Bringing a Podcast to Life with SEP's Kelly Wilson and Zac Darnell

Lindsay Tjepkema: Welcome to season six of The Casted Podcast, where we're back with more of our very own users. Why? Well, because by becoming a Casted customer it's pretty clear how committed you are, not only to podcasting as a key piece of the future of your marketing efforts, but also to the bigger picture of how these shows all fit into their integrated marketing strategies. So these customers, these users here of Casted, are the most forward- thinking brands that are harnessing the perspectives of experts with their podcasts. And then these customers are ringing out those interviews by amplifying them out across other channels. They're practicing what we preach here at Casted, and I want you to hear all about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and importantly, how you can do it too. I'm Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co- founder of Casted, the first and the only amplified marketing platform made for B2B marketers, and this is our podcast. Today, I'm talking with Zac Darnell and Kelly Wilson of SEP. When the pandemic shut down live events and really wreaked havoc on their marketing strategy, like it did for a lot of companies, Zac and Kelly decided to pivot and created their own show, Behind the Product. 11 episodes in now, and they've brought stories of how products are planned and developed to life, stories that in many cases would never have been told if not for the podcast. An experienced podcaster in his own right, Zac outlines his ingredients for a great show, including manageable frequency, a defined audience, a passionate host, brilliant subject matter experts, and of course, outstanding content, valuable content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the SEP website. In this episode, Zac and Kelly will share with us just how powerful a podcast can be for marketing. Zac, Kelly, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to have this conversation with you today.

Kelly Wilson: Thanks for having us.

Zac Darnell: Thanks for having us.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah, and it's been-

Zac Darnell: Thanks.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Somebody owes someone else a Coke. So I'm excited because this is kind of like a full circle thing because actually the first time that I met Zach was because I was coming on a show that he was doing, and that was a ton of fun, and we stayed in touch, and now you're here today.

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: So tell me what you all are doing at SEP with Behind the Product, what that show is all about and kind of how it came together, and then we'll go from there.

Zac Darnell: So, okay. About a year ago now, we had been in the pandemic for about a month, and I'm a hyper extrovert and an external processor. So I like to talk to people, sometimes at walls, but mostly people. And I had been doing a personal show for a long time and got an itch to try to start something in SEP. I thought we could use it as a way to connect with folks in a different way, and just sit down and have a conversation. You get so much more context in the conversation versus things like a blog post, or even just a conference talk. inaudible the idea to Kelly and some of the other folks on the leadership team, and had a lot of support there, and we kind of got things started. And it was really just wanting to explore some of the stories behind the products that we are often involved with with a lot of our clients, and really that's where a lot of the harder decisions and inaudible fun or stories tend to happen. And we kind of wanted to explore that a little bit with the show, hence the name" Behind the Product." Who are the people, the practices, and maybe the fun stories that are behind the things that we use every day. That's really where the idea came from.

Lindsay Tjepkema: That's really cool.

Kelly Wilson: And I think what Zac learned real quickly... Now Zac has been with SEP for a few years. And what he found real quick is you bring an idea to anybody at SEP, everyone's like," Hey, you go for it. You're doing it, right?"

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Kelly Wilson: So you have an idea, it's like," You got to take that and run with it." And the nice thing was Zac had the experience, he knew what he was doing. So it was pretty easy from a marketing side for me to say," yeah, let's give it a shot." Because 2020 was a very different year for everybody. So we realized that events weren't going to happen. All that face- to- face things that we use for a lot of lead generation, we had to pivot real fast. And so the idea just naturally kind of happened at a perfect time for us to say," All right, let's give this a shot. Let's see if we can get some more face to face time with some people and tell some stories." And so, yeah. That's how it got started.

Lindsay Tjepkema: So tell me, Zac, how is it different doing a show for your company than it is to do a show personally?

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: The other show that you have that, I mean, it's still like a businessy, it's kind of still a B2B podcast. It's not about brewing beer, right?

Zac Darnell: Sure.

Lindsay Tjepkema: It's still about tech and leadership and stuff, but this is on behalf of your company.

