When we talk about podcasting technology, we're always looking for something that's going to make
Speaker:your life easier, but we don't want it to just make your life easier
Speaker:and be cheap and sloppy and something that you're not gonna be
Speaker:very proud of. And when the concept of a PodPage
Speaker:first came along, there were a lot of folks who were concerned, like, yeah, an
Speaker:automatic podcast website, I don't know. Is that really gonna be worth it?
Speaker:Is my site gonna look professional? Is it gonna be cool? Is it gonna
Speaker:work well? How easy is this kind of technology? And
Speaker:right away, I could tell the 1st time I ever put my eyes
Speaker:on a pod page, I knew there was some real there there.
Speaker:Right? You enter in your RSS feed, you tell it the name of your show,
Speaker:And within 5 minutes literally, within 5 minutes, I had helped folks
Speaker:create a functional, beautiful, You
Speaker:know, really powerful podcasting website.
Speaker:And that was several years ago, and it's only
Speaker:gotten Much better, much stronger. And it's definitely something
Speaker:that if you are not savvy enough, if you don't wanna go down the
Speaker:wormhole of WordPress, if you, You know, don't know what
Speaker:you don't know when it comes to building the right podcasting website?
Speaker:Then you definitely want to check out a pod page. And
Speaker:today, we are super excited to have Brenden Mulligan, the PodPage
Speaker:founder, also just a serial entrepreneur with some other cool stuff that
Speaker:he's done in his past. Brenden, thank you so much for joining us here today.
Speaker:Thank you for having me. It's good to talk to you again. So we we
Speaker:spoke about this, I think, many, many years ago when this first developed,
Speaker:but, You know, pretend that that episode never existed. Tell us, how did you
Speaker:get to creating and thinking of the idea
Speaker:of the PodPage service? So I have
Speaker:spent my career helping creators. I started in the music industry.
Speaker:I moved into helping app developers And then,
Speaker:working with podcasters and digital artists and the theme throughout all of them
Speaker:has been the same, which is all of these creators, They
Speaker:do what they do because they have some talent, in that
Speaker:medium. And so podcasters, like, they're amazing because they Find people to
Speaker:interview or they come up with great stories or great topics. They they create
Speaker:great content. And so in all of my time as an entrepreneur, I've and
Speaker:working with I've always tried to find the things that they're they
Speaker:shouldn't really be focusing on because it's just they should be focusing on
Speaker:their craft as opposed to sort of the maintenance of their business.
Speaker:And there's some areas that they need to be focused on strategy, but there's other
Speaker:areas that they shouldn't. And in almost every one of the cases and groups,
Speaker:The building your own website has been one of these things that it should be
Speaker:easier than it is. And so back in in my music industry days,
Speaker:after watching Myspace fall apart, what we all realized was These musicians
Speaker:have been focused too much on being on these platforms and not enough about owning
Speaker:their own piece of the Internet, and so we help them create websites,
Speaker:Really, really easily using the content they'd already put on the Internet, and when I
Speaker:saw what podcasters are doing, I saw almost the exact same thing. I would search
Speaker:for really good Podcasts, and the Top hits on Google were
Speaker:Apple Podcasts. I think at the time of it have been Itunes. I can't remember.
Speaker:You know, Spotify. It's it was platforms, and a lot of them didn't have their
Speaker:own website and I started reaching out to podcasters asking why and they're like, it's
Speaker:a pain. I don't really wanna learn about WordPress. I tried. I paid a
Speaker:designer, but it didn't work. Like, all of these excuses were basically, it's too hard.
Speaker:And so when I dug in a little bit more, I realized that the
Speaker:RSS feed, The same RSS feed that's that's read by Google and
Speaker:Spotify and Apple has all the content to basically be able to
Speaker:create a website instantaneously. I mean, We say 5 minutes
Speaker:to get to a website that you're like really happy with and you can just
Speaker:leave alone forever, but it takes like 10 or 15 seconds to actually generate the
Speaker:thing. And so, It
Speaker:honestly started as a weekend project for a friend that had a pretty popular podcast,
Speaker:but didn't have a website. I was like,
Speaker:yeah. Let's let's just try it. So at the end of the weekend, I was
Speaker:like, here's a website I built for you. It's totally self supported, powers itself, it
Speaker:updates itself. It doesn't, you know it not only pulls in your episodes, but it
Speaker:pulls in reviews from Apple, so the
Speaker:content stays fresh, all the stuff. And so then we're like, alright, well, is it
Speaker:worth it? So we threw it on a subdomain of his.
