Thought Leader Podcasting to Boost Signal | Srinivas Rao

Peter Winick

Using a podcast as a vehicle for your thought leadership

An interview with Srinivas Rao about the world of podcasting and how it can help a thought leader boost the signal using podcasts as a tool.

Today’s guest is Srinivas Rao, the founder of Unmistakable Creative, host of the long-running hugely popular Unmistakable Creative podcast. He is also the author of a number of books such as An Audience of One and The Small Army Strategy.

Srinivas has a candid conversation with us about the world of podcasts. We decrypt the imperfect information that is out there regarding podcasting and how it isn’t a get rich quick scheme. Srinivas and Peter discuss the levels of digital intimacy that can be created with an audience, and how a scripted conversation can actually be more stilted than a candid one that flows naturally.

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:

Why thought leaders might want a podcast and why it might not be the medium for you.
How thought leaders can create a higher level of digital intimacy with their audience.
Why telling a great story is key for thought leaders to grab their audience.

Do you need help creating your own thought leader podcast? Are you wanting to increase the number of listeners on your current podcast? We’re doing it here at Thought Leadership Leverage! We can help you get your own podcast off the ground with a solid strategy, marketing, and graphic resources. If you’d like to dive into thought leader podcasting or need help with your current one, reach out to Thought Leadership Leverage and let us help you.

Transcript

Peter Winick Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. I am super excited for today’s guest. I’ve got Srinivas Rao and many of you will recognize that name. He is the founder of the unmistakable Creative, which is definitely one of my favorite podcasts. I am typically not likely. People ask me all the time, like what your favorite book is, but it’s like asking what your favorite kid is. And given all my clients write multiple books, I typically don’t like to answer that question, but this podcast is definitely one of my favorites. So Srini has been a very busy guy. He’s the founder of the unmistakable Creative, which he’s been doing for decades, so he is not new to this space. He’s interviewed over 700 people, by the way. He’s also authored three books, two with Penguin and one that was self-published. That was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Wall Street Journal bestseller. He’s been in Forbes has been The New York Times. And he’s lowering your standards to be with us today. So welcome aboard. Srini. Good.

Srinivas Rao I’m good. And that’s a you know, I hope I can do justice to that introduction, you know, so it’s interesting that I want to just, you know, I think it’s a great place to actually to have the conversation. You set up lower standards to be with you. So it’s funny, right? I think that we have this what I call a status bias, and that is it’s more an illusion than it is a bias because, you know, I’m notorious for turning down really, really famous. People guess like I’ve turned out Pulitzer Prize winners. I have never said it publicly, but I’ve turned down Gary Vaynerchuk. And people are just like, What? And I’m like, Look, I will never make a decision based on what somebody’s status is. I’m far more interested in what their story is and who they are as a person. And so but it is interesting, right? Like we I think we all have this implicit bias of, The New York Times is a more worthwhile media appearance than Peter’s podcast. But the funny thing is that for all I know, your entire audience could become subscribers to the podcast, to unmistakable creative. And in The New York Times, I’m a blip on the radar, so it actually might be more worthwhile for me to be with you. But that’s a, you know, an interesting jumping off. Well.

Peter Winick I mean, you know, it’s interesting that you say that because this is a niche podcast, right? So I’ve never cared about the size of the audience. It’s really the quality. And I would argue we probably have the highest per capita New York Times bestsellers listening of the tiny, tiny couple of thousand folks that download a month because that those are a peach, right? That’s what we do. So I want to start with, you know, you’ve got a lot of the boxes that we can check, right? So you’re a keynote or multiple bestseller speaker, etc. But I really want to go into the podcast piece here because you’ve been doing this for a long, long time. I’ve been at it for two years and I actually like it. And I think one of the reasons I personally like it is because I hate writing because I’m lazy and it’s easy for me to talk, but yours is a longer format. It’s aligned to the brand. So tell me about some of the do’s and don’ts that you’ve learned about when you launch a podcast, How to stay on, you know, sort of, yeah, and define your market, blah, blah, blah.

