Launching and growing a podcast | Chris Hutchins (All the Hacks, Wealthfront, Google)

1. 0:00 – 3:25

   Chris’s background

   1. CHChris Hutchins0:00

      Yes, there are four billion podcasts. However, there are only about 150,000 podcasts that have had 10 episodes and have published in the last 10 days. So, the easiest way to be in that top 5% ish, I don't know, I don't know what the math there is, about 3, 4%, is to just stick to it. Like if you just do an episode a week for 10 weeks, you're now in the top 4% of all podcasts that anyone has created.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:27

      (instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. Today, my guest is Chris Hutchins. Chris is not only a former product manager, founder, and investor, he just this month went full-time on his podcast and the independent creator path. When I was looking for advice on how to build a podcast, Chris shared this awesome deck with a ton of great advice that he's built throughout his journey. And so, I thought it'd be fun to spend an episode talking about all the things that you should know about launching and growing a podcast. Chris's podcast is called All the Hacks, covers all the ways to financially optimize your life, and it's one of the biggest business podcasts in the world. Chris has also been on the Tim Ferriss Show, actually interviewing Tim Ferriss. He's also head of new product strategy at Wealthfront, where he took some big bold bets within the company, which we talk about. Chris is awesome, and I am excited for you to learn from him. I bring you Chris Hutchins after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Notion. If you haven't heard of Notion, where have you been? I use Notion to coordinate this very podcast, including my content calendar, my sponsors, and prepping guests for launch of each episode. Notion is an all-in-one team collaboration tool that combines note-taking, document sharing, wikis, project management, and much more into one space that's simple, powerful, and beautifully designed. And not only does it allow you to be more efficient in your work life, but you can easily transition to using it in your personal life, which is another feature that truly sets Notion apart. The other day, I started a home project and immediately opened up Notion to help me organize it all. Learn more and get started for free at notion.com/lennyspod. Take the first step towards an organized happy team today, again at notion.com/lennyspod. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate growth. If your business stores any data in the cloud, then you've likely been asked or you're gonna be asked about your SOC 2 compliance. SOC 2 is a way to prove your company's taking proper security measures to protect customer data, and builds trust with customers and partners, especially those with serious security requirements. Also, if you wanna sell to the enterprise, proving security is essential. SOC 2 can either open the door for bigger and better deals, or it can put your business on hold. If you don't have a SOC 2, there's a good chance you won't even get a seat at the table. But getting a SOC 2 report can be a huge burden, especially for startups. It's time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Enter Vanta. Over 3,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months, less than a

2. 3:25 – 9:25

   Lesson’s from Wealthfront

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky3:25

      third of the time that it usually takes. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Just go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discount. Get started today. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

   2. CHChris Hutchins3:48

      Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky3:50

      This is gonna be a pretty unique episode, I think. You're a product manager, and we're gonna talk about some of the things you've learned being a PM on some really killer products. But what I wanna spend most of our time on is talking about how to launch a podcast. You've built one of the most popular biggest business podcasts in just like a year and a half. You've taught me some stuff. You've helped other people with their podcast. And so, I just thought it'd be really helpful just to talk about just like the skill of building a podcast and all the things you should know. How does that sound?

   4. CHChris Hutchins4:21

      Sounds great. You just did a episode about growing a newsletter business, which I was like, this is awesome 'cause I have a newsletter and I want it to be bigger, and I think anyone that's- has knowledge to share, I talked to a PM yesterday who's like, "Oh, I've got all these product ideas, maybe I'll start a podcast." So totally, this is fun.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky4:36

      Awesome. That's exactly how I've been thinking about it. First, we did the newsletter, and then podcast, maybe other things. I don't know what's left.

   6. CHChris Hutchins4:42

      YouTube channel. We could, I, I, I, I don't know if you feel this way, but YouTube. I feel like just putting a podcast on YouTube isn't enough. I need to learn the skills of YouTube.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky4:51

      Yeah. All right. I gotta get Mr. Beast on. That's the next goal. To, um, set a little foundation for folks to give them a little sense of your background and some of the things you've done in your career, can you just talk about some of the, some of the biggest things you've done in your career, what you've been up to, and then what you're up to now, and also about your podcast?

   8. CHChris Hutchins5:09

      I'm kind of like a happenstance product person. I, uh, I basically really liked startups, but I didn't know what job I could have as a non-technical person. And I joined a, my first startup probably 10 years ago and was like, "I will do anything." And they were like, "Do business development." But it turns out we didn't have anyone who also was doing products, so they were like, "Uh, what, what should we build that people will buy?" So I was like, "Well, I gotta figure out how we turn this API we were building for location services into a product." Left that to join another startup with a few people we co-founded. Did the jack of all trades role at a startup, and then quickly we're acquired by Google about a year in. And I went through the interview process, and they were like, "You're a PM." And I was like, "Oh, great. What does a PM do?" Like I didn't really totally know. I'd never worked as a PM. Went through Google's kind of like week of training and got thrown into it. And I think I've now learned with a lot of time that being a PM is awesome. Being a PM at Google when we were working on Google Plus was not awesome.... I transitioned pretty quickly over to Google Ventures, did venture capital for three years, left to start another company trying to make financial advice more affordable, more accessible. Grew that for about two, two or three years and we ended up selling that company to Wealthfront, where, um, I, I ran a new product strategy. I most recently just left that role after three years and started going full-time on All the Hacks, which is my effort to help everyone upgrade their life, their money, their travel. I'm the spreadsheet for everything optimizer and do all this research to try to help people live better, happier, wealthier, healthier lives. And, and I have a podcast where we share all the hacks to do all of it.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky6:43

      Amazing. For... While we're on the podcast, we're gonna dig into this stuff more. Where can folks find it? It's called All the Hacks.

   10. CHChris Hutchins6:48

       Anywhere you're listening p- I mean, you listen to podcasts right now, search All the Hacks, you can find it allthehacks.com. Uh, I'd be surprised if someone listening to this is, is more of a newsletter reader than a podcaster, but you know, allthehacks.com/email is the newsletter too.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky7:01

       Oh, newsletter. I love it. All right. Coming back to your last gig at Wealthfront, from what I understand, your title was new product strategy. And Andy Rachleff, who was the CEO for a while, kind of this legendary figure, he co-founded Benchmark. He's just like this brain that I, I listen to him every time I hear him on a podcast. He basically pulled you into Wealthfront and specifically wanted you to focus on figuring out new business ideas, new business lines, new product lines within Wealthfront. Is that right?

   12. CHChris Hutchins7:31

       Yeah. So we had an engineer at the time who came up with this idea called self-driving money. I was like, "Gosh, what if you could automate and optimize your entire financial life and you didn't have to, you know, rely on human financial advisors?" And we heard from our customers forever that they pay us to not talk to someone, like our demographic doesn't want a bunch of humans in the mix. And so we had this idea, but we didn't really know what it was. So Andy was like, "Gosh, you've been spending time thinking about financial planning and software and, you know, ha- as an entrepreneur, could you come in and help us build self-driving money?" Uh, I was like, "What is it?" They're like, "Well, we got a bunch of, like, ideas from an algorithmic standpoint about how to do it, but what exactly is it?" So it was thrown into, "Let's do a bunch of customer research, let's talk to a lot of people, and let's try to come up with as audacious of an idea as we could for how you fulfill the promise of automating and optimizing someone's entire financial life to the point that they don't have to think about their finances on a daily basis and they know the right things are happening."

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky8:28

       When I think self-driving money, I'm picturing money just driving around like a Tesla... Money meets Tesla.

   14. CHChris Hutchins8:34

       Yeah. The, the vision I had was, what are the core pieces of financial life that are stressful? It's like, "Ah, I gotta move money. I gotta c- contribute to these different accounts. I wanna make sure I have enough to pay my bills." And so what we ended up with was a product called Autopilot that would monitor your core banking account, whether it was a checking account at Wealthfront or n- or not at Wealthfront, or whether it was an account at Wealthfront. And we would say, "Let's make sure we leave a certain amount of money." And you could tell us that much. And then we would say, "Great." Now we had basically a series of things to fulfill with any excess. It was like, "Let's make sure you keep this much as a three-month emergency fund. Max out your Roth IRA. Let's make sure you max out your 529 for your kids, and let's put the rest in your kind of taxable just brokerage account." And we would just periodically say, "Oh, you got extra money, let's sweep it over and do what we need to do with it so you don't have to think about it."

