Turner Novak

Nate Matherson: 

00:00

As far as like the prep goes, like, do you have like a list of questions or do you go in cold? Like, how much time do you spend like prepping the questions for each episode? 

‍

Turner Novak:

00:11

Probably somewhere between two and ten hours. It really kind of depends. I'll ask them for topics they want to hit on anything. They feel like they're an expert in I'll ask him like, what would make this a really good episode for you?

And like, sometimes people like you might have like a publicly traded company on a CEO and they have a comms team and they launch an AI product. And the comms team is like, you have to talk about the AI, the AI product that we just launched. So that's part of it. And then sometimes I'll ask them for like, Hey, Anyone I should talk to, like any of your investors, co founders, friends, who should I talk to to just like help me come up with some ideas for us to talk about?

And that's always led to some interesting stuff. For example, at the Instacart episode, every single one said we had to talk about what happened when Amazon tried to or acquired Whole Foods. That was like a pretty big moment in Instacart's history. And I hopefully would have hit on that, but I might've missed it.

don't know. But like all eight people were like, This is the number one thing you got to get into talk about. So sometimes you get some good ideas from that too.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

01:22

Hi, and welcome to the optimized podcast. My name is Nate Matherson and I'm your host on this weekly podcast. We sit down with some of the smartest minds in content marketing. Our goal is to give you perspective and insights on what's moving the needle. Today. I'm thrilled to sit down with Turner Novak.

Turner is the founder of banana capital and host of the peel. One of my favorite podcasts. This week's episode is a little bit different. After filming 50 plus episodes about SEO, I decided that we needed to mix it up a little bit. Over the last few weeks, we've chatted with guests about growth and go to market more broadly.

And on this episode, Turner and I talk about starting a podcast. Prep, production, distribution, and more. And towards the end of this episode, we will chat a bit about social media and marketing.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Optimize podcast. It's brought to you by Positional. If you don't know by now, my name is Nate, and I'm one of the co founders of Positional, and we've built what I think is a pretty awesome tool set for content marketing and SEO teams. We've got tools for keyword research, internal linking, content optimization, and even a couple of tools for analytics.

We'd love for you to check it out at Positional. com. Turner, thank you so much for coming on this week's episode of the optimized podcast. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

02:44

Thanks for having me. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

02:45

Yeah. You know, I've been a fan of the peel, uh, for, you know, months now. It's a great podcast. And, uh, on this episode, you know, I'd love to get a sneak peek behind the curtain and learn more about your production process, what goes into creating a podcast.

But first for our listeners, could you tell us who is Turner Novak? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

03:04

I feel like I'm a pretty, pretty simple guy. Uh, I'm an investor, invest in startups, have a podcast. Most people probably know me from my Twitter where I, I'm basically a meme account, but instead of, being a meme account. It's just me. And I make, make memes and jokes about, uh, just kind of the intersection of startups, tech, investing, the stock market, startups, kind of everything in between.

I am a serious person, but don't take myself that seriously at the same time. And, uh, yeah, I love what I do and love what I do. Love podcasts. So I'm sure this will be an awesome conversation. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

03:45

Yeah. You and I first connected during the pandemic. I think it was back in 2021. And I remember your viral posts, uh, specifically your posts, making fun of VCs.

They were so great. And now you've got a podcast. It's called the peel. And what made you decide to start The Peel and how many episodes in are you? 

‍

Turner Novak:

04:04

I had thought about starting one for a while, actually. It's probably the same journey that everyone goes down where it's like, oh, I should start a podcast because, uh, and it probably took like three years to actually start.

I kind of did. There's this one well known, uh, You know, kind of tech investing podcast that I'll, if you listen to a lot of podcasts, you'll probably know this. And they were doing kind of like, uh, they're bringing on some hosts to try some different concepts. And they had me shoot a couple kind of trial episodes and, uh, and they just ghosted me.

