Get Your Next Guest With Poddit

David Jackson 
Well joining me via squad cast. If you've ever wondered what the heck is poddit, you're going to find out today. Joining me is Brent Basham. Brent, thanks for coming on the show, buddy.

Brent Besham 
Absolutely. That's a great question. Because I've often wondered, what the heck is this all figured out? So yeah,

David Jackson 
well, the cool thing is you you have podcasted in the past, so you're not one of these people that kind of like, hey, podcasting looks like something we could cash in on and have no idea what they're doing. And that whole nine yards. So that's always cool. But what inspired you to start pot it?

Brent Besham 
So the short version is I was a podcaster, for maybe a little over two years. numerically, it was banned three years, but I think two years or so 120 130 episodes, something like that. And we did a lot of guests shows had a lot of great guests on my show. But you know, there was a lot of challenges in that. And as podcasters we're kind of pressed for time, most of us, we didn't make a lot of money with the show, we dabbled in Patreon and all the typical tropes of you know, the podcast world. And you know, so at some point, though, again, I was raising three kids. So the podcast, something had to give, right? Because there's an opportunity cost and everything we do. And at some point, it just became too much for us. And we took a air quote, break, and and then we haven't been back on Mike, you're still Yeah, yeah. But you know, we had tech backgrounds. And that was sort of originated out of me talking with a colleague, friend, but a co worker, and somebody had gone back to school for for computer science. And so at some point, we started, you know, we're still fan of the space, we still paid attention, what was going on, and all that have friends. And we realized this is a big pain point, but on both sides, and there's like a lot of little nuanced pain points, too. And there's not really a great solution out there. So we at some point, just decided to jump off the deep end, we got a couple of people involved. And we said, let's see if we can we don't know if we can, but let's see if we can solve this, importantly, around our jobs and see if we can make this easier for everybody. Because there's all these disjointed tools. If we can figure out a way to make this easier, we give the podcasters back their time, and their voice stays in the world, my digital dead show may be still in the world right now. Granted, that wasn't the only factor. But it was definitely a factor.

David Jackson 
So what's the biggest pain point you think it solves?

Brent Besham 
The goal is for it to be the best way to connect for your next podcast interview. But there's a lot of facets to that on each side of the mic right now. It's really, as you can imagine, as you're building a network, and you're trying to build it around the idea of discovery, when it's new, it's kind of useless, because there's only a few people there. And then when you further break that down for Okay, we've got a couple 100 people in there. But then how relevant is that to Dave Jackson show in his category and hit right. So it starts so the discovery aspect will continue to be better and better over time. And that's why we really had a big focus on making sure there was a good free version. So it's valuable to people so we can fill up the network. So that's what we're doing right now. And also being able to apply back and forth. You know, we had seen a couple of things out there with relation to like guest directories and things like that. But there wasn't a place where you could have your podcasts on there, people apply to your show, people are using email, they're using Google Forms, and we're moving in a direction to really try to solve that pain point for podcasters, where they can push everything to our platform, use our platform to coordinate and integrate like the scheduling and all the different parts of it, it could be the central place for coordination of the interview, and all the details and reminders. And there's a lot of things, their details there. But at the end of the day, we want to make it really easy for the podcaster to be able to use the network independent of the discovery piece. And that's what we're working on right now. And that way we know if that works, some of the guests they interact with will want to join will want to upgrade, etc, etc. And the whole platform works for everybody.

David Jackson 
So walk me through a typical transaction.

Brent Besham 
So basically, you have a profile when you go in there and you set it up. And we've worked to have a really simple onboarding process. And you could add your show, and you add yourself. And we've worked to make that really simple and fast. And then you can further edit that to make it better and have a better first impression, etc. But the idea is that you have like a personal page with like your guest page, and you have a podcast page, and they're connected together. So if I go on there and search for Dave Jackson, I'll find Dave Jackson, I see a little Apply button. I click to apply to Dave to get Dave on my show or invite Dave on my show. And then it'll ping you with an email and you go in there and you can see that and then you can you guys can go back and forth and say Cool. Well, the nice thing is, I skipped a step there is when I see Dave Jackson, of course your name is out there so people know who you are. They know they want you in your show, but a lot of people don't have that luxury. So they can easily click on the profile, see all their social media, they can listen to back past episodes, they can look at a YouTube video. So for me when I was doing it, it was really hard because I was going on Amazon, I was chasing websites around it was just trying to figure out who might be on my show. Now, granted, like I said, some of that becomes relevant as more people join the network, but the ones that are in there, we have some fantastic credible people in there that are may if they're a fit for you. their qualifications are perfect. So it enables you to quickly identify, are they right for my show, invite them. And then we're working on those next pieces to where you can coordinate that whole effort from there. So it stops there now, and you sort of chat back and forth. But as we move forward, it'll continue to take some steps past that

David Jackson 
doesn't work the other way. What if I see a show? And I want to be on that show? Because that's, that's a pain point I have, because I have people that contact me who my favorite is somebody who sells real estate. And they wanted to be on this show, and talk about real estate. And I'm like, I don't know if you noticed, but I'm on a lot of real estate talk here. It's like, Yeah, but is that an option, if I'm looking to be a guest on somebody's show?

