My Big Idea (Part 1)
A cooperative podcast network for today, built on lessons learned from decades past.
In my last post I talked about wanting a revolution. And you heard the call! I heard from so many of you. Thank you to all the people who reached out from every level of the podcast industry and beyond.
Many of you have been laid off in the last year and for that I’m sorry. I also heard from people who left their jobs willingly - like me - tired of business as usual and feeling disempowered and dissatisfied. And I heard from people who are still employed - in podcasting and elsewhere - who believe there’s a better way of doing things. A way that leads to sustainable employment rather than excessive growth.
A way that gives creators control of their own destiny.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months thinking about and studying different business models. This has been a challenge. People who’ve worked with me directly know that budget spreadsheets make my head spin. In a recent workshop for my Entrepreneurial Journalism course we had an assignment in which we pretended to be the Gothamist. We had access to a theoretical yearly budget, and the idea was to change something about how they do business and try to make the numbers work. I decided to give them a podcast! (and also give small raises to the whole staff, because wouldn’t that be nice?) And I very quickly ended up deep in the red. It was laughable. My heart does not naturally line up with financial realities.
I know this about myself, so I’m careful to surround myself with super-smart, business-minded people who can put some financial order to my creative (and bleeding heart) production ideas. But things have changed, and I’ve spent much of my time since the last post talking to people who understand business and also share my cooperative vision.
And I have an idea. It's based on a work experience I had many years ago. Stick with me.
It’s the summer of 1994. I’m 19-years-old and living at home after my first year of college. I needed a job, and fast. I don’t remember how I first heard about the Vector Marketing Corporation, but I quickly found myself at an only slightly culty meeting with about two dozen other young people led by a very enthusiastic team leader in a nice blue suit. She explained that if we worked hard and were persistent, we could make thousands of dollars in a matter of weeks selling KNIVES.
All we had to do was attend a handful of training sessions, and then we would head out into our communities, armed with a loose script and a shiny new set of Cutco Knives, and it was our job to convince people to buy them. And if we did, we would earn a commission.
A quick note here. I’m a huge fan of The Dream so in case your MLM alarms are going off, I looked it up. Back in 1994 I did have to buy my knives (on a payment plan) before I could demo them to others. It appears they changed the rules at some point and now you can borrow a demo set if you can’t afford to buy them. Also, I didn’t have to recruit new salespeople. My job was just to sell sell sell.
I had never done sales before, but I had done a lot of theater. I could memorize a script and improvise my way through the slightly ridiculous demonstration they taught us. The idea was to call up everyone I knew and tell them they’d be doing me a huge favor if they watched my demonstration, no strings attached. This would help me learn valuable skills and possibly earn a little bit of money for college.
My childhood neighbors and family friends are a very kind bunch, so of course they said yes. I headed over to each of their houses with my knives in hand, and I did my demo. Using the lines I had memorized from the sales script, I talked about the specially-designed handle that feels so nice in your hand. (Here, you can hold it!) I talked about the serrated blade that stays sharper, longer. (Do you have a vegetable handy? I can show you!) And if knives aren’t your thing, we also have scissors so strong they can cut a penny in half! (Seriously. One time I cut a penny in half and it shot clear across the room and almost hit their dog.) I told them about the lifetime guarantee. And much to my surprise, many of them were convinced by my pitch and got out their checkbooks.
Here’s the kicker. Even if they didn’t want to buy anything, the script told us to ask them for five references for people who might be open to a demonstration from a nice college student. Names in hand, I would call up those folks, drop the name of the person who referenced them, and do the whole thing all over again. It worked.
Once a week or so we would go to a Vector Marketing meeting to get new sales tips and learn who the top sellers of the week were (there were prizes for this!) Vector didn’t pay us,1 but we earned a commission on everything we sold, and after six weeks, I had made a good chunk of money - certainly more than I would have made working as a lifeguard or waitress or any other minimum-wage job I could have gotten as a 19-year-old college student.