Zac Darnell: Right.

Lindsay Tjepkema: How is it the same? How is it different?

Zac Darnell: The stakes are higher, because I feel like I'm now publicly representing 160 other people. And so I definitely feel that pressure, versus me and a buddy of mine just happened to be interested, we work in tech, we love to geek out about companies, and growth, and that kind of thing. That's just us having fun in something that we enjoy. This feels like," Oh, okay, I better make sure that I show up with the voice of the company and the people that work in its building." So yeah, the pressure was definitely very, very different. I wanted to... I was very, very concerned with, I don't know, saying something silly, and asking a dumb question, or giving some silly anecdote that somebody would go." Hmm. Is that really how we feel about these things? Is that really how we do it?" So that's always in the back of my mind every time I interview somebody.

Lindsay Tjepkema: crosstalk.

Zac Darnell: Which was one of the reasons why part of the model, I didn't want it to just be me, I wanted to make sure that there was always a cohost from SEP, whether it's a maker, one of our directors who are responsible for the fitness of our practices, was there with me to help drive those conversations and ask questions from the people that really, I mean, they're the ones that really do the work, that are really the experts, not me. I can be a great champion and a great mouthpiece, but outside of that, they're the ones that really have some of the interesting stories to talk through.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Good self- awareness. So, Kelly, tell me how this has come together for you from your standpoint? Like you said, there's been a lot of pivoting for you, and for your role, and your strategy, I'm sure. How did this doing the show fit into that, and kind of where does it fit into your strategy now?

Kelly Wilson: Sure, yeah. That's a really good question. I think part of our culture is giving back, and especially when it comes to knowledge sharing. So in the past, we do a lot of events, we go to conferences, we speak at meetups. It is a way for us to get face- to- face with people and show them what we do. So because we are building products for people, it's kind of hard to tell everybody's story in a unique way, because we're behind a lot of NDAs. And so this is just a different way, whether it's just a friend in the industry, or someone that we've worked with in the past that is willing to tell the story as well. It made it a little bit easier, I would say, from my perspective to help tell the stories behind those. So we're lucky that 90% of our business is repeat and referral. People come to us, they use us, and then they attach to us. And that is awesome. So it's a marketer's dream, right? To be able to have that number. So our strategy, I think pivoted because of the pandemic, and everybody working from home, it's like," We can write blogs, we can send newsletters all day long, and that's what everybody else is doing." And it's no secret that podcasting is starting to increase in popularity. So I'm imagining our clients being at home, going on a walk, tired of sitting on Zooms and listening to things. So for us, it's an experiment. Let's try it out, let's see how this is working. Zac has done an amazing job having great guests with great content. And so it's just a different way for us to connect. Yeah, feeling so far so good.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. That's great. Now, can I get everybody up to speed as far as how far into things you are? Because it's pretty new, but not so new anymore. How far into recording and everything? Where are we at right now?

Zac Darnell: Yeah, I think we are getting ready to launch episode number 11 on the 15th of April. At the time of this recording, it'll be 15th of April.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah, that's right.

Zac Darnell: So when we started, we wanted to have a reasonable cadence that we could keep to. So we started with once per month, maybe we'll increase that at some point. And I think, ideally, if we can build the momentum, try to do maybe twice a month, every other week.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah. But just-

Zac Darnell: But right now we're I think we're on episode 11. Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: That's awesome, because quite often people just assume that they need to do a weekly show every week, forever and ever. Right?

Zac Darnell: Right.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And if they can't do that, then they're failing at doing a podcast, and so why even do it? And so you're seeing some great success. It's a great show, and you're doing it once a month right now.

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And like you said, you launched with was a few for people to dig into, and that's great. It's enough to get some engagement. It's enough for people to sink their teeth into it and to kind of keep coming back for more, but you don't have to do it every week. So tell me a little bit about that decision. Was that something that you wrestled with, or were you right off the bat like,"No, we don't have to do it every week,"?

