Graham Brown: Welcome to The Age of Audio, my name’s Graham Brown from the award winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. The Age of Audio is a series of conversations with thought leaders and changemakers in the world of audio. Podcasts, Radio, Social Audio and Data are converging to create engaging and authentic content for a new generation of listeners.

Graham Brown: Tell me about guesting. I love what you're doing with PodMatch and I think you've really identified a space where there's a lot more people that want to get into podcasting than actually want to create one, at least.

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Graham Brown: And so the market is a lot bigger. Tell us about, what's your overview of the market, first? What kind of research insights do you have about that market as well in terms of why people are doing it and so on?

Alex Sanfilippo: So when I look at podcast guesting, I realized that there's a lot of people that they probably initially have the thought like you and I have - let's start a podcast. And it is the first time that you ever decided to start a podcast or maybe you didn't have this overwhelm. Maybe you're some kind of a superhero. But I looked at what it would take and not understanding at all, I thought there was going to be a lot of dollars involved and I knew for sure there was a lot of time and education involved. And so when I looked at all of that, I was like, "Ugh, I don't know if I want to do this, but I really do." So, I just decided to go for it. But I think that many people, they look at that and they have a product or service, and that's why they want to start a podcast because they want to talk about that product or service. But when they start looking, they're like, "Oh, I can't do a podcast and my product or service, but I would still love to be on a podcast and they've got to be getting guests from somewhere.” So I think that people just had that revelation moment where they're like, "Okay, maybe I don't need to start one. Maybe it will be better if I just jump on some shows." I really think that's where that started from, was just people hearing great interviews and deciding, "Oh, I could do this as well. And I imagine it starts with a Google search. It's probably what happens.

Graham Brown: Yeah. And the ROI for these guys must be pretty high. I mean, we're preaching to the choir a little bit here, but you don't have to set up a podcast. You can just drop in on a ready-made audience as well. This is the fantastic part about it, right?

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, it is. It's really an incredible opportunity for people. I find the people that do this the best are the ones that don't just go on every podcast they can. Because there are those people that are like, "Oh, I don't care what your podcast is about. I'll jump on it for sure." It's people that really know who they serve and if that podcast serves an audience that's similar to the same and they jump on that podcast and they can speak to that audience really well, those are the people that do a really good job, have a big ROI and usually I find that those people that are doing that, they also have a very great singular call to action. So, it's not like to go to my Instagram, go to my YouTube, go to my website, go here. I got this and this, all these free things. They say, "No, here's the one thing I'd like you to do, if you enjoyed this episode." Because some people are building massive businesses without having their own podcasts and they're just using the content that's getting repurposed for them from those episodes. People are making them content for free. It's really a brilliant strategy. I think if I could go back, Graham, just between you and me, I'd probably not start a podcast when I did. I would've just done a bunch of guesting first. And then maybe started one at some point, because I do love having a show.

Graham Brown: Right. But having a show gave you the insights, maybe to just start a podcast.

Alex Sanfilippo: Of course. Yeah.
Graham Brown: Yeah. Okay. I've been very interested in how this market's developed over the last few years and I'm curious how you see it. What's it replacing? Okay. So there are the people who guest on podcasts and they've been doing it forever, but there's a bigger wave, isn't there, which serves a business purpose almost. What is it replacing? Is it replacing traditional media and interviews or something else? Where do you see this matching service or these matching services eating into which budgets?

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah. If you would've asked me this at the end of 2019, I would have had a different
answer, but 2020 threw everyone, it's like a curveball was thrown out there. I mean, it changed the game for everything. So podcasting initially, it's interesting, I don’t mean to go into COVID talk here, because people hate that. But briefly I'll mention that podcasting dropped by about 20% across the board for the first few months of COVID. People were like, well, it looks like podcasting is going out the window. It's done. And then we saw a swing where it went back the opposite way very aggressively. And as a matter of fact, a lot of people then started looking at analytics of where people are spending their time, what form of media I should say, what people were using to consume and things like that. It was found in 2020 by Spotify that downloads of music had leveled. Although there's more people getting the apps and technically having the ability to access music and things like that, it leveled off. And what started increasing was podcasting and of course streaming services. But I'm finding that it's really replacing a lot of the way that people used to just spend their free time. When I was in the gym, I'll be real, 3 years ago, I used to listen to music. I didn't like to listen to podcasts in the gym. I was just like, I'll listen to music. Now, I don't really like listening to music in the gym. I'd rather listen to a great podcast episode so I can learn something when I'm doing that. And I'm finding more and more people who decide they want to consume some form of content. And many people who listen to podcasts, this was done by Forbes, a study, and I'm not gonna remember the statistics exactly. But it was the upper 70 percentile of people who listen to podcasts, listen to learn something new. So they listen with a purpose. So what I'm realizing about podcasts is I think it's quickly becoming the primary way that people are starting to learn new things and it's their choice, their content consumption of choice, which I think is a very interesting thing for us to be paying attention to.