Brent Besham 
Yeah, in fact, that's one of our biggest things is that the nice thing is, if you go there, and you see those shows, by and large, I can't say 100%. But a very, very high percent of the ones in there are there because they're looking for guests. So now, there's different levels of this, because a lot of that is largely newer podcasters, because they need guests, you have a different pain point as an existing Podcast, where you're trying to manage all these inbound requests. And that's problem one. And problem two is identify the ones in that that might actually be a good fit for your show, and not manage threads of emails, and all this other kind of stuff. So yeah, we're working towards some things to where you'll be able to stick a little link on your website pointed over here, they go through the little hoop of signing up. But again, it's like a couple of clicks. And if they don't want to do that, what we've heard from podcasters, is, that's fine, they don't have to be on my show, if they're not willing to do that little bit of due diligence. And also, when they get to your podcast page, there's episodes right there in the page to click and listen to. So if they haven't listened to your show, then you obviously they don't even have a lot of effort to put forward to be on your show, you know, stuff like that.

David Jackson 
So you could also again, I'm an old musician, there used to be a cover charge, in some cases with some some bars. And your true fans would pay the five bucks to get in the door and the others wouldn't. So this could actually be kind of like a little baby cover charge, which again, it's free to them to sign up. But it's like, Hey, here's one thing you have to do. And I would think, and correct me if I'm wrong, this gets all that communication of what's good for you scheduling is now on your platform and keeps my inbox kind of free of all that stuff. So I can focus on whatever the you know, the more important conversations that are going on in emails that

Brent Besham 
correct? Absolutely. And that's actually one of the things we're digging into now is how do we really flesh that out so that that side of it's really valuable to you, you could quickly maybe you want a dog or earmark one that says, well, that one might be a good one, but I can't contact them right now. And so you pin them. And you've got a little management piece that allows you to do that, and again, out of your inbox, because oh my gosh, trying to sort through your inbox to find stuff. It was a, it was a huge pain for me. What else does pot it do? That's the core, I mean, we really want to be the best way to connect for your next interview. That's the whole idea. I keep saying that, just because I'm reinforcing it in my own mind to make sure we serve that purpose. It's not it's not a plug. But we want to make sure we serve that purpose. And I mean, there's a lot we can do. And we're iterating. And we just scaled up the team from four to seven, we're going to do some meat to Team sessions in our Facebook group. So everybody can just get a sense that it's not just the mouthpiece of me, there's actually real people really cool smart people behind me open as open as we're not even behind me beside me, helping us work for co founders. And we really the vision of it, and it's a grind, you know, it really is to build something like this, we've never done this before. But we see that we've had a very high percentage we've had over 300 interview bookings already it's it's getting traction, given that it's so small, the numbers are really encouraging. And we just seeing what we can build and seeing what we can solve for podcasters. And also, by the way, as a podcaster. On that side, you're not going to pay for the tool. Like it's just free, because it's your platform. And we know that the platform can be propped up by the guests wanting to take advantage of our everybody's respective platforms. So the monetization can work from the people trying to get the ROI on our platforms.

David Jackson 
Got it? So let's talk about that. The if somebody is paying for this, how much is it? And then what do they get for that?

Brent Besham 
Hmm, I'm gonna give you an exclusive, we're about to change the pricing, partially because of COVID. And partially because we're kind of in beta, we're going to go down to 19 a month, and then there's going to be some very aggressive six month and annual like very aggressive because we really want to invest in the people who want to invest in us and believe in us. So and we're probably going to do a grandfathering thing there too. So it'll just be forever, even though we know our prices are going to go up in the future. So that's where we're at what that gets you is basically two big buckets, it's a profile upgrade. So that basically lets you get up make a better first impression. So when people land on your profile, you could have like your own custom header, your own, you could have embedded past and again, this is only on the guest side of the podcast site is free. You could have past interviews embedded so they could listen to you. You could have your YouTube video embedded right there. So the idea is that when somebody lands on you, you're going to get a higher rate of success because your profiles better with some options. And then it's also going to enable you to surface to the top a bit more in terms of all over the website as we start sending out targeted emails is Hey Dave, we think you would probably like these guests, and so It won't be completely 100% just on the paid side, but it will influence the algorithm, because we have a responsibility to make sure that as we go, the targeting is the most important thing that the relevancy to you is the most important thing. Right? But within that the paid tier will get priority.

David Jackson 
Yeah, cuz you have to eat as much as people think bandwidth is free. coding is definitely not free. Time is not free.

Brent Besham 
No. Reality is if we're gonna deliver on what we're trying to build for everybody. We need income to do it. This is a reality, you know, but I think that people will be pleasantly surprised that the value that's that's the goal,

David Jackson 
and the website is potted. That's pod it dotnet. And if they want to, like you have tutorials, or what if somebody's like, what's the onboarding process,

Brent Besham 
so there is a the onboarding process is just step, step, step, and you're in and you're ready to go. We have had in fact, we're at pod Fest, just to give you a quick example, and met a guy launch and then later that evening, we saw him and he said, Dude, already got my first person want to interview, went back to the room, set it up, I got somebody. So stuff like that's really encouraging to us. We do have some stuff on YouTube. And we're about to we're going through major revisions right now. Like I said, we scaled the team. So tutorials is on the list in terms of flushing that out and making it look a bit more professional right now it's a screen share. But we have you can always reach out to me personally, I will hand guide you through the thing. It's our baby, you know, I mean, we want you to be successful with us.

David Jackson 
Absolutely. Well, Brent, buddy, again, the website, pot it that's pod it dotnet thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to help podcasters get organized, clear out their inbox and find great guests, man, I really appreciate it.

Brent Besham 
Absolutely. Thank you for the time and for what you do with the show Dave.

David Jackson 
Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai