My Path to a Podcast
There is no shortage of available resources offering wisdom and guidance to aspiring Podcast Producers who want to get a show off the ground. When I was starting the Breakthrough Builders podcast in late 2020, I researched a range of perspectives, data points, and opinions. In the end, the resources that would turn out to be most salient and helpful for me were the Infinite Dial report from Edison Research, the specific guidance on process steps offered on Shopify’s Blog, and the Ultimate Guide to Podcast Marketing from Castos. Infinite Dial’s comprehensive research and clear reporting helped me solidify the business case for investing in a podcast. Shopify’s thought leadership helped me identify the component parts that needed to come together to get from idea to audio. And Castos’ piece helped me understand the high-elasticity “little things” like publishing times and cross-promotion.
What my searches yielded in lesser measure were stories. The inspiring chronicles of a show’s genesis and etymology. The candid reflections on the challenges of getting a show started. The invariable zigs and the zags that were probably abstracted under the veneer of SEO-optimized text, prescribed character limits, and the pull to just. create. something.
Putting anything valuable into the world often comes with experiences people don’t want to revisit. Nobody likes regaling a crowd with stories of unanswered calls or writer’s block. But my personal truth as a creator is that the journey has been incredibly inspiring and rewarding. It hasn’t been without its setbacks - but, on balance, it is recognizably close to the “if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t change a thing” experience that sits at the intersection of clear focus, hard work, great people, and good luck.
With this in mind, I wanted to share the steps on my journey to becoming something of a...Podcast Person. My reflection is not meant to be a “how-to guide,” and it is not a list of resources per se. Instead, it is an attempt to share the story of how Breakthrough Builders came to be, so that others might take something from the experiences I’ve had.
My Path to a Pod
Question 1: Why a podcast?
This is the first and most important question to answer, as everything flows from purpose. I’ve written previously about my view that Qualtrics had a significant opportunity to modernize its thought leadership, better celebrate its customers, and develop more brand-right content. This intersection offered a few different content and format possibilities, but when I reflected on my experience of the pandemic (read: I missed talking to adults), I knew that I would have a deep motivation to create a platform for connection and conversation, debate and discussion, learning and laughter. I knew I’d put in the early mornings and late nights to get something into the world. And given the rapidly growing growth of the podcast medium, I knew I’d be swimming with the current.
Question 2: What’s the story?
This one came to me fairly quickly and intuitively, but not because I had a Eureka moment or a blinding flash of insight. It was instead because an alchemy of three disparate but related experiences came together in my mind: the sustenance that well-led, approachable, smart podcast conversations had provided me during the pandemic (most notably Making Sense, How I Built This, and Armchair Expert); my excitement to build something that honored the Qualtrics Brand; and my need to escape Zoom and get back to really connecting with great people and great builders to talk about things that matter.
These three paths came together as the Breakthrough Builders platform, with the podcast as its first instantiation.
Question 3: What’s the model?
Answering Question Two about story got me the What. Next, I had to figure out the How. I felt that there was an opportunity space in the podcast market to create and deliver an audio experience that was personable yet professional, entertaining yet educational, as summarized below:
Another dimension of the “How” that required logical thinking and creative discipline was the “cognitive balance” that needed to be struck between the voice of the Guest, my own voice, and the implied voice of Qualtrics. To stay consistent with the show’s objectives and purpose, I settled on a mix of about 65% Guest, 20% self, and 20% company. This didn’t mean that my Guests would talk for six out of every ten minutes or that I would speak for two of ten; it was just a model to help ensure that the conversation would pivot around our Guest and their stories, with my voice providing a framework for the dialogue and a discussion partner for our Guest on particularly rich topics.
Question 4: Who’s the audience?
One of the luxuries of a show like Breakthrough Builders is its relevance and potential appeal to a broad, diverse audience. Writers, builders, makers, creators, inventors, shapers...these are the Guests I knew I wanted to feature on the show because there’s a little bit of this spirit in all of us.
That said, from an audience-building perspective, we stood up Breakthrough Builders to invite senior business leaders and influencers to hear from the kinds of people we are “for” at Qualtrics. These leaders often know of Qualtrics, but have an older frame of reference for the company as a survey product. An essential and inspiring part of moving the needle on the awareness, consideration, and favorability of our brand is positioning ourselves alongside people who’ve built great experiences - whether they’ve used our platform to do so or not.
We also set out to build a broader audience: anyone who sees themselves as an “intraprenurial” builder. There are many shows that feature guests and content related to entrepreneurship, but fewer that explore the themes of career development and professional impact across all types of organizations and industries. Our ambition was to create a relevant, relatable content series for intraprenurial builders that could inspire them and help them discover their own unlocks - and, like the executive audience, reconsider their perceptions and understanding of the Qualtrics brand.
Question 5: Who are the Guests?
The show’s conversation format demanded, of course, that the show feature a compelling array of Builders whose stories would be relevant for and resonant with our audiences. Thus ignited the most thrilling part of this entire enterprise - identifying Guests for the show and asking them to join me for a conversation.
Despite being over a decade old as a medium, podcasting does not (yet?) feature many of the mazes or riddles associated with securing television or speaking-gig guests. It’s still mostly informal. There are occasionally speaking fees and talent agents involved, but as Jordan Harbinger’s story demonstrates, it’s a networking play. The bad news about this is that if you’re not within two degrees of connection to someone, it’s unlikely they’ll appear on your show without significant legwork and luck. The good news is that it’s not just a game of dollars. To get rolling, it’s all about starting with people you know whose stories are a great fit for your audience.