Graham Brown: Especially in the business space. Teaching yourselves. I imagine now you've got people who are looking at podcasts rather than, let's put it into the COVID conversation as well, spending money on events, is just not going to happen now. People aren't going to be doing events anymore, people aren't going to be doing expos and exhibitions and analysts lunches, all those kinds of things. They ain't going to come back for years at all. Because the genie's out of the bottle now. It ain't ever going back. So I wonder now it's like people are looking at this thing - actually, do I need to spend all that money on that booth at that trade stand? Should I just get a podcast and do that? And I'm wondering if that's kind of happening and I'm looking at the U.S. because that's a much more advanced market. So if it’s going to happen first. It's going to happen there. What are you seeing? Are you seeing people sort of switching on their sort of business activities and setting up podcasts or even guesting because of what they would have done in the past?

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah. So I'm seeing, to speak to the guesting thing very briefly, I'm seeing a lot of, it's not necessarily the C suite of companies, but like their marketing team. They're training these people to jump on podcasts and represent the company. So instead of sending people like a sales staff out to a trade show where they can go booth to booth and talk to people instead, they're putting marketing teams out and basically having them become like an inbound sales team instead just on podcasts. So they're going out and guesting and there's a lot of examples I've seen of people doing that. It's mostly online companies I've seen that do that type of thing. So that's an interesting take, but also I've already noticed with a lot of the events because the United States is starting to, like right now when we're recording this and I know of course it should be evergreen, but people are starting to go back to events, but I'm realizing now that a lot of them they're calling them hybrid events. So the mass majority of people will be online with a small in-person audience. And so for me, for example, I had somebody today pitch me to purchase a booth. And like you said, it was about $10,000 is what they wanted for it. And they're expecting like less than one fourth of their previous year's attendees and the rest will be online. And so for me, I'm like, "Oh, this has always been a $10,000 booth. Why is it still 10,000 if there's going to be 75% less people?" Like, that's my thought process? I'm like, well, why would I not do some online advertising instead or do something else if I wanted to spend money on something like this. So I'm definitely seeing that. And then of course, the things that people used to have to do in person. There were all these things that you could not have a meeting that was remote. You couldn't do this. You had to be present for that type of thing. Like whatever it might be. This isn't the case anymore and I've actually, you've seen this as well, I know, that people have been moving their internal conversation from HR departments onto internal company podcasts. So their employees can listen to, I don't know if it's on a drive into work if they even do that anymore or if people are just like, when they wake up in the morning, quickly listening to something like a daily or weekly podcast for that company specifically. And obviously this is not a company with 10 or 20 employees. We're talking fortune 500 fortune 5,000 companies. They have a lot of employees where they want to get a message out to many of them without having to call like an all staff meeting or have some sort of retreat for everybody and instead they're just saying, "Hey, let's get our HR staff or somebody who's talented on our team that's able to just share this ongoing message with the company so we can keep the culture tight."

Graham Brown: Yeah. A friend of mine, Adam, is doing that for Taco Bell. I thought that was awesome. They can do it for taco bell. And I don't think it was the sales. I think it was, it would be field staff. I imagine a lot of their guys are in the field, they're going and selling the equipment and servicing, like managing the accounts that there must be hundreds of these guys. Would they pick up an email? No. Would they listen to it? No.But would they tune into a podcast like when they were traveling around in the field? Absolutely. I think that's interesting. Let's switch to the guesting part. Because we as a market have become educated about the possibility of what guesting can do for us, guests speaking. But I think where the lagging indicator is of our knowledge, it's that we don't necessarily know how to be a good guest. So, you talked about the training, for example. So, that's one part. I mean, let's put the tech side away. Get yourself a decent microphone or those kinds of things. But let's talk about what makes a good guest and what doesn't? Obviously let's get it out there. The obvious one is going on there and pitching. That doesn't make you a good guest. People turn off. But what have you found is that what are people learning now? Actually, I'd need to kind of recalibrate my approach as a guest now. I need to do this a little bit differently. What are you discovering? What's working? What's not?

