Monetizing and Increasing the Intellectual Property of Your Podcast with David Segura

 You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast.
 If it's radical, we cover it.
 Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey, guys.
 What's up?
 Welcome to the latest edition of The Radcast, Ryan Alford, your host.
 We're getting radical.
 We're getting radically meta today, talking to the founder, the CEO of Glassbox Media.
 What's up, David Siggura?
 Doing great.
 How are you?
 I'm great, man.
 Appreciate you coming on.
 I'm excited to talk podcasts.
 Hey, anyone that's coming on to tell me that podcasts are exploding.
 It's the smartest decision anyone can make, but it starts to stroke my ego a little.
 So I appreciate it.
 Okay, happy to do it.
 I'm being sincere.
 So it works for both of us.
 I know exactly.
 It's good for you.
 Good for us.
 I know we'll get down that road.
 Here in Manhattan there, I both, we talked pre episode, I both miss it and don't miss
 it a bit.
 Can't deny the energy, but it grows on me.
 I'm glad to be back in a little bit of slower South Carolina, but it probably does fuel
 the energy daily.
 I'm sure that it does.
 New York is unrelenting after seven years or so.
 I still not totally used to it, but I've learned to embrace it.
 You have to.
 It's the only way.
 And I loved it.
 I like the frenetic nature of it, but as you get older, you want to end raising kids.
 It's not the best place to raise a family.
 Not because it's like bad or give it a bad rap about being dangerous or something.
 I never felt and not in at a danger, but these are more green grass and certain things.
 So raising the family here in South Carolina, but it's not about me, David.
 I want to hear.
 And I know I can't wait to get to talk more about glass box and all the stuff that's
 going on there.
 But let's set the table for everybody and tell them a little bit about that backstory
 on you, man.
 Yeah, definitely.
 So I was born in Houston, but I grew up in El Paso, Texas.
 Really enjoyed it.
 Smaller town moved a lot slower, nothing like New York.
 Then I wanted to change a place.
 And I ultimately went to University of Chicago, loved it out there, had a great experience
 good education, but it was too cold for a Hispanic guy at Northwest Texas.
 I just couldn't hack it.
 So the first chance I got, I was out of there.
 So I moved to Los Angeles, really enjoyed it, did some consulting, which was not the
 best fit.
 Hats off to anybody working at a big company, but for me, I learned early on that that
 wasn't really like my bag, and I want to be a little bit more entrepreneurial.
 So started out as a junior employee at several media companies, had a good experience, and
 that all eventually led to me starting this company called Giant Media.
 Giant Media was like this native video exchange, which in plain English, we used to help companies
 in entrepreneurial brands, create videos, and tell stories.
 We would find out essentially the best place to propagate that, whether it was a publisher,
 or alternatively, these apps coming from this new social network that people probably have
 heard of called Facebook.
 Early on in Texas, it's great outcome for us, but we had no other choice.
 We'd get some credit sometimes for being innovative and embracing Facebook early, but
 as a small company, we decided to bet the farm on it, ended up being right.
 So we scaled that out with some amazing help.
 People like Mike Dubin from Dollar Shave Club and others, and as a result of that, had amazing
 clients like Heineken-Loriel, you name it, and eventually got acquired by this big
 holding company called AdMellage.
 That was itself backed by TBG and JMI, so that was an amazing outcome.
 We worked our tails off, but it was almost existential.
 We achieved what we wanted to do, and I was thinking like, what the hell do I do now?
 And so that was the story of Giant basically.
 That's cool, man.
 That's fascinating.
 When you start talking about the video network platform, it was, remind me, it's kind
 of like early programmatic in a way.
 Is that, would that be a good way of summarizing it?
 Very much so.
 It was all built for scale.
 Our biggest clients were all on the demand side, so they were those huge media agencies,
 which I know you're familiar with, the OMDs are the way, the publics, all those guys.
 It was personal, it was strategic, but it was also very transactional.
 It was for the most part automated self-serve, and then we did do some contextual buying
 as well with them.
 So it scaled nicely, we learned a ton, and eventually we got bought by this company
 that had ambitions to scale over the world.
