John Corcoran is a recovering attorney, an author, and a former White House writer and speechwriter to the Governor of California. Throughout his career, John has worked in Hollywood, the heart of Silicon Valley, and run his boutique law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area, catering to small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Since 2012, John has been the host of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where he has interviewed hundreds of CEOs, founders, authors, and entrepreneurs, including Peter Diamandis, Adam Grant, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Marie Forleo.
John is also the Co-founder of Rise25, a company that connects B2B businesses with their ideal clients, referral partners, and strategic partners. They help their clients generate ROI through their done-for-you podcast service.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [01:49] John Corcoran explains how our laws around plants impact daily life
- [04:12] The surprising productivity and sleep impact of caffeine
- [09:20] Why Whisper Flow outperforms other voice dictation apps
- [10:52] Insider advice on handling explicit content in your podcast
- [13:06] How to make your B2B podcast a true reflection of your brand
- [14:31] How one podcast generated millions in direct business revenue
In this episode…
Podcasting continues to evolve, and not always in ways creators expect. One minute, the industry is celebrating growth, and the next, it is wrestling with algorithms, labeling rules, and shifting listener habits. With so many moving parts, how do hosts stay ahead without overthinking every episode?
According to John Corcoran, a longtime leader in the podcasting space, the answer starts with understanding how small details can shape the listener experience. When asked about the issues podcasters should pay attention to, he points to something as simple as explicit-language labeling and how easily it can trip up creators. John explains that platforms often flag episodes automatically, sometimes even when no one has actually used a swear word, which means podcasters spend more time worrying about symbols than strategy. He also highlights how tools like accurate speech-to-text technology can transform productivity and consistency, especially when injury or busy seasons complicate content creation.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as Chad Franzen of Rise25 interviews John Corcoran to discuss the biggest issues impacting podcasts today. You will hear why explicit ratings matter more than most hosts realize, how speech-to-text tools can double your productivity, and what separates authentic B2B podcasts from forgettable ones. John also provides insights on using podcasting as a strategic tool to build relationships and grow your business.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
- The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
- The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
- How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan
- This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
- Wispr Flow
- Jordan Harbinger on LinkedIn
Quotable Moments:
- “I think the highest compliment you can get from someone is when someone meets you and they’ve listened to your podcast and they say, you seem just like you are on your podcast.”
- “It’s much more accurate than any other speech-to-text tool that I’ve used, to the point where it can even format things.”
- “He told me recently that he could attribute two to three million in revenue to his business directly from the podcast.”
- “You can actually dictate about twice as fast as you can type.”
- “Just make sure that’s an accurate reflection of who you are and who you want your brand to be.”
Action Steps:
- Embrace simple, consistent podcast workflows: Keeping production uncomplicated helps you stay disciplined and publish content that builds long-term momentum.
- Label episodes as explicit by default: This prevents platforms from auto-flagging individual episodes and keeps your show’s presentation consistent.
- Use high-accuracy speech-to-text tools: Dictation can significantly increase your output and reduce friction during busy seasons or injuries.
- Focus on authentic conversations with ideal guests: Treat each interview as a relationship-building opportunity that can drive meaningful business results.
- Prioritize sleep-friendly caffeine habits: Understanding how caffeine affects your body can improve clarity, focus, and long-term sustainability as a creator.
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25 we help B2B businesses give to and connect to your ‘Dream 200’ relationships and partnerships.
We help you cultivate amazing relationships in 2 ways.
#1 Podcasting
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At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 200 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy.
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
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Elevate business relationships with customers, partners, staff, and prospects through gifting.
At Rise25, thoughtful and consistent gifting is a key component of staying top of mind and helps build lasting business relationships. Our corporate gift program is designed to simplify your process by delivering a full-service corporate gifting program — from sourcing and hand selecting the best gifts to expert packaging, custom branding, reliable shipping, and personalized messaging on your branded stationary.
Our done-for-you corporate gifting service ensures that your referral partners, prospects, and clients receive personalized touchpoints that enhance your business gifting efforts and provide a refined executive gifting experience. Whether you’re looking to impress key stakeholders or boost client loyalty, our comprehensive approach makes it easy and affordable.
Discover how Rise25’s personalized corporate gifting program can help you create lasting impressions. Get started today and experience the difference a strategic gifting approach can make.
