The B2B Podcast Strategy Behind a 2+ Million Listener Podcast

What's the difference between doing a podcast versus just doing regular webinars or live streams?

They're looking for expertise. You are a person who is an expert at specific things, and there's not as many of you.

You've taken podcasts and made people want to binge on them. You don't want to leave the content. You want to just keep consuming it, almost like you're watching Netflix at night or something on a series that you love.

The most crazy, interesting, controversial thing that you go and tell people in private, that should be the first sentence here. No fluff, no anything else. Just like, what is that burning thing that you believe?

If you're an executive wondering whether podcasting is worth the time, you're going to love this episode. Podcasting has exploded. Over 100,000 new shows launched just in the first half of 2025, but most of them never get past a few episodes, let alone drive business. My guest today is Ian Faison. He's the CEO of Caspian Studios. He's helped companies like Salesforce, Asana, Gong, Qualified, and many others turn podcasting into an engine that generates revenue. And in this episode, he's going to break down exactly how to do it right from concept to episode 1 to measurable ROI. Welcome, Ian.

Hey, Rush, what's going on?

Hey, I'm excited to have you on this podcast. Let's get right into the big question is whether podcasting is right now. Podcasting statistics. I keep messing up when I say that. So podcasting statistics.

I know that's a hard one.

It's a hard one, right? They reported that just in the first half of 2025, over 100,000 podcasts, new ones, were started. I think there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.5 million podcasts out there. So there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of competition. Most of these podcasts never get past the first couple of episodes because it's a lot of work. So our audience is executives. So for executives who are on the fence, trying to decide whether podcasting is right. How should they decide if it's a good move for their business?

Gosh, that's a great question. I'd say that the first thing is that you gotta wanna do it. You know, like, is this the right medium for you? Like, is this something that inspires you? Is it something that like you feel excited about doing it? Do you wanna talk to your guests in public? Do you want to tell a story in a way that's in a video and an audio format? And do you want to really just like build stuff for your audience that you hope that they love? And like, if the answer is yes to all that, then you should definitely do it. If you feel sort of like on the fence or like, am I going to miss this wave or something like that? I mean, it's, it, from my experience that the people who are not excited to do it are not going to be successful doing it. I'd say this is probably true with anything in life, but in this type of medium where you got to put so much of sort of your brainpower and heart and soul into it, then that would be my recommendations. I see a lot of people who are sort of tepid throughout the process and then they create a pretty lukewarm show that is probably not going to break out.

What's the difference between doing a podcast versus just doing regular webinars or live streams? and then maybe just publishing some blogs. Uh, I mean, is it just like so much of a bigger lift? Is there a broader reach? What are the big differences executives should be aware of?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the first step is like, uh, I think you have to look at, um, content broadly to say like, hey, what are we trying to create for our audience? So I think sort of people get obsessed with like the format, and I think that they should be more obsessed with like the utility and the delivery to the audience. So podcasts are an audio format that is now like a video audio format to be able to deliver the best information to your audience. It's a way that they don't know who, you know, the audience can listen to your stuff or watch your stuff anonymously. So, and it's there in the application that they're using. So that's Spotify, Apple, you know, whatever. So when you start thinking about like the utility there, well, The utility of creating a podcast series is that when there's new episode of, you know, Good Hang or Joe Rogan or Bill Simmons or whoever, that your podcast, if they're subscribed, shows up right next to it in the same place in Spotify or wherever. So that's the utility. If they want to, if you want to put it on YouTube and people want to watch it on YouTube, that's a slightly different utility, but similar. If you want to create written content, then you're delivering that via you know, a newsletter or writing blog posts and hope that they get seen that way. And if you want to do webinars, like, completely different thing, right? It's, it's something where you're inviting a group of people specifically to that thing for a specific purpose. You're getting their email address. There's an understanding for the most part that they're going to get— someone is going to reach out to them about a sales opportunity afterwards versus a live event, you know, which is pretty similar to a webinar, like a virtual event. And then, you know, actual, you know, IRL type content where, you know, you're sitting down or getting a group of people together that may or may not know each other and hopefully connecting them. So I think that, I think you really just need to be very focused on the way that you're delivering the information and how they're, how they're going to be using it. Like if it's something where it's like long form that you're giving a bunch of different information versus if you're creating a video for that someone could find when they're scrolling. Like they're just very different things. I think people just often treat these as one thing and they're not. They're, they're really different. So the way that, you know, How I Built This is, is written and produced and hosted is, is completely different from Joe Rogan, which is completely different from, you know, the show we did Murder in HR, which is completely different, you know, from a million other podcasts. So like the way the format, the style, the function of the podcast that you're creating could be completely different, even though the information could be the same as your newsletter. So I think all that to say, like, I think you should obsess over the utility and like how they're actually consuming it, 'cause that's gonna have a huge impact on like how you're actually creating it too.

Now, one of the big things that you emphasized is really focusing on your audience. And you know, that's so true. You really need to know who you're writing for, when you write content, who you're speaking to when you're gonna be doing a podcast. And you've created Ian's hierarchy of audience needs. I love it. It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Can you walk me through that? How does, how would an executive use that to design a show that really speaks to their ideal buyers?

