Podcasting For Business Growth Masterclass with Matt Medeiros

In this LMScast episode, Matt Medeiros from The WP Minute shares that formative events he experienced as a child inspired his passion in music and radio.

Matt knows artificial intelligence can evaluate and reproduce data; he is not confident about its present use for podcasting however. Having personally interacted with artificial intelligence systems, the author can confirm that these tools have a propensity to ignore the most important podcast episodes—a typical issue in the marketing field. Though he is enthusiastic about the future uses of artificial intelligence. He feels that the already used applications fall short of his expectations.

He claims that the popularity of the podcast “All In” has been continuously rising. That its hosts, wealthy and powerful businessmen in venture capital and information technology. He was trying to make the point that it is difficult to reproduce the popularity of a celebrity’s podcast. Particularly if it gets lots of money and attention. Still, he underlines that lonely podcasters may thrive by improving their technique. And finding a unique audience niche for themselves within the online community.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMSCast. I’m joined by a special guest. He’s back on the show. It’s Matt Medeiros. Matt is one of my, a good friend and one of my favorite people in the WordPress community. Before I knew Matt personally, I listened to his podcast, The Matt Report. It’s how I kind of first discovered that there was this community behind WordPress and these entrepreneurs trying to figure things out.

And, it had a huge impact on me as in becoming a podcaster and becoming more involved in the WordPress community. Matt does a lot of things. You can find him over at gravity forms. He has a podcast called the WP minute, which is awesome. It’s one of the ways I keep up to date. On what’s going on with WordPress news and in the community.

And then he has podcast story, which is, or no, sorry, podcast setup, which is all about the gear. He’s a gear head. If you’re watching. If you’re listening to this, as you see him on YouTube, dude, always upstages me with his technical equipment, his lighting. He’s he’s a, he’s a podcaster I look up to, and he’s working on a new podcast called our.

Beloved medium, which is about how radio changed the world and some stories you haven’t heard from that. But first welcome back on the show, Matt.

Matt Medeiros: Thanks Chris. Thanks. Thanks for the depth of an intro. I really appreciate it.

Chris Badgett: You know, this episode is going to be about the power of podcasting. Matt and I have been podcasting for over 10 years. So you’re, you’re listening to 20 years of podcasting experience here.

But one of the reasons I know you so well is because I’ve probably spent 95%, maybe more. Probably like 99 percent of time, not getting to know you by listening to you and my earbuds. Listen to you, interview people, listen to you, tell your story and stuff like that. But if you could give us like an overview of like how you became a podcaster. I know a lot of people want to, and it’s funny to me right now.

So In the sense that it’s podcasting is really huge and it’s only getting bigger. But how’d you get into it like a decade ago?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So, before I started the agency, the digital agency that I ran with my father. Which is why I had started a podcast. I, you know, having answered this question over time, it sort of dawned on me that even before the agency.

My, my family owned car dealerships, uh, down here on the South coast. And my dad would always be on the radio. So like when I was young, I remember going to radio stations and there’s. I was trying to wonder like, why, where was this affinity for audio, radio and presentation stuff like that come from.

And I think it, you know, it goes back to then when I was. You know, watching him go on the radio, talk shows, recording commercials and stuff like that. And. My uncle used to, his brother would always like build, into CB radios. But he would like build me a radio, uh, with like a toilet roll with copper wire.

I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, Chris, but it was like toilet roll, copper wire as the antenna. And then you could tune it with a. Lead from a pencil on a razor blade. It was amazing. You show me how to like build all this audio stuff. And then when we started the agency. My father and I was looking for a way to, you know, meet the community. And understand what opportunities were out there in WordPress.

Because I, I wasn’t a developer, right? I saw Jake Goldman and all these other people building their agencies super fast. How are they doing it? It was because they were connected to the community. Which was tiny back then, but still very important to have that connection. And then, that’s how I started podcasting at the time.

I was listening to Andrew Warner for Mixergy. I was like, maybe I’ll try to be like the mixer G of WordPress. Since he wasn’t covering like all these WordPress folks, that I was seeing. Uh, and that’s, that’s how it kicked off. It became a sales tool for, for the, for the agency. And then I just started doing it more and more for the love of it.

Even once I was out of the agency game, spent a couple of years in the audio industry at a podcast hosting company. Really started to see podcasting from, you know, the customer’s perspective. How do I start a podcast? Why do I start a podcast? the importance of open source. Podcasting, you know, so it doesn’t just, you know, get scooped up by Spotify’s. The apples of the world and why, podcasting district, open podcasting distribution is so important.

You know, to now continuing to do it for gravity forms with the breakdown podcast. With my stuff at the WP minute. And of course now this new project with our beloved medium, Yeah, I love, I love podcasting. There’s a tons of, importance and opportunity in it for business owners. And just for like open source NIS, like open publishing.

Do you love WordPress? You should probably also love, if you love the idea of open source WordPress. You should probably love the idea of open source podcasting as well. Because there are two open source channels that, help us humans get the word out about our stuff.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. We’re going to go all over the place with this conversation.

