Tips from The British Podcast Guy to becoming 'the podcast guy' to #getnoticed

Hello, welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James. And today we're meeting Mark Asquith, who's in Manchester. And Mark is the founder and now managing director of an amazing podcast hosting and podcast growth platform called Captivate. Mark, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, Jim. Pleasure, pleasure to be around.

Well, it's a pleasure to meet you because you're really known as Mr. Podcasting UK. You built Captivate from a platform with your business partner in the northwest of England to hosting over 10,000 shows in a relatively short amount of time. And I'd love to have a chat with you and hear how you have managed to get that business to be so successful, leading ultimately to the acquisition by Global. So welcome to the show, Mark. Where do we start? Do you want to share with us how you built Captivate and what it does? Let's start there.

Yeah, absolutely. It's the old cliché of just scratching your own itch, really. I've been in podcasting for a decade now, maybe just over a decade. I think this is sort of back in the old days when there was only a couple of hosting platforms out there. So I was very fortunate to get into podcasting in the UK when not many people in the UK were in podcasting. I can probably count like a handful of people, maybe the Cornucopia guys in Sheffield, maybe Ant McGinley, certainly Colin Gray. And, you There weren't many of us. And my nature is that when I enjoy something, I want to know a lot about it. And podcasting came around at a time when I was looking for an outlet, a creative outlet for myself. I used to own a design, digital, and brand agency. And I was looking for something else, a new creative outlet for myself, which is when podcasting came along. It was fortunate in podcasting, I could go to the conferences. I just missed out on the first podcast movement by like a week. I just couldn't make it. But I spoke at the second one and I've done ever since. Same at Podfest. I was out there in the US. At these conferences that everyone now wants to go to. And I was probably the only British guy, certainly one of two, myself and Colin. We were there before, frankly, before anyone else was, just because we were, just because we enjoyed it, you know? And it was interesting because no one really cared too much about podcasting. So I started a couple of podcasts, started a pop culture podcast, started a business podcast. But I was fortunate in 2 ways, 3 ways. Number one, when I get into something, I get into it. And then number 2, I was fortunate enough Because I come from a marketing and branding background and design and digital background, there was a lot of skills there that I could take from the sector I was in and apply to podcasting when no one else was applying it to podcasting. You know, like now everyone's talking about how do you market your podcast? How do you grow your podcast? How do you do this? How do you do that? And there wasn't many people talking about it when I got into it. So I was able to say, well, look, if I was building a product, if I was marketing a business, here are the things that I'd do. Here's how it works for your podcast. And no one was doing it. So that's the second thing. And the third thing was I was, when I was putting the tech together for my own podcast, so the digital tech, the online tech, building a web presence and so on. There was a huge gap in the market for WordPress. I had a lot of entrepreneur people wanting to do websites and wanting to build like integrated hosting with their websites for their audio and to get their analytics in there. And no one was doing it. There was maybe one company, Blueberry, doing it at the tiniest little smidgen. So we just built a business called Podcast Websites, fully managed WordPress service with integrated audio hosting, which then led to Captivate later. So yeah, to get right back to the question, I started Captivate because I was there. You know, I used to, before the lockdowns hit in 2020, we were out in the US 5 months of the year, 6 months of the year at the podcasting conferences. And it's fortunate that I just got to know everyone. So I was able to kind of ask people, I would just get this immense feedback. without asking or trying, because people just say, oh, isn't it annoying that you can't do this? And then at the same time, I've produced 1,500 or so podcast episodes myself and still do. So, you know, you take all the user feedback that you're getting from people on the ground, plus all my own experience of, God, why can't a hosting company do this? Why can't a platform do that? Why can't such and such? And you bring it all together. And, you know, we create Captivate. And that's what happened, which is fun.

Having used Captivate and seen it, it's a really powerful platform that you've built there. Amazing. And to have 10,000 shows hosted. Would you say then the secret was this going out and speaking Denmark and why America? Why not, for example, be talking maybe in continental Europe more? Just share with us the strategy there for customer acquisition.

