Latest / Matt Has A Podcast About Podcasting / Show.fm pivots to help podcasters produce, plan, and host their shows

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Show.fm pivots to help podcasters produce, plan, and host their shows · Matt Has A Podcast About Podcasting

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Matt Has a Podcast About Podcasting.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Special episode today.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is an interview that I had with my friend Dan Maby.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: He is starting a new podcast venture with another friend of mine, colleague of his, partner of his, Nathan Wrigley.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: They are launching show.fm, and they are poised to help podcasters produce the back end of their podcasting business.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I underscore the business side of things because I think the success that you'll have with their products and their approach to podcasting is if you treat your podcast as a business.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about this multiple times on this podcast before.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll let the interview speak for itself.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: He is launching this new venture.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's software, it's hosting, it's collaboration, it's podcast production.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It could help you.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I sat down with Dan and uh on another podcast of mine where we talked about the first half of the podcast about WordPress stuff, and then we transition transitioned transitioned into podcasting.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here is Dan.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to transition over to talking about podcasting.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have another podcast called Matt Has a Podcast About Podcasting, and it's a great podcast if you love podcasting.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're listening to this uh on that podcast, welcome.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're coming off uh the WP Minute podcast that I do about WordPress.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're interested in podcasts, go follow uh my podcast, which will be in the show notes.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, Dan, you and Nathan have been working on uh a solution for podcasters.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um Nathan, what I'll say is uh historically, Nathan started it maybe a few years ago, but you'll color in the lines like I saw something demoed to me a few months ago.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: That was what in my mind frame was what Nathan was working on with Podcaster Plus.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's show.fm.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: What was that transition and and what are we doing with show.fm?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Nathan and I started working together probably four, maybe five years ago, uh getting into discussions.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So Nathan originally had um an application built to support his specific workflow when he's producing his podcast.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's done it's produced around 11,000 uh sorry, 12,000, 1200 episodes.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um so he's come across all sorts of challenges uh through that, uh, as as I think most podcasters have when it comes to um things like guest management and just just managing information really.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um he started out cobbling lots of tools together and you know, can I get this piece to work with this piece, you know, this solution to send information over here?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he found that he was wasting more time and energy and money doing that.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So he had this initial application built.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was specifically for him, it was specifically for his workflows.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I we got into a conversation, I looked at it and said, look, there's there's something, you know, there's a real there's an opportunity here.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that obviously you have a pain point with.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: It isn't really fit for purpose for uh to bring to market, it's not something that you know it's it because it's framed specifically around you and what you need.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: We uh fast forward a couple of years, we talked, we had various conversations about it, we you know what could this look like?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: We spent about probably two years, I'm gonna say, mapping this out.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we we're very good at talking about things and working through things and not necessarily always taking the action that's needed.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we we then but bit the bullet and said, right, let's do this, let's m let's bring this to fruition.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we'd gone through, we've done tons of UI stuff, we'd done tons of mapping the architecture underneath it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that's something I really want to be really clear about because unfortunately, so many tools these days are coming to the market really fast, and it's not this isn't that.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is something we've spent an awful lot of time building the underlying infrastructure for.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we had this conversation and said, look, you know, where are we?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're both we're both very um you know, we're very active in the WordPress space, we both love podcasting, we both love what you know what it offers, you know, what it can bring to the two communities, etc.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, look, it probably makes sense for us to build a WordPress plugin because obviously then it allows us to talk into the WordPress community and it allows us to have that sort of crossover from you know WordPress into podcasting.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're not you know, we're not known at all in the podcast community at all, and that led us down a path that in hindsight we probably shouldn't have gone down.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we ended up with what's called Podcaster Plus Blocks.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's a fantastic plugin.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: It allows basically we use the um WordPress Interactivity API to allow you to create uh audio players on your website, but every single component of the audio player is an individual block.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the play button, the skip button, the volume button, etc.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it ties in with your RSS feed, so it will auto-publish from your RSS, does a whole bunch of stuff uh and it's really cool.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it was never our core focus of the business.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was never where we were looking to drive um what was Podcaster Plus.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we ended up at a point where we said, hang on, what are we doing here?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: We've we've just spent all this time producing this plugin, and it you know, we've pushed it out as a commercial offering.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we know we started developing getting some users across it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, that's not what the business was ever been meant to be focused on.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we pressed the pause button and uh and took a bit of time to reflect on what it all was.