Cause we both are just complete geeks in this industry. I’ve been thinking a little bit about AI and large language models. So if we look at the, like why podcasting is important for business or building a personal brand. Or just getting your message out in the world. I’ve been thinking about, you know, on this podcast, LMS cast. We’re approaching 500 episodes and that’s like 500 hours of content where it’s mostly me interviewing smart people.

About what they’re up to as a course creator in the WordPress community. So there’s just so much raw material there to, and I learned from you. I saw you launch a custom GPT that was trained on a podcast. I’m like, how’d you do that? Then I figured it out and then I did it. And I was interviewing this AI about.

You know, gems from the LMS cast podcast, but what’s your take on AI, large language models and podcasting?

Matt Medeiros: Well, Chris, unfortunately I’m not as big of a fan of it as you. And, you know, no, look, I think there. I think there will be a layer of coolness, you know, this stuff. Like creating it for us to either do internal research on the past that we’ve produced.

You know, and I think about how, how crazy, like all of the recorded content that I’ve ever made. Just like yourself, 500 episodes, me, probably the same amount in audio plus video. And what does that mean in a world where, you know, you could feed all of this content about how. I communicate with other people, reactions, laughter, crying.

Cause I’ve cried on a podcast before, you know, all kinds of emotional stuff. And I think about that. I was like, I was actually thinking about this the other day and. This is a side note and it’s actually going to sound like I do love AI. But, I was thinking about like, wow, all of this content could be like, there could be an AI version of me.

Much more easily reproduced than a couple of my friends who’ve never recorded a podcast or shot a YouTube video before I have all of this content and. What it would it be like when. I’m not here anymore and maybe my kids can interact with me as if I were alive. Amazing, just crazy stuff can could happen with AI.

Because of all this content that you and I have both put out or another podcasters and content creators have. So yeah, there’s like this, Crazy futurist world where it might be pretty cool. But in the right now in the moment I don’t love it because it’s a lot of it is the, the, the marketing stuff.

The, let me clip my podcast quickly. Let me pull the excerpts from it. And it just never really hits for me. Like it’s not like a lot of these AI marketing platforms, even my favorite tool, Descript came out with a big update and like, Oh, you can clip your content. Now. And the clips are never the clips I want.

They’re never the clips I want. If you don’t, I guess if you don’t care about that stuff. If you’re looking for a quick, easy way for marketing, okay, it works. But if you’re really trying to punch in to like the great stuff. Or the great moments, in my opinion, anyway, AI. It still has a ways to go.

And everyone says it’s going to get there six months, a year or two years. I’m sure it’ll be better. But right now I. I’m not all in on it. Because it’s just not effective for me. Perfect example with Gemini. So I, I watch a lot of my city council meetings on YouTube, where I live. So the other day I was like, a two hour video came out from the meeting. I was super busy, had a bunch of stuff going on.

So I’m like, you know what, let me just ask Gemini, who’s YouTube’s AI or Google’s AI, which owns YouTube. I’m like, give me like the, the top 12, points from this, from this video. And I fed it the URL that came back with like three things and none of it was important. And I’m like, it’s just not ready yet.

Like you guys are throwing a trillion dollars at this thing and this is all it’s given me. You know, so I, I, I just don’t find it useful for me. Right now, but in the future, maybe it’ll come up with some, some good stuff. As I, that was a cheap way out of your question. But that’s how I feel about AI right now.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. No, good points. Do you happen to listen to the all in podcast?

Matt Medeiros: I do. I’ll, I’ll jump in and out of it, depending on the topics.

Chris Badgett: I think perhaps this, Friday when they record. I’m guessing, but I think they’re going to, interview Donald Trump on the. Or have him on the panel for the podcast. And I watched those guys start up and during the beginning of COVID. It was just a thing for them to get together.

And now they, within two years or three years, it’s like this super influential. Podcasts where they’re literally bringing on like world leaders and famous folks. I mean, they’re, they’re like predominantly venture capitalists and startup community stuff, but they’ve, it’s grown into something much bigger.

What, how do you think about that? Like in terms of why is the all in podcast? Why has it risen to what it is? Speak a little bit to the power of what can happen with podcasting and conversations and what makes the ones work that work.

Matt Medeiros: So this is, a deep topic for me because like. I, I see how like money moves in.

In the podcasting space, and I think first you have to look at it, from like that perspective. So for instance, when Joe Rogan went premium only through Spotify. Or it was, you could only get his access through Spotify. So he was open podcaster, open RSS feed. He was on YouTube as well, but he had an open RSSV that you could tune into his show.

Then Spotify bought the rights and you could only listen to him on Spotify until earlier this year. Where he went back to open RSS in YouTube. He is still a Spotify show. He’s now openly distributed everywhere. Through COVID, the audio space and the podcasting space saw a huge boon, like a lot of us did in tech, but it saw a huge boon because everyone was home.

