This transcript was created with help from Ai. Please report errors to us and always refer to the video as your primary source.

Justin Brady: Real Iowa’s real talk. No drama. This is the Iowa Podcast proudly recorded in the Jethro’s Barbecue Studio. For those wondering, yeah, Jethro’s over there. You just can’t see him anymore. Edison Research now has said podcasting is crushing radio. So just to give you the numbers, 40% of non listening time is going to podcasting. 39% is going to radio. I used to be on radio a little while ago, so it feels kind of good to talk about that. Today is Ryan Sno, the owner of SD Media, of course, has a podcast as well, which we’re going to talk about. Thanks for coming on the show.

Ryan Snaadt: Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.

Justin Brady: So real quick, everybody Jet throws barbecue. Of course we love, if you want to get a really hot deal, $30 gift card from them, go to Iowa podcast.com. Scroll to the top, click that little banner, and if you buy a hundred dollars gift card, they’re gonna throw in a $30 gift card for free. I think that’s pretty darn cool. So, uh, Ryan, obviously thanks for coming in here. Um. What happened? Like, you know, PO podcasting is like, I’ll ask you a general question first. You may not know the answer, that’s totally fine, but do you know what, I used to be a radio guy. You were never on radio, but you’re a media guy and you were doing your own show. Um, do you have any idea why podcasting has taken out? Radio? Do you I just wanna start there.

Ryan Snaadt: I, I think. it’s, it really boils down to people chasing attention. If you talk to a radio sales person, they’ll tell you 80% of people listen to the radio on a weekly basis, but that, those are just like, whether Those, numbers are accurate or not, at least you can track on podcasting where people are coming from. right? I think that’s really the, the appealing piece for, for people trying to get a message out is because you can basically just have like what we’re doing now, like a microphone, a camera, and you can become your own radio station. So, um, I think it’s just the radio of the future and it’s, it’s on demand radio, wherever and whenever you want it to be. Um, with no structure. It can be whatever it wants. It can be a 30 minute show, a four hour show if you’re Joe Rogan, whatever it is. It kinda gives people the, the Flexibility. to do whatever they wanna do.

Justin Brady: Yeah. So I want to talk about how you’re building podcasts for customers, what customers are asking for, what patterns you’re seeing, why podcasting is so dominant right now. This is interesting because people are probably like, Justin, you’re a podcaster. Why do you need another podcaster in here? I’m an interviewer. You know, I’m, I’m an interviewer, podcaster, radio content, and I’ve kind of like crashed my way through the tech side and the technical side. You are a technical guy, camera, audio. You do this professionally for companies and got into the interview side, right? So we come at this from both perspectives and I wanted to have a discussion with you on what’s going on or what, um, what. Like, you know, basically spell it out for Iowans. Here’s what’s going on. So, um, first of all, are you are you seeing a lot of customers now come to you where in the past maybe they were shooting ads and they were shooting. Are they coming now with podcasts on their mind? Now? Is this a primary, like, entry point for working with you

Ryan Snaadt: Yeah, I think it’s, it really boils down to what the goals of the company or the client is. Um, a lot of times we’ll sit with clients and they’ll say, oh, we wanna start a podcast. And I’ll say, well, what’s the show about? And then as, as, you know? we’ve kinda went back and forth on LinkedIn about this in the past. Um, people just wanna self-serving podcasts like the a BC Car Sales Podcast where we’ll sit and talk about the great deals we’ve got going on. Like who the heck is gonna tune into that? so a lot of times if we are steering someone to a podcast, it’s because they’re, it’s, it’s a funnel practice for marketing. So they’re trying to become top of mind, top of, you know, people are no like, and trust factors at that top of the funnel to attract their ideal audience. So in that example. instead of making it the a, b, c car dealership part podcast, maybe their core audience that buys a lot from them or like car enthusiasts. So maybe they would start like a show about. The new, you know, Ford Raptor that just came out or a new, you know, Corvette or something where car nuts and car guys and gals would tune into that. And then, oh, by the way, it’s, it’s put on by a, b, c car dealerships. So that slight twist is kind of what we try to help people with is like, make them. even realize if podcasting is a, is a viable solution to build an audience long term,

