Creating noteworthy podcasts for big brands (as a business) w/ Harry Morton
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Brian Casel: [00:00:00]

Hey, it's Open Threads. It's my podcast. I'm Brian Casel. Welcome to it. Back on the show today is Harry Morton. He's the founder of Lower Street. They are a high level, high quality, podcast production agency. And Harry takes us inside what it actually looks like to create amazing and, what he calls, noteworthy podcast content.

We're not talking about your run of the mill interview shows like this one. We're talking about, really high production value but most importantly podcasts that are interesting, that have a voice and a unique story to tell. And, you know, we, we sort of went back and forth in this episode between Harry's experience of building this amazing agency over the last few years from just himself up to an agency of over 20 creative professionals working full-time on it.

We talked about [00:01:00] that business story, but also literally the creative process behind piecing together just incredible stories on the podcast airwaves. And I actually picked his brain a little bit near the end there to try to understand how us, small, smaller businesses who, who may not have the same dollars to invest as like these big brands do that would hire a, a Lower Street.

To see, like how could we actually piece together something a little bit different as a podcast maybe for our brand over at ZipMessage. Anyway, something to think about. Something that I am actually always thinking about.

So today's episode is brought to you by ZipMessage. It actually has an interesting use case that I talked about later in the episode where, you know, our creative team could use ZipMessage to pull out quotes from interesting people to use in a podcast production, sort of like an asynchronous production process. Kinda interesting. Anyway for now, let's get into this show talk podcast, and creativity with Harry Morton.

Enjoy.

[00:02:00] Harry Morton back on the show. Last time you were on we we geeked out about music and just making music and beats and and all that But let's let's actually get down to business in this one

Harry Morton: Sure. Yes sir.

Brian Casel: So you know know several close friends of mine are in the podcast industry and you're you're one of 'em who who you know I think of you and your work as like all things podcast. You run Lower Street which is you know a fantastic production company. I mean I'll let you sort of explain it a little bit but my take as the outsider looking in and I've been you know following your work for years now it's been really amazing to see you grow Lower Street First of all you've got like the podcast hosting companies and podcast software out there-

Harry Morton: Yeah.

Brian Casel: -and then there's a an ocean of these freelancers who are like podcast editors podcasts show notes writers things like that.

Harry Morton: [00:03:00] Mm-hmm.

Brian Casel: There's no shortage of of those people around

Harry Morton: Right.

Brian Casel: But then there are a few companies who do podcasts at a much higher level And I I think of Lower Street in in that camp of like -

Harry Morton: Sure.

Brian Casel: High production value, high end, just quality, interesting work. Yeah, I mean like how do you describe like what what Lower Street is and where you guys sort of fit into the the podcasting world?

Harry Morton: So I started at the, at the absolute ground floor. I had no network, no connections, no right to start at the company that I did basically. I mean, well, it wasn't really a company, it was just me and my underwear and my bedroom. saying we, when it was very much just me.

Brian Casel: Been there for years.

Harry Morton: We've all been there, right? So, and then at that point, I, I had no, well, as I said, I no business experience before. I didn't really know what I was doing, and so I didn't know where to start. So really what I did was look around me and see, okay, this is a skill set I have. I know I wanna do something in podcasting. You know, as we've talked in the last episode about music.

Like I [00:04:00] had that audio background and that, that production kind of ability. So I knew this is where I wanted to play, but I didn't know kind of, you know, what that was gonna look like in the long term. So I just looked around to see, okay, what else is here in this ecosystem? What are the other businesses doing this kind of thing and basically just copied them. I mean, literally, I told Craig Hewitt when I met him at uh, at the first time I met him, I think it was 2016, 17, at MicroConf in Portugal I think it was. And and he did a talk there at the time cuz he just, I think he was just at the point of transitioning to kind of Castos, I think.

I remember like finding in the thing and going, Hey, another podcast guy. Chatting to him and I was just like, Yeah, by the way man, like I literally just saw your pricing, copied it and here we are. Cuz I was like, well, he's selling it, so I guess it must be fine. And that would be my starting point.

And, and really it's just been a constant iteration since then. And what I found was over the years that, as you've rightly said, there's no shortage of people serving kind of that end of the market or that kind of lower price point. I actually, I dunno [00:05:00] what Castos is at today. So I've, I can't comment on, on what they're doing, but like..