And so I was like, man, I guess I'm not that good at this. So I kind of, you know, sat on it for another couple of years. I was like, man, I guess I'm just, must not be a good podcast host. I don't know. Uh, and then it just kind of kept resurfacing. I've listened to a couple of podcasts and like, man, I wish they did that differently.

Or like, I, I think this would have been an interesting question to ask at that point in the conversation, or I kind of, I kind of want to learn about this. So it's kind of, like I said, it's probably an evolution over three years of like, you know, thinking about it, getting rejected and being at the very lows and then like slowly building up and kind of realizing that I think it's probably one of the most underrated and maybe like powerful forms of media, especially from a marketing standpoint.

And my job is basically to sell money to founders really at the end of the day, if you want to really distill it down. And I just felt like there was a big kind of opportunity in the market to just make a really well done podcast for founders. It was just, I did doing a couple of things differently than I kind of felt like other people were doing.

And so, yeah, that was kind of the. The journey of kind of deciding to start one. But yeah, I just think it's, there's not very many forms of media where you have someone who sits down and spends 30, 60 and some podcasts are like 120, 180 minutes, and it just builds a really strong connection with the listener.

So it's kind of why I decided to start one. I just thought super powerful asset if you can get it going, but they're so hard. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

06:14

Yeah. The first episode that I listened to of the peel was your interview with the founder of air garage. And y'all talked for like two hours about parking garage. Um, I actually listened to it on the airplane and, uh, I didn't know that I, that parking garage just could be so involved.

And I learned so much. Um, I'm about parking garages, but also about air garage and, um, and it kind of sucked me in. And I went back and listened to a whole bunch of the previous episodes you've done. And now like I'm subscribed and I get the new episodes each week. Um, but you know, you mentioned that podcasting is underrated.

Why would you say that podcasting is still underrated now? Cause it feels like there are so many podcasts out there. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

06:59

I think that's why it's underrated. I think there are a lot of podcasts, but there's not very many good podcasts, if that makes sense. Like, especially if you're, if you're sitting in our seats, like you as Nate or me as Turner, we probably all know 10 people that have podcasts, but we probably don't listen to their podcast, I guess.

Um, so, and I just, I don't know. I feel like, A lot of the times it's kind of one of those things where you check the box. It just is like a, we have a podcast. Okay, check. It's like one of those things. Like we have a website, we have a social media account. Um, and I just kind of felt like there was a big opportunity to, uh, do it, to do a little bit more than just checking a box.

Um, so, and I think if you really want to kind of break it down, I mean, you can monetize them, they can be standalone media businesses on themselves. You record with someone who probably has interesting insights and opinions for 60 to 90 minutes. You can chop up those clips, put them across every social platform.

You can take the transcript, you can use them for customer stuff. So I've definitely invested in founders I've had on my podcast. I've had founders that have discovered me and my firm from the podcast. So I feel like you can use it for, like I said, it can be its own business in itself. You can use it for customer.

conversations, um, like there's, there's very few times you can reach out to like the CEO of a publicly traded company and just say, can you just sit down with me for 90 minutes? Like, it's an interesting way to get people to spend time with you. Um, and it just like builds a parasocial relationship too.

Like I'm sure the people who have listened to you do tons of these episodes. They probably feel like they know you pretty well and they're like, I want to use this product because, or I want to work with him on whatever, whatever the business is, it's kind of behind the podcast. Uh, so yeah, like I said, I think they're so underrated.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

08:56

It sounds like you're using the podcast for customer support in some sense, like bringing your portfolio founders on. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

09:03

Actually, less than, less than I should, my LPs would probably like me to do it a little bit more. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

09:09

I will. I do want to ask you about the breakdown or and like how you find the guests a little bit later on.

Um, but your venture fund banana, it's kind of like a startup. You know, I know people will make fun of VCs for saying like their venture fund is like a startup, but it is, it's a business at the end of the day.