Justin Brady: Yeah, focus on au what the audience wants to hear, not what you wanna essentially. Uh, and you’re right, a lot of people do make that mistake. ’cause I’m in PR comms, a lot of people know that. And that’s the first top of mind thing all clients have is we wanna do a show about ourself. I’m like. Yeah. Cool. How’s that? You know, like, let’s, let’s just apply that. When you go to any event with people at it and you talk about yourself all the time, tell me how that goes.

Ryan Snaadt: People just kind of tune you out. They’re eye. They Say, wow, that’s crazy. About six times in a row. And they’re like, wow, that’s crazy. Oh, and then they’re like, look at the time I gotta go. It’s like, no one’s gonna give you their time voluntarily for that stuff.

Justin Brady: So if you could break it down, like by percentage is, are most people coming to you with podcasts? Is it still a pretty small, ’cause it’s mostly corporate clients, is what you’re working with, uh, are most people, uh, still doing the traditional over the last 30 years we’re doing videos, you know, it’s an ad or doing a digital ad or we’re doing a, a, a special interest thing? Or are most people. Starting to come to you with podcasting as their first priority now, is there a percentage that you can generally

Ryan Snaadt: Yeah. Yeah. So most, I would say, most of our clients, well, last year we did over 250 projects for clients, and 90% of them were just corporate videos. So it’s like training, recruitment, sales, promotion, those types of things. Whether they’re running on, on tv, paid ads, on Facebook ads, whatever that platform is. In the last couple years though, if we decide to go deeper on a podcast approach, we make the client gar or commit to a six month period. ’cause it is definitely a long-term content investment. You’re not gonna put one post out and become, you know, Alex Earl or or Joe Rogan or any of these other huge name people. It takes a lot of time to do that. So a lot of times we try to. Look at it for a longer term approach. ’cause when I started doing podcasts, it was when I, before I even started my company, I used to be an in-house, uh, person at a production house in like 20 19, 20 18. We Started. doing this approach with ag companies that were just starting. So without going down the laundry list of what happened, um, a larger or a smaller company was acquired by a huge agriculture client, um, based in the Midwest. They’re one of the largest companies in the world. And they were like, how do we get this website going? How do we get people to find them? And I came up with this bright idea to start a podcast for them, and this is before podcasting was even as big as it was. Long story short, we did a podcast all around it and it’s chicken fertilizer. So it was dried chicken, SHIT, uh, And that was the whole thing, which is. kind of the tongue in

Justin Brady: Oh,

Ryan Snaadt: Oh. But it was all based on organic search. So then when, people look up, yeah, that information there, we would, you know, we would do all the things we’re doing now. We would record it in video, which people weren’t doing. We would pull social media clips, which people weren’t doing, and the fun thing, which is before ai, we would hand transcribe all the videos. We had a copywriter on staff that would do that and turn them into blogs and email newsletters. People, I mean, looking at a monthly basis for this, they would get maybe a hundred views on their homepage in a month, but they’d have like 2,500 on their blog, Right, because we were ranking for these things, and it would bring in leads, which would turn into huge accounts for them, which made them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because of the podcasts. So granted, there was only a hundred viewers per episode, but 50 of those were viable leads. And then about five of them turned into. Paying customers. So it’s really like, you’re fishing, but with this big net. And it’s hard to track sometimes, but it’s, it’s a really good strategy if it’s the right type of client.

Justin Brady: yeah, you mentioned like. You, you made a point to say, which I agree with, um, like 60 or not 60 most clients you say, Hey, you gotta stick with it long term, at least six months in order to see a return. Which is absolutely true. Like my podcast that I started like over a decade ago, I tell people, um, you know, ’cause it was a, about comms and I was interviewing business leaders. I didn’t really see payoff till two years. Like it took a while. And people are our most brands and I’m, I’m talking about big brands, but I’m also also talking about individual brands. ’cause we like a lot of startups creating content and stuff like that. Are most of them kind of surprised when you say that? They’re like, WI thought this would be something that’d just be strong right out of the gate.

