In this episode we spoke with Anthony about his career, how he discovered a new way to promote a podcast, how to grow and promote a podcast in 2023, what's happening in the podcast industry and more.
Who Is Anthony Smith?
"I am the Trailer Editor for Steven Bartlett’s The Diary Of A CEO… Europe’s biggest podcast! A skilled video editor with experience creating assets for some of the World’s Biggest Brands and Film/TV Franchises. From social assets and long form featurettes to TV commercials and big screen content, I’ve had the privilege on expanding my skill set for a whole variety of genres and platforms."
THINGS WE DISCUSSED:
00:00 Talk4 EP 069 Introduction
00:30 Who is Anthony Smith?
01:30 How did you get into video editing and become part of Team DOAC?
07:40 How did you discover a new way to promote podcasts with Trailers?
14:07 How long does it take to edit a pro quality trailer? 25:10 Where to put your budget to promote a podcast
43:10 Should you have controversial guests on your show?
49:18 How to grow a podcast in 2023 & 2024
54:27 What are the most effective promotion methods for podcasts?
58:50 Anthony Smith Instagram & Linkedin
59:17 Stephen Bartlett Diary Of A CEO
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TRANSCRIPT:
hey what's up guys and welcome to episode 69 of talk4 the quick fire podcast where we ask four great questions to unique and interesting people behind the mic today is your host Louis scorpion that's me and let me introduce our special guest for today Anthony Smith who's going to be answering some questions today and welcome aboard a talk for podcast man please say hi to the Fine people listening and just give us a quick rundown of who you are and what you do before we shoot some questions hi everyone so I'm Anthony Smith I'm head of trailers at the diver CEO podcast so my role really is essentially to show off the podcast in its best possible way twice a week so we release two trailers twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays and my role really is to just try and encapsulate the best of the best and create an emotional narrative that's going to drive people to watch a full episode yeah man it's freaking awesome man I have to say I've never seen anything quite like it before but I mean if you haven't heard of Stephen and you haven't seen Darby CEO you're living under a rock but yeah if you follow it quite closely you you would have seen these kind of trailers for the episodes and they're done by the man sitting in front of me today on the screen of course um and I've got some really good questions lined up because I mean let's be real Steven has a podcast I have a podcast I'm really Keen to learn lots about this stuff so um man if you're ready to go should we jump on to the first question yeah let's do it let's do it okay man let's do it so question one let's just turn the clocks back a bit then so how did you come about your skills in video editing and how did that lead you into the job for you know diversary CEO which is obviously a big thing man yes I mean it's a really weird Journey that I've been on really when it's only one of those where you look back in hindsight where you can sort of connect the dots together of How It's led to this but um every time a change happened in my career or in my life I'd never actually see it to where it's led to now so I started wanting to be an actor when I was when I was a young kid that that was my dream was to be on stage and then to move into film and I got relatively far with it um and then it got to around about GCSE time and I was doing drama and I was doing media and it was the big performance for GCSE and one night I just got this weird sense of stage fright and I didn't want to go out and it was strange for me because the day before I was doing performances and the day before that I was doing performing since I was rehearsing and um and I was still being a bit of an attention seeker as I was when I was growing up but yeah I just suddenly got my stage right and yeah um yes I think mine's a second child syndrome but um I I suddenly had the stage run I didn't want to go out and I did in the end and uh the great the grade was great etc etc but then I just sort of made this weird pack that I would never step out on stage and act again um but around that time when I was watching uh films in a in a different way and I was taking an interest in in the behind the scene like featurettes that were usually done on like the second disc of a DVD or and things like that and I fell in love with with film and how narratives have drawn together and how people can create uh like these masterpieces of film so I went behind the camera and the aim was to become a director then and a writer so I went to University studied Film Production and that the entire goal then was to be a director that's all I wanted to focus on and from graduating from film I then started a video production company with my then business partner Joe and because we we were so scared of loans we I'd never been taught anything from like the money sites I was scared of loans I was scared of funding I was scared of this idea of owing people money so when we started we didn't take anything or we didn't borrow anything and everything was built from the ground up from from zero pounds so every client would get would put the answer to the kit and put that towards more equipment and uh software and things like that but because of that it meant it was only me and Joe and we suddenly found ourselves having to spread ourselves over various different roles so my role became the more I guess creative side in the sense that I would write the briefs I would direct the shoots and then I would edit the piece and as time went on I just fell in love with editing again and again and again and I loved creating these narratives and uh creating something that's a little bit different uh than what clients usually have so I think out of everything editing was what I felt my true calling was as it were and then uh fast forward five years I then found myself becoming a senior editor for a social media marketing agency in London and their clients spread from Disney to Marvel to James Bond to Sky and so I found myself in back to like that movie that movie side of things and creating social assets for that and then and then literally about two and a half years after that um it was time for a change and a new challenge and then I came across um a post for the diver CEO wanting to find a way to uh find a new way to Market their podcasts so our applied for that role uh got speaking with the producer of the podcast is Jack um sent him my work sent in my Show reel almost didn't get the job because of that work and then uh I'd be glad it got you in the end yeah it was crazy really it so it was like that was one of my first lessons when it just made you realize you have to be very very careful with how you present yourself and how you brand yourself and what you want to put forward because I almost didn't end up with the role and luckily I got set a task and I had to build um almost like a mock trailer for a previous guest done