‍

Turner Novak:

09:25

It's less stressful. I would say there's some parallels. It's, it's not as hard, but it's, it's not easy.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

09:30

Well, don't tell yourself short, you know, pulling money out of wealthy people is not easy. Um, how has the podcast helped you as the GP of banana? Um, is it, has it been most helpful on like the sourcing side of things? Is that like the number one benefit for you or is it, you know, getting new LPs? Like what's the number one goal for, for the podcast?

‍

Turner Novak: 

09:53

There's kind of like a multi pronged goal. I would say the number one goal, it's a way to meet people, I would say, and just like get to know people better, like I said, that otherwise probably wouldn't spend a ton of time just sitting down and talking to you. Uh, like it gives you kind of a platform to, to meet, to meet folks.

I think it does help for, Sourcing a little bit like I get, I probably get about one email a day where the founders like, Hey, listen to your podcast, realize you have a venture fund, realize I follow you on Twitter. Like there's kind of some, there's, I probably still get the most just from founders that come across my tweets and you know, like multiple a day that are like, Hey, I've been following you on Twitter for a while.

So yeah, it's probably a big thing. And then, like I said, I've, I'm still probably in the phase of building up the distribution, like, you know, anywhere from like five to 10, 000 listens, streams, views, whatever per episode. So it's, it's not like the most helpful thing in the world for a portfolio company.

Like, I would like it to be a little bit bigger, still working on growing it, but it does help. Like I have had People say even non portfolio companies, they've been like, Hey, a customer reached out saying they heard me on the podcast. So I really just find it, I see it as a way as like, you're building this like asset to, you know, just benefit the ecosystem.

Like I'll get to know a founder, you know, they're like a unicorn already, whatever. I'm probably not going to invest. Cause I do more early stage stuff, but if I help them get some customers or help them with recruiting. They'll like me, their friends, when they're raising companies, they might tell them to, to talk to me.

Um, so yeah, just kind of be, it's just a way to be helpful to everyone in the ecosystem, meet more founders, meet more people. Uh, and then I, I run some ads in it too, where I work with kind of a third party agency and they just, they fill, Ads a lot. So like I, I'm not losing money on the podcast. I think I make like a couple hundred bucks per episode, which I, I guess is nice.

And again, as it gets bigger, it'll probably get to a point where, you know, maybe, maybe I can make like a million bucks a year off of it. You know, we squint hard enough in the future, like couple, couple years down the road. So yeah, I think there's a lot of benefits to it. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

12:09

I was gonna ask you about the ad spots, 'cause I've heard some of them.

For your portfolio companies, but then I've also heard ad spots for companies that I don't think are your portfolio company. So is it a combination of both? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

12:22

Yeah. So for the portfolio companies, we've used it as just like testing, just like giving them some like free ad space and just like testing if podcast ads even work, we'll just run like two, three episodes.

Just see if anyone clicks on the link, see what kind of leads they got out of it. And then, you know, we've never, I've never like. I don't, I don't think I've charged any of them. I hope that, um, but like when I first started the podcast, one of them, uh, I did some ads with one of my portfolio companies called secure frame.

I think they did like the first 10 and he basically just like helped me pay for like the editing on the first couple episodes, kind of a thing. Like, I think he paid like ended up being like a hundred bucks per episode or whatever, but like. I didn't make anything out of it. And I, I know I sent them like hundreds of leads from that.

So, so yeah, I just kind of see it as like, again, it's just like, there's a lot of different ways you can, you can benefit from podcasts. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

13:18

Yeah. I feel like I hear secure fame on a lot of podcasts or at least they've sponsored. A few of the podcasts that I listen to, um, you know, I always ask our guests on like the SEO side of things, like what makes for a great piece of content.

Um, but I'm going to ask you on like the podcasting side of things as a podcaster and someone who listens to a lot of podcasts, what do you think makes for a great podcast episode? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

13:42

Yeah, it's a good question. And it's something I thought about before I started. It's just like, is it interesting for people to listen to?

