343 Seth Silvers - The Intersection of Business, Storytelling, and Podcasting

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:05

So Seth Silvers, founder and CEO, story on media and marketing, thank you so much for joining me on podcast junkies.

Seth Silvers

0:06 - 0:15

Thank you, Harry. This is great. And yeah, super happy to be on. This is one of the shows that I find myself listening to throughout the year and always enjoying.

Harry Duran

0:15 - 0:46

Well, I appreciate that. You know, it's as you might relate to and given you're in the production world and in the podcasting space, sometimes you feel like you're just in your own empty room recording content and you're just wondering like, who's listening to this? And so when I go to a podcast, I was just at a indoor farming conference for my second show, vertical farming podcast, and it was nice to see some like fans of the show kind of tell me they were like bingeing the episodes on the way to the conference. And so it's really humbling, you know, when you get to connect with listeners directly.

Seth Silvers

0:46 - 1:12

Yeah. And for me, like, I'm more on the we produce shows for different clients and so it's less of like the listener relationship, but sometimes we get to see that for clients and we're with clients in those settings for them, and it's like, oh, this is really making an impact. And it's clear that people are listening to the shows and they're enjoying them. It's good to have those moments to remind ourselves of, like, this actually really matters. This is actually a really significant medium.

Harry Duran

1:12 - 1:16

So remind me again, was it a email outreach from you where we connected?

Seth Silvers

1:16 - 1:25

1St first, I want to say it was probably one of the conferences, I think the first time that I remember meeting you was maybe a podfest a couple of years ago.

Harry Duran

1:25 - 1:25

Okay.

Seth Silvers

1:26 - 1:30

And at that conference I was talking about like NFT integration and crypto integration.

Harry Duran

1:31 - 1:33

Oh yeah, that's right, that's right.

Seth Silvers

1:33 - 2:01

And so that was something that for about a year I was spending a lot of time like really trying to figure out. And I still think that's kind of like the future of memberships is going to be that type of technology. But I was really putting a lot of effort and time into figuring out like, is this the right time for podcasters to be able to use some of this stuff in order to engage with their community? So I think that was the first time. And then, you know how it goes, we run into each other at a couple different conferences and have conversations here and there.

Harry Duran

2:01 - 2:39

I think what's great about my show, specifically because of the nature of it being super meta, and with the last couple episodes, I think some of the past guests have been referring it to as podcast therapy. Cause that you could just come on and just kind of, like, talk about what we're seeing behind the scenes. And, you know, we've all got our polished appearances on for the shows and for the shows we produce for clients. But, like, you know, it's always interesting to see what's happening and what folks are going. So bid you to talk a little shop on this episode. So just to kind of rewind the clock back a little bit, I know you got a little bit of a marketing background, but I'm curious, you know, not having to go through the entire resume, but talk a little bit about the roads that led you to podcasting.

Seth Silvers

2:39 - 3:37

Yeah. So I started in the nonprofit space, started nonprofit in high school. Fell in love with storytelling, and that was when I really began to realize, like, I loved bringing people together. I loved the idea that you can bring a lot of people together from different backgrounds with a good story. Like, if we can all kind of, like, stories really bring people together in unique ways. Thought I was going to stay in the nonprofit space, and then as I went through college, was kind of realizing, like, man, I really like the business side of things and felt like my giftings were maybe going a little bit that direction and ended up becoming a marketing director for a nonprofit. And after college, for about two or three years, I was kind of thinking, so you're, like, building a business in the back of your mind? And so I was kind of, like, filling out notebooks and trying, I didn't know what I was doing, but I was, you know, writing down business plans. And in the question that was in my head was, would it work for businesses to market through storytelling? Like, that was the question that for a couple years was just kind of, it was like, the lens that I was looking at media through.

Harry Duran

3:37 - 3:38

Sure.

Seth Silvers

3:38 - 5:05

And so I'd see these little examples here and there, but at the end of the day, I realized I support the brands, the companies I love. I support them because I know more about their story. I know more about them than just, here's the product that we sell. And oftentimes, I pay more for companies that I align with their values and their story. And so I was beginning to realize, like, this isn't, I'm not shaking this. Like, I feel really connected to this kind of ideology, if you will. And so I started story on media. This was eight years ago, in 2015. And so I started the company and said, I'm going to build an agency that helps small businesses market through storytelling. And I thought that was really, really specific but it was really, really broad, and you can kind of call anything and everything storytelling. So for about five years, got to work with a ton of different small businesses, some medium, some big, but mostly small businesses, helping them to craft their stories, helping them to figure out kind of the media landscape. Wasn't really thinking about podcasting, was really trying to figure out what is the right medium for businesses to be able to communicate through storytelling. And then I started my own podcast, which we've since kind of retired or sunset it. It's still out there, but we're not actively publishing to it. And I began to see in my own show how much of a connection I had with the people that were listening. It was really odd. It was so much different than any other medium. And I remember my show was not big. We would get, like, I don't know, a couple hundred listens.

Harry Duran

5:05 - 5:06

Sure, sure.

Seth Silvers

5:06 - 5:39

And it was a local show. And I remember, like, walking across the street and some stranger was like, oh, you're the guy on the podcast. And I was like, what in the world? Like, so I talked with him for, like, 10 seconds before, like, that little stoplight turns, and it was just this interesting revelation of, oh, this is a really unique medium for connecting with people. It's kind of like many people that have gotten into podcast production. Start your own, and then you start producing a couple others and start, you know, okay, well, I can help with other people that are podcasting that maybe don't know what they're doing, or maybe I'm, like, half a step ahead of them.