Ryan Snaadt: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Most people don’t understand the, the time concept to it. Um, but what I always say though is that podcasting, and again, we, we offer. a ton of different media. It’s not the only thing. So it helps that I can kind of talk people out of a podcast, which we’ve done a Couple times. Um, the First checkpoint. is. Could you do, do you have 50 episode ideas? Yeah, 50 interviewees, 50 topics. If it’s a solo show or a small group round table, whatever. And if they’re scratching their head after 10, I’m like, don’t do it. Yeah. Because you’ll do 10 episodes and you’ll quit. So that’s the other thing, um, even when I started my show, I’m like, well, I at least know 50 people that I could do the first season, which is 52 weeks in a row. I could do a year’s worth. And now we’re launching the third, third season, so we’re going into like 150 plus people that I’ve interviewed for my show. So it’s, Again, it’s like you really have to decide like there’s this huge uphill thing and like make sure you got your snow, boots on and you’re walking pulls and something to drink and some music to listen to. ’cause it’s a long trek, but once you. get halfway up the hill, it mu gets much easier. The snow thins out, it’s a little easier to hike. Yeah. You begin to Enjoy it. And then you can look up after a year or two and look around and check out the view like you’re, you’re a lot further than where your competitors are. But I really think founder-led content, like you mentioned owners, business owners, on the mic, on the, you think of the, the largest companies in the world. There’s only a few of those people, the founders that you even know, their names like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, or Tim Cook or whoever. Most of these people that are huge, you know, have a lot of influencer knowledge. They just prefer to stay anonymous, which I totally get. But just imagine what your business could do, like in terms of scale and visibility, if you’re doing media, but your own media that you can, you can dictate what the message is, how you wanna perceive, be perceived. It’s, it’s a lot more, um, bigger picture thinking and more bigger strategy thinking for a company to do that.

Justin Brady: And I think one of the good things about a podcast is if your leader is not like a public speaker, not everyone’s a public speaker, right? Not everybody can get on a microphone and rant or talk about something. Uh, even people who say, oh man, I could just talk for three hours. You put me behind a microphone, that would be, I’m like, yeah, but are are, are people gonna listen to it though? Because that is a big deal. And so not everybody can give a compelling But every great leader can be a good interviewee. And so I tell a lot of brands as well, like if, if you know, your leader in some cases should be out front and if they’re not a gifted leader, but they have a lot to say, pair ’em with someone, extract the information. So the, when people do come and they, and they make these podcasts with you, uh, again, I know you do a lot of media stuff, but we’ll focus on podcast edit ’cause the Edison research, are there a couple outside of the whole. Gotta do it for at least six months to see any payoff. Are there any other just classic mistakes that a lot of these brands are making? Because some brands this is fine, are also self-producing this stuff internally, and so are there any classic mistakes you just see all these brands making all the time? Because a lot of our listeners are just gonna start a show outta their house. They’re gonna use a Yeti mic, they’re gonna publish, which is fine. That’s a great way to start. So are there a lot of mistakes and errors you see people just constantly making over and over again that just drive you crazy?