Email us through our contact form.
You can learn more and watch a video on how it works here: https://rise25.com/giftprogram/
Contact us now at support@rise25.com or message us here https://rise25.com/contact/
Episode Transcript
Intro: 00:00
All right. Today, we have a little bit of a different format. Today I’m going to be interviewed by Chad from Rise25. And we’re talking about a book recommendation, a resource recommendation, a tool, a thought leadership that I think you should listen to, and a few issues that are affecting the podcasting industry today that I wanted to tell you about. So we’ll be back with Chad in a moment.
So stay tuned.
John Corcoran: 00:25
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:41
Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you, every week we have smart CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies and organizations. And we’ve had Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, lots of great episodes if you check out the archives.
And of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast. We are the easy button for any B2B company to launch and run a podcast. And we do three things fundamentally: strategy, accountability, and full execution on the production side so that you can create a profitable podcast.
So to learn more, go to rise25.com or email our team at support@rise25.com. And with that, I will turn it over to Chad, who will take the lead.
Chad Franzen: 01:27
All right. Hey, thanks so much, John. Great to be here. Looking forward to getting a few recommendations from you. I want to recommend a book, a podcast book and podcast, maybe a recommended tool that listeners could benefit from using, and a person who you might recommend as a thought leader that you respect and admire.
Let’s start with a book or a podcast. Have you read any books lately or heard any podcasts?
John Corcoran: 01:49
Absolutely. So I’ve gotten on quite the Michael Pollan kick. Michael Pollan, known for The Omnivore’s Dilemma and a number of other books that he’s written. Tremendous writer, just really good. He calls himself a garden writer, so he mostly writes about plants and human interactions with plants.
I read The Botany of Desire. I read How to Change Your Mind, and I read his most recent book, which is This Is Your Mind on Plants. All of them are the kind that breaks down different plants and, and the, the, the way that humans interact with them. Like for example, he’ll talk about, you know, the cocoa bean which is in coffee and talk about caffeine, you know, as a drug and how that affects people. And you also talk about cultural history.
Part of it is a personal narrative. So he’ll talk about his experience with caffeine or do an experiment like going off of caffeine while he writes the chapter, which was a bit of a disaster, and talk about the legal history, cultural history, all that kind of stuff and very well researched, very well written. And so that’s why I’ve just been a bit of a, of a, a kick listening to his books. And it just informs our society and, you know, some of the ways that we decide to, you know, regulate ourselves as a society. And it’s, it’s a little mind boggling to think that we have these plants that grow in the woods and that we have these weird laws around them that say that you can’t do anything with that plant, or it’s illegal for you to grow that plant that grows naturally in the woods, or in some instances, it’s legal to grow that plant in the case of like, poppy seeds.
But it’s illegal for you to manufacture these poppy seeds and turn them into an opioid. Unless you’re a pharmaceutical company, then it’s legal. So it’s like these kinds of crazy, wacky laws that we have. But, you know, wacky is such a light headed, hearted term to use for because there are people that right now are in prison because they went over the line of, of these laws. So just a very interesting series of books.
Chad Franzen: 03:57
Yeah. Sounds like it. Was there any like regarding the Plant book as somebody for me who drinks coffee from like 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. straight, was there anything that kind of personally affected you or impacted you or changed the way you thought about something after reading it?
John Corcoran: 04:12
Yeah. I mean, you know, the, you know, coffee and caffeine is a drug, just like, you know, marijuana is a drug. And, you know, mushrooms are a drug and LSD is a drug. And, you know, these things have, you know, they affect our behavior. The interesting thing is that it’s generally been determined by society that, you know, coffee beans and tea leaves because they produce caffeine, produce that they affect us in a positive way.
And, you know, in many ways our society has been much more productive because it allows workers to work longer hours. The downside of that is that it affects our sleep and sleep. You know, there are sleep researchers who say that, you know, affects our longevity, affects our lifespans. And, you know, the weird thing about it is that caffeine affects our sleep. So we take more caffeine in order to stay up.
Right? You know, and I say this as someone who’s got a coffee, same thing every day. I’m having coffee, you know, and I enjoy having coffee. And there’s kind of a cultural aspect to it. There’s the ritual aspect to it, you know.