 An amazing set of people, really funny.
 I spent my two years after making sure the integration went through, but then immediately
 after that, decided to take some time off, was mildly burned out, and I felt I needed
 to do that for myself, and glad I did.
 It's good.
 You have to recognize it yourself.
 Too many of us don't get too far all the other into that, and they can go south or further
 south quickly.
 So it hats off to you a lot to be learned out there for entrepreneurs, like knowing
 and understanding how to take care of yourself.
 So would you call, would you classify yourself?
 I have these discussions with clearly an entrepreneur, clearly a marketer on many levels.
 Are you a technical marketer or are you a visual marketer?
 Where's your passion at?
 You seem like you got a little bit of both.
 I would say this, that'd probably be more of the technical marketer camp, but like everybody,
 I think I'm a visual person.
 I'll start by saying, I'm not like a true CTO, like my co-founder, a giant, is that guy.
 He gets to, he's what I consider to be a true technologist.
 That's not me.
 I'm more of a dreamer, like a big thinker.
 I like strategy.
 I try to feel like the gaps in the market, and then obviously assemble a good team and
 push them really hard, so that's what we did.
 So our whole vision there was just trying to figure out how do we help people scale video?
 How do we do something different from pre-rolls, something more personal and personalized?
 We just happened to capture the trends a little bit quicker than a lot of other folks.
 So we were very fortunate to have our exit in 2014, and obviously, I think the choir did
 really well too, so that's great also.
 That's cool.
 We exit there.
 We take a little break.
 We dabble in a few things.
 When did the podcasting start to hit your radar, and you know, before we have hard down
 the glass box, rabbit hole, talked to me about what you've been seeing, what kind of
 led to the podcast trade for you?
 Yeah.
 So I'll say this is a little bit of cliche, but at least in my experience, it ended
 being true.
 I did want to start another business.
 I know I'm more of an entrepreneur than I am an investor, but it took some time to
 get there.
 Like this whole break, for example, it was like five years.
 It was a long time in between of starting this business and kind of getting started.
 So essentially what I was doing during that time is investing in all sorts of companies
 from like CPG to media.
 The audience has probably heard of some of them.
 Companies like Liquid Death, Hawthorne, the clone company, Grove Collaborative, Ease,
 Cannabis Company, a whole bunch.
 And while it didn't relate, obviously, directly to podcasts, later on, it did.
 And seeing what people did well, what they didn't do well, I just started to get more
 passionate about getting back in the game.
 And then it was almost like having a hard to heart myself.
 I have a lot of interest.
 I'm like, literally ADHD.
 And so at a certain point in time, though, I just thought, you know what, I'm a media nerd.
 That's what I get to get back to.
 That's always been my sweet spot and that's where I can add the most value.
 Let's do this.
 So in 2020, we essentially just got the band back together.
 A lot of folks from the giant media team were interested in doing something.
 It took us about six months to figure out exactly what that was, but multiple members
 of the founding team wanted to focus on podcasting, which I was passionate about.
 But I'll be the first to say not an expert at the time.
 And the reason why we chose it is just that we thought it was a really interesting way
 to improve the lives of creators, essentially the podcast host and figure out a way to invest
 in them, sometimes literally, to increase the value of the IP.
 So our whole vision for a class box is that we're extremely bullish on the concept of
 improving IP really quickly through podcasting.
 We think it's like a foothold or told and to anything.
 It's great at the standalone product, but adaptation opportunities, whether it's books,
 live events or TV.
 We really think it's endless.
 And we're just at the beginning stages of this now.
 Yeah.
 You're saying you're singing from the playbook.
 We're in the choir together.
 I don't know if you're preaching, I'm preaching, but I'm amenin in the back.
 Hallelujah.
 In the good Southern Baptist church, when anybody was literally like vibin with what the
 pastor was saying, wanna make them feel good, they go, amen.
 I gave you some digital and real amans from the pastor in the soapbox, but it's been fascinating
 to me with marketing.
 Everybody is tired of ads.
 Like everybody's aware more of marketing than they've ever been before.
 And they don't want, we're interrupting.