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: That allowed us the time to really focus on uh coming back to looking at the things that we've been planning around the um what we call a pod ops platform, so podcast operations.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this was about how do you manage your podcast?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get from point A of you know concept of a uh podcast episode or a guest all the way through to publication of that?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really where what is now it's called Showdot FM fits in.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because we actually transitioned from Podcaster Plus to show.fm I think as I mentioned, about two weeks before we launched.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I saw the announcement, I was like, okay, so they're just doing like a rebrand, but no, it's not a rebrand, it's it's a whole platform.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was that a friction point when you were testing out Podcaster Plus?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, why are we doing the plug-in thing?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast could be anywhere.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is just me saying this and not you saying this, but podcast could be anywhere.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is was that the impetus behind this?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the in truth, yes.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: We were looking at what what is this, what is this as a platform?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um one of the um aspects that we have within the platform is uh is a public um uh web page for your podcasts, as pretty much every podcast hosting solution has.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we were looking at it and I just said, look, this just feels wrong.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: It feels a bit clunky.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: We had a subdomain, top-level domain, podcast name, podcast episode.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Before you know it, you've got a 280-character URL for your for your episode.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this just this just felt wrong.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: What if we looked, yeah, what if we put in a short domain just specifically for that piece of the application?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that's really where the journey started, and we and it really made us reflect on what we were doing as well, because we stopped we stopped and said, look, we found show.fm.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: That made us really kind of look at what is the product, and it's you know, it is it's not a WordPress solution, it's not um you know, it's so much more.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the podcasting space has again, like the WordPress space, has evolved quickly.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's been some real change uh when we're talking about video, for example, uh in the space at the moment, uh, with obviously Apple uh HLS coming through.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a number of things that were um relevant when we were looking at the name of it, uh hence hence the reason we looked at show.fm.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: It means that we're you know we're looking at a nod back to the audio with the FM, but really we're talking about you know a show here, and that show, you know, try and define a podcast.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: What is what is the definition of a podcast?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you'll find many different ways to define it.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I actually just uh spoke about this on the last episode of the Matt has a podcast about podcasting.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we spend a lot of time we spend too much time trying to define the the technical jargon of what is a podcast.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um podcast movement just happened they in New York, which I was supposed to go to, but I I had to cancel last minute.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they were like the one of the workshops there was like defining what a play is, and but we're at a podcasting conference, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's totally like they're they're trying to flip it onto the head of um, and when I say they, I mean the podcast industry with a capital P and a capital I, which is basically people with a lot of money who do a lot of advertising, you know, and that's that's generally what drives like the top end of the market.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, video is fascinating because it's video, so yeah, it's got a visual component.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh YouTube, which when you think video, that's the only player in town, really, is a YouTube channel.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: YouTube has the analytics, of course, it has the platform, it has the search, but it also has the ad network, right?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the ad buyers, so it just makes total sense for the capital P, capital I to say, oh, uh a podcast definitely has a video component now.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um all of that is to say is like we spend so much time trying to define the technical side of what a podcast is, but not of not enough time defining who the podcaster is and what the podcaster wants out of their podcast, regardless if you're doing TikTok or straight RSS MP3 plays or YouTube.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no one is spending time.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, what does the podcaster want out of this?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: What who are who are they?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: What how are they reaching their audience and and what's their goal?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it all gets kind of shoved into the same you know, box of do you pick YouTube, do you pick Spotify, Apple, where do you do you know, and that's not the conversation that should happen.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because the technical side is always going to change.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So at show.fm, the headline says save time podcasting, your show fully managed.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get uh the elephant out of the room.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is it just audio or is it is there no hosting here, no pass-through of files?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is purely podcast operations.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is my plan to uh develop a show, host a show, recruit guests, etc.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: etc.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the answer, so currently no video.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we do provide hosting.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we do provide full end-to-end.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it is uh the the premise of this is about getting in from the start.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So this uh as a tool supports the guest management.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got full um booking management.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: So uh if you're using um uh I don't know, Calendar Lease, Avi Cal, Book Like a Boss, all of those types of tools, uh we have all of that functionality built into Show.fm.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have an option to turn off uh the ability to create episodes, or you can turn them on.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it ties directly into the process of creating a podcast episode through the booking piece.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh turn it off, and it just behaves like any other booking system that you would expect, except you can tie into what we call our automations in the platform.