Everyone wanted to start a podcast. And then you started to really see the money start to move. You start to see, you know, every celebrity get a podcast, start a podcast. Every comedian, start a podcast, money was flowing into it. And, you know, folks like the guys at smart list podcast was acquired by Amazon’s company.

I forget the name of their audio company and 80 million bucks after running for a year. Or something like that. Now they’re doing roadshows. It’s, it’s crazy. But the point is, you see a lot of money in the podcasting space going to that traditional, what I’ll call Hollywood celebrity, right?

Again, the smart list guys, Kevin Hart, tons of celebrities, tons of big comedians, and it’s all just doing it the same Hollywood way. I can guarantee you that their numbers, like their downloads are nowhere near what they’re getting, what they’re getting paid because it’s the traditional. Celebrity slash Hollywood business model.

So like there’s all this attention, all this stuff, cause they’re, they’re a celebrity. Oh, they’re getting paid millions. It costs millions to produce this thing. But then there’s folks like you and me that whatever, you can pick up a hundred dollar microphone and start the show. But nobody’s tuning into us because we’re not that celebrity status.

And we certainly don’t have a marketing machine behind it. And, and I think when you look at the industry as a whole, you’ll, you’ll see those spikes of interest. Uh, you know, this show is great. But it’s Conan O’Brien. He was on TV for two decades or three decades, whatever it was. You know, it’s really hard to find celebrity shows really winning.

And what I’m getting at is when you look at All In, it’s somewhere in the middle where they’re, they’re not like household names for sure. But, But they’re billionaires, right? So there’s already an, like, there’s your interest level already. Oh, there’s, there’s two, there’s two billionaires on this show, right?

I think Saxon and Chamath are probably the billionaires. And then you have Jason who, who has that, like, again, 20 years of podcast and media or 30 years podcast media expertise, and he has an audience. So it was like this perfect infusion of. Oh, these guys are like super interesting because I know a couple of them are a billion couple of billionaires and they have like these, these really extreme points of views that like mesh together.

You know, but I don’t want people to get distracted by that. A lot of people sort of look at it and go, Oh, I want to do an all in type podcast, or I want to do a Joe Rogan style podcast, super hard to replicate those personalities in that sort of, uh, energy in the, in the, uh, pop culture. guys can bring to the table.

But it is amazing how fast they grew. Uh, and now they’re turning it into the same thing, events, event, uh, once a year or twice a year in Miami that they’re doing it. I know they constantly say that they’re hiring a CEO. I don’t know if that’s just like, I don’t know if that was banter, if that was true.

And it can turn into a big business and it doesn’t always have to be about, you know, audio, you know, and I’m sure they, they, most of their views on, on YouTube. But, yeah, it’s amazing how fast they expanded it. And there’s tons of opportunity when you start a podcast to go in multiple directions, you know, as you’ve seen with, with them, you have to, if that’s just like, if that’s what you’re trying to monetize, you have to be able to split it up, but, Yeah, I don’t know if I answered your question there, but I just see it from like a, a broader perspective of like interest and, uh, you know, where the money’s going.

Chris Badgett: Well, in a more narrow perspective, like this audience is mostly education entrepreneurs, subject matter experts that want to build a brand and teach online and make money with information products. And then we also have. You know, the WordPress professionals, the agencies that build sites for clients, no matter what I do, focusing on one avatar or the other, they both show up.

But if I’m an aspiring course creator or a you know, I build websites for clients type person, how should I get motivated and think about podcasting and why I should do it?

Matt Medeiros: Oh yeah, that’s, that’s great. Because for me, when you, when you talk about AI and, I know this has been in the, in the Twitter ecosphere, a lot, a lot of people saying like, Oh, you know, AI is going to start taking our jobs.

And I’m sure you have a strong opinion on this too, Chris, but I just, Now’s the time to inject the humanity into your service. And to me, audio is, is the most affordable way to do that. The other tug of war that’s happening in the audio space. And I’ve written about this on the podcast setup is a lot of people are saying, YouTube’s the, Oh, YouTube’s the new home for, for podcasting now, because everybody wants video with their podcasts.

But to me, that’s okay. But you’re starting a YouTube channel. You’re not starting a podcast when you’re doing that. And I’m not one of those guys that say, Oh, you can’t. You can’t do both or you shouldn’t have both. I’m just saying, well, it’s two different paths, two different mediums, and then there’s two different approaches.

You could do a recorded show like we’re doing now, where it’s largely two talking heads being recorded and sent over to, to, to YouTube. Or you’re actually like doing a Mr. Beast type production, which is. It’s insane, right, to do that, but where do you want to live and where do you want to compete on, you know, on the YouTube world?

Uh, but creating the audio, it’s the most effective and affordable way to have that literal human voice, uh, for your customers and for your brand, right? When I do the breakdown podcast for Gravity Forms, it’s behind the scenes at Gravity Forms. It’s not another, it’s not competing against, you know, uh, your show, Chris, not competing against my show.