Back then, at least, we were talking like, you know, monthly packages of a few hundred bucks kind of thing. And, and what I quickly realized is that that, you know, it was a very quick race to the bottom. And also as a creative person, as someone that came from it, from slightly more of an artistic kind of background, like I wasn't, it wasn't gratifying work to do either.

So I knew really the only opportunity for me to make the most of the skill set that I had, the understanding I had creatively, and also hopefully create something that would have a bit more longevity in it and slightly more of a competitive advantage was to go up market and do kind of better and better work.

Brian Casel: When you started was it you like doing the audio work for clients

Harry Morton: It was. Yeah. So yeah, it was literally I was doing everything. I was writing show notes, I was editing audio I was, you know, yeah, doing, doing the whole thing.

Brian Casel: Mm

Harry Morton: And uh, you know, my first hires were people to write the show notes cuz that was my least favorite thing. And that was all freelancers and contractors.

And then I was hiring audio editors. And this was around the time I actually discovered what you were doing with Audience Ops and kind of took your course around productizing and really [00:06:00] educated myself on, on how to scale that kind of business. And it was probably, yeah, again, one or two years into that where I'd grown a bit of a team and we'd started to kind of like increase our pricing slowly and gently. And then I was like, okay, no, we really need to like actually go that next level up

Brian Casel: I'm guessing that something that that prompted raising the prices.. People hiring podcast editing services It's it's sort of tough because podcasts themselves don't to make a lot of money-

Harry Morton: Right?

Brian Casel: It's sort of difficult justify spending on like a relatively more expensive production

Harry Morton: Yep. Mm-hmm.

Brian Casel: if you're like a business and you run a podcast as part of your content strategy like it's hard to invest a ton of money on there. Or if you're doing it like I am which is like sort of like a fun side project,-

Harry Morton: Yeah, for sure.

Brian Casel: Again, it's like not a major business investment. How do you like did did you run into that with your client base early on?

on

Harry Morton: We did start to run into that-

Brian Casel: Where they didn't have like a high willingness to pay for that?

Harry Morton: Yeah. And the reason we ran into that is because I was, [00:07:00] where I was educating myself and the places I was hanging out in real life and in Twitter was like the MicroConf crowd, right? So like a lot of SaaS, a lot of online bootstrapped entrepreneurs, they're my people.

But what I learned very quickly is I don't wanna sell to my people. I wanna just hang out with my people, drink beer with my people, talk business with my people, but not sell to them. Because, you know, I'm one of them myself. I love these people, but they're not always good customers. Cuz they wanna do everything themselves and figure it out and do it cheap.

So, and which is exactly what I wanna do. So I don't blame them for that. So.. But also that was tied into the fact that in my previous roles when I was working, I was working on kind of corporate sales. So I was kind of like, it was, I was already in that kind of enterprisey, corporate kind of language was like part of my vocabulary.

And I, I felt very comfortable with those conversations. And so suddenly the conversation is not around, How much are you gonna charge me to edit this podcast so that I can try and get revenue for my bootstrapped agency? But instead it was, How much are you gonna charge me to develop a coherent [00:08:00] strategy for our, for the branding and audio for our large scale business?

And that's a very different conversation. And so, you know, I didn't, it wasn't just like an immediate jump into that and it, it's something that's very much iterated over time.

Brian Casel: Yeah, I mean, how did you make that transition? Cause I feel like there are so many, you know, freelancers, consultants and even like small agencies who just.. They sort of just get stuck in that like.. What is it, like like a like a mouse wheel-

Harry Morton: Yeah. Yep.

Brian Casel: -of lower level clients And it's it's just like a completely different game to be selling and networking with and developing solutions for like these larger organizations. Like how did you even get the first contacts of people who would be interested in buying high end podcast projects with you Like how did you even make that switch?

Harry Morton: So some of it was through cold emails. So there were some shows that existed already. And actually this is just changing actually, that Apple are removing emails from RSS feed. So you can't like scrape every podcast in existence [00:09:00] and like blanket email people, but you, but back then you could.

Brian Casel: I didn't know that was possible.

Harry Morton: Yeah, so you can, you know, if you look at the RSS feed of a podcast, it used to and probably still does on many feeds, but you can turn that off. So, you know, if you're into not getting spammed then you might wanna look into that. But yeah, the RSS feed contains the publisher's email address and so you could kind of look at shows that you thought, Hey this represents the kind of client you wanna work with.