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky9:22

       Can you talk about the impact this had on the company

3. 9:25 – 14:56

   Storytelling and communication

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky9:25

      and also just like how long of a endeavor this was within Wealthfront?

   2. CHChris Hutchins9:29

      It was a quick endeavor to try to start talking to people. Like this was like just throw in the mix. I have a very poor sense of time, but let's say somewhere between like six and 12 months maybe before we kind of put something like really in front of someone that could execute on all the features. There was a lot of prototype UI testing. I think, you know, Andy, he's legendary. If anyone listening to this wants to learn about product market fit, Andy is your guy. I believe he coined the term, he teaches the class at Stanford. And, you know, the lesson was like really find something people are reaching over the table want and make sure you have that validation. And so we were putting things in front of people, clickable full prototypes. And I remember we got to one where someone was like, "Can I go get my husband? Like, I need to show him this." And then I created this thing, which I'm sure is not that new, but I would start pretending that the product existed in the interviews only to find out, you know, at the end people was like, "Oh, it's not out yet." And they're like, "What? I wanna u-" Like, you could really feel the like, "No, no, no, no, this has to be out. I wanna start using it." So we found this thing that a small number of people were very excited about. And we knew that a product like this was gonna be a high risk bet because people don't automate their financial lives today. People drive to go pick up fast food and if you could, with a push of a button, bring it to their house, you're making a thing that they do much more efficient. Right now, it's like, well, technically they do this manually, but trusting software to do it is something that we knew would be a higher risk bet. And I think the takeaway... I would say the impact on the company was not as high as we had wanted in that it didn't become this wild top of funnel, right? Like I think it's similar to Tesla's autopilot. It's like nobody goes and says, "I just wanna buy this car because of this feature." I'm sure some people do. But once you're in the ecosystem, it had huge impact on making it easier for people to start saving more, making it easier for people to be more confident in their finances and just automate all that behavior. So I would say the, the letdown was it wasn't the big, you know, huge top of funnel thing where people are like, "Oh, this is all I've ever wanted." Even though if you interview people and you're like, "Gosh, would you like a product that could just automate all this stuff?" They're like, "Yes, I would love it." And then you hand it to them and you're like, "Do you wanna use this thing?" And they're like, "Well..." You know, like, it's very hard to test that. And so we, what we found was it was a, a win in terms of it, it moved a lot of metrics for saving more money, increasing, you know, contributions and that kind of stuff. But it didn't become this growth channel, which Andy would say product market fit is exponential organic growth. So I would say by that metric, we didn't have product market fit, but as a tool to make a system of products so much better...... we have the cash account with all the checking features. We have an investing account. We have retirement accounts. So this really brought it all together, and that was super valuable.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky12:18

      Awesome. So here's my big question. What have you learned? You spent a lot of time thinking about big bets, big innovations, working within a company to come up with something totally new. What have you learned about how to approach that within a larger company? How to successfully innovate, how to think about launching big bets, how to structure teams, anything along those lines?

   4. CHChris Hutchins12:37

      I've learned a few things, and I think some of them I've learned came naturally being a founder before being a PM. But, you know, you think that customer research is all you need to build a product at a company. But figuring out how to create excitement internally and get buy-in from other teams, because you know, they're the ones that are gonna build it. They're the ones that are gonna help market. Like it, it, it's all a team effort. Sometimes you get caught up as, at least I found as a PM of like, "Oh, we got the customer insights, we did the testing, it's all positive." And then you show the, you know, the ratings you got from some survey or the, you know, engagement or some clips. And that's not the end of it. The end of it is creating this compelling vision for what you're building. And then the thing I learned from being a founder is, gosh, you have to state your vision and your mission and why you're here, like every all hands. Like it seems so crazy because it's core to you why we would build this, what its purpose is, why it's amazing. But as a founder, I was like, every week I was like, "Hey everybody, before we get started, like this is the mission we're on. This is why we're doing it. This is the thing we're doing in the world." And as a PM sometimes you're like, well, I told people three weeks ago and I put it in that email that I sent out to everyone. And like it was in the top of the PRD. So like, why hasn't everyone like understood why this product exists? And I realized very quickly that that same thing is true. So if you wanna make a big bet, if you wanna make a, you know, a big impactful product, you have to bring people along with you. And your ability to speak publicly, persuade people, build influence within the company, like those things are all as important as your ability to identify a user need and build a product that solves it.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky14:15

      Awesome. This reminds me a lot of Airbnb where the founders every all hands shared the vision and the strategy that they came up with that year, like every single all hands. And it's always like, "Yeah, yeah, we know, we know." But to your point, it's so powerful and important.

   6. CHChris Hutchins14:28

      And some people don't know, like some-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky14:30

      Right.

   8. CHChris Hutchins14:30

      ... people were not paying attention that one all hands or kind of missed it out. Skip all hands like often. There's just, you need everyone to be able to in, and, and this is a little segue to podcasting and we'll come back to it, but I start my show with saying, "Hello and welcome to another episode of All the Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel." Because I just want everyone to know this is exactly what this show's about. So when their friend asks 'em a question, they're like, "This is exactly what it is." And the same thing is true about a company's mission,

4. 14:56 – 17:39

   Why you should focus on overall impact

   1. CHChris Hutchins14:56

      a product vision, anything. You want everyone to really understand it, be able to talk about it succinctly, and just have a very cohesive narrative in their head. That's a really big one. I think the other one is just understanding the customer, not just by talking to them, but just like being in the mix, playing with all the products. Something I asked a few of my colleagues before this, like, "What, what are, what are things that I've particularly done well?" And they were just like, "Gosh, you, I feel like you understand what's happening outside of the walls of our business better than a lot of people." And maybe that's talking to a lot of other people who are founders, talking to a lot of other people starting companies, going to read all the comments on new financial products on Product Hunt. Like, really just trying to understand people beyond just customer research. And so that was another thing that I think I, you know, as a founder, you're always looking for product market fits. You're always trying to learn. Sometimes at a company it's really easy to get caught up in the research you've already done and the customers you've already talked to, and you forget to kind of step outside and, and go talk to other people and see what other people are doing. And I'd say don't get caught up in what competitors are building and like try to feature parody them, but just understanding the space outside of, outside of the walls of your business.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky16:06

      One thing I'll add to your point about reminding people of the strategy and the vision is if you can also help them understand how their team and project connects up through that, like create kind of a little tree of here's all the teams, what they're doing, here's how it connects to the pillars of focus and themes, and then here's how it connects to the North Star metric and our vision and mission, that kind of adds another wrinkle of like, "Oh wow, now I get it. I get why this team's important."

   3. CHChris Hutchins16:29

      There's a great analogy. I'm sure if I send a link you can put in the show notes or something about a football team and it's like, you know, the GM's goal is to like sell out the tickets and win the conference championship and it actually like tiers it down. It's like, well, there's a defensive line coordinate. I'm not even that big of a sports person, but it's like the defensive line coordinator's job is just one specific thing, but they, they kind of explain how it all levels up to this one North Star metric for the company, or two in that case. And I think that's just so important. And when you're talking to people at, at your company and with your colleagues, it's not just what it does. It's like this product will automate people's money movements so they don't have to move their money and it happens automatically. And that's cool, but it's equally as important to remind everyone, and then they don't have to worry about their money every week. And then they don't have to worry that their contributions might leave them without enough money in their checking account to pay their rent. There's these two components of it, which are, what does it do? But like, what's the feeling you want someone to have? And that gets into like product vision versus just the product feature set. And whenever we've written product visions, David, it's about things we're building. It's like imagine a world where

5. 17:39 – 19:10

   Why Chris likes working on big, crazy ideas

   1. CHChris Hutchins17:39

      someone can feel this way about their money and it's like, and then this thing will do that. That's the product strategy, is like how you execute on it. So Reforge has this awesome product strategy, kind of product vision roadmap that levels them all up, which I really like as a, another resource.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky17:54

      Go Reforge. I just recorded another podcast this morning actually, in which you just said, it reminded me of it, where a lot of people focus too much on features and not enough on benefits. And the stuff you're talking about is just like, think about what are the benefits of the person versus like here's feature one, feature two, feature three.