I’m not doing WordPress news, I’m not interviewing WordPress entrepreneurs. I’m taking you behind the scenes of gravity forms, interviewing something that’s happening with the team, something that’s happening with the product. And then I’ll bring in like our the people in our ecosystem, gravity, whiz, gravity kit, those guys bring a man, what are they doing with their products, et cetera, et cetera, quick bites, short form, uh, and put it all together.

It’s a variety show. So there’s plenty of different ways that you can make audio work for your brand. Uh, for your listeners. And then I think the next question that most people say is like, well, how many downloads should I, you know, how many downloads should I get? How quick should it grow? it’s not about that on the audio sites, especially not on the audio side.

You should look at your hundred downloads an episode show as a win.Especially in the audio space, as long as you’re slowly ticking up, which could literally be one more subscriber every month, you’re doing a good job and you’re, and as long as those people are still tuning in, your 100 downloads per episode show is doing a great job, uh, because those are 100 committed people who are connecting, you know, with you, you.

Every week or every two weeks or every month, whatever it is that you publish. Um, and those are, they’re going to be your best, those are going to be your best community members, your best customers, your best amplifiers. Um, you know, and I’m just a huge proponent on, you know, connecting at that level, uh, with your brand.

And then you do all the other stuff. If you want Instagram, Tik TOK, YouTube, blogging, email, all that other stuff. Um, but I love podcasting because it’s such a connected and committed audience.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, and I agree with you. It’s not about the size of the podcast, like This podcast is so niche around course creators and WordPress and technology and stuff like that, that even though we get relatively low downloads compared to the all in podcast or whatever, we’ve still built like a huge, you know, substantial business around that.

And I would say the same thing about our YouTube channel. I don’t care if my video about how to create a dynamic certificate with this certain type of merged data only has. A hundred views. Every one of the people that watch that are probably a customer. So it’s a hundred customers, a lot of customers.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. And the audio in the podcasting space specifically, this is another tug of war that folks like you and me are, and thousands, tens of thousands of other podcasters are not represented in, um, when you look at monetizing, uh, a podcast, because when you go, if you were just like, how do I monetize a podcast?

You would come up with. The typical advertising rates dumped onto us by, you know, Nielsen, I heart radio, like all these like big corporate places that have TV shows, movies. So they just look at it from how can I get 1000 people listening or 10, 000 people or a hundred thousand people listening to this audio?

And what are we going to pay in advertising? And the, and the, I think the average CPM right now costs per thousand that advertisers will spend is 26. Right. That’s the average CPM. Now that’s a thousand downloads , right? You and I, I know you don’t do sponsors on your show. Uh, but I do. And uh, if I was only charging $26 that , the WB minute would not exist.

Right? So it’s way more than industry average because of the audience. And in your case, you’re funneling that. back into your business. It was just making X amount of thousands and thousands of dollars on the back end of people knowing who you are and buying your product. We’re just not represented in that, in that equation.

And that’s the biggest tug of war in the space is these big platforms come in and they say, Oh no, You need, you know, in order to make a couple hundred bucks with your show, you need to have a few thousand downloads. You’re like, how am I going to get to that few thousand downloads to only make a couple hundred dollars?

You know, that’s, that’s nothing. So you have to look at it as a business and you have to say, well, maybe I can bring them into a membership. Maybe I can bring them into merchandise. Maybe I can sell them a product. You know, so as a side tangent, but the industry at large is really, really tough on, um, making money with your podcasts.

If you’re not thinking creatively, or if you don’t have a business, like maybe like many of us listening to this too.

Chris Badgett: There’s probably something about your and my similar personality types where I hear these stats that like 90 percent of podcasts don’t make it past 20, 20 episodes or something. And I’m like, for me, it’s felt frictionless the whole time getting up to 500.

Like I was just a natural fit for the medium. But I, so I think a lot about podcast failure, cause if you are going to commit, you should really get married to the idea and be a pot, become a podcaster. Like your identity is changing. You have to make space in the calendar. Um, but I think one of the things that holds hangs people up is not really getting clarity on who the listener is, the avatar, like the reason you’re doing it and stuff like that.

How, like if someone’s like, let’s say a subject matter expert, In jujitsu or something like that. And they want to, they’ve been doing it for 20 years and they want to create courses and they want to create a podcast. How should they think about the avatar of the listener? Cause I feel like all, all I am as a representative for the people that I know are listening to the show.

And I’m, I’m asking questions, not just for me, but for them, you have a pretty good sense of who they are, but what’s your advice around that whole. Avatar listener clarity.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. The podcasting space, again, when you look at it from the business perspective, it’s one of those things that’s super hard to, to measure it’s it’s success.

Or I hate to use the worst thing you could say is like ROI of podcasting because it’s like immeasurable on how to get to that, but, um, it creates that surface luck area. People know you, they listen to you. Even if they don’t listen to every episode. Even if they don’t listen to any episode, but they just know that you continue to put out the podcast immediately in their mind, you’re the guy or the gal that does that thing.