Harry Duran

5:39 - 5:39

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

5:40 - 6:32

And so I had a couple shows, and then in 2020, came to kind of a fork in the road business wise, where I was still doing a ton of different projects. And I realized, like, I really need to focus. Like, I either need to, like, focus and actually start to see the business grow, or I need to shut it down. But it wasn't doing me any good to continue to kind of just, like, say yes to everything and pretend I'm focused, when in reality, I was kind of all over the place. And so that was when I took a step back, looked at podcasting, and realized our podcasting clients are the ones that I enjoy working with the most. I feel like we're giving them really good value, and they've been with us for longer than our other clients. And so it's like, all right, it's kind of checking these boxes. So I gave myself four to six months to bring in new podcasts and clients and to kind of rebuild the business. And I say the rest is history because I'm still doing it and I want to keep doing it.

Harry Duran

6:32 - 6:33

Yeah, yeah.

Seth Silvers

6:33 - 6:39

But it wasn't necessarily easy, but it's been the better phrase would be like, the rest was rocky, but I've been more okay with it.

Harry Duran

6:40 - 7:16

Lots of unpacked there. I'm curious, when you talk to businesses in that early work about storytelling, the importance of storytelling and building that into your company's brand and marketing, for folks that are interested in that topic, that they have a business and they want to maybe change up how they approach how they sell or how they position themselves to their market, what are some things that companies should be thinking about and maybe have to kind of repackage what they currently do from a marketing perspective, but what do they have to think about if they want to be perceived as a company that really puts story first in terms of their messaging?

Seth Silvers

7:16 - 9:39

Yeah, there's so much to dissect there. When I started story on that was right around the time that Donald Miller published Storybrand, and I actually remembered one of the videos that I saw. I think it was either in college or shortly after college, that just absolutely stuck with me, was a TED talk by Nancy Duarte. And she was breaking down the hero's journey, but also breaking down in a very analytical way, some of the best presentations of our time and speeches. So she went into, like, Martin Luther King junior s speech, she went into Steve Jobs, she went into all these different things and broke them down. And I began to see, like, oh, there's a science of storytelling. And then I remember learning about the hero's journey, and that's become a lot more popularized now. And I think people realize, like, oh, you're going on this journey, but a lot of businesses are still getting it wrong because they think that it's their hero's journey. And I think from a marketing perspective, that the simple shift of realizing that as a business that you are a guide and not the hero, that, like, your customer is the hero. And they have dreams and they have passions and they have things that they want to accomplish. And hopefully your role is like Yoda on the back of Luke whispering things into their ear. That kind of, you know, you're whispering your services and your products and your blogs and your podcast episodes, and hopefully those things are helping them get to their dreams. That simple shift is huge for businesses. And then when you start creating the next piece is when you start actually creating content that is positioning you as a guide that's saying, hey, we want to help guide you. I think from a podcasting standpoint, it's such a perfect medium to be able to do that. And I like to advise our clients and even when I'm working on shows, be like, man, what if only one person listened to this show? Like, would it change their life? Would it make enough of an impact for it to be worth it? And I think we should be looking at it in that way. And so I think when it's coming back to, like, how can brands do this to make sure they're kind of story forward? Think you have to get clarity on whose story you're telling and what content you're telling, but then you have to actually be telling the stories. Like, there's plenty of data now that shows your audience is actually expecting you to be talking about the impact that you're making. It's not kind of like if they're wondering, like, where is the content? Which is very different than it was ten years ago.

Harry Duran

9:39 - 10:38

Yeah, it's always interesting when you come across the hero's journey and Joseph Campbell, and then you start to learn about what George Lucas did and how he met and then how that drove what he created with Star wars. And obviously, that's an iconic movie. I actually saw it in theaters and dating myself for sure, but it was when done correctly. And you see it occasionally in movies and obviously books as well that are well done. There's something about it that clearly, as the person consuming the content, you can resonate with because, you know, we're all going through those heroes journeys in our own lives, whether someone is there to document it or whether we're even aware that we're going through a hero's journey. If we look back, and if I look back at my life, I'm like, oh, wow, I can see those arcs. I can see the peaks, I can see some valleys. I can see just kind of like figuring out what it is I wanted to do with my life. And it could be like a hero's journey with my business or a hero's journey with my personal life. And you just, once you see that framework, it's like you can't unsee it because you start to see it in different places.

Seth Silvers

10:38 - 10:45

Yeah, you for sure can't unsee it there. It's. Yeah, it kind of changes the way that you look at things for a long time, which I think is great.

Harry Duran

10:45 - 10:50

Have you noticed or have you been able to map a hero's journey in your own personal life?

Seth Silvers

10:50 - 11:53

That's a good question. I haven't thought about that. I haven't looked at it from that perspective. I mean, there's certainly, I feel very aware of the role of guides and like, the role of mentors in different places. In college, there was several kind of business mentors that I got to see them build very successful businesses so that they could give back. That was the motivation behind it. And some of their businesses were very connected to a cause and others were not at all. It was like, well, here's an opportunity. Somebody's going to be filling this need, so we're going to fill this need and do it really well and make a ton of money so that we can give to things that we care about. And so those were some people that were super influential in my life and kind of helped to going into college, I really thought it was you make an impact or you make money, and if you make money, you're funding the impact, and if you make an impact, then you're not making much money. You're just kind of doing the Lord's work, if you will. And so that the separation between that broke down for me where I realized, like, oh, business is actually a very good way to make an impact.

Harry Duran

11:53 - 11:54

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

11:54 - 12:45

And so there's definitely been guides along the way. You know, even now, I feel like I've tried to surround myself with other podcast agencies and build relationships with other agency owners that some would say are competitors. And in one way, that's me surrounding myself with kind of a collective guide that I can kind of learn from. For maybe I'm doing things better in one way than this person, but they're doing things better in one way than the other. But probably collectively in my community, there's somebody that's doing something better in every aspect of our business. And so I think that I've definitely tried to surround myself with those guides because I feel like I'm building everything from scratch. I didn't, like, work for a big agency before this, so it's kind of all felt like, okay, well, I want to do this, so how are we going to figure out how to do it? It's usually not my great ideas.