Because it's so hard to just say, Hey, started a podcast, just listen to this like 20, 40, 60 minute piece of content. Like that's a hard thing to kind of squeeze into people's days. So for me, I just thought it just has to be interesting. And, and for me specifically, I think about, I think about as kind of like edutainment.

Like there's, there's some entertainment aspect to it, but I also want people to learn something. So typically the guests that I have on, probably like 80 percent of them are founders of companies and they just talk through the journey. How did they get their first customers? How do they do customer research?

You basically just ask, like, what are a couple topics you are an expert in and really want to talk about? And then, you know, They tell you and then you ask them those questions and it's like, you know, you might, you might have like a call with some founder of some company. Like you meet the CEO for the first time.

It's like, man, how did you like land Shopify as your first customer or whatever? Like all those questions that you might want to ask someone when, when you meet them, it's just like, get the, get the guest to bring those out in the podcast. So yeah, I think a lot about just make it interesting and make it so people learn something from it.

And then, you know, if you do that well. They'll keep coming back. Cause like I said, it's hard to get people to just consistently stick to listening. So I appreciate that you're a consistent listener. It's, it's, it's hard out there as a podcast host. 

‍

Nate Matherson:

15:11

I've liked, subscribed, given you five stars, so hopefully that helps.

Um, you know, speaking of guests, you've had some killer guests on, uh, you know, Vlad from Webflow, uh, the founder of Zapier, uh, the guy from the parking garages. How do you go about finding your guests? Is it, and do people ask you to come on? Do you go out and do outreach and ask people to come on? Is it referrals?

Where do most of your guests come from? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

15:39

Definitely a mix and it's changed a little bit over time. So in the beginning, it was a lot of just asking people. I think the thing that helped was I kind of already had a platform on Twitter. I think at this point I have like 169, 000 followers on Twitter or something like that.

So I basically just asked a bunch of people that followed me that I thought would be good guests, just asked them if they wanted to come on. And that's kind of how the first, I don't know, maybe 10 ish. 20 ish went down a couple of portfolio companies. I started asking people for referrals. So after I recorded the episode, I'd be like, Nate, this is awesome.

It's a great episode. Um, one thing I ask every guest it's like anyone you think I should have on. Here's kind of the parameters. And for me, it's usually like a late stage ish founder. And sometimes it's a little flexible. Like I've had the data guy at Carta come on, and we just talked through all these insights that he's seeing and all the data that runs through Carta's platform.

Um, so, and then now I get, I get like PR emails, like people, Pitching me, it'd be super interesting. Uh, I have a couple like friends that run PR firms that will occasionally be like, Hey, you should talk to this guest. I, I don't do very many of those, but I've had a couple of guests where someone like actually Vlad from Webflow, um, the PR firm that he works with was like, Hey, you should want to, want to have Vlad on.

And I was like, yeah, I was probably going to ask him anyway. So this is, this is awesome. Thank you. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

17:13

Yeah, I get those emails, too, as someone who probably has a much smaller podcast than you. And I find that, like, the vast majority of the pitches are pretty terrible. Um, at least they're not, like, clear in terms of why a listener would want to have or listen to this person for an hour.

But yeah, you know, I, um, I want to ask you about 

‍

Turner Novak: 

17:33

Yeah, you want to be clear. I don't Very, very few of those. Like, maybe Maybe three total, um, but they've been, I think some of the better episodes. So 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

17:42

Vlad is great debt and it was an awesome episode. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

17:45

Usually before I even like ask the guest if they want to come on, I kind of think about what the packaging will be like the title, the YouTube thumbnail is super important.

If you upload to YouTube, what some of the topics will be. And I really try to make sure there's like a couple of really Key kind of killer things and with Webflow It's like they had like 30k in credit card debt at one point When they were building the company and like they couldn't raise any money That's a pretty interesting story like just kind of the like I think about the hook of like why would someone listen this episode?