   3. CHChris Hutchins18:10

      The last little skill, and I know you, you've talked about this, but I think it's something that...... I was fortunate enough to not care about, which I think is wh- when you focus too much at a company about like, "Ooh, I want the promotion," you get caught up in this world where you're like, "Ooh, I- if I want the promotion, I need to do what my boss wants." And I had this fortunate benefit of... Like, my last job, I was the CEO. I didn't care about my title. I didn't care about leveling up. Like, I came in and I was like, "I wanna continue trying to execute on this vision of this thing that I wanted to do." What that actually meant was my only metric I cared about was impact, and like, trying to build a product that would work. And I think in any job, in any company, it turns out you think that doing what your boss wants is actually what's gonna get you promoted. But the people that I've had work for me or I've worked alongside that seem to always be the outperformers are always the people that are just solely focused on having the most impact on the company. I think the thing I learned, which a- thanks to Andy Ratcliff for teaching me this, is

6. 19:10 – 21:34

   The early days of Chris’s All the Hacks podcast

   1. CHChris Hutchins19:10

      when you push so hard for your ideas and you have really strong beliefs, you have to also make sure you state your intent, because sometimes people think you're acting out of self-interest. I'd be like, "Oh, we should delete this feature and build this crazy thing. It's gonna be amazing." And people are like, "Oh, Chris just thinks his idea is better than everyone else's." And so he taught me, he's like, "You know, it would go a long way if before you said that, you said, 'Hey guys, I've got some crazy ideas, but before I say them, I just want you to know that all I care about is that the company is successful. And I think this idea will make the company successful and that's why I'm so excited about it. I don't need to own it. I don't care who owns it. I'm just really excited about it.'" And when you state your intent, you give people a little bit of ease in thinking, you know, what it might be. And even though I'm sure half the people listening work at a company where their culture is like, assume best intent is one of the pillars, it's still our nature to assume that if someone's shooting down an idea we have, that maybe it's out of their own self-interest. And I've learned that when you have crazy ideas and when you're pushing back against a lot of people, if you can make sure you constantly remind them why you're doing it and what you care about, it goes a lot further than if you just kinda come in there with sharp elbows and try to push for crazy things.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky20:19

      It reminds me, I think Andy is the person who, on a podcast once said that every year he picks like, a, we're gonna bet the company on this idea kinda project. Is that...

   3. CHChris Hutchins20:28

      I would say we've done that a few times. I think the thing that I always told people that I wanted to work on is like, I wanna work on a project that, if successful, makes everything we do as a company today feel like it's not that important, because we did something that was 10 times bigger than everything we're doing today, and what we're doing now is just 10% of the company. Like, those are the kinda crazy ideas I like to work on. They're very hard. Sometimes you're like, "Ooh, I've got one," and then it just doesn't work. You know, sometimes you do one and it, it takes a turn. But I think that when companies find those things, they're so powerful. But if you don't have the buy-in from management that that's your goal... Andy's a very, he- he always talks about slugging average, not batting average. He's like, "I don't care if you hit the ball every time. If 1 in 10 times you hit a home run, that's better than someone who hits it every 3 out of 10 times, but, you know, gets out a lot." He thought about that and the balance, he's written a lot internally about the balance between kind of w- working on iterative improvements to current features and then taking big bets and trying to find, you know, the balance amongst it all. But I think he does believe there is always exploration necessary for taking big bets and, and trying to take, you know, swings that could have outsized

7. 21:34 – 24:19

   The pros and cons of starting a podcast

   1. CHChris Hutchins21:34

      impact. You gotta balance it, 'cause you're often wrong, and I think that's something that I was like, "That's the thing I wanna work on." A- as someone who, who is kind of running a company, when you get to go to a big company and you're like, "Now I can solely focus just on this big product bet, I don't have to worry about hiring and recruiting and, like, all of these other things," so that was fun.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky21:52

      Speaking of being solely focused on something, uh, let's talk about the podcast. Uh, so this is kind of the new thing that you're gonna be focused on full time. You just left Wealthfront and you launched the podcast maybe a year and a half ago, correct me if I'm wrong, about a year and a half ago. The podcast is like top 30, top 40 business podcasts. It's probably gotten a lot higher at some points. And so there's a bunch of questions I wanna ask you about just how you launched this thing and built this thing. But broadly, what did I miss about the framing of the podcast?

   3. CHChris Hutchins22:18

      No, yeah, that, that's it. Um, it's about 18 months old. We have been doing, gosh, probably about almost a hundred episodes, not quite there. Weekly show. And you know, I- I went on parental leave part of the last 18 months, and I tried to balance family and like just grinding on this. And it's been a passion project on the side, and I'm very excited to see all the different kind of legs and tentacles that the brand and, and the content can have.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky22:45

      What kind of benefits and good things have come out of having a podcast and launching a podcast and running a podcast?

   5. CHChris Hutchins22:51

      I think we all run into people and you're like, "Gosh, this person's really smart. I wish that I could just pick their brain for an hour." And sometimes you can just email them and be like, "Hey, could we schedule some time in a month and we could just chat?" But that sometimes just feels like a weird thing to ask. The podcast gives you this great platform where you're like, "Well, I have a podcast, and so I would love to invite you on and help you amplify your message and spend an hour trying to understand everything you know about topic XYZ." And sometimes it's like really nerdy and nuanced, and sometimes it's, you know, broad, but being able to have a reason... I think one of my first episodes was with a guy named Morgan Housel, who wrote a book called Psychology of Money. I was like, "I read the book." I was like, "This is a great book. I have so many questions." But like, what am I gonna do? Randomly email this person I don't know and say, "Hey, I loved your book. Can I just ask you questions for 45 minutes?" I would never do that. But I randomly emailed him and said, "Hey, we've never met, but I have a podcast." I don't even think it had launched. "It's launching next week, but I'm really excited about it. Could I pick your brain?" And he was like, "Sure." So I would say the biggest thing is it just gives you a platform to explore your curiosities on things, you know, provided that you can really focus the thing that you talk about on one vertical niche something so that people learn what it's about, because the hardest part about podcast growth is there's like four million podcasts and you gotta find a way to stand out in a sea of many podcasts.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky24:12

      Let's actually talk about that. I was gonna ask you about that. There's like four million, you said? That seems right. (laughs) There's probably four million launched a day

8. 24:19 – 27:09

   The time required to produce an episode

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky24:19

      also.If you're someone that's thinking about, "Should I do a podcast? Should I not do a podcast?" Do you have any advice for just like signs that this might be a worthwhile endeavor with your time, versus signs you probably should not do this, do not even?

   2. CHChris Hutchins24:34

      I'll give you two perspectives. So one is, yes, there are four million podcasts. However, there are only about 150,000 podcasts that have had 10 episodes and have published in the last 10 days. So, the easiest way to be in that top, I don't know, 5%ish, I don't know, I don't know what the math there is, about 3, 4%, is to just stick to it. Like if you just do an episode a week for 10 weeks, you're now in the top 4% of all podcasts that anyone has created. Now, that doesn't mean you're in the top 4% of the 150 active podcasts. So, what I would say to that is, I mean maybe you have a massive platform already, in which case, you know, just go start the podcast. But if you don't already have a massive platform, it is unlikely statistically that this thing is going to work. So absolutely do not start the podcast if you wouldn't do it for free, making no amount of money in perpetuity, or as long as you wanna experiment with. That, that's one thing I'll throw out there, is you are most likely going to start a podcast and it will not take off and be wildly successful. However, I've met plenty of people who have, you know, hundreds of listeners and hundreds of episodes, and they stuck at it because they truly loved the thing. If you don't know if you love the thing, it's very easy, which is what I did, to say, "I'm gonna have one season of eight episodes." And I committed to record eight interviews and put eight interviews out in the world. That was it. All I committed to myself. And I said, "If that doesn't work, then I will be fine and say here was season one and there's just not a season two." And I was, I would be okay with it. So you can commit to see if you like it before you do it, but chances are, a- and I, you might have found something similar when you started creating content, it's like for the first six, nine months, like there's, there's no revenue coming in. (laughs) It's a lot more work than it seems. Everyone I know that has no podcast and goes to having a podcast, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I thought this was just like once, one hour a week I just talked to somebody." It's like, now I have to prepare for it, I gotta write up show notes, I gotta make sure it's edited properly, I gotta recruit people. Turns out you reach out to 10 people, two reply, one is willing to schedule this week. Like, there's just a lot that goes into it. So I would say only do it if you're excited to do it, even if five people are on the other end.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky26:49

      Talking about the time investment. How long does it take you per episode, hours wise, and then how long did it take you to kind of prep launch?