Yeah, well, first off, shout out to Maslow for the idea. He did a great job. But But what the thing that's funny and the reason why I did this is because like Maslow's just a dude that made this up. Like this isn't, this is, this is not science. Like he didn't, he didn't come up with this as like the right way. And so I was like, hey, we can borrow his format, which is pretty good. And, and I think that's funny, but I think that like it, it's true though. Like the, your audience does have needs that you're trying to meet. That's like why you're creating stuff for them. And there's all these different sort of reasons why they're going to consume whatever it is that you're going to make. And in the business world, in the B2B world specifically, or in the business world, it's way more focused than that. So compared to every other content where they're like, I'm trying to waste time or I'm trying to do whatever, just be entertained or laugh or whatever it is, in the B2B context specifically, I think that you kind of need to narrow down your, the audience needs. And so I say that these are number 1, utility, number 2, expert, number 3, tastemaker, number 4, parasocial, and number 5, community. So this is like how you should be thinking about creating content that ultimately does build a community. And so the first layer here is like utility, which is basically I need to learn something about blank. Or it could be like I need to be entertained. But generally, you know, business people aren't really looking at that. But it's like if you're, if you're, if you're, let's say you run an auto body shop, the utility is there is like I need to learn how to change a tire because I have a tire change. So like that's just like simple utility, how-to stuff like that. That's like the lowest level of, of, you know, audience needs. That have to be met first. And there's usually tons and tons and tons of competition for that section that you're trying to do. And I can keep going if you want.

Yeah. I mean, 'cause then you've got that next layer and all the way to the top, which is the community. And so is the ultimate goal to build a community from your podcast?

It potentially, I mean, so the way that I would look at it, so utility is just like answering like the basic, the basic sort of level, like, How do I do blank? The next level up from that is they're looking for expertise. So it's like, there's, you are a person who is an expert at specific things and there's not as many of you. So like if you were to say, you know, whatever, if you were an expert at, you know, HR and recruiting or something like that, right? So there's an expert. There's still a bunch of people that are an expert, but what they're looking for is someone who has specific expertise. So in the, in the, for the auto mechanic piece, it's like they're looking for someone who is really, really good at cars. Right. And so only this type of person would know that the level above that is someone when they're looking at like a tastemaker. So this would be like, let's say if our auto repair person, they are trying to make content. Right. So they said the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to make how-to videos. For just anything that you can do on your car. The second thing is, I'm going to really dig in on, you know, what my audience is looking for and they're looking for specific information about how to make their car go faster or, you know, or something like that. Maybe how to make it, you know, how to do low budget things. The next thing up is a tastemaker. So this person has now become so interesting. That people follow them and like seek them for information outside of just being a mechanic. So, you know, you went from people saying like, hey, this, this guy does, you know, funny, funny car videos to, oh, he's actually really knowledgeable about cars to, oh, he's actually just really knowledgeable about lots of stuff. And like, I, I, you know, half of his show is about cars, but the other half is just kind of about like random stuff. And I think he's really funny. And then the next level above that is parasocial. So then you would say, well, this guy's really funny and I'm going to follow him on a bunch of his social channels. I'm going to subscribe to his newsletter. Maybe he has a Substack and maybe I'll start paying for that. And this person is just part of my life. Like I listen to their show every week. I support their Patreon or whatever. You know, I pay them $2 a month and all that. And then the final step is like, oh, okay. Now this person has a community of car enthusiasts. That they manage, maybe they have a Discord. I'm part of that community. And now this person is like pooling together people that are like me where I can go and talk about cars or, you know, specific type of car. And then in that channel now people start opting into and selecting into the different stuff that they like. They're like, oh, well, this is for the people who like Trans Ams or whatever it is. And people start to— now you're, you're making them, you're helping them connect with other sort of like-minded people. but you also share this person in common, this car expert funny guy who you all follow their content. So when he puts out his weekly episode, now people are in the Discord talking back and forth about, oh, you know, he said this about Trans Am, but I don't think that's actually true. And like, oh, actually I do. And so you're, you know, you're putting together like-minded people.

That's interesting. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I was gonna say, cuz, cuz now it almost sounds like that's, that's the goal if you're an individual podcaster. How does that connect with companies who want to do it? I mean, you've, you've worked with Salesforce, you've worked with Asana, very big brands at Qualified. I think that's when we first met was, was when you were doing the podcast with Qualified. So how, how does that hierarchy connect with something that a business could do to drive revenue?

