How Do Creatives Pivot Their Careers | John Taylor

did about 110 episodes. It was a wine podcast. It got really popular and it was one of the— and so I started getting my first sponsorship opportunities. And so I was like selling a ton of wine for the sponsor. And that's when I actually decided, hey, I'm going to do this wine brand myself. And that whole thing started. But then I kind of wrote this novel, this fiction novel, sort of based on the podcast and kind of my own experiences. That attracted the attention of Netflix.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Portage, Michigan. I'm assuming that's on a lake somewhere, uh, but in any case, thank you for listening. Joining me today, John Taylor of ACT3 Agency. John, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Christian. Really, uh, honored to be on the show today.

Well, I'm excited to have you because I want to pick your brain. Um, but let's start with— let's start with the pedantic. Um, how did you come up with ACT3?

Uh, because I'm just old as you can possibly imagine, and this is the third act of my life. And, uh, this is, uh, what I hope to be the last work project of my life. So it's kind of a, it's kind of a combination of the, of the culmination, everything that I've done up to this point, and, you know, going out with a bang.

I love it. So what was Act 1 and Act 2?

Oh, Act 1. Well, let's say that Act 1 was the music career. So I went off to college, went to USC, was trying to get into film school at the time, because that was the mecca of— for future directors was USC, because, you know, Coppola and Spielberg had just poured all this money into it. And we were watching it being built right in front of our eyes. But I never got in. I applied 6 times for film school, they all rejected me. So did NYU, UCLA, CalArts, you You know, it just wasn't happening. I'm like, why is this not happening? I realized because my actual calling was, was as a musician, a songwriter and producer. And so my brother and I, um, who I'd been in bands with when I was just a kid, we decided to make a go of it. And we got about 7 minutes of our allotted 15 minutes of fame. Our band got signed to Atlantic Records. We did the national tour thing, played the MTV Music Awards. We You know, uh, then we got caught up in the absolute turmoil of the music industry, uh, in the early 2000s. We're dropped from the label and, uh, you know, just sort of did the independent music thing from then on. And so that was pretty much Act 1.

Okay, pause. What, what was the band's name?

So the band's called The Uninvited. And we are in fact still around, and my brother and I still do it, and we play shows. I'm here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We play shows around here, down to LA, uh, out to Vegas, up to Phoenix.

Um, what's the genre?

So the genre is— well, back in the '90s it was alternative rock, right? That's grunge or no, no, closer to, um Barenaked Ladies. Um, but our, our— we had two quasi-hits. We two had two lower, lower Billboard charting singles, like way down there at the bottom. Uh, one was definitely third wave SoCal ska punk, and, uh, the other was our contribution to Western civilization, a song called Too High for the Supermarket.

And I'm going to have to go check these songs out because that genre is right in my wheelhouse. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma that, you know, everybody '80s listening to, you know, heavy rock, hair bands or country and western. And I just couldn't abide any of it. So I was, you know, on the second English wave of alternative rock, um, you know, everything from Morrissey to, uh, The Cult to The Cure. Awesome. Um, so that, that was— so I'm sure—

yeah, yeah, love your stuff. Yeah, so yeah, that was, that was, you know, that's what we were doing it. And, um, The Uninvited.

Listen, look at, look it up, listeners.

In '98, I want to say, maybe '99, we— the biggest festival we played was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oh, okay. Yeah, for some— I forget the name of the radio station there, uh, but the, the single was top 10 at that radio station. And that was one of the craziest things about, about the whole experience at the time, was that— so, you know, if, if you were— if you're getting radio support, you were huge, and if you weren't, you weren't. So we would go and play this festival to 30,000 people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they were singing the song. And then the next day we would be in Missouri and there we'd be playing for the waitresses because there was no radio support.

So yeah, you'd be the Des Moines County Fair and yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, what was Act 2?

So Act 2 is going out into the professional world, um, you know, getting a job. And you know, we rode that train as long as we could And so really, for me, like, my professional career, uh, job, job, J-O-B, job, was— didn't start until I was about 33.

Okay.