Speaker:And a week and a half later, it was the number one hit on Google,
Speaker:after changing his link and his RSS feed to that. And so it was
Speaker:like, oh, so basically with no effort, You're able to tap the
Speaker:number 1 spot on Google when someone searches your your podcast
Speaker:name. And at that point, it was like, Okay. This is clearly worth
Speaker:it for a podcaster to do. Now, like, can I make it easy and
Speaker:accessible for them to do it? And so then That was when I started DM
Speaker:ing podcasters a link to a page that I built for them and I said,
Speaker:Hey, here's a website I built for you. Would you be interested in just giving
Speaker:me feedback on what you hate about And and it sort of start that's where
Speaker:it kinda came from. It was just talking to more and more podcasters and seeing
Speaker:their reaction and then seeing how openly they were to switch to it or
Speaker:adopt it once they realized how easy it was. And yeah. I mean, one of
Speaker:the things that was so great about creating a pod page for the 1st time
Speaker:and then helping clients create a pod page was that
Speaker:simplicity of it. You know, something that comes up often when people are
Speaker:trying to build a website or, honestly, with any creative endeavor, are
Speaker:Choices. Too many choices. And what I loved about it
Speaker:was you put you like I said, you pop in your feed, you can have
Speaker:a website in minutes or seconds even. But You
Speaker:have some, you know, design palettes, let's say.
Speaker:Right? Like basic templates that people can use. And You you
Speaker:have just enough where it's like you can find what you're looking
Speaker:for, but you don't have to feel overwhelmed by all those choices to the point
Speaker:where you can't move forward with it. And on top of that, it's so easy
Speaker:that once you maybe get tired with your one design, you're like, yeah, let's try
Speaker:something else. You can go ahead and just, boom, click that. Now the whole website
Speaker:kinda changes, Keeps into account, right, some of the customization
Speaker:that you've made, but, right, you can update the look and feel without having to
Speaker:go through and reprogram your entire website once again.
Speaker:It is that whole flow and, and
Speaker:basically the, the theme of, I want it to be easy for people
Speaker:Without having to do a ton of work. I want it to look good without
Speaker:being overwhelming. I want them to be able to change it
Speaker:without screwing things up That it is so hard. And I would
Speaker:say it's gotten harder over time as we've made the pages more complex, but a
Speaker:big part of Q1 for me, It's literally the biggest
Speaker:project that we've worked on for a while and what I'm working on right now
Speaker:is adding a ton of themes and functionality, as far as
Speaker:cut design customization without making it more complicated. So if
Speaker:you were to log in to PodPage with my account, there's this crazy amount of
Speaker:new new stuff to change because I'm trying to figure out how to make it
Speaker:still feel accessible and easy, But we're about to roll out like a new we've
Speaker:haven't updated our templates for a while, but we're about to roll out a a
Speaker:a new set of templates that are in I mean, obviously, I'm biased, but They're
Speaker:really, really nice. I honestly I mean, this is just on me. Like, I feel
Speaker:like we've fallen behind a little bit over the last couple of years because we
Speaker:haven't done a lot of template work. We've done a lot of, like, Adding the
Speaker:ability for people to tweak things on their website and make it look better, but
Speaker:as far as just a one click, like, I want my website to look like
Speaker:that, we haven't it hasn't been as, high on
Speaker:the priority list. So that's what the beginning of this year is, and so I'm
Speaker:excited about it. And so I I appreciate what you said, but it's I'm I'm
Speaker:embarrassed by it. I think it could be way better, and hopefully, it will be
Speaker:in couple weeks. I mean, everything can always have room for improvement.