Harry Duran

12:45 - 13:33

Yeah, I think I definitely like that idea because I own an agency as well and I've had several agency owners on this show and you as well. And I think there's this idea of abundance mindset. It's not really that scarcity mindset where you're just like, oh, there's only a certain amount of business. And I've even, like, niched down into, like, specifically like, who I want to work with. And I'm very spiritual. So kind of like, lean towards that in terms of, like, the types of shows we work on, the types of shows that light me up, and I just seem to attract, like, that type of business and those types of, like, business owners. I've even, you know, through some work I've done with a coach, I've, if you look at my LinkedIn, it says I'm the cosmic conduit for awakened souls ready to transmit their message. So it's a very, like, polarizing message because it'll attract or immediately repel people, which is great. Which I always tell people, like, should be repelling people as fast as you're attracting them as well.

Seth Silvers

13:33 - 14:38

Yeah, I think that's great. And, I mean, you do. We've seen similar things of, like, even on my own journey, I just think like attracts like. So at any given time, probably over half of our clients are, I'm going to be pretty aligned with on a values level. And that hasn't necessarily been intentional. I think it's just kind of what ends up happening. And I've seen it with other companies, too, where if their goal is just to produce as many podcasts as we can and just get as many episodes out as we can and as much content out as we can, and there's a place for that. I'm not necessarily saying that's always bad, but the type of clients that you're going to attract are probably going to be clients that are coming in and valuing quantity over quality. And so I think in almost any way, it's like we're probably transmitting our values in more ways than we think. And that's something. In the last year, our team has gotten really, really tried to, like, get really clear on is what are our values and how are they guiding us? And we've been more clear on communicating those to our clients and prospective clients as kind of a filter of like, do you fit or do you not? And I've really liked that.

Harry Duran

14:38 - 15:03

You mentioned values a couple times there. And I think about as companies and as business owners and having worked with coaches myself, there's always the inevitable, like, let's work on our vision statement, let's work on our values. Let's, what are we, you know, aligned with? What do we represent? Who do we want to work with? What lights us up? When you think about your personal values, do you feel like they just evolved over time? Or if you even think back to growing up, did you inherit them from your family?

Seth Silvers

15:03 - 16:48

I think the personal values are a lot harder to figure out than the business values the last six months or so, I've been going through the process of, we're kind of like self implementing EOS or the entrepreneur operating system. And so, long story short, they have this, like, two page kind of business plan that has your values and where you want to be in a year and a lot of really specific information that's super, super valuable. But it caused going beginning to, like, work through that caused me to really think through, like, the business values and the personal values. Like, there should definitely be alignment. And so then it caused me to start to wonder my personal values. There's definitely a lot of values. Like, I really value spirituality and my faith. And a lot of that does come from my family and community, but also how I interact with that looks so different now than it did when, you know, I was maybe 18 years old. And so I think there's been evolution in how maybe I interact with these values where it's like, man, family is super important, and faith is really important to me. But there's also, like, added values to that now in how I interact with those are different. So I think the personal ones have stayed the same, but they evolve as, just as I become a more mature person. And then I think on the business side, it was really looking at, like, what are some of the core convictions? Like, what are some of the flaws flags that I want to, like, put in the ground for our company and almost thinking about how do some of the values that I have and how I feel like I've been given a lens to look at the world differently than you have. And I think that's a beautiful thing. And so then I think the values for the company was kind of like, thinking through, how do these values translate to, like, economics to, like, a business? And kind of thinking about it from that way.

Harry Duran

16:48 - 18:25

It's interesting. As a business owner, you know, you did mention family, and it's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently because coming from a corporate mindset, I was in corporate for 20 plus years. So it was literally like I had to, depending on where I was living at the time. I'm getting up at, like, 630 to catch the bus to the subway to get into the city to be, make sure you're, like, literally sitting at your desk at, like, 09:00 a.m. Because the door to the office was visible to everyone on the floor. So everyone knew, like, you come in 915, you're just like, hey, Seth, you know, like, do you have a long night or something? Like, it's like, so it's interesting, but it probably speaks to something bigger about how we're all been indoctrinated into that rat race. But breaking out of that as a business owner, it's taken some time and slowly over time now, thanks to my partner, who's got a more flexible schedule, she's helped me see the importance of maybe just not waking up with an alarm clock and easing my way into the day and being flexible with my time and not so rigid with what I do and that I have to be, like, at a certain place at a certain time. So I've tried to even with my scheduling now because of some work I've done with coaches, it's this idea of, like, planning my week from the middle out. So my Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are tend to be booked with, like, calls like this and interviews and client calls. But I try to leave my Monday and my Friday, like, open for personal work, catch up work, some Cal Newport deep work. Possible to see that book on your shelf as well. So just kind of thinking about that, and I'm wondering how your relationship to that balance has changed over time. I know there's no such thing as work life balance. It's just a seesaw. It's constantly going up and down.

Seth Silvers

18:25 - 20:23

Yeah. My story is kind of a little bit reversed in some ways because my first job out of college was working with a family foundation, and then we were kind of merging that foundation with a nonprofit. And so I had a budget and hired some friends that I grew up with, and we kind of set up, like, a remote office for this nonprofit organization where I'm at now in Fort Collins. And so my first job out of college was, like, I had complete control over, like, our. My schedule. And so, you know, we had an office that we kind of, like, went into most days, but I actually remember thinking, like. And this was part of the challenge with it is I actually wanted more accountability in it. And I remember realizing, like, I could not work for, like, three days, and I never did this, but I remember having this. I could not work for three days and say, I don't know, I was sick or maybe even say nothing. And I don't think anybody would. Like. I don't think anybody would really notice and realize, man, this is not that great. And so one thing I've had to work through and try to overcome is I do feel like the first few years of work out of college, for me, it didn't reinforce a super strong work ethic because I was, like, in a culture where there wasn't much accountability. There wasn't really that much clarity on leadership. There wasn't a ton of clarity. It was very empowering. So it was very like, go and create value and go and do your thing. But I struggled with that piece. And so I think, for me, I love the flexibility. Like, you know, I work from home at different times. I've worked out of, you know, we've had offices and co working spaces and different things like that, but there's always been flexibility. And so for me, I've been trying to add more structure in a more, like, healthy way because I don't do very well if it's just like, all right, what does the day have for me? So even just this week, I've been journaling and reflecting on, like, what is not just, like, what does the ideal day look like? I think that's kind of not silly. It's just kind of framing a question in that way is going to be helpful for people and not helpful for some.