Um, so I got, um, a friend of mine gave me a job as, uh, he, he was doing a software, um, development company, uh, right around the internet boom. Um, and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse, which was very generous, especially since I had no idea about software. But I was the sales guy, sales and marketing. And so, you know, that company survived until one of the partners had a midlife crisis and, you know, stole all the money from the, from the company to buy cars for his mistress. And, and then the internet exploded and the dot-com bust happened, uh, and then I went into real estate, uh, okay. And I— thus began what one could call a series of, um, entrepreneurial endeavors that, you know, led to a certain amount of success and then died, failed, died, whatever. In the, in the real estate world, I had, I had built up a company that had, was doing private mortgage investing and fix and flip rehab type of funding, that sort of thing. We had $10 million of assets under management. We were being eyed by a private equity firm and a hedge fund. for another $100 million in, uh, investment, investment capital. Uh, and during the due diligence process, we discovered that one of the partners had been running a Ponzi scheme, basically. And so the whole thing imploded. That was fun. Uh, then I went from there, I went into, um, uh, marketing in the wine business, uh, right up here in Napa. I was, uh, worked for a couple different wineries doing, um, uh, marketing, uh, direct-to-consumer marketing for, for wine. And it was great. Uh, it's wine. I mean, what's there not to love? Um, and the people were great, and the wine's great, and the food's great, and it pays like crap. But again, I started my own company, started my own wine brands, and I had an angel investor who was like, well, if you can make these wine brands work to X level, I'll come in and I'll fund the rest of it. And, you know, and then we'll build the brand and then sell it to, you know, Southern Wine or, you know, whatever, right? And so we built it to beyond X, um, built it up to this, uh, very competitive, um, two very competitive brands. And then my angel investor had a heart attack and, um, had quadruple bypass surgery and then came out of surgery and was like, I'm never working a day in my life. So sorry. And then that company died and that's when I went out and freelance, started doing freelance marketing, you know, post-COVID. That's when I started podcasting. One of my clients was, you know, said, hey, what's up with this whole podcasting thing? And so I started a podcast for them. I— they didn't get it. So, I took over the podcast myself and did about 110 episodes. It was a wine podcast and it got really popular. And, it was one of the— and so, I started getting my first sponsorship opportunities. And so, I was selling a ton of wine for the sponsor. That's when I actually decided, "Hey, I'm going to do this wine brand myself." And, that whole thing started. But then, I kind of wrote this novel, this fiction novel sort of based on the podcast and kind of my own experiences. That attracted the attention of Netflix. And so, we did basically a series Bible and a pilot script for Netflix and they loved it. And then, the head of legal who was sort of representing me, um, got fired and Netflix just restructured everything and then it was dead. So yeah. Um, so yeah, that's what I, you know, then 2000, 2001, as I'm just kind of doing freelance work, that's when I decided to start my own agency and realized that the niche, uh, that really needed to be filled, was podcast marketing. And I understood podcasting, I understood marketing, and here I am. So thus begins Act 3, and off we go.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that Full Commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Okay, so I— let, let's dig into some basics around podcasting. Obviously, there's, there's still a lot of growth from what I've seen in the industry, but it's changed from what it was probably when you you did your wine podcast, in that, like, you still have— well, the way I see it is, and I want your opinion as to whether I'm right or wrong, you, you have, you have major podcast shows which essentially have replaced what probably were, uh, radio broadcasts, uh, before, and/or video, because, you know, like TV shows, like there's, there's, you know, both formats. But the vast majority, uh, by numbers of the people that are in podcasting, podcasting never attract, uh, an audience to, uh, generate revenue, uh, like from sponsorships or advertising. And there's more of a promotional purpose as part of their marketing strategy, right? Is that accurate?

Yeah, I think it's extremely accurate and I think there's a lot to unpack there. One of the— when podcasting sort of first started out, it was very new and people were discovering what is this and what does it mean and how do we do it and how do we monetize it and things like that. It was very much the Wild West of new media. And I think one of the things we're starting to see now that as the dust settles and there's more of this sort of foundational acceptance of podcasting, a couple of things, kind of like what you were alluding to. I think that a lot of the big, big companies, YouTube, Netflix now are seeing podcasting as this this, you know, kind of new way of, of doing entertainment, but it's still the old way. What is new is the distribution, right? The same thing that happened to the music industry back in the, in the late '90s, you know, that we got all caught up in. You had Napster and, and mp3.com and these great new ways of stealing free content, right, of turning paid content into free content.