Speaker:But again, for for folks who can't build a website or don't wanna go
Speaker:through the whole rigmarole, it's nice to have Nice but, you
Speaker:know, simple choices to work with. Talking about some of the
Speaker:Tech stacks, talking about some of the features, you've added a lot since the very
Speaker:beginning. What are some of the features you are most proud of with
Speaker:PodPage? Let's say one that you
Speaker:particularly like, Maybe the community is like, yeah. Whatever.
Speaker:And then what's that one of the communities like, oh my god. This is amazing.
Speaker:You're like, really? I don't even think that was gonna be that important to you.
Speaker:For me, things that I like, you know, it's funny when you build
Speaker:something that one of the pitches of it is it's automated. It takes care
Speaker:of itself. It's a set it and forget it type product.
Speaker:If you want to tell people how powerful it is, but you don't want to
Speaker:confuse them by being like, We do all of these things and you don't even
Speaker:know it. Right. And so, so I love all the
Speaker:features that sort of happen in the background. And
Speaker:those features are things like, You know, the way that we actually,
Speaker:this is just rolling out. We haven't even announced yet, but it is live. We're
Speaker:starting to pull in chapters, so if you put chapters in your RSS
Speaker:feed you'll start seeing them show up on your website if you want.
Speaker:We're gonna start For, for the elite plan,
Speaker:you can put in your, if you have a YouTube channel
Speaker:and you have a, You have a
Speaker:playlist that all you put all your podcast episodes on, we're gonna start actually
Speaker:trying to match your YouTube channel Podcast episodes
Speaker:with the episode that we import. And so when we import the
Speaker:episode from your feed, it'll automatically put the video
Speaker:for that episode on the episode page. So when people come to your website
Speaker:to to look at the episode you they can actually just watch it as opposed
Speaker:to have to listen to it on the web. So It's all of
Speaker:that stuff is the part the stuff that really gets me excited because it's it
Speaker:makes things so easy. We're using a ton of AI tools to To do small
Speaker:things, we're gonna start transcribing episodes. If you don't have them transcribed, so your
Speaker:your website has more text for Google to understand the context of the website or
Speaker:the the webpage. So I love all that stuff. A
Speaker:lot of times users don't even notice that's happening because it's
Speaker:just happening. The for the from a user standpoint, by far the best feature
Speaker:that we've launched
Speaker:since probably since The 1st year, has
Speaker:been sort of our guest workflow and, a lot of
Speaker:podcasts have guests. We built basically a profile where they
Speaker:can a very simple thing where they could go in and they could just type
Speaker:like, here's a guest name, here's their bio, here's a headshot, here's
Speaker:their social links, and And then they could say they were
Speaker:on episode 54, and then when you look at episode 54, there'd be a little
Speaker:guest bio at the bottom. You click the name. It has a whole page on
Speaker:their website for the guest. That was
Speaker:the feature. And so I thought it was kind of clever and nice, it seemed
Speaker:to fit the medium, and so I've released it
Speaker:and, The the initial feedback we got from our Facebook community was, this
Speaker:is amazing but God it's just another thing for me to have to fill out.
Speaker:Pod page is great because all this stuff is automated is there any way you
Speaker:can automate this? Now obviously we can't automate generating a guest
Speaker:profile, But their suggestion was can I just have my guest do the work for
Speaker:me? And so we ended up building a a guest facing version of
Speaker:that profile builder Where now the podcast just sends a link
Speaker:to a guest. They fill out a form that form saves them in
Speaker:the backend of their pod page. And then the the podcaster can go in
Speaker:and say, okay, like, Brenden was on
Speaker:Podcasting Tech, I'd already filled out the profile so that was, I could just click
Speaker:my name and say he was on he's gonna be on episode 54, and then
Speaker:when episode 54 is imported we can attach
Speaker:The Brenden episode Brenden's profile to the episode and also
Speaker:email the guest, Hey, the episodes released here are
Speaker:links. That whole workflow has been like transformative for our users
Speaker:and totally not something that we thought we'd be doing when we set out to
Speaker:build the website service. But, But really is really it's really helpful for them because
Speaker:a lot of people wait to email their guests because they don't have the
Speaker:website link yet. And so, Anyway so that's that's been
Speaker:a big a big win for for our
Speaker:users. And I'm assuming that If, like, one of the questions is like, you know,
Speaker:where can I find more information about you? Right? Let's say, you know, I'm using
Speaker:this form with you, and you'd say, obviously, podpage.com. Now
Speaker:aren't I automatically creating some link backs, which is really powerful for SEO
Speaker:in general? Yep. Yep. You you know, you can The person can can plug in
Speaker:their website, their podcast link, their, you know, Instagram account,
Speaker:whatever they want, And they they have they have control
Speaker:over what the pro the bio is, and so, and the profile looks like.