Zac Darnell: Well, you alluded to a personal show, a little passion project of mine that I had been doing for maybe a year, a year and a half prior to this. So I learned the hard way through that, of not signing up for too much up front. So we tried to do a much more often shorter cadence. I don't know, whatever the correct phrasing is there. We were trying to do once every two weeks as a passion project, not a full- time job. It's hard to keep up with that. I mean, there's a lot of coordination that goes into," Hey, do you want to be on a show? Yes or no? Awesome. When can you talk?" All the mechanics behind the scenes of launching just a single episode. There's a few hours of work there that you kind of have to keep up with and keeping that pipeline and momentum going, I kind of learned the hard way that starting a little bit less frequent, that was probably a good way. And you can always increase that frequency in the future if it's something that takes off, if you want to double down on the time investment to get those episodes out. So that was really what influenced I think a lot of that decision. I don't know, Kelly, where your head was at when we talked about them.

Kelly Wilson: Yeah. I think I was cautious. This is not Zac's primary job. He's managing project teams, and working with real clients, and delivering real products. So like I kind of joked earlier," Yeah, you signed up for it. You've got to help find the time to do that." And my concern is the commitment, right? If you say you're going to do this, we got to be able to perform every single month and deliver something that people want to listen to. This is not something we can just like," Okay, let's just do one real quick," without it being thought out. So we wanted to do with, like we normally do with everything, we wanted to keep our reputation high and make sure that we're producing quality stuff. So I think it's been on point.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah.

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: No, it really is. It's a great show, and you can tell. I mean, the bar is high, and you can tell you're putting a lot of thought into it. There's not like," Oh, let's just go talk to someone, and just time to do the show for the month." I'm interested, Kelly, in how you said," If we're going to do this, we got to do it right." What does that look like for you as you've kind of gotten into this for the first time, and how did you approach this and say," Okay, this is who we're serving, and this is kind of the strategy behind it." How did you start to formulate what the show would look like, and who all was involved in that?

Kelly Wilson: Yeah. That's a good question. I think, obviously, finding a void in the market like," What's already out there? What are people not already doing?" Whether it was people talking about brewing beer or doing other things, there's a lot of podcasts out there. So how do we stand out? And it also had to stay core to what we do. Zac could have a love for bicycling, and he could want a podcast, but I'm going to say," Yeah, it's not worth your time doing that." Right? We have to stay core to making sure that we are communicating in a way that tells the story about products. We want people to learn something. We want them to walk away and say," All right, where's the meat?" So whether he's coming up with the list of guests, and these, like I said, this could be a variety of different friends in the community. It's taking a team of people. Zac has got a Trello board of potential people he can talk to, and we're trying to flesh out," Is the meat there?" And we're taking recommendations like," Hey, this would be a great person to talk to as well." And sometimes those are happening inside projects. Sometimes they're happening outside of SEP, if someone's running into people in a variety of different communities. There's a lot of smart people, and there's a lot of people who don't have the opportunity to tell a story, hence the name. So there's a lot of goodness there. So I think from a marketing perspective, it's making sure that we stay core to who we are throughout and not compromise the good content. So Zac, you might be able to add more about the who behind it, but...

Zac Darnell: Yeah, I mean, I think in my head when we first started talking through this, there were three main categories of people I thought would be fun to talk to, clients of ours that we could talk about, like Kelly mentioned, we have a lot of NDAs and privacy behind a lot of the work that we do, but sometimes we can talk about those engagements. Other... I don't want to say potential clients, not from a sales perspective, but just other people in maybe non- technically first verticals. So not digitally native companies that are looking to go kind of down a digital path or a technology path become a technology company. I find those stories personally interesting, because I think that there are a number of different paths that those folks can go down. And I think it's fun exploring that. So that was kind of a secondary category. And then other thought leaders in the industry. We're really big fans of guys like Jeff Patton or Troy McGinnis that speak a lot about ways of building modern products today. And I think spreading those messages and injecting them inside of the stories that sometimes we get to be a part of was a fun twist as well. So those were kind of the three kind of the buckets of folks that I thought would be really interesting to explore.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love that. And I love that the whole thing kind of started with," Who can we have great conversations with?" Right?