It wasn't a strategy for customer acquisition. Really wasn't. It was just, there was nothing continental Europe. There was nothing in Britain. Everything was the US. Literally everything. If you look at the trends in podcasting overall, the market share of whether it's listenership, whether it's production, whether it is hosting companies, even our own market share at Captivate is still heavily biased to the US. And that's because of what it was like, you know, that's equalizing out much more now, but the legacy customers are very significantly skewed towards the US. Plus, if you get to go to a conference in Vegas, you're not going to argue, are you? That sucked. It was fortunate.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. A nice place to go and promote. You mentioned that podcasting still is predominantly America. Do you think then from an entrepreneur's point of view, If you're building a business into Europe, for example, or into Asia, that having a podcast should be part of your strategy. Does it really make sense to have a podcast unless you're focused on America?

Oh yeah, I think there's 2 separate questions there. I think the America part is, I don't think that matters anymore. I think it's, you know, there are enough people in enough territories that know enough about podcasting that it will work if you choose to make it work. Question of whether you should have a podcast in your mix though is very different. And I love podcasting. I've been doing it now for over 10 years. It's my job. It's my career. It's what I enjoy doing. And I would, even if I didn't have Captivate, even if I didn't now work for Global, even if I didn't speak all over the world doing it and write on it and educate on it, I would still podcast. I would still talk about Star Wars or DC or whatever, you know. So I'm saying that for some context because there's no point starting a podcast unless you can put time into it. It's often sadly other entrepreneurs who are selling podcast courses because they think, well, wait a minute, I can make a quick buck doing this because everyone wants to get into podcasting. And that's the problem is That sort of used to be true. Like 6 years ago, 7 years ago, there wasn't that many podcasts around, there was still only 200,000-300,000, which against 50 million blogs, and God knows how many YouTube channels, it was sparse. So you could create any podcast and generally get a decent listenership as a business owner, enough to build some kind of funnel, some kind of sales focus, if that was your goal, you could do that. Now you can't. Because now there are millions of podcasts and parodied in TV shows and movies. That's how obvious it's become to have a podcast these days. So I think what you've got to consider is it's like anything, you know, if I was to set a YouTube channel up, I could do it now. I could just do a YouTube channel on my phone and I could publish to YouTube. Would it grow? Well, probably not because I'd need time and tactics and strategy. So yeah, podcasting is as good as any other medium. It's got a little bit of an edge over certain mediums. So like YouTube, it's got a certain edge over YouTube in that it can be passively consumed and it can be consumed in more diverse ranges of places. So the car and walking and so on, but it will not work for you unless it's good. Like I hate the whole, let's take a YouTube video and repurpose it to audio. Like, I think that's crap. You know, what's the point? It's silly.

Yeah, they're different formats actually, aren't they? Different design intent.

Yeah, that is exactly it. Yeah, the design is so different. And even vice versa, you know, we ran an experiment during lockdown, like, what if I just publish my podcast to YouTube? And I'm like, you know, get ready, there's some music incoming. But I'm like, welcome to Podcast Accelerator. This is Mark Asquith, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's have a good time. I'm gonna talk to you about Twitter threads for podcasting growth. On a podcast, that sounds great. On YouTube, the content is good content. But the comments were like, dude, what the— what you're doing with your music, man, turn the music off. And it was great to experiment with. I love doing it, even though you get people in the comments and you just have a bit of banter with them. And it was great because I was able to say, actually, I can see why that wouldn't work because I need to do different things. The editing's different, the visuals are different, and it's such an important thing. So yeah, in short, it's great for getting noticed, but it has to be done properly. It can't just be tacked on like a lot of people do.

Yeah.

I compare it to. SEO back in 2007, when everyone, like all the local builders were coming to our agency and all the local plumbers were coming to our agency and like, oh, we need to do SEO. Like, well, do you really? Like, you probably get what, 20% things, inquiries coming through from Google, coming through cold, 80-85% are from referrals. Like, why don't you build a referral scheme? That's better. You know, things get trendy. And if you don't do them properly, it's very easy for someone to say, well, podcasting didn't work for me. Because podcasting is not just hit record and publishing it, you know?

Yeah. So as you rightly say, it's not for everyone, ironically, because you have a dog in the fight, as they say, that everyone had a podcast, Captivate would be getting better. But Mark, you recently sold Captivate to Global, which obviously has the iHeartRadio network within it, which is massive from a getting noticed perspective. Can you just tell us how did that happen? Because it's a real success story. It's an accolade and obviously a credit to what you've built with both passion and technical expertise from the marketing and outreach investor relations. Can you just talk us through how you manage that?