Speaker:So, yeah, it's been a it's been a big hit for both. I mean, If
Speaker:anything, I think at this point, the scale that we're working at, I think
Speaker:one of the most inefficient parts of the whole thing is that a guest Isn't
Speaker:creating, like, a pod page profile that then they could send a lot of Podcasting.
Speaker:They're creating a profile for each podcast, and we've gotten some feedback now. They're, like,
Speaker:I feel like I'm filling out A pod page profile form for
Speaker:so many shows that I'm on so often, it'd be nice if you could just
Speaker:I could just kinda, like, give permission for the new ones to access it.
Speaker:So good problems to have, but, but it's, you
Speaker:know, it's been helpful on both sides. Maybe, we'll chat with you in a year,
Speaker:and you'll say, yep. We figured it out. We got it filled, and here it
Speaker:is, folks. You'll, you'll you'll have your own guest profile on PodPage.
Speaker:Yeah. I also love that you have your own guest release built into it. So
Speaker:that's great. So you can basically turn on that. There's a a
Speaker:show guest release form, with, you know, copy
Speaker:courtesy of Passy Legal for Podcasting. Obviously, you can upload your own. But,
Speaker:like, Again, just 1 more place that podcasters may not be
Speaker:thinking about what it is that they need and you're already
Speaker:providing Like, hey. Here's a heads up on something that you need. And by the
Speaker:way, we've already done the work for you, to make that super
Speaker:easy. What are some other Future
Speaker:features, or what are some other places where PodPage is
Speaker:looking to go in the future if you can share any of that with us?
Speaker:Well, I think, you know, at the beginning of 2024, if you're talking about the
Speaker:future, you can't can't talk about the future without thinking about AI. I think there's
Speaker:a lot of stuff that we can do to be helpful there. There's,
Speaker:you know, SEO is a hard thing for most people, including myself.
Speaker:And knowing not only like, you know, PodPage does all the work to structure
Speaker:your page to make it as attractive to Google as possible. And, you know, when
Speaker:you put a transcript Not only do we post on your page, but we tag
Speaker:it in the HTML. So when Google looks at it they know this is a
Speaker:transcript, and so when they're trying to structure that data on Google search
Speaker:results They don't have to figure out where the transcript is, we tell them. So
Speaker:there's a lot of spoon feeding we do to Google, but you still have to
Speaker:have the right content on there. And so,
Speaker:We're trying to help podcasters
Speaker:make sure that they are doing, as well as
Speaker:possible with the content they wanna do. So we've last year, we added a bunch
Speaker:of sort of advanced, SEO tools. If you've ever used WordPress
Speaker:and Yoast SEO, We basically took a lot of inspiration from that and now
Speaker:make it easy to say, okay, I just released an episode, and we say what's
Speaker:the focus key phrase that you want to be coming up on Google for, and
Speaker:then we'll analyze the the the episode and the page to tell you whether
Speaker:or not you've set it up for success, because there's only so much PodPage
Speaker:can do. And this has been really helpful because a lot of people would come
Speaker:to me and say, hey, I was hoping to rank for, you know, business
Speaker:podcast, and then We help them realize, like, not only is that
Speaker:gonna be incredibly competitive, but your your site actually is more
Speaker:about, like, small business, small businesses
Speaker:in Akron, Ohio or something. Right? And it's like then they once they
Speaker:start targeting their key phrase towards that, they have a lot more success ranking for
Speaker:those kind of things on Google. So we added sort of the the
Speaker:analysis tools, but I think we're still there's still an opportunity to help
Speaker:not only, with the analysis, but also with just helping people understand.
