Why Organizations Need a Different Podcast Strategy with Richard Fawal and Colin Cole

[00:00:00] Jeff Umbro: This week on Podcast Perspectives. 

[00:00:02] Richard Fawal: A mission-driven podcast succeeds when it helps the organization producing it achieve goals and objectives and reach the audience that they need to reach. 

[00:00:12] Jeff Umbro: Podcasting advice has traditionally been written for creators trying to grow audiences, attract advertisers, or generate subscription revenue.

But what if none of those things are your primary goal? Today, I'm joined by the founder and CEO of Voxtopica, Richard Fawall, as well as the Director of Policy Outreach and Communications at More Equitable Democracy, and host of The Future of Your Former Democracy, Colin Cole, to discuss a framework that argues that mission, not monetization, should determine how organizations approach podcasting.

[00:00:40] Richard Fawal: I'm the founder of Voxtopica. Voxtopica is a full-spectrum podcast agency focused pretty exclusively on working with mission-driven organizations, nonprofit groups, trade associations, institutions of higher learning and research institutions, really any organization or entity that is primarily focused on achieving a mission more than generating revenue or profit.

We've been doing this for about seven or eight years now, and that's really our exclusive focus in podcasting. 

[00:01:14] Jeff Umbro: Would you say no to, like, a branded show that came to you? 

[00:01:18] Richard Fawal: No. We will do and have done branded shows, and actually we consider what we do branded shows just for a very specific kind of brand.

But a commercial, we, we have no objection to doing commercial shows, and we do commercial shows, but our expertise is really in clients who are, who are making a podcast to have a specific kind of impact. So sometimes that, that's a brand. Sometimes a brand does come, and they're m- not making the show for revenue purposes or for commercial purposes.

[00:01:46] Jeff Umbro: Colin, you wear many hats. Can you walk through, like, your day job, and then also how that intersects with podcasting?

[00:01:53] Colin Cole: So I have a really interesting, well, maybe not interesting to everybody, but, uh, a unique role in my organization. I am our policy expert, so I'm the person who evaluates pieces of legislation, who looks at proposed ballot initiatives, who weighs in on whether or not that comma is in the right place.

But also, I'm our chief comms director, so I have oversight over our comms products, and unlike a lot of nonprofits where the comms products are a lot of, like, newsletters and social media posts, we're trying to do a lot of media work, so podcasts, uh, YouTube videos, and a lot of more digital long-form content that's kind of unique in the space.

And I have a bit of a background where I used to work in television production, and so I sort of marry these three things together to try to make sure that we're saying the right things about a complicated topic that's distilled down for a general audience through media. 

[00:02:46] Jeff Umbro: And you are the host of The Future of Our Former Democracy and the forthcoming show, More Like Us, correct?

[00:02:52] Colin Cole: That's correct, yeah. 

[00:02:54] Jeff Umbro: So I brought you guys together today because Richard published a really interesting framework for mission-driven podcasts. Colin, you make a mission-driven podcast, so I thought we could kind of walk through that. So Richard, would you mind just kind of giving us an overview of, like, what is this framework and why did you publish it?

[00:03:13] Richard Fawal: We have been working obviously with nonprofit mission-driven organizations for quite a long time, and we realize that there are certain patterns that we see repeated in our clients, um, certain situations that they're dealing with that are substantially different than what commercial podcasts and advertising-driven podcasts deal with.

So a- over time, we sort of, we're putting those together in proposals and the work we do in marketing and just reaching out. But what we realized, I guess, at the end of last year, that we needed to put this together and make it available to any nonprofit, any mission-driven organization that wants to make a podcast, to help them overcome the challenges that these types of organizations have.

Primarily because no one else was doing it, and most, the overwhelming majority of information that's available online about how to make a podcast, what you need to do, what your priorities should be, you know, the steps and the, the systems and all of that, are really built and designed around commercial podcasting.

They're intended to have an outcome of being able to sell ads and get sponsors and generate revenue. A lot of the tools and a lot of the work that you have to do, whether it's mission-driven or commercial, are the same, but when you are working in a mission-driven organization and you are working in podcasting, there are multiple layers of additional things that you have to deal with.