that got the job and then it's literally just been uh a year and a month later and still doing it still loving it that's freaking awesome man so back to the GCSE thing then so your mindset for that basically was okay I'm gonna do this thing but I am never putting myself through this hell again and that's a promise I love it dude but it's funny how it works though isn't it it's like you the first thing I noticed is that you're a fan of the movie side of things you're a fan of the trailers and stuff and that's why the quality of the things you're doing is so good it's like someone who says or like has some sort of a scrap a paper or whatever or they've got some degree and all this stuff and they think oh yeah I'm gonna get the job and everything and never is as good as the people who have got the real passion for that sort of a thing so I can see exactly where it's come from because these trailers you make they look like movie quality and you can see that the person behind it understands how it works and it's really good but yeah question two talk to me about that then so obviously you had a profound impact on the podcast by discovering a new way to promote it that being the trailer side of things so run us through how you actually came about that and what was the source of inspiration about it and what's Stephen skeptical about it at the beginning
um so how it came about it it's to be honest a lot of it came from a lot of it came from I guess that previous side of film um but it's something that's always followed me my entire life is this idea that um story is King driving emotion is the most powerful tool you can use as an editor really you know it's if you can create an emotional rollercoaster with your audience if you can leave them feeling angry or sad or happy and feel emotionally invested into your work then you've got them and that's a problem a lot of from what I've seen from a lot of branding videos that sort of went out and a lot of podcast trailers in the past was podcast trailers before they they weren't even really trailers they were just promos and it was just we'll take it one moment from the episode and we'll focus on that that's kind of what I do and yeah and it's what most people do and it's um and it has its and it has its place what Steve wanted and what Steve gets from his guests is drama and emotion and Trauma and life-changing advice and we wanted to Showcase all of that in one moment in one nine well you started off being 60 seconds now luckily it's 90 seconds um in a 60 second piece that will drive people to watch the episode so um it really came from I wanted to always tell a story so I always wanted to watch the full episode get an understanding of what was going on and then craft a storyline within that an emotional storyline within that and then because of the guests that we have that allowed me to sort of up the drama and up the suspense and yeah up those moments and up the Cliffhangers for example and the hooks because the guests were giving that to us you know some of these guests have gone through unbelievable traumatic horrific storyline some of them so it sort of gave me the opportunity to do that had it been a different podcast it probably wouldn't work out this is something that I've had quite a lot of editors and podcasters messaged me about and it's amazing because I get tagged in posts where people saying I've tried an Anthony Smith trailer which is the biggest form of flattery I've ever had and they asked for advice and quite frankly some of the advice is it it doesn't fit the tone of the of the show Al fits the turn of the show because it is all about the drama and it's all about um that documentary esque this is this is your life or this is um this is what you can do to improve your life in somewhat magnificent way so so for me the first things first was to try and match the tone of the trailer to the tone of the podcast can it allow me to do that thankfully the set allowed me to do that the guests allow me to do that the questions allowed me to do that and so that that was the first part and then obviously with with Stephen the first thing he ever said to me was um have you watched any podcast promos prior to this and I got a little bit worried at first because I hadn't um and my reasoning behind what I had them was because I don't like this idea of other other podcasts influencing me um and to to be frank my my background was in film and in media podcast was still relatively new industry for me and so uh I said no and he just said good that and the reason why I said good was because he wanted me to have no um no constraints no full of what other people are doing and just do what I think's right for the podcast so that's what I've done and obviously it's taken time to to build it to where it is now you know it's taking a lot of feedback from Jack and From Grace who's like the queen of social head of content and us a lot working together and the feedback Luke was feedback loop with Steve and the feedback with the other team has slowly built this to the style of where we want it and I think there was one there was one trailer the first trailer which I think people really really understood it within the team as well was I think it was Tim Grover who was the um trainer for Michael Jordan and I think or it might have been toku they'll say it was when they went to LA the first time and the the delivery of his lines were so dramatic because he's American and they love they love the drama they sure do yeah so the delivery of his Lions just allowed me to just do bass drops and impacts with sound effects and the switch up of music and it was a very like almost like a traumatic moment in his life and that's when I started getting messages from people saying this is like a genuine movie trailer is this guy on Netflix is it doing this so then when we found this sort of key and people loving the Cliffhangers and the hooks we was we started figuring out this formula and this formula was working really well and so we've just continued to find that one percent with everything that we do with these trailers and have gotten to where we are today but narrative has always been at the core of these trailers that's so cool I mean yeah I have to say it's kind of so the way I sort of promote my ones is with these little like you said these kind of cutouts from the podcast and then I sort of make an edit out of it but like you rightly said it's kind of like you're just giving it to them in a sense but what you're doing with the trail is it seems like kind of of these Cliffhangers you're telling everyone exactly what they're gonna get but you're also leaving them like oh I want to know a bit more and then they go to the thing so it works perfectly it's worked for me many a times well but let's get into nitty-gritty bit with this then so obviously very easy to just be a consumer and watch it and yeah get the like like button and leave a comments and stuff but let's just see so how long does a typical edit of one of these things actually take for I'm sure it's kind of got quicker over time but is there sort of like a template that saves a lot of time now is it always kind of like a from scratch grind View it's always from scratch it's um it's I mean the typical trailer can take maybe two and a half days or so um and how many hours is it actually is that obviously you can say days but how many hours do you think you're actually putting into that price nice uh I mean to be fair it very much depends on the guests you know we've had some where um uh I I it depends on the guess and it depends on the situation in which I'm seeing the guests work so for example there's been times when I've sat in on the podcast and I've been taking notes the entire time and then that's almost half a day done um whilst I'm doing that and then there's other guests where they'll have they'll they'll be a really emotional moment where they're crying and it's like instantly okay we've got our hook and all we've got our endings so then it's finding the other bits but then sometimes we have guests where they might be