 And so we're podcasting place for me is in this alternative media world for brands and
 opportunities for like how you bring content to life in a way that maybe promotes a person
 of brand of product, but it's kind of like the notion Pepsi's, Pepsi will have a TV station
 one day.
 Like you're seeing this convergence of media and brands and commercialism and all that
 stuff.
 And podcasting to me is like at the forefront of like this alternative media opportunity
 because it has so many arms and legs because once you start creating content and doing
 what we're doing right here, the offshoots of that are endless.
 Like you said, books, other adaptations, but there's just, it is IP, it truly is.
 It's a unique piece of content that can be used in different ways, manipulated different
 ways, and then turned into alternative forms of media things.
 So it's really fascinating time that we're in.
 I'd agree.
 And just to give you another example, I've mostly been a digital guy.
 Obviously, that's what I'm passionate about, your classic startups, but I've also dabbled
 in investing in TV catalogs and probably the most well known is daughter and don't give
 me wrong.
 I'm super biased, but it's a great show who doesn't love season Milan.
 But the fact of the matter is it's been almost 15 years since it's been on TV and even
 with that, we've been able to license that old catalog to Pluto TV overseas, Latin America
 and Europe.
 And here in North America, with at least the right now, Disney plus.
 So the reason I bring that up is that even though it sounds bombastic, impossible, almost
 borderline wrong, I really do think podcasting is evergreen.
 And I really think that the staying power is there.
 So with a straight face, I'll tell you that I think podcast catalogs will eventually rival
 TV and music catalogs as well.
 So I think that realization is a new one, but people with much bigger checkbooks and bigger
 brains and I have started to realize that really recently.
 So I'm excited to see what this goes from here.
 I love that.
 The radcast started five years ago and I always saw it as immediate entity.
 Maybe I had the T-sheet being a marketer and kind of writing that, starting the train.
 But like we've started the radcast podcast network and like we've got three or four new shows
 coming under our umbrella.
 And so I look at it the same way.
 It's like that IP and like it's it.
 The more shows you get under the umbrella, the more opportunities like the high tide raises
 all ships.
 Right.
 And so those synergies with sponsors with content with the interplay of guests and hosts
 and different things, even if they're not exactly down the same line or vertical, there's
 just so much there.
 And I think there's, you saw this trend with like COVID and things like that where podcast
 can went high because a lot of people had maybe more time and it started to level off
 a bit.
 But I think now we're probably just what we've done is we're just kind of back now on
 that natural growth plane for the media.
 And I like, I both like and don't like, but that it's cool a bit with just new players
 coming in because it takes a lot to build a show.
 It's a lot of work.
 That's it.
 It's just complex and it's easy to get started.
 It's hard to have longevity.
 Yeah.
 And all things in life, you gotta be consistent.
 And I will tell you at the risk of annoying you, I was that guy working with like really
 star creators, our team and myself, especially just underestimated how many mad hours
 goes into doing it from research to practice, to production, to editing, it's just like
 mind blowing.
 So my hands off to anybody who does it like a year over year, much less like five years.
 That's amazing.
 Yeah.
 I was hit three, it's gonna be like episode three, 50 somewhere in that range.
 We did two week for and look, I started, I worked for others for 17 years and this started
 radical already at agency, I started the rad cast and started really going heavy with
 my personal brand.
 Those three things all started really about the same time five years ago, most of the
 day, like right here, March, April, May of 2018.
 If you put them on an axis of time and growth, they all three are almost identical.
 The revenue of the agency, the growth popularity, listenership and sponsor opportunities at
 the show.
 And then the popularity of my personal brand, because we've interplayed all three and
 leveraged one against the other.
 And so it, but it takes that consistency, I had one client, and I was recording two
 podcast weeks, which in some ways made no sense at all.
 It wasn't like impacting, but people as well as freaking crazy, but five years later,
 they don't.
 But people have to, but it's still early.
 And I think people just need to realize the opportunities there.
 I agree.
 I agree.
 And that's a big part of our vision.
 So just taking a step back, because a lot of people do ask us like, what is glass blocks?
 There's a lot of folks in this space.
 People even use like the saturated words sometimes, especially those that are involved in media.