Yeah, well, so it's the exact same thing. And so that's, I think, where people get this messed up is like the creating a great show. Your only job is to create a great show. Like, that's it. You just want to serve your audience. That's it. So like every time when I sit down with like a big company and they're like, I, we sit down and I say, and I say like, what are your business goals for this show? And then what are your audience goals for this show? And like those two things are completely different things. Your business goal is to drive more revenue for your business, create pipeline, create brand awareness, whatever your business goals are. Your audience goals are, I want them to learn more about Pontiac Trans Ams. I want them to meet other people that have Trans Ams. I want their cars to, their, you know, their cars to have less problems so they could have better preventive maintenance or whatever it is. Like, that's the goal. And so I think what people really like fail to understand is that the best shows are the ones who are in service of their, of the audience. You look like Lenny's podcast has become like massive and it's like, Lenny just wants to help product people get better at their jobs. That's it. He has no ulterior motives. And because of that, or he might, I don't know, but because of that, all of these other good things have stemmed from that. And if you listen to his show, it's super clear from the first minute that he is making this for you to try to get better as a PM, or now he has sort of a bigger audience. And so like, those are the type of things like that isn't mutually exclusive. Mm-hmm. But it just so happens that if you do make a great show with lots of listeners and, you know, build a community and build all these other things, that it's way cheaper and easier to sell them things because they already think about the world the way that you think about the world. And you, and you've, and you're able to like both, both push information and pull information out of this community in a way that makes you more knowledgeable and it makes you the place to go. And when they think about those things and, you know, like HubSpot did this with inbound. Salesforce did this forever with Dreamforce. Like getting people together in a meaningful way is always gonna be valuable, right? But I think that where people fail is that they just say like, oh, I just need to get business value from this thing. And it's like, if that's the case, like just like go do something else with your money. Yeah. Because it's, it's not gonna be authentic to your audience and they're gonna smell that stuff out from a mile away. And there's already other channels where you can go do that stuff more effectively. I mean, part of the reason why like most webinars suck is because they're so self-serving. And you're like, this is not in service to the audience.

It's just an ad for the company. Yeah.

100%. I was just looking at one earlier today and it was like, this is, you're gating something that is one of your customers talking about you. Are you crazy? Like, just put that out into the world. Yeah. Like, what are you doing? Like, why would you do that? That makes no sense.

You know, I think one of the things that, like everything you're talking about goes to the heart of the two reasons people buy. And that's they gotta like you first and then they gotta trust you. And if all they're doing is giving a sales pitch every time they interact with you, the relationship feels very transactional and that just makes people not like you and not trust you. And so I think to your point that that's what you gotta avoid.

Well, and, and I think that people, what they do is they start with like, oh hey, I want to build a community and they, they roll out a Slack channel or Discord for their startup and then it completely fails. And it's like, yeah, because trust is not earned by opening up a community for people. There's a ton of those, right? Just like there's a ton of podcasts, just like there's a ton of all sorts of different content, written content, whatever it is. You have to find the thing that makes you interesting. And most of the time, 9 times out of 10, it is just your enthusiasm for the topic that is going to separate you.

Yeah.

And like when you put together a bunch of people who just like want to make content for content's sake that are not enthusiastic about it at all or really want to tell those stories. Yeah. Because they just want to sell stuff and that's all they want to do. It's like, that's not good enough. Like, and it's not gonna break out and it rarely does.

Yeah. And it shows. So let's go into the steps here then. So the first thing is figuring out the way you're, what your audience actually wants, right? And what your purpose is for doing a podcast, because it is a lot of work, you know, preparing, getting ready with the questions, finding guests to interview, or if you're going to be doing just like, you know, I guess block and tackle topics yourself, that still requires some preparation. A lot of leaders expect some fairly quick wins. Sometimes 30 days, 60 days may be very unrealistic. So what's a realistic timeline that executives set or should set for results and what kind of results should they measure, say in the first, I don't know, 6 months?

Yeah. I mean, so first off, I think I would say like you want to think about what your audience wants, but like, that's, that's not entirely like always true. Right. Everyone talks about like the, you know, my customers, you know, Henry Ford, my customers wanted a faster horse. So, I mean, I think that it's the same, it's same as true with content where like, I think you need to have a point of view on the world that is different. That is unique. I think you need to put original ideas out into the world. I need to think— I think you need to think about every single element of, uh, of your show and what makes it different and what makes it unique. Um, for our show Remarkable that we do, uh, it's called Remarkable Content, and the whole goal was to blend Hollywood storytelling and B2B marketing. Like, that's the goal, is like, let's take the best storytelling ideas from Hollywood, B2C, ads, you know, books, whatever, and beyond. And just like try to pull out some B2B marketing lessons to see if we can be more creative. 'Cause we know that B2B marketing needs to be more creative. So like, that's why we created the show. That's the sole reason why we created the show is to blend these two worlds together to hopefully help people think more creatively about their marketing, right? And it's like the A, that didn't exist, which is, you know, even if a show exists and you wanna make something like that, that's okay. but this show didn't exist. I thought it needed to exist and I really wanted to make it and I felt, and I feel super passionate about it. It's core to our business at Caspian to blend the worlds of, of Hollywood and B2B marketing. Like, for every reason we should make that show, right? I love it. I feel passionate about it. Our team likes it. They feel passionate about it. And wouldn't you know it, every single time we bring someone on the show, like CMO, marketing leader, they absolutely love being on the show. And they say, they're like, I've never done a podcast like this. Like, that's what you should be trying to do, right? Like every time that someone comes in, like, I've never done anything like this because that means you're original. So I think like before you get into sort of like what are the business results is like, how can I be original? Because originals are the thing that make all the money. Star Wars makes all the money because they were original and they thought of the idea of to do a space opera. Like you just go on and on and on with that. Like the original ideas are the things that make money. Having a stance on the world that is slightly different, that is not for everyone, is how you make money. And so to find your voice and your idea and your thoughts about the world and to say, I'm going to build a show around this belief. There's a great show called The Late Round Quarterback and our Late Round podcast. And this guy, JJ Zacharyson, wrote an ebook in like 2013 about, it's a fantasy football podcast about how you could wait till drafting quarterbacks till later in the draft. Because if you draft your fantasy football quarterbacks early, you're leaving a bunch of value on the table. And like he built an entire brand and industry and company and community and all this stuff based off just that single principle that is now morphed into like all sorts of other stuff. But that's like his brand. Like That is like not intentional on his part. He was just like, hey, I'm going to write this ebook and this is the thing. Like there's so many things like that that I think just people like, they would, if you told someone, hey, back in the day, I'm going to start a podcast about like just this one super specific thing, people would've thought he was crazy. And like maybe it was a little bit, but that's why it worked. And so I think there's all sorts of things like that, that drives the business value. Originality drives the business value.