um where it might be more like an expert where they've got loads of different theories or they're trying to explain different parts or they take ages to build it and you sort of have to like like concise concise concise concise concise so but I very much believe in starting from scratch with each one it's it allows me to not get sloppy it allows me to try and find something new each time um so the what the usual process is sort of it has evolved and it's changing as we speak now with my new role as head of trailers I now have a fantastic editor who's learning the ropes and is doing part of the process for me as well but going back to what it was for the majority amount of time I would sit watch the entire episode any and take notes in my notepad from there I would then brainstorm ideas and try and craft a narrative from from those notes and I would almost create a a trailer on paper move that into with the time codes move that into the edit try and craft different ideas someone work some of them didn't actually work based on the delivery of the guest or the moment and then you just sort of keep two in your way start adding some music things start to come into life you're starting some sound you're getting like feedback throughout with Jack and and then Grace and then with Steve and um and then eventually you end up with this Epic trailer that's got um like Amazing Music and Sound just merging together and animation and as we've evolved it's a lot of people would think that it gets faster and faster and faster but um as we've evolved I'm still learning you know I was never taught editing editing is just something I've had to learn by doing I didn't get taught at University I uh definitely didn't get a tour at school um so the only way I Learned was by just try trialling different methods failing trialing something else and it works um and so that was so those moments really have always been trying to find this one percent which I've mentioned before how can we make each trailer better just by that little bit so it might be learning 3d motion in After Effects you might be learning new ways to bring text in it might be other sound design aspects so the process still saying the same really in terms of length because we keep trying to push how far we can take these take these trailers and um when we look back at them now which I've I've recently celebrated my 100th trailer uh I saw that that's awesome I made a trailer for the trailers I love it trailer for the trailers and me and Jack was watching back through them and talking about them and it's incredible that the Stark difference we see between my first trailer and my 100th it's it is crazy to think and they're both taking the same amount of time except this one's just got floating newspapers going around more b-roll more music more bridges coming in the flow is more seamless And the emotions more powerful so so it is the the process is getting quicker but the effort is increasing yeah it's a very premium thing and I totally get what you mean I mean even like the little sort of clips that I take and and sort of you know edit up a bit and make them sort of viral worthy you might call it or whatever I mean you could spend a whole day on that and it's brutal for the kind of the young podcasters who are just coming through now and just starting up when they don't have a team behind them or anything and it's like oh my God they have so much to do like they have to fill all of these shoes in so many different aspects and stuff but I'm interested then so obviously you know the majority of podcasts certainly don't have Studios and they don't have all these you know nice things and everything but do you think that people should start trying to sort of lean towards like a trailer thing in future I mean with their podcast obviously it's never going to be quite the same especially if it's like not in person and it's online but do you think there's sort of like going to be a motion towards making that sort of a style of things a bit more with other podcast us come going into the future do you think kind of for people listening if they have a podcast me do you think we're going to kind of it's best to stick to sort of like the traditional little clips from there what do you think is kind of like the future of that and is there improvements to be made
um I think to be fair podcasts just keep growing and growing and growing uh we went to the um uh the podcast show last year and was listening to the panelists talk and uh and someone said that they can genuinely see podcasts being the way people find out their news how people almost listen to true stories or watch documentaries in a sense and I can I can definitely see that happening you know podcasts are just growing and growing and growing the amount of guests that which we bring on have their own podcasts and we're trying to grow in America now and the podcast game there is just completely different and and it's massive so it's it's definitely not going to go in away anywhere soon and if anything is only going to grow so what you need to think about now is how can you make yourself stand out or how can you make yourself unique and content is vital and you know marketing a podcast is so difficult like like you said you know Doak has a team behind it and even we're trying we're even we're trying to keep up with Trends and trying different things and um experiments can go well experiments can go badly but we're sort of blessed that we've got such an amazing team behind the podcast from the production side to the market inside to the guest book inside and they're all so integral to the process and they're all so talented and like when I joined one of the first things Steven Jack said to me was that we just don't we don't hire just anyone you know if we're if we're really searching for a role and we get hundreds and hundreds of applicants we're not just going to hire one of those hundreds and hundreds of applicants unless they tick every box that we want and we know that they can drive the company forward even if it means that we have to keep searching then the process takes longer yeah um so the team that we've got is incredible so from a standalone podcaster who's doing everything themselves my advice really is to keep experimenting uh obviously I'm a huge advocate for trailers