Srinivas Rao Sure. So you mentioned that you like it. That’s 90% of it, right? I heard a podcast. I mean, keep in mind, like when we started in 2009, everybody basically was saying podcasts were dead. It was the medium that, you know, basically was the digital graveyard of the Internet. Like, you know, we didn’t have the iPhone. It just came out. The iPad hadn’t come out yet. And there are some people who are bullish. They’ll go give it like several years and all, you know, it’ll catch up. But I never started it because I thought it was going to lead anywhere I had. The funny thing is, you know, you mentioned that I write books. The reason it started was because I, you know, was in this online course, you know, where there are 13. You know, one of the lessons was to interview somebody and the 13th guy I interviewed. So I didn’t just interview one person. I did a weekly series called Interviews with up and coming bloggers. And the guy basically, I remember I went to him to try to go do some joint venture with him and he actually said, No, that’s a terrible idea. Besides, he’s like, You’re not a very good writer, but you’re an extraordinary interviewer. And so he said, I think you should just follow that and, you know, spin it out into a separate site. And I think that part of it was that I genuinely just enjoyed the experience of doing it. I mean, I still do, you know, it’s one of the things where I think that, you know, it it’s one of the it’s really funny because if you I mean, you talk to me on the phone, I talk too much, which is ridiculous considering that I’m an interviewer. And, you know, women who have set me up on dates, you know, for the podcast are expecting me to show up as like the host of the podcast. And they get irritated that I didn’t listen as well as they hoped they would based on how good I’m doing it on the podcast. Going to extraordinary added when I’m you know when you’re on like yeah I got to figure out how to translate this to my dating life I’d probably end up you know.

Peter Winick But that would be like, like going on a date with a dentist and checking out cavities, right?

Srinivas Rao Like, yeah, it it’s a little weird, right? It’s kind of like there’s a balancing act. I mean, I have to work at it still. Like, I try to be mindful of it, and. But the thing is, it’s this thing where I just get lost in it, you know, It’s one of those things. So here’s the thing. I told somebody once that I believe my superpowers that I can take anybody. I mean, I’m convinced of this now and I can put them behind a microphone and I can make them sound interesting.

Peter Winick So but I’m going to go with that. So there’s lots. Of reasons people do podcast. So the most accessible.

Srinivas Rao Shit to the way most and most of them are the wrong reasons. Just.

Peter Winick Right, right, right. So we started, we were blogging for years, going to be for years doing all that sort of stuff. And then, you know, like Captain Obvious said to me, where you’re better at talking in your writing. Why don’t you, like, try that? Like, okay. And to me, originally there was no it was like I always thought it was an experiment, like, let’s try this for some period of time. We have access to some interesting folks based on what we do that are far more interesting to me. So ask, you know, cash in some chips and get some folks. And it’s probably good for the brand, right? That was sort of my working thesis. Well, it’s evolved to the point where it’s not just good for the brand, it’s good for business that people that I meet through the podcast become friends, become clients, become whatever. So it’s become sort of this weird non biz dev biz dev thing that’s actually a ton of fun. I mean, it’s the same as I’m doing all day without a mike in front of me. Just get on the phone or Zoom or whatever and talk to the interesting people and you know, seeing that there’s a there.

Srinivas Rao So, you know, so let’s go back to the do’s and don’ts of this. Ryan Holiday wrote an article, I think sometime probably about a year ago that said don’t start a podcast, which so I think that, like one thing that I want to talk about is the motivation behind this. So what happened was I think that, you know, come 2000, you know, 15, we went from sort of lingering in obscurity to to sort of not just us, but sort of the entire podcast ecosystem to what the journalist Kevin Ross referred to as native podcasting. And now even more so than ever before, because we’re all just sitting at our, you know, house quarantine, you know, trying not to lose our minds. And the thing that happened as a byproduct that, you know, particularly in the online world, I think the Internet, the Internet marketing space in particular, which I often refer to as the Internet marketing circlejerk, is I mean, you know, because I mean and the thing is, this isn’t isolated to podcasting, right? So like blogging became popular and next thing you know, everybody has a blog about how to start a blog and how to make money from a blog.