Ryan Snaadt: Sure, sure. Yeah. And, and we’ve had plenty of them. I, I would say the most common is that people do not batch record their episodes, which is the biggest hack that anyone making content can do. Like later this afternoon, I’m making four YouTube videos and six social media posts in like a three hour chunk of time. Brought a bunch of outfits. I’ve got my teleprompter. ready, I preset it up. the day or Friday before, uh, the last week or whatever. So when you kind, I, I always say like the laundry analogy is the way I always do it. So if you’re gonna wash your laundry, one I art, art item at a time, it’d take you three years to get your laundry done. Here’s my one sock. I’m gonna put it in the dry or washer. Run a cycle for an hour, take it out, dry it, take it out, roll it up, fold it. Oh crap, I need the second one. Let me go wash that one. The whole day is spent washing two socks. So instead you go in for, you know, a couple hours, you script all your videos out and if you’re not a teleprompter person, just have your bullet points or Whatever you wanna say. Yeah. Write it down Do all the scripting first. Yeah. scripting first. Then go get your set ready. Whether it’s the same place you film, that makes it easier. But somewhere in your house, your office, wherever, even if you’re rather walk and talk outside or wherever you film, these people film in their car all the time too, depending on what, what the content is. And then the next piece is go and batch record. All of them. I, another hack I always to say is, um, use different clothes. You can switch clothes out so you can film ’em all on the same day. And then it looks like you’re different days whenever people watch ’em. so now you’re gonna probably have a little like racket clothes somewhere you can. just batch record all these

Justin Brady: I’ve already recorded one to like, I told you this before, I already recorded one today and I just wear the same thing. I just don’t really

Ryan Snaadt: Or you could just be like, the Steve, Jobs wear the same. clothes every day and no one would ever know Temp to

Justin Brady: me. Yes, don’t tempt me.

Ryan Snaadt: Yes. And then obviously record everything and then go in and edit all of them at the same time too. So batching those tasks makes it much easier. Uh, the other nice. thing is as you, as you go through that process, you’ll get better at knowing what you like and what you don’t. Um, and then there’s, there’s so many things that can speed those processes along. Like if scripting your interviews, if you’re interviewing people, I used to write all my questions by hand. Now we can leverage some AI tools to help get us halfway there. You know, we’ll still go in and do human revision. There’s basic ones that I would hand write every time of like, tell me about your childhood and where you grew up. Like I ask that question every single interview. So rather than just manually writing that every single time, I just take my framework. I usually use, I always have a lightning round in the middle of the show and I’ll say, based on my bio that I’ve given you, you know, give me some crazy questions or some out, out of the box ones, and then I’ll kind of filter those. So Long. answer to your short question. Batch recording is the biggest detriment. ’cause people burn out way too quick and then they’re not using technology and tools that are available to them to make the process much easier. ’cause if you can systematize it, if you can batch record and then you can make it fun and repeatable, then you’re, then you’re cruising, then you’re having a lot of fun with it.

Justin Brady: Yeah, I think that’s good advice. Get a process established because it’s not if, for those that don’t know, you know, but, and I know, but, but podcasting is a grind. Because there’s no other, well, there may be a few, but it’s an occupation or a, or a, or a project within your occupation. In both of our cases that there is a deadline every week, and if you miss the deadline sponsors or viewers are ticked and that it’s always, and it’s always a new idea every week, and it never ends. It’s just one thing after another after another. As soon as you get one recorded, you’re like, oh, great, I got that in the bag. That was awesome. My audience is gonna love this. And then within an hour of finishing, you’re like. Crap, I gotta work on the next one.

Ryan Snaadt: Right. It

Justin Brady: It just never ends it. Um, so is that something that often surprises brands is just like, oh, this is a, a weekly, if you’re, if you’re scheduling weekly, this is just a weekly grind that, and it never, ever goes away. It’s always hanging over your head. Do you see people just take this on and they kind of overestimate how much time and effort it’s gonna take?