I hope they stay and the beauty of the trailers is that it does give a a sense of what is gonna happen you know and one thing that we found we did there weren't really many trailers for podcasts before I joined in that style anyway from what we could see you know we're we're often getting quite quoted Now by other podcasters podcast agencies and guests that I've never seen a podcast advertised this way and when you think about it what I've been doing is not really massively new it's been done in other Industries for years it's been done for films for TV for shows even for books at some stage so all I've done is just evolved a style in an industry to another industry yeah and I can I can see that becoming more popular now we've seen it a lot more uh especially with some larger podcasts they're now starting to do trailers and I'll get tagged in post saying someone's someone's done a an Anthony Smith trailer someone's done it for like big podcast guess and we've had um quite big podcasts messaging us for advice and wanting to know how that process works for trailers so it is that's that's going to become a grind part of it the problem is is obviously that's my sole job I I don't have to do the episode as well plus then record the podcast plus find guests Etc and I think there's a worry for solo podcasters that the more they do the more they're just sort of gonna get burnt out and the love of this industry and what they're doing is gonna go so the best thing really is the clips things like Clips work the the biggest thing that you can do is just try and get your podcast out there as as much as possible and if that's by doing Clips amazing if that's by testing out a trailer or making a 30 second trailer or just a teaser with one question but playing with Sound and Music just to try and hook people in that can work as well it's just sort of experiment but it's just getting the content out there and building that Community who trusts you who understand your style who understand the sort of guess that you want on and can take value from it so that's the biggest advice really for solo podcasters is to just get the content out there in some way and the better and the easiest way that you can most efficient way that you can absolutely very true and um yeah so obviously just thinking this I promise I will move on to the next proper question in a minute I'm just loving this isn't this is great talk so that's fun right right so if we just take take for example like just podcasters you know solo podcasters in general who have like a limited budget obviously not everyone's kind of sitting in on Dragon's Denim and everything but if you had like a certain sort of budget to work with to kind of like Market a podcast nowadays where would you sort of be allocated now maybe I can dress this up better so I can get some Insider Secrets but like from your kind of experiment side of things and from the sort of like experience you've had and what you've sort of seen where do you think it's like most effective to put a limited budget into marketing a podcast nowadays because I've I've been confused by this in the past too I've been searching it on the internet and I've never really founded definitive answer it seems like really it's sort of the traditional kind of meta ads and stuff but yeah what do you think is kind of the best way to go about it or would you budget mostly on the quality of content and editing and that side of things
I mean in terms in terms of budgets really even I think I think people can sometimes get a little bit carried away with this idea of a higher budget means a better product and it means more opportunity to be honest some of the best pieces of marketing Donna have been done on the smallest budgets you know and when you when you think about what's a dispose what's at your disposal disposal we'll get there yeah that's right yeah this is I I used to have like speech therapy when I was younger so I can't I can't say certain words and then my I'll say a word in a podcast like I've done this um last year I just was talking normally and um my girlfriend was listening to it because she just makes sure that what I say is okay okay and then um we was on holiday and then she just burst out laughing and I was like why are you laughing and then she just real she just added another word to the list of things that I can't say um there's a lot of them um but yeah we've got a lot of tools um available to us one of the biggest ones obviously is social media and social media is free you know and building for me personally built the way you build that the best way isn't by pumping loads of budgets and ads into it it's sort of building that Community um obviously you can do like the odd like sponsored posts which aren't that aren't that expensive you know you find out from things like from YouTube like who your audience is the almost like the age Gap or what kind what countries are listening to you most or you can that what gender is listening to you most and then you you can do like a few Target ads to sort of play to those demographics a lot more and again you don't have to spend a lot on that you can just sort of like do a little put sort of dip your toe into that but I mean for us the trailers get a Traders go out and social the Traders go out on YouTube the Traders go on Instagram Tick Tock LinkedIn one size fits all isn't it it's good yeah exactly and it's um that's a relatively cheap piece of marketing but it's it's one of our biggest forms of marketing that we put into it and and so I think use use the aspects of what you have which are free which are social um which may be your which may be your time to to create Clips to and if you start teaching yourself almost like the basics and then keep experimenting with even things up from an editing perspective how text is put on screen um keep how music plays a role keep trying these different things and then you're putting out there for free and then obviously it's interacting with your community so as soon as you get a comment you reply to that comment try and putting it on all platforms as opposed to just one and making edits that fit each specific platform as well helps you know the what we put on Tick Tock is sometimes different to what we put on LinkedIn because the demographic's different and the age range of who's watching our Clips are different um so it's sort of using the tools that you have got as opposed to the money that you want that's that's sort of like the best way to grow and when it comes down to YouTube testing things up when the podcast comes out what time what day testing the thumbnails thumbnails are so important me and you have spoken about this before we had a great night of just podcast nerdery didn't we we really dug into it but you can talk about that stuff for hours couldn't you like it goes deep yeah yeah I mean just look at look at Mr Beast this one of the the things that I mean one of the most or if not the most