And you’re already winning from like a brand perspective. I know they put in the sweat equity to continue to do this crazy podcast. Therefore I respect them at, you know, at some level I’ve given them a little bit more than the other, Competitor who might not do that or the other person who might not do that.

And you have to start like, so the technical advice I’ve always given somebody about podcasting is, yeah, start with the goal. What’s the goal? What do you, what do you really want to get? And then let’s walk that back because a lot of people are just maybe a little overambitious, um, or have the wrong setting at the wrong sites, but once you are set the goal, you start doing it for yourself first and that 20 Mark, 12 episodes, 20 episodes, that’s when you love it.

That’s when it’s great because you got 20 friends, you got 20 colleagues and it’s easy to get them on the show and interview them and do all that fun stuff. And then it’s after that, you realize, I’ve got no more friends and nobody else wants to do a podcast with me. That’s when the, when the real work starts and that’s when you maybe look back and even 20 episodes is still far too early to, to look back on your body of work and say, who’s, who are the people listening to this?

Um, but you do get a sense of it. You know, up until that point, even if you’re 20 episodes took you six months to get to or whatever the number is. You kind of know what’s happening in social. And you see the, the stuff that’s connecting with people. You see the retweets, the likes, the comments, you know, what type of content is starting to work.

And you can kind of start to form that opinion on, on who the person is who’s listening to your show. You’re getting the DMS, you’re getting the, Hey, great episode. Oh, I love this episode from Chris. Um, in fact, I interviewed, I listened to your episode with Alex Staniford who launched, uh, Siren, uh, affiliates.

Yeah. Um, I was actually listening to your episode and then the next day he emailed me to come on my podcast. Uh, but I was listening to your episode and I was like, wow, you know, this guy’s got a great product. Really, really liked it. You know, and you start to form those opinions on who your avatar is and then you need to move at some point.

And move into actually communicating and connecting with that audience as fast as possible. Here’s a survey, uh, you know, if you like this thing, join this newsletter, um, have a open office hours, air quotes, open office hours about your podcast. Hey, jump in. Uh, let’s just talk about the shows that you like.

Do a live stream. Live streaming is great for connecting and, and learning who the people are that are listening to you. Bye. It is important. But me, in my opinion, I’m like 50, 50, 50 percent of this is me wanting to do this. And 50 percent is. serving the, serving the audience, right? certainly if somebody is outreaching to you and they’re like, Hey, I want to be on your podcast.

That decision is like 90 percent the audience. Do I want you in front of my audience? So I protect my audience. But when I’m creating my content, I’m largely thinking, okay, 50 percent is serving the stuff and the ideals that I want to push forward on this. And then I start to think, okay, will the, will the audience actually want this kind of content?

Uh, but you got to connect with them as fast as possible. Surveying Social interactions, live streaming, and start getting the pulse of, of who’s listening.

Chris Badgett: Related to the audience, I think beginning podcasters have a decision to make, and I’ll frame it in, I think, the way Gary Vaynerchuk describes it. Uh, or it might have been Tim Conley or somebody else, I can’t remember, but there was this idea called the two audience approach.

If you start a podcast or YouTube channel or whatever, and one audience is like your customer, your prospects, your target audience for your business. But then there’s this other audience, which is other people in your industry. So. I’ve seen the emergence of a lot of the build in public ethos. Some people make podcasts about just how they’re doing in business and how they’re growing, or maybe a couple of founders get together and interview each other.

You know, Brian Castle does a lot of that. And I really like his content because it’s. I’m like an industry insider. So I learned from that. What’s tell us your thoughts around building public as a podcasting decision. So instead of like maybe targeting my ideal customer, I just want to share the journey.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the, that’s the surface luck area. Um, and that’s the stuff that’s really hard to measure. in podcasting, um, the stuff that doesn’t go into the formula of, you know, the value of an advertiser spot, 26 CPM, because you could get a part, you could land a partnership deal. You could get a customer, you could get a job.

Like when I left my job in the audio space, I was able to get a job because I hadn’t, I did not stop podcasting the whole 10, 11 years of my life. It is, it creates opportunity that it’s just not on that is not on paper all the time. Somebody refers you, somebody recommends you, somebody trusts you. They know that you’re available to hire and they reach out to you because of all this work that you’ve put in, you know, over, uh, the You know, over time and building in public is certainly another Avenue that allows that to happen.

That’s the way that I’ve always done it. Like I’m not a. Big SEO guy. I don’t do any, I do zero SEO, even my YouTube videos. I don’t, I S I don’t do it. Uh, it’s foolish. Like I get it. It’s foolish for me not to like pay attention to it, but I just want to put out the content. That I, that I like to create serving that avatar that I know is in my head.

And if you watch it, great. If you listen to it, great. If you don’t, I don’t stew on that. Um, sometimes I do where I’m like, I should have a bigger audience or I would love to monetize more, but largely like I’m doing this because I love it and I’m hoping that the other people on the other end, it was consuming this also loves it.

I know they do because they, I see the numbers, I see the downloads and I get the feedback loop. Um, but building in public is a, is a fantastic way, uh, to do that. It’s probably an easier way. It’s actually a more welcomed way than, than maybe interviews in the beginning, because interviews can come a challenge after those 20 episodes, right?

Now, what do I do? Who do I get? Then it’s the logistics, it’s scheduling. It’s making sure that that other person on the other side knows how to do a podcast, or if you’re just doing something where it’s just, you know, reporting on the work that you’ve been, that you’ve been up to great, fantastic. You know, and it’d be, it’d be great if more people in the WordPress space did, you know, did that as well.

For a podcast, uh, medium or, or a YouTube series or something like that. Yeah, so I’m, I’m all in, to steal that phrase. I’m all in on, on the build in public stuff. I think it’s, I think it’s great. It’s smart. It builds the brand. It builds that human brand. Again, that might get overtaken by AI because it’s your story.

It’s your lessons, It’s your successes. It’s your failures.

Chris Badgett: So I like it related to build in public. something all podcasters or content cradle creators struggle with, which is imposter syndrome. So the first fear I would have around building public public conversation is, Oh, what if I talk about a challenge in my business or a challenging customer or something like that?

And then that person hears it. And then I’m in, I’m in my head. So what, what’s your advice for, uh, Battling imposter syndrome, particularly to get through those 20 episodes and keep going. And I find like with you talking with you, it’s all very, it’s very easy and very natural. I don’t get nervous at all for, uh, podcasting.

Sometimes I do, if I I’m getting interviewed on a big show or something like that, but. So I’m, I’m human too, but, and I still struggle with imposter syndrome. But, uh, what’s your advice to get over that initial mountain of imposter syndrome?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Like a sort of like technical strategy is you’re just never getting ahead.

What’s the term? It never getting ahead of your skis, right? Like you’re never taking on something that, uh, if you’re actually like creating content. You’re, you know, uh, the whole fake it till you make it thing, yeah, kind of works. But if you’re recording a, a podcast, you know, weekend and week out, or you’re doing a, a word, a word, WordCamp presentation or any presentation, you know, you know, that feeling when you’re like, I don’t, I don’t want a hundred percent know this content.

That could be something like, don’t create content that you’re, I know this sounds like crazy, but Super like obvious, but I’ve been in the situation to like doing a presentation or, or recording an episode that I didn’t fully understand this topic. And I was, I was getting nervous. And then when I was getting nervous, the content coming out was not good.

Um, so understanding like where you’re, where your, uh, uh, zone is for content, a hundred percent is where you should start because that’s already going to give you the confidence to focus in on the stuff that you’re really good at. And one of the things that I always fall. Uh, uh, fall trap or fall into the trap of is doing too much, like presenting too much content, uh, for one topic.

And that is something that I, I always struggle with, especially like in creating YouTube videos. It’s like today, I’m going to show you how to set up a template inside of, uh, 2024 theme. But first let’s talk about the history of templates. And then it’s just like, yeah, but the way you should really be doing it is, and the way we did it in the past was functions, PHP.

And you find yourself just tumbling down this Hill of like all of this other content. So from a technical standpoint, Like, how do I get out of the zone of imposter syndrome? Making sure that I’m always dialed in to not going above my pay grade and staying as focused as possible. The flip side, like you, which happens to me, um, like Jason Calacanis, perfect example.

When he came out with his book, Angel, Angel, which was, I don’t know how many years ago. He put out a tweet and he said, Hey, I’m taking podcast interviews, tech shows, talking about my new book. So I DM’d him and he said, great, I’ll get you in contact with my producer. So I was like, oh shit, that was easy. Then, so then the producer reached out, she sent me an email, asked me a bunch of questions, podcast downloads, all this stuff.

And then she’s like, great, we’re going to book him for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks from now. I was like, wow, this is great. Then the day of. Uh, she’s like, I need your phone number because I’m going to text, I’m going to text you when he’s ready to go live or to record it wasn’t live. And I was like, wow, this is like, now I’m like, now I’m getting nervous.

So it’s like, she sends me a text. She’s like, all right, hey. Uh, he’s going to be in back into his hotel room in like 10 minutes. And now I’m like in my office and I’m like, Oh my God, like, what do I do? Like, this is so weird. And then, uh, she’s like, he’s going to, he’s going to, uh, text you from his number, from another number when he gets there and then just, you know, go to this link or something like that.

And then I remember getting on and just being super nervous. Um, but that’s, that’s the, um, That’s how you know you’re human, that’s when you’re really pushing the boundaries and imposter syndrome there is okay because you’re really pushing yourself to an extreme. You’re nervous because you want to do a good job.

