[Podcast Series] Dr. Jeremy Weisz | [Start a Podcast Series] Do Downloads Matter? Why Your Most Important Metric Is Not Subscribers

Jeremy Weisz  5:11  

Do you want to do a three hour interview? No. I actually did psychedelics. I watched the Joe Rogan interview last night. I love his stuff. It was two hours and 48 minutes. Now I do listen to time speed. If you know, he doesn’t have an eclectic background. But, you know, there is, as our friend Jordan Harbinger says, it’s like hard work and luck. You know, all wrapped into one and you have to hit part of it, is luck hitting your stride hitting a certain point. Now it’s been over 10 years, right? It’s, you know, overnight success after 10 or 20 years for people. So they see Joe Rogan. And they see Mark Marin, and they’ve been doing it forever. And building on what they don’t see Joe Rogan’s on the UFC, you know, he’s, he’s been on, you know, reality shows. He’s been a comedian. He’s also, you know, an announcer at the UFC, so he’s all over the place. It’s not just his podcast that’s given him the exposure. It’s all these other avenues and channels, and they just see Oh, he got famous and sulfur or whatever it was Spotify. olina says, supposedly over 100 million dollars. But it wasn’t just the pocket. There were so many pieces of that puzzle, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker  6:35  

Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz  6:36  

How easy is it to replicate that?

John Corcoran  6:38  

Yeah,  I say it’s getting more difficult, more and more challenging, especially as deep pockets are moving into podcasting. Because bigger, you know, media companies, NPR, ESPN, CBS, you name it, Disney, these companies are moving very quickly into podcasting. They’re seeing opportunities, and they’re the only way that they have to monetize their businesses are through downloads, getting downloads, and then selling ads or sponsorships or using it kind of as a, like a branded podcast to promote their parks, maybe or something like that. There are other properties, but that’s very difficult to compete with. Or another way to put it, I think is, you know, even if you go ahead, go after Joe Rogan, that’s fine. Maybe you’ll become as popular as him. But if you don’t, then it’s still going to still be profitable. I say that people all the time, like we want to be profitable, even if you don’t, because the problem is a lot of times people set that goal for themselves. And six months later, they’re not getting the downloads that they thought they would, whatever they know, that would have been, you know, and they, you know, so then they get discouraged. And they want to give, you know,

Jeremy Weisz  7:40  

here’s another take on that, John, and it’s like, not just don’t subscribe to Dallas, you know, some really smart people we know do their podcasts if no one’s listening, not only because their relationships are valuable for their business, but because for business development and personal development for themselves, right? They’re like, Well, I have this issue in my business. And with let’s say, it’s an HR, but HR, you know, issue, you could get some of the top people in the world, profile their thought leadership, and put them on this platform, and you’re learning directly from them asking the exact questions you want to know about? How valuable is that?

John Corcoran  8:22  

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think of so many of our friends like Ian Garlic, or, you know, Dan Kuschell, who’ve used podcasts really effectively in order to move into new areas, or make great connections, build great relationships, acquire customers, get referrals, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, great, you know, listeners are great, you know, they hope they get a ton of downloads, but they still want it even if you don’t, it still should and could and will absolutely be tremendously powerful as a tool for you. So and thank you, Felix for being here. Felix is listening in from the Latin podcast awards out of Montgomery, Alabama. Haven’t heard of that before, but often definitely check it out. So check out the Latin podcast awards. I’m gonna go on a tangent for a second, you’re not gonna like the tangent.

Jeremy Weisz  9:10  

So we’ll have some of that conversation for a second, why downloads? You know, whatever you know, downloads matter. No, you know, our overall opinion is tertiary. Yes. But the main thing is just giving your best relationships, but it’s also, you know, John deeper, it’s leaving a legacy for yourself. It’s also just sometimes, even I go off of that. The Dream list is not just for business, but it’s personal. And it can be your childhood heroes. It could be an athlete you’ve admired forever, which is a motivation for you or comedian or whoever. And I was talking to our friend Steve Gunn this morning. And I said, You know, I sent what’s equivalent to, you know, if you’re in college or wherever you see In a drunk text, yeah, no, I said to Steve I got I was studying in the library till three in the morning you know me right I’ve been studying library three in the morning so I really didn’t drink. So I would come back from the college dorms coming back from library three when everyone else was good. It is like a Saturday night by the way, and everyone else’s game back from the bars and then we would hang out. So I never I don’t really didn’t really send me drunk tax but I sent a sleep deprived emails last night,

John Corcoran  10:28  

which is like the dorky version of tax by the way.

Jeremy Weisz  10:32  

So I was

Unknown Speaker  10:33  

literally the marquee suburban version of drunk texts.

Unknown Speaker  10:36  

I got really out of control and I said a sleep deprived

Unknown Speaker  10:39  

email all my

John Corcoran  10:42  

wife is gonna have to lock me up

Jeremy Weisz  10:43  

drunk text is what you regret the next morning, the sleep deprived email. You could also regret the next morning but mild

John Corcoran  10:49  

regret is not like, like abject embarrassment. It’s just like

Jeremy Weisz  10:54  

a little bit uncomfortable, really. And so I was watching Joe Rogan, I’m like, you know, I was watching some comedians, I’m like, I love comedy, and you love comedy. And I’m like, I would love to have these guys on some of these people on the podcast. So I start researching. This is again, this is four in the morning, okay, four in the morning. Like, why you should know that Jeremy doesn’t sleep. Um, I’m trying to be better about that. But so I’m researching these comedians and emailing them. Like, why am I even doing this? JOHN would not approve of this right now. Why, but I just kept on like, researching these comedians, emails, I’m like, you know, maybe one or two of the people just I really admire, that bring me joy. And so anyways, I went down that path, but just back to say, you could get just some of your dream guests, childhood heroes or people that you really admire, not Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

John Corcoran  11:47  

You know, when you develop a relationship with them, I mean, our friend Brendan Lemon is a comic. He’s a comedian, you know, I mean, and he’s gonna be on a podcast soon, because he has a book coming out. And it’s a nice thing to be able to, you know, deliver that additional value to people. You know, another one of our clients, Andrea Herrera, Lead Like a Woman Show. She’s doing an amazing job, Heuston. Sorry. Hey, Andrew.