Zac Darnell: Right.

Lindsay Tjepkema: "Who can we talk to and talk with that our audience would love to listen in on that conversation," right?

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Which is how you're ending up with a great show.

Zac Darnell: Thank you.

Lindsay Tjepkema: So you have those conversations, you record it, you turn it into a show, then what happens? What does your process look like? What do you do with the content? Where do you go from there?

Zac Darnell: So mechanically now we're actually using Casted's platform. Here in the last, I think, six months- ish when we started to switch over and use the Casted platform, which is wonderful, by the way. So we now have audio editing help, which is great, because the first few shows were me learning through YouTube and Googling on how to use GarageBand. So the audio quality has-

Lindsay Tjepkema: In all of your abundant spare time, as you're doing your job, and doing a podcast, and just learning how to also do audio engineering, just crosstalk that, Zac?

Zac Darnell: Yep. Correct. No, I really wouldn't.

Lindsay Tjepkema: No?

Zac Darnell: To be fair though, if you just want to get started, there's a way to get started, but yeah, once you know that you want to take it more seriously, go find an expert, because it's going to amp up the quality tenfold. So when we're done recording an episode, we also do a quick recap. So me and the cohost that came on, we'll do five to 10 minutes, and it's really just setting the stage for," Here's what you're going to hear. Here's what we found interesting." So there's an opportunity for us to kind of inject our opinion about," I really found this interesting, or you really found this interesting," and all of that gets shipped off to our audio engineer. We kind of do a little bit of back and forth tweaking, and then we have a canned intro and outro message that I actually might tweak for our next show. So quick preview. And then another employee of SEP, Maddie, is awesome. She's on our biz ops team and has joined Kelly and I, along with our graphic designer, Justin, who does all the graphics and visuals for the show, for all social media, and all the things that I know Kelly has probably a checklist of, all the things that we have to do when we want to launch an episode. So Maddie and I kind of tag team some of the key takeaways that we use on the Casted platform, try to put together all the guest info, guest bios, all the metadata that goes along with the show, show notes, show descriptions prior to a launch, and then put everything up on a Casted platform and hit launch. I know there's more stuff behind the scenes that I don't know about, Kelly, that I'm sure you could talk about.

Kelly Wilson: Well I think it's-

Zac Darnell: There's other stuff that you and Maddie do.

Kelly Wilson: Yeah. I think it took us a few months to figure it out, like Zac said.

Zac Darnell: Oh, yeah.

Kelly Wilson: And having Casted to kind of help do this has been really helpful, but yeah, we're now plug and play. We're at the point now where we feel great about the system in place to be able to publish it. There's no surprises now. So we were lucky enough that we spent some time redesigning our website in 2020, so that allowed for us to build a page for the podcast in the same process. So integrations with WordPress, and being able to do that was really valuable for us, and really good timing that we didn't realize until we started using Casted. The really interesting thing about the podcast is we don't have this content anywhere else on the website. So the meat inside the audio is not anywhere else. And that's where I think podcasting is really unique, and being able to use transcription now, and in the little audio transcript, the snippets, and all the various things like that that we can use on social media has made it a lot easier. If we were having to do that manually, we would have probably given up long ago. So we do share it out on social. We are putting it in the hands of individuals just to kind of play," Let's test it out. Let's put it on LinkedIn." Zac will post things, I'll post some things from the company. And we find that, obviously, people that are guests on the show, they're going to share it too. And that's what, again, any marketer's dream wants that to happen, and it happens. So it's been working well. It's been working really well.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. I love it. And I also love how you are approaching it as an experiment. You said that a couple of times now. And so tell me more about that. What are you watching as indicators of," Time to try something new," or," This is working well,"? What are you... And I'm not even saying what, I'm not even saying numbers. I know you're not like," We just need to get to this number, and that will be success," but what are some of the things that you kind of look for like," This is going well," or," This, we tried this, and it didn't work so well. Time to try something new,"? and I'm thinking that maybe this is even kind of the culture of who you are as a team, and who you are as a company, but what does that," This is all an experiment," mean to you as far as the show is concerned?