Speaker:Like, we can look at a podcast, and we do this for elite users if
Speaker:they wanna we can look at their episode when you say, like, the key phrase
Speaker:you're probably should be targeting is this, you know, and it may be the guest
Speaker:name, or it might be, you know, something in the in the topic. But we
Speaker:look at the show notes, we look at the summary, we look at the title,
Speaker:like, You know, our guess is that this is what you're gonna wanna rank for
Speaker:because this is seems to be what it's all about. So using tools
Speaker:like that, A little thing we're gonna release, which is just, inspired
Speaker:by Amazon. I don't know if you've seen the Amazon AI tools for their reviews,
Speaker:but instead of reading the 5,000 reviews, you can just now at the top it
Speaker:says, People like this because and it sort of summarizes everyone's
Speaker:review. We've that that's actually already built. We just haven't turned it on yet.
Speaker:Search a bet, a much better search using AI. Like there's a lot of that
Speaker:kind of stuff that we just want it to be the page to be a
Speaker:lot smarter. Again, our It's sort of like our goal is
Speaker:just to continually make it less and less of something you think about.
Speaker:Right? Like, it's just doing what it needs to do, and it's just working and
Speaker:helping you. Some people like writing blog posts
Speaker:alongside their, alongside their episodes,
Speaker:and there's a strategy for that, and we can help Use AI to help
Speaker:inform the strategy around writing a blog post that that
Speaker:helps promote the episode versus competes with it, stuff like that. So,
Speaker:We're doing a lot more high touch SEO stuff this year. We did a a
Speaker:big SEO seminar yesterday. We're gonna be doing one of those monthly. We're gonna have
Speaker:SEO, consulting and, like, high touch SEO,
Speaker:1 on 1 consulting for people who want it, you
Speaker:know, so there's just we wanna do a lot more. Now that we spent so
Speaker:many years making these amazing websites, now we wanna make sure that they've they're all
Speaker:found for the people who wanna put in the work to do it.
Speaker:Amazing. And some of those new AI features that you're talking about, those are only
Speaker:gonna be for, elite plans, or is that also gonna
Speaker:be in the pro? It'll there it'll depend on the feature.
Speaker:Okay. I I need to look at it, but and it it might
Speaker:start with elite, and go to pro in the same way a lot of stuff
Speaker:with pro, went to basic. You know, Elite gives us an opportunity to beta
Speaker:test it with people who are a little bit more invested in their
Speaker:in the website because they're paying more and they want more high you know, advanced
Speaker:features, and so it lets us kind of give it to them. They can they
Speaker:can use it, and we can get it right, and then a lot of stuff
Speaker:can move down into pro or parts of it can move down into pro. Things
Speaker:like like AI transcriptions, You know, a lot of people transcribe
Speaker:their audio with their host or someone else, but if it gets to us and
Speaker:it's not transcribed, we wanna transcribe it for you because there's so much we can
Speaker:do once we have a transcription. Transcriptions are actually really
Speaker:expensive, and so that's one of those things, like, the cost is high
Speaker:enough where we wanna make sure that we can afford to do it for everyone.
Speaker:So that will be something that would be an elite. But some of the smaller
Speaker:AI stuff will will be in pro. Well, one of the
Speaker:things you mentioned was that, you know, So often, you get
Speaker:people who you want this product to be something that they don't have to think
Speaker:about. And I'll be honest, when I was using this for, one of
Speaker:my shows, I never thought about it. Like, I honestly I I
Speaker:can't even remember how rarely I would visit the website
Speaker:for my show just because I knew it was already taken care of. Everything was
Speaker:automatic. The episodes are being pulled in. It was always working. Right? I never
Speaker:had to go in and, like, purge cash on my on my WordPress site,
Speaker:make sure all my plug ins are updated, make sure the most compatibility issues, you
Speaker:know, were were working. It just always worked, and it was just one less thing
Speaker:as a podcaster that I had to think about. So For anybody listening,
Speaker:if you haven't, put together a website for your podcast, if you're thinking about how
Speaker:am I gonna display my content, cannot cannot
Speaker:stress enough how Great. A pod page would will be,
Speaker:obviously, podpage.com. There'll be a link to it here in the show notes below. Brenden,
Speaker:before we let you go, we just wanna ask you a other questions about podcasting
Speaker:in general, just to see kinda where you're at in the world. So one of
Speaker:the first things we wanna know from everybody is, is there a favorite Podcast
Speaker:that you are listening to right now or, maybe 1 or 2 that
Speaker:you would recommend, to folks? You
Speaker:know, it's so funny because I spend so much of my day writing code. I
Speaker:I used to be able to listen to podcasts and work and now that I
Speaker:just I don't I can't do that anymore, and I work from home, so there's
Speaker:no commute. So I feel like the number of podcasts I listen to has gone
Speaker:down a lot.