   4. CHChris Hutchins26:59

      This has evolved a bit, yeah, as the podcast has generated enough revenue to hire other people. But in general, I would probably spend, depending on how well I knew the topic

9. 27:09 – 28:29

   How Lenny started his podcast

   1. CHChris Hutchins27:09

      or the person, anywhere from two to ten hours preparing for an interview. If someone wrote a book, at the beginning I was like, "I gotta read the whole book. I gotta take notes." Then I was like, "Well, if I read the whole book and take notes, then I kinda know everything, so I'm gonna read a few chapters." You know, I wanted to listen to everyone on different interviews. Some people are really hard. Some people have only talked about one topic and you wanna get them on another topic. I interviewed Kerri Walsh Jennings, who's a three-time gold medalist at the Olympics for beach volleyball, and I listened to every interview she'd ever done because only like 3% of each interview was about not volleyball stuff. And I was like, "Well, I don't wanna talk about volleyball, like I wanna talk about performance and how you can train." She won a gold medal while she was pregnant. Like, do, this is like a serious level of physical and mental preparedness that I wanted to dig into. So that's one big piece of it. After it's done, then it really depends on the style of show. If you have this NPR style editing where it's very narrative driven, it could take you a long time to go through the editing. For me, with interview style, I think it takes me about an hour to go back and listen to it at a little speeded up, speed up pace, and then go in and be like, "Ah, this thing wasn't worth keeping in," or we, we had to repeat something and let's cut that out, or this person, you know, stumbled on their words. Fortunately, there's some amazing software now.

10. 28:29 – 30:49

    Launch lessons and how Apple rankings work

    1. CHChris Hutchins28:29

       I use a piece of software called Descript, which basically imports all the audio, transcribes it to, let's call it like 95% accuracy, and then you can edit the podcast like you would edit a Google Doc. It's crazy. Like, you're just like, "Oh, let's delete all the ums. Control F um, ignore all ums." And then you listen through it and you're like, "Oh, that, that um was really necessary. Let's put it back in," and like little edits like that. But that tool makes the editing process really easy. From the get-go, I had an audio engineer who would actually like mix and master and add in the music and that kind of stuff. So I would say each guest is probably at least ten hours, plus, you know, probably two or three hours of coordination and outreach to three or four people that you reach out to in order to get the one. Now, I've since hired someone who helps do a little bit of research. So they might go listen to two or three episodes, read a couple chapters of the book and put up some notes with links to those various places, so I can then take that and take my time from ten hours to three hours.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky29:31

       I'll share my experience briefly. It's a little different, which is really interesting to hear your experience. So I launched the complete opposite of your advice, which is I just launched big with like, "I will do this forever. This is my new thing. I have like 40 guests lined up, here's who they're gonna be." And I think it's partly because I already went through that initial period of uncertainty whether I can keep this up with a newsletter, which you said eight to nine months, which is exactly how long it took me to do the newsletter every week to get to a point where I'm like, "Yes, I can keep this up for years. Let's start adding a pay plan." So I think I was just more confident that I can keep at it. And then, I actually planned to monetize right from the beginning. I think partly again 'cause I had the newsletter already. And I will say, so I don't edit them myself, I have a production group. That's just like a game changer. So, you can save a lot of time and I, I don't know if you've gone through a producer or anything, but I feel like...

    3. CHChris Hutchins30:24

       ... most people eventually do. I've now switched to someone who was like, went back, listened to the first 20 or 30 episodes and said, "Oh, I get what you like to cut out of a conversation." And I'll end and say, "Hey, take that 90 minute conversation and I think there's probably 20 minutes to cut out." And they do a very good job of getting pretty close.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky30:41

       Awesome.

    5. CHChris Hutchins30:42

       And, you know, I, I, to the point that some episodes I'm just like, I don't even look at it.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky30:45

       Yeah.

    7. CHChris Hutchins30:45

       It's just recorded and done.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky30:46

       Yep.

    9. CHChris Hutchins30:47

       When it comes to launch, I would say,

11. 30:49 – 32:57

    Why you need to create authentic content

    1. CHChris Hutchins30:49

       I, one of my suggestions is to get a few things in the bag. Like, line up. You don't wanna launch and then be, like, scrambling, so I, I tend to think launching with two or three episodes, either all at once or in a week, is a really valuable strategy. You talked about, in the, in the intro you were like, uh, sometimes it's been a high- higher ranked but top 30, you know, I think I've been top 100 in the business category all the way to top five in the business category, or top 10, and just all the way in between. And the reason for that is that the ranking charts are all driven by different variables than you would imagine. They're driven a lot by momentum of new subscribers, at least on the Apple charts, than actual downloads. So, I have a friend who launched a podcast and had a huge following on social media. And so out the gate was able to garner a ridiculous number of new subscribers, to the point that she was the number two podcast overall. All podcasts in the world-

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky31:45

       Holy shit.

    3. CHChris Hutchins31:46

       ... but now, so it's crazy, for like a week or two, a woman named Erica Kullberg, she has a podcast called Erica Talks.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky31:51

       Oh, yeah.

    5. CHChris Hutchins31:51

       And, um, but it's not number two anymore, because it's so driven on the momentum of how often you can get new subscribers. She's still in the top 100 of business podcasts, but, you know, to get to the number two spot overall, it's all about number of new followers per hour, and if you can get a ton of traffic early on, you can drive that. And I will say, the value of doing that is, now you've got this screenshot of, like, "Look, I was top 10." And by the way, she did the same thing I did. The moment I was top 10, like the second I was in top 10, I immediately took all those guests that were on my dream list, and I was like, "Hey, I've got a top 10 podcast," like, you know, you can go look at it right now and see that it's in the top 10. So you kind of, you can always say that forever after it happens once. You can always use those things. So capitalize on that. So, you had the newsletter before. I had a, a newsletter I'd written on casually for various things throughout my life and for my last startup, and so I kind of put it all together to try to carry a big launch so that we really spike the rankings, maybe qualify for Apple does this like new and noteworthy thing, and so

12. 32:57 – 35:01

    Be one person’s favorite podcast

    1. CHChris Hutchins32:57

       there's a lot of stuff you can do to build momentum at launch. But, at the end of the day, all the momentum in the world doesn't matter if your content's not good. So, I try to s- like content for me is like product market fit for, you know, building software. It's like, you need to have a good podcast, and so if you launch big, one of the downsides is you're like, you don't really get that moment of like tweaking and testing and seeing how it is and, you know. I will say, I list- I did five episodes. In the fifth one I was like, "This is number one." Like, this, the first one I recorded came out, I don't know, fifth. But the fifth one I recorded came out first, 'cause I just knew it was episode one. And the guest that I had on, uh, we talked about travel hacks, a guy named Lee Rowan, he's come on twice. It was just like this awesome energy episode about everything you'd want to know about travel hacks. Allthehacks.com/one to save yourself the need to scroll through the whole list. But, if your content isn't a unique perspective, you don't have a unique way of saying it, it's gonna be really hard to stand out in the sea of podcasts. So, I would say, be you, be authentic, try to be someone's favorite. Don't try to be everyone's okay podcast. Like, you know, I remember Tim Ferriss was saying, uh, I got a chance to go on Tim Ferriss's show and interview him about podcasting, and he's like, "Look, I did an episode about, like, how to," I think it was, like, how to make violins or something, and he said, "I was so fascinated about this. 80% of people were like, what is this episode? But 20% of people thought it was one of the best episodes I'd done that year." And I think half of his top ten episodes of all time are people you wouldn't recognize. So, I would focus on what gets you excited, not focus on what you think will move the metrics, because every time I have a guest where I'm like, "I really think this person's gonna move the metrics," it's like, it doesn't, and then I interview someone who no one has ever heard of, and I get these emails, like, "Wow, that was such a good episode. Can't believe, oh man, I'm so glad you did that one." I was like, "Y- you don't even know who this person is."

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky34:51

       Very similar experience in many ways across a lot of things that you said. Something that you did mention that you shared previously with me is, uh, and this is advice that I've thought about a lot,

13. 35:01 – 40:09

    How Chris ideated and titled All the Hacks

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky35:01

       is you should be somebody's favorite podcast. That's like a sign that you're doing something right. Could you-

    2. CHChris Hutchins35:07

       Yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky35:07

       ... could you expand on that?