You mastered this really well because you launched a podcast called Murder in HR. And for those of you who don't know, this hit number one on, I think it was like Apple and Spotify, like everywhere in fiction podcasts, right? And you're thinking, wait a minute, he's doing B2B stuff. What's he doing on a fiction podcast list? So walk me through this because I got to say, this was one of the most original things I have ever seen. And it tied into how helping a company grow.

Yeah. So, so the idea started that our team sat and we sort of brainstormed like a million different ideas for fiction series. I just had this belief that I think that fiction is like criminally underinvested in, in B2B. And the reason why is because like we love controlling the story, we love controlling the narrative. And I was like, Why wouldn't we make more fiction? Like that's, you get to do both, right? I'm like, and I, you'd sit there and I would, I would talk to these CIOs or I would talk to whoever it was and, and then we'd stop rolling and then they would start telling me all these crazy stories. And I was like, man, these are all the stories we can't put anywhere. It's like, we can't put these in a podcast. We can't put these in a blog post. The person like who told it to me can't be associated with it. Like, but these are the great stories. And so I thought, well, what if What if, why don't we try to figure out a way to make a fiction series where we can tell these crazy stories? And so I had been pitching this idea of a murder mystery set in an HR department of a tech company where the tech company is actually a front for assassins. And so, and the idea there was like, I used to be in the Army and I was in HR and we had all these crazy stories and I've talked to all these other CHROs, and they had all these crazy stories. And my thought was basically that if we were to create a fictional version of this, that's like the craziest company you could possibly imagine, but they had the most boring regular HR problems just like everybody else does. How funny would that be? You know, like you have this front for assassins. The joke that I would always use is like the guys, you know, just comes back after, you know, an assassination or whatever. And he's like, hey, like my, my contacts that I normally get, like, you know, I lost my contacts. They like, I slipped in a pool of blood and I need new contacts. And, but our, our, you know, vision doesn't pay for it. Um, and then having to like argue with, you know, the HR person or whatever. And so anyways, all these just like make it super ridiculous and very, very silly. And, and so anyway, so I pitched this idea to a bunch of marketers, CMOs, people like that. Everyone was like, hey, this is crazy. No, but that's cool, I guess, that you're thinking about it. And so, yeah, we talked to this guy, Ryan Bonici, who was the CMO at GymPass, and he was like, I like it. Let's pitch it to our team. And so we pitched it to them and came up with, you know, we tweaked it a little bit and their, their message was Well, we want this to be about toxicity in the workforce and how wellness is the antidote to that. And they're like, can you work that into the story? I was like, yeah, that is the story. That's perfect. And so we gave all the characters super toxic traits that are just like regular traits that people have in corporate America. And then, you know, wellness was an antidote to a bunch of that. And, um, yeah, and it's just a really fun, crazy story. And then we got it cast, uh, with Kate Mara and Brett Gelman in season 1. Kate Mara. And Brett are both amazing actors and super famous and, you know, in all sorts of Netflix shows and all sorts of stuff like that. And they, you know, breathe life into the characters. And we brought in all these cool cameos and brought in Corporate Bro and all these fun things to do all these cameos. Yeah. And then also, you know, 2 million listeners later and we won all these awards and won 2 Webbys and did all this stuff. And it's like, that's original idea and it's executed really well and it's really unique. And HR people absolutely loved it. And HR people are the butt of every single joke. And finally there was a hero that was them solving murders and it's freaking fun, you know? And so, um, and, and still I pitch all sorts of crazy fiction ideas and still get lots and lots and lots of people who are like, well, I don't know. And I'm like, we've done this 3 times, you know, like we did it with Murder in HR, we did it with the Hacker Chronicles and we did it with Scam Hunters. So we've done this 3 times. I'm like, this stuff works. It works really well. So. I think people are just so scared to do anything that's not normal. But it's like, that's where the value is. That's like, there is no traffic on the extra mile. You have to do the things that your competitors are too scared to do. And the thing is, there's nothing scary about it. There's no brand risk. There's no whatever. Like, it's a silly show, a fake show about, you know, HR and assassins. Nobody takes this seriously. There's no brand risk at all. But yet when you try to pitch, you know, people creative ideas, it's like they just get lost in a million things. So I think that there's just a general apprehension there to try to do stuff like that. And we did, and the cool thing was like Gym Pass, we rebranded as WellHub, they wanted to do all sorts of stuff too. So they did, we did cutouts of like Chalkbody outlines and we did a murder mystery themed event with CHROs and chief people officers, and we did cameos with real chief people officers in there, and just like all sorts of really fun stuff.

