used to be negative for a long time, and then I was neutral for a couple of months. Now, I'm positive.
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Sam Parr | how much do you charge for an ad | |
Ben Wilson | about a $1,000 per per placement | |
Sam Parr | so everyone asks my first million I get messages all the time saying hey can we advertise on the pod so my first million I said we're gonna talk about how much revenue it makes it makes zero revenue because hubspot when they so the way the our process worked with my first million was the hustle owned my first million so sean actually came up with the idea and he goes hey can I do I wanna create a podcast you guys wanna be my publisher and I said yeah but we're gonna own it and he said that's fine and so we did a revenue split I don't remember what we did but I think we did 5050 so let's say the hustle sold $10,000 $10,000 worth of ads the hustle gave him 5,000 and we kept 5,000 and then we also paid for it which I don't know if that's actually a good deal for him or us I don't know but when we sold the company hubspot bought the hustle and they bought the podcast with it and now hubspot is the only advertiser on the pod but we don't make any money from it so directly although they could calculate how much money they would make off of it if they had to go and buy those ads elsewhere but I think so I went and talked to a friend my friend has a podcast in the health and wellness space and I asked him how much revenue do you guys do and so they get 7,000,000 downloads a month and they are currently doing 3,000,000 in ads 5,000,000 selling like programs like fitness programs and then like another half a1000000 in like merge and affiliate deals and so collectively they're doing around 10,000,000 in revenue with about 65% profit margin so it's quite good and so I think that our pod just off ads would maybe be in the 6,000,000 range so it would be around 75 to a $125 per 1,000 downloads and that would be separated in like a bunch of different $30 per 1,000 downloads ad so we could probably charge 25 to $40 per ad and then you have like 2 or 3 ads in the in each podcast and that's how you get to like that 5 or 6,000,000 range then another like 3 or 4,000,000 just off some like courses or paid community | |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, and that's not taking into account cost. Because if we were selling our own ads, we'd probably have to get an ad guy to actually sell it, and he'd take a cut, correct? And stuff like that.
Yeah, so what's our cost now for MFM, Jonathan? Do you know?
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Jonathan Barshop | For the production side, you know, we have Ben, our producer. We've got Ezra, who does the video and audio editing. We also have the short form clip folks and our YouTube producer. So, between that whole team, it's like $25,000 a month.
If you include other ways to grow the show, whether it's buying ads on other podcasts or other platforms, it could be anywhere between $25,000 a month to upwards of $50,000 to $100,000. | |
Sam Parr | Just because, like, our costs right now—not including me and Sean—are about $500,000.
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Jonathan Barshop | Year, roughly. Yeah, I mean, you can scale it up and down. It's just like we're being aggressive with our growth goals, so we're putting a lot [of effort] into it. | |
Sam Parr | Of investment into that, our growth is basically through buying ads on other people's podcasts. That works decently, it seems, but it's actually hard to track.
The other thing you tried was buying ads on YouTube channels and things like that, right? Do any of them actually work, you think?
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Jonathan Barshop | We ran some ads on YouTube, and it definitely drives a lot of views and some subscribers. However, it's not necessarily sustainable, and you always kind of question the quality of those subscribers.
I don't know, we've kind of tested everything, and the thing that we're most bullish on is obviously the short-form clips. It's also not easy to tell how well those are performing in terms of viewers and listeners to the RSS feed. But, you know, that's just a long-term play.
As you're seeing, your growth on Instagram and TikTok is largely driven by these clips from the show. So, it's just like, you're not going to convert that viewer the first time they see it or the second time. But hopefully, by the 50th time they see your face, they're like, "Fuck, I just need to check out what he's up to and check out the podcast."
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Sam Parr | ben are you doing anything to grow | |
Ben Wilson | no basically just working on more production that's basically it | |
Sam Parr | but like my organic growth | |
Ben Wilson | Has been huge! Like, honestly, as long as I produce more episodes, it's going to keep growing. I've done a little strategic planning regarding who I choose to feature in order to grow a bit, like what I cover. I think probably with podcasting, that's the biggest driver of growth.