And so we wanted to sort of lay that out and explain to folks who do this in mission-driven organizations what we've learned over the years are the best ways to sort of overcome some of those challenges, to prepare in advance for them, and to be able to really be- succeed in podcasting in that environment.

[00:05:02] Jeff Umbro: So Colin, would you spend a minute just talking about your most recent project, The Future of Our Firm of Democracy, and Like, what you all hope to achieve with that show? 

[00:05:13] Colin Cole: More Equitable Democracy is a racial justice organization that's focused on electoral systems reform. So fairly heady, complicated stuff, or at least stuff that maybe sounds complicated at first blush.

And so a lot of the folks that we've traditionally interacted with are, uh, civil rights organizations, the types of folks who go to, uh, you know, social justice or political conferences, people who work in political spaces. And that's all well and good to socialize the idea to try to get, you know, a legislator to introduce a policy or if you want a city council to consider a reform.

But it's not really a super effective space for growing a, a widespread movement. And so we started thinking about, uh, the, the concept of gerrymandering, something that if you go back in time to 2008, 2009, the vast majority of the American public had never heard of before, let alone knew what it was. And starting around 2011, 2012, uh, there was a big concerted effort by folks, uh, in media with reach who started socializing the concept of what gerrymandering was.

And today, as a result of some really effective popular mass media work, your average person on the street, they maybe don't know the minutiae of gerrymandering, of, of packing and cracking and vote dilution and efficiency, but they know that like, oh, it's like the unfair way that people cheat at elections, right?

Like, it's bad and we shouldn't do it. And once that idea spread wide enough, you started seeing A movement that was able to achieve reform. So in the state of Michigan, people gathered signatures and got on the ballot to amend their constitution to ban gerrymandering. You saw states pass independent redistricting commissions.

You've seen efforts even in states like Ohio, uh, where folks might assume redistricting measures aren't popular, where the popular majority of the, of the public vote to restrain gerrymandering. So, so that to us sort of serves as the template for how do you build a movement around sort of a complicated esoteric idea?

And the thing that we work on at More Equitable Democracy is this concept called proportional representation, the idea that if voters like you are a fourth of the population and you get a fourth of the vote, you should have a fourth of the seats in your city council or your state legislature. And so all that said, we started thinking about how to communicate this idea to a mass audience, and we naturally arrived at storytelling, that we have enough white papers and explainer videos and political science conferences talking about this issue.

What we needed is to find a way to communicate it to your average everyday person. And so what we came up with was a podcast called The Future of Our Former Democracy, where we take a deep dive into other countries that have grappled with problems similar to problems you might see in the United States, problems of oppressed minority groups, problems with, uh, a divided House and Senate, and the tension between a Senate that represents states and a House that represents people, struggles with a divided society trying to figure out how to go forward after, uh, uh, grappling with, uh, a far right authoritarian government.

And all of these things are ways to make what maybe instinctively feel like, oh, a European example that's so different, it's so foreign, it has nothing to do with us. They're all the-- They all tap into something that feels sort of familiar to folks, and that's how we've decided to work to help communicate the stuff that we work on.

[00:08:38] Jeff Umbro: Yeah, Richard, one of... In, in the document you have a line, uh, RTS: reach, teach, and speech, and I know that there's quite a bit more than, than those three words, but that to me really encapsulates what's Ca- what Colin is up to, and, and I, I love it. I'm, I'm absolutely going to steal that, so. 

[00:08:58] Richard Fawal: Great. That's what it's there for.

[00:09:00] Jeff Umbro: Perfect. So, uh, you know, taking a step back and diving into the actual document that you put together, you broke this up into six, like, pillars. I would love to spend a few minutes on each one. W- what is the first pillar of, of this plan? 

[00:09:14] Richard Fawal: So the first pillar of the mission-driven podcasting framework is strategic foundation.

And it really refers to thinking through both the goals you have for a podcast and the audience that you're trying to reach, and the value that this podcast is going to provide the audience. 

[00:09:35] Jeff Umbro: Sorry to jump in, but before you keep going, I, I wanna just underline, like, how frequently have people come to you having not thought about those two things, purpose and audience?

[00:09:44] Richard Fawal: All the time. 

[00:09:45] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. 