Um, what did it do for their business? Like, can you— is— was there a way to connect the dots to a bottom line or even a top line?

Yeah, for— I mean, for— well, I, you know, first off, just like in terms of total, like, you know, reach of the show and reaching tons and tons of people, um, which is awesome. Um, it was something that they put in, uh, in a lot of sales collateral that they're sending out to like all of their customers and prospect people were excited. One of their prospects like wanted a private viewing party, which is pretty cool. And so people just really— I mean, they're just a very cool brand and have a really cool sort of way that they think about the world. And it fit their style and it fit their brand. So it was a logical extension of like who they are as a business and very authentic in that way. And yeah, and open doors and open open conversations and conversations that didn't used to happen and, you know, all sorts of different stuff. And that's— I think that that's like the beauty of, of doing something crazy like that is that it doesn't just do one thing, right? You know, it's not just a single thing. It helps in a bunch of different ways.

Yeah, I think, I think one of the big magic words that you said was it opens conversations. And what I've noticed is that a lot of times executives may want a direct line between If I do this, I need to see an ROI right here. And especially with LinkedIn, a lot of them hesitate to get online because it does take, again, it takes time to just get out there, post something, takes time to create authentic thought leadership content, no matter what it is, whether they're just writing a blog or doing a podcast. And I think the overall goal here is to really start these authentic conversations because that actually does turn into revenue. And, um, and I like to buy from experts. I do not like to buy from people who I can sense that their education was ChatGPT University. And you gotta be really careful with that, you know?

Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, I would say they're like, it, that's totally fine if your education is ChatGPT University, but like you better be putting original ideas into the universe, right? Yeah. Like, this is where I think that the puck is going. That's super valuable. Like, it's really, really, really valuable to put your thoughts on the future out onto the internet, right? Like, you might be wrong, you might be right. Nobody has a crystal ball, but the— because nobody has a crystal ball, that's why it's important to do it. And because you could be wrong, that's why other people aren't going to do it. And like, that's stuff that just again, people are just scared about— they're scared to be wrong, they're scared to put things out in the world, they're scared to, uh, and like, I am too. I mean, I was— I am too. I'm all the time— I sit there and debate whether I'm gonna hit send on a LinkedIn post every day. So yeah, I'm— I think—

no, I'm there, you know. Yeah, I, I'm there with you, and I publish very frequently too, and I encourage others to as well. And a lot of times the big question I get from people is like, well, I have no idea what to publish. I get this a lot from technical people. And, you know, I went to engineering school with, uh, you know, my, my, my fellow nerd friends. They do not want to post online. It's just not in their nature. And, uh, so then I say, well, why don't you talk about that? Why don't you talk about that fear? And they try to post and they share just something about, hey, every time I think about posting on LinkedIn, I feel like going back and starting to code. I'm like, that's your post, actually. Talk about that, that become— that is so authentic because like millions of people can relate to that exact feeling and they actually start to build a brand just from being themselves, uh, in that authentic space. Yeah, let me—

yeah, go ahead. Yeah, let's just— I, I do want to say something on that a little bit too, is that, um, every great professional content person, whoever you want to, the Barbara Walters or whoever, Oprah, the vast, I shouldn't say every, the vast majority of those people, authors, personalities, TV personalities, whoever it is, they have either a book publisher or a producer or multiple executive producers or someone who is providing them feedback and saying, yes, yes, that's great. Or like, no, no, that's great. And the people who aren't doing that, generally speaking, have an audience interaction, like somebody does standup, right? Where they're physically seeing whether the audience likes what they're saying or not. And so I think that What I have found after doing, you know, thousands of podcast interviews is with guests is that just so many people just need help telling their story. They just need a little bit of help. Like, and ourselves included, right? Like, and that's, I think that in the same way that, you know, Michael Jordan had a basketball coach, right? It's like everybody needs that little push. Everybody needs a little bit of help. Everybody needs help. Like, getting their stories out there and then finding the story within that and telling it in a more succinct professional way. So, um, I think part of it is that, um, it is just really scary to put yourself out there in general. And like, I am scared about it every time I do that, every single time. Yeah. Um, but you got to have someone who can look over your shoulder, and I think that that makes it feel a lot easier.

Yeah. And I find that when you just share thoughts of last one of the conversations you've had in the last week. Just sometimes going into what the lessons were from that conversation that other people would love to know about makes the job a little bit easier about, you know, what to share. You don't share anything confidential, but just talk about some of the lessons learned. I find that those are, those are good ways to get started. Let me ask you this. When a company decides they want to do a podcast, Is it the executive that should be the interviewer? Should it be another executive on the team? How do you pick who does it?

Yeah, it's a great question. So there's no right way to do it. Um, uh, generally speaking, it should be a human being. Um, so it should not be an AI bot doing it, right?

Yeah, gotcha.