    4. CHChris Hutchins35:08

       You know, there's this whole idea of you build your thousand true fans, and I think any time you're creating something in the world, you want people to be your advocates for it, because those are the people that are gonna share it, those are the people that are gonna write the reviews, those are the people that are gonna send you the ideas. Those are the people that are ultimately, when you make a call out on a podcast, like, "Hey, I'm looking for someone to help build this company or this, you know, enterprise," that, that are gonna reach out and wanna work for you. I find it so valuable to build that relationship with people, and it's even more valuable with podcasting, because podcasting is such an intimate medium. Like, you're in someone's ear and they're actively listening to you while they're, you know, going about their life. They're going on a walk, they're doing all these things, but you're right there. And I, I get so many emails that are like, "Ah, I feel like I'm just sitting on the couch with you while you're talking to me," and like, you create this really close relationship, and the more you can create for those people and be their favorite time of the day, their favorite thing... Someone once told me, like, "Make sure you're consistent with the time you release, because you'll get people that are like, 'Woo, it's Wednesday morning, where's my episode?' Like, this is how I, I, it's become a ritual in my life." And so, I don't know, I just think it's so valuable to build that early kind of excited user base and, and those thousand true fans that I always try to put something out that's someone's favorite, and I actually surveyed the audience about-... 50 episodes in and asked, "Which was your favorite episode?" And there were... E-Every episode except one was someone's favorite. There's one episode that no- no one's favorite. So, uh, I'm still waiting. Maybe next time I survey, someone will be like, "No, no, that one was my favorite." But every other episode of 50 episodes was someone's favorite. And it was like the coolest feeling knowing that every episode was someone's favorite.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky36:57

       That's exactly what happens with my newsletter. I get a reply with every newsletter and someone's like, "This is my favorite one yet." Okay, somebody really likes this one. So interesting.

    6. CHChris Hutchins37:06

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky37:08

       Are you hiring? Or, on the flip side, are you looking for a new opportunity? Well, either way, check out lennysjobs.com/talent. If you're a hiring manager, you can sign up and get access to hundreds of hand-curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply to join this collective, and I personally review and accept just about 10% of them. You won't find a better place to hire product managers and growth leaders. Join almost 100 other companies who are actively hiring through this collective. And if you're looking around for a new opportunity, actively or passively, join the collective. It's free, you can be anonymous, and you can even hide yourself from specific companies. You can also leave any time, and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from. Check out lennysjobs.com/talent. How did you pick your topic for your podcast, and then do you have just, like, advice for folks for how to pick the topic for their podcast?

    8. CHChris Hutchins38:07

       This is an interesting one. So, my podcast actually started as a parenting podcast from the perspective of dads. And, you know, I was doing all this research. I'd built this, like, probably 75-page Notion doc all about parenting. It was like, I had a Kanban board for all the things I needed to do in each trimester of the pregnancy, and then the fourth trimester after the baby was born. I had, like, all these checklists. I had a stroller spreadsheet that had at least, let's call it 15, 20 different features that you could filter on. Dimensions, you know, cubic volume of when you sum up the dimension. Like everything, it was crazy. And I was like, "I'm so obsessed with this." And I was like, "Nobody's really taking this kind of crazy optimized approach to processing parental information," except a few people... Emily Oster, by the way, if anyone out there, wrote a few books. I really loved her, like, pragmatic science approach. But I just didn't see a lot of this, and I especially didn't see as much content coming from dads. I was like, "I'm so excited." And then we had our s- daughter, and I was like... For some reason, I was like, "I love her." But like the, the topic of parenting and optimizing every aspect of it just wasn't what it was before we had the child as after. I was like, "Wow, but I, I bought this microphone and I figured out how to use all the editing software." And I'd never even recorded an episode. And it just ended up that I was like, "That topic just wasn't right for me." And I went on another friend of mine's podcast, guy named Kevin Rose, who was a co-founder of a company we started. He started Digg back in the day. And in the middle of it, he, we, we'd been talking about this, had been brainstorming ideas. And in the middle of his podcast, he's like, "Hey, tell us about your new podcast." And then I was like, "Kevin, I don't... I haven't nailed down what it is." And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, it's fine. Why don't you just record a response to that question and email it to me before this episode goes live, and then you can just tell everyone what your podcast is about?" And then I was like, "Okay, I'll think about it." And like, the next day, he was like, "Dude, I need this by Friday." (laughs) I was like, "Oh, man. So I have like two

14. 40:09 – 43:52

    How to get started and get your first subscribers

    1. CHChris Hutchins40:09

       days to figure out what my podcast is." And I talked to a lot of people and they're like, "What do you love? What do you love talking about?" I was like, "Gosh..." One question someone said was, "When you're at a dinner table, what's the thing that you talk about where you notice that everyone at the table is, like, leaning in and, like, trying to listen and pick your brain on and maybe sends you a text after?" And I was like, "It's probably all the hacks I have for traveling for free, for, you know, getting upgrades, for saving money, for shopping online, for optimizing my health or anything. House hacking, saving money on my rent." And every time I bring those up, people are like, "I like saving money. I wanna travel for free." And they're like leaning in like, "Which credit card do I get? Is this one bad? What about this one?" And I couldn't come up with a name. I had hundreds of names. It was like Life Up- Upgraded, Optimizing Your Life. But every time I described what it was, I just said, you know, "I t- I t- It's Life Upgraded. I'll teach you all the hacks to do this." And then some, someone, I can't remember who, was like, "What about just All the Hacks?" And then I looked and I was like, "Is allthehacks.com available?" I was like, "What? It's available?" It's like, "Ugh, get the domain." And then I very quickly recorded a response to Kevin's question, which was like, "Yes, I'm launching a podcast called All the Hacks." You know like, (laughs) "Here's what it is." And I had to go create a trailer and upload it all in like three days. And I, I think I was fortunate that I just had the time pressure that I had a thing to get out. So I'd say, one, what do you love talking about at the dinner table? What gets you excited? What do people reach out to you for expertise on? What do you spend your time going down deep rabbit holes on the internet on? Because all of those things are gonna be part of your life as a creator. And then two, if there's any way you can force yourself to just have to make a decision, because I get stuck in this analysis paralysis, that's great. So, you know, find some friend of yours that's like, "I'm tweeting about your podcast on Friday," or, "I'm gonna include you in my newsletter next month." And, you know, give yourself an artificial deadline or even a real deadline to kind of just put a stake in the ground. And you could change the name, you could pivot the topic, you could pivot the style of content. All those things can happen after. But just get started, because you know, you'll get to learn whether you like doing it, whether, how it feels. And, and you could always... This is another fun hack. You could create a podcast and make a private feed, and people can add a private feed to their podcast app. So if you wanna get some feedback, you could just send people a URL and say, "Hey, paste this URL in the Apple podcast player and listen to a couple episodes and let me know what you think," before you kind of make that plunge to send it to the whole world.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky42:34

       Awesome. I actually heard that interview with Kevin Rose back in the day.

    3. CHChris Hutchins42:37

       And I checked out the podcast. (laughs) I think I actually subscribed and it felt very natural. So nice job. (laughs) Yeah. Little did you know that (laughs) it was inserted in post-production, recorded on a separate system. Yeah. So people listening to this may feel like, "Hey, I don't have Kevin Rose announcing my podcast. How do I, how do I get started? How do I get my initial traction on my podcast?" Do you have any advice there for people that are just launching, things they could do to get their initial set of subscribers and get the word out and get some kind of traction without, uh, a friend with a huge platform? Yes. I interviewed a guy named Nick Gray. And it was a fun conversation because he wrote a book called The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, and it was all about how to, like, build relationships by throwing the best cocktail parties. And it was very, like, tactical guide. But one of the things he does is he has a friends newsletter. And he basically created a newsletter, and every time he meets someone that is a friend of his, he, you know, sends him a note and says, "Can I add you to my friends newsletter?" People say yes. And he just shares, like, "Here's some cool articles I'm reading. Here's a, you know, a cool thing I'm doing in my life. Here's a picture." It's like a... Instead of waiting till the holidays to send your holiday card to everyone you know that's like, "Here's what happened this year," or maybe now we've... That's what my grandparents did. Now it's just like, "Here's a photo of the family." He just sends it out. I don't even know what the cadence is. It's just, like, every now and then I get an email and it's like, "Oh, this is what Nick's up to. This is pretty cool."