It turns out that I was in fact the #8 salesperson in New York State for that summer. Ha! And while Vector wanted me to stay on and continue selling once I was back at school, I had had enough of the sales life. So I packed up my shiny new set of knives, my prizes (a 5-disc CD-changer and a whitewater rafting trip) and my knife-sales trophy and headed back to college. And yes, I still have the knives today.
So how does this relate to podcasts?
As I mentioned in my last post, there are really only three ways to make money from podcasts:
Advertising
Sponsorships / Underwriting
Memberships / Subscription
All three of these ultimately work the same way: one person sees value in a creator… or a story or a mission… and they convince another person of that value. They persuade someone (or some brand/company) and money changes hands. Although there are many people actually involved, at its core, it’s a one-to-one interaction. The relationship of the seller to the buyer is everything.
So what if, instead of sending enthusiastic salespeople into their communities with a catalog of knives, we send them out with a catalog of stories?
What if there were hundreds, even thousands of salespeople, who head out into their communities, connect with their personal contacts, and offer them any combination of support for the stories in the catalog?
They could sell individual memberships for their favorite show, or a show they think their neighbor or family friend will like. They can demo the show with clips of funny or impactful moments. They can talk about the importance of supporting creators and audio storytelling more broadly. And they can offer different levels of membership - there’s something for everyone. For whatever they sell, they would make a commission; if they don’t sell anything, no harm, no foul.
(And, hey, in addition to earning a little extra money, this could be a great networking opportunity for those working their way into the industry while building up their own creative resumes or independent show ideas. Maybe instead of earning a whitewater rafting trip or a trophy for top sales, they can get a meeting with their favorite podcaster? At the very least, they’re learning valuable marketing and promotional skills.)
Let’s take this one step further - for the really ambitious salespeople. In addition to selling memberships, what if they also have the option of selling sponsorships, or even ads? Even before I sold knives I had to do fundraising for our high school theater program. Each year we had to try to get local businesses to buy ads in the playbill - $100 for a full page, $50 for a half page, $25 for a quarter page, etc. We all went to our parents first. But some of us had to be scrappier and go into our local coffee shops or restaurants or gift shops and charm them into supporting us, and they did.
It’s a running joke at this point that you hear the same ads in every podcast - Zip Recruiter, Better Help, Me Undies… And it’s great that those companies see value in podcasts - more of that! But surely there are businesses who’ve never been approached by a seller before who just need the right person to approach them with the right story at the right time. Ideally someone they know and trust.
So all these salespeople (call them pod merchants, or pod reps, or pod dealers - ha!) are out in the world practicing their pitches and selling podcast memberships and sponsorships and ads and earning a commission on everything they sell.
And where does the rest of the money go? TO THE CREATORS.
It’s time to reinvent the idea of a podcast network.
Here’s how I’d describe my concept in one sentence:
A cooperatively-run network where creators can make a sustainable living and shows are monetized through a grassroots salesforce.
And here’s how it works:
While the pod merchants are out in the world selling their wares, the creators are out in the field and in their studios doing what they do best:
Creating smart, entertaining, and impactful stories for listeners.
Collecting those stories into a unified network is a familiar and beloved idea. What’s new is this:
Revenue is distributed equitably across the network up to a predetermined threshold for each show.
This means that ad sales, sponsorships, even revenue from individual show memberships, are pooled to benefit the collective. The overarching goal would be for the threshold to equal a livable wage for the network’s creators for each year their show exists. What that threshold is will be determined by a set of rules written into a set of coherent by-laws. (I’ll go into that in a future post.)
Creators of “hit” shows should absolutely benefit from their success and would be eligible for bonuses and other incentives. But by being part of this cooperative network, you are, by definition, supporting not just yourself, but others in the collective.
There will be a small governing body (cooperatively run) that provides administrative support and management to keep the wheels turning both for the creators and the salespeople. There will be rules to govern how shows get added to the network and how shows can leave the network should they wish to go elsewhere.
