What Entrepreneurs Can Be taught From Bootstrapping A Area of interest Podcast

The exponential growth of Podcasts is all around us – with some forecasting the number of podcast listeners will surpass 160 million in 2023 following increases of around 20 million each year.

That’s the kind of growth your company would dream of right?

There is plenty for marketing leaders to learn from how some global podcasts have bootstrapped themselves from zero listeners to those million. To learn more I recently met with Marshall Poe, Founder and Editor of the New Books Network – a podcast platform that is taking the media world by surprise. New Books Network (NBN) was founded in 2007 with a single mission to provide public education and has now evolved to a network of more than 800 hosts and 140 podcasts spread over more than 100 different subject categories, disciplines and genres.

Marshall Poe, Founder and Editor of the New Books Network

New Books Network (C) 2022

Marshall was a Russian History Professor for over 20 years so was well used to getting the input of researchers – something that eventually led to him founding the Podcast.

Poe “I founded the NBN because of the disconnect between what experts know and what the public gets. In the traditional media, the public only gets soundbites – if that. On the NBN, I wanted the public to get experts talking about what they know at length. And then, if they want to “go deep,” they can buy the book.”

Poe’s mission for NBN to connects the public with the people who produce what we know. With over 4 million downloads per month its surprising that more people aren’t talking about what his company is doing. It is even more surprising to learn they have never done any advertising and their growth has been achieved almost entirely through via word of mouth: “I’ve learned that there is a great hunger for what the trad media considers obscure. People want to get into the weeds on topics that they know essentially nothing about – they are much more curious than many give them credit for.”

Each week NBN releases 75 new episodes to its a global audience and often achieves over 140,000 downloads per day. Each of its hosts are professors/researchers who review books on a wide variety of specialist subjects, helping fuel its organic growth feels Poe.

“Slow and steady wins the (podcasting) race. My mantra is the only way to build a devoted podcast listenership is to produce good content, regularly, over a long period of time. I originally learned this from Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist) at SXSW in about 2006. He said “If you do something well on the internet for 5 solid years, you will, at the end of that period, be the only person doing it.” Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but I never forgot it. People think the Internet is “magic.” You put something up and people will instantly come in droves. They won’t. You have to build an audience one listener/reader at a time.”

Rather than trying to broadcast to the masses, part of this “narrowcasting” that NBN have deployed is recognising the world is made up of a zillion tiny “communities of interest.” Prior to the Internet (and podcasting), there was no equivalent way to economically provide relevant content for these small groups. Creating content to harness this opportunity is how Poe continues to grow: “Our approach has proven to It was not too expensive – and you could find them. You can do both, and the NBN is evidence of that. The topics we cover are not “obscure” to the target audience; they are of great relevance. The challenge is to create content that they will find immediately relevant and provide it to their over 100 of these communities of interest – “The key for NBA is creating good content, regularly, over a long period of time. If you want to build a trusted brand it will take a lot of time and effort. The New York Times did not become THE NEW YORK TIMES overnight. That’s the story of the NBN: slow, incremental growth over a period of 15 years. It’s not a podcast network, it’s an institution.”

In considering what advice he would pass onto other entrepreneurs / company leaders to deploy in growing their own businesses, Poe believe sticking to one core idea you believe in is key: “I’d say this: pick a topic that are interested in. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anyone else who’s interested in it, or if you think it’s too obscure to gain an audience. The interested people are out there. But you have to stick with it and understand that building an audience takes years. But it does accumulate – and then they tell other people about what you are doing.”

In many ways building a podcast audience is very similar to a retail process. It is clear from how Poe has scaled his business that very similar rules apply – you need to add new listeners (just like your customers) one at a time.

Another key lesson from NBN is to focus on developing something you are interested and passionate about – and believe there are others out there who share your interest. And, as Poe says “Eventually, you will reach all of them.”