It looks like they're doing some stuff, but actually there's some opportunity for them to do better in this or that area. I just did a bunch of cold email and this was probably again in like 2017, 18.. And that got me in the door with a couple of accounts and that was the sort of stair step I needed to give me that validation.

Brian Casel: And so that that meant that those people, those companies had produced some podcast content-

Harry Morton: Right.

Brian Casel: -but they don't have the right people working on it or they're looking for someone new to do something even better?

Harry Morton: Yep. Or I just thought, Hey, this sounds shit, and I can tell you how to make it less shit. And obviously put that in an email slightly, slightly more gently.

Brian Casel: Yep

Harry Morton: And I think one of the ones that we got that was a real win was [00:10:00] actually not a branded podcast. It was a podcast here in the UK called Secret Leaders and which is like an entrepreneurship interview show. And they were part of this wave. They came along before like Diary of a CEO came and bulldozed the rest of the UK entrepreneurship podcasts to the ground. And and they were doing really well at the time. And so I, I came on with them at like their season two and we helped them kind of produce the show, make it better, and they started to kind of get to the top of the, the charts basically.

And so that meant I could then email everybody and say, we produced the UK's number one business podcast. That was a huge, that was a huge kind of thing.

Brian Casel: It sounds like you you stuck to cold email or or just email outreach in general.

Harry Morton: No, I didn't. That was probably a period of, kind of three months where I did that. I got a few accounts

Brian Casel: Okay

Harry Morton: And some really crappy ones as well. So like it did, so that was enough to, to make me stop. But the ones that I did, I, you know, I was very lucky in one or two of those ones being like, pretty, pretty helpful.

The other thing that that happened, I think was my experience has been saying yes all the time and then being around [00:11:00] for long enough for things to come back around. So like if someone says, can you do this? Are you able to do this? And it feels like it's somewhere in the wheelhouse of the trajectory we wanna be headed in.

I was just like, yeah. And very confidently said yes, even though I had absolutely no effing clue how we were gonna get it done and we'd figure it out later.

Brian Casel: Mm-hmm

Harry Morton: And so that allowed me to do certain things. And then the other thing was, yep-

Brian Casel: And so is that more ambitious? Like like so people are coming to you -

Harry Morton: Mm.

Brian Casel: -we wanna do something bigger and better, more creative, more different. Can you help us do that?

Harry Morton: Cause meanwhile on social, I'm saying you should do that, right? So I'm saying you should do this social. Meanwhile, like, we are not actually doing it. But I, but honestly, like this works, I imagine, you know. Say it with authority and, and so people would kind of come to us, of agree with that vision and would, and would kind of say that they wanted to do it and we did it.

But then there were some clients who, one account in particular worked with him at one company. He then moved to a much larger organization in the same role and immediately brought us along with him. And then that just opened us up to this massive account and [00:12:00] that was another, and then we put their logo on our website and then all of a sudden it's been, yeah, it's one of those, you know,-

Brian Casel: Yeah

Harry Morton: -seven year overnight successes, you know, it's just a stair step, Rob Walling, approach, you know.

Brian Casel: Yeah when I was running Audience Ops that happened a few times where we had a really good client for like a year or two and that person is like a head of marketing at some company. Then they and they go to another company-

Harry Morton: Yep,

Brian Casel: -and they like immediately recommend us over there. And -

Harry Morton: yep.

Brian Casel: -that was always like like such a nice bonus. Cuz it's like you you know converting a new client, a much better client and it was like the easiest sales process. Cause they just bring you right in.

Harry Morton: Right. But you only get that if you stick around long enough for those things to come back around. And I, that's just like a, I consider that to be an enormous factor. I've been so lucky. Like so much of what's happened in Lower Streets progression has been just good fortune. But I also put a lot of that good fortune around to just like not giving up for ages, cuz I just, yeah.

I think that's a big, a big thing.

Brian Casel: [00:13:00] What does the team look like today? How's it made up?

Harry Morton: So we are onboarding our 19th employee tomorrow.

Brian Casel: Oh wow.

Harry Morton: And we are all full-time. So I kind of moved away from the contractor setup some time ago when I, when I just decided that we, I wanted that consistency, that buy-in, that culture that we wanted to try and create. So we, we moved away from the contractor thing into full-time employees. 19 of us now, but we should be 22 actually by January. Like, it's been kind of an insane-

Brian Casel: Amazing

Harry Morton: kind of court year basically.