successful YouTuber of of all time and one of his biggest passions to talk about on biggest parts of wisdom is about thumbnails he's so passionate about thumbnails and even for me before I joined here I never really thought of thumbnails in that way I always thought if I ever designed a thumbnail for a client when I had a business I just wanted it to look nice that was my thing I didn't want it to be still from still from the promo so I'll design a thumbnail for them but that that was it that was the fall I never really realized what text image sizing all of that stuff comes into play and how that impacts but it has a huge impact and there's way to test that you know you create various different thumbnails for one episode test one see how many clicks it gets test another one see if that drives and then there's aspects like um during the episode how do you hook them within those first 10 seconds it might be it might just be something you say asking people to subscribe can actually really boost subscriptions you know doing all these little things which are free to do and it's just experimenting they're the things that learn but can also grow grow your channel yeah it's so true I think have you have you ever noticed like when you when you want to go to bed at night or something and then you think uh one last YouTube video and then you're there three hours later thinking oh I've got five hours of sleep left I'll tell you why that is and I'm sure you know exactly why that is too it's because the people who designed these apps that made these phones and stuff there are scientists technicians and absolute experts who are solely focused on keeping your attention and that's exactly it and that you look at all these YouTube videos and stuff it is so competitive and it is literally like the bidding war for people's attention so you you have to be so proficient at it it's just it's the necessary so when you go through these channels and you see these videos like you said Mr Beast I mean he's just the The Godfather of just doing it so well I mean I'm always kind of trying to evolve and everything but okay look let's move on to question three so obviously a lot of podcasters myself included either starter for you know ass of one man like we kind of said um and we have a lot of a lot of big shoes to fill in this in this case especially with a very competitive you know podcasts of the markets at the moment so um you spoke a little bit about the need for being an editor and the marketer in one and also the vital role of telling a story so give us a bit of insight into why these things are so critical and also where to learn the skills to excel at this anything immediately actionable for people listening would be great as well yeah of course so if you want to be an editor in in this game or in online content or in marketing in general the the clues in in the name you have to know about marketing you can't just be an editor anymore you know and I think the I think the reason for that is the way I think of it it goes back to when me and Maya ex-business partner first start our company and when we started we still had contacts at the University we went to where we done a deal where we could use the equipment and we'd always speak with the like The Tech Guys there or would speak to lecturers or other students and whenever we mentioned what we was doing which was was making promos for companies which would then lead to adverts and TV commercials for companies they all sort of had this similar response which was oh you sold your soul to the devil how you you've given up this creative alter oh boy filmic filmic world to go and work for the man and work for money and corporates and stuff like and there was this there was this huge stigma you know when we started and people didn't understand how us doing Film Production could then lead to us selling our souls to companies and the reality of it is is because they they see editing or they'll see filmmaking in one one aspect which is just this creative this creative world this creative bubble where everything becomes your baby and everything like it's quite a stubborn world it's the only way I can explain it really you know you don't get you don't get feedback from other people you don't cater to what corporates want because corporates just care about money and profits and growing a company they don't care about the like the art is the is the main thing whereas for me it was vital that you get feedback on projects it was vital that your piece of work impacted people in a certain way and it was great that our work led to more sales and to growing a brand and raising Awareness on key issues for some Charities or or helping with recruitment you know these were these were viable goals they just weren't Arty creative goals they were corporate goals so I think from that experience then that's when I sort of learn and understood that I think a lot of filmmakers struggle to understand the other need that your edits need to fit a certain purpose and they do need to tick certain boxes and that that's not that's not constraining your ability as an editor it's not it's not like a train a chain wrapped around your creative artwork you know it's a challenge for you to do what you love but to also please the client and to put and to tick those boxes so that's something that I sort of learned from early on was how can we merge the two together and I was lucky that obviously I had Joe who was a huge influence um on my work and and how we worked as a team and when we had certain clients we were able to give them what they wanted but to also feed our beast and our hunger for that creative outlet and then that obviously leads through into my next job which was creating social assets for some of the biggest film franchises in the world you know they were creative films you know they had they were they had their linear storylines they were full of emotion they were cinematic and but whilst those films obviously were the films and they were there to entertain an audience part of my role was to make people go and see the film and to make people understand the film or to understand the show and so as much as I loved the creative side of it and I'd loved coming up with ideas on how when covid happened and then shows started reopening and TV shows started going back into production and we needed to find ways to um sell more tickets for West End productions for example or to get people to watch certain TV shows um as much as I loved that creative side of it of creating this narrative Arc or like these beautiful images of um and juxtapositions of emotions and things like that I always had to have it in my head that this needs to tick a box this needs to hook people in within the first three seconds this needs to leave people wanting more this needs to promise people that what they're going to see is going to be the best thing they'll ever see in their lives which is why they need to continue watching it you know so you need that you need both of those hats and the other side of marketing is you need to understand your client and it and it's the same