I never stole anything, officer.

You're You're a good man. So you have just all that's changed is the way that this content is distributed and is consumed, but the content itself, the material that people want to listen to and watch, that hasn't changed. And I, this hill is what I'll die on is that there was, you know, back in the '90s, there was a ton of daytime TV talk. Shows, right? There was Ricky Lake and, uh, Sally Jesse Raphael and Arsenio Hall. And I'm not talking about quality, I'm just talking about quantity of, of talk shows. And then they all seem to just go away. And what you're seeing now, I think, is, is the through line to there, where people still want their talk shows, they still want their daytime TV, they still want this kind of form of entertainment. And it's just being, it's just now called podcasting and it's being distributed in a, in a different way. And then on the other side of that coin is podcasting for B2B or B2C or direct-to-consumer, where the podcast is not necessarily for entertainment purposes, but for educational purposes, for, trust-building purposes, for thought leadership purposes or thought-provoking purposes. And the podcast serves as this tool to explain to people your perspective, your experience, your expertise, and then hopefully get them to, you know, buy what it is you're selling, whether that's a service or a product or, you know, what have you. And I think one of the challenges that a lot of podcasters face is sort of deciding where they fit in there and then where the podcast fits. Is the podcast the thing? Is that, is that what you're selling? Is that this content I make, right? Or is what you're selling this thing that I'm talking about?, right? In which case your podcast is part of your marketing matrix, you know, and it fits up here and there's funnels that go through it and there's, you know, all of that, you know. So, yeah.

Yeah. And I would overlay onto that that the technology, you know, obviously has made— brought down the cost of doing podcasting. And it's this long tail where, you know, it started with Spotify of like, You know, your, your, your 20% of the curve didn't really change, but the, the, the tail that goes out where you might have 10, 15, 25 downloads is really long, right? I was shocked when I, uh, first— and I've been doing it several months, uh, Alex Sanfilippo with PodMatch, and his data was, okay, if your episode gets 25 or more downloads in the first 7 days, it's the first— it's top 50% of all podcasts. And I was shocked by that. I'm like, really? Um, but, but then I think that's an incomplete, uh, number in and of itself because I don't necessarily You know, in using the podcast the way I'm using it, I don't really care how much is listened to in the first 25— I mean, the first 7 days. It's really the long tail of, you know, how many people eventually listen to it and the benefits of having the SEO, the transcripts on the website and being able to drive traffic from that as well. And it's, it's interesting trying to figure out the strategy behind the content because it's, it's not always a clear path, which I guess is where you come in.

Yes, I— where the agency and, and what, what we do comes in. Yeah, that for sure. Um, Because it's exactly like you say, you have this, when you create a podcast, you have this evergreen long-form piece of content. And especially over time, I think I agree 100% about what you say about, you know, is it important to get all these listens out of the gate? No, not really. It's a piece of content that will live on the internet for as long as electrons exist. So You know, it's, it's a, it's a long game. And after you do 100 episodes or 50 episodes, whatever, let's say after you do 100 episodes, you also have now 100 hours of your expertise recorded. And that's one of the areas that we're coming from as well right now is like, wait, you've just created basically your own large language model of your expertise, which is completely unique and different from somebody else's. And that is a, that is a content goldmine, right? It's, it's comparable to writing a couple of novels that are strictly about your expertise. It is, it's huge. And yeah, and that's, that is where we come in. We, you know, our agency is all about promoting podcasts in a way that increase discoverability, which again, that long-form content is all about, and increase your listenership to your sort of ideal client profile. Like, who is your ideal listener? We help you find that person. We more importantly help that person find you.