Peter Winick And then there’s conferences on how to be a blogger. And yeah.

Srinivas Rao And so, you know, you create this entire ecosystem which is is really more of an echo chamber than an ecosystem. I call it an ecosystem actually is not accurate. So then the same thing started to happen with podcasting. Online marketers clued in that, wait a minute, there’s a massive audience that I could tap into. And so what ended up happening as a byproduct of that, I remember I was interviewed for somebody who was creating a course for somebody about how to start a podcast. Like when you don’t even have a podcast and you’re creating a course about how to start one, or you’re interviewing people about this like, This is bullshit. Your authority is highly questionable.

Peter Winick But yeah, the same, you know, in the book space, I could Google 500, you know, be a bestseller author. But yeah, of course, Joe Lipschitz from Cleveland that’s never read a book, let alone write something. And it’s like, you know, why are people, you know, there’s more money in selling the picks than you to the gold.

Srinivas Rao It’s so Exactly. It’s the it’s the gold rush. Right. So yeah. And then, you know, particularly in the online marketing space, what ended up happening was, you know, a few big personalities got, you know, on microphones and then shouted from, you know, their megaphones of social media, Hey, everybody should start a podcast Now. That is the stupidest statement that has ever been made by an online market. And I’m sure if one of them is hearing this, they’re probably going to hate my guts. But I’m willing to take that risk. That is the dumbest thing.

Peter Winick I would hope. There’s none of them hearing this because that’s not my audience. And.

Srinivas Rao Well, no, it is it is the stupidest thing that anybody could say because that’s like literally saying that, you know what? You know, Nike not only makes size ten shoes, we should all wear them. You know, if your feet are not big, you’re going to look like a clown if you do that. And so what ended up happening is that everybody, of course, jumped on the bandwagon. And this is where all these cognitive biases come in. Yeah, there’s this bias. It’s like, you know, some authority figure tells you that, everybody should start a podcast. You go and look at this person’s results. It’s like, wow, they’re making like $70,000 a month. But yes, of course, everybody should start a pot.

Peter Winick Exactly.

Srinivas Rao Let’s not forget that there’s numerous, you know, biases here. First off, you have imperfect information. Let’s just look at that one. Most of these people were they have conveniently left that. I don’t know how the hell everybody has overlooked this. And it really makes me angry because it it’s one of those things where I’m like, okay, and I’m not saying this because I don’t think everybody should start a podcast. There are people who’ve done wonderful work in the last few years that I think have I’m sure glad they did. There are other people who honestly, you know, they leverage their platforms with, their podcasts aren’t that good, they just happen to have big audiences. So the thing that, you know, you have sort of an imperfect information problem where the thing that most of these huge, you know, people left out is, by the way, I had 60,000 people on an email list. I could tell about my podcast.

Peter Winick Exactly.

Srinivas Rao How is that? That’s imperfect information. Right? Then there’s the private interest problem, which, you know, the private interest terminology is not mine is Douglas Vigliotti is who wrote the. So I want to make sure I give credit where credit is due. Sure. But that’s the private interest problem. I mean, look, every one of us who creates content is driven by private interest to some degree, like. I’m here. I’m here. My private interest in people listening to us and because I want them to subscribe to unmistakable, creative like there is a private interest. But you know, when somebody who says everybody should start a podcast, you know, is now selling a course. Wait a minute. Look. Of course this person is going to say that they stand to benefit from this tremendously. Know not to pick on Gary. He’s just one example of sort of not this in particular, but somebody will go, you know, Gary is one of many people, social media influencers who have, you know, large enough audiences and large enough bank accounts that they can go and make investments in things like Snapchat and Twitter. Sure.

Peter Winick Significant investments. Yeah. I mean, it’s you know, if your Gary, when TikTok lit up to go there and become a top five on Tik Tok didn’t take much, you know, for me to do that would be like climbing Mount Everest based on my biology.