Speaker:The. I'm really enjoying, there's one that's a friend
Speaker:of mine, named Chris Hutchins. He has a podcast called All
Speaker:the Hacks, And he's also, like, one of my beta Tech or, like, he's the
Speaker:he's one of my pod page users that Tech me and says, hey, can you
Speaker:add this crazy feature? I'm, like, no no one is gonna want that. A week
Speaker:later, I'm like, no. I'll build it anyway, because it kinda sounds
Speaker:fun. And so he's he's it's great. It's a great podcast. I try to
Speaker:try to listen to as many episodes as I can, And it's
Speaker:all about optimizing your life, and he takes the approach of, like, oh, if you're
Speaker:interested in optimizing how you do travel, credit cards, or maybe it's money, or
Speaker:maybe it's preschools or maybe it's your cell phone plan, like, it it he finds
Speaker:people who have gone deep on everything and then interviews them. So I that
Speaker:I love. I've always loved, like, Tim Paris and Joe Rogan's shows. They're just so
Speaker:long, so I I usually catch clips of those,
Speaker:and then, I've been I've been really enjoying the All In podcast, which I know
Speaker:has been getting a lot more popular. It's I come from the tech world and
Speaker:it's a bunch of tech world people, but I feel like it's a really it's
Speaker:an it's a refreshing Podcast to listen to because I feel like it's people who
Speaker:generally have differing opinions, having conversations about their
Speaker:differing opinions, and They're fairly well informed people,
Speaker:and it's just like I feel like it's the exact opposite of what you get
Speaker:when you read, you know, mainstream media. You get where you're getting
Speaker:such a one-sided approach to things, like it's actually a
Speaker:conversation. And so they'll have on, you know, they've had on Tucker Carlson or Jared
Speaker:Kushner, but they've also had on RFK Jr. Or, you know, people
Speaker:on, like, the far liberal side. And so I feel like it's a nice balance
Speaker:of, like, oh, is this just, like, informative and interesting. So I feel like I'm
Speaker:being drawn more to that content now, where before I think I was more
Speaker:drawn to, like, Startup content. So I was listening to My First 1,000,000,
Speaker:and, more like businessy side stuff. I've sort of gotten to the point where,
Speaker:like, alright. I've I've listened to that for long enough. Now I'm sort of interested
Speaker:in other stuff. Is there gonna be a PodPage
Speaker:podcast anytime soon? You know, I try to stay in
Speaker:my lane, And do and do what I'm good at,
Speaker:and I've I've tried a few times to think, like, oh, could I do a
Speaker:podcast around podcast websites, or could I do And I feel like there's a lot
Speaker:of great podcast content out there about podcast tech,
Speaker:about how to podcast and all that, and It's just not necessarily I
Speaker:think an area that I'm great, so I'm gonna leave that to people who
Speaker:are. I think doing a podcast is so hard. I mean, it's so much
Speaker:work, And I've such respect for all the people out there doing it that
Speaker:I think that I would rather spend all my time trying to make PodPage better
Speaker:and not Not trying to do a podcast. So I'm always making myself
Speaker:available to podcasts, but I haven't I don't think I wanna do my own. I
Speaker:I think, you know, honestly, I think I think I sit down and I think,
Speaker:Do I have 52 pieces of content a year to share with the
Speaker:world? And I just don't think I do, at this
Speaker:point. So Or if I do, it would be a lot of work to fig
Speaker:to organize that and figure it out. So it's just not where I wanna focus.