[00:09:46] Richard Fawal: All the time. Generally, v- and we've wor- we've done over 40 podcasts at Voxtopica, and I did podcasts in my former job prior to starting Voxtopica. Almost every single time a client comes to us and they have decided who the host is going to be, how frequently this podcast is going to come out, what format it's going to have, how long the episodes are going to be.

They've made all of these sort of structural decisions, and our first question is, "Great, so what are you trying to accomplish?" 

[00:10:20] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. 

[00:10:21] Richard Fawal: And very often they kind of, uh, the, the, um, well, uh, we wanna, like, really reach people, you know? Or, or- Brand awareness ... we've got a message that... Yeah, whatever. And then we ask, "Okay, well, who's the podcast for?"

And that ranges anywhere from everybody which is the worst possible answer. 

[00:10:40] Jeff Umbro: If, if it's for everybody, it's for nobody. 

[00:10:42] Richard Fawal: It's for nobody. Um, to some sort of, like, oh, the people who follow us on Instagram kind of answer, right? Like, some subset of the audience they're already reaching. But they haven't really thought through any of the specifics about what all that means, and that's, that's sort of why we take everyone back and just say, we're g- that's where we're going to start.

We're gonna make sure that you- that we have a clearly defined goal or goals and objectives that this podcast is going to have. 

[00:11:11] Jeff Umbro: I'm curious, like, how specific you, you force people to get. Like, can you give an example of, of a conversation that you've had and, like, the end result that you were happy with?

[00:11:19] Richard Fawal: We were working with a university recently and, uh, obviously I won't name, name anybody specifically, but they had been doing a podcast out of their sort of president's office for a while, and the staff had gotten very frustrated because it was a lot of work, and they wanted it to be successful, but it wasn't really anybody's job.

So it was everybody's job kind of kicking in. And, you know, we helped the president of the university think about why he was doing a podcast, right? That's the goal. Why are you doing this? And ultimately it came down to thought leadership and sort of addressing the sort of structural changes that are happening in higher education right now, but really helped him narrow down, okay, so that conversation you did with the guy who's had a pharmacy in the neighborhood of the university for 50 years, that didn't really have anything to do with this.

You just thought he was a neat... Right? Like, I mean, we didn't get that specific with him, but it helped him stop scheduling those kinds of interviews and really, okay, I n- every episode needs to achieve these goals. And then on the audience- We typically talk to our clients about three audiences, and I will not lie, we learned this from Bumper.

If you're listening to this, you- you're probably familiar- 

[00:12:32] Jeff Umbro: Dan and Jonas have both been on the show, and I, I think, uh, every person in podcasting can, can make that comment. 

[00:12:39] Richard Fawal: Yes. Yeah, yeah. We work with a lot with, with Bumper and Dan and Jonas on a lot of stuff, and so we learned this from them. But we think about three audiences, and sort of in that case, helping him realize that, you know, the, the, his, his sort of core primary audience were people, y- were other executives, high-level leaders in higher education, you know?

And then the sort of adjacent audience to that were people who are thinking about higher education, sort of like thinking about secondary education, but are helping students, like, figure out higher education. And then sort of the media that covers higher education was, was another audience. So that was this, that was a specific situation where he went from, "Oh, I know this cool guy," or, "I met this cool person," or, "I heard about this interesting person," to, "The purpose of my show is to achieve these things with these audiences where we're providing this value."

[00:13:29] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. Let's bring this guy on or this woman on because they can speak to this exact thing, and they can command an audience that we want and bring them to the table. 

[00:13:38] Richard Fawal: Absolutely. 

[00:13:39] Jeff Umbro: So, uh, I wanna talk about how you measure success, but we'll get to that in a little bit. So Colin, it, would you say that you had that experience where you came in on day one and, and you had to kind of reconsider, like, who you were trying to reach?

[00:13:52] Colin Cole: Yes and no. Uh, we went in with an idea of who we wanted to reach that was less broad than everyone, but we did get pressed to start thinking more about segments and specific groups we wanted to reach, and that, uh, was really helpful. It, it wasn't very hard for us to think about who we wanted to reach, though, and it did inform structural changes that we made to the show as we went.

Having that sort of as our meter sticks really ended up informing a lot of how we were thinking about the construction of each episode, who the hosts were or weren't, and how we talked about concepts in the show itself. 

[00:14:25] Jeff Umbro: All right, so we've defined the audience. We know why we're making this show. You know, what do we think about next, Richard?