So I think, you know, listening to this and, you know, I’ve cut down on my coffee intake. I used to drink more of it. You know, if you read it, you probably will feel the same way. You’ll feel like, oh, geez, I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I should have a little less coffee, you know?
And, you know, if that’s if that’s the impact that you get from one of these books, then that’s probably a good thing.
Chad Franzen: 05:40
Is there some fine line you could walk? Like if you just guzzle as much coffee as you can before 1 p.m. and then you cut it off after that. Would that impact your sleep less or.
John Corcoran: 05:50
So an interesting and interesting stat that I read was that there’s like a half life to coffee. I think what the stat was in the book that said that 12 hours after you’ve consumed the coffee, about 25% of it is still in your body affecting you.
Chad Franzen: 06:05
That’s good to know. Interesting.
John Corcoran: 06:06
Yeah. Good to know. So, you know, maybe cutting it off earlier in the day will help improve your sleep that evening.
Chad Franzen: 06:12
All right. Let’s move on to a tool that you might recommend to listeners.
John Corcoran: 06:17
Okay. Tool. So this is one that I’ve been crazy about recently. I almost broke my finger about a month ago now, stupidly playing football with my kids in front of my house. So I didn’t even have, like, a good story behind it, like a bar fight or something like that.
Maybe I need to make one up, but since that point, I’ve been hunting, pecking, and typing. It really affects that. So I discovered Wispr Flow before, but I’m using it even more now. So Wispr Flow is a voice to a speech to text tool. You basically hold down a keyboard, a key on your keyboard, and then you speak out your words and you can actually dictate about twice as fast as you can type.
I’m a pretty fast typist, but that’s pretty amazing. And so when you get in the habit of using it, you are surprised how much more productive you can be. Not to mention that it can help with things like carpal tunnel and stuff like that. I have it, I use it on my phone and I also use it on my desktop. It’s especially helpful on the phone.
It’s much more accurate than any other speech-to-text tool that I’ve used, to the point where it can even format things. And if you correct yourself, if you say something and then you say no, actually, blah blah blah, and you say a different phrase, it oftentimes will pick that up and it will it will know that you intended to delete the first few words that you said, and it will insert the other words. And you can even say like, you know, list three things in a row, and it’ll format it in terms of bullets one, two, three, which is pretty amazing too. So when you’re working on your phone and you know your thumbs here and you have to format things to send an email or text or something like that, it’s really helpful. But it’s also helpful in the office as well.
I think that, you know, I don’t know why, you know, Apple is a multi-billion dollar company that has got, you know, on the iPhone this, you know, speech to text technology that is inferior to this company. You know, Wispr Flow, which is a little newer startup, you know, but they and I don’t know why they haven’t acquired the company yet because it’s like, you know, way it’s head and shoulders above the technology that comes built into the iPhone. And yet it’s really clunky to actually use. If you want to use it like in a text message, you want to use it in an email. When you’re on an iPhone, it’s very clunky to get it to use, you know, to work.
And I’ve had androids in the past as well. And I find Android is a little better actually, than an iPhone, but it’s still not as good as this, so Wispr Flow would recommend it to anyone. And there’s a free plan. It’s like you get 2000 words per week, and oftentimes that’s enough for me. It isn’t right now because of my finger, but most of the time that’s enough for me.
So you can do that.
Chad Franzen: 09:04
So I used to work with somebody who would always dictate all their emails and texts, not using Wispr Flow. And we’d always have to be like, can you, can you translate your emails for us because we can’t figure out what you’re saying because you’re not writing it clearly or whatever. I’m guessing Wispr Flow around that.
John Corcoran: 09:20
Yeah. This would actually help a lot with that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I find I get a lot of messages now, I think a lot of people are using voice-to-text technologies, and a lot of times you get them and you read it and you’re like, oh, they clearly didn’t read this, or it’s a voice-to-text thing that just didn’t spit out really well.
So I find with Wispr Flow, it is far more likely to be accurate.
Chad Franzen: 09:44
A thought leader who you respect and admire and you might recommend to those people.
John Corcoran: 09:48
Mention my old friend Jordan Harbinger. Jordan is, you know, an OG in the podcasting space. He’s been a leader. I mean, he’s like what’s his name? It wasn’t him.
Edgar Murro is that his name? I’m blanking on his name. Is that the right name? Edward Murrow, yeah, the journalist. Very early journalist.