Srinivas Rao Well, not even for going and becoming a top five on Tik Tok. But if you, you know, think about the fact that somebody says, okay, I’m now an investor in Tik Tok or like I don’t know if he has or not, but yeah, like I said, it’s just the example that comes to me because I know he’s invested in a lot of the platforms regularly. And you know, the funny thing is I was like, if I invested in Twitter or if I were an investor in Zoom, I know this like because I had, you know, I took, you know, minor equity stakes in certain things, like, yeah, as in, of course I’m encouraging people to use those products. Why would I not encourage people to use those products? Because if I happen to have equity in those companies, that equity is going to be worth a hell of a lot more. If the people in my audience all go and use that thing, that is a private interest problem. So that whole bias thing bullshit aside, right, that that’s one huge problem with this that is completely overlooked. I think that people don’t take context into consideration. So that is one thing. I want to address that first. Now.

Peter Winick If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Srinivas Rao Let’s talk about, you know, sort of motivation do’s and don’ts. Now, all marketers saw podcasting as a channel for more business. Yeah, the kinds of things it’s like, more people will buy my courses, more people do this. Now, one thing I want you to consider is this If you go and look at the top 100 shows in iTunes, none of them come from people who are online marketers, with the exception of Tim Ferriss. And Tim Ferriss is not really an online marketer. And he happened to be at this party.

Peter Winick Why? Right, right, right.

Srinivas Rao Anyway, people. Right. They’re all storytelling shows. Sure. That comes out of NPR. There’s a reason for that.

Peter Winick One video or any of those, right?

Srinivas Rao Yeah. Audio is an entertainment medium first and an education medium second. And the problem is that if you just take information and try to put it into a podcast, like nobody wants to listen to Ten Ways to Grow Your blog and a podcast that’s mind numbing, I can read that.

Peter Winick That’s a bad PowerPoint, right?

Srinivas Rao Yeah. I mean, maybe somebody can do that justice, but at the end of the day, you know, really good podcast, the ones that stand the test of time tell great stories. I mean, you listen unmistakable, creative, you know? Sure. So you notice that if I have a guest, we almost never talk about their work just for conversation. I mean, it’s very rare that anything about how they became successful and tactical stuff comes up. I am very, very story driven. And that is why I will often turn out like people like, I can show you how to grow a blog. I’m like, nobody in my audience cares about that either, because that’s just not that interesting.

Peter Winick But, but, but where I want to go with you for a moment.

Srinivas Rao Is.

Peter Winick There’s a lot of paths that authors and thought leaders take. And, you know, one is we don’t do anything with online marketers, right? So we’re in the more boring, if you will, B2B world where people, academics, consultants, whatever, are creating wonderful content that has a business application. So by its very nature it’s going to lean a little bit more dry. Doesn’t mean you can’t bring it to life with stories. It doesn’t mean you can’t bring it to life with data. Right. You sort of have to for many of my clients, traditionally let me do this a long time. The book was sort of the centerpiece or the keynote was the centerpiece. And what I’m looking at in your world, yes, you have the books as well. But I would say and I could be wrong, more people know you from the podcast than the book. And even, you know, if you look at the data and I just had somebody on recently that told me depressing facts that not only do it, does the average business book sell less than 1500 units? The average person doesn’t make it past a page 18 So that’s depressing me, you know, but given people feel that they know you and your ability and your style based on the podcast so that they feel comfortable booking you for keynotes, remember when those are things great, well other things with you because they might have listened to you every day for six months at the gym in your ear and they get a sense of, you know, your it’s literally your voice and your style and the quirky. Yes. And the you know, the good, the bad, the ugly. And there should be no surprise when they call you and say. It’s really I’d like you to do X because they kind of get what you’re about basically, like a book is two dimensional. And I think this is a little bit more of a three dimensional medium. So what would you say?