Harry Duran

20:23 - 20:24

Sure. Sure.

Seth Silvers

20:24 - 21:19

But for me, I was like, what would I. When I'm proud of the day that I had, like, when I come to the end of a day and I imagine myself, like, proud of how that day went, what did it include? Like, what was a part of it? What was not a part of it? So I'm starting to reflect, and it's funny you mentioned the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday thing, because I'm doing very similar stuff to realize that kind of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are meetings days. And I'm trying my best to have two days a week where I can actually work on the business, do things like practicing solitude, practicing reflection, practicing deep work chunks. And so it's a balance where right now things are probably, like 70% more in meetings and working on tasks and different things, and then this 30%, like, harder to measure but deeply important work of thinking through business problems and planning and different things like that. But it's kind of a not. It's evolving. I feel very aware that it'll probably look a little different in a year or two years than it does now.

Harry Duran

21:19 - 21:29

And that's important because you're evolving as a person and you're getting different inputs and different influences. And it looks from, like, the looks of your bookshelf, it looks like you like reading a lot as well.

Seth Silvers

21:29 - 21:34

So. I do like reading, but I find myself not reading as much as I would like to. Yeah. Yeah.

Harry Duran

21:34 - 21:49

I love that. It's color coordinated, too. It reminds me of my partner Natalie's iPhone. She recently adjusted her iPhone icons to make them color coordinated. And so when you look at it, she just swiping through and just gradually goes through the colors of the rainbow. So similar ethos there.

Seth Silvers

21:49 - 21:51

That's funny. That's awesome.

Harry Duran

21:51 - 22:58

And the thing that I've been finding more helpful lately from a reading perspective is reading on Kindle and then having my highlights in there and then syncing that up with the readwise app, which I don't know if you've seen that or familiar with that, but readwise is a great app because you open it up in the morning and then depending on what you've highlighted in your kindles and you've synced it, pulls those highlights into your readwise app. And then you could pick how many you want. I pick like eight different highlights. So I scroll through the highlights so it shows you the quote and it's kind of like that recurring. There's something about the, there's a certain, like, memory tactic there, I think, in terms of, like, seeing the input. And sometimes something that I just read will show up pretty recently. So it comes in handy and I think I do. It also has an option to scan. So it has a great OCR app built in. So if you're reading the physical book, you can literally scan that segment and then it'll drop that into your updates as well. So I'm with you. I think I've gain so much from reading and I'm always worried that it's not sinking in because in the moment you're just like, yes, yes, that's it. Highlighting it and then you forget it. So I think having a system for how I learned from books has been really helpful for me.

Seth Silvers

22:58 - 23:16

I'm curious to have there been any good. I haven't really tried to read books on podcasting. So if any of our friends that have written books on podcasting are listening to this, I apologize. But have there been books on podcasts? I know there's not a ton, but there of are some. Like, have there been books on podcasting?

Harry Duran

23:16 - 23:16

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

23:16 - 23:17

Enjoyed reading.

Harry Duran

23:17 - 24:30

Yeah. The one that I constantly am referring to and we pulled bits of it for like, the work we do with clients is Eric Newsom's make noise. And he worked at Audible and really smart guy and really understands that they launched a couple of high profile shows when he was there. And just kind of the way he approaches, you know, thinking through your show and some of the exercises that we do now, like plan your first twelve episodes, you know, and, you know, we talk about this with clients a lot, you know, because it's, the title is an SEO friendly field. And so, you know, before we even think about recording or mics or location or I have them start working on that exercise because, you know, helps them think about the content they're going to create, as opposed to just saying, okay, I've got everything ready. I've got my cover art, I've got my description and my name, and I've recorded my trailer, and I can go. And then I've just seen it from experience before. And even I remember early days doing that. You get to that place where you're just like, you don't know who you're gonna speak to or you're scrambling for a guest or you're scrambling for content. And I think there's some. There's something to be said for really thinking through and probably related, you know, circling back to that, your work on storytelling. What's the story you want to tell and who you're telling that story to? And what's that theme you're carrying through your show? Which I think is really important when I think it's.

Seth Silvers

24:30 - 26:19

I mean, I think that's a great. I'll have to check that one out because that's something to. To. We've been seeing. I think I'm seeing it more in the industry, and I think I'm also seeing it just in my own, like, shows that I listen to. And how I look at the podcasting space is the importance of actually thinking through what you're about to produce and thinking through the conversation beforehand. And not that there's not a place for, you know, live interviews and doing things like that, but I kind of think that people are getting sick of, and I say low quality. I'm not meaning, like, camera, not meaning, like, the tactical quality, like, low quality from a, you're going into the interview and you're not. You don't know what's gonna happen. And not that they can't be organic. Yeah, but, like, you're not thinking through what is the one thing that, like, my audience wants to hear. And again, it goes to the hero's journey of this show is not your show. Like, it's not your show. Like, who is that? Who is your audience? What questions are they asking? And how is this? How is this solving their problems? And so we're talking a lot more with our clients about planning their episodes and spending more time on that. And the funny thing is, it's more work. It means more work for the host, but we've ended up having conversations of, like, well, should we say that it's we can produce podcasts for 4 hours of your time a month where it's like, technically I can't, like, you do four 1 hour long, meaning technically you can. But what if to actually have a successful podcast, it takes 20 hours a month for a host? It's like, I don't know the number, I don't know what it is. But we've been having this conversation internally of like, what commitment does it actually take? And even if that means there's less shows that are starting, if they have a higher chance of longevity and quality and engagement, like, those are a lot of the conversations we're having as a team.