Alex Sanfilippo: For me first off, just to speak to the very beginning of that, like the pitch shot of it. When you're even outreaching for me, I can tell a lot about somebody based on how they reach out. Because I get a lot of the people that are just really general. So it's like, "Hey, I can talk about anything. Like I am ready to go." And I'm like, "Well, my podcast isn't about anything. Like it's about something specific." And they're like, "Oh, well, I can talk about that." I'm like, "Well, I kind of feel like maybe you can't because you can talk about everything." And now Graham if you're going to go on like on a comedy show where people were just kind of like messing around.

Graham Brown: I can do comedy.

Alex Sanfilippo: Then Graham go for it, have fun, right? Like that's cool. But if it's like a very focused podcast, like mine's a very focused show. I have very specific topics I'm looking to talk about, for example, I wanted some this coming week, sorry, it's in three weeks from now. I'm actually having somebody on and they are talking about how early entrepreneurs can save money on taxes. So they're going to come out like writing off a room in your house, how you can write off your internet, your cell phone. Those are the types of things in a deep dive. I wasn't looking for someone in general who understands money. Like I wanted somebody very specific. So I got an actual tax expert. So first off the pitch has got to be, I think, very short, very precise, but once you're on the actual show, I hear a lot of people that just, it's going to take some, it's going to take a little bit of of learning to figure out how to do this type of thing. And I'm still learning this as well. You need to learn to speak in soundbites. Like you've heard the podcast where somebody will just talk for 20 minutes and it's on one question. They just kind of keep on going off of what they're saying. You've got to be able to talk in close, smaller sound bites because that's what people can digest. If I was just talking, it's supposed to be a conversation, right? If I was talking to you for 20 minutes, he'd be like, "Oh my gosh, Can I get a word in here?" We've all met somebody like that. Of course.

Graham Brown: Oh yeah. We do.

Alex Sanfilippo: We've got to learn to be able to say, "Okay, how can I break down what I'm trying to say in something bite size that somebody can take something from this that I'm saying here and I can give the host a chance to ask me something else on the same topic or a clarifying question."
Graham Brown: Yeah. The outreach is a good starting point, isn't it? It's a good indicator of how this person is approaching as a guest and what their understanding is of you and your podcast. Obviously that person that says they can talk about anything, talk about money. They clearly don't understand what you want and importantly, your audience. When I've done it, I've been podcast guesting for years, doing it the old fashioned way with email and where I've really got success is where I've said the words, ‘Your audience’ or ‘Your listener’. I think your listeners would be interested in this or they would be interested in these subjects related to the ones that you've talked about in episode 17. People don't do anything like that. I'm surprised with these outreach emails I get. I'm talking about once I get on LinkedIn, from PR agencies. They'll be like, "Yeah, I'm an expert on blockchain. I can come on your podcast." I don't speak about blockchain on my podcast. It's like, okay, fine. But that's kind of, a lot of people are just spamming podcasters, aren't they? And I think a lot of it is coming from PR agencies, unfortunately. But just these little tweaks. Let's talk about what works in terms of that approach email. I'm sure just a little bit of mindfulness about what the other person wants helps.

Alex Sanfilippo: It goes a long way. It really does that little bit of mindfulness, like you're saying and having some awareness of what you're pitching. To me, the first thing that you should do again, figure out who the listeners are, do your best to decipher that. And most hosts will say it at some point during the intro, or they'll say it in the, even the description, just read it and listen to an episode. And if you're like, "Well, I don't have time to listen to every podcast out there." Fine. Skim through one or two of them, or look at some guests they have, maybe you'll find somebody you like, you can actually see something you enjoy or find one that's on a topic that you like. That's a great place to start because then when you’re reaching out, you're not blind and just guessing. It's kinda like playing the lottery when you just blast it out to a hundred people. You've got to have some idea. And that gives you again, like you're saying, like the awareness of, 'Okay, I understand this.' And everyone always talks about how podcasters, like mine included, like our babies are our podcasts. Really, our baby is the audience. So, I mean, you touched on that. Actually referencing the audience. That's the real baby. That's like what we're trying to protect. My podcast is pointless if none of my listeners ever tune in again. That's what I really try to protect. And when I have somebody reach out to me and I feel that they value my listener as well. I really appreciate that. Like that's really a great thing for me. I had somebody one time, just a quick story here. I had this lady. She pitched to be on my show and I was like, this might be a pretty good fit. Let's chat a bit more about it. I explained her the audience a little more. And she said, "You know what, actually, I don't think I can quite speak to that audience. And I really want to respect what you've created here. So I'll have to pass." And I actually called her after that. I was like, so no one has ever done that because it's a decent size podcast. Everyone's just like, "Oh, it's fine. We'll make it work." But she was very honest and said, "Hey, I just don't think that's quite right." And she's somebody who does it very well on the right podcast. But I really appreciate the fact that she had enough awareness to realize, okay, that's not who I can really speak to.