 And I'll just take a step back and just say that we model this company, essentially almost
 like a record label, like personal heroes of myself and my co-founder, include folks
 like David Geffen, Boston, folks like that.
 So the way we see yourselves and the way we see ourselves operating in the world is
 that for the most part, we're not building a tech platform from scratch, whether it's
 a riverside, a megaphone or a twist.
 Instead, we're trying to sign up star creators across multiple thematic genres, comedy,
 exciting culture, business, and financing name it.
 And what we try to do is figure out ways to grow their audience where it's helpful, we'll
 actually make an investment in them to become a minority partner in the whole franchise.
 And then of course, we're also executing on large-scale brand partnerships, whether
 it's like people that just are already spreading the gospel, the podcasting like athletic
 greens and better help, but also our former clients that giant, which to us, surprisingly,
 even though they like the space, they don't know a lot about it yet.
 And they need more education than we thought.
 But the good news is that behind the skins and the on days of the world are not only
 buying through glassbox, but they're waking up to the idea that, yeah, you're right.
 There is a lot of data and third party analytics that can gather from podcasting.
 It should complement my social media and video investment, which is obviously already long
 since established.
 So we're getting there.
 We just think we entered this market as a company, maybe more soon than we did with giant
 and video.
 We honestly thought we were going to recreate that whole experience, but we found out actually
 for the biggest brands in the world, brand awareness, things like that, we're evangelists.
 And we're happy to put on that hat.
 We think we're well equipped to do that, and we're well on our way towards accomplishing
 that.
 Yeah, it's so interesting, fascinating, and talking with David Segura, CEO of Founder
 of Glassbox Media, glassxmedia.com.
 So a lot to unpack there with the platform.
 I have a lot of questions as a podcast, producer, owner, et cetera, and trying to, with
 the best interest of the leaders of the listenership, it's not all selfish here, folks.
 We're thinking about you, but in all seriousness, David, like, how does, when a show, when you
 identify a show or you're adding, do you guys own the IP or does the original of the show
 on the IP?
 Are you just sharing profits or are you taking ownership of the entire IP of the show?
 Great question.
 And there's no perfect answer in terms of like, how do you structure versus how you don't,
 but I'll just tell you at a high level what we do.
 Part of the reason we've been able to grow so quickly, like literally January 2021 is
 when we've really started focusing on podcasting.
 We've gone from obviously having zero podcasts with zero monthly listeners to having just
 under 80, under exclusive multi-year contract.
 And we collectively reached just under 12 million monthly listeners.
 So it's scaled up pretty nicely.
 The way we've organized the businesses that we're targeting folks that already have a passion,
 have been doing this maybe for years in most cases, and have an audience, not always,
 but typically of at least 150,000 listeners or downloads every single month.
 In some cases, much more than that, like almost 2 million with Chris, fit, and and sleep
 but to get to the point what we're typically doing is we are actually offering a revenue
 share.
 But the big catch and a positive way is that we're giving you the greater of that revenue
 share or a minimum guarantee.
 And the reason we're doing that is that we have to put our money where our mouth is.
 If you're independent, you enjoy that, you're your own boss, you're a control of your editorial
 vision.
 If you want to take on a partner, it's a risk of some sort, and so to justify that,
 you want to show you that we're going to be able to accelerate your earnings and at
 the same time, respect and leave you in control of your editorial vision.
 So that's like the core of the business.
 The compliment is that in the tackle of the IP question, that's literally top concern
 for every single creator that what you just jumped to immediately is like what they're
 most concerned about.
 And it's straightforward, but their biggest anxiety is that they're going to lose control
 somehow.
 So the way we structure our deals is they're twofold.
 We have our exclusive multi-year agreements that are rev shares with them, G's, that
 doesn't involve any IP participation.
 But we also offer typically a development deal, which is this entertainment, Lingo, of course,
 for an investment.
 And we try to structure it so that we give you X dollars.
 And that basically entitles us to anywhere from five to as much as 30% stake.
 We try to keep things aligned.
 We want you to be incentivized.
 We also don't want to alter the direction of the show.