[00:14:32] Richard Fawal: Oh, next we're thinking about, well, like you said before, bureaucracy. Navigating the org chart, and really figuring out how to overcome some of the bureaucracy that can influence a podcast within a mission-driven organization. And we really talk about three things there. We talk about misunderstanding, we talk about mistrust, and we talk about misuse.

[00:14:54] Jeff Umbro: So, uh, generally speaking, when people are trying to, like, kind of navigate this at their organization, like- How do you recommend that people try to explain to, like, the broader ecosystem what they're trying to accomplish without really spending, like, you know, an hour getting into the weeds of, of why they're doing it?

[00:15:16] Richard Fawal: Yeah. No, that's a really important question, and it's a really important thing to, for, for folks working in the space to understand, because it can be, uh, very, very challenging when other folks within the organization, particularly pe- people higher up in the org cha- chart, people higher up in the org chart sort of want different things from the podcast.

So the first thing that I th- think is critically important is, you know, defining that goal, defining these objectives, defining these audiences. And then what we recommend folks do is essentially put that in writing and get whoever is responsible, whoever is the leadership person who is driving this, whether it's the, the chief marketing officer or head of communications, to sign off on that, that this is the purpose of the podcast and these are the audiences we're going to reach.

Because what happens if you don't do that is, well, you get somebody from the fundraising team who comes in and starts asking you to talk about fundraising and to pitch fundraising on the podcast a lot. Um, and that may be fine. In some cases, that's great. But if it doesn't fit those goals and if it doesn't fit those audiences, you've now basically diluted the purpose of your podcast, and you've made it less appealing to people because now it's doing something else.

Or you get the folks who are putting on a conference, you know, we, you know, to, to make the show all about the conference. The next few episodes need to be about the conference because we're trying to sign people up. When you have that in writing and it's signed off on, right, you, you always have that pushback in your organization.

No, no, no, we agreed that these are the purposes. Yeah. And here's how we can help you out. Sure, we will make a mention of the conference, right? That, nothing wrong with mentioning a conference or mentioning the fundraising side or things like that. But we're not gonna make an episode about this because that doesn't fit our goals and it doesn't fit our audiences.

[00:17:04] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. And I, I think it's so funny because there's always a moment where someone's boss talks to their cousin at a barbecue, and the cousin says, you know, it, "I have 20,000 downloads a month on my podcast." Right. And then the boss says, like, "Why don't we have that?" Or whatever it is, you know? 

[00:17:20] Richard Fawal: Because our show's not about murder.

That's 

why

[00:17:23] Jeff Umbro: Exactly. Yeah. Or, or your cousin doesn't understand the difference between, like, a YouTube view and a download versus a listen and whatever. Right. So, uh, Colin, I'm curious, like- Is this something that you ever had to navigate in terms of, like, trying to communicate this with your organization?

And,

 like, what, what happened? 

[00:17:42] Colin Cole: Yeah. So we've had to deal with our own bureaucratic struggles, in some ways less than a lot of other organizations, which brought with it a couple of its own challenges, and then in some cases I think more, all of which I think is instructive. We are a fiscally sponsored project.

So, uh, essentially what this means is we're part of this larger nonprofit that essentially does a cost-sharing model where a bunch of nonprofits that might be too small to become fully independent, because, you know, legal work is really expensive, m- political compliance laws are really expensive, especially if you're operating in multiple states.

HR is really expensive. And they essentially host a bunch of these nonprofits and are able to outsource a lot of those ... Or not outsource, but really insource a lot of those, uh, very needs. Um, and at the same time, i- as it provides many benefits because MED could not be an independent organization at our current budget, um, it also means that we have an independent legal department which has its own analysis and concerns as it wants to make sure that the broader organization is taken care of.

And so this has caused some challenges with just basic contracting. A, in terms of timeline, because it always takes more reviews than we want. B, in terms of, like, the language. They're very specific about the deliverables that need to be listed on contracts. And there's also been, um, a bit of challenges here and there where, you know, we're talking about electoral systems, structural reform, institutional changes to longstanding parts of the US democratic machine, which inherently means that a- at some points we are talking about political parties.