Brian Casel: So what are like the the main roles across the team?

Harry Morton: So the main role as we move again, as we kind of have moved from just being like, we'll edit your podcast into, we're gonna develop a show, we're gonna write it and script it, and all that kind of stuff. We moved away from kind of audio editors and more to producers. And so those folks might be from public radio, they might be from kind of journalism backgrounds.

But that, that's the bulk of our workforce is the folks that are like writing and scripting. We obviously have audio folks as well, so we have a team of now three, we just hired [00:14:00] another, uh, audio engineer and they're doing like cutting tape, sound design, mixing, all that kind of good stuff. And then in the production team, we've got producers who are producing and then we have executive producers that kind of oversee those producers. But also manage their own shows. And now we've just included, I mean, I'm giving you the full thing, but like a production manager who oversees that whole department and makes sure that everybody's like following set procedures and stuff. Because that's what we found is like, despite me watching every one of your videos, Brian, I am just the worst at process.

Like, cuz you're the process guy and I'm like, I gotta be more like Brian, but I can't do that stuff.

Brian Casel: It's funny, I wanna ask you about process in a in a second but.. When it comes to producing like a high end-

Harry Morton: Mm-hmm.

Brian Casel: -quality podcast but I I'll get to that in a second

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Okay, back to the show.

So when a client comes to you, correct me if I'm wrong, is it like completely different in every different client's case? Or like would a client come to you and say we want to do a big new season and like do they come to you with the concept like we have this idea for our podcast we want Lower Street to make it happen.

Harry Morton: Yep.

Brian Casel: Or does client come to you and say, We know we need to invest in our brand and be out there-

Harry Morton: Mm-hmm.

Brian Casel: Lower Street, can you come up with ideas for us? Like, how does it work?

Harry Morton: So we're doing a bit of both. So at the, at the, let's say the lower end of the folks that we serve, they come to us and they go, we wanna produce a podcast. And to them, a podcast is two talking, interview style show. Right? And so my job is then to educate them on here's what that could be and here's why that's awesome.

And then coming up with ideas of how we frame that and package that in the right way. But when we are doing the bigger, kind of more [00:17:00] interesting or kind of more, not interesting, the more kind creative, different formats that we're creating. Like, for example, we're working on a podcast with a client about climate change for COP 27, and instead of wanting to make that show about.. This sounds like I'm pitching my business that's not what I'm here to do. But, but anyway, I'm just gonna talk about..

Brian Casel: No please, I was actually gonna ask you for examples like-

Harry Morton: Okay.

Brian Casel: -what is like when we say like high end more creative podcast like what what is that?

Harry Morton: Yeah. So they want to make a climate change podcast. They're a big global brand, so it's important for them to stand out. So the targets at COP 27 are all about 2050. So they, they came to us and so to answer your question before, they came to us with this concept and we're making it happen. I want us to get more involved in going to companies and proactively pitching creative ideas.

But this in one in particular came to us. They said, we want, we wanna set this podcast in 2050. And it's like how we got-

Brian Casel: Oh that's cool.

Harry Morton: - it's how we got here. So it's fictionalized. So we've got like actors that are playing, like people on the ground and it's around climate change. So one of 'em, the episode that's out right now is all like wind farm islands that they're creating in Denmark, like off the sea [00:18:00] in Denmark.

And so there's like an engineer on the ground on one of these wind farms that doesn't exist right now. And so that's kind of been super fun.

Brian Casel: So this client comes to you and says we have this basic concept of we wanna have a show that that is in the future in 2050

Harry Morton: Yeah.

Brian Casel: -Go.

Harry Morton: Exactly. And then we have to figure out all the gaps.

Brian Casel: So you guys like source all the actors and-

Harry Morton: Yeah, so we're sourcing the actors, we're figuring out how do we interview modern, current day, professors who are leading on these technologies and feature them in that podcast in a way that is, makes sense for that. You know, we're setting it in 2050, but we're talking to an expert in 2022.

So like, how does that work? So they're like playing themselves in the future, or we're like recording, like, here's the material from back in 2022, kind of thing.

Brian Casel: So it's like the job of producer to get in the weeds and search for professors who happen to know about this and we can interview them and is that what a-

Harry Morton: yep,

Brian Casel: -producer essentially does?