I hate investors. We have no investment whatsoever. We were fully bootstrapped. Started working for myself because I don't like people telling me what to do. So like to have investors would suck ass. So I would never do that. And from that perspective, and the reason that I'm saying that is not to be flippant, it's to set the scene for how we got to the point that we could become part of Global. Captivate is built without asking anyone what they wanted. I know how to do good customer research because I've done it for other startups. I've done it through my agency. I know how to do that and I can do it well. We've never done it for Captivate because people only know what the deficiencies are and what they wish would solve a problem that they're having literally this second. And the old entrepreneur cliché, ask people what they're struggling with and give them a solution. It sounds brilliant on paper, but it doesn't get you very far really. So what we did was we literally made useful things. And what I mean by that is we didn't ask people, what would you use this thing? So for example, would you use a dynamic show notes builder that saved you 30 minutes in your show notes? I know people would, but if I were to ask people, would you pay for it? They would say no, because it's not that much of a problem. But the thing is, we went into Captivate with the strategy as follows. The hosting part of it, the analytics part of it, the bit that every host should be the best looking, it should be the easiest to use. But we shouldn't be applauded for that. Because that is the basic, like, if we can't do that, we shouldn't be in the game. So we made that the best it can be. And it is one of the best in the world. It's the easiest to use. And we get commended on that. You can see that on Trustpilot. But then we've got to do 2 other things. We've got to have the best support in the industry, which we have. Again, you can look at Trustpilot for that. We've got everything support focused. I still do support and I've sold the damn thing and I still do support. And then the second extra thing that we should do is build an ecosystem of product that sits around Captivate's hosting offer and that will help people with their daily podcasting lives. And that is all we should do. And we should probably give all of that away as part of the hosting cost, because if people keep hosting, People, we get bigger, they get bigger, everyone wins. So that's the way we did it. When it comes to networking, marketing, and getting noticed, I am naively simple when it comes to marketing. My approach to marketing, to networking, is the same as my approach to this conversation, which is the same as my approach to a conversation in the bar with my friends, which is to just be unequivocally yourself. And so through 10 years of speaking, giving everyone the time of day, and trying to help as many people as possible and connect as many people to other people that can help them as possible. I just built up a great network. And then when it came to the fact that Global were looking to acquire a hosting platform, like they came to us. I'll tell you the story about us.

Yeah, that's a great accolade, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

And it's great. Honestly, I love Global. We weren't looking to sell it. And I'll tell you that story in a second. But Global came to us and it was such a good fit because they're just nice people. And they love what they do. They love audio. They love creating. They love on air and they love broadcast and they love podcast and they love it. So it was such a good fit. But the reason that they came to us and the reason that it fit was because our personality is such that it didn't matter if it didn't, we still had a good business. So we could be very choosy about if we wanted to get acquired and to become part of something different. And What was good about that was that the product stood alone. You know, the product is incomparable to any other hosting company because on paper it's hosting, but where else do you get integrated guest booking, dynamic show notes? Where do you get Amy? Where do you get all of the other stuff that we do?

Integrate. Yeah.

Yeah. And, but also it's not just integrate, it's created a toolkit that simply didn't exist and still doesn't. And, you know, and then you overlay that there's me and Kieran. Who have all this experience and I'm pretty outspoken.

Yeah. And you're out there.