That is sort of a fine line, which has caused some challenges where we've had to go through additional rounds of the editorial process, where basically there's a, there's I would say a healthy tension between the folks who are really centered in the movement building work about making the points we want to make, and the folks on the legal side who want to be very particular about the language we use to make sure that we don't cross any lines for our mutual protection.

And I think that's been, uh, overall a healthy process, but it was a process that takes a lot of time, and I think any nonprofit, especially if you have a big legal department, should be prepared for that to add on at least another month to any process that you're going through, from contracting to out to publication.

[00:19:57] Jeff Umbro: What you're explaining or describing is, is similar, uh, but different to, like, a lot of what we see traditionally with organizations. Um, uh, just one example is we did a really robust marketing campaign for one season of a show. Everybody at the organization that we worked with was thrilled, and then they published a second season of said show, and the expectation, uh, like, what we did previously just became the baseline.

And if that doesn't happen a second time, then there needs to be an explanation to the higher-ups as to why, and there might be a thousand reasons why, but you still have to have that conversation, and if it's not satisfying, then, like, somebody's getting in trouble. And I feel like this is the kind of thing, uh, Richard, that you're trying to communicate, that, like, it's really about just aligning expectations from day one.

Let's dive into the third pillar, which I actually think is, is very much aligned with the fourth pillar. Um, so there's planning and then production. 

Mm-hmm. 

Uh, do you, do you disagree? Or, you know, it's, it's essentially pre-production, production. 

[00:21:05] Richard Fawal: It, 

it, it is, but the design piece of the third pillar is particularly important.

So it's planning and design, but one of the things that we, uh, as, as I mentioned earlier, m- a lot of clients come to us, and they've already decided what the format is gonna be. They've already decided who the host is gonna be. They've already decided the length and the frequency and all of these things that are, are critical to the performance of the podcast.

Sometimes, sometimes we really change that. When they come to us and we walk them through the entire process, that changes. And similar to what Colin was saying, right? It starts off with this idea, because that's the idea, and they think it's an idea, but when we really dig into what the goals are and we really dig into who the audience is, that idea doesn't work anymore, and we have to design a different kind of show.

But generally speaking, it ... the, the, there's a lot between the planning and designing and the, and, and the production, right? Once you've figured out what it is you're making, then you have to put the ... Then you have to make it. But I will say one thing very important about the production part of this, the fourth- Sure

pillar, the producing side.

Organizations really need to spend a lot of time thinking about the systems they are going to put in place for production. 

[00:22:29] Jeff Umbro: Yes. 

[00:22:30] Richard Fawal: That is something that oftentimes organizations miss, because let's face it, everybody who's listening to this show, and both of you know that you can go on YouTube and spend an hour watching some videos, and it'll tell you everything you need to know about making a podcast.

You'll know how to get your podcast on Apple. You'll know what kind of mic to buy. You'll kn- like, all of that stuff will be clear. 

[00:22:55] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. 

[00:22:56] Richard Fawal: I'm doing air quotes for those listening. But to do that consistently, either every week for a weekly show, or every other week for a biweekly show, or if it's a seasonal show with story arcs, like, like, there is real thinking and planning that has to go into building the systems that are gonna allow that to happen.

It does not happen organically. It just doesn't. And if it does, then you're gonna really screw up for the first few seasons of your show before it all comes together. 

[00:23:25] Jeff Umbro: Uh, Colin, I was w- I'm wondering if you can, like, t- speak to that a little bit because, uh, you, you touched on this before, but, like, what's very different from you in, in a, a majority of, I think, you know, nonprofit or mission-driven shows is that you did not make a chat show.

[00:23:41] Colin Cole: Yeah. And it never was gonna be a chat show, but what it was did change quite a lot. So I mentioned, you know, from the beginning that it was originally our ED essentially, uh, reading a story. But that episode, episode one of season one went through more variations by, I think, a factor of five or 10 than any other episode in, in the season.

Which I think was good that we spent a lot of time on it to get it right. And it did mean fundamentally restructuring the episode conceptually, not just where what parts go where, but who's saying what, and what's the tone, and what's the pace, and what are the voices, at least three times with a bunch of sub-edits along the way.

And we could have, in theory, uh, avoided all of those re-edits and re-recordings and additional sessions if we had, from the get-go, a better conception of what the show was going to be. So I think that we landed in a really good place, but it was a rocky road to get there, and that's something where we could have had a smoother time with, with more planning from the outset.