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Sam Parr | And you are basically at how many?
So the way that we found Ben was, I was actually taking a flight at like 5 AM. I was exhausted and I thought, "I need some inspiration." I think I looked up Napoleon or something like that, and I saw your podcast. At that time, roughly how many downloads did you have?
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Ben Wilson | Monthly downloads would have been like 100 to maybe low 4 digits, getting a couple thousand per episode.
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Sam Parr | And then we mentioned you on the pod. Is that like the thing that was the big up? We did this pretty big thing about you where I was like, "Sean, this is like the greatest intro song and pod I've ever heard." How much did that boost?
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Ben Wilson | I've gone from $2,000 to like $40,000. I would say that it's been like half and half. So, half of it was like a big upswing; I immediately went up to like $10,000 to $20,000. Then, since then, it's been steady growth from $20,000 up to $40,000. | |
Sam Parr | Dude, that's the thing about podcasts. Everyone talks to me and they're like, "I wanna do this." I go, "Just so you know, it's very, very, very hard to grow."
So at The Hustle, we had maybe between 1 and 1.5 million subscribers when we launched this podcast. Sean was like, "Hey, I wanna do this thing." We said, "Alright, great." He goes, "In fact, I already have a pilot episode." He sent it to me, and I was like, "Oh dude, this is great as is! I'll give you 3 or 4 weeks to get ahead of the game, and then we'll launch one a week."
Basically, that first week we launched, I think that first episode got 50 or 60 thousand downloads. The next episode got like 30 or 40, and then it just ticked down until it was like 5 to 15 thousand downloads per episode. We blasted it to The Hustle, got traction, and this is how all podcasts—and maybe not all, but many products—work. Your launch is epic, then you go down, and then you just... over a time.
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Sam Parr | Of a couple of years, we slowly worked our way up. Then one day, someone didn't appear to one of his guests. He was like, "Hey, you know how we do that thing?"
So, Sean and I used to meet every two weeks, and we would just brainstorm in front of a bunch of people. He said, "You know that thing that we do? Can you show up in like an hour and just come do it with me?" The person didn't show up, and I was like, "I guess."
The results were decent enough that we thought, "Alright, I guess we'll just make this the thing and we'll just keep trying." From there, it slowly went up.
When we got acquired in February, about 18 months ago, I think we were doing 600,000 downloads per month. Then it went up from there a lot, and I actually don't know why it went up. I don't know what happened.
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Ben Wilson | That's interesting. So, the idea for what my first really became was basically an accident, is that right?
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Sam Parr | Yeah, so it was like... first of all, I didn't want to do a podcast forever. I thought it was a total waste of time. I was like, "We have to focus."
And he was like, "I have this thing." Basically, Sean at the time was not a content person. He is now, and he's great, but at the time, he was just like my friend who... you know, he wasn't on... I don't even think he was on Twitter.
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Ben Wilson | you just started yeah he's more of an operator than a company | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was just my buddy who had a company in the gaming space. Obviously, he was always charismatic and pretty good at storytelling, although I would say that's even improved a significant amount.
He was like, "I just interviewed our buddy Sully here. Here's the pilot." I heard it and I was like, "Oh dude, this is baller! This is awesome!" It wasn't actually that different than anything else. It was called "My First Million" because he was going to talk about how people got their first million users, revenue, or profit, whatever. It was all about the early days, which frankly isn't that unique, but he was pretty good at it.
Then, like six months in, or three months in, someone didn't show up, and he was like, "Hey, come do this." Me and Sean loved this podcast called "The Fighter and the Kid," which featured Brian Callan and Brendan Schaub—two guys sitting on chairs just goofing around. We thought, "Oh, I think we could do that." So we just kept doing it.
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Ben Wilson | That's interesting to me because, a little bit when I started my podcast, it was the same thing. It was kind of an accident. I was sitting there, I had been reading this Napoleon biography, and I thought, "I want to remember this. I want to retain more of this information."
