288 Austin Petersmith - Publishing Voices That Yearn to be Heard

Episode Summary

Austin Petersmith is the Founder and CEO of Racket, an organization that provides the easiest way to tell audio stories and connect with people who want to hear them. Austin joins today’s episode to share his experience as an online community builder. Austin and his team at Racket amplify voices in the audio industry so that those who want to have their stories told can have that opportunity. Today, Austin and Harry talk about podcast monetization, the incredible progress that has been made in podcasting technology and what inspired Austin to make the jump from journalism to entrepreneurship. Austin speaks to the challenges he’s faced as a creator and why he feels so passionately about the work he does.

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Key Takeaways

06:30 – Founder and CEO of Racket.com, Austin Petersmith joins the show to share his background as an online community builder and how he’s focused this skill on helping the podcasting community

13:42 – Austin reflects on what inspired him to launch Capiche

20:57 – Making the shift from journalism to entrepreneurship

22:23 – Racket’s origin story

32:20 – Amplifying voices who want their stories told

39:05 – Austin speaks to the work he’s doing with Podcash and other trends he’s noticed in the podcasting industry

50:30 – Something Austin has changed his mind about recently and the most misunderstood thing about him

53:56 – Harry thanks Austin for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can connect with him and learn more about Racket

Tweetable Quotes

“Email allows you to build a direct relationship with an audience. And that’s what makes email newsletters a really powerful thing. A person subscribes to your newsletter and you have that direct relationship that’s not at the whim of Facebook or any other platform that can sit between you and your audience.” (10:16) (Austin)

“Community and user generated content are things that have always inspired me. If you can provide the tools to help someone put some sort of thought from their brain out onto the Internet where another person can get value from it, that’s just a magical thing.” (16:13) (Austin)

“The more I learned, the more I realized that something is broken here for sure. Because so many people have something to say and this medium [podcasting] is working for so few of them.” (26:05) (Austin)

“What we see as a problem is that the number of people that are publishing their voice online today is way smaller than the number of people who are interested in publishing their voice online. And that’s what we want to solve.” (32:20) (Austin)

“As we look at ways to help the creators on Racket monetize, I’m really interested in how we can decentralize that portion.” (49:50) (Austin)