Graham Brown: Yeah. Would be wonderful if more were like that and maybe take a more sort of focused approach and the approach as well, in the sense that rather than target 200 podcasts maybe like narrow it down to 20 and like consume them, listen to them, build a relationship with a host as well, because your numbers are going to be better at the end of the day in terms of your success rate. The shotgun approach is a bit of a well, I mean, it just creates noise, doesn't it? And even if you get a podcast gig with somebody who's unaligned with your audience, ain't going to work for a long time. I was just going to share, this is Alex, one of the things I do is I break down. I work with a small number of target podcasts, and then I would say, okay, so there's like three buckets with my categories. There's one group, which is the how-to podcasts. So for example, my how-to specifically is how to use audio to communicate and tell stories and that can be for a corporate leader. It could be for a startup founder and so on. And so I'd find podcasts that matched that how-to category for me. So it could be a marketing podcast. It could be a comms podcast. And then I have the big-ideas podcasts. And my big idea bucket is AI, machine learning and audio, the future of audio, age of audio. So I look for those guys. So there might be a podcast about AI or data and the trends in that. And then the last one is the journey podcast. So, my journey is - I sold a business and travel the world for 4 years. So that could be the entrepreneurship podcasts. That's sort of behind the stories and then I'll have like 5 in each category and then target them and just work on them rather than like, “Okay. Let's hit the comedy podcasts. Let's hit the blockchain podcast”, which is what people do. So I'm wondering, like, there needs to be a little bit of onboarding and training for these guys. I guess in time they're going to learn it. They are going to figure it out

Alex Sanfilippo: Well, that might be too late because here's the thing - there's certain people that have reached out to me a dozen times pitching different clients. But I know, now I don't even read it anymore. And not to be rude, I usually do my best to read all these things, but they've done so many bad pitches. They're not going to waste my time because they're clearly just copy pasting it. So I'm not even taking them seriously, but I do hope that more people, like you are saying, actually learn to put them into buckets. I think that would be very valuable.
Graham Brown: What have you learned about podcast guests for yourself and all the people that you've seen where you've been surprised? Like we think podcasts guests, the best ones that, these very articulate public speakers, the Steve jobs types, and the ones that join speaker bureaus, but what have you found the ones that are really good at this stuff surprised you that you know now, but you didn't know when you started out.

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, this is a really good question. So I've gone after the big names, the influencers. I'm doing air quotes there that people go after. And some of them are great. They do a very good job sharing their story, but they share the same story on every podcast they go on. So in a perfect example, I have a lot of respect for Matthew McConaughey. His book was phenomenal. But he was on probably about a hundred podcasts. I didn't go listen to more than one of his interviews, because guess what? They're all almost exactly the same. You couldn't get them out of the cycle. Because he's so trained. So conditioned for it. And I have a friend in the industry, Jordan Harbinger, who is a big podcaster and because he's a big enough podcaster, he can say, “I want to book three hours with you to record a 45 minute episode.” And everyone's just like, “Okay, that's fine.” If I did, they'd be like, that's ridiculous. You can have 45 minutes or 45 minutes. But what he does is he just cuts through all of that. And he says sometimes he won't even record for the first hour because he's trying to get them out of their normal cycle. But most of us don't have that luxury. Most of us have to get on with people. And so what I've found is sometimes those influencers, all due respect to them, they're phenomenal at what they do. They're not always the most authentic for your audience. The best guest I find is the person that specifically really knows what you're looking for. So again, getting very focused, getting very niche for a specific episode. And finding that person that you just have great synergy with. The people that I've had better synergy with, people can hear it. Not just you, like, you feel more comfortable in the interview, but people who listen are like, “Man, that was like, that was a groove the whole way through that episode.” People can really feel it and to be completely transparent here, I've maybe had one or two big names that I really felt like, “Oh, I gel with this person. This was really good.” And the rest of them. It was like talking to a robot. Ask a question, they give kind of an answer, but I'm like, “That's your standard response. Okay. Next one. That's a standard response.” But some people can get into it with you. And again, they know that audience, they know that focus that you're looking for. That's who makes a really great guest and man, all my best episodes have been with that type of person. Names that if I said them right now, no one, whoever hears this would ever know who they are without looking them up. But that's perfectly fine because it's really impacted, influenced my avatar, my ideal listener.