I should create something. I should make like a blog post or a tweet storm or something. Then, I had all this audio equipment lying around. I thought, "Oh, I'll just do a podcast about it, and I bet people would like to hear what I learned from reading this biography of Napoleon."
I think a lot of really good podcasts start that way. It's not someone sitting down and gaming the system, like, "Alright, where's a niche that I want to make a podcast?" It's people who are just kind of doing stuff, and then it turns into a podcast and becomes successful. Do you think that's right?
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Sam Parr | Maybe. I think you can. There are companies like iHeartMedia that do this nicely. I think Parcast, which is a podcasting company, does this nicely. Gimlet Media does this nicely as well. Who else? Wondery does a decent job. Some are still better than others, but basically, they come up with ideas and then they launch them almost like a movie, where it's planned and hopefully successful.
Other times, it's organic. I think the problem with podcasts—there's a bunch of upside, and I'll talk about that in a second—but here's the problem. The problem with podcasts is the same issue I have with copywriting and hiring writers, which is that everyone can talk. A lot of people like talking with their friends. Therefore, the noise-to-signal ratio of people who want to do it versus those who are good at doing it is really hard to determine.
You have a ton of people launching podcasts that are:
a) Not committed to the long term. They're not dedicated to making this work.
b) Not actually good at it. They don't have the skill or the talent, and they think they do because they talk with their friends a lot. So, there's a lot of crap out there.
c) Not well thought out. Sean and I joke that you need some attributes. You either have to have this crazy interesting niche, or—this is definitely true in Sean's case and slightly in my case—you just have to be really charismatic and good at storytelling.
Or you have to have some crazy experience. For example, you could be an expert in X, Y, and Z, or you could have been in the NBA for 20 years, so you can talk about what it was like being in the NBA. You have to have something that's intriguing and a unique angle, or you have to be super talented, like Malcolm Gladwell or something like that. Do you know what I mean?
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Ben Wilson | Yeah, so what you've touched on is something that there's this guy, Eric Newsom. His background is in public radio, and he was kind of one of the OGs of podcasting. He has this framework that I love for creating a hit podcast.
He calls it a diamond. There are really four attributes on which you can be unique, and you need to be unique on at least two of them in order to have a successful hit podcast.
The four ways you can be unique are:
1. What the podcast is about
2. Who hosts it
3. Who it's for
4. The way you tell the story
So, it's who, how it's told, what it's about, who it's for, or who it's by.
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Sam Parr | okay so basically like the concept or the person | |
Ben Wilson | Exactly. Most people only do one thing, and that's where they fail. They're like, "Oh, I'm gonna make a podcast about gorillas because there are no podcasts about gorillas." It's like, well, are you Jane Goodall? Are you an expert? You need that second thing to make it successful.
You maybe don't have to be the expert, but if you're not the expert, then you have to differentiate in terms of how you tell the story. You have to get really high production value, or you need to have gorillas on the podcast or something like that. Most people just think of one new idea and stop there.
Whereas I think "My First Million" is successful because, A, what it's about is unique. It's kind of an entrepreneurship podcast that covers everything from little side hustles all the way to big tech ideas that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So it's unique in what it's about; it covers everything.
Then, the "who"—you and Sean—have the experience and are really funny and super engaging.
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Sam Parr | And it's like the All In Pod. People talk about that, and I'm like, you know, I think that they're pretty okay hosts themselves. I think Jason's pretty great.
But you're going to listen to anything that they say because they are so successful. Their worldview is so much grander than mine. You know, they're hanging out with ex-presidents, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. They've built billion-dollar companies. They have access to things that I don't.
Therefore, they don't even need to be... and I'm not saying they're not charismatic, but I'm saying they don't even need to be that charismatic in order for it to be awesome.