15. 43:52 – 45:07

    How Gary Vaynerchuk used Twitter to establish authority

    1. CHChris Hutchins43:52

       Anyone can subscribe to it. And he shares all these great things. He's like, "Ah, I was thinking about a virtual assistant. Here's 75 things that I, like, dreamed up that I could send to a virtual assistant." It's like, "That's really cool." "Here's how I tweak my Calendly," and, and I sent the Calendly to you. It's like, "I added a few little things in it that I..." You know, he had suggestions to just make it a little more friendly, make it a little more comfortable. Uh, the one I loved was like, "If I've not arrived within two minutes of the start time, here is my cell phone number." Like, "I just wanna make sure I'm prompt and people know that." And so one thing is, before you even get started, find a way to just build an audience of your closest friends, family, colleagues, a- and throw stuff out in the world. You don't have to do it weekly or monthly. You could just send it out every quarter, every six months. It doesn't matter. But start to build something. So I started with a new, uh, I think it was on Mailchimp called Life Updates. And I think I sent, like, five of these out 10 years ago, and I hadn't really sent one out in seven years, but I still had this email newsletter with like, you know, 1,100 people on it that I just collected from life. And so that was one thing. Look, you can always go out and try to find other creative ways to partner with people. So you have a newsletter but you don't have a podcast. Could you, you know, use your newsletter to promote something? Could you find

16. 45:07 – 47:42

    How to take advantage of platforms with built-in growth engines

    1. CHChris Hutchins45:07

       someone who has a platform that you could trade your services for promotional things? I, I, I, uh, can think of an... a couple examples where there's been something where I've been really excited to use and I'm like, "Hey, could I talk to my audience about this thing? And then you could let me use this?" So if there's anything, whether it's consulting services or anything, you could maybe trade those services for other people with an audience to, to share and promote you. I think that happens more often than not. But again, it all matters if you have good content. So I'd say the first thing, the most important thing to grow a piece of content is just have it be good. And it's hard to know what's good. Put it out in the world, see if people like it, maybe get your reps in before you even try some of these growth things. Mm. I think. You know, I was fortunate to have done some public speaking before, so I felt a little more comfortable. But if you... You mentioned MrBeast earlier. He's very public about the fact, if you go back 10 years and look at his YouTube videos, they were not exciting like they are now. And it took him a long time. And I think that's the reality with content, is for almost every person that you see out there and you're like, "Wow, they have this huge audience. It's so awesome," you go back 10 years and you're like, "Oh. Well, their first episode wasn't that awesome. It was actually kind of crazy or it wasn't that interesting." And they got better over time. They learned what their audience liked. They built a following. So those things are all there. Find communities. If you're talking about a very specific thing, I never forgot Gary Vaynerchuk's lesson. Gosh, I... He probably told me this 13 years ago. He was like... When he was starting Wine Library, which most people don't maybe even know that that's what he was originally known for, he wanted to build this business. And so he went on Twitter and he looked for every single person that asked a question about wine, and he at replied them back. And so a tactic that I think could work really well is, for me, I'm like, "I, I love travel. I love points and miles." I can just search Twitter and find every person on Twitter, every person on Reddit, every person on a, a forum, whatever, that's asking a question about the thing my podcast answers, and go in and try to be a value add to them. Mm-hmm. I guarantee that if you have a podcast and your favorite thing is quilting, and in your bio on Twitter, maybe Twitter's not the right platform but let's just go with the analogy, right? Your bio says like, "Top quilting podcast," and you go find everyone that's asking questions about quilting and answer their questions with strong, like, good answers, they're gonna look at your bio and be like, "Oh my gosh. This person knows their stuff about this topic. Let's go see what they do." And you, you have these advocates, they share in their communities, and it grows over time. I'll come back to one more tactic, which I didn't do, but there's no built-in distribution engine in podcasting. TikTok,

17. 47:42 – 48:57

    The power of in-person interviews

    1. CHChris Hutchins47:42

       you make a TikTok video, TikTok sends it to like 100 people. And if no one likes it, it dies. But if like a few people like it, they send it to more people and more people. And YouTube does the same thing. Instagram Reels does the same thing. Podcasting doesn't have that. And so it's just a slow growth effort, and you just have to be okay with that. But what I didn't do early on, which you can do, is you can make clips of your podcast. And you could put those clips on these channels that do have that built-in distribution. And if those clips do take off, you know, they could build a massive audience. And so, uh, there's a guy, Danny Miranda. He has a podcast, and he launched, didn't have a huge following, but he created clips of every single episode. Lots of clips. He didn't know what was the most interesting piece of content so he made a clip for everything. He built millions and millions of views on TikTok and Instagram just by creating content from his podcast that drove downloads over to his podcast, helped him build his audience. And he built an audience on social faster than I have, a- and bigger than I currently have out of just...... being all in on distributing his content on platforms that had growth engines built into it.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky48:48

       That last point is interesting because what I've been hearing, and I've actually experienced it, so I have TikTok clips, I have YouTube videos and YouTube shorts, and I find

18. 48:57 – 51:27

    How to pitch to other podcasts

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky48:57

       they drive followers within the platform, and downloads, and views. But I haven't seen any actual impact on the podcast. And maybe people can measure or maybe they can tell something's happening. But from what I hear and what I've seen, it... I don't know if it actually drives a lot of downloads, but it's still really useful. It's totally really useful to have an awesome TikTok account and an awesome YouTube account.

    2. CHChris Hutchins49:16

       He said, "Look, I don't know if it drives downloads, but it drives brand awareness for me."

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky49:20

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    4. CHChris Hutchins49:20

       And he's had multiple guests be like, "Oh, yeah, I'd love to go on your show." One of the clips he made, you know, like he made a clip talking about Ray Dalio, and Ray Dalio was like reposting this clip. And so he was getting a lot of engagement with people that would be very difficult to reach out to saying, "I have this many downloads." But because he was getting thousands or even millions of views across a platform, it gave him the credibility to do a lot of things that he might not have been able to do. Now, then he's gone and translated that into, "Well, let's go bring some of these people with really, really wide distribution of their podcast onto my show, and let's do an interview with them." Then for the most part, people are like, "Oh, let's distribute, you know, that content to my audience that you had me on." One thing he did that was so good is he did all of his videos in-person. So he would fly to someone, record in-person, and the quality of the video for an in-person video was just so much better than you get doing a remote thing. It's a lot harder, it's a lot more work, and it doesn't even impact the audio, but he would make the best quality clips. And Erica Kulberg does the same thing. And she would deliver them and he would deliver them to the guests. And now the guest starts using those clips because he spent so much time trying to come up with the best clips, the highest quality, best produced that made his guests look amazing. And then those guests were much more likely to share those in their audiences. And all of a sudden you've got a lot of momentum. Does that translate to downloads? I'll give you a little shout-out. Danny has a paid newsletter on Substack where he actually breaks down all his downloads and all his tactics on how this is all working for him. Uh, and it's fascinating. It's called In the DM, because he did a lot of early on recruiting with guests in, in DMs on social media. But it, it's to be seen whether it can h- how much of an impact it can have on your podcast, but it certainly builds other things that are, I'd say, like indirect attri- there's no direct attribution, but that doesn't mean that things aren't overall going up. And then the last one is finding other podcasts that you can go on as an expert in some area. So hopefully you're starting a podcast

19. 51:27 – 57:36

    Equipment and products for producing podcasts

    1. CHChris Hutchins51:27

       because you believe something is exciting in the world, you love it, you have a passion about it, you're an expert in it. Take that thing and go present yourself to other podcasts. And they all have listeners that are listening to podcasts, so, like it's the best medium. Because yes, someone who likes short form 60-second videos is maybe not the best target demo to listen to a one-hour audio only thing. Like those two are very different behaviors. But if you could find something you're really good at and present a value add to people to come on their show, then that could help you build your audience while adding value to their audience. And I think as someone who gets a lot of pitches from people to come on their podcast, I will only caveat it with, do the work to make sure you're really presenting a compelling pitch. You're gonna get a lot of nos. That's just how it works. I've pitched myself to go on lots of shows and sometimes I get nos also. Many times I get nos. But I never send an email that's like someone would read it and be like, "This person obviously doesn't know what they're talking about." But I get so many that are like, "Oh, I'd love to have my client come on your podcast. Uh, they love talking about building a business." And I was like, "Well, I don't really interview people about that." You know? Like if, if someone came to me and was like, "Here is a tactic to improve your life that I think your audience would benefit from, and here's why my expertise makes me the best person to talk about it." I'd be much more open to it because they actually understood what my show is about.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky52:51

       Yeah. I get at least one email a day with one of these pitches and I know exactly what you mean. Which I only don't reply, because it's just not even worth...