Harry Morton: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they're finding all the contributors, doing all the research on the content, writing the scripts. And because it's fictionalized that means [00:19:00] we're writing more or less every word. Like, there's obviously some interview material there, but like a good, probably 60% of the material in those episodes is like stuff that we've literally written.

Brian Casel: This is actually the process thing I wanted to ask about I was just asking someone else about this at a conference I was at. I like I would love to to launch a new podcast as as like a brand project from from my team at at ZipMessage right.

Harry Morton: Yep.

Brian Casel: And I would like to do something that's a little bit better and different than just a typical interview show because the interview shows are the the only super basic thing that I know how to do right-

Harry Morton: Yep.

Brian Casel: From a process standpoint I know how to invite guests, get it edited, published all that. I would like this show to be something that I don't have to be on the mic like maybe my my marketing person Claire can can run with this -

Harry Morton: Yeah. Amazing.

Brian Casel: -or or someone can. I've seen it sort of work both ways right. Like there's one approach where a journalist type of person or a producer goes out and interviews [00:20:00] maybe a couple different people and gets a lot of footage in in a general subject matter direction. But we don't know what's gonna be the most interesting. We're gonna get hours of of recorded footage and then pull pieces out of that and and turn it into a narrative style set of episodes. Like there's that which seems like a lot of work.

Harry Morton: Yep.

Brian Casel: And a lot of like guessing

Harry Morton: Right. A lot of luck. You gotta hope that you get good stuff. Yeah

Brian Casel: The other approach would be the opposite way and and this is how I'm thinking about it is like if I if someone on my team is a fantastic writer and storyteller. Have-

Harry Morton: Mm-hmm.

Brian Casel: -them write an episode first and do their own research just like they're writing an article, or writing an-

Harry Morton: Yep.

Brian Casel: -ebook or something like that. And out along the way like alright if we're in this section we're gonna need some quotes from these experts so I know we have an intro section about climate change, let's find a climate change expert to-

Harry Morton: Right.

Brian Casel: To just ask them or three questions record it get their voice incorporated into the episode and like piece it together that way.

Harry Morton: And [00:21:00] the benefit of that, as well, is that you are then leading the narrative. You're, you are telling the story. Like you're not just gonna get Rand Fishkin out and like have Rand talk about clever shit, and then you kind of go, Hey, look, it's brought to you by us. So I guess we are clever too. It's like, no, this, these are our, these are our thoughts. And by the way, here are some quotes to pull to back that up from some interesting people.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Is that how you guys generally do it? Like you have someone write the episode and then seek out the people and the quotes?

Harry Morton: Yeah, I mean it really, it super depends. Like some, some, some shows we do are still interview based and our job is to plan the interview so that there's a good narrative there and then write scripts to kind of link it all together to tell more of a story, but around what is effectively a one-on-one interview.

And so the best, to give that some context, like the best example of that is how I built this. It's, it's just Guy Raz talking to one other person, but they tell stories around that between the segments of interview to make it more nuanced and interesting. So that's a lot of what we do. But then we also do a lot of these documentary style ones where we do the process exactly as you've said.

The other thing I wanna pick up on is that we have worked with a client that did, like.. They basically [00:22:00] recorded everything for the last two years of them trying to raise venture money. Every interview they've done, every conversation, every, like, I'm waking up at 3:00 AM am and I'm gonna record myself into my voice memos

Brian Casel: Like the reality show style.

Harry Morton: Exactly. They basically wanted to make Gimlet startup, but not and we went through literally thousands of hours.

Brian Casel: I've done that myself a couple.. I literally have a couple of Dropbox folders when I was going through I recorded like maybe five or six private episodes of when I started to sell a business. And I never released it.. I thought that I would like piece it together like a documentary style thing

Harry Morton: Yeah, I, I would encourage you to consider that again cuz it's, it's really good.

Brian Casel: I burned out like I I got like so I I was selling Audience Ops and I think I started recording episodes like that for the first like two or three weeks of it.

Harry Morton: Yep.

Brian Casel: I kept up with it and then I just got so burned out-

Harry Morton: Yeah.

Brian Casel: -and then dropped off.

Harry Morton: So that show I will name drop though. It's called Unicorn Launcher by a company called [00:23:00] Vigo. And it is really, really good. And I'm not, that's not bragging about our work, it's just they've told a really cool story and they've been very open about it.