Ryan Snaadt: They, they usually underestimate it by quite a bit. Um, and that’s why we do the batch recording. ’cause even like for my show, we do that, like right now, we’re gonna launch season three for my show in a couple days. The first of the year or first of the month. Excuse me. Uh, April 1st we’ll launch our first episode, but I’ve already filmed. My editors already cut through all 16 episodes. We’ve already filmed four, four months of content before we even launched the show, because we know our busy seasons is in summer. We’ll be out on, Yeah. we’ll be out on shoots all summer. So it’s like just really trying to take a huge holistic view on it. But then I’ve also built SOPs and screen recordings of every single thing, so as we bring on more team members. Summer intern, whatever it is, we can hand those tasks off of like, here’s how to edit them, here’s how to film them, uh, those types of things. But even for clients, when we do their shows and they come in, my big shtick is like, we’re gonna get your entire, an entire month’s worth of content in a day or less. So usually it’s a half day, we can film four episodes back to back for a podcast. If they’re doing a weekly show, have outfit change, bring some caffeine, give ’em a coffee or something, and we just boom, boom, boom. We knock ’em all out from nine to noon, then they’re done. They, they come in for four hours in the entire month and then they do nothing else. So. For our done for you stuff. That’s definitely like a really, a really AP appealing thing for people. But Even like. you know, I built free YouTube videos and online courses and stuff to teach people how to do podcasting. ’cause we, I get so many questions, like endless amounts of questions. Like I was on a TV show for entrepreneurs, it’s called The Blocks, if you’ve heard of that. It’s on Roku, apple TV and some other sub networks. But it was a live-in startup competition for seven days where we live on site and we compete and pitch and all this stuff. And everyone, once they found out I had a show, Every business, owner there was like, teach me how to, how do I launch a Show. Like how are you doing that? ’cause I see other people doing that, or I see, you know, you see like Alex Ramey or you see like Christopher Williamson or some of these other people that have like huge audiences from doing their show and they just want to go as quickly as they can to that. But a lot of times I would kinda educate them again, talk them out of doing a show if they’re really not, if their heart’s not in it and they don’t have the bandwidth to do it. But you’re gonna trade one or the other. You’re gonna trade time and do it yourself, or you’re gonna trade money and, and have other people do it for you, or hire team or contractors or other people to produce it for you though.

Justin Brady: Because it’s a lot. It’s, it’s not Go record. And publish, because nowadays you’re not, uh, well, I, I don’t think you’re doing, you’re, yeah, I know. You’re not doing this. You’re not just publishing on like Apple, Spotify through a podcast Like those days are gone. Where, where are you publishing your full show now

Ryan Snaadt: Yep. So we publish ours on Spotify ’cause because they’re heavily leaned into video podcasting and it gives us a lot more organic growth that way. Um, because we’re one of the few shows that really prioritizes video for all of our clients, for us and for other clients. We do it that way. And then our main focus right now, um, for posting is YouTube because YouTube’s the number one consumption platform for podcasting, and it’s owned by Google. Which helps with Google, SEO. So again, holistic vision right now. Um, before about a month ago, we didn’t have any of our, of my show rhymes odd, and we didn’t have any of that linked to my website for my company, SNO Media Group. So I, So I went in, wow. And I, I ended up hiring a contractor to come in and be like, Hey, here’s create, turn these, transcribe all these into, you know, blog posts, turn them into, you know, SEO Rich podcast. And now, now I’m going through with all 116 of our episodes this week. and, uh, plugging those into the site because. yes, it’s gonna take me at least eight hours to do that, but. Organic search, as I mentioned with that ag client completely changed the game. So there’s so many things we talked about in my show that would help us with organic SEO, but we can also give our guests a kickback where if I link to their site that helps their SEO. So it’s like, Having, having people on, it’s just that mutual benefit there for people. And it’s another selling point for us for to have really big name guests that come on. ’cause we understand the marketing and it’s worth, it’s worth their hour and a half to two hours to come in and be a guest on my show because we’re gonna take care of ’em on the marketing side.

Justin Brady: Are you ever going to start publishing to like, ’cause we’re, we’re publishing to like Facebook and LinkedIn and X. LinkedIn is a whole beast because they cap you at 15 minutes, which is ridiculous. So we do a special LinkedIn version. Some people are like, I don’t like, why, why didn’t you just upload the show to LinkedIn? You did the, you chopped it off early and gave a tease. So I have to click over and watch the whole thing. I was like, it’s not my choice. I’d upload the whole thing. But LinkedIn has us capped. So are you. Uploading everywhere or wanting to do that. And is it just like a bandwidth thing?