Yeah. And that was part of it. So we weren't looking to get acquired. We tested the water to see. So we basically thought to ourselves, right, we've got 2 options with this. We're bootstrapped up. We can either get acquired. There's a TEDx talk that I did a couple of years ago, which is about choose happiness, choose control. If anyone has seen that, they'll know that I do not like anyone dictating what I do at all. So to get acquired. was like the last thing on our mind. Because why would I want to get a job and other people be able to tell me what to do? It just didn't fit with the last 20 years of my life. So we had the other opportunity, which was, well, in that case, we can keep building Captivate. But like any good entrepreneur, like any good startup founder, you've got to test your assumptions. So we stuck Captivate on MicroAcquire, which is like a site to kind of sell smaller businesses. And we had no intent of selling it. The valuation wasn't even right on there. We literally just finger in the air, made it up. And the valuation that was on there was way off. We started talking about with Kieran and the team, and we very rapidly went through the process of saying, we do not want to get acquired because everyone's a tire kicker and is looking to strip Captivate for the tools and strip it down to its bare parts. They don't necessarily want strong-willed founders in place like us. They just want to strip it for its MRR. And that's when we decided we didn't want to sell. So we put the head down last year and we just said, well, we'll just keep growing it. And then Global came along and because we weren't looking to sell, We were much more open to the conversation because there was nothing to lose. It's not like we, oh my word, need this acquisition. So we have to do everything that they want. It was just, well, they seem like decent people. You know, we were in there at a very high level as global. Kieran and I are at a very high level. So it's not that people at the highest level are good people. What's their vision? And their vision is carry on doing what you're doing and keep building Captivate. But actually, You get the opportunity to work on the wider podcasting industry as well, which we wouldn't be able to do if we were just siloed into CapFit. It was fascinating that it just came from being genuinely around, you know, just being a genuinely active person in the industry. And I think that's one thing just to finish up on that is that certainly in podcasting right now, but I think in a lot of business industry, people get into it because they think they can make money. And they can, but especially in industry like podcasting or any creator-led industry, it's obvious if you get into it because you want to make money and people see that. And although we see so many companies, they started because they thought they could get acquired in podcasting that haven't, because it's obvious that they're in it for that. And the industry and people looking to buy businesses in an industry like podcasting, they're looking to buy people as well. They're not just looking to buy product. They're looking to buy people and it stands out a mile. So that's very important is to be genuine.

Yeah. And I think that maybe leads us to the final question, Mark, about what would be your number one tip to my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs? You've started something, many businesses, you've built this through genuine hard work and commitment to the product and to the industry as well. So is there a number one takeaway that you could share with us on getting noticed? Do you think that's worked for you?

Yeah, I believe it's fundamental, which is to be wholly in the industry that you're in, to give to that industry and to go and be present at all of the things. And the marketing strategy, marketing tactics, product strategy, product development, brand design, launch tactics, all of that follows. Without loving and being wholly in what you do, everything else will be superficial. And it will be about the numbers. Whereas if you genuinely love what you do and you give to it, the numbers will naturally come. Because you will unequivocally be absolutely everywhere and be so well known that it's impossible for the numbers not to come. And people try and do it the other way, they try and launch something and then get well known. And you have to give to the thing first. And that is not always easy. But it works beyond all else. And all you've got to do is look at any business that you can think of that has done what you aspire to do, whether that's grown, whether it's been acquired, look at the founders, then there will be that one common trait that they started doing the thing before they decided they wanted to make money doing the thing. That's important.

Mark wonderfully said about the integrity and the passion and having watched you and binge listened to all of your podcasts, which you've done selflessly to give back. I absolutely could feel that coming. So Mark, if you want to find out more about you, Mark Askwith, How can they do that?

Oh, just Twitter, actually. That's the easiest place to— @MrAsquith on Twitter. And then there's everything else on there. We can have a chat. And I'm big on Twitter and engagement. So yeah, just @MrAsquith on the Twitter.

Great. And in spite of Elon Musk, you're gonna stay on Twitter? Got to ask you that question.

I've got a Tesla outside. So yeah, although I do think I will say that what I think Twitter— a bit nuts, what's going on at Twitter. I don't agree with everything there at all. I don't agree with it. But yeah, I'm gonna be there mainly because I did that like setting up Mastodon and all the other stuff. And I was like, man, this is a hassle. So I'm going to be on Twitter for a while, I think.

Okay. That's @MrAsquith. And of course I'll put Mark's details in the show notes. Mark, thank you so much for joining me and sharing with me, not just on this podcast, but through all the other work you've done about Captivate. Thank you so much for joining me on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur today.

No, it's a pleasure, Jim. Thank you for having me.

And look, for everyone of us, The Unnoticed Entrepreneurs, you've heard that podcasting is good as long as you're committed to it. And also that really ultimately to get noticed, you have to be passionate and committed to what you're doing and who you're serving. So a wonderful message from Mark. And of course, if you've enjoyed this, do please share this with a fellow entrepreneur. And if you've really liked the show, please rate it because that really helps. And until we meet again, keep on communicating.