Srinivas Rao Okay. I think that you brought up a really good point about, you know, dimension, you know, dimension when it comes to media, right? So you’re right. A book is two dimensional. And, you know, the example that I come back to, we had some very, very early conversations with a talent agent at CAA about unmistakable creative as a TV show. We just you know, we were I saw the Letterman show that he did on Netflix and I was like inspired. And I was like, well, what would prevent me from doing that? And I was with my now roommate. And he said, absolutely. I was like, I have access to interesting people in droves. I have an audience. I just need a venue. So, you know, for my book launch, I think for Audience of one, we actually did a live taping of a show in New York. But, you know, you know, it’s like, well, how would I even get this? So my roommate said, Go ask your audience. It’s got to be somebody who might be able to help you. The one person who responded to me was a talent agent at CAA, who happened to be a fan of the podcast. And I was like, okay, cool. So we got to talking and, you know, long story short, he just, you know, he shopped it around. They were like, We want somebody who’s already a star. We want to make one. So that aside. But part of what I thought was appealing about video as a format was that you could paint a multidimensional portrait of a person that you could.

Peter Winick Exactly.

Srinivas Rao You struggle to do the audio. So if you look at the Letterman show, I think the brilliance of what he did, particularly when you look at the interviews that he did with Malala and other people, was you got this perspective of this person that went beyond the person that was just sitting in the chair. He had these conversations with their family members, you know, these beautiful shots of where she grew up and, you know, everywhere. I Right. And I remember looking at that thinking, wow, if I could take somebody like my friend Maurice Dorian, who does all of our artwork and instead of interview him from behind the microphone, start, you know, a video episode at the sight of the Berlin Wall, you know, or the former, like, how different would that be than just listening to sound? Because now you’re getting, you know, sort of like you said, you’re hitting every cent every one of the five senses. Yeah. And I think that that, well, not taste and touch, but still the thing is that that you know, there’s a bandwidth that happens, you know via video audio or whatever it is that like you said, you can’t get access to via a written text. Right? So I think that if you think about it, like I describe it as levels of digital intimacy, right? With, you know, writing being the lowest form of digital. And I think, you know, sort of audio being sort of an accent and video and then of course, in person, which none of us can do right now being the highest.

Peter Winick Right, Right, right.

Srinivas Rao What’s interesting, particularly about the time that we’re in now is this is, you know, an observation I’ve made probably too many times over the last couple of weeks. People are sick of hearing me say it. But, you know, you and I are probably relatively close in age. And when we were growing up, if you remember, like the late 80s, early 90s, you know, the idea of seeing somebody’s face on the other end of our cell phone or not even a cell phone, like the fact you could see somebody’s face on the phone, that was a Back to the Future shit. You’re like.

Peter Winick And that is that was The Jetsons, man. Right.

Srinivas Rao That was going to be amazing when it happened. And the funny thing is it happened ten years ago and we basically, you know, almost like we regressed in terms of our ability to communicate because we went from, you know, having that technology to going from, you know, voice to text. Like, you know, there’s a great line in the TV show One Tree Hill where one of the character says, he’s like, Can you imagine a voice had been invented after text. People like, Holy shit, you can hear the person on the other hand. It’s a really bizarre sort of thing. But I think that is one of the good things that’s coming out of this, is that it’s teaching us how to communicate with technology in a way that is far more human than allowing us to access sort of this this bandwidth that we don’t get when we’re just like, you know, the conversation you and I are having. Imagine having this via email.

Peter Winick Yeah, no, this would stink. Really? Yeah. And nobody would be ridiculous.

Srinivas Rao So this is why I get really annoyed when people say, can you send me the question is an advance or you know, or it’s kind of like, well no, I remember somebody wants to ask me like, Can you send us the questions you want to be asked for an interview? And I was like, No, I’m going to do that. You’re the interviewer. That’s your job. Or when I have, you know, PR, a publicist like, Hey, can you send me a in advance? I was like, No, I don’t do that right? I’m sorry to inform you, but if that’s what you’re looking for, we’re the wrong fit. Or I’ll send them and say, Just so you know, I’m not going to ask any questions, but if it’ll make you feel better, here’s, you know, here’s a way to allow us to go listen to an episode because otherwise you’re going to waste both of our time. So, I mean, I’m the person who is notorious. I will cut interviews in the middle of them if I don’t like it.