Harry Duran

26:19 - 26:19

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

26:19 - 26:29

Is like, how do we kind of return back to rather than just churning and burning as many episodes as you can, actually having thoughtful content that solves real problems.

Harry Duran

26:29 - 27:28

Yeah. Because at the end of the day, you know, pod fading is a real thing. And, you know, I've gone through waves. If you do the math on my show, I'm closing in on ten years, this show next month. Amazing. So it's been a crazy hero's journey for my show, and I'm at 340 plus, something like that. So, you know, the math on that doesn't pan out to one a week. But there's been some times where it's just been like a couple of weeks, and then I'm back in the groove now, which is fun. And I think I've been more selective about who I invite on the show. Not necessarily selective, but just kind of like, paying attention to, like, who I have conversations with because I want to feel like, you know, and this is something for anyone that's podcasting, you know, you look at the calendar and you see you've got an interview coming up. It should give you, like, a good feeling. It should feel, you should feel like, a bit excited or just like, interested to see, you know, who this guest is and what we're going to talk about and where the conversation is going to go. And so if you ever look at the calendar and you're dreading the upcoming interview for your own show, and that's probably a red flag right there.

Seth Silvers

27:28 - 28:11

Yeah. And that was part of why I actually shut down my first show, the small business storytellers, was I was kind of just going through these interviews and I got really sick of having conversations. The people were great. They were amazing. There was like, everybody I interviewed was fantastic except for one person, which I thought he was fantastic. And then I got barraged once it got published by, like, a community of that person's customers. That had all been scammed and they were like, how are you giving this person a platform? And so I ended up taking all the content down, but everybody was amazing. But it was like the system that I had built and that I was kind of following, which time a lot of people were doing, was, okay, you do these 30 minutes business interviews. Okay, tell me your story.

Harry Duran

28:11 - 28:11

Sure.

Seth Silvers

28:11 - 28:33

Okay, that's cool. Ask a couple custom questions, tell me what you do. And then I'm hoping that the show grows because you're going to share it with your audience. You're hoping that your business grows because you're hoping that I share it with my audience. And it just wasn't energizing and wasn't working. And so then I had to step back and I was like, you know what? This is not super life giving for me. And so it was about a year ago that I decided to publish the last episode.

Harry Duran

28:33 - 28:34

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

28:34 - 29:06

And then the last six months or so, I've been working on a new concept that is super energizing for me is going to be a lot more creative and fun to work on. And that's reflective of, like, the season that I'm in business, which is different than when I started that last show. So, yeah, it was an interesting decision to realize, like, man, this is. It might be time to say we've done 100 episodes. Yeah, let's be grateful for that and say this was awesome. And then let's bring this journey to a close, and we're going to start a new one. And that's going to be, who knows how long that'll be.

Harry Duran

29:07 - 30:31

It's interesting when you talk about how much work is involved, because I noticed that in some of our clients who have bigger teams, and when I think about the role, I was in a client meeting recently and there was like, I think, like six or seven people. Like, it was just me and I think my ops person on the call, and they had like, six or six or seven people on there on a call. And I'm just like. I mean, all these people are doing individual things related. You know, she's got a successful, like, health and nutrition business. So she's got someone for the website, someone for marketing, someone for social. She's got, like a chief communication or like a chief of staff, and she's got, you know, an assistant. And it's so funny because indie podcasters, like, or solo podcasters, they're wearing all those hats and all those things need to get done, but they, if you're just getting started with your own solo show, like, you have to do all the things. And I remember with podcast junkies, like, I mean, I had to create the artwork, I had to schedule the interview, I had to, like, interview the guests, I had to edit the interview. You know, I had to write some social copy, I had to create graphics. I had to, like, order t shirts and go to podcast movement and just like, you know, do some guerrilla marketing and just all those things. I felt like one of those, the buskers who is playing the guitar and he's got instruments, the tambourine he's got doing some of his foot, he's got a good drum as well, doing all those things at once. And I'm wondering if you see that same challenge and how you help work your clients through those challenges or just manage expectations of like, hey, here's a little, like, idea of like, what you're signing up for.

Seth Silvers

30:31 - 30:59

Yeah, I think a lot of it for us, like, we've seen value in kind of being able to be that one stop shop for our clients. Obviously, as you work with a more upstream in the business space, they're going to have teams that they want you to integrate with. And so that's kind of just a reality. And it is always a little bit more challenging. I don't know who in the industry said it, but they, I remember hearing one of some session one time where they were like, yeah, you pretty much need to, the bigger the client, you kind of need to charge like a pain in the ass tax.

Harry Duran

31:00 - 31:01

That does make sense.

Seth Silvers

31:01 - 32:09

And that resonates and I've kind of seen that. It's like, and when earlier in my days I thought like, oh, man, like, why would I charge double for or triple for a Fortune 500 company than for this? But then you start to work with clients that have all of these teams and you just realize it's just infinitely more complicated. Oh, yeah, it's way more challenging. It likely there's a higher chance of it not working and so there needs to be more budget for things that you can't predict in order to integrate with those teams. And so I think that's the reality for kind of the upstream, like, the bigger kind of your enterprise level clients is there's going to be teams that you just have to figure out how to integrate with and not every podcaster is going to want to do that. I think we've found a lot of value and kind of in the, like, mid market for like growing but still kind of small, medium sized businesses being able to handle all of that. I know early, early on like, in 2020 and 2021, I was doing all the things that you were saying. It was like me and virtual assistant, and we were doing it for a couple shows. And then I remember somebody asked me to launch a daily show and sweet daily show for two months.

Harry Duran

32:09 - 32:10

And that must have been fun.

Seth Silvers

32:10 - 32:20

It was interesting. It was. It forced me. It forced. I jumped on a call with them. They said they wanted to start a daily show and they wanted it to be live within 48 hours.

Harry Duran

32:20 - 32:21

Oh, my God.

Seth Silvers

32:21 - 32:25

Yes, I can do it. And I asked for more money than I ever had at that point.