Graham Brown: I like that. I like the groove. I think you nailed it. That's the word that embodies what it's about the groove. It's interesting that you chose an actor as well. I have a radio DJ friend, and I asked him many years back in the beginning of my podcast journey - who would make the best guest and the worst guest? And I can't remember who the best guest was that he said, but he said the worst guest would be Tom cruise. And he said like, for the same reasons is that they won't let you in. They won't let you behind the veneer of the acting world because that's their job. That's what they're really good at. They're the best in the world at doing this. And yet what people really want is that vulnerability, that authenticity that you get. How do you do that? How do you be more authentic on a podcast as a guest? What's the key here? Because authenticity is the word of the 2020s.

Alex Sanfilippo: Right, it is.

Graham Brown: Is there an authenticity training course out there? How do we do that? What sort of tips? What makes it work for you?

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, it's a bit of a balancing act because like I mentioned earlier, you've got to be good at speaking in sound bites, to some extent. And sometimes that doesn't come across as authentic because talking for 20 minutes might be your authentic self. But so a lot of this is learnt and I'm not telling people to go out and just practice on other people's podcasts. But anytime you get the opportunity to speak anywhere, take that opportunity. Ask your friends for feedback. So something that I've been doing for years now that's helped me a lot is instead of sending text messages to my friends, I send little voice messages. You can do it. I have an iPhone, so you can do it pretty easily. So they all get these voice messages from me. And at first they were like three and four minutes when I probably could have said it in 30 seconds, but I just didn't know how. So over the years I've gotten it. Really, it's me being authentic. I'm truthfully sending them something that's really meaningful, but I've just learned to package it in a way that now people can actually consume this, including my friends. They're not like, “Oh my gosh, there's a 4 minute voice message from Alex probably about nothing.” Like it's 30 seconds, very concise and I get my point across. And people in my life, it's funny, they still to this day. I still look forward to the next time I get a voice message from you. Like it's always so meaningful. It's impactful, but just a matter of getting the practice out there. But being authentic, don't pretend to be somebody you're not is what it comes down to and do your best to when you know your true self and you're really in tune with that, do your best to improve yourself and the way that you can actually speak.I know you have some great feedback on this too, but those are kind of my initial thoughts with that.

Graham Brown: Yeah, I think that's great. Ideas as well. I like voice messages. I never tried that one

Alex Sanfilippo: At first, we were like, “Whoa. A voice message.” But I do it all the time now.

Graham Brown: That's cool. I think the key here is practice. Isn't it? Being a guest takes practice. You've got to put it in the hours. It's like playing a guitar. Or whatever it may be as a skill you've got to put in, not the 10,000 hours, but you've got to improve your craft. I was listening to Howard Stern talking about his journey. And he said, just his voice took 10 to 12 years. That's probably the extreme. But he's got the voice of radio effectively. But he is just getting through, I can remember my first few podcast interviews. I don't know what it’s like for you, but they were terrible..

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah. I feel bad for those hosts that had me on. They said it was great, but I questioned it. I won't go back and listen to them. I'm scared right now.
Graham Brown: I mean, it's like, but. How do you get good at that? One of the things I've found is storytelling as well, is that, when you can kind of just, and without sort of sounding insincere, but to practice storytelling, like, turn your life into scenes and into breaks. If you like that, you can build something beautiful out of it, you can take this thing that happened and practice it. And the inspiration for that came from Kevin Hart. Because the comedian said that what he did onstage is he breaks his storytelling down into two years and the first year what he does. And this is the guy that fills stadiums and there's millions and Hollywood movies. But the first year, what he does is he goes out to all these clubs, these sort of crappy dive clubs, where people are drunk and they heckle and there’s like 10 people in there. And he does those completely for the first year. And he's like, standing this close to the guy, sitting at the front of the bar and heckling him. And he's looking at him in the eyes and stuff. He does all of that. And he says, the reason he does that is so he can get feedback and he can train and he can train. “Oh, that joke didn't work. That skit didn't work.” And then he gets all that feedback, his data, air quotes, and then, year two, he takes all of that out to his DVDs and his stadium performances. So, I think about that, that's agile in a software sense, isn't it? In terms of doing your thing, being a guest, storytelling, and people look at, I mean, you're a good public speaker, you're a good guest, you've got the craft. That doesn't come naturally. That requires a lot of practice.