Ryan Snaadt: Yeah. so great question. We do two different deliverables for our show. We do the full length video podcast, which goes out on YouTube and Spotify, iTunes, all the other places there so people can listen to it. The other piece is that we’re really heavily, um, focused on vertical video. So at least every every one of my podcasts at least, has six social media clips that we’ll pull from it. Um, so we’ll create a bunch of vertical reels that way. And then our, our workflow for that is I schedule ’em all out on the TikTok desktop app. ’cause you can schedule out a month in advance. So once a show’s done, I’ll go in and plug ’em in and kind of rearrange ’em. So then they publish everywhere. And then our super secret hack is we use, um, repurpose.io, which is an automation tool. It’s like Zapier for social media. So basically what we set up an automation where whenever the posts go out on the TikTok account, we link it to the LinkedIn, Facebook, or uh, Instagram X, wherever else we want to go. And it just automatically shoots it all over the internet. Everywhere else we want to go. So that strategy last year, I think we had 1.6 million views across all the platforms. Um, that was just, I mean, actually 1.6 million was just from YouTube alone. From YouTube shorts and then the, the full length videos. But that just helps us go omnichannel. ’cause again, it’s a bandwidth issue. We don’t have. Five people that can specialize in each one of the things. I just want the videos to be posted everywhere. Uh, we even started a Snapchat account where it’s on, so if you’re on Snapchat, check us out. We’re getting like 15, views a clip, but it’s, like, it’s an automation thing where it’s not taking any time. It’s just, it’s just putting anywhere and everywhere it can go.

Justin Brady: yeah, I think people mis like podcasting, at least when I started, used to be you do an MP three file, or not an MP three, but we were doing waves and we were uploading on SoundCloud, believe it or not. Yeah, old

Ryan Snaadt: With all those EDM DJs, I like it. I

Justin Brady: know. We were, uh, doing the show, we were uploading to the server one time and then that would push to Spotify and Apple and we’d write a summary and embed it on the site when we were done. That was it. That was the whole process. And then video, like killed all of us because, and, but it killed, I mean, the time it takes, like I was probably, I could edit a show. I could record a show. If it was a half an hour show like this one, I could record it and I could put, push it up in, do the full edit in addition, five, 10 minutes because I had a template. It was already done. Just drop it in. Export, upload. Done. You know, the, the writing was a little bit different, but now it’s video editing. It’s uploading these huge files. It’s ugh, the headache. It creates like the process of, you’re even talking about, uh, uploading to reels. Like out of every show you mentioned, out of every show. So you’re recording the show, you’re video recording the show, you’re mixing the audio, you’re editing the video, you’re doing the multicam, you’re, uh, now there’s some tech that does that automatically, but you still have to adjust it. And then once it’s all published, once you write the blog post, now you’re clipping these things out and pushing them through TikTok and Instagram and all the like this. Do most companies actually go the distance and do that? Or are they like, hold up, dude, we just wanna upload like two videos a month and call it good,

Ryan Snaadt: right? Um, most people start with that. Yeah. Uh, the, we just want the audio and then I educate them on the marketing impact of, if we’re gonna do this, let’s take the extra two steps and give you oodles of more content to share. Like, Oh, are you guys doing an email newsletter? Yeah. Well, no one ever reads it. I’m like, ’cause this crappy, like, let’s take these awesome. interviews or these awesome topics and turn them into emails. Like, we can do that with AI in five minutes. And they’re like. I never thought about that. Or like, do you guys share organic social media? Well, our friends and family, like our Facebook posts, I’m like, well, yeah, ’cause it’s not helpful to your audience. Let’s create a whole show around your ICP or your ideal customer persona. They’re, they’re gonna wanna watch this stuff. Like, where can I get the full interview? So I think that’s the, the, the turning point for people is to realize that you’re not a podcaster. You’re, and I, I’ve, I’ve been saying this a lot lately. Um, every company is a media company. Once people understand that mindset

Justin Brady: true.