with podcasts you need to understand your podcast and and what I was going back to before when people used to send me the trailers and stuff that they made which was done in our style it didn't suit the star of their podcast and that's an editor's that's an editor's hat on that's not a marketer's hat on the editor has seen something that's inspired him and created something very similar to put post that and it might be it might be a lovely edit and it might work from that creative side and it's got the sound and the music and the emotional Journey but it feels off because it just doesn't suit the marketing side and that's when you need to put marketing hat on go hold on out our podcast is borderline on funny quotes and All About Love or about um like I don't like gaming or it's like it's nothing to do with this drama that I'm creating so why am I trying to create drama you know so I do believe that you need that uh creative hat on which is your editing hat and then obviously you need to always think about the marketing and what it's going to achieve um and it was the third one storytelling it was yeah um I've sort of said it before but you know story telling a story is the most powerful powerful way you can engage an audience you know how we make our decisions is all fueled by our story lines because story lines create the emotions that drive our decisions you know if we if we and and it's been done for years it's been done for movie Traders for years it's been done in the media for years this is what the news does this is what um West End shows do is what books do you know they focus certain emotion and emotion evokes an action and in a sense that if you're angry you're more likely to do you think that you're more likely to go shopping if you're angry or sad you know um I think I heard one of the guests say once that um shopping is one of the biggest um addictive traits for people who are going through a hard time because you know you buy something and then you get this little rush of endorphins or so don't quote me on this I'm definitely not an expert but um sounds about right yeah you probably get this Rush of endorphins is like oh this is amazing I've just bought this you've done it and then you feel down again so you then you go buy something else um but emotions Drive action and action is what you want if you're marketing a podcast or marketing a TV show or marketing a film you want people to go and see it and you drive that by a narrative you know you need you need to creating a trailer it's almost like creating your little mini movie when you go and watch a Marvel film or if you go and watch ET for example I'm using ET because we watched it the other night and just reminding me how much of an incredible story is because you meet there's a character who barely says any words the central character E.T you and which is like this sort of ugly little alien and you yeah totally not offended by that and and by the end of the film you're balling your eyes out because this this little ugly alien is going back home with it with his family and leaving this family behind and you've fallen in love with this aliens it's the same with Lilo and Stitch you know Stitch isn't cute at the start of the film by the end of it you want a stitch and that's why Stitch is so popular and so you and the reason for that is because the narrative has created this emotional Journey with that character to make you understand that character to understand how they're feeling and you go on the journey with this character the trailers with for our podcast is no different you know if we have a guest on we and whether they're hated or whether they're controversial figure or whether they're loved um you sort of want to take the audience on a on a story a story arc with an emotional Journey so by the end of the trailer you may like them you may not like him you may disagree with him but you're sort of you sort of have this emotional attachment to him and because of that you want to find out what they've got to say um one of my favorite ever guess was uh Chris Chris Camara and um and it was because I watched him growing up on soccer Saturday as a as a pundit and he was this giant ball of energy and like the life and soul of the party and his quotes were just memorable and he used to just shout down to the camera and they became iconic we booked him in and we met him and he came out and he was he was quite slow talking and he hadn't been on Sky Sports for a while and I'd always wondered what had happened and then as it turned out he suffered from apraxia and his speech was his speech was going and he felt like he's lost his career that he's not the same person as he was that he he couldn't do the things that he loved and he felt trapped and it was like a very emotional episode and so my job really was to create that same emotion I felt in 60 seconds or 90 seconds you know show him the life that he was and what it's led to and the response he's had from it has been incredible but the reason why people like that is because they went on this journey with him they saw him at his high and they see him at his low and you can relate they become human to us now and that all that's all stemming from the storyline absolutely yeah it's relatability isn't it and um just something that cropped up there before we get to the fourth question is something that crops up in my head um while you were speaking there you spoke about kind of having controversial people on and you know people who sort of may not be so liked by the media or whatever where do you kind of like draw the line of that when you're when you're kind of starting a podcast and stuff like I've had this in the past before where I've actually had yeses for a podcast from some people who actually seemed very controversial and I didn't have them on so is it safe to take these kind of risks do you think with people um and like how kind of effective is it and I'm just just giving a bit of insight like into is it worth taking the risks with people who are controversial and does it actually have potential to really damage the brand or is it actually just something that's actually good