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah. I like what you just shared there, actually about the storytelling side of things, because storytelling is a big part of it. Like earlier I mentioned a stat, a few stats. No one's going to remember that without going back and listening to it again, like if someone was listening to it right now and I’ll say, “Well, let's pause for a second. Excuse me, sir or ma'am, can you tell me that stat, I referenced earlier?” They aren’t going to remember it. But if I ask them, “Hey, do you remember the Kevin Hart story that Graham said? They'd be like, “Oh yeah, I can remember it.” Our minds are conditioned to remember stories and the more you can weave them in somehow, some way is just really powerful. Especially, when you can do like, what you just did: a short, concise story that really drives a point home. I think it is just such a powerful thing that you can do in this. And naturally, like you said,, I've never been much of a storyteller. I've never considered myself to be. I've had to learn that over the years. And one way I've done this is actually I still practice. So my friends, by the way, they are all like test subjects in my life. So whenever we're together, people now know and people actually ask me, “Oh Alex, can you make up a story about this that's like right here?” And I'll just like to start rattling off some random story, but it's practice. And sometimes people are like, “Wow, that was almost believable. Like I know that it wasn't true, but like, that was almost believable at this point.” When I first did this, I would say the most ridiculous things. And it's just getting comfortable doing that and putting this art of storytelling into practice. Just like all the rest of it that we're talking about here.

Graham Brown: Yeah, you did. You remember your story about your 30 second voice messages. That's a story. I remember that. And I think that sort of shows that, it shows about you, it shows about your journey, to some extent vulnerability, because you didn't get it right the first time and it shows that you're doing this for your friends as well. That's the human story and people will remember that. Even though that might not have been intended as a story, that's kind of what people take away, isn't it? I'm just sort of rounding out. What are you seeing as trends in guesting? Obviously we talked about the evolution of people in terms of their approach and how they are as guests. Are you seeing any kind of new formats? Are you seeing anything interesting? People really pushing the envelope? What was sort of, what can you see from the coalface, your vantage point, I should say, in podcast guesting?

Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah. This is going to be a kind of a strange start to my answer here, but I'll work it in, I promise. Podcasting analytics have been behind the times, you know this, for a long time, like podcasting analytics are not like social media where you can see anything. You don't get a lot, but we are starting to get more and as people are getting more, they're able to now see as a podcast host, how long people are listening and tuning in for. And a lot of people have found that people don't finish the episodes. And there's a report done by Convince & Convert, Jay Baer is the guy who runs this. And he actually went through this study. I don't know how, where he found these people, but he was asking people who listened to podcasts and he pulled them. And more than 50% of people who listen to podcasts, say the episodes are too long and the analytics are showing that now that they're just too long. So I think that the future of guesting is like what we're doing here. We're not going to talk for two hours today. We're talking for half an hour or less. That's all that we're going to be doing here. And that's what people can actually consume because of one topic or if it's kind of multiple topics, that's all people can really hang on for. People are listening in the gym, they're listening on their commute, they're listening while they're cleaning the house, when they're between tasks, whatever it might be that they're doing. So smaller bite sized with more concise guests seems to be where I'm seeing things going. So hosts are coming on, asking more pointed questions to these guests. They're saying, “Hey, like, here's the answer I'm looking for. I believe that the days of, ‘Well, tell us about yourself’ are becoming behind us, which is by the way, the worst question you could ask as a host, right?

Graham Brown: Oh man. Yeah, you got me there? Totally.

Alex Sanfilippo: But as a guest, by the way, a good guest has some sort of answer for that. Something that they put together and packaged really well. Because when somebody asks me that I don't go off on a tangent and be like, “Well, what do you want to know? My childhood? My business? My wife?” Like, what do you want to know? You come up with something really short and precise, but I find that those questions are disappearing and better questions are appearing. It's becoming more and more rare for me to run into an interview that I feel like isn't good. And maybe I'm just getting lucky, but I've heard a lot of really great podcast episodes from shows that virtually they're not known for. They're not like a big social presence, but these people are getting better and better at interviewing and asking these questions. I think that the future is getting shorter and turning into just better pointed questions that people can really learn something from.

Graham Brown: You’ve been listening to The Age of Audio with me Graham Brown from the award winning podcast agency Pikkal & Co. To get access to all the audio conversations and book content for Age of Audio, go to theageofaudio.com - one more time - theageofaudio.com