Ryan Snaadt: It changes everything about how you go about it. Where we’re not selling widgets, we’re not a service-based plumber or Whatever. Like we’re trying to educate or entertain or add value to this core group of people. And the natural next step is to have them work with us. I think That’s the. that’s the big piece. Like even with This podcast like talking about podcast and we offer to clients, we can’t help everyone. So if I can give people tidbits to help. Maybe when they get to the point where they would need something produced, they would call us. But if not, that’s fine. Like there’s plenty of times where I’ll be out in public and someone will say, oh, like a video. You did help me that I made 10 years ago on my YouTube channel. That still, gets used now. So it’s like. It’s all compounding, but it takes forever. It’s like long, it’s the Warren Buffett investing version of content creation. It’s like you can put a tweet or a, an Instagram or a TikTok post out and it goes mega viral overnight and you keep chasing your tail trying to repeat that. Or you can do something that’s like proven to actually increase your SEO that would drive, you know, traffic to your site that might convert into sales. But it’s gonna take a decade to do. But I’m young enough, I can still keep going and do it and we, we can, we’ve figured out systems and processes to do it, but trying to go the investor, long-term investor route for content rather than the short form sugar rush where you try to just chase your tail and try to go viral overnight.

Justin Brady: So let’s talk about, uh, rhymes with odd ’cause you have a podcast and you have a media company. And again, like we started off talking about some, even marketing people get a little confused by how content strategy’s supposed to work. Sure. A lot of marketing people will be like, well, you know, Ryan, if you have a podcast, it should be the How to Record Video podcast and how to set up video and audio po. But you’re not doing that. If you go look at your podcast, you almost don’t know. You do video stuff, you drop it occasionally, you work it in there. And so, which by the way, I agree with the strategy, it’s a, it’s the long game strategy. ’cause you’re saying, I don’t really care. I’m not gonna make a show about video and podcasting. I’m gonna make a show that is focused on these stories I want to highlight. And you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of business people, people with good stories. So at this point, can you confidently, well first of all, how old’s the podcast Now let me ask that.

Ryan Snaadt: this will be year three. that we’re going into it. Yep. So we do, we do 52 episodes a year and this will, we will be starting up our third year this year.

Justin Brady: year three, are you pretty, I mean, I know this stuff’s really, really hard to track, but are you pretty confident at this point? The podcast has basically made your business.

Ryan Snaadt: Um, it, we’ve made money from it. Uh, it’s, it’s been harder to track. I would say there’s many reasons why I do the show. So, kind of the holistic, uh, bigger picture vision is like our company helps connect brands with their customers. So we help them do, you know, video production, we help ’em with podcasting, with content strategy for social media, whatever that is for people. I created the show because I was having these business conversations and their conversations were so good. I’m like over coffee, lunch at a networking event. I’m like, God, I want to film these and just like share. ’cause there’s so much insight I would have with these really awesome people that have had cool stories. So that was. Goal number one. Um, the Second goal. of it was, again, for the networking approach. I’ve met so many cool people, met 116 people I didn’t know previously or, or have deepened my relationship with those people that I can turn into.

Justin Brady: how we met.

Ryan Snaadt: Exactly. Like, Exactly. Like, and I, I start doing podcasts and I kind of zoom out a little bit, like, who else is even doing this in the state? And there’s not a lot of people, so it’s a short list of people. that like, Who else is doing this? So. that’s kind of the other piece is the, the networking approach, but. To answer your question pointedly, yes, we have made money from the show. It’s been from guests that have came on that said, holy cow, we love this setup. We’ve been wanting to do a show. Can you just, can you just do it for us? I’m like, yeah. So we’ve done that or we’ve had other clients on that. Um, we start talking media and then they’re like, oh, I know someone you should talk to. And then it turns into, you know, a large project for our company. So, um, it’s a lot harder to track. I mean, I can, ’cause I’m in the weeds on it, so I know. Okay. From our list of people, did this lead to a project or whatever? So it did help our company quite a bit. But the, the bigger impact has been the, the, you know, people telling me, like, I was on episode 20 and I almost gave up like at season one, episode 20. I was like getting in the thick of it, almost gave up. And then someone reached out to me from high school that owns a lawn care company and he was telling me, he is like, Hey, I’ve been like listening to your, all your interviews on my big, uh, over the ear headphones, on mowing lawns in the summer. He is like, this is like one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to. Keep interviewing people. This is great, and it was like the one little nudge I needed to like keep going.