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a uh a nice little drag-drop solution that allows you to sort of a if this then that uh which includes um pushing out emails, you've got webhooks, uh, we've got our uh API, there's all sorts of stuff that you can get quite technical with uh if you choose to.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that booking piece moves on to uh the production.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're actively working at the moment.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've we've launched with what we call our founders deal.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's a deal that we're not going to repeat.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've we're offering it up for the first 100 founders that come in and join us.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're doing is we're working with those founders to determine what they need, what they're looking for within this solution.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the conversations that keep coming up is a uh is a rock solid studio, something where you can do the recording, something where you can edit the recording, where you may not have AI getting in the way, for example.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is about how do you you know strip things back to what they actually are, what's the what are the key focuses here?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we're going through that piece at the moment with our founders, um, and you can go through uh the um the guest booking through to publication.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So once you've published, we've got we do all the hosting for you.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's the there's a guest network in there, there's there's a there's a lot of tools that sit there that allow you to move from um the point of having a conversation with an individual if you're having them as a guest, all the way through to having that um podcast available online.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when you and Nathan said, you know, we're gonna transition from that let's say pure WordPress focus, the WordPress plug-in, and looking at the community of uh those of us here that are doing WordPress podcasting or setting up WordPress sites for WordPress, or excuse me, for podcast uh websites.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: How have you shifted to like set the set the marketing or set the exposure for show.fm?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you how how do you approach it with like that same community mindset because there is a community in in podcasting?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um how have you changed to set that mindset to go, okay, let's not focus on the WordPress side of things.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm sure you still will, but how do you broaden those horizons and say we're gonna go after podcasting?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and how do you get this in front of other podcasters aside from showing up on Matt has a podcast about podcasting in the WP mode?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Part of that is exactly that.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is exactly that is getting into um getting into the podcast space and and communicating with other podcasters and saying, look, um, yeah, we've got something here we'll come and share with chat with you.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: It it's always that difficult one of balancing between a sales pitch and just I want to show off something that's really cool here to be honest.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um we uh I attended the uh podcast show in London.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's yes, 10 about 10,000 attendees in this event.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've done it, I've done it for the last two years.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: We were in there and we sat down.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is if you've ever attended a WordCamp, um the the the this event had a lot of similarities.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a real community around podcasting.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, loads of people, you know, you could see they knew each other, you know, they've been in the industry for many years.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: But but equally, it's also a very different space.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's a I think you're you're you're able to be more commercial, I think.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think I think that's something we've always sort of tiptoed around a bit within the WordPress space, that sort of commercialisation.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we need to walk into a room and say, look, we need to make money, because we all need to make money.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be able to talk about money.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always almost been a little bit of a dirty subject in the WordPress space.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: But in the podcasting space, um certainly the last um podcast show in London, uh it was uh it was a very sort of commercial-oriented set of discussions, which um yeah brings its own set of challenges.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a different way of communicating, it's a different way of getting in front of people and a different way of providing an offering for people.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's it's making us have to adjust how we communicate and what we're communicating about, and uh it's tough.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're we're we're we're making mistakes and we're gonna continue to make mistakes through this journey.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is we've this is the first time both Nathan and I have ever released a product, and yeah, there's there's a real learning curve, there's a real journey to to to go on to you know figure out how how best to communicate.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I I definitely it's funny you said that about it's like the more commercial feeling of it, which still might not be the the the perfect phrase, but it's the phrase that I've been using lately because when I create content on um this is is weird because I'm doing a simulcast podcast right now.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we're still talking on the WP minute, the WP Minute listeners are hearing me.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but on the Matt has a podcast about podcasting.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: They uh I've been sponsored by Buzz Sprout for a few videos on on YouTube.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Ghost Platform has sponsored me, rss.com has sponsored me.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's totally different because it there's no like, oh well, if you were with Buzz, if you talk to Buzz Sprout, we you know we can't we can't talk to you, or if you use this plugin, there's no you know, like allegiance to and it's different in this space because this space is not about the same that same like fabric that WordPress has.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot more freeing to have an opinion in the podcast space um than it is in the WordPress space.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know why that is.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's because I care more about WordPress community.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know if that's it, because like my goal in podcasting is is kind of the same thing with with WordPress, where like I I don't care if you don't have an RSS feed and you call yourself a podcaster, but I will tell you if you don't have an RSS feed and you call yourself a podcaster and then something happens to your show, don't don't come crying to me because I told you to have you know the RSS feed.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there's like that, it's a it's a it's a real weird difference, and I I don't have a better phrase for it than WordPress versus podcasting.