Kelly Wilson: I think from my perspective, like I said, the content is this is the only place that it lives, so are people talking about it? And again, socially that can happen really easy with a like or re tweets of any sort. And I consider it a win, because if they're not doing it on any of our other posts, and they're doing it on this, then to me that's a really good thumbs up, and validation that people are listening. I think we have learned a few things. We learned that," Hey, my genius brain was like,'Transcription. That's awesome. That means free blog posts. That's going to make it really easy to do blog posts after every single podcast.'" And then we tried it, and we're like," Oh, that is awful. No, that's going to take some work. We're going to need them do some massaging of what the transcription equals to a blog post." So we learned that that is going to take some time to do, and we pivoted real quick on how we were going to do that, and we tried. So we'll push that out, we'll see how many impressions we're getting and what's happening I think organically. I'll admit, we're not putting any money towards the podcast right now. We're not spending ad words and dollars to it. It's a cheap experiment in my mind, because we want to see what's going to happen right now organically. So we'll learn in the next couple of months what that means, and we'll try different things. So for me, that's kind of what it means at this point.

Zac Darnell: What Kelly said. No.

Kelly Wilson: Ditto.

Zac Darnell: Yeah. I mean, it's easy to look at metrics and try to draw some conclusion as to," Why did we get 30 listens over here and 50 listens over here?" But I think that only becomes an input. I think some of the anecdotal feedback from guests, and from maybe folks that do drop a comment or a handful of impressions on things like LinkedIn, conversations with folks that I know have listened to the show," Hey, I really enjoyed the..." I got a lot of great feedback on the episode that we did with Lessonly a few months ago. And quite frankly, I really enjoyed that conversation. Our guests, Jaki and Casey, they were just really, really fun pair, and our director of UX, Noelle, joined me for that. She had a great connection with Jaki and Casey, that bridge or the dynamic of having a co- host on the show, because I didn't know them, was just phenomenal.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah.

Zac Darnell: I get to kind of fade out into the background. My voice gets quiet, and Noelle in that conversation was able to have a really just fun conversation with a friend and her coworker about their journey.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah.

Zac Darnell: And I think that really showed through. So I got a lot of, again, anecdotal," Hey, really enjoyed that episode."

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it.

Zac Darnell: And that's a good just kind of gut check for me to go," Oh, okay, great." So that dynamic of having a co- host that has a personal connection to our guests, that really works well to kind of help bridge the audience into that conversation as well if it's doing the same thing for me. So it's little things like that I think that we've learned over time that become more powerful for influencing how we tactically establish who our guest is going to be. Now who's the co- host going to be? Okay. Now what are we going to talk...

Lindsay Tjepkema: Yeah.

Zac Darnell: Those stories and those experiences kind of shape how that works out.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Well, I love that too, because it sounds, again, it sounds like this is part of who you are, part of who your team is, kind of how you approach things. Because I think far too often, especially with podcasts, but I think with anything, is you put together a strategy, and you're like," How are we going to do this show? And here's the format." And you just press" go." And every single time it's exactly the same, and it's like," No, this is how we do it." And it sounds like you're really open and receptive to," I want to try this thing," or," We should try this thing," or," Somebody had an idea of what we should try," or," We tried that, and it didn't go so well. So let's maybe try one more time, or let's try something new." That's so important is being receptive, paying attention, being willing to try new things. And also to give it time. I mean, you're only 11 shows in, which on one hand that's when you start to get some of that data, even just anecdotal, I'm not even talking metrics, but just some of that just feedback.

Zac Darnell: Right.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And being open enough to say," Hey, we're still just getting started, but what do we know now that we didn't know 11 shows back? And how can we continue to tweak things as we go?"

Kelly Wilson: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And I think that's a really important mindset to have.