 But we want to mutual incentive to work together to develop opportunities, whether it's in
 book publishing, live events, TV, or all the above.
 And there's a risk here.
 So in other words, it's creator friendly clearly to be in the minority position.
 But some of our investors have like rightly been critical, at least in some extent.
 And they've said stuff like when push comes to shove, if you're the minority partner,
 let's say that you zealously argue that they should do something or not do something.
 You ultimately can't make them if you're a minority partner.
 They're right.
 Our bet here is that running a portfolio with many podcasters is going to be over the
 long term financially a lot more valuable than pretending we have the best taste and that
 we should do everything from the ground up and with less shows.
 That's our vision.
 And that's why we're comfortable taking the risk and trusting creators and ultimately
 leaving them in control.
 Really interesting there.
 And hats off to you for seeing that vision and what would work with ultimately what makes
 it all run, which is the creators and the shows themselves.
 Congrats there.
 And I can understand the risk side of it with the investors too.
 I totally can't see both.
 But let's let's explain a little bit, get underneath what glatz box is and what it isn't.
 I think you've described what it is.
 But when people think about distribution of shows now today, and let's just let's focus
 on audio just for the sake of simplicity.
 You've got all the distribution channels, Apple podcasts being probably number one, number
 two.
 You've got Google's.
 You've got I heart radio.
 You've got all the Spotify, obviously.
 So this is where shows get distributed, listening to and depending on the audience and depending
 on whatever apps people have on their phone or computers or whatever for listening.
 Glassbox is not some platforms.
 Try to keep all the listens and watches happening on their platform.
 I'm not hearing that from you.
 What I'm hearing from you is you're fine with it's being seen and viewed and getting
 as much distribution on all those channels as much as possible.
 It's more everything around it.
 The ads and sponsors, the inter service here, am I understanding that correctly?
 You're exactly correct and it's a deliberate choice of the team made, including myself,
 but also we tried to pattern match with other industries and what we think they're going.
 But one comment I'll make that I'm sure you know is that podcast discovery is hella hard.
 That's still the central issue I think of the whole industry and I met a lot of really
 talented people, whether they're producers or hosts, that know they're going to produce
 a kick-ass show.
 They know they're going to do a good job.
 And so they rightly assume that they're going to blow it out in terms of audience.
 So whether they find out is that no, maybe not actually, it's very difficult, takes years
 of work, some luck, momentum, you name it.
 So we decided that we wanted to be in the content game, but we wanted to basically pick
 you back off existing distribution and it's exactly those places you talked about.
 So an eye heart, it's on Apple, it's on Spotify.
 So we signed someone up, I mean to give you an example, we signed a show called Practical
 Stoisa with Tanner Campbell, Tanner's great that shows about philosophy.
 But the message within the message is essentially that it appeals for a reason mostly to young
 men, that's 90% of the audience, that want to figure out ways to level up, whether it's
 the personal life or their career and apply these lessons of Stoisa to that.
 Obviously, probably generously inspired by Ryan Holliday's, like Daily Stone Show as
 well.
 So starting with 200,000, which is material, we were able to grow that to almost triple
 that in a period of just three months.
 So we make a deliberate decision that we're going to get in business with folks that have
 got some traction, have a relationship with the audience, and then we'll think of ways
 to make that more scalable, both on the marketing and monetization side.
 And that's the business decision we've made.
 We're seeing now though that other industries are exploring this as well, as an example,
 Bob Iger at Disney, now that he's back there, he was the first to admit that look in
 a perfect world, all our Disney IP, which he argues is the best in the world, would just
 stay here and use it, we'll use it to grow Disney plus and maybe the other property
 museum.
 What they figured out now, and he's very tactful, he's very professional, a fortune
 500 CEO about it, but what he's really saying is that if someone wants to overpay for
 something and license it for peacock, maybe, or paramount plus, we'll do it.
 In other words, our content should live wherever we can get the highest return for ourselves
 and shareholders.
 And I think it just goes back to that classic marketing conundrum.
 Do you want to use your IP to basically grow this and only this, or in some cases doesn't
 make sense to propagate that in multiple places and take in the licensing fees or the
 additional audience, which converts into revenue.