Importantly, this is not a production house. This network is built for independently-owned shows that already exist and/or are ready to be put out into the world. The shows in the network are chosen by the cooperative using a selection system that’s agreed upon in advance, written into the by-laws, and governed by a clear and transparent set of metrics. The production teams for those shows are their own entities (ideally also cooperative entities) and are run however they choose. If there are multiple creators working on a show (and there usually are!) they would decide how to split their network revenue. And because the creators are operating as freelancers, they have the flexibility to take on whatever other gigs they want/need to meet their own needs and threshold for success.
For what it’s worth, I’ve thought long and hard about creating a cooperative production house. Production is what I know best and where I’m most comfortable. Here’s why I pivoted: there’s a lot of overhead associated with production.
If the goal is to support as many creators as possible, then I think the best way to do that is through a network that can scale, rather than a production house that can’t. (We’ve seen this happen time and time again this year, haven’t we?)
If we focus instead on a network for existing shows, I feel we can provide the most services to the most people.
In the survey I conducted a few months ago, I asked the respondents (nearly 200 of you so far) to select the top three things they value most in their work. The top responses were:
Collaborative Colleagues / Camaraderie (70.1%)
Creating Meaningful Content (62%)
Creativity / Innovation (57.6%)
The next three were:
Work / Life Balance (42.9%)
Flexibility (32.1%)
Independence (25.5%).
This network will be built with those values in mind. It will provide a place where creators can be a part of something larger than themselves - a movement that values sustainability over excessive growth. The design is a network where the creators are in the driver's seat, and the spoils of their hard work returns directly to them and is distributed equitably.
So what now?
I am wrapping up my time with the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and I’ll be presenting this idea to my cohort soon. I’m excited to hear their feedback.
I’m also finalizing a business plan for this Lean Co-Op program and I hope to get some good feedback from them as well.
Meanwhile, I’d love to hear from YOU.
Are you a CREATOR with an existing show who believes in this vision and might like to be one of the first to join the network? We’ll need some heavy hitters in the beginning to really make this work.
Are you a SALES PROFESSIONAL who believes in this vision and might like to help with initial fundraising and recruiting the first team of pod dealers? 😆
Are you a MARKETING OR PR PROFESSIONAL who believes in this vision and might like to help get the word out?
Are you a FUNDER who believes in this vision and might like to help us get off the ground?
If you are any of these, please reach out via this google form. (I will not share your information without explicit permission.)
Finally, a bit of business. I’ve decided to turn on payments for this substack. These posts will remain free for everyone, but your pledges will help me reserve some time to continue working on this big idea while I also sort through my own paid freelance work. (Speaking of which, I will have time available beginning in March should you need a consultant, showrunner, executive producer, or development producer on your project. The freelance hustle is real, people.)
Thank you again for all your support. Now let’s make THIS THING real!
One more thing. I am not working on this alone. I am lucky enough to be supported by a kind and generous team of friends and colleagues who’ve been advising me and fielding my texts and emails and phone calls filled with wacky ideas. They’ve helped me stay grounded and also pushed my thinking to new levels. I’m eternally grateful to everyone I’ve spoken with in the last couple months, but especially to (in alphabetical order):
Avery Trufelman - read her substack and listen to her show!
Barry Lam - listen to his podcast!
Makaela Kingsley - check out her incredible work
Jesse Hardman - check out his incredible work
Samantha Hodder - read her substack!
Sara McCrea - hire her!
Apparently now Vector offers a base rate for each meeting you take, whether or not you make a sale. Progress!
Such a creative idea! And yet another great piece from you. For some reason, I feel compelled to post this tidbit by Ben Riskin in Nick Quah's 1.5x Speed newsletter:
“Sorry this is a bit like when Time Magazine declared ‘Me’ the person of the year, but I think it’ll be a big year for ‘people who can make the things they are pitching.’ Reporters and producers that cut tape, engineers, writers, etc. These are people that have the most flexibility to get a project off the ground, the best chance at connecting with listeners authentically, and the most to gain from doing so.”