Speaker:Alright. Outside of Podcasting websites, because obviously, that's your
Speaker:lane and and, you know, you're working on that solution anyway. Is
Speaker:there another place in podcasting in general that you can
Speaker:Do you would like to see improvement or see something
Speaker:change? I think that the openness of podcasting is such a
Speaker:core central part of it that is so incredibly important. And it's hard to
Speaker:watch Spotify. I feel like they actually innovate pretty well. Like, I think
Speaker:their podcasting listening experience is really good. I I use it The majority of the
Speaker:time, I like that it's cross platform, but I hate that it's this
Speaker:walled garden. So I would love to
Speaker:see The consumption experience diversified a little
Speaker:bit, although it's just really hard to see that happening. But,
Speaker:but, you know, we we face a lot of issues with Our users where they
Speaker:write in, they're saying like, oh, this isn't working, or this isn't showing up here,
Speaker:and it's because they're on Spotify for Podcasters and they've, like, by
Speaker:default Gated their content to just a few places or
Speaker:so I would I would love to see more innovation across the
Speaker:board on the consumption experience, but I'd, Like I said, I don't I don't know
Speaker:if that's gonna happen. I do think that this video is gonna be a bigger
Speaker:component to it, and so we'll see what
Speaker:you or what YouTube does this year, when they do their full launch
Speaker:and stuff, but, I think that I think Tech consumption experience is
Speaker:still more to be desired. I think on
Speaker:the podcasting sort of like the Inside Baseball tool side, I think the hosts are
Speaker:all doing a really great job. I think the podcasting 2 point o
Speaker:tags and And all the stuff that could be in the podcasting feed,
Speaker:it'll be great when that's all supported because it makes people like me, like, makes
Speaker:my job so easy when there's already a transcript, when there's already chapters when
Speaker:there's already guest names. Like, my life would be way
Speaker:easier if all the content that we, that was already being published other places was
Speaker:just stuck into the feed. And so what the podcast 2.0 initiative is doing,
Speaker:I think is awesome. And hopefully those tags are adopted by more
Speaker:people and the feeds have more than a minute because I think it'll just make
Speaker:all the places you can go to learn about podcasting way better. Like, I wish
Speaker:there was a video link in the feed. So when I get an episode, I
Speaker:already know what the YouTube link is, and I can I can put that on
Speaker:the website? So I think it's all coming, but, I'm I'm excited
Speaker:for that to develop. And then I think there's there's sort of this mad rush
Speaker:not just in podcasting, but in tech in general for, like, a 1000000 people
Speaker:doing AI tools, and we've sort of held back. I mean, like, well, everyone's Everyone's
Speaker:innovating on AI right now, but I feel like at the end of this year,
Speaker:a lot of that will shake out, and there'll be probably a few really, really
Speaker:good people. I honestly think the hosts are gonna win there,
Speaker:Because a lot of the AI tools are best used pre
Speaker:feed. I think of, like, podcasting workflow is like pre feed and post feed. Pre
Speaker:feed is like, need to write your show notes. You need to come up with
Speaker:a title. You need to come up with all this stuff. You need to do
Speaker:all that before you put it in your podcast host and before it goes in
Speaker:the feed. So I don't like to mess with any of that on the PodPage
Speaker:side. The post feed stuff is I think where we live, which is, like, cool,
Speaker:you've you put it in your feed, now we can put it on your website,
Speaker:now we can help you Put it on Twitter and X
Speaker:and, Facebook and everywhere else. Now we can help, you know, get it into
Speaker:Google SEO, all all that, you know, email it to your guests, Potentially
Speaker:email to users. All that marketing stuff is, like, post feed. I think there's a
Speaker:lot of cool stuff that we'll see in the pre feed side. Okay. And
Speaker:then, of course, the last question is, what technology are
Speaker:you using for podcasting? I know, like I said, you don't host your own podcast,
Speaker:but you do appear on on many. So What's the equipment there in your tech
Speaker:stack? You know, it depends on the day. Today
Speaker:I'm using the, just like a basic ATR
Speaker:2100 microphone that I think I got 4 years ago
Speaker:because someone said this is a good bit, maybe Tim Ferris recommended it, And I
Speaker:was, like, here's a good basic mic, and I've used that, with the same