The other thing I'll say in terms of the production side, and I think, uh, some of the, some of the studio teams might be annoyed at me for giving this piece of advice, but I found what was really important for our process at least, was the iteration, the ability to reiterate. And by that, I mean to listen to an episode and decide it doesn't work, or decide that this segment isn't good, or that, you know, we really didn't quite hit the mark there and, uh, maybe we should do another stab at it.

The ability to do that made the show so much better, and it did cause, uh, us to need additional studio time, and it led to some cost overruns that, uh, are their own challenge that folks should be prepared for. But, um, again, I think the show was a lot better for it, and that is also, in theory, something that can be made better with more planning.

All that to say, if you don't get it in the planning phase, you don't have enough time for a really robust planning process, you really should build in a long window, not just to get your edits back, but to give edit notes back to the editors and to potentially go back into the studio a second time, because that might be what the show needs.

[00:26:01] Jeff Umbro: And Richard, do you, do you often see people being willing to kind of reassess the, the ideas that they show up with? 

[00:26:10] Richard Fawal: I do, actually. Usually, if they are willing to sort of let us lead them through a process that we have done dozens of times, then they are much m- much more willing to sort of m- modify their original ideas about the show because we've demonstrated, like, h- how much more successful they could be in what they're trying to accomplish with a different kind of show.

I'll give you a very quick example. We did a show on sort of some major constitutional issues last year that started out as, like, just like, "Oh, we're just gonna do this talk show." And we realized that for the audience that we wanted to reach for this show, like, talking about the Constitution with constitutional experts, like, as

in term ... like, a chat show about that was eye-rolling, like, fall asleep boring unless you're a constitutional attorney, right? We realized we needed to do this as something that was more narrative, more entertaining, and more interesting. And so the evolution of the concept through that process, really sitting down and thinking about, who are we trying to reach with this?

Why are we talking about the Constitution? Like, what are we trying to say, and, and who do we wanna reach? Like, really made it clear that sort of a chat show about the Constitution wasn't going to achieve anything that we wanted to achieve. And so it became this really entertaining, funny n- narrative show where the host actually goes on this journey learning about the Constitution along with the listeners, so.

[00:27:43] Jeff Umbro: Your fifth pillar is measuring success. This is my favorite. This is, like, the hobby horse that I will constantly sit on. What ... It ... We talked about downloads, and that's, like, the number one metric that people are typically gonna show up with in terms of, like, what their expectations and goals are.

Assuming that that is not the thing that people should look at, like, what are some other metrics that people typically pay attention to? 

[00:28:07] Richard Fawal: Like you said, this is the most important thing, really. Navigating the org chart is great. Having a strategic foundation is critical. But w- but for mission-driven organizations and mission-driven podcasts, ultimately, what they are trying to achieve is some level of impact.

Downloads are fundamentally a metric that revenue-driven shows look at because that's what, uh, advertisers will look at. And yes, the industry is working on lots of different things, and the AMP stuff came out recently. And, like, how do we really ... This is, this is really interesting to me, is how do we really help advertisers spend more money with podcasting?

That's super important, and I support all of that. But if you're a mission-driven organization, that's meaningless to you. 

[00:28:52] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. 

[00:28:52] Richard Fawal: So one of the things that we really tell our clients and really work with nonprofits to do is- Build systems that will demonstrate the impact. There's a lot of landing page conversation in what we do, right?

Like, go to this we- you know, like telling the audience to go to this website and sign up for a thing, or give us feedback on the show, or share what you've done in your community to help out this community. Like, those types of things where they can actually measure and then go back to the leadership of the organization and say, "This show has generated this many actions," whether it's on the web or not, "this many actions from the audience."

So, um, and these actions are all tied to that mission, to mission of the organization and the goal of the podcast. 

[00:29:37] Jeff Umbro: Colin, I, I know that a lot of the, uh, you know, results you're hoping for is, like, laws will pass. But, like, how-- But there's really no way for you to really know if your show is the thing that puts somebody over the edge unless, like, you know, someone sends you an email saying that that's the case.

So, like, uh, how are you measuring this? 

Yeah. 