Well, yeah, and that's, that's the problem with long tail is the technology. There's, there's You know, if you want to find, uh, you know, The Uninvited on Spotify, you have to know that it exists, right? And you have to know— and, and that's, that's the problem, is that there is great content, but how do you find it? And, um, you know, the aggregators, uh, GoodPods, you know, MalPod and some of these others that, you know, even the main platforms like Apple, etc., Spotify, you know, they're starting to get better at recommending through algorithms of listening. But it's still, as a podcast producer, it's, you know, it's kind of like, how do you find— I don't even know who my listeners are, right? Like, at the end of the day, it kind of is like speaking into the void. I don't get— I don't have a feedback loop. Like, I don't really know who's listening or what they think of the content other than just the very raw data of episode downloads, which, you know, trying to discern why did they want to listen. There's one episode that is like, you know, 6 sigma. It's way off the charts. And I'm like, why is that content that much more popular? I have no idea. I can't on the surface see any reason. It's not like the guest was super special or they had a large following on social media. Like, I didn't promote it. Like, why is that episode? And the content itself, I'm like, Well, I mean, it seemed pretty normal. Like, why, why is that one performing better? So I'm assuming you also help folks figure that out.

Yeah. Yes, we do. And, you know, it's really— your example was so interesting and so spot on for what we do and what's going on in the world right now. So, yes, let's say that you wanted to go find Music by the Uninvited. So if you type in The Uninvited into your browser, okay, first you're gonna get the movie from 1956. And then you're gonna get a bunch of hits on Alanis Morissette. Side note, her producer stole that song name from our name.

Yeah, I know.

Bastards. And then you're gonna get like half a dozen Icelandic death metal bands of the same name. And then somewhere down there, you'll find us. And so that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. What— so, so the person who's searching for it, you wouldn't just type in The Uninvited anymore. You know, that's what's going to happen. So when people are doing a search now, they're like, The Uninvited, this, I guess, alternative rock band that, what, sounded like the Bare Naked Ladies from back in the 1990s. Right. That's the way they search. And so that's what we optimize for, is to make sure that, that, that band comes up when you do that search. And because that's the way people search now, that's the way AI discovers things now. So that's the approach you have to take because then you are finding that, that user who you want to be your user— we want people to listen to our band. So you want them to find you instead of finding the 1956 Ray Milland film, right? And so everything you say there is, is so true, you know, like, how do you, how do you decide, how do you know who's listening to you and, and what topics they're resonating with? So one of the, one of the reports that we generate is a pretty simple correlation of your downloads to your episode title names. So we break down your episode title name, episode titles by word. We take out all of the of's and and's and these and a's and stuff like that. We take all those out and all the adverbs and action words and adjectives and and nouns we keep in. And we correlate that with the number of downloads each of those words received from that title. And then we kind of structure them together into like two-word combinations. And we look at the data and we see and we're like, oh yeah, the words globally, like this was one client, the word globally had like a 10x higher download rate than the next most comparable word. And she had no idea. And it gave her insight to say, oh, well, okay, I guess content that is more centered around a global audience is what's resonating with people. And you can never really get into like exactly what's in the mind of your user. That is, you know, wish, but you can follow these kinds. There are ways of following topics of your content that you can use. One of the key ones that we use too is just creating trackable links and making different trackable links to go into your different content. So for example, you have a series of YouTube playlists for your podcast and each each one of those playlists has— is on a different topic and you organize your podcast by topic in these playlists. Well, you put a trackable link in the playlist and you put the same trackable link in that content, in the videos that go into that playlist. And now since it's a trackable link and it's converting to your book or to your service, you can then look at it and say, oh, check it out. This topic is leading to more conversions than that topic. Right? Yeah. And so that's sort of, you know, there are ways, there are ways to track your users, but you're always going to be like, it's like tracking them through the forest. You're always going to be 10 steps behind, but at least you know where they're going.

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Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna pivot now and, and talk about the business model of your agency. So we talked about what you do, let's talk about how you make money at it. Um, how did you come up with your, your pricing model on, on the service that you do offer?