 We've made our choice, and so we very much believe in the fragmented model, the distributed
 model, and that's why when investors tell us rightly, maybe we should explore building
 a listening app, etc.
 I'm like, we could, maybe we can gather some really interesting audience data, but from
 a consumption standpoint, a revenue driver, it's not the strategy.
 We want to piggyback off of the existing distribution, and that's elsewhere.
 I'm going to be real transparent right here.
 David, the reason I wanted you on the show once your team had reached out was of what
 you just said.
 I think it's smart.
 I think it's the way to go.
 I think these walled gardens that seem to make sense, don't make sense for how the
 audience listens and scattered.
 And so why not tap into all that audience to build the IP because look for a show to
 grow more sponsors, more things that needs more audience.
 If you put it behind a walled garden, it's just limiting the opportunity.
 Period.
 I think it's brilliant, and I think it's the smart way to be doing it.
 You don't need me to tell you that.
 But as a creator and a podcast host, that's the way it's got to be.
 I'm just going to make no sense.
 See these guys, like a couple of like peers and things like that.
 They go, I'm going to go over here on whatever it is because they get lured by some of
 these platforms.
 I won't name any of them.
 I'm not trying to badmouth like one person or platform, but I'm just like, dude, why
 are you going to cut your legs off?
 You're just going to, you're alienating the audience that you've built, whatever it is,
 you think they're going to follow you.
 They're not all going to fall.
 Maybe 10% will.
 And you have to start all over again.
 And so it's fascinating to me.
 I'd agree.
 And I think this trend will accelerate because the thing that's happening behind the scenes
 is that it's awesome as podcasting is, it's growing week over week, year over year.
 A big driver is also radio.
 Radio is still huge.
 It's almost a $40 billion a year industry.
 And obviously that's slowly atrophies and comes to podcasting as it should.
 But those advertisers, they want performance.
 They immediately, hence the promo codes and everything like that.
 We love those advertisers.
 We're not trying to be disrespectful in any way.
 But I'll say that increasingly, the Johnson and Johnson's, the Heineken's, the Palatins
 of the World.
 Those are the folks that are going to dominate.
 And they're very preoccupied with reach.
 So even if you have a good incentive, financial otherwise to regulate your distribution to
 one simple listening platform, it's going to hurt you in terms of where the world is
 going.
 Because once they say yes to you, they say yes on everything.
 They want your back catalog, they want your current episodes, and they want to maximize
 reach.
 So if you just have your audience or worse, you literally just have your revenue opportunity.
 And you started to go real close, I'm going to take you one step further, is what people
 are realizing is, and it's going to be crazy, like we get approached with, we have four
 title sponsors.
 I do all live reads, we have no other ads ever laid, all individually negotiated.
 And I only do brand of ad deals, what I mean by that.
 I do know, we want to do your show for two weeks.
 And we want to run this, we'll put a code if we sell something, and look, they want
 the podcast to generate something that marketing can't do, which is someone hearing an ad
 one time and taking an action.
 Come on, man.
 If it worked that way, it would be too simple.
 You got to build brand and you need reach and frequency, and that's where I want to see
 more of the bigger brands come in to seeing the exposure opportunity.
 We all know impressions aren't all in all created equal, but I can tell you this, a two
 minute live read, which is where sometimes I go to, because I just get into whatever
 we're talking about and I build it into the storyline.
 The impact of that versus your 30 second pre-recorded, whatever, I would put it at 100X, the impression
 level, and what it does, and that doesn't mean that my audience goes and buys X product,
 but it's the level of the authenticity, and it's the frequency, and there's just not
 all impressions are created equal.
 I'd agree with that, and the market's evolving, like you're obviously in a great position,
 if brands will embrace that, they obviously believe in your show, so they're willing
 to do it.
 But the experience for most podcasts is a little different, and they're going to be in
 that test bucket.
 In other words, anywhere from 1X to 3X, that's what they're going to test, and on the basis
 of that quick test, they're literally going to get a renewal for the rest of the year,
 or they're not.
 So it's crazy, but that's usually the model.