[00:29:57] Colin Cole: So one of-- So we're measuring it in a lot of ways. One of them is thinking about what I mentioned before, which is your sustaining listeners, your folks who are really sticking with your show through the whole season, folks who are listening to whole episodes, not just the first 20 minutes.

Now that we're through a second season and producing a third season, something else we're, that we're looking at is growth. It's all about the trajectory. Um, if you aren't just going, even if you're at where you want to end up, if you're heading in the right direction, that, that makes a, a really big difference.

Another thing for us is just our other, having content for our other pipelines. So, like, our mailing list, our Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. Those are vehicles that often can end up having content that sort of feels perfunctory. Like, you're clipping a news article, you're doing a selfie video. And if, and if it's not really intentional, it can kind of feel like it's space, it's just taking up space to remind people that you exist.

But one thing that a podcast can do is it can give you content, uh, that you already know is really good for your mission that you can clip up and you can repost, and that gives you a purpose with what you're posting. And I found that that drives a lot more engagement. Uh, it gives a, a more cohesive, uh, social media calendar for all the stuff that you're posting and, and that's really helpful.

And it also can ease up some of the burden on, uh, your social media team trying to come up with something to say for this week's post. And then two others, I think. One is just reviews. I think that's maybe, uh, maybe it's overrated, but it's really good to get reviews on things like Apple and comments on Spotify, um, anything that sort of drives home, uh, that this is, like, a real thing that someone has actually listened to.

And for that, to that last sort of point about how can we know if we're helping, you know, pass a law, one of the things that we're trying to do is just market the podcast not only as its own interesting sort of history that you should listen to if you're the kind of person who likes slow burn, but also that if you want to learn more about this topic at all, if you're thinking about, "Man, the Los Angeles City Council is broken.

What can I do about it?" That there is this podcast that actually covers something that's really relevant that might be a source of learning for you. And we've seen that we have a, a number of nonprofits in the ecosystem that have been recommending our podcast as a resource, as something that can help people understand this issue.

And when we started being a resource that not just we were pushing, but allies and folks in comparable fields have been pointing to and looking at, that to us was a real mark of success because it, someone else was going out of their way to point to the thing that we made and say, "This is really useful.

I hope you'll listen to at least the first episode." And that for us is the ultimate measure of success. 

[00:32:41] Jeff Umbro: Love that. Yeah. It's ... When you, when you make something that's really meaningful, even if it's just for one person, like, it, it feels great. Whether or not that's what your miss- what, what your organization wants is a different question, but

So how do you make this sustainable? Like, uh, Richard, how many people come to you and, and only make one season of a show? 

[00:32:59] Richard Fawal: Mostly that doesn't happen anymore. Mostly when people follow this system, because it's built properly within the organization, the leadership understands what they're doing, it's been properly communicated.

Because they thought about the goals and the objectives and the audiences, and they're measuring the right things, almost everybody makes a second season of a show. It's really gone well. The really, the only shows that sort of end up closing are, like in one case, a show we'd done for quite a few years.

The host retired, and the organization was like, "It was his show. We're gonna let it retire with him." And of course, now we're in conversations about, okay, what do they wanna do next? But, you know, but, but- 

And it, and it's not ... And to be clear, it's not always a bad thing if a show ends, but ... 

No. No, no, no, no.

Sometimes it, it, it should. And that was really his ... Like, in that case, it was his show. It was built around him. We all know how important the host is to the show and how audiences connect with a host, so it made sense. But, but if they do it all these... If they do everything else right, and they let us walk them through that, and they really are engaged in the process, their show is almost always a success by the metrics they themselves have set.

Mm-hmm. It may not have hundreds of thousands of downloads an episode. It may not be reaching millions of people. It's probably not making any money at all. But those aren't the metrics that they set for the show. The metrics they set are the metrics they're hitting, and so continuing the show really is valuable to them 

[00:34:25] Jeff Umbro: And, and I think the, a quick follow-up to that is, like, if somebody is not hitting the, the metrics that they've set aside as their goal, they can often look back and try to figure out why that is the case.

[00:34:37] Richard Fawal: Absolutely. 

[00:34:38] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. So, so it's helpful even in failure. Colin, you obviously have deemed at least one of your podcasts as sustainable, and you're already planning many future seasons. Was there anything that went into that decision, or was it really, like, looking at all the things that we talked about today?