And I've I noticed like the episodes that don't do us well. I'm like man. That was just a bad bad title packaging, like it'll do half as good as the other ones. And I'm like, man, or like they won't get picked up by the YouTube algorithm. Like most of my episodes get a decent, you know, they get like 10, 20, 30 a day from the YouTube algo.

And then there's some that just, they get none. And I'm like, man, just fell flat. Like people just didn't like it. Uh, so I think that's super important too. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

18:46

I think you do a good job with the hooks like leading into your episodes. There's always at least like five to ten words which are like very clickbaity which like call out what might be a very small portion of the episode that make you want to keep listening.

I don't know if you do that on purpose or not. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

19:04

100 percent yeah. Well, I think about it is Clickbait and then deliver on the clickbait. So like one of the ones, like one of the most recent episodes I did with a guy, uh, his name's Neelam Ganantharan. He was the, kind of the second in command at Instacart. He, he said this one line when we were talking, he's like, during COVID we grew 5X in five weeks.

And I was like, holy shit, that's, that's the title. That's, that's like everything. So we actually re recorded that segment. In a way that we could position it in the intro. So like literally the YouTube thumbnail is we grew 5X in five weeks. The title was like, uh, I think it was like building Instacart to 10 billion plus or something like that.

And then the very first five seconds of the episodes was, it was delivering on the clickbait of like growing 5X in five weeks, talking about how they navigated COVID. Um, so I, I kind of like, sometimes I know what that's going to look like before I even bring the guest on. And sometimes I have no idea and sometimes it'll just happen and I'll be like, okay, this is it.

Like, what else can I, what else can we do to like, make this be the clickbait and then deliver on it? 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

20:14

If I'm going to push back on your podcast a little bit, it's sometimes that the clickbait is so good. And then I don't get, I don't get the clickbait until I'm like 50 minutes into the episode, but maybe that's like, so I have to listen to 50 minutes before I get to the clickbait, but maybe that's a good thing.

I don't know. Good thing for everyone. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

20:35

One thing I do is I, I put, um, timestamps and like episode chapters and in the show notes, which I think is pretty important. When I look at the analytics, once I started doing that, like you can totally tell like there's one episode, like the, you get like a retention graph on listeners.

There's one episode is really like 50 percent higher on this one specific thing where I'm like, people just wanted to hear that. And like everyone clicked to that immediately. And so that's another way of maybe like helping. Get to the clickbait faster, but to the point is like, it's, it's so hard to get people to listen to podcasts.

So like, you kind of got to figure out what's the clickbait. What do you, what's the thing that people really want to hear? 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

21:19

Absolutely. And as far as like the prep goes, like, do you have like a, a list of questions or do you, do you go in cold? Like how much time do you spend like prepping the questions for each episode?

‍

Turner Novak: 

21:33 

It's probably somewhere between two and 10 hours. It really kind of depends. So, I'll usually ask the guest, I'll ask them for topics they want to hit on, anything they feel like they're an expert in, I'll ask them like, what would make this a really good episode for you? And like, sometimes people, like you might have like a publicly traded company on a CEO and they have a comms team and they launch an AI product and the comms team is like, you have to talk about the AI, the AI product that we just launched.

And then it's like, all right, cool. We're talking about your new AI feature. They will like promote the episode because they're like, you know, the CEO talked about her new like AI thing and you know, you get a little bit of a boost from that. Um, so that's part of it. And then sometimes I'll ask them for like, Hey, Uh, anyone I should talk to, like any of your investors, co founders, friends, who should I talk to to just like help me come up with some ideas for us to talk about.

And that's always led to some interesting stuff. For example, at the Instacart episode with Neelam, every single one said we had to talk about what happened when Amazon tried to acquire or acquired Whole Foods. That was like a pretty big moment in Instacart's history. And I hopefully would have hit on that.