 The one nice thing that we're pushing back on, and I think other people are, too, to
 be fair, is that we've come to recognize, in most cases, we can't get them to switch off
 that model.
 That's fine.
 But what we do tell them is that we're going to serve the spots dynamically.
 So to clarify, it's not going to be, like, randomly in mid-sentence or anything, but we
 do pre-record the host's red ads, so that when, let's say, sponsorship is over, whether
 it's one month or 12 months, we reserve the right then, at that point, to maybe switch
 out a Heineken for a Budweiser.
 And that's one of the ways that we're able to keep things ever green, and keep that revenue
 potential going.
 We've had some pushback, but that's because I think, to your point about reaching frequency,
 I think they know that, but they know that even if they decide not to move forward
 with you, if something is baked in or there forever, they're probably going to get a few
 more hits on that, and then that might actually serve their needs.
 But it may not serve the podcast or the audience's needs.
 So we're trying to bounce that, and to be fair, we found that most brands, they're
 willing to play ball, mediates these two.
 They just want to be successful.
 So if you can convince them, they're willing to try things at scale.
 Yep.
 And the secret sauce is in the middle, like, the big brands they want, the dynamic, they
 want all that.
 The ones at the bottom probably can't afford it.
 The middle brands, people, brands that are new, but already successful, and have seen
 the success they can have podcast, they'll play a little bit longer game and understand
 some of the values of the impressions over just pure volume.
 And I'm going to look, I think we have 130, 40,000, that was a month or something like
 that.
 So we're up there.
 But it's, you've got, I don't know, mine's a big authenticity thing.
 I think the next phase for you guys, which is what I've done is I get a lot of leverage
 because my personal brand, I'm verified on every platform, I have a million followers
 across all channels.
 So when you buy the show, you buy me.
 And so it's leveraging all those things and getting your creators behind that would
 be a up-shoot.
 I'm sure.
 And that's what folks want.
 At the end of the day, whether it's a personal endorsement or not, it is.
 Like when you agreed to select something and you put it on the show, people do read
 into that.
 And so I think the brands are just to be fair getting a great deal.
 So that's why when we're going after some of these new folks, so we haven't not signed
 yet, but not going to what we do, kind of aggro folks like that.
 I think they get it.
 They understand that it's a special relationship and it's a great way to promote whatever they're
 trying to do, whether it's Annie's popcorn or Slim J.
 Yeah.
 But your platform makes a lot of sense for people that have a good product or they're
 a good show, but maybe they're not, the marketing acumen is not there and you're willing
 to invest in it.
 It's again, I read through it and once I understood it, I'm like, this is a no brainer.
 If you're like a show and you got a little traction, but you just need some ammunition
 behind you, this just makes a lot of sense for that sweet spot of shows and that.
 And I think that's a good number because it's just a messy world out there.
 And a lot of creators spend a lot of time doing things and they let the art of the craft.
 But this stuff isn't, is natural to them.
 And so there's a lot of great shows out there that don't get the following that they should.
 I think it's exactly it and in my experience, most people have the chops to do it if they
 needed to.
 They're just not staffed or like really executed.
 So most of the creators we've talked to have been doing sporadic, let's say, host red
 ads with like shows that they respect and they're thematically relevant, but inevitably
 there's only so much time for that.
 It falls off and it's not consistent.
 So one of the things that we do is we make sure to not only continue that for them, but
 we also record trailers and then we swap those.
 In an automated way, we basically track very carefully what they contribute versus what
 other people contribute, how much of those listens basically turn into either downloads
 or subscriptions to the RSS feed.
 And then the crazy part that blows people's minds is that we literally trade millions of
 impressions every single month with we jokingly call frenemies.
 So whether it's milk or flatwalls, push in media or cast media in LA, they're doing
 deals where literally no money is changing hands, but literally we're mutually lifting
 each other's boat and increasing revenue simply by swapping relevant audience.
 And I think it works out really well for us.
 So let's give some value out there to our listeners because we do, we have a good number
 of people that have started or have podcasts.
 And obviously first selection would be let's get on glass box media or at least talk to
 you see if it's right fit.
 But how can podcasters out there promote their show better?
 How can they get?