Peter Winick Well, and I think that’s kind of the point is there are there’s not hard rules, but there’s different standards, different sort of whatever in each medium. But you have a lot of leeway because, I mean, who wants to listen? Because I get the same thing. I have people’s publicist calling me, can you give me a list of the I’m like, if I give you the list of the questions, that would be far easier for me in them. And it would just be a transcript. We would call, you know, maybe I’ll sue you and we’ll take a deposition. That’s what we do. Transcripts. Like, if you want to have a great conversation, I have no idea what I’m going to ask that person until literally I hit the red button on the mic and it’s not because I’m them. Some people think that sloppy, lazy. No, it’s like I’ve done my homework. I know sort of the notes I might want to hit, but I also know if there’s a left jab that comes out of nowhere and gets me a little dizzy like shit, I’ll just go with it. Like the, you know. Well.

Srinivas Rao That’s the thing, right? Those are the moments. So, you know, NPR has this terminology called driveway moments. Yeah. And driveway moments don’t come out of, you know, sort of scripted noun. And keep in mind, like, we do have certain questions that we shouldn’t get the ball rolling that I’ll use. And those are all asked by design because I know So for you it’s hard. So, you know, Lydia and Lydia Hemsworth here. Yes. Dan’s Roth, who just wrote this beautiful book on friendship. And I know I was like, okay, of all the people who I could ask that question about what social group you were you part of in high school, like you wrote a book on friendship.

Peter Winick You, of all people, will write an eating.

Srinivas Rao Story behind this. And so part of the design of that is that human beings are wired for story. And when somebody is telling a story, it’s very hard for us to stop listening. And particularly if it’s like weight. And so we you know, my old business partner, to his credit, figured this out about 3 or 4 years ago. He said it’s taken you 20 minutes to get into this like beautiful flow. He said, I think you can get there faster, change the way you start the show. Don’t ask anything about their work and just go for one of these bizarre questions. And it’s really hilarious to listen to people’s reaction because they’re like, Nobody’s ever asked me that before. I’m like, Yeah, I know. That’s good because that means, well, the moment that they got realized that that’s it, their script is completely broken no more, you know?

Peter Winick But that’s like watching an actor, you know, promote a movie. And whether you see them on ABC, CBS, NBC, they’re doing the same shtick, you know, And it’s like it’s a promotion. That’s not what we want. Well, I’d love to be talented enough to sustain the length of your podcast, which is like an hour and 20, but my mind is about 20 minutes and we’re there. Okay, okay.

Srinivas Rao Well, I didn’t talk too much, but I.

Peter Winick Know it’s fantastic, man.

Srinivas Rao Let me give you the do’s and don’ts. I think that ultimately do this for the right motivation. Make sure that you’re entertaining your audience, you know, mastery over metrics. But master of our metrics is that’s true. Whether you’re an author, whether you’re a speaker, whether you’re podcaster. And I think we’ve lost sight of that. And I think largely that’s due to the fact that all of our metrics are publicly on display. So it’s just this huge, you know.

Peter Winick Well, it’s a representation of our ego and we always say other stuff, but I think I love the mastery over metrics because by the way, the mastery always has to happen first and then the metrics and even the metrics. I would say, listen, I’m a metrics guy, but it’s easy to fall into the social media BS metric of retweets and all that unless they’re, you know, that they’re predictive indicators to an outcome that you’re desiring. A lot of them are fluff, you know, and.

Srinivas Rao I couldn’t tell you how many followers I have on Twitter. I mean, I haven’t used social media for I think I think I quit Facebook like at the beginning of February. So let’s see why. Yeah, yeah.

Peter Winick A couple. Yeah. Yes.

Srinivas Rao Albeit 90 days without Facebook. So I actually should write a.

Peter Winick Book or write a book. 90 days without Facebook. And I you go, Well, this has been awesome. Serena, I so much appreciate all your work and taking some time out of your day to spend it with.

Srinivas Rao Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Peter Winick Thanks, man. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com to reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.