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Ben Wilson | Right, exactly. They have that second angle. The second angle doesn't have to be that you're a great entertainer. You could have very unique insights, like those guys do. But you gotta have something for that second angle.
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Sam Parr | this data is wrong every freaking time have you | |
Ben Wilson | Heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.
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Hubspot | Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed. HubSpot: "Grow Better."
But let's talk about the upside. The upside of a podcast is that I have never... I mean, I'm somewhat popular on social media, but I'm not that popular on video or picture-based platforms. So, I've not experienced what it's like to have fandom there.
For our podcast, the benefits are significant. I've noticed this in myself when I listen to other people: I truly become a fan of these individuals because I get to know them so well. That is a huge benefit.
Sometimes, people will come up to me and say, "Yeah, I eat this food because you talked about it," or "I read this book," and I'm like, "I don't even remember mentioning that!" I talk so much that I can't even remember all of it. But people listen so intently that they really get to know you, and it creates true fandom.
I think you could probably get that on other platforms, but it's more pronounced in podcasting. If the episodes are 30 to 60 minutes long, listeners really get to know you.
However, the hard part is that the best way to circumvent someone's bullshit detector is just not to bullshit. That's the challenge with podcasting. When you talk for 45 minutes or an hour and a half, three to five days a week, you can't lie... at all. Because it's going to catch up to you. You have to be authentic. Or, if you're going to play a character, you have to play that character all the time. I mean, you really have to be authentic. | |
Ben Wilson | The greatest thing and the worst thing about podcasting is that it is such an intimate medium. You're in someone's ears while they're doing the dishes or commuting. They feel like they're friends with you, I think more so than with YouTube, Instagram, or any other media format, including TV. People really feel like they have this relationship with you, which is a little weird.
As you alluded to, I think the most difficult thing about podcasting is that it's really challenging—it's like hand-to-hand combat—to build a big audience. But the best thing about it is that you can build a really valuable following with very few followers.
For example, if you have 35,000 followers on YouTube, you just can't do much; you're essentially nothing. I talked to someone the other day who has 35,000 downloads per episode on his podcast and is making half a million dollars a year from it.
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Sam Parr | genre or category | |
Ben Wilson | productivity yeah | |
Sam Parr | Alright, so 35,000 downloads an episode, and he's doing half a million in ad revenue. Yeah, and then he could be doing way more off like courses or whatever else he wants to sell. He could be doing 3 or 4 times as much as that. | |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, and he's talking about doing that stuff, but he's not doing it yet. So, I don't even feel like that's the limit of what you could do with that many followers.
I do think that's the beauty of podcasting. If you can grind it out to get a decent following of a few tens of thousands, you can make real money in podcasting.
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Sam Parr | yeah and the best way I think you do it is if you already have a business so for example I didn't know this but you know that guy patrick david betts I think his name is he's got that youtube channel called valuetainment so I just thought that he was like a personality and he recently had a life insurance I think it is company that he sold for like $300,000,000 and I didn't even know about that and that's way more valuable than I mean his youtube channel is very valuable but not $2 or $300,000,000 valuable same with dave ramsey dave ramsey I was researching him his company is worth something like 7 or $800,000,000 and it's a collection of real estate and selling like personal finance stuff and the radio show is definitely awesome but it's not it it alone ain't worth that it's not the monetization engine and so if you already have that monetization engine and you build a podcast I think it's lights out man I think you can crush it I and what's interesting is our pod's not even big so let's just say we're between 13,000,000 downloads depending on a combination of youtube or not youtube I and it's it's not youtube first so like we we our faces aren't out there if I'm walking around a top ten city so like a new york down to like a denver I will get recognized maybe once a day and that is a very small audience that is not a there's 350,000,000 people in america and we only reach 1 or 3,000,000 of them a month and I get recognized probably 5 times a week or like yesterday I went to lululemon and I had to give her my email and my email is is my name and I told her my name and she looked up and she goes wait for my first million are you saying for my I was like yeah what's going on but and she goes I thought I recognized your voice and like that happens all the time and that's one of my biggest surprises is that we get recognized on such a small audience and the people are like pumped they're excited which I would be too if I if I you know like brendan schaub is someone I really admire and you'd probably have no idea who that is and he's not like famous a list famous if I saw him I would be like dude can I get a picture you know what I mean it is so it's that's the interesting thing about podcasts | |
Ben Wilson | do you get like instagram models that slide into your dms | |
Sam Parr | So that's funny. I surveyed my Twitter audience and I asked, "What gender are you?" It was 93% dudes.