Such a great question because it's a, it's a constantly evolving constantly moving target. Um, I, uh, demand— what is— I can't even think of the term now. It's, uh, it's demand-based and, and what the market will bear. And it, like I said, it's, it's been a constantly moving target and a, a very frustrating part of the business because there are, there are these lofty podcasters that, that 1% that is willing to say, okay, yeah, I'll pay you $5,000 to do your entire package, to optimize all of my digital platforms and to do a 90-day program of optimizing all of my content. And giving me all the tools that it takes to do that on my own afterwards. And that's this tiny, tiny, tiny little sliver at the top. And then there's this larger layer that's like, okay, I'm willing to make a $3,000, maybe $2,000 investment, but I want the exact same thing. And And then there's, you know, the ones who are like, I got $500, man, what can I do? Right? Yeah. And so we are trying to— we're trying to do a little bit of something for everybody in that respect. And I mean, that's one of the reasons why we created our course, right? You can get a course for $499 that explains all of this, everything we do. You can do our entire strategy from the digital optimization to the marketing content, if you've got the time, I've got 8 modules of video for you to watch, right? And it's $499. You can do it yourself. And isn't that— I mean, the bottom line is that that is the trade-off, right? You've either got time or you got money. And if you've got time, then I'll show you how to do all of this on your own. And if you got money and you have no time, I'll do it all for you.

Well, what I'm thinking, and, and maybe you've got this thought as well, is that, you know, the, the promotion of the podcast is, is really kind of secondary because, uh, I would assume there's a lot of people out there that have podcasts that don't really have any overarching intent. Like, one of the conversations I have with my head of marketing or head of revenue here is, you know, it's totally fine to spend money on something if you know it's working to promote it, right? Like, but what's the point of promoting something that's not converting, right? And so, but I think that if you were to take most podcast producers out there, it's their podcast isn't, quote, converting because that's not their intent. They don't even really know that it should be their intent. And like, so there's like this knowledge gap or education gap, strategy gap between like, why would I even want to promote my podcast? Because I don't know what the hell I'm doing with my podcast.

Absolutely, 100%. And I would say that 60%, at least, of our clients are podcasters who've hit the 50 to 70 podcast level. Yeah. And are coming to me and saying, okay, I forgot why I'm doing this. Well, you know what, what is this supposed to do? Right? Am I, am I supposed to be making money? What, what happens here? And, you know, then we have to take this step backwards and that's that very basic question. Well, what's your goal? What do you want to do? What did you— why did you get into this in the first place? And what is it you feel like you're missing now? Why are you coming to me and saying, what happens? And usually that's the conversation you have is that, is that conversion conversation like, well, Actually, I wish I sold my book as a result of this, or actually I'm a life coach and I'd like more coaching clients. And I thought maybe that just doing this, I would get some. It's like, well, yeah, well, you are establishing your thought leadership. You are showing your expertise, but now let's talk about how we make that convert and how you ask for the sale basically through the podcast. As well. And yeah, I mean, a lot of people start without knowing exactly why, and that's— we try to help them.

Well, that was me.

Well, that was me.

Uh, I— like I told you in the green room, I, I, I started this podcast because I wanted to have a conversation that wasn't happening anywhere else, um, because I'm impassioned about the idea I think that there's definitely synergy and could have commercial purpose. And I think it has raised visibility, awareness, and trust with our prospects. But looking at the audience, I have no idea, is this people that could be target customers or not. Like, I have no— I have no data on that. Um, when you're talking to people, independent producers, and, and like, you know, people that have reached that 50 mark or maybe 100 mark, that they, they have proven that they've got something worth doing and that they're willing to do it. Because my other understanding from looking at Alex's numbers is that the vast majority of podcasters, like, you know, in the '90s, never get to that 100, uh, episode mark. Uh, they just quit too early. Um, what is a reasonable expectation? I mean, like, you know, I use the metric of 25 downloads. Like, you know, you get to maybe 1,000 downloads a month or something like that, you've you've, you know, you've got something, uh, but like, what's— how do you manage those expectations with, with your clients?

God, that is such a great question.

That is such a great question, John. I ask great questions.

You really, you really do. The difficult part about answering that question is it's kind of like asking, how long is a piece of string. Because let me give you a couple of examples. I've got— I work with my oldest client. I totally undercharge because he's my oldest client. Has about 165 episodes now of a podcast that is all about Wholesale distribution. So you really can't think of—

sounds like a riveting conversation.