You’re not nervous because you’re lying, right? Like, I’m, you know, I’m pulling the cover over, you know, some people, which, you know, happens in, in WordPress and in, in internet at large, right? Where it’s just like, here’s how you make 10, 000 in a weekend kind of person. Uh, but you’re, you’re nervous because you’re taking on a new challenge and you just want to do good.

Um, which is totally normal. Totally different. Those, I don’t really have a tactical advice other than breathe and just be confident in your past work to understand that, Hey, this is just a casual conversation. But you know, focusing in when you’re creating that content, definitely like don’t get ahead of yourself and don’t go ahead of your skis and really focus on what you’re doing.

You know, be as focused in as possible.

Chris Badgett: I think a fun way to do this last part of the show is I know that you are an avid podcast consumer as am I, and I almost don’t even read books anymore. I listened to audio books, but I would actually prefer a podcast interview with the author. So instead of a four hour book, I can get a one hour interview and get like the gist of it.

That’s kind of my filter for committing to a full book on audible. But what are some of your, let’s talk about us as power podcast consumers. I think I listened to eight podcasts this past weekend and a lot of them were long. And, uh, but what are some of your, let’s start with what are some of your favorite podcast shows?

Matt Medeiros: So I listen to every WordPress podcast, uh, because it’s, it’s, I have to write for, for the work that I do with the WP minute and certainly what I do with gravity forms like that. That’s, that’s how I stay in the know, um, of what’s happening, uh, with, with WordPress. Um, so I have to listen to every single one.

I might not listen to every single episode, but I’m subscribed to every single one. Depends on the topic.

Chris Badgett: About how many are there? Oh

Matt Medeiros: God, at least 20. Yeah. It’s at least 20, that, that cover WordPress and. You know, mixed in with like YouTube series and stuff like that. So I tune into all of that stuff.

And then I’m all on the flip side, on the podcasting side. I listen to at least half a dozen podcasts about podcasting. I don’t know how I have the time for it. But, I do, because I, and again, it’s not every episode and the power tip there is I’ll do the thing that a lot of people in the podcast industry hate, which is I’ll listen to it at, you know, one and a half times speed, right?

If it’s something like I need to get through. I’ll listen to it at one and a half times speed and podcasts and people hate that. It’s, you know, it’s their art and they want it to be consumed. At the right speed, which I totally agree. But sometimes I have to plow through them. Cause I need the news information.

Like I need to know what’s happening.

Chris Badgett: Somebody is listening to this right now.

Matt Medeiros: At 100%, you know, and there’s like, there’s apps, like, if you’re an overcast user. They have special, he has a special formula on how to speed up the show. So he cuts out the gaps and then there’s literally like the one and a half times button that you can click.

So that’s how I, I plow through it. And then the other podcast that I listened to is just for like entertainment wise. I listened to a couple of comedians and I listened to, um, I’m going to forget the name of the whole series now, of course, but, uh, Sounder sounder productions has like a ton of like history podcasts that I listened to.

So of course the typical like World War II stuff, and a lot of, real dictators is a fun one for those of you that want to know, uh, the history and the impact of, of dictators throughout, uh, human history. But those are fantastically produced. Podcasts, right? Sound design, uh, voice actors, script, those I listen to for more of like that entertainment side of things.

And I’ll also admit that I go to bed sometimes listening to those podcasts and fall asleep listening to those podcasts. So I try to, to get as much done. Professionally through the podcast, uh, the podcast about podcasting and the WordPress stuff every week. So it’s about like, at least a dozen episodes, a dozen individual podcasts every week that I’m churning through.

You know, I just try to do as fast as possible.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. I mean, I’m also, you know, educate myself through podcasts. Like I didn’t go to business school or entrepreneurship school or whatever. Like I would say 90 percent of what I’ve done that’s been effective. I learned from a podcast interview.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah.

Chris Badgett: It’s such a helpful, helpful thing.

And like you as well, it helps me turn my brain off at night to listen to a podcast. Uh, you know, before bed or leading into bed, which is, uh, and I like to, in the, in that time period, I like to go, cause I spend so much time in business and entrepreneurship, I like to go outside of that. So maybe the recent Joe Rogan interview with Terrence Howard.

Is a perfect late evening podcast for me or, Alex Friedman interview with somebody about some big topic that’s, has the potential to change the world or already is, or how to make peace in the world or whatever it is. Those are some of my favorite. And I look at like the all in podcast is sort of like my news.

I don’t do a lot of news. And, um, but like, okay, like the, the things that are surfacing there in general are things that are good to talk about. And I think that’s one of the things they’ve done well is they’ve kind of divided it up to like politics, science stuff. Some big business news thing, investing advice, like a lot of cool.

How’s the economy doing?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah.

Chris Badgett: How’s what’s going on in society? What major events happened?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I think

Chris Badgett: that makes that podcast really special, which is why I’ve kind of been hooked on it all the way through.

Matt Medeiros: There’s a podcast. God, I’m going to forget it now too. But if you’re ever, if you ever can’t sleep, oh, here it is.