Harry Duran

32:25 - 32:25

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

32:25 - 32:34

Which I thought was a ton of money. And they wired me the money that day, and I was like, oh, wow, this is actually real. And so what it did, though, was it forced me to figure out the processes.

Harry Duran

32:34 - 32:34

Sure.

Seth Silvers

32:34 - 33:22

And it forced me to. It was a project that I couldn't manage on my own. So it also forced me to start thinking through the processes as a team. Now, I mean, we still have a fairly small team of six, but it's like we have different disciplines. And so when we're talking to a team or, you know, a client, we're able to kind of say by hiring an agency, you're getting multiple, multiple disciplines, as opposed to trying to hire just like a one trick pony that is pretty good at a lot of things. So I think that was a transition for us, but we've seen a lot of value, and on my end, us working through all of the challenges of being able to handle all those details and all those different things, because a lot of clients, they're just like, I don't want to handle any of the details. Like, I want to focus on the creative or I want to focus on creating content. And that's kind of the sweet spot for business.

Harry Duran

33:22 - 33:22

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

33:23 - 33:33

Is where the host, whether it's the founder, who, whoever it might be, where they can just focus on the content, and then they can trust that, like, everything else is going to happen. But that's. It's not reality for everybody.

Harry Duran

33:34 - 33:44

How you mentioned putting some procedures together, and so how important are systems for you? You know, whether they be sops or documenting processes, they're super important.

Seth Silvers

33:44 - 35:14

And for people that don't think they are, like, I like to. You know, I was. Our team was actually just talking about this today because we just switched everything over to ClickUp. And so for the last couple months, we've been, like, building out ClickUp so that we can kind of manage more clients. And so, I mean, you think about it like, let's say, like an episode has ten tasks to get done, which most episodes have, like 20 or 30 if you're like, really breaking down all the little tasks that need to be done, and then you're managing ten shows, and then you're doing it weekly episodes, and it's like, okay, well, that's 40 episodes a month, and you're probably working on six weeks of episodes at a time. And it pretty quickly gets into, like, that's like six, 7800 different tasks that are in motion at a time. And so I think pretty early on, I realized that I can't keep track of that in my head. So we had somebody I hired as a content manager that was really administratively gifted. And so we put, she's now our operations manager. And so her main role right now is kind of like the system side of things. And so it's definitely not perfect, but before having some of these, like, systems in place, I was just always nervous that something was going to break and that I was going to forget something because it's inevitable. It's inevitable that our systems now will break. And so then before we had those things in place and sops and figuring that out, it was, I was just, like, always felt nervous because I was like, I'm going to forget something. It's going to fall through the cracks. Yeah. So it's super important just still figuring it out.

Harry Duran

35:15 - 35:46

Yeah. And I think the key with it is when you find something that breaks, have a process for, like, diagnosing it and just kind of going back and just with the team and seeing where. Because there's inevitably something that could have been communicated better. And I learned, like, from early days with VA is like, you have to be like, really black and white. Like, especially working with, like, offshore teams. Like, they don't handle variety pretty well or anything that's gray. Like, it literally has to be like a black and white instruction. And they don't, because they don't deal with ambiguity that well. So it's just kind of those learning those things over time as well.

Seth Silvers

35:46 - 36:04

Yeah, I think the hardest thing with that right now is we have a good system for all the production. But on my side, like, the projects I'm involved in, or like, the way my brain thinks about things, there's like, the ten to 20% of stuff that we work on that doesn't quite fit into all of our systems, that's challenging.

Harry Duran

36:04 - 36:36

So for the benefit of folks that are listening, who are generally folks in the podcasting space, I'm just curious, what do you see or what do you think about what's happening in the podcast landscape in terms of, like, I listen to pod news on a regular basis, so, you know, just kind of keep up to date with what's happening, what Apple's doing to change things. The fact that they're adding transcriptions in there is now good. I follow what's happening with podcasts in 2.0. So when you look at things that are moving the needle for your clients, what's one or two things that you think is helpful to share with this audience in terms of, like, things they could be thinking about for their own show?

Seth Silvers

36:36 - 38:07

Yeah, I mean, I think overall, I think Apple's made some really good changes in the last six months, and it doesn't sound like this would be the case, but Apple hasn't changed a ton with podcasting in the last, like, ten years. So I think even though that iOS update was painful for a lot of clients and having to explain that to them, like, I think readjusting to where numbers are accurate is a really good thing. And I think it's just like, it's a big win. I think accurate data is really huge. I think one thing that I'm really excited about is a little bit of what we were talking about before of just higher quality content and kind of resetting the standard for what a good show is. And so some of how that's looking for us is even, like, making the interview process, like, the pre interview process, a little clunkier. You know, you're still user friendly, but, like, people actually having to do work. And so, like, an example is, we had a client, they have a questionnaire, and they really like talking about stories and not principles. They don't want people to come on and just share. Okay, here's my five things and my six things and all this stuff they want to hear. Like, what are the stories that have, you know, changed your business? And so we have a form that we send them, and our associate producer connects them, and we sent one of the guests the form, and he responded back, and he was just like, I'm locked and loaded. I'm ready to go. I don't need to fill this out. And so we did it. We canceled the interview. And I reached out to him, and I did it tactfully, but I kind of just said, I was like, hey, like, we want to give, we want to respect your time.

Harry Duran

38:07 - 38:07

Sure, sure.

Seth Silvers

38:07 - 39:14

And this host is actually putting time into preparing and thinking through the conversation that he wants to have for his audience. And I said, we also want this to be valuable for you. And so we worded it well. But I think that's becoming something that we're just talking a lot more about. And we're looking like, how can we actually have higher quality guests? That, yes, like, I realize that as you're coming on a show, you probably want somebody to hire you from that show. Like, that's fine, but be thinking about the audience first. Like, be thinking about the value that you can give. So I think that's something that, like, it's a conversation that we're just like regularly having is what are things that we can do to make the actual conversations and the actual stories on shows more valuable for the host and for the guest? That's taken up a lot of brain space, and I'm excited about it. I mean, overall, I think that more people are getting access and easier access to podcasting. I think the YouTube integration is complicated, but I think it's good to get everything everywhere. That's kind of where I'm approaching it.