In my opinion, Guest One was really important. The first person to appear on the show, I felt, needed to be an embodiment of the show’s premise. I considered a number of people and ultimately decided to approach Robert Chatwani, a friend and mentor who’s the CMO of Atlassian, with the request of being the first Guest. To my delight, he not only agreed, but prepared extensively with me and ended up using the episode to publicly tell the story of a defining career moment for the first time. I was honored and humbled, and I still often cite that episode as one of the most revelatory and purposeful conversations I’ve had in a professional and personal context. The experience of doing Episode One with Robert - and the feedback we got from our audience about his show - confirmed for me that the podcast medium was indeed one I wanted to continue to invest my time and our team’s resources in.
The entire first season of Breakthrough Builders provided me and our audience with pinch-me moments, one after the other, as incredible Builders from within and beyond my network shared their stories in candid, relatable, and specific ways. Epic creative leader Charlie Sutton at Facebook reflected with me on the accountability of people to build technology that amplifies human agency. Engg leader Farhan Thawar at Shopify shared his view of learning as an “infinite game” that motivates him in his career. Iconic entrepreneur Kim Malek regaled us with the story of starting and scaling Salt & Straw. And on and on. The flywheel had begun to spin.
Question 6: What’s the branding?
Breakthrough. It’s only two syllables, but it might be the least-efficient duosyllabic word in the English language. It’s equal parts beauty and train wreck. And it’s the heart of the Qualtrics brand, and as such, it was the Life Force of the show. The creative challenge was how to steward the spirit and letter of the platform using the brand identity of Qualtrics.
It was a journey I went on with one of the most powerful pairings I’ve known in my branding career - Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. The two of them helped me imagine album art, guest and episode art, web page designs, and creative to bring the Breakthrough Builders brand to life in imaginative and intuitive ways. From the earliest days of our explorations, I was drawn to the beauty and simplicity of using overlapping b shapes to signal connection and conversation, and to using the Qualtrics gradient in subtle, polished ways to clearly connect it to our brand. After a few turns of the crank, we were ready to take the new platform to the world.
Question 7: Who will help make it happen?
When I say “we” at the end of the answer to Question Six, I mean it in the most inclusive way possible. My teammates Ali Rohani and James Wadsworth supported me with strong points of view and helped sell the vision for Breakthrough Builders within Qualtrics. My CMO, Kylan Lundeen, helped showcase it around the company as a demonstration of brand-right thought leadership. Gregory Hedon (Frenchy) built not just one website, but two - one dedicated to the show and the one you’re reading this essay on. Our ECD John Johnson’s eye for detail helped the branding go from ‘pretty good’ to pretty outstanding. Nate Crenshaw was our first showrunner and editor, and was a key voice of pragmatism and focus in the early days. Todd Bagnull has been an indispensable show writer and thought partner. Chelsea Hunersen has literally taken the show to the world as the owner of all things Social at Qualtrics. And of course there are people in my network who contributed at some stage of my career to shaping me into someone who could not just feel confident leading a company-sponsored podcast, but to use the platform to steward our company, our brand, our people, and our community.
Question 8: How will it be produced?
When we got the show off the ground, we didn’t have all of the right resources available to produce a studio-quality conversation that would compel people to tune in and turn us on. So we looked to experienced partners outside our four walls, and started by working with Maryland-based Clean Cuts, part of the Three Seas Collective. Their astounding music library, high production quality, and strong project management helped us execute Seasons One and Two with efficiency and beauty.
When the opportunity came to affiliate with a podcast-focused production house here in San Francisco, though, I wanted to take advantage of it. I’m glad to have Breakthrough Builders as part of the growing collective at StudioPod, where leaders TJ and Julian are helping open the world to and for a whole generation of incredible creatives.
Question 9: What’s the work really like?
Anyone who wants to get started in podcasting should take stock of the fact that it is a lot of hard work across some fairly disparate fronts. You’re identifying potential guests, recruiting them to come on, deeply researching their backgrounds so that you know their story, divining the unique storyline that connects that story with your audience, preparing for the recording with each guest, making sure they have the right technology for the interview, and then executing a great interview. You’re making calls on which software and hardware to use: How will you record? (I prefer Squadcast.) What kind of mic do you want? Which spot on the condenser array of the mic captures your voice best? Do you need a pop filter? Once you have an audio recording, do you use a transcript as well? (I say 100% yes.) What do you keep from the interview, and what do you toss? How do you decide the flow? Where will you introduce music? (I say wherever there is a moment in the dialogue where you want to make sure to recapture your listeners’ attention.) What will be the title and written description of an episode? Does the guest want or need to approve it? Does their PR team? And on and on.
The bottom line is that, to pull off podcasting, you have to be not only deeply empathetic and incredibly organized, but also willing to put in the work. You may have great teammates surrounding and supporting you. But if you’re the owner of the franchise - the person whose name is on the digital door of the show’s recording room - you’re going to want to sweat the details and the small stuff. That’s just how to get to Great.
Question 10 - How will we promote it?
This, admittedly, is an area where we’re just getting started as of the time of this writing. We are working towards getting the podcast website behind the Qualtrics firewall so that we can use our SEO and paid search to drive traffic and get better audience insights. We have ignited a partnership with VaynerTalent to help us widen the Guest network and amplify the show in new ways and new formats. We have begun to buy ads on Google to drive organic search traffic to discover us. We’re experimenting with episode cross-promotion. But we are still in the early days of promoting, as we are still focused on creating excellent content and building out the franchise the way we want to.
In Closing
I hope that this reflection provided some relevant and interesting insights. There’s no one way to do podcasting right - and even if there were, I’m quite confident I wouldn’t be the one to advise on what that is. But here’s what I can say. Know why you’re doing it, build something distinctive, honor your guests, have fun, and put in the work. If you’re doing those five things consistently and well, you’re well on your way.
Good Luck!