Kelly Wilson: And I think the other thing I just thought of too, Zac, one dimension is we have 150 employees inside our company, so talk about the biggest critics. What an opportunity to have people give us feedback on a show, and that's what we love about people. We love giving feedback. We love getting feedback, and we are always talking about getting better, and that is a cultural thing. So reminding ourselves that we've got 150 listeners inside of our own building too that can give us feedback, and help us learn, and give us ideas is an important thing not to forget, because hopefully they're learning along the way as well.

Lindsay Tjepkema: For sure. For sure. Yeah. Your most important audience, and often most overlooked audience, is your internal audience, is your own team. Right?

Kelly Wilson: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And if they're big fans, usually whatever you're doing is going to be a success. And if you can't kind of get their attention, it's an early red flag. crosstalk. Okay. So again, you're a nice, you're a good handful of shows in, you've got your stride, you're paying attention, you're making tweaks. What is some advice that each of you would share that you've learned along the way for somebody else who's not quite to where you are yet?

Zac Darnell: So early on, again, part of the reasoning, at least for me personally, just given my personality trait in the midst of this pandemic, in the midst of this time when we are severely disconnected as a society, this was an opportunity to do the opposite. Let's connect more, albeit all over Zoom, and chat with folks. So I think there's oftentimes a fear of reaching out to people that you may not have a deep relationship with or know personally to invite on your show. I'll say it this way. I have yet to be told," No, I don't want to be a guest on your show." I'm no one. I'm not important. I'm just a guy in the indie tech scene that likes to talk on a podcast and work with folks. So I guess my first piece of advice is," Don't let that fear stop you from reaching out to somebody that you want to talk to and explore a topic with." I think-

Lindsay Tjepkema: And just adding to that...

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: Two shows, so Casted, and then prior to that I did a show for the company I worked with too. I think I got one" no" ever.

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: And it was like," Oh, I'm just really super busy. I would love to do it later." And other than that, it's been" Yes, of course."

Zac Darnell: Yeah.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I don't think I've ever gotten... I mean, hundreds of shows at this point, and I don't think I've ever had anyone tell me," No."

Zac Darnell: Right. That's a good point.

Kelly Wilson: Yeah.

Zac Darnell: And my second one, and, Kelly, I hope this isn't yours, but don't feel like you have to have a perfect plan and have a big team to do this. Like I said, hop behind a mic, and get on Zoom, whatever, hit record. I mean, you don't have to have some perfect plan. There is no such thing as a perfect plan.

Lindsay Tjepkema: There's no one size fits all. That's for sure.

Zac Darnell: Nope.

Kelly Wilson: So mine, I would say," Make sure that you're a podcast consumer first." So make sure that you're listening and learning to other podcasts. I listened to podcasts, I would say prior to us launching one, but you're only listening to certain ones, right? So you have this opinion, or people are going to have a judgment on what it's going to feel like and want that experience. So from a marketing side I would say," Make sure that you are consumer first before you make any judgements." I think Zac's idea of finding someone... I think it's the passion. You have to find somebody who's passionate. And I think would we have done this without Zac? No. We would not have. We just wouldn't have. It wouldn't have been something that I think we would have explored. So the fact that he came with the idea, was passionate about it and followed through is something that I think is really key with anything. And I think the other thing and my biggest concern was about the focus. I have listened to podcasts where I'm like,"It's all over the place." And so when you spend the time, and you're ready to listen to it, and you're like," Wow, this is not what I thought it was going to be." Being deliberate about the content and making sure that for us people know what to expect with you is really I think is what keeps them coming back. And, yes, experiment, experiment, try all the new things, because... Yeah, it's a low risk.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I love it. Well, yeah. Great advice. Thank you for sharing. I think that's a great place to leave it. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for creating a great show, and... Yeah, for sharing what you learned along the way.

Kelly Wilson: Thank you.

Zac Darnell: Thank you so much, Lindsay, appreciate it.

Lindsay Tjepkema: That's our show. Thanks so much for listening, and for more from today's guest and some pretty amazing content that they've inspired visit casted. us, and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest on all things Amplified Marketing, B2B podcasting, and a lot more.