I guess it it depends on it depends on you it depends on your brand what your values of the brand um how uh what's the word how not undecisive but how neutral you are yeah topic I suppose yeah you know and I mean it's some as as you get bigger and as the podcasts grow naturally you're just gonna have people who disagree with the guest every guest you know whether whether they're universally likes or whether they're hated or if they're controversial or not No One's Gonna like there's not one person who's going to be loved by everyone yes they've always done something to wind someone up so I guess it's a case-by-case basis if that person's got some value to offer you know I mean we get it we get it with uh some of like the doctors we've had and some of the experts where their views I can imagine yeah huge outrage with people because of what they said to the extent where I get messages and stuff of like hate mail and things like that sounds and it's it's um United and at first it's really worrying and it's quite scary and it's um you know you you question it but then you sort of gotta understand that one we're not agreeing nor disagreeing with that person that person is credited they've they're an expert in their field they just may have a different opinion to someone else yeah which happens all the time and that's where you know the art of debate is beaut as a beautiful thing for me I love debates you know me and my dad were having for hours and hours and hours about things like the school system and things like that and it's um so for me I love a good debate and maybe that is something that um as the world goes on debates are being seen more and more as like a uh you're right or wrong there's no middle ground there's no way to sort of talk about this or express your feelings um but it's sort of a tricky one really there there's probably some guests that we wouldn't have on um there's probably some guests that people are shocked that we've had on there's views that we've had on where people have been really annoyed at us for but they're not our views they're the views of the person we've not you know we're not saying we agree with them um the message yeah and at the end day there is still that whole line of there's no such thing as bad press you know saying look at people like say Piers Morgan for example my career he's made his career by being pretty controversial and speaking his views he knows what get Raul's people up so he he knows what he says he adds an extra 10 onto it to just to get people fume in the right that's what happened yeah exactly that's what that and and it works and it rolls people up and that's why he's he's still in the business that's why you know when he was on Good Morning Britain he was like one of the most watched daytime TV shows at that time and was getting huge ratings you know he he knows what he's doing um and that's his brand and it's just whether if that aligns to your brand or whether you're neutral enough that you can let this person speak say what they want to say whether you agree with them or not and it you know as and then just let the viewer make up their own mind and let the viewers discuss their points that's what YouTube comments are for you know people you know people have debates on that for our guests all the time with certain aspects you know but we will never now have a guest where 100 of the people agree with their view or agree with how they do things whether it's something to do with work-life balance whether it's something to do with trauma whether it's something to do with mental health whether it's something to do with health and gut and exercise yeah you know we're never gonna find a guest that appeals to 100 of people and quite frankly I probably wouldn't want that because you know you don't want everyone agreeing with each other you want you want this debate you want to spark different ideas absolutely man yeah a really really solid point I think you touched on this earlier as well like some people are now starting to kind of go towards almost podcasts for their news because they know that there's no red tape so I think as a host if you're considering that kind of a thing it's quite important to remain pretty sort of like I'm just gonna be the messenger here and put the truth out there and just have no red tape around the whole thing so yeah just be the person who kind of brings the news almost in a sense to them and brings the people in front of them and then they can make their own mindset up about yeah man really solid points um okay so fourth question then so in a heavily competitive industry now very competitive industry um from watching and working with one of the best in the game at it what do you think it's going to take for new podcasts to stand out of the crowd nowadays and what will it actually come down to to for shows to achieve extraordinary results do you think
I think the main one is finding finding your voice and finding your community so there's a lot of people who will not copy but be inspired by a podcast and want to do pretty much the exact same thing the problem is they're then competing with that podcast which has already built up a community and a follow-in yeah so the only way really you can compete with that is to pump loads of money in and and so to be fair that sometimes that can work but not everyone has loads of money that they can pump into a pump into a podcast so I think you know the reason part of the reason why we've become so successful is we found our voice and we found what works and through trials and trip from trials and experiments and Steve being the host that he is he has a way of getting uh information and emotions out of guests that not many people can do you know and then so we have sort of become we're now being quoted by other podcasters like weirdo podcast guests go on to cry for example for um or where they've got like maybe like an exclusive drop or something like that you know we're it's because Steve's so good at getting to the core of every guest and you know and they'll be guests who won't want to come on because of that you know they might not feel ready to open up or to tell their story but what we're finding now is guests who are wanting to express themselves and maybe tell a story that they've kept hidden for so many years or to almost let things off their chest it's almost like a like a miniature therapy session for some of them and that's our Niche you know and when you think about the guests that the dialer CEO interviews it's experts in uh gut health Mental Health Sleep to footballers to managers to singers to actors to authors yeah so in terms of the guests we're bringing in there's no there's no Niche there you know they're they're so sparse and obviously we still get comments about when we release a celebrity people want the CEO when we release CEO people want celebrity etc etc and we always get that so we don't have that Niche so our Niche is Steve's ability to get to the core of the guest um Steve's ability to ask questions that people may have always wondered but never have the chance to ask asking questions that the guests don't expect and also The Branding that we've built so the trailers the trailers have um have become like a life of their own um the social media clips that we do have like their own branding with it you know the studio people who come in they want a photo in the chair because the Studio's become iconic you know so the brand inside is our Niche we've built a huge community of people who trust us who understand that with every episode you're going to learn something new you're going to learn something about someone or you're going to learn something that you can bring into your life and to make positive change so I think really the the best way to stand out is to find your Niche and just to focus on that Niche and don't try and Branch out too much don't try and do everything that everyone else is doing yeah take inspiration from aspects so take inspiration from for help some people do thumbnails but put your own spin on it yeah um how people Market it how