Justin Brady: There have been so many times, dude, where I was like, yeah, I’m done with this. And you read a review or a client reaches out and like, you know, fast forward to today, um, like I said in earlier in the show, uh, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, but not until two years did. Also in two years I started, I think like you, I started focusing a little bit and I was like, what’s this show gonna actually do? Like, I think you said this makes me feel a little better. Uh, I think a lot of podcasters will feel be better only within the past month. Or you’re like, oh, I should tie this into our website a little

Ryan Snaadt: Yeah. I wasn’t even drinking my own. Kool-Aid. I’m like telling people Oh, And I’m like, cobbler shoes. Exactly.

Justin Brady: but you know, it took me two years, uh, maybe longer, but I can confidently look back now and say, without that podcast, I would not have done. The cool things that I’ve done now, like I’ve worked with the founder of ancestry.com on projects. I’ve worked with White House people, I’ve interviewed presidential candidates. I’ve been over in Vienna hosting the global Peter Drucker forum stream in a palace. All of that stuff I can trace back to And so this stuff is brand building. Like I think the things brands struggle with is they’re always looking for that direct. Relationship. They’re always looking for that very calculated. We heard the show, we researched Ryan, we saw that he does video, we bought, and you’re just never gonna get it. You’re never gonna get it. What you are gonna get is someone who comes to your business because you have a profile and they trust that profile. They may not even know why, but they just like, oh, Ryan, I, yeah, I’ve heard your name a million times. They don’t know why they saw your content. They can’t even make the connection. And so, um. Yeah, I find it, I find it fascinating that all this stuff now is finally kicking radio’s butt. And like you even hear from a lot of tech companies, like you can go direct now. I still believe in press and media, but you can go direct now. Um, let final thing talk about the business a little bit. Uh, plug what you’re up to and plug the show.

Ryan Snaadt: Sure. Absolutely. So we’re kind of in this fun point where we’re redesigning kind of the, the impact that we want the podcast

Justin Brady: a brand new studio too, and brand new

Ryan Snaadt: Yes. Yep. So, um, about a month and a half ago, two months ago, we moved to a new studio in Polk City. So bigger space that we more turnkey mounted fixtures for lights and bigger space and different backdrops. So yeah, so we do our show there, we rent it out for people. And then we started kind of this new direction where we’re launching the Content Marketer Club. So it’s a free online community that people can go to learn how to do podcasting, YouTube, social media. Uh, we have paid courses in there, but there’s a lot of free connection with people. So we’re starting that out. Just trying to get, again, plugged in with more, more people. Our, our people we work with is marketing people at, at larger companies, so we want to connect those people and give them, uh, ways to ask questions, learn. Everyone’s expected to be a Swiss Army knife and know how to do everything, but it’s just, there’s so many, so much nuance to each platform that there’s a lot of things there. Um, but no, we’re. we’re excited for the, for the new year for my show to be launching in a couple days for season three. Um, just providing more, more free content for people. And then again, just doing more, more projects this year and building the team out and kinda just seeing what, what happens in the next three to five years. So we’re really

Justin Brady: congrats on the growth. Ryan Sno, the owner of Sno Media, and of course the Rhymes with odd podcast. Of course, if you’re driving somewhere, we will have all those notes posted@iowapodcast.com. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the Iowa Podcast. It’s been a long time coming and we made it happen.

Ryan Snaadt: Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.