Jeremy Weisz  12:09  

Andrea Herrera, we did feature both. Yeah,

John Corcoran  12:14  

thank you. Thank you, thank you. But yeah, absolutely, you know, just do an amazing job of building connections with people in the field. So you know, look up these shows, and you can see how other people are utilizing these tools. The other thing I was gonna say about the downloads pieces, you know, apple, you know, depending what stats you lay you you read 50 to 70% of all downloads come through Apple, and Apple does not release, download numbers at all, they have some charts, up to 100 or 200, or something like that, but no download numbers. So if you go on LinkedIn, I’ve done this before, and you search for top 100 podcasts, you get about 9000 results. Sure. Mathematically, that’s impossible. So someone’s lying, right? So the truth is, no one actually knows your download numbers. So that so the question then becomes, what do downloads do for you, if it’s if no one can know what the actual truth is, what do downloads do for you, what they do for you is they establish credibility or social proof for someone who’s deciding whether they’re going to say yes to be whether it’s worth their time to be on your podcast. And if you’re going out and trying to get Oprah Winfrey and stuff like that, it’s going to be harder. But for most people, it’s a better use of their time to start with people who already know, like, and trust you, and then go in concentric circles outward from there and get direct referrals from other people who know and trust you who will vouch for you. And it’s not that challenging to get great people to be on your show, even if you’re just getting started even if you don’t have a ton of downloads, and eventually you will build an audience, you will build a listenership and you’ll get people that are interested in and engaged as your audience. The other thing is, as things are becoming kind of multi channel And right now, we’re broadcasting this live across both LinkedIn and Facebook. And so you’ve got communities on different social channels that are going to be consuming that content, you know, even beyond a download, right? So it’s actually other ways that people engage and give exposure to your audience getting exposure to your guests. And so that you know, the download number is not you know, it’s kind of like it’s a raw metric that people kind of default to and they think it matters but it’s a very overt it’s a vast oversimplification.

Jeremy Weisz  14:26  

I think we’re gonna end each of these with our favorite time. Whoa, okay, from either Adam Sandler movie, David Spade Clifford 

John Corcoran  14:35  

If you are listening to this, you should know Jeremy Weisz is an absolute movie savant. He knows every single detail about every single movie made caveat as long as that movie was made between 1991 and 1995, and stars Chris Farley and David Spade. That’s the case. He knows every single detail, like encyclopedic knowledge,

Jeremy Weisz  14:57  

and I want to just give a shout out to sem rush Because you mentioned you know, Apple doesn’t they don’t you know publish download numbers and it made me think sem rush allows you basically to plug in a website and see like every detail about websites traffic backlinks and everything so our friends over at sem rush you can check them out I love it if you want to do like, just feel like you did a trick to someone you go and just start spouting out have sem rush on in this talk about their website like how do you know you have a camera in my room now? sem rush Yeah, um, so let’s Yeah, so your favorite

John Corcoran  15:34  

Where do you wrap it up with your favorite time? Well, yeah,

Jeremy Weisz  15:37  

but I want you to sit. I would like to know your favorite Adam Sandler from Adam Sandler.

John Corcoran  15:43  

Okay, this is not a movie quote. But I gotta go with Batman in

Jeremy Weisz  15:47  

a movie. It is a movie quote. Well, isn’t it then Tommy? Boy?

John Corcoran  15:51  

I stand correct. Okay, that was their Night Live skit.

Jeremy Weisz  15:54  

It’s the point where David Spade is looking at the ladies swimming, skinny dipping in the pool. And then maybe that was I don’t know if that was him

John Corcoran 16:03

See what I’m saying people, see what I’m talking about

Jeremy Weisz 16:04

Or he knocked on the door and he said housekeeping. You know that one? Right. And then

John Corcoran  16:08  

that’s I don’t think that’s the scene. Does anyone listen? Is anyone listening? If

Jeremy Weisz  16:12  

anyone knows which scene feminine but it is. I think it’s like um, Richard your briefcases over here. I’m just working on some documents. He’s what he’s looking at the lady skinny dipping

John Corcoran  16:25  

here, or they can listen to you reenacting it, but I would.

Jeremy Weisz  16:29  

So I’m gonna go. favorite quote. One of my favorite quotes is I’ll tell you why I suck as a salesman. And if you don’t, if you could picture the scene, where Chris Farley, Tommy Boy at the diner? Yeah, get the chicken wings. Tommy likes wingy. Okay, so, listen to that one. Why suck as a salesman? If you’re in business, or marketing or sales, you’ll love that you do sales. JOHN, that’s the turnaround scene where he starts selling more. That’s the message he’s passionate about. Right? He cared about it. I think that’s Yeah, exactly.

John Corcoran  17:08  

Exactly. So you know, alright, so go check that out everyone. You want to learn more about putting together a podcast of your own having your own podcast, you can contact us at [email protected] or rise25media.com You can learn more about Dr. Jeremy Weisz on LinkedIn or at rise25.com/about. It was a pleasure. Hope you all are. Well. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Thanks, everyone.

Outro  17:32  

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