people release you can do all things that but find a voice that's suitable to you because people will will smell a rat if you're trying to do something that you're not passionate about really um you need to live and breathe this industry in order to get far in it it needs to become like your passion and the only way to find your passion or to do something passionate is something that you genuinely love and care about so true man so true but this also ties in with something you said earlier as well you were kind of talking about like people when they start overdoing and they kind of burn out but I mean if you if you're if you love gardening and pulling weeds out the ground and stuff and all that sort of stuff and you are so passionate about it and then you start a podcasting it why would you burn out from that because you're just talking about the thing that you're most passionate about so stay intrude to yourself like you said very true um last little trivia question just something I've I'm interested in because obviously I've got like a bit of a legend on the thing here and you're in the studio of one of the biggest in the game and you work with one of the biggest in the game so if we talk about the future of podcasting and stuff what are you guys seeing in terms of like the ratio between the audio only platforms versus the video platforms because my sort of my sort of thinking towards it has always been that actually the audio only tends to be dominant because you you can do other things whilst listening to it whereas the video is kind of a little bit more committing but I'm just interested like what are we seeing kind of in like the metric side of thing from that standpoint and should people be focusing more towards video content or is the kind of audio stuff always going to be a dominant Factor I'm just interested if you have the if you have the info yeah so uh so earlier this year I think in ja uh end of January beginning of Feb we hit 1 million subscribers on YouTube and I think at this moment in time what are we now April April so three months later so it's taken two years or so to get to that one million uh now we're in April I think we're on 1.8 million so it won't be long till we're breaking 2 million and I think that is one of the the best examples to show how important video can be for podcasts it's vital for us you know and it's vital for me as an editor because obviously it's a lot easier to make a trailer when you've got uh five to eight different camera angles but there's more to it I think having video as your podcast it unleashes another demographic and another type of listener and viewer and there are obviously there's loads of people who will listen to the diver CEO whilst they're walking the dog or whilst again for a jog you know I think we're on you know in gyms for example um we're on flights now um as a visual but you know there's other people who see it almost as a as the show to just sit down and watch you know there's for me coming from a film background visual there's something you can get from visuals that you can't quite get from audio especially with the emotion side of things too in your in your podcast exactly yeah yeah like when we heard Maisie Williams on and she she couldn't bless her she couldn't contain like her emotions and she was she was crying and Steve goes over and give gives a hug it's a beautiful moment it's in the trailer it's in you know we kept in the episode it's been used in news that and that's a visual thing that you get to see and you can physically see someone upset you know and for me that's something that audio can never do really you can obviously hear like a crack a crack on the voice but they're saying about seeing someone physically upset that heightens your emotions you know and it it makes you understand them a lot more and see the human element of them a lot more so I think by doing video it's it's the future keep if you're not doing video I would highly suggest you do it whether it is over Zoom whether it's one camera with its two cameras it's something I recommend and to build on YouTube because YouTube is still one of the biggest platforms for people to watch and listen to podcasts um and it it offers something for completely different demographic that's why Spotify now do video as well as audio because they understand that people want to also watch this stuff now it's becoming the new way to consume news to to find out about people's lives and people want to watch that if it's you know so so I would highly recommend like getting on video I think it's it that's we talk about competing and how you can level up and gain that's probably one of the biggest things that you can do absolutely yeah I mean I only started in video 37 episodes and tell you what so worth it makes such a big difference especially like you said with the kind of promotions or things like the content you get from it and the little Clips you know that that's that's a whole new marketing side for the podcast too so I mean it's absolutely it's just just vital um but wow look at that so that is the four questions done for today and uh man before we wrap it up it is time for what I like to call the Shameless plug so just promote away my man anything that you want people to take a look at your social media or just something you believe in now's your moment no judging here
all right so I mean obviously if you want to see my work the best way to see my work is to follow Stephen so I'm plugging someone else um but if you give very honorable
if you give Steven a follow on Instagram on Twitter on on Tick Tock um obviously Monday and Thursdays you'll get a Thursday uh Monday and Thursdays you'll get a trailer every morning so that's how you can see my work um my thing that I'm focusing on at the moment is my LinkedIn so you can find me on LinkedIn Anthony Smith and part of what I'm doing there is I want to give away some of the secrets of the trade some of the um some of the ideas some of the techniques is going really well so far and on it really is just it'll be like videos or little tutorials or almost static posts or just little things that I've picked up or things that I think are useful so for example one of them would just be like ratios of different video formats for example and stuff like that but it's just like little tips and tricks for any marketers and editors out there so linkedin's probably my my main one but feel free to follow me on Instagram if you want to see any photos of my holidays I love it man well dude thank you so much for joining me today for the talk for podcast dude I'm absolute pleasure having you on I've thoroughly enjoyed picking your brain thank you for having me no it's been a really good one dude and yeah thank you guys for listening to this has been episode 69 nice and if you likes listening to the past episodes go and have a look at our Channel and if you'd like to listen in for the future ones too there's gonna be there's loads of people booked in it's all it's kicking off now make sure to hit that subscribe button and spread some love by leaving a like and a comment signing off for now