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's the the there's a lot of similarities and a lot of differences.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think um I also think there's opportunity as well to to blend some of the learnings from the the WordPress space into the podcasting space, and vice versa.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think there's opportunity to learn in both directions, yeah.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one of which you know that that commercial discussion I think um is really important because those commercial discussions lead to sustainable solutions, sustainable products.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's there's there's a WordPress community lesson too.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I and I know you've been turned on to podcasting 2.0 and like following the work that they do.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I look at that as a very tiny, tiny, tiny version of what we have in WordPress.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, there's like 14 people that contribute to Podcasting 2.0 RSS or uh GitHub uh repository, many thousands on the WordPress sides.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but the similarities there are you need all types of people, right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like what I find in podcasting 2.0 is everyone is developer heavy because that's what they're develop, they're developers and they're developing the RSS feed.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get a guy like me that walks in and you know, I'm like, let's talk about getting paid.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, get the hell out of here.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, no, you have to understand we need this.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: In order for your technology to be used, you need to get the common person to go, what is a funding tag?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And how is that going to be beneficial?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that means money in my pocket.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Show me how to do that.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: They don't need to hear about the value splits and the streaming sats and all this other stuff yet.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Way too early to do that.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's like a big lesson in the open source side of podcasting that they should learn.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's that's probably what we've tried to try to do with show.fm is is integrate those 2.0 tags um in a way that just makes sense.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're not we're not trying to get into the deep technical weeds.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can get more technical with it as a solution if you choose to, but just simply drop your drop your link in.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, where do you where do you need the payment from to go to?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Drop your link in and then we'll we'll handle rendering that for you.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: So on show.fm, it's the complete platform for a podcaster.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll throw the fastball at you uh now, late in the show.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the biggest challenge that I have, having spent time at a podcast hosting company, is getting people to understand that they need to think about their show like you've created uh your show.fm podcast platform.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people starting out are just like, oh my god, I don't where do I plug this microphone in and what do I do with it?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do you level that person up to go, you're running a business, here's how you can get paid, here's how you can keep it organized.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: But in the beginning, they're just like, I don't even know what I'm doing.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just having fun and that's all I care about.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So show.m really fits um well for individuals that have uh been podcasting for some time, have a um have a back catalogue, have an understanding of the pain points.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: That those are those are the customers that really fit well into it as a solution.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we have a free offering.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: That offering is really intended for those individuals that are just starting out that just want to test the water a bit.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because as you said, there are so many challenges that come um with it.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: We want to try and take some of those challenges away.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you may not need the full guest management suite when you're first starting out.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: It may you may just be an individual talking into a mic on your own, no video.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: That is excellent.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that just getting your voice out there.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's really where the the WordPress sort of ties in for me, the the ability to get your content published.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: But having um that free offering allows that individual to use our platform, publish their episodes, and be able to get that voice online.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: The the the platform really, as I say, comes to fruition when it is when you've got um an understanding of those pain points already.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, it's it's a journey that I think many people go on.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um we look at the space, and there are so many.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we were doing some research recently looking at the WordPress podcast, yeah, the podcast throughout the WordPress space, and it's a little demoralizing when you start to look at the number of podcasts that have got three, five, ten episodes and then didn't produce any more.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it often it is it's it's not the actual doing of a thing, it's all the stuff around it, it's all the busy that you get with it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: How do you um get it online?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do you edit it?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you market it?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's you know, I I don't need to be preaching to you, mate.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Decade many years many years of these podcast episodes, and it's but it does come with a set of challenges that you don't you're not necessarily aware of when you first think about right.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'll plug this microphone in, uh I'll find a subject I'm passionate about, and I'll start talking about it.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like at the bottom of your uh the workflows page, which is probably a culmination of everything that you were just talking about.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: About and how you like condense all of that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you talk about how much how many hours it saves, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a crucial thing because I've always said somebody starts a podcast, everything's great in the beginning, they love it, it's exciting, they're launching something new, they're out there, you know, promoting it, but then they run out of their 12 friends to talk to.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then it becomes like, now what do I do?