And that leads me to say something that I think I'm really, I'm really passionate about at the moment. And what I wanna talk about a lot in general about content is, is this idea of being noteworthy. Like, I'm really interested, like we can't just make more noise. There's plenty of noise and we have to make stuff that is genuinely valuable. And so I think tho that extra effort recording all that stuff that you've recorded about your exit is, is noteworthy. That is different. Like people aren't doing that work and, and I think, I think that's really huge.

Brian Casel: Dude you you're exactly right. We were talking offline just earlier today about like why why do I do this show Or why should-

Harry Morton: Yep.

Brian Casel: -anyone invest in a in a podcast I think this idea is starting to to make the rounds now that like, Look it's not audience builder

But I I feel like you you touched on it like the best possible outcome of [00:24:00] having a podcast out there in the world I think is people recommending to other people.

Harry Morton: Right.

Brian Casel: Because it's so interesting and so different and unique you

Harry Morton: Yep. Exactly.

Brian Casel: You know you can't it's not like producing blog content which will get just get found in search engines and stuff like that.

Harry Morton: Yep,

Brian Casel: It has to be talked about. And the way for it to be talked about is for it to be unique and high quality. Like production value..

Harry Morton: High quality is kind of table stakes. Yeah.

Brian Casel: That's table stakes Like it has to you have to have amazing story in there you know.

Harry Morton: I completely agree. And so that makes, what makes me wanna come back to what you are thinking about with this show that may be producing with, with Claire on your team. Like, I think it'd be really interesting, there was a, a brand, and I can't remember what they're called. They're like something star, and it's basically a piece of tech in your car that if you get in an accident, you press this button and someone comes to help you. I forget, I can't believe-

Brian Casel: Oh yeah. Uh .OnStar.

Harry Morton: OnStar. So they, they created a podcast that was all about strangers doing [00:25:00] acts of kindness. So basically like, Okay what are we about? OnStar, we're about like, we we're about helping you in that moment of need when you never thought you'd ever need to need that moment of need.

And, and so they tell stories of, of kind of people that help complete strangers in these moments, cuz that's effectively what OnStar is about doing. And these amazing, wonderful stories came out about, you know, people giving kidneys to complete strangers and then them meeting up years later and, you know, this kind of stuff.

And so I wonder what the, the async, cuz async is just like a thing that's just like it's coming to be now. And I wonder what the stories are. Like what are those, what are those like between-

Brian Casel: I'm gonna start to get some free consulting out of you while while we're recording

Harry Morton: No.

Brian Casel: So like we're we're starting to focus on coaches as as the the best customer, the best user of of ZipMessage. they're using it for for asy communication with their clients. We just launched this thing called Coach Club which is a community for for coaches. A newsletter for coaches, we have that going now. And the next piece of [00:26:00] of that whole brand strategy would be like a Coach Club podcast. Maybe we we would call it something better than that But like

Harry Morton: Mm-hmm.

Brian Casel: I I don't know what what it would be the topic would be but it but it needs to be interesting and noteworthy for professional coaches.

Harry Morton: Right. and and I think what's interesting and noteworthy about all stories is like personal human stories, right? So the reason I brought the OnStar thing up is that they are like deeply human stories and we just can't help but care about them and listen to them. And so I would say that like, yeah, I just wonder what stories there are that can only happen asynchronously between two people.

That's, that's something that's unique from the way that you would interact with a coach one on one in, in a, in the same room as as each other. I, I bet there's some amazing, of your users, they've got some amazing client stories and like seeking those out and-

Brian Casel: Yeah and like client transformations

Harry Morton: Yeah. I don't know.

Brian Casel: Like, getting back to the process thing and getting back to what you-

Harry Morton: Yeah,

Brian Casel: -were saying about like, you know, bootstrapper who try to do this-

Harry Morton: [00:27:00] yeah,

Brian Casel: -cheaply.

Harry Morton: Yeah.

Brian Casel: You know, where my mind goes is like, this is a thing that I think is worth investing in. Like I would like a podcast to exist from our brand arm of what we're doing on the, on the marketing stuff. I know we can't afford Lower Street to do it. So that's where I start to try to piece together in my mind, like, how could we do something like this? So, like, you know, Claire on my team, we also have Aliyah on my team. And Aliyah is listening to this because she's actually editing this podcast.

Harry Morton: Oh, nice. Hi, Aliyah.