So it was called. Northwoods baseball sleep radio. This guy, my producer, the producer that I’m starting the other show with, he helped this guy produce some of the show or no, he interviewed him for a show that he used to do. And all it is is a mock baseball game from like the 1930s. This guy, this guy has built like a whole universe of baseball teams and he just played and it’s just, he plays out a whole baseball game.

Like you hear the, the crowd, the announcers. The, the organ playing like advertisements, running fake advertisements and eat the whole score. Like, all right, he throws the pitch, hits a single and he runs the first page and you listen to the whole thing. But if you’re trying to fall asleep, it’s the most like calming thing.

Cause it’s just like background white noise. And it’s an old, old school baseball game. It’s crazy. Uh, the power of audio and the mix of content that’s out there.

Chris Badgett: There’s another one similar. Well, in the sense that helps with sleep is, um, there’s this podcast, forget what it’s called about ancient civilizations and how they collapsed.

It’s really interesting, but it’s so soothing. And the storyteller is so good. It’s not a hardcore history, which is also good, but it’s something else. Uh, last question. One of my biggest frustrations as a podcast consumer. Is when I find a great podcast and it’s, um, and I’m like, how did I not know about this?

It’s been going for four years and this content’s awesome. I check another couple episodes. I’m like, great. Now I have a full other, like, or at least pay attention to going forward. I find that podcast discovery is hard, especially as there’s more and more. And, you know, I have a lot of different interests.

How do you surface good podcasts? Do you find it on Twitter? Do you just type in a search somewhere? How do you find good stuff?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I mean, the technical answer is maybe like where to find other podcasts. There’s a, um, if you’re just purely like, I need to find stuff, um, good pods. It is also a podcast app, but it’s also a app slash podcaster community.

So good pods, you can use that as a tool to search for stuff. And then they have like community aspects, features to the app. So you maybe see like the ones that have the most comments there’s, you can create groups there as well. If you’re the podcast creator, you can create a group there and people can jump into that group.

So that’s like one way to reverse engineer it. There’s a bunch of, like trailer. Podcasts that are out there, um, pod news, which is the, the five minute daily podcast that I listened to for all my podcast news, James Cridlin, he has a whole podcast trailer podcast. So you can just subscribe to that and hear new trailers that come out as long as they submit to submit to his trailer, uh, thing.

You know, you’ll hear new trailers there. So that’s another way to get discovery. And of course, like just combing things on social, you hear somebody talk about a show, you tune into it, you check it out. But podcast discovery is also one of those things that’s super like in the podcast space, that’s like one of the more challenging things.

That’s why everyone’s like, yeah, let’s just give all our content to YouTube because they’ve got a great search engine, you know, and we can discover more podcasts there. It was like, yeah, but you’re forgetting what you’re doing when you’re giving up the open RSS distribution. Um, when you go that route.

Uh, so it is one of the more challenging things in the podcasting space because there is no central network that ties RSS feeds together. There should, but there isn’t. You know, and, and, you know, things like good pods and there was another one pod chaser used to be a thing, but they got bought out by a bigger company.

Um, so you might be able to go to pod chaser. True fans, T R U E, truefans. fm is put on by my friend, Sam Sethi. He has a whole, like, network of, uh, podcasting 2. 0, uh, podcasts that are there. So that, that’s another great way. Podcastindex. org is, uh, The open source alternative to the Apple index. If you’re interested in exploring other podcasts there, yeah, it’s a, it’s a manual curation process, unfortunately.

As soon as you give it up to an algorithm, that’s when the commercialization comes in. Then we’re all back to promoted and sponsored podcasts.

Chris Badgett: Well, thanks for the those tips. It’s been a great conversation. We should have done a Joe Rogan style and gone for three hours. Because I know we could at some point I want to do that.

I was just like, I want to talk about something for three hours and not stop till it’s done. Might go to four, whatever. Can you, lay out where you out there watching or listening can, know what you’re up to and where to find Matt Medeiros.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. I’ll, you can go to my, primary site craftedbymatt.

com. It has all my stuff there of everything that I do. If you want to see what I’m up to at Gravity Forms and tune into the Gravity Forms podcast. It’s gravityforms. com slash breakdown, uh, and then wordpressnews. com. TheWPMinute. com is where you’ll find me most. And if you’re interested in, uh, the impact of radio, uh, throughout human history, it’s OurBelovedMedium.

com, um, starting that. That will launch in 2025. Uh, I’ll have another interesting story to tell because I’m trying to raise a hundred, we’re trying to raise 100, 000 to get it produced to come out summer 2025, so about a year from now. Um, voice actors, sound design, original music, like we’re trying to. Scope all that stuff out.

And the a hundred thousand dollar mark is like super cheap compared to like, if you were to go to like a big network show, it’d be hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this stuff done. So it’s a shoe spring budget, even though it sounds like a lot to small podcasters, but that’ll come out 2025.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Well, thanks Matt for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. And it’s always good to reconnect with you.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah, man. Same here.

Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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