Yeah. And maybe, maybe there's going to be a lot of successful you know, things that happen that way, or maybe not, I don't know. But it should probably be someone that really wants to do it, that's engaging, that's interesting, that is going to be fired up to do it. If it's someone in your company, well, and so the reason why it needs to be a human being is that it's going to be more successful from their channels than it is going to be from your company channels. So there's not very many successful shows that are like the brand podcast, you know what I mean? Like the Coca-Cola podcast. You'd be like, well, what the hell am I going to learn about that? But if you make it about a person, it'll do better. So you have two options. You can make it someone internally or you can make it someone external. If you make it someone internally, you might, the risk would be that it feels a little bit too much home cooking. If you choose someone who's external, it might feel a little bit outside of your brand. Both, that's sort of the risk on both of those. The upside is that if it's someone internally, you're gonna get a lot more sort of like brand equity out of the entire thing potentially. If it's someone externally, the benefit is that potentially they already have a big audience or a bigger audience. and they're gonna, you know, they're gonna give you a lot of credibility, uh, for your company, you know, being involved with that. Um, either one's good. If you have someone external that you really love and you wanna make a show with, you should do that. If you have someone internally you think would be fantastic, you should probably do that. Uh, it really helps if they're a practitioner. Uh, so that's great. And then the other thing is like, if you're gonna have a host, uh, who's not like, there's two types of, of people, generally speaking, that are in podcasts. There's someone who is like a play-by-play person, you know, like you, you hear in sports where they can just keep the trains running on time, keep things moving, explain what's going on. Then there's the other person who's more of the color commentator providing nuance and explanations of what's happening. Generally speaking, you want to pair two of those people together and normally It's really hard to find someone who can do both.

That's really interesting. That is, I mean, I don't think people go to that level of thinking when they want to do a podcast. It's usually, hey, we got to start a podcast because everybody's doing it. Let's go start doing it.

Yeah, for sure. And again, that's probably not a good reason to start, but it is a fine reason to start too. Like that's not to say that you shouldn't do it like that. Like go, you know, I mean, in no finer terms, Every single brand on the planet should be making more video content, full stop. Like there's no doubt in my mind that that's the case.

100% there with you.

Or better content than what they're making now, right? So it's not to say don't do it, they should probably shift from doing as much written content or blog content 'cause that stuff is not as important right now. It's still important, but not as important. And you should be doing more video content. And audio content. But what you should be doing is using all these AI tools and all this crazy stuff to make stuff that's super original and better than anything that you've ever made. And like, that's what's so exciting to me. And I think that you're right, that most people don't put enough rigor into it. They don't like look at shows that are great and dissect them and figure out what it is that they love about that. I mean, like when we start a show with someone, we use comps and we say, what is it about this that you like? What is it about Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend? Oh, well, the way that he does XYZ. Well, he's a professional comedian. We don't have that. So what can we do to, to put levity into this show? What can we do to, you know, do something like that? Like, so, and I think it's, that's really important to like think through those things, especially when the people who are making it don't, aren't like consumers of that stuff. Right. It's like, it would be like if you're trying to create a horror movie and you don't like horror movies. Movies, right? It's like, well, you gotta go watch a bunch of horror movies, right? So what is, what we see a lot of times is a senior executive who doesn't listen to podcasts or does whatever. They're like, well, I don't really do that. And you're like, okay, well, what do you like? And they're like, I watch videos on YouTube. And you're like, okay, well, that's the same thing. It's just slightly different. Or they're like, I go to, you know, I read the Wall Street Journal. And I'm like, all right, well, nobody under 22 reads the Wall Street Journal. Persons. I shouldn't say that, but, but, uh, we're selling to people that, that, that don't read the Wall Street Journal. So we need to think of a way to get in front of them that's better. And, uh, and, you know, the data shows that a lot of them are watching short-form video that's under a minute. So we should probably make some of those, you know? So anyways, um, so I think you just need to think through all of that stuff and you don't need to do paralysis by analysis. Like you have to just pick something and go at some point, but. I think just like a little, a few more turns around, around the idea and you might find something that's a little bit better. And it really does start with the host, right? And whether you go one host or two hosts or whatever, there's also a big edit button. Yeah. So like anything that you do, just cut it shorter. Oh, we didn't like that answer. Just cut it out. Like it's like, oh, that was like a little funky. Just cut out the dead space. Like there's so many things that you can do when it's not live. And people never do it. They'll sit there and they'll drop an hour and a half long interview that has sections that they know stink and they'll still upload it. I'm like, just cut it out. What are you doing? No one's ever gonna miss that. But what they are gonna do is stop listening to your show. So just cut it out.

Yeah. I think the editing part, it cannot be understated. So how do you balance somebody who may not be the best interviewer with editing? I mean, can editing make up for that or do you really need to have— 100%. They can't, editing can't.

Cut them out. Like if they're a bad interviewer and the guests are great and if they're a, if they're getting, well, so a bad interviewer means two things. It could mean that they're getting bad answers. Then you should not have them be a host. If they're getting great answers, but they just don't ask questions in a way that is, for whatever reason, if it's, they sound super bored or whatever, I mean, coach them up. I'd say like, 9 times out of 10, if they just increase energy, increase enthusiasm, show that they're enthusiastic for the topic, show that they're enthusiastic for the guest. Think of late night hosts, think of Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon's entire career is him just being super enthusiastic.

I mean, the energy is, you could just feel it just jumping out of your screen.

That's why people like him. That's why people watch. Whereas you compare that to somebody else and they aren't enthusiastic in that way. So Um, and, and, and, and maybe this person is just very dry and very whatever, and you just don't think that they're good. Just cut out a bunch of their answers or just cut them out of the show entirely.

Yeah.