If you go to our meetups, we had a meetup in New York with 1,500 people RSVP. I don't know how many people actually showed up, but let's just say 500 or 800 people showed up. I'm pretty sure it was 90% men as well.
So, my stuff is mostly all men. Also, on all of my social media profiles, there's a picture of me and my wife as either the main picture or the cover picture. Most everyone knows that I'm married.
So, do I get women DMing me in a sexual sense? No, but that's not really the case. It's happened maybe at most once a month. But, like, you have to remember that a) this is a tech and business podcast, and b) I'm like a Midwestern 7. So, you know, I'm a Missouri 7 and like a New York 6.
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Ben Wilson | Do you realize that like 99% of our audience, if they had Instagram models sliding into their DMs once a month, would not be like, "It's not that much"? They'd be like, "I got Instagram models sliding into my DMs once a month, baby! I'm rich! I'm famous!"
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Sam Parr | Well, I get it. I now know how many fake profiles slide into my DMs—once, four, five times a day. So, I don't know how many of these women are actually real, but I would say maybe once a month there's someone who... I'll even be sitting next to Sarah, my wife, and I'll be like, "Hey, this is crazy! Check this out." We'll laugh about it, and I'm like, "You know I ain't touching that, but just so you know, this exists."
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Ben Wilson | I was talking to someone who is more conventionally famous than either one of us. They were discussing how they get real, verified models sliding into their DMs all the time. This person has a girlfriend and is in a long-distance relationship. It's very hard for them. They're just like, "All the time, these people are sliding in."
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Sam Parr | That's crazy! No, I get the hand models, but I don't get the fake models or the body models. I don't exactly understand that.
What happens a lot is, when it's warm outside, I always work out outside and I'm always shirtless. There seems to be an unlucky pattern where I get recognized shirtless a fair bit. I always put my shirt on right when I'm about to be recognized.
For example, me and Sarah have been on walks where I've been shirtless, and a guy will come up with his 4-year-old daughter and say, "What's up?" I'm like, "Oh dude, I'm totally making this little girl uncomfortable being this shirtless dude right here."
So that's our joke. If I'm ever going to be shirtless, I'll wear glasses or something because I don't want to be that one time I see someone and it's uncomfortable for them. But that happens all the time. It happened yesterday.
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Ben Wilson | you so you're saying your body's more famous than your faces | |
Sam Parr | No, I'm saying it's a coincidence that usually when I'm outside during the day, I'm shirtless. Again, my...
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Ben Wilson | It's not a coincidence. Maybe they don't recognize your face, but they're like, "Those are Sampar's pets." I can tell that those are Sampar's abs.
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Sam Parr | I would... and, like, I've got a New York 7.5 body. So, like, it's not always embarrassing, but...
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Ben Wilson | The other day, we released an episode that was about fitness, and people loved it!
Yeah, people loved it. It's a great episode.
But Sam DM'd me and was like, "Hey, can we change my after pic? I don't think I look ripped enough." He started sending me like 5 to 10 shirtless pics. It's like...
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Sam Parr | dude if I'm gonna be | |
Ben Wilson | shirtless my body look best | |
Sam Parr | If I'm going to be shirtless on the internet, I would prefer to look my best. I think that's the best approach. So, anyway, that's the update on the pod. Do we want to talk any more about that?
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Ben Wilson | Just like one other thing, I have a couple of frameworks that I think are interesting. I've been thinking about this for a little bit.