    3. CHChris Hutchins52:59

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky52:59

       ... trying to convince them they're not a fit.

    5. CHChris Hutchins53:00

       Yes.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky53:01

       Shifting gears a little bit, I wanna talk about your stack, your podcasting stack. What do you use on software? What do you use on hardware? Mic? Headphones? What do you recommend?

    7. CHChris Hutchins53:11

       On a mic, I started out with the ATR 2100x. I think it is a great entry level mic. It's under $100. You can use like old analog XLR cables if you want, but it's also USB. That mic got me through 50 episodes. I have since upgraded to a Shure SM7B, which is like the XLR compatriot to... I think you have a Shure MV7?

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky53:36

       Uh, yeah, I have the USB version, if that's what...

    9. CHChris Hutchins53:38

       Yeah, exactly. And those are two great kind of upgrade mics that I think ha-... You know, I like the sound quality a little better. But every time I'm traveling and I'm like not sure if something's gonna come up, if I can make a recording, if I have to record the intro, do a remote interview, I still carry the ATR- ATR 2100x because I just think it's an easy thing to have. And it works really well. I record everything on Riverside. I put everything into Descript. I- I plug my XLR mic into a Focusrite, uh, Scarlett 2i2, which is like a audio interface. I- I would say I've gone a little bit overboard with video. So we were talking right before this started, I have like a- a Sony A7C which is like a mirrorless, full frame camera behind a $60 Amazon teleprompter so that I can make direct eye contact with the camera while an iPad that's... I don't know, it's like 10-year-old iPad, sits under it and projects as a second screen for my computer.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky54:34

        Yeah, if you're, um...

    11. CHChris Hutchins54:35

        Using this...

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky54:35

        ... you're not watching this on YouTube, you gotta check out the YouTube video at least for five seconds to see Chris just staring at you. I've never seen this on a podcast video before.

    13. CHChris Hutchins54:44

        Yeah.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky54:44

        It's the future.

    15. CHChris Hutchins54:45

        So I have that set up using a iPad running an app called Duet Display.I don't do the editing. I've worked with one editor that uses Audition and one that uses Pro Tools. I don't have a strong opinion there. Oh, my favorite of all, a friend of mine, Brendan Mulligan, started this company called Podpage. And so for people who don't know a lot about how podcasting works, there's a hosting platform. I use Simplecast. I liked that they were one of the only hosting platforms that has a really affordable self-serve option, but also has a really great pro, all the features that you would want in the future for monetization, everything, so that you wouldn't have to switch. Not to say that, you know, you couldn't switch easily. It's pretty easy to switch. How it works is you upload an MP3 file. You write out all your show notes, the title of the episode, everything, and they create an RSS feed for you. You could literally just create an RSS feed, right? Like, you, that's all it really is, and you could host everything. You're on your own on AWS or something, but they make it really easy for not that much money, and then you go distribute that RSS feed to all of these different players. So the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, et cetera. And, and one of the things that's amazing is this site, Podpage. You submit the RSS feed to this website, and they go in and say, "Oh, here's the description of the podcast. Here's each episode. Here's the cover art you submitted for that episode. Here's the title. Here's the show notes." And they just auto-generate a website for you, and then they give you the tools, like, a WordPress style set of tools to go and change the header, change the descriptions. Like, you could go in and tweak things, but every night on Wednesday, or I guess Wednesday morning at 2:00 AM, my podcast goes live. And at 2:05, Podpage has already noticed the RSS feed is up-to-date, and that site is posted. I don't have to do anything. They even monitor for the, like, slug, like the URL slug I put in as a "Check out this podcast at this URL," and Podpage says, "Oh, that's the URL you want them to check out? We're gonna inherit that and put it in, so you don't even have to give us any information, and we'll just know the URL that you wanna set this episode up on." I think that is a super simple way to build a podcasting website. The only other thing, we didn't talk at all about analytics at all, but I use Chartable for analytics, and podcast analytics are a little crazy because you don't have a lot to go on. But Chartable is a really cool analytics platform that becomes really interesting when you start to cross-promo with other shows or, or run ads for other shows or do anything like that, because they basically can track IP address of downloads, and I say track, like I don't know who's listening to what from where in any kind of very specific way. But what I do know is if I'm doing a cross-promo with another show where I'm saying, "Hey, check out a podcast I love," and they're saying, "Check out a podcast I love," it

20. 57:36 – 1:01:28

    How many downloads it takes in order to be taken seriously

    1. CHChris Hutchins57:36

       actually says, oh, how many of the people that downloaded this episode actually went and listened to this other episode. So you can get direct attribution of podcast listeners going from one podcast to another. So that is a, a really important tool in my kind of running a podcast toolkit, but it, it doesn't matter as much until you start focusing on growth and, and doing promotions and stuff like that.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky57:58

       Awesome. I, I host on Substack. There's maybe one difference. I use Podpage for my site. My, uh, producer/editor people actually use Descript/DScript also. That's kind of what they use for editing professionally. So it's good for amateur hour and good for professionals as well. I, I use Chartable. Something is up with my Chartable. I think I've told you, it doesn't count my Spotify downloads. That's kind of a pain in the butt, but it's still-

    3. CHChris Hutchins58:21

       Which is funny, by the way, because for anyone listening who doesn't know, Spotify actually owns Chartable. So like, the one platform your, your Chartable doesn't get good download data from is the one that it, it is owned by.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky58:33

       Yep. I do not understand what is going on. Uh, I've talked to them and they don't know what the fix is. It doesn't matter anyway. I get enough analytics other places. There's one other site I'd recommend called Podstatus that just gives you a quick access to where you're on the charts every day. Gives you these cool line charts, which Chartable sort of does, but it's like, a lot simpler on Podstatus, but otherwise ...

    5. CHChris Hutchins58:53

       Awesome.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky58:53

       ... all the same stuff. One other question real quick. Say someone launches their podcast. What would be like a good download goal to aim for when you're getting started that's like, hmm, maybe this is working. Do you have like a sense of a threshold to try to hit?

    7. CHChris Hutchins59:08

       I wouldn't think of a threshold to hit because you could launch with a huge audience and have a terrible podcast, and you might hit 10,000 downloads and it would be crazy, right? Like, you would feel really good. So I would care more about the direction than about the number, because even the Apple charts, they're momentum driven. You could have one download, but if you, you know, the next week you have a lot more and a lot more and a lot more, you would actually rise in the charts faster than someone whose podcast is kind of stagnantly doing X number of downloads. If you have 3,000 downloads an episode or something like that, you're in the top 1% or so. So, you know, you don't have to get to crazy numbers to be in the top of the charts.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky59:53

       Yeah.

    9. CHChris Hutchins59:53

       I would say.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky59:54

        I heard a similar number, 3,000.

    11. CHChris Hutchins59:55

        The top podcasts are doing, you know, millions an episode, but like, that's like top 10, top 20, top 30. The next tranche of like the top 50 are doing probably hundreds of thousands of downloads, but outside of the top 200, 300, it's in the ten thousands of downloads per episode, and this is a little bit variable if you have a daily show or a weekly show or something, but I would say if you cross 10,000 downloads an episode, you are now taken seriously by a lot of people. So I had conversations early on with networks like iHeartMedia and like, you know, different podcast networks that wanted to bring in the show and would, you know, do all that, and that, that all started at like 10 to 15, maybe 20,000 downloads an episode, but by no means would I expect anyone to get there right away. Even I didn't get there right away. It took time. Even with a few, you know, friends to make announcements and stuff, it took time. So forget how many downloads you get on your first three episodes, because you're probably gonna tell everyone in the world and you're gonna use all your social capital to boost those, and then look at how many downloads you get on your fourth and fifth and sixth, and does it go up? Does it stay stagnant?... Apple and Spotify actually give you really cool data about how long people are listening, do they drop off halfway through? Uh, you could start to be like, "Ooh," you know, uh, "Do people stay for the whole episode?" I will say, I haven't found a good site for benchmarks, but it's like, you know, uh, the average podcast, I think, probably has less than 50% of listeners by the end. So don't be s- don't be turned off when you say, "Wow,

21. 1:01:28 – 1:09:02

    Using Overcast as a growth lever

    1. CHChris Hutchins1:01:28

       only 40% of people made it to the end." Like, that's not horrible. Like, I think my best episode, it might be like 65 or 70% of people made it all the way to the end. It's not 99.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:37

       What I like about those charts is you can see what percentage of people skip the ads and then just keep continuing. It's like-

    3. CHChris Hutchins1:01:42

       Yeah. (laughs)

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:42

       ... a bump. The mid- mid rolls and the pre-rolls.