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like now this becomes work.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm either going to continue doing this and maybe just like find new friends to talk to, or like I'm gonna take this more serious and like put a brand around it or funnel it back to it to my business.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I can definitely see something like this where they go, I I don't even know how to get from point A to point B, you know, and show.fm can help them get to point B without like getting so stressed out.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: So because we because we manage the full end-to-end life cycle there, so we start off with the guest management, so that's the guest booking, and that's really a piece that really sort of triggers this whole um cascade of things across the platform.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: The beauty of that is that we have we have a solution that enables um uh individuals that are booking on as guests for a podcast to, if they choose to, create their profile.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then that profile is then rendered within the guest network.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: The guest network is then available to all podcasters that are subscribing to the app, which then allows people to look through and connect with one another.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are an individual, you've got your, as you say, you've gone through and you've you've you've interviewed your 12 friends and you need to find your friend number 13 to come onto the show.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: We've got our guest network that allows you to um search, filter through.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a recommendation solution that allows you, so we've got a fully anonymized solution that allows guests uh hosts to be able to rate their guests.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um those ratings aren't rendered until X amount of uh ratings are applied to a guest, so it becomes anonymized, but it allows us to then start to surface guests um within the guest network that are um being called back for multiple interviews, being called back for multiple podcasts.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: What's really interesting in this in that piece though is we've then got the ability because we've got the analytics within the platform, so we've got IAB aligned analytics.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not IAB um uh accredited currently, but they are IAB aligned.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: It means that we can then look at the guests, we because we transcribe the audio, we can look at the data between the guest and the analytics for the episode, and we can actually trigger automations based off the back of that data.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got a guest that keeps returning and you know you see a spike in your you know listeners' figures based on that particular guest or that particular subject matter, um, we can actually trigger an automation to send out various things, emails, webhooks, etc., to help support that.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some really interesting stuff that you can dive into when it gets into looking at guests, analytics, and automations.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I saw the the guest network and um I was like, that's that's a really great idea because yeah, eventually, and and I I can tell that this has um uh Nathan's fingerprints on it because he he runs a show that is you know what we would consider like a round table show, like a news and update show for WordPress.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he constantly has a rotation of you know three or uh or two to three guests every every week.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're running that kind of thing, which is super popular, so sports shows, uh, you know, news shows obviously, a lot of tech show roundups and stuff like that, um, that's a killer feature.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh once somebody does run out of their friends, or like you said, hey, like every time you know Dan shows up on a tech show and he talks about WordPress, we've noticed that there's a 20% increase in um you know listens that go out for this podcast.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: You should book Dan.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's a really cool feature.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's awesome.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is that where the AI credits I notice on the uh studio plan um there's at the bottom it says 300 AI credits.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is that where the credits are are going to?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is like doing all of that logic?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the so what we've tried to do here is create a it's really hard at the moment.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: You look at products and you know every company is now an AI company, every company's got some form of chatbot into we're not looking to go that route.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: We've what we've tried to do here is create a very thin layer of AI and use that AI as a tool where it is genuinely useful.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, obviously, transcription is one of those.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: We want to get the audio transcribed and have you know have the ability for you to edit that audio, so edit that transcription, which you can do, and obviously it then gets tagged in within your RSS feed, so you've got your VVT files, etc.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other place that we use AI is within the uh guest booking process.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you can turn on these optional AI questions.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we allow you to edit the content within the questions, but essentially the questions are are fundamentally the same, the same five questions that are asked of the guest.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they go on to your booking link.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: The guest um answers those questions.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can either make them required or optional, entirely up to you.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we then basically, with the uh guest books in, if the host accepts that booking, it creates a draft episode, and then our AI will actually undertake some research based on the information that that person has submitted in that form.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: But we restrict it to the URL and the information that they've provided, and it will only ever gather publicly available information.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: We then uh ensure that it also returns what it hasn't found.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not looking, you know, we're not trying to hallucinations are a real thing, you know, when when we talk about AI.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to be aware of that, and we try to um we've tried to restrict this in such a way that it becomes useful but not um it's not going to fabricate a bunch of information for you.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it returns basically returns a s uh a set of um questions.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got things like uh icebreakers, you've got um a little bit of information about the subject that the individual wants to talk on.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it allows you as a host to come into that interview uh slightly more prepared.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: You you may not um necessarily use any of it for betum, but you may want to look at, you know, just glance through uh you know, I've got a guest on that's talking about a subject that I may not be particularly familiar with.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's allowed basically the AI to return some information that might help you in that um in that interview.