Brian Casel: And she's been doing an amazing job doing it. So we've got these, awesome, creative, talented people. And we do have some really great coaches who are now participating in, in Coach Club, a lot of great users of ZipMessage. I wonder if someone like Claire can, and she's an amazing writer and storyteller, so she could write an episode, a narrative of like a focus, a topic, literally the script. She, she could write. She could even record it. And then maybe [00:28:00] even using ZipMessage, we can go out and say like, all right, to support this story, we need quotes or from two or three coaches who've experienced this or that. Claire can send a ZipMessage to those people, ask them the question, get them to record their response.

We take that footage. Aliyah edits it all together into a really great show, and we package it up and we become the next NPR.

Harry Morton: No, I love it. I think that's, I think that's great. The challenge of course is if, if Claire's doing it, like she's got a ton of it. Like it's, it's a lot of work. And so carving out the time for her to do that. But I think yeah, I, I think there's, there's, there's definitely something and you know, again, as a SaaS product, you've got so many users and they're all creating content as they're using your, your product.

Brian Casel: Yep.

Harry Morton: it feels like there's just like a wealth of material out there that you could tap into in one way or another.

Brian Casel: And I mean, not to, not to like promote ZipMessage, which of course I am, but like

Harry Morton: Yeah, of course.

Brian Casel: It does seem like a good tool for asynchronously, just gathering [00:29:00] quotes-

Harry Morton: Yeah,

Brian Casel: -to support-

Harry Morton: For sure.

Brian Casel: -a narrative for a specific episode without having to go through the time of sitting down for an hour, two hour recording and then the time of like sifting through all that material and just editing it out. Like instead just using ZipMessage, like just, just get a 30 second quote from this one person and we'll use that.

Harry Morton: Right. Totally

Brian Casel: It's interesting.

Harry Morton: Love

Brian Casel: So I think you are right? Are you producing your own stuff, like your own podcast and things like that?

Harry Morton: We, we have in the past produced a couple of shows and that's kind of basically been on the back burner cuz we've been.. It's classic cobbler shoes problem. We're just like constantly busy doing client work and then what takes away from the stuff that's, that's our own. But we've just made some key hires on the team, from my perspective, and that's freeing up much more of my time, or at least I hope so.

And so my goal for next year is definitely to get on the content side of things and be much more active on LinkedIn and Twitter, but also start producing some, some shows. So I'm excited to kind of-

Brian Casel: I'm sure you've thought of this, but like, as a follower of, of your work, [00:30:00] I think it would be super interesting to hear sort of what you were just describing about the whole process of what goes into creating a high level, high quality, high creative podcast.

Because like, I, I've really been interested in this idea of, you know SaaS companies as, as media companies, media brands. I've been fascinated with what companies like, like Wistia have, have been doing with like their whole range of different shows that they produce.

Harry Morton: Right. ProfitWell are doing the same thing.

Brian Casel: ProfitWell, and like, all these, like, Help Scout is getting into it.

Harry Morton: Mm-hmm.

Brian Casel: Mailchimp has done some interesting stuff. A lot of that is like video based. But, you know, it, it's like I still don't have a concept in my mind of like, how does that stuff actually get created and executed,

Harry Morton: Right. Yeah.

Brian Casel: I, I feel like you, you and, and Lower Street would be perfect to like, educate the world and show the world, like how that stuff actually comes together, you know?

Harry Morton: Yeah. Maybe I should do that. I've always been reluctant to, cause there's just so many podcasts about podcasting and I just didn't wanna add more, to the pile, you know? So I've always been reluctant [00:31:00] to do that, but yeah, maybe that's something I've gotta get over and just just start doing it.

We'll see.

Brian Casel: Well, Harry, this has been really fun to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. We'll have to get you to come back on here.

Harry Morton: I'd love to. It's been a lot of fun.

Brian Casel: We'll find something else to geek out about.

Harry Morton: Yeah, for sure. I'll, uh, gladly talk about, business and music any day. So yeah, it's been been a pleasure.

Brian Casel: Good stuff. All right. And of course, folks uh, can follow along at Lower Street. We'll get everything, uh, linked up in the show notes. All right, thanks Harry.

Harry Morton: Sweet. Cheers mate.

Brian Casel: Well, that wraps up today's Open Thread. Hey, tell me what you think. I'm on Twitter @casjam, and right after that, head over to iTunes and give this show a five star review. Really helps it reach more folks like us. I appreciate it. Talk to you next week.