Harry Duran

39:14 - 40:02

Another layer in terms of the production, because it's a whole skill set, because there's people who are YouTube creators who started on YouTube and they've really dialed in the algorithm, they know what exactly. They spend probably a bunch of time just on a cover art image, on the tagline, on literally the hook for the video, because they're in the habit of getting people to watch the video and pull them in with that hook. And from a podcasting perspective, we talk about having these elaborate and long titles that explain to the listener the journey they're about to go on. But you can't stick that whole title on the YouTube cover. So interesting to figure out where's the balance there, there, because you want them to have success there because I think the latest numbers that came out are the fact that they're depending on the age range or the demographic, when people think of podcasts, they're going to YouTube first.

Seth Silvers

40:02 - 41:16

Yeah. And I mean, I think YouTube is huge for the discoverability side. I think a lot of the reports that we see, and I'll be at, I'm heading to podcast evolutions in a couple days, and I'm sure there will be a lot of sessions about video where they're saying that more people are listening, consuming podcasts, whatever the language, is, on YouTube than other platforms. I still think the missing piece there is like, if you ask me what platforms I've consumed a podcast on in some format in the last month, YouTube would technically cross that. Spotify would technically cross that, Apple podcast would technically cross that. So then if you survey me and you're asking, where do you consume podcasts? I'm checking all three of those. The information that I want to know is where people, where's your, like, primary place of consumption? And I think that's where a lot of people are missing is, I don't know any avid podcast listeners that the primary place that they are listening or consuming podcasts is on YouTube. It might be discovering, it might be checking in with your favorite creators, clips, and all those things are still valuable, which is why we're doing the clip stuff. We're doing all the YouTube stuff for clients. But yeah, it's a really interesting thing. I'm not a huge fan of how the R integration works right now. It's hard to know what to do with clients.

Harry Duran

41:17 - 42:18

Well, it's also educating them as well, because they're coming to you or they're coming to us for like, guidance on what's best practice, and we're still trying stuff. And like you said, if they're not putting in the work to kind of engage with what's on content that's being consumed on YouTube, you know, unless that's part of what you offer, you know, they've got to have a resource that's looking what's happening there. And then you got to start to pull in the metrics to say, okay, this is what's happening in your podcast host, this is what's happening in YouTube. Pull those together. Notice, you know, there's different types of people, you know, to your point, ways in which people engage on those two platforms. So it's interesting because I do think about, like, started with overcast and that was like my only app and I just live and die by overcast. And for some reason, I don't know if it's because I'm on iPhone X and I'm just like delaying my iPhone upgrade. It's just laggy and it's been really slow and crashing. And I've been consuming a lot more on Spotify. And so it's interesting to see how all the different people are responding. And you now have to basically say, you can find us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you consume your favorite podcast, and you just gotta make sure it's available on all platforms.

Seth Silvers

42:18 - 43:16

Yeah, it is interesting. There's one podcast conversation that I heard this week that I felt like it was significant for me. I'll remember it for a long time. It was also interesting cause I watched the video version of this podcast and I actually watched most of it on Spotify and it was probably the first episode that I've like, actually watched most of the video on. And it was an interview with MrBeast and on the Colin and Samir show, which they're pretty well known amongst like YouTube creators and the creator economy. But one, it was interesting because they were talking about what you were saying with like the packaging, what they called with the thumbnails and the titles. And they were saying, I mean, obviously this is the most successful youtuber in the world. His videos are reaching about 8% of the world's population in the last 90 days. So you say. So not like repeat the unique viewers that have seen a Mister Beast video in the last 90 days. It was like 900 million people.

Harry Duran

43:16 - 43:16

Wow.

Seth Silvers

43:16 - 45:20

Which is crazy. Like, that's actual percentage points of the world. But they have, he was saying that, like, they have thumbnails and titles planned out that they're working on for the next year that they're planning with their team and they're going through creative. And it was interesting because some level of that is not possible in podcasting. I get that. But it was interesting when we talked about it in our team meeting today, where we just kind of like started to ask the question, like, what does it look like for us to be more intentional about the packaging of how everything is going out around an episode? I don't know where the conversation will go, but I think that was really interesting. And then on that episode, he announced that he just signed a deal with Amazon prime, and so he's gonna be hosting a show, which now it's the big news. So any article that you read about this, they're talking about this podcast episode. And he said on the episode, he's like, yeah, we thought about releasing a press release. And then I figured I'd just come on this podcast and talk about it. And that was really interesting because you have the human in the world today that has the most eyeballs. Yeah, that has huge news for creators to share. Amazon's probably going to spend over $100 million on this project. And he's like, well, let's just talk about it on a podcast. And so I thought that was really, really cool because it was just like, man, I hope that this, I hope little things like this begin to shift to where a lot of people still aren't really thinking about podcasting. And so if we can have these big conversations that are usually like, news bites. Yeah, sound bites, what if those are actual conversations on podcasts and we learn about really important things happening in our world, not from press releases, but from hearing the context around a conversation for 30 minutes. And so that was an interesting thing that happened this week, that I was like, this might be some simple little blip, but it also might be one of the a little bit more significant moment in the podcasting timeline where it's like, this seems like a significant thing.

Harry Duran

45:20 - 46:22

Yeah, it feels like it's adding legitimacy to the platform, which I think is great. There's another platform that starts at a D. I heard James mention in our pod news. It's a search engine that's driven off of podcasts and all the big shows of like Jordan Harbinger's got his stuff on there. And you go into the platform and you ask, on which episode did Jordan talk to? Blah, blah, blah about this in this topic? And it just kind of scours like his entire catalog. And I think you've got to obviously upload your content there. But it's kind of this combination of what we're seeing with the AI chat bots and basically seeing there's no shortage of content out there now. Because if you think about all these podcast episodes, I mean, if I were to do that to the 340 episodes I had, there's nuggets of wisdom. So now it's almost like, how do we, and I think the AI is helping, how do we curate and get all this information that's out there so that the end consumer is getting value out of everything we've created? Because it's not that we need to create more content. In some cases, it's just like, help them find the answers for stuff that's already out there.