[00:34:55] Colin Cole: It was all the things we talked about today, but it also wasn't a foregone conclusion. When we first finished the first season of The Future of Our Former Democracy, there was some belief that, okay, we did it. We made a podcast. It did really well. The story now exists in perpetuity, so we can always point to people who, uh, point people who want to learn about Ireland to this podcast, so we should wrap up.

And there had to be discussion about why there was value in continuing, and that not only was there some value in continuing, but that would actually make the investment in the first season more worthwhile, that it actually would help further justify the money already spent on the podcast. Mm-hmm. And I wouldn't say that was a fight, but it was a tough discussion, and we ended up agreeing that that was the case.

And for us, y- you know, in our pursuit of not trying to appease everyone with a single product, 'cause it appeals to no one, that's why, you know, we were sort of thinking about th- the slow burn audience as a really narrow niche. We've actually gone the other direction and have decided to double down on making additional shows to target different audiences, rather than trying to get more audiences to listen to our one show.

So this fall, we're launching an interview show that's more targeted at folks who watch, you know, vertical content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. But we're also making some more documentary content for folks who want to watch, you know, a 40, 60-minute video on YouTube that's not a eight-episode, you know, 10-hour deep dive, but, uh, that is something really visual and gripping and emotional.

Um, and we're also trying to talk to folks who are into, you know, a bit of kitsch and a, and a bit of, uh, levity. And we're understanding that each of these produ- projects, each of these audiences might only watch the one thing, and that's actually okay, and it's actually good. And so that's been really, uh, gratifying that there's been this sort of consensus that it is worth not just continuing the podcast, but if we want to pursue different audiences, that those should be independent projects.

And, and I'm really glad that that's the decision we ended up landing on. 

[00:36:57] Jeff Umbro: That's a really good, you know, punctuation to end on for Colin. And Richard, I wanted to just very briefly ask you, you've been using this framework for a long time. I know we talked about a lot of it, and we're jumping around a little bit.

Mm-hmm. I- is there anything that we didn't cover that you think is, like, fairly essential to this conversation? 

[00:37:16] Richard Fawal: I think we, we, we hit all of the key points. The, the one thing that I would say that is, is really important, uh, to your listeners is that the podcast ecosystem, podcast industry overall, I think really doesn't take much into consideration about just how much mission-driven podcasting is out there.

And very often it's, you know, everything in the industry is so driven by the revenue side of it and the advertising side of it. One of the things that makes podcasting such an absolutely fantastic medium is that a show like Colin's, right, that isn't trying to make money but is still entertaining and interesting and powerful s- and, and wonderful storytelling, can be just as successful and can have just as big an audience and can reach just as many people as a show that's, that's being driven entirely by sort of making money or generating revenue or ad dollars and all of those things.

And I really think that the industry would do well to sort of step back from just the revenue side and understand how powerful a medium this is far beyond just, you know, l- living in a, in a commercial ec- in a commercial world. 

[00:38:33] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. And then the thing we didn't talk about, which should have probably been the first thing we talked about, is, like, why people are choosing to make podcasts instead of other mediums, um, mission-driven or otherwise.

And, and it's because it really works and is really effective at building communities and relationships. 

[00:38:51] Richard Fawal: Yeah. That's why I do it. 

[00:38:53] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. 

[00:38:53] Richard Fawal: I mean, it, it ... I worked in communications and nonprofits and politics and public affairs for 30 years before I started doing podcasts, and the reason I gave up everything else I was doing to focus exclusively on po- po- on podcasting is because it is literally the most effective communication medium I have ever encountered in now almost 40 years of working in communications.

[00:39:18] Jeff Umbro: Well, Richard, Colin, thank you guys so much for joining us today. This has been super fun, and, uh, we'll, we'll talk soon. 

[00:39:26] Richard Fawal: Great. 

Had a blast. Thank you. 

[00:39:28] Colin Cole: It was a real pleasure.

[00:39:36] Jeff Umbro: For more podcast related news, info and takes, you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of the Podglomerate. If you're looking for help producing, marketing or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all socials @podglomeratepods.

This episode was produced by myself, Jeff Umbro, and our production team, Chris Boniello, Jose Roman, and Nicholas Abuhamad. Thank you to our marketing team and a special thank you to Dan Christo