 Obviously, some of the tools and technologies you guys have, but what are the any like at
 home tactics for people that have a show they're trying to get some popularity, any things
 in your checklist?
 Sure.
 What I'd recommend for most people is to like go out and identify like mine did hosts
 that you think you like and you respect that are relevant.
 And if you start basically swapping host reads for each other that are sincere and
 enthusiastic in nature, that'll help.
 The other thing too is to create trailers and what they could do in theory is automate
 some of these swaps.
 So if you have let's say a mid row with three ad breaks on that, probably not all of them
 are sold out between host red ads and programmatic.
 Instead what you'll do is just use some of that to basically swap with other people.
 And if you want to track conversions, what we use internally is chartable, which was
 recently acquired by Spotify and we're able to track in real time like how well you know
 that these spots are actually performing.
 So we treat them like marketing needs advertising, no money changes hands, but it's really critical
 to growing the audience.
 And then not everybody has the capacity or time, but PR.
 One of the things that we'll do is leverage not only our PR team, but we'll even reach
 out to Apple Spotify and while sometimes we don't get a response, it's nature of the business.
 On a very regular basis, we've been able to get some of our podcasts featured as top
 category like in philosophy, society and culture you name it.
 And the podcasters I think can do that too.
 It's just difficult because at the end of the day, it's easier for them sometimes to
 build a relationship with a company that works with multiple podcasters that they choose
 from.
 But ultimately, I will say, I know a lot of Indies get routinely selected for things
 like that.
 And if they're just after it, they believe in their show when it hits, it'll hit.
 So I think that's another tactical way of creating value for yourself.
 I love that.
 I love the shared shows of that one in that.
 And I'm doing a middle check like I need to do that more because I know I've met a lot.
 And you're in the business.
 You just start to meet the same people like they're like what I'm doing shows or whatever
 it seems to gravitate.
 You're in the same spaces and all that.
 And it tends to also bring like the listeners and to always to somewhat gravitate to the
 audiences.
 So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
 That's good.
 That's good tactical advice.
 David, what's the process for people learning more interested in the platform or just
 in general?
 Yeah, apart from visiting us at GlassboxMedia.com or on social media, LinkedIn or Instagram,
 you can just send us an email directly, whether it's me at David at Glassbox Media or Matthew
 at Glassbox Media.
 He's our director at a Nashville.
 Even though we're in Soho, New York, he's at a Nashville former A&R guy, which I think
 actually is an incredible skill set fit.
 And he goes out and identifies amazing podcasters with his team.
 They're constantly like listening, doing their homework.
 That obviously a lot of people reach out to us, too.
 And what we find is that even if we feel like it may not make sense for us to enter into
 a relationship and one where we financially guarantee things to you, we could still potentially
 work with you as a marketer, figuring out swaps and different ways to like promote
 you to show and more importantly, keep the lines open.
 And if a show does cross into that territory where it goes from a very kind of intriguing
 like passion project, too, holy shit overnight, I have a real business here, then we're happy
 to step in and really help and accelerate that.
 That's awesome, man.
 I really like your demeanor and personality.
 I think it makes it, I don't know, you deal with a lot of CEOs, founders, and have success
 like you.
 I don't know, there's just a really good energy from you.
 And I think it's going to resonate with our listeners, so I really appreciate you coming
 on, David.
 I'm just happy to be here, and I'm glad they come across because part of reason I'm
 entrepreneur, I'm just a curious person, and I love learning.
 And I'm continuously learning from literally our team, but also the podcasters themselves.
 So it just makes for just an awesome experience for everybody.
 That's great.
 Hey guys, you're going to find us the radcast.com search for Glassbox Media.
 You'll find all the highlight clips from today and the full episode as well as the 10 minute
 short episode for all UAD people out there like me.
 We got all of it.
 David Secura, CEO, founder of Glassbox Media.
 You know where I'm at Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms, just Google me.
 I'll come up and you'll learn about marketing, podcasting, and who knows what else we'll
 see next time.
 All right, cast.
 To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at the radcast.com or follow us
 on social media at our Instagram account v dot rad dot cast or at Ryan Alford.
 Stay radical.