Seth Silvers

46:22 - 47:21

Yeah, I mean, podcasting has always struggled with curation or discoverability or that element that we go to YouTube, we can type in something we're interested in. We can see a lot of results on it. And we all know that search engines inside of podcasting apps kind of suck. Like, there's still the problem. It's getting much better, but there's still the problem of, you know, I type something in and I look at a podcast, I'm like, this podcast hasn't published anything in four years. Why is this ranking? But it is getting better. And there's tools like that I think will be the norm. You know, I remember, I don't know, it was maybe like five years ago when Gary Vee was doing his askgaryvee show and he did something like that where you could go to his website and say like marketing or Twitter or something and it would pull up his quotes. Like, now we know that he had a team that was like, transcribing and categorizing all the stuff that now can be done with AI. But I think things like that are going to become a lot more important in the transcripts piece will be huge, too. With Apple Podcasts, that's really driving a lot of that.

Harry Duran

47:21 - 47:30

So as we get to a close, wrapping up the conversation, I usually have a couple of questions, ask guests. The first one is, what's something you've changed your mind about recently?

Seth Silvers

47:31 - 47:59

I think I'm going to say, like recently as in kind of the last year has me been embracing this and becoming confident in it. And that is our position being not working with everybody. Like the transition from can I help you start your podcast and grow it? Yes. Should I like changing that and realizing for a long time, I kind of thought that I would, I'd be like, leaving all of these people that need help behind in order to work with businesses.

Harry Duran

47:59 - 47:59

Sure.

Seth Silvers

47:59 - 48:08

And now I'm realizing that the more businesses that we get to work with in a quality way actually makes our business more profitable in a way that then we can invest in things that help other people.

Harry Duran

48:09 - 48:09

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

48:09 - 48:20

So I think for a while I was like, no, I'm going to make this working with, working with, like, really small businesses. And in the last year I've realized, no, for us, like, medium sized businesses is where we can do our best work.

Harry Duran

48:20 - 48:21

Yeah.

Seth Silvers

48:21 - 48:24

And that's been definitely a journey to change my mind on.

Harry Duran

48:24 - 48:38

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because then you feel like your resources are being put to the best use possible and you can give those clients, like, more of you as opposed to just figuring out, like, the bare minimum so you're not losing money or losing your shirt on a project.

Seth Silvers

48:38 - 48:39

Yeah, absolutely.

Harry Duran

48:39 - 48:42

What is the most misunderstood thing about you?

Seth Silvers

48:42 - 49:25

I would say it probably comes down to the imposter syndrome piece. Like, I think in the last two years, like, I've been really, really grateful for the reputation that we've built, and there's a lot of confidence in there. And a lot of that confidence is supported by real projects that we've done and because I know things work. Yeah, but I mean, at the end of the day, it's, people ask me all the time, like, oh, you're in podcasting. Isn't that great? And it's like, industry is great, building a business is hard. And so I think there's still the, like, I come across pretty confident in a lot of ways, and that's something I've been navigating over the last couple months and really digging into, it's like, man, why do I lack this confidence to, like, take things to this next season where we feel like we're going? And so that's something I'm working through.

Harry Duran

49:25 - 50:18

Seems like it's something that every entrepreneur deals with. And I think you learned this idea of whether it's imposter syndrome or handling failure better, because in the past, it would just rock me. Like, I'd either, like, lose a client or I'd just mess. We'd mess up something, or even I'd start a project, invest a ton of money in it, and it wouldn't pan out. And I think nowadays I just kind of figure out how to get up faster and just kind of dust it off your dust of dirt off your shoulder and just be like, well, that didn't work. What's next? You know, like, what are we going to try next? And I think you get that toughened skin or that armor, whatever it is that helps you move forward. So it's definitely not for the faint of heart. And that's why there's just a small group of people that call themselves entrepreneurs. But I think anytime you meet others in that space, it's. There's a camaraderie. Because kind of we've all, if you've been doing it long enough, you've been in the trenches long enough, then you know you've got some. Prove it. Yeah. There's a lot of stories you can share and lessons learned as well.

Seth Silvers

50:18 - 50:20

Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

Harry Duran

50:20 - 51:01

Seth, thank you so much for connecting again. And I know, you know, in this world, we tend to cross paths a lot, and I haven't been able to make it out to a lot of the conferences lately. I'm going to try to make podcast movement in DC. It is my ten year anniversary, so I'm going to submit a talk, see if I can get Jared to put me on stage for ten years of podcast junkies. So that'll be fun. If I can pull that off, that'll be cool. But, yeah, I'm just glad we got the ability to connect and go deeper. That's what I love about this show show is that if we did connect at a conference, usually it's for a few minutes or just in the hallway and then other things are happening or it's in a noisy after party or something where you can't even talk. So I just love the ability to slow down and get to know a little bit more about you and appreciate you connecting and sharing your story with my listeners.

Seth Silvers

51:01 - 51:18

Yeah, absolutely. This is great. And I appreciate what you do, and I specifically love everything you're doing with the vertical farming and that side of things because I think you're one of the best use cases right now of, like, niche podcast work for businesses. And I just. I love it. So I think about you often and appreciate what you do.

Harry Duran

51:18 - 51:24

I appreciate that. So folks want to connect with you a little bit deeper or learn more about the agency. Where should we send them?

Seth Silvers

51:24 - 51:30

Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, and that's a good place, just with my name, Seth Silvers. And then our website is Storyon Co.

Harry Duran

51:30 - 51:38

Okay. And I think you've read all those links during signup, so we'll make sure they're all in the show. Notes for listeners. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.

Seth Silvers

51:38 - 51:38

Absolutely. Thank you.