It is an hour and a half every week of wholesale distribution. You, you, you can't think of anything more niche than this. And at no point do they ever have more than, say, 150 listeners. Mm-hmm. But they're selling a SaaS product. They're selling this SaaS software that they developed that unsilos your data and gives you this much better sort of CRM. If they sell that thing to one listener, that's a quarter of a million dollars, right? So 150 listeners, if they can convert you know, 1%, that's huge. That is huge. They don't need 1,000 listeners. They, they like 1,000 listeners, but you know, there you go. I've got the same kind of client who works in spa management. She's a consultant for wellness spas, same sort of thing, very niche, very, you know, and would she like 1,000 listeners? Yes. Is it a 1,000 listener kind of show? No. But if she can convert, you know, one of this rotating 200 listeners into a client, you know, it's a $50,000 engagement. So those are the sort of things you have to think of in terms of, you know, what is the success of your show and what is the, what is the success of your audience number.

So, so what it sounds like you're saying, that in a lot of cases the, the number of downloads is a vanity metric that really is irrelevant. It depends upon, one, the, the what your business intent with it is, and two, the the, the cost you can afford to pay for that piece of marketing, right? Right. I mean, like, so if you're selling a book, uh, at $20 and you make, you know, $10 on it, that is a whole lot different paradigm than if you're selling a $250,000 annual subscription to a SaaS product.

Completely different. Yep, absolutely different. And you have to do that sort of equation backwards, right? So if, if your conversion is $10, your, your net for a conversion is $10 and you want to make $100 a week and you know that you're converting 2% of your audience, well, then you do the math and figure out how big your audience has to be in order to make that $100 a week.. And then, you know, the question, how do I grow my audience? Right. And it's a completely different model than your Joe Rogans and even your Mel Robbins, right. Who are all about the listeners. It's about the listener number. And then I can charge if I'm charging exactly, you know, $25 cost per thousand for Purple Mattress ads. Well, then I'm still raking in millions of dollars because I have millions of ears on it. And then the products become an afterthought, right? Mel's book is secondary. It's nice, but it's secondary to what her advertising dollars are putting— are pulling in. So that's definitely a different model. And, you know, I've worked— I work with a couple of clients who are in that model, um, and they got nothing to sell and they're not trying to sell anything. They're trying to be entertaining and get more ears. Now, not to go down the rabbit hole, but even in that scenario, even in that case, you really have to look at what that, that, that, that number, like what is the big enough number, is becomes more and more interesting the more sort of niche your audience is. So in the case of this podcast I'm talking about, they are middle-aged women talking about middle-aged women issues. And their audience is predominantly middle-aged women. And middle-aged women hold all the money. If they don't have the money themselves, they gatekeep the money, right?

Yes, yes.

And so, very attractive audience. And now you're not talking about an $18 cost per thousand, you know, basic ad. You're talking about a $50 cost per thousand, especially for some product or service that is really aimed at that audience. So I guess it's a long-winded way of saying it's, you know, different in, in every case.

Well, and there's, there's also— so I, I went to a webinar Alex, uh, hosts quarterly, and they had a presenter on there, uh, that sold his company to Mighty Networks, and I think it's Mighty Mighty. Isn't that the online community platform?

There is a Mighty. Yeah, there is a Mighty.

And so he continued working with them, and he was talking about the evolution of community. He made the comment that, and this might be useful information to you, that they already have seen a decline in online education. And that's their primary business model, right, is creating content to sell on their platform, video courses, et cetera, that it's shifting to community where it's more about transformation and being part of that community. His example was CrossFit, and he said, why are people so passionate about CrossFit? You know they're a CrossFitter because they don't stop talking about it. You know, or he used vegans as another example, is because of the transformation that they've experienced and they're so impassioned about it. And the shift, the shift from it not being about you, John, and you're driving the content, but rather you become the curator of the content and it's the community that comes up with the content. And so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that from where you sit.