It's interesting; we do interviews, and it's always surprising which episodes actually pop off. We'll get someone really, really famous, and their episode will do okay. Then we'll get Peter Levels or we'll get Dharmesh, and the episode will go crazy. It will do super well.
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Sam Parr | Dude, because we need more unique, weird people. Sometimes we're cloud chasers. You need unique people.
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Ben Wilson | And it's like when you get unique people who have a super engaged audience that want to hear from them but don't get to hear from them often, then it totally blows up.
I've been thinking about that recently with my podcast in terms of what I do. I could go the route of doing more episodes on figures like Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Winston Churchill, or Muhammad Ali.
The bottom line is, there's actually a lot of Muhammad Ali content out there, and you could probably find stuff that's as good as my podcast or nearly as good as my podcast. So, I've pivoted to doing stuff that's a little more niche.
I just did an episode on Brigham Young, who most people don't care about, but some people care about very, very passionately. It's actually on track to be my most downloaded episode.
I'm trying to adopt that Peter Levels, Dharmesh kind of unique episode framework. Now I'm starting to think, "Okay, Brigham Young is huge in the Mormon community. People want to hear about that. That's going to drive downloads."
Then those people are into my audience. Who else can I do? Like, who is the greatest emperor of Cambodia? Cambodians probably don't get a lot of podcasts made about their heroes, right? So, can I do that? Can I drive something for that audience and then those people become super engaged?
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Sam Parr | have you ever looked up have you ever watched bruno mars youtube videos | |
Ben Wilson | no are they good | |
Sam Parr | No, so that's my thought. A lot like Bruno Mars, he's one of those guys who everyone knows about, but not that many people seek him out, even though he's pretty amazing. I love his music videos, and I was watching some of them. They have like 1, 2, 3, even 4... I believe 1 billion views. Bruno Mars has 4 billion views, and I was wondering why.
I looked it up on Wikipedia and then checked the YouTube comments to see if it aligned with my thoughts. Basically, Bruno Mars' mother is Filipino, so he's part Filipino. The Philippines... I mean, how many people live in the Philippines? You know, a ton! I think like 100 million. So it's not exactly a small country, but in terms of the amount of people who exist in that country compared to their cultural relevance on a global scale, they're not exactly represented a ton.
So when this American Filipino guy gets famous, it's kind of like Jeremy Lin in the NBA. You know, there are a lot of Chinese people, but there weren't a lot of Chinese basketball players. When Bruno Mars got famous, the Filipinos were like, "Yes! One of us!" They rallied behind him.
It's the same with Björk from Iceland. Iceland isn't exactly incredibly relevant; they don't invent a lot of things, including entertainment that gets recognized on a grand scale. When Björk gets a little bit of love from America or Europe, they all pounce on that and go, "Hell yeah! It's one of us!"
It's like Nelly in St. Louis, where I'm from. You know, my 65-year-old white dad is like, "Nelly's the man!" Everyone in St. Louis is like, "Nelly's our god! He's our mayor! We will do anything for Nelly because he represented us." We didn't have a lot of representation as St. Louisans.
So anyway, I think it's the same way with different topics. If you find that one or two things, it's okay if it's not that many people, but if they're passionate about it and can rally behind it, they're like, "Finally, something for us!" That just makes it so much easier to get popular. | |
Ben Wilson | It's a little bit of the Amazon strategy, right? Like, Amazon is the store for everything online. But it didn't start out that way. It was a bookstore, and then it was a DVD store, and then it was a dog toy store.
It's actually just a collection of niches that all got bundled. I think that works for content as well. You can just go out and collect niches, and then it becomes a big broad audience, even though you don't start that way.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, and so right at this point, we're a little bit more broad. We're sort of that broad, but we're more broad. We make dumber jokes and we talk about Kim Kardashian every once in a while.
But before, it was just like, "This dude's making $5 a month on the internet," you know what I'm saying?
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Ben Wilson | alright is that the pod | |
Sam Parr | that's the pod |