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um features, I'm just looking at the features.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have uh, of course, analytics, we just talked about that, client reports, podcast MCP.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: But before we wrap, I want to bring it back to uh the embeddable player because that's what I'll say is that's sort of replaced what you're if in terms of WordPress anyway, it replaced uh podcaster plus blocks, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the embeddable player that you could have over there.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're you're saying, hey, you host with us, uh, you can use this embeddable player, you can put it on WordPress, you can put it in any platform that accepts the uh the uh iframe or embed code.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um what does the future of the player look like?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've always felt like the player is pretty important uh in terms of like this is the thing that people look and feel when they're on the website.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um what does the player mean to you now that you've sort of, I don't want to say transitioned away from WordPress because you still support it, but you're not thinking of building a player for WordPress anymore.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, so we built the player this um the Showdos FM player is we use Web Components, so um you can use the API to essentially build this on any platform.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're using Astro, if you're using whatever the platform happens to be that you're building on, uh we've already seen it, in fact.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: We've we had a client come back to us um completely out of blue and said, Hey Dan, take a look at this, we've you know we've built this website, it's fantastic.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they'd used our public API.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: We've got both like a public API and an authenticated API.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: They'd used it to build up this uh the website, they'd used Claude to support it, and yeah, it was fantastic to see this thing, yeah.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: This this thing that was an idea come to fruition.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: The player is it's challenging, it's hard because so many people consume their content, consume podcast content on um apps that you have absolutely no control over, you know, Apple, um, Spotify, etc.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these these walled gardens.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're absolute, yeah, we are absolutely deep in that that um uh that that passion for open source and that passion for having your owning your content, making sure that you're not putting yourself in a walled garden.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you've just you've mentioned it yourself, mate, this this this idea of an RSS feed is an incredible thing because it means that you own that content.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're not you're not in a position where the company's decided actually, you know what, we're gonna bump our prices 10x and suddenly you're you're blocked out of being able to use that tool.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: The player, we want to be able to create a player that you can use on your public site, whether that's WordPress, whether that's some other solution, and essentially again have ownership of that.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we open source the the the uh Show.fm player is currently going through the WebPress repository um reviews.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it open source, it'll be available for anybody to use, adapt, adjust, however they want to.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's about getting your content on a platform that you have control over that enables you to get your voice, your content out there to the uh to the public.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it it it's um we will probably end up bringing some of what we learnt from Podcaster Plus uh within the WebPress plugin into the show.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Just to allow flexibility and adaptability of that solution for you.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: But at the moment it really is about enabling you to get your content uh onto your site and enable that content to be accessible.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we made sure that the player is full, fully keyboard accessible.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're looking at colour contrast.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's various things that we need to make sure that uh every user can use that player for you, uh, and also bring in your transcription as well.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of things that come with it.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Show.fm.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: At the time of this recording, the founder price, the founder deal is$3.99 for your first three years, which uh includes uh almost everything, right?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at the it says included in studio for founders direct access.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that I don't want to maybe maybe I shouldn't say that out loud, direct access to Nathan and Dan.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Get your founder pricing now uh before that little uh you know uh tip goes away.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: But$3.99 for the first three years um to get show.fm as a founder purchaser, it's a great deal.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that that includes three years of access to it as a studio level.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you break that down, we you can host up to 30 podcast episodes a month on that studio plan.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so the price really does tumble down to an incredibly small amount when you're looking at it.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you've got an unlimited number of podcasts on there as well.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're allowed to create your own as uh on all tiers, as many podcasts as you want.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just so it's a it's a really um yeah, it's an incredible deal, which we will not be repeating.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's often said, but it is.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is really about we'd rather be funded by a hundred podcasters than one investor.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: That really is the message here because we want to build a sustainable business here for the future.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: So building with podcasters allows us to uh adapt and evolve the product for them.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Show.fm, get your founder deal before it uh goes away and never comes back.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking to save time, uh if you if maybe if you're interfacing or working with a client that is building out a podcast, you're a podcast editor, producer.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself in an executive producer role sometimes, just giving my uh brain trust to the show.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um recommend show.fm if you need to get that project back on track.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of folks who are uh you know podcast editors doing all kinds of back of the office stuff that they don't like to do with their client.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Show.fm could be a perfect fit for them.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out at show.fm.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dan, thanks for hanging out on two podcasts today.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: A pleasure as always to uh spend time with you.