It's a great point. It's a very interesting point. And one of the reasons it's a great point is because I agree with it so much. I will die on the mountain of curation. And that curators are sadly missing from everything. The reason you have so much garbage in the world is that technology has given us platforms for worldwide audiences for everybody, but the curators are gone, right? Let's go back to the music business, right? When I was a kid and we were were trying to be rock stars, you had to get your music past the program director at the radio station. The radio station program director literally sat in her chair and she listened to music and she said, good, bad, bad, good, you know, and decided, you know, which one of the 1,000 CDs on her desk was going to be played on the air. And if it got played on the air, you were a hit, you know. But at least the, the audience was the judge of whether that was going to be a hit song now. And the audience grew to trust that program director, and because they like that radio station, right? This is the radio station I listened to. I like the music that comes from it. And so they were trusting the curator. And yes, I think there is a, a, a significant parallel between that and podcasters today. When you're growing that trust, what you're doing is you're becoming a curator to the content, to the information. And people are turning to you and saying, I trust this person for the knowledge that they're passing on or the perspective that they're getting instead of trusting every freaking voice on the internet, you know, that, that I have access to.

So, so I just had this epiphany, okay? I, I, I've known for a long time that the technology driving down the cost does exactly what you're talking about. Like, to— in order to get on the radio, or for you to get a, a record label to produce your album, there was such cost involved that they had to to, you know, make some discernment about who they let in the door. Were they always right? No, that's not the point. Now that we have the tech, the cost has driven down on all of the content across all different platforms. You have, but you don't have a long tail of curators, right? So, so really the curators need to, You're not curating for the masses anymore. You're curating for your niche. And, but, you know, it's still just as valuable. It's just for a smaller subset. Yes. And I think you're right. The curation is gone and AI has made the problem worse. You know, are you gonna trust, the LLMs to be your gatekeepers? Absolutely not. Like, I mean, I'm even fed up with my Google feed. Like, you know, like, you keep showing me the same shit. I'm tired of— and it's on me because I keep reading some of it, right? Like, so it keeps feeding me back what I— but there's nobody sitting there going, like, I really know Christian Brim, I really know John Brim, I know what kind of things that they like, um, and, and to curate. We, we've kind of abdicated that to the algorithms. Like, there's no, there's no person in the loop.

Yeah, that's a great, it's a great point. And, you know, algorithm is not necessarily your friend, I think, is the, is the conclusion. No, because the algorithms, you know, let's look at the TikTok algorithm, for example. I mean, that's programmed to keep you engaged on the platform and keep you angry or enraged or just keep that dopamine flowing. The YouTube algorithm is a search engine algorithm. And yeah, it's a content platform and everybody puts their videos up there and it's good. They should. It's the first largest podcast platform, but it's a search engine. And if you don't treat it like a search engine, it's not going to serve up your content. And yeah, and the algorithm. Yes, the algorithm is not a curator. That's, that's, yeah, I think that's a great takeaway.

To your example of the wholesale distribution, like, rather than, you know, thinking about it in terms of selling a product, thinking about it in terms of curating a community around wholesale distribution, those people that are in there and want to listen to an hour and a half of that content, like, being, thinking of yourself not not necessarily as the person that has to produce the content, but thinking of yourself as the curator for that community, right?

Yes.

Yes. John, this has been a fascinating conversation.

I really thank you. I appreciate as well. This has been a fascinating conversation. I love the rabbit hole of podcasting, marketing, and all the above. It's Yeah, fascinating stuff, and you've got some incredible perspective on it, so kudos to you.

We'll see if I can do something with it. Um, how do people find you, ACT3, and connect?

Uh, well, you can connect with me directly by email, john@act3agency.com. That's ACT, the number 3, agency.com. Uh, we're online at act3agency.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn, uh, just look up Act 3 Agency. You'll find me and my fabulous AI-generated headshot.

So no, no TikTok handle?

My— it's— I do have a TikTok handle, but that's my band. I still, um, I still post, uh, you know, it's interesting though, side note, uh, whenever I started my TikTok account, it was all, you know, band stuff, like here's a band at rehearsal and here's the band on the road and stuff. Nobody watched it. Nobody could give a flying. And when I started talking about independent music marketing, yeah, it went through the roof. 10,000 followers, a million views here and there, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And there's a moral to that story. I mean, there's a takeaway of like, you have to establish your hook, your thing. Your differentiator. And yeah, no one wants to listen to my music. Why would I go listen to it? I do. I'm going to go listen to it.

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