    5. CHChris Hutchins1:01:44

       And it's not as- it's not as high as I thought.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:46

       10, 20%, depending on-

    7. CHChris Hutchins1:01:47

       Maybe 15%. I- it depends.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:48

       Yeah. Not bad at all.

    9. CHChris Hutchins1:01:51

       Yeah.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:51

        Any last words of wisdom on the world of podcasting, starting a podcast, continuing a podcast?

    11. CHChris Hutchins1:01:57

        Yeah. I've got three things for you. One, this is a little bit of a financial outlay, but I think it's really interesting. There's this podcast app called Overcast, and it's not the biggest in the world, but you can run ads in it. And the thing I like is that the ads are much more reasonably priced than a lot of other places. And they're very dynamic, so I would encourage anyone listening to, like, watch it for a few weeks if you have a podcast and you wanna experiment. Because the same ad could be $200 one week and $700 the next week, depending on how much demand there is for that category, so you can wait and hold out. But what I like is, they take your art from your podcast, and then you can rewrite your description, and they tell you how many people saw the ad, how many people tapped on it, and how many people subscribed to the podcast after seeing the ad. A- and technically they could also listen to the trailer, they could listen to an episode. And they even give you benchmarks of what to expect. So for a few hundred dollars, you could go in and run an ad for your podcast. Now, I would say in all of the experiments I've done with them, I've probably garnered, I'm looking at some numbers, like hundreds of subscribers, not thousands. And I've probably spent maybe $1,000. Podcasts, you know, the average cost to acquire a podcast listener, if you're doing paid marketing, is about anywhere from three to $10, depending on the appeal of your show, what kind of audience. I'm sure it could go way over that for a business show. And- and by business, I mean, like, B2B-focused kind of show. So let's say, let's call it $5. So it's not gonna be the best way to grow your audience. At some point, if you're at enough scale that you have ads in your show and you know how much a customer's worth, like, maybe it makes sense to pay $5, because your LTV of a podcast listener is $7. But getting it- started, that's not you. What you can do is say, "Okay, what was my click-through rate on the ad?" Which will tell you if do- someone doesn't click, it's either not a good description or it's not a good set of content, or your cover art's not good. So you can kind of think about, "Okay, I actually need to figure out the podcast before I even have content." And you could run this ad with a trailer, before you even record anything, and then it's like, "Okay, well people tapped on it. How many of them subscribed?" And I like to use this as a way to say, "Okay, well, the benchmark said I was gonna get about 50 subscriptions for this ad that was gonna get 1,000 taps, and I got seven." So these aren't people who weren't interested. These are people who read the description and were like, "This is interesting," and they didn't subscribe. That means my content probably sucks (laughs) . Like, that means someone listened to a trailer or an episode or something more than the description and the- the image and decided, "This is not for me." Maybe they looked at your episodes. I- I don't know. But if they don't tap on it, if you're supposed to get, like, a 2% click-through rate and you get .5, then it's like actually the topic or the way I describe it or the cover sucks. And so I like that as a way to, for a few hundred dollars, get a good test. I've even thought of running, like, an A/B test of the same, like, podcast with two different descriptions. I wish you could do it with two different cover arts. So, I don't know. That- that's like a- a cheap way to do a little bit of testing. One other thing that I'll share is I just try to share the podcast everywhere. So you've probably noticed that in all of my emails, at the bottom it's like, "Oh, great talk to you, Chris." And then it says, "Hey, wanna upgrade your life, money, or travel? Check out my podcast and newsletter." Like, I'm taking every opportunity I can to let anyone know about it, because you never know what'll happen. And my favorite example, especially when it's written like that, it doesn't come across like a big, bulky signature, was we bought some floor mats. And one of them didn't fit, and I was going back and forth with the customer service person and they actually replied and they were like, "Oh, thanks for sending me that podcast. I really appreciate it." Like, they thought I was just randomly telling them, "Hey," like, "if- if you want to upgrade your life, check this out." They didn't know it was my signature. And so I got a new listener from customer service from a floor mat company. Which, by the way, here- here's one hack that I also learned from the floor mat company. Come to my show for hacks. But if you're ever trying to get a deal on something, that floor mat company, I just pulled up the live chat and just asked, and I said, "Hey, I'm looking at these floor mats. Think you could give me a discount?" You know, "I'm trying to ... it's a little expensive." And then he was like, "Yeah, refresh your cart, it'll be 15% off." So, you know, we're not gonna talk ... This episode's not about all the hacks, but there's one cool one.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:11

        We need more hacks. Well, I think we'll get to that at the end. Keep going.

    13. CHChris Hutchins1:06:14

        And then the last is, I think it's fun that podcasts you can experiment. I started out doing guests, and then I did some Q&A episodes from questions listeners asked me, and then I recently did some solo episodes. I was really interested in the idea of all the ways you can rent and swap and exchange your home to stay in vacation homes around the world, so I just researched it for, like, I don't know, th- two or three days and just did a 45-minute episode of me talking. There was no guest. There were no questions. It was just me talking. And that works. I'm gonna start another series of episodes where, instead of interviewing people about an expertise topic, I'm gonna interview people who are really dialed into a country. So I've got a guy who's written a handful of the Lonely Planet guidebooks for Japan and is in Japan right now for three weeks, getting dialed in, what are the latest, coolest stuff. He's gonna come back and we're just gonna r- record an episode about everything you need to know about going to Japan.... and I'm gonna add on about 15 minutes, I think, at the end without him where I just talk about all the tricks for using your points, your miles, deals and discounts. Like, there's this new airline in LA that's super cheap to fly to Japan but it comes with some caveats. So it'll be like two-thirds guide to going to Japan, one-third guide to getting there for cheap. And like, there aren't a lot of businesses or ideas where you could just have all of these things that you can experiment with.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:34

        And that you could do them so fast. Yeah.

    15. CHChris Hutchins1:07:36

        Yeah.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:36

        I love that.

    17. CHChris Hutchins1:07:37

        If I interview you, which I'm doing right after this, so anyone listening to this that wants to hear a little of Lenny's story, come check, check out, uh, All the Hacks. And, and for 20 minutes we talk about some topic that's a little off-topic. I've sometimes just taken that and submitted it as a bonus episode on Friday. 15, 20 minutes. You know, it's not my regular show, but you could just... There's so many ways you can experiment and find out what you like, and then you might say, "Wow, you know what? I really like doing the solo things." Or maybe you have a co-host on for a week and you're like, "Oh, that's so much better." So I just love that it gives you a good opportunity to experiment with stuff, find the thing you love, because I think my big takeaway is once you find the thing you really love to talk about, all of that, it just makes everything so much easier because it's natural and you would do it for free. And, you know, the harsh reality of this whole game is like, there's probably gonna be a number of months or years you have to do it for free before it takes off, so if you don't love it, that's gonna be a painful few years.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:31

        To build on that, I find the same thing with a newsletter, same with a podcast. The last thing you wanna do is create a job for yourself that you hate. And so picking a topic-

    19. CHChris Hutchins1:08:40

        Yes.

    20. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:40

        ... that is just not interesting to you, picking a medium that is like painful to you, there's no reason to do that. Like, you may become like a TikTok star and, and you hit a viral video, but then you have to make viral videos for the rest of your life, and that's no fun. You have to think about like, "Do I want to do this for years and years and years?" And you can stop, but then it becomes hard if it becomes a really good source of income. So

22. 1:09:02 – 1:09:06

    Lightning round

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:02

       that's something to think about. Like, just don't create a job for yourself that you just don't, don't want.

Episode duration: 1:17:34