And just string together the guest answers with some sort of like thing in the middle. Like there's no rules. You can, you can make it whatever. Take all those answers, cut it down into a 10-minute clip and make that your show. Like you, just because you rolled the tape and asked the questions. Doesn't mean they need to be in the content. We've done, we've done shows like that over the years where I ask questions and we literally cut me out completely and, and make a, make a really tight edit and like, it's way better. I'm not always, but sometimes.

That's good to know. I think that's a, that's a great piece of advice about editing that, that can make up for a dry host. What's an ideal mix of guests? Is it customers, prospects, industry leaders? Team members? What do you recommend?

Yeah, I mean, no hard and fast rules. I generally like to think like a third, a third, a third usually makes sense. Like a third customers, a third prospects, and a third, you know, influencers or people who have audience in that way. You know, but we've messed around with this over the years on Remarkable. Sometimes you can do seasons, which is really fun where it's like, hey, this time we're doing seasons. What a lot of companies So guest booking is really hard. Getting, it's just incredibly challenging. I've been doing this for almost 10 years and it's never gotten easier. It's still just as hard as it was then. It's always hard. And so you have to figure out how, what the right order is, how does your production meet what can actually realistically happen, right? But there's stuff that you can do, especially in post-production, which is cool, where you can say, okay, this season, quote unquote, is about, you know, this industry, whatever, automotive. And like, that's a great thing to do. Or you could say, hey, we did 10 interviews with 10, you know, CIOs of automotive industry. We cut them down into a super tight 35-minute episode and you drop that, right? See, most people in content or in B2B marketing world would like look at that and be like, oh, we did all this work for these like 10 interviews or whatever. And now we're not like getting the most juice out of all that. Whereas like, I look at it the polar opposite. I'm like, we just saved people all this time and now they have 35 minutes. That's like amazingly good content. Just like this one thing, like everything you need to know about the automotive industry for IT in 2025, right? How? Right now, must listen. But what most people will want to do is they'll take that same podcast or series or whatever, or blog posts, and they'll just run it all together where everything is like interspersed with all sorts of other stuff that that person might not care about. And they're like, oh, we got an interview with the CDO. And then there's one with a CISO and there's one with this and then there's one with that. And again, that's not necessarily wrong, but also the other way is true too, which is like, Just if, if your target is automotive CIOs, just make that show, put all the episodes on that show, on that feed, and that's it. And publish it. And so I think that just people like use this one-size-fits-all approach to this stuff, even though it costs you $0 to create a separate feed. You know what I mean? Again, not one isn't right or wrong. It's just like, there's so many different ways to do this. And people by and large just do the same thing, which is like, well, we sell to every single industry. Well, it's like, well, guess what? Every single industry doesn't care about every single industry. Oil and gas doesn't care about this other thing sometimes. They don't. So like, don't make a show for everybody. Make a show for a certain group of people that you think will love it, will tell all their friends about it.

Yeah, I think that's so important because if you're trying to reach everybody, you reach nobody. And that's like number one rule in marketing. Well, let me ask you then, like, so you create a podcast, you either do the editing with the tools that are available today. There's so many AI tools that can help. They're not great, but you know, they're getting there.

They're getting there for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, so, you know, hiring a good editor really makes a big difference. That's what I use on, on my podcast, which is all about helping executives create that signal, which is why I call it Executive Signal. What's the way people promote their podcasts? Is it just like putting a clip on LinkedIn?

What are the ways to do that? Yeah, I mean, there's, in the same way that, you know, with regular marketing, marketing your product, there's an infinite way of, you know, doing it the other way. What I generally say for business podcasts is like, you should have a budget for every single episode and you should run a paid budget. I just don't think, organic is a strategy, it's just a strategy that is slow. So if you have time, that's okay. But 99% of people who make podcasts have all the time in the world because they don't need to have a win. Whereas a business podcast, like you have to get to value, like you have to, otherwise it's not going to work. So I would say if you're going to do, put all the time and effort and energy in, just spend paid ads to promote each episode. That's what we do for the vast majority of the shows that we've ever made. Not like I've made shows that have no marketing budget, but like by and large, I think that that's a losing strategy to not have a very clear, a very clear paid strategy. And again, no marketing strategy is your marketing strategy, right? Like if you say, I don't want to do anything and I'm just going to do organic, like that's your strategy and you better be sure that, you know, you can be fine with that. However, that's just not very predictive. And there's a lot of people playing that game. Um, and, uh, again, if you, if you just go the extra mile, I think you'll probably be more successful, or at least you'll learn that your show isn't very good more success, more quickly, which might not, which might not be a bad thing.

Yeah, exactly. Or maybe you'll learn that one time down the road. Yeah.

Yeah. Or maybe you'll learn, hey, this 50-minute show that we're making kind of stinks, but this is a killer 1-minute show. Like, and that might be great, right? It's like we're doing numbers on on TikTok with this show. And yeah, it's a lot of work to get to that minute, but now we got a hit. So it's another thing is like, it's not— if you, if you feel like the content is good, then, um, you got to put some paid behind it, I think.

So let me double-click on that just a little bit because your audience is, um, is, uh, SaaS companies. You do stuff for B2B. So where do you advertise? What do you advertise? Is it like the one-minute opener? Do you create different clips with different like 5 clips on an episode and then you paid ads on LinkedIn or YouTube. Describe that.