Speaker:stand I think it came with. Like, it there's not there's not a lot of
Speaker:tech here, and then I've got an AirPod in. Still a great microphone, that ATR
Speaker:2100. That that's I've been recommending that for years, and, yeah, I would still
Speaker:recommend it today. Yeah. It's great. It did sit on my shelf for years
Speaker:Because I think I did I was on someone, maybe it was with Dave Jackson,
Speaker:and he they said that the AirPods sounded better
Speaker:Then the mic. So I was doing AirPods for a while and then for a
Speaker:while it was just, just like my computer mic. I
Speaker:think that all of the post-processing, like echo cancellation, audio
Speaker:cleanup tools have gotten so good that,
Speaker:that I think 4 years ago podcasters were very specific about,
Speaker:like, please use specific microphones, you know, come on for
Speaker:pre Pre interview sound checks all and I feel like over the last
Speaker:year or so that's kinda gone away, at least in my experience, where it seems
Speaker:like The, these tools are able to make great
Speaker:audio using kind of whatever the input is to a point. Yeah. That, you know,
Speaker:when you think about that, that's a really good point that now there are so
Speaker:many great AI enhancement tools and
Speaker:plugins and software that even Not
Speaker:great audio could be made to sound decent, and decent audio could be
Speaker:made to sound highly impressive. So really sticking to
Speaker:something as simple as a 2100. Just that just something that brings a mic
Speaker:closer to your mouth as opposed to, you know, the built in microphone on your
Speaker:computer or even I find sometimes with AirPods, the the microphone
Speaker:being behind your mouth, you know, there's a lot of room
Speaker:that has to be absorbed before I can hear your voice. So,
Speaker:but, yeah, I I like the I like your point that you don't have to
Speaker:get too crazy these days because the technology is there to improve
Speaker:Whatever your sound is, you know, it's take it up a few notches. I I
Speaker:also think that maybe it could have been COVID when, I mean, everyone got
Speaker:into podcasting or People couldn't go to their studios or
Speaker:people just sort of had to make do with whatever they had. And,
Speaker:and I feel like that kind of It was a good shock to the system
Speaker:where it was like, you don't need to, before you're at 1st episode, you don't
Speaker:need to spend 1,000 of dollars on gear. You can just.
Speaker:Throw some AirPods in because ultimately what's important. What's really important. Long term is
Speaker:that you are care about this topic enough or care about this podcast enough
Speaker:to keep doing it every week. It doesn't actually matter what you sound
Speaker:like. Eventually you want to make sure you sound good, but you're way better off,
Speaker:like using your mental cycles to Love the craft and get into the
Speaker:craft and make it a habit than you are to like build the perfect podcast
Speaker:studio, or at least that's been my perspective and observation.
Speaker:You know what? I don't think I could have said it better myself. That is
Speaker:the exact kind of advice that we would give everyone which is You've never
Speaker:heard a person say, you know, that podcast
Speaker:meant nothing to me, but, man, it sounded good, so I kept listening. Whereas
Speaker:Yeah. People will come to a podcast with
Speaker:solid content even if the quality isn't as
Speaker:pristine as they would like. So focus on good content. Focus
Speaker:on your audience. Focus on delivering value. And everything
Speaker:else, you can fix in post or, frankly, you can improve Later
Speaker:as you find, more success with what it is that you are doing.
Speaker:Well, we've been chatting with Brenden Mulligan, the founder of PodPage.
Speaker:And, you know, without Exaggerating truly the best
Speaker:way for a podcaster to build, launch, and not
Speaker:have to maintain a website because It does all the work for you. And on
Speaker:top of that, it just comes with amazing other features that are
Speaker:beneficial to podcasters that You would be spending more money
Speaker:on, you know, signing up for this, signing up for this, signing up for this.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:Brenden and the team at PodPage just bring it all together in one easy place.
Speaker:So Cannot recommend it enough. We have a link to pod page here in the
Speaker:show notes. But if you're thinking about a website or if you're tired of the
Speaker:struggles of your website, can't stress enough that you should definitely
Speaker:go check it out. Brenden Mulligan, thank you so much for joining us here today.