Yeah, just every— everything just sort of depends. I mean, it just depends on what ends on the show, depends on a bunch of different factors. But yeah, anywhere, anywhere where you can get leverage and it won't be too expensive. So usually LinkedIn is pretty expensive. I mean, LinkedIn thought leadership posts are really great right now, so you always trying to do that sort of stuff. But that, but then again, then you're just fighting to get people back to your page anyways, or to get it back to your podcast. So like, that's not really winning anyways. You're like, it probably is just better to post, post on LinkedIn, boost those as the content themselves as sort of like zero-click content. So, I mean, that's, that's what, that's what I personally do. And then I promote our actual shows, like my shows. Using paid, you know, display ads and things like that. So yeah, that's— it's just, it's, it's also complex is what it really boils down to. Yeah.

Hey, as we close out here, I want to ask you a handful of rapid-fire questions. I'm going to start with this one. What's the first question that you ask a new client before you actually design their podcast strategy?

Okay, so say it again.

What's the first question you ask a new client when you design their podcast strategy?

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Who is it for and what are the business goals? That's always those two together. Tell me why we're trying to do this thing to drive revenue and, and who are we making it for?

Very good. Now, I listen to your Remarkable Marketing podcast I love listening to it on my walks and, you know, your episode. I remember one time you were talking about David Ogilvy and relating to how Ogilvy's concepts really apply still today. I'm a big Ogilvy fan, so I love that one. Yeah. What's the most surprising things that you've learned by making Remarkable?

Yeah. And by the way, Ogilvy did predictions at the end of his book, which is like probably widely considered the most famous, one of the most famous marketing books. And boy, he was super wrong about a lot of them, which is more to the point of like why you gotta make predictions. Predictions. And put your neck out there. The thing I've learned about Remarkable is our audio engineer, Scott, who's done almost every episode, he said to me at one point, he went, you know, I think we're the only people who could do this show because it's so damn hard to make. And that was one of those things where you go, yeah, if that's the case, then we're on the right track. Because if you're the only person who can make your show, then it's definitely worth making. I would also say just like, if you wouldn't make it for free, then you shouldn't do it. Like if you just don't truly believe that this information needs to be out there for your audience, like you just shouldn't. You just shouldn't really do it. Like you just gotta believe, like it's so value, it's so valuable for me. Half my newsletters come from just like ideas that we discuss on the podcast and then I get inspiration and I'm like, oh shoot, I should write about that. So it's just like, it's so valuable to us that we would do it even if nobody listened.

All right. How do you make sure you never run out of content to talk about?

I talk a lot, so I don't think, I don't think I possibly could. But for me, it was kind of the answer to the last question. It's like I have to consume stuff that is outside of our sort of zeitgeist. There's a great quote from the old CEO at ESPN, and he was sort of doing a postmortem on his career and he was like, the number one regret I have is I spend most of my time watching our shows and not enough time watching everybody else's shows. Like, I felt guilty because if my people are making it, I want to be watching it. And he's like, I, he didn't say this, I'm paraphrasing, but like he lost touch with other stuff that was going on out there. So for me, ideas come from other places in the outside world and you just, you gotta be constantly looking at what other people, what all sorts of other people are doing. And I'm super guilty of putting my head in the sand on certain stuff, AI being one of them for sure. But you really gotta be a student of the game and follow stuff. And if you are just constantly talking to people that are pushing the pace of innovation, like you'll never run out of stuff to talk about.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. I got one more for you. If there's a CEO listening today and they wanted to launch tomorrow, next week, really soon, what's the leanest thing that they can do to get started and be effective right from episode 1?

I would say the most crazy, interesting, controversial, whatever. The thing that you go and tell people in private and they go, oh my goodness, You know, that whatever that thing is, that should be the first sentence of your show.

Okay.

Just like, don't— no fluff, no anything else. Just like, what is that burning thing that you believe that you're like, oh, this is something that I should put out there? Like, just make that the first sentence. No, no music, no whatever. Cold open, get right into it and start talking about it immediately. Right.

And Ian, people can use you for podcasting as a service. You've got a great company that does that. Uh, how can people reach you?

Yeah, just, uh, it's ian@castmeanstudios.com. Uh, go to castmeanstudios.com. Also, I'll plug, uh, we have a, I, I wrote this ebook, uh, that's called the Serialized Content Framework. And it just goes through like how to build series and why I think series are so important. Um, and gets into like how serialized content is eating the world and riches and niches and all sorts of other stuff and gets into ROI and all these different things. But it's free and it's, You know, 69 pages and you just skim through it in about 5 minutes.

And I love that one because what you've done is you've figured out a way to not have people just say, okay, I'll tune into the next week, the episode next week. You've taken podcasts and making and made people want to binge on them, which is—

That's the goal, right?

That's very unique. I mean, like, you don't want to leave the content. You want to just keep consuming it almost like you're watching Netflix at night or something on a series that you love. So. Kudos to you for getting that one right.

They don't always, they don't always come out that way, but that is the hope.

All right, Ian, thank you very much. So much valuable information in this podcast about how to do a podcast, how to do it right, and how to do it for B2B. Thank you for being a guest on Executive Signal.

Thanks so much, Rush. Appreciate it.