But I might have missed it. I don't know. But like literally all eight people were like, this is the number one thing you got to get into talk about. So sometimes you get some good ideas from that too. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

22:56

Yeah. That's something that like I have not done, but maybe I should do. Uh, maybe it'll let me go like deeper into the guests, uh, you know, backgrounds, expertise.

‍

Turner Novak: 

23:07

Honestly, mine are like have a, have someone on and help people learn something. And kind of make it like entertaining in a positive way. So I, I never tried to like get into dirt. Um, I'm trying to think, I feel like there have been times where like I had someone touch on something, like I, I asked a question that like, It was something kind of negative that was going on for, for them, like in their world and like, just gave them the chance to just hit on it and clear the air and just kind of keep going.

Um, I've definitely done that before, but the intention is not like to play gotcha. It's to like, Just have them, you know, set the terms of whatever the thing is. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

23:51

Yeah, no, I totally agree. That's, uh, that's on our podcast. We, uh, we, it's an edited podcast, so guests can take whatever they'd like out. Is your podcast edited?

Do you give guests the flexibility to make edits if needed? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

24:05

Yeah, generally speaking, the thing I found is, especially if they have a, like a comms team, like if it's like the CEO, they're like, Just send it to the comms team and sometimes they'll have changes they want to make I've had one time one episode It took them like it probably took him like a month to review it and they had no edits 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

24:26 

Yeah, I bet you they didn't even look at it and then like a month later they're like, oh we need to get back to This guy it's all good.

‍

Turner Novak: 

24:32

There's some a lot of stuff going on in the world at that time They're like in the company. So like I usually give people whatever kind of space they need and You know, it's, I usually try to make sure, like, they feel like they're getting some of something out of it, but it is a big ask really though, to have someone spend a bunch of time sitting down with you and like giving you a bunch of their time and like being really intentional and really helping.

I think about it as like putting together a piece of content and like generally it's, whether it's for like an individual, like I have, have VCs on every like seven, eight, nine episodes or so, like I've only had about four total. Um, but usually it's like, what do you want to talk about? So, you know, I want you to look good, you know, so like all this is like, kind of like, like I said, I plan it out a decent amount because I want it to turn out well.

I want people to listen to it and I want people to keep listening when they do listen in the first place. So,

‍

Nate Matherson: 

25:34 

and now just a quick word from one of our sponsors, actually our only sponsor that is positional. com positional has what I think is an awesome tool set for content marketers. We've got everything you need. To take you from start to finish and help you scale this channel as I've done over the last 11 years of my career, we'd love for you to check it out at positional.com. By the way, I should ask, like, what are some of those tools that you use or, you know, our listener could use if they wanted to start their own podcast. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

26:06

So I saw you record in Riverside, riverside. fm. That's where you're using. Then I have an editor that I work with. So I work with a kind of podcast network that helps me do a lot of post production.

And then, like I said, also sell ads. They're kind of, I would describe it as like a B2B podcast agency. So they probably have about 20, 25 podcasts they work with. And it's mostly Topics. So some of their topics are like Econ 101, CFOs. Mine is generally founder, founder stories. They have a VC one. They have, uh, one, uh, with Paki McCormick, where he does like, I think it's called age of miracles.

He has a couple of different topics. One was like, uh, nuclear energy. Um, but it's just like, it's generally people who work in tech or interested in those kinds of topics. They'll kind of have them come on. Um, they'll, they'll do, they'll do specific shows. I have a show about HR, um, which I've never listened to.

It sounds miserable, but I think people like it. Um, so like I said, it just depends on the topic. It depends what you're interested in. Um, and, and, and then, so they have editors that they work with. So I usually pass it off to them. We work in Slack. Typically what we do is we'll upload into Descript. I think descript.com is the website. Uh, the editor will take a first pass. I'll kind of leave some comments in it. Here's what we should cut. Can we, like, take this and put it in the intro segment? Occasionally, we'll rearrange things. Like, we'll be like, we said this at the end, but can we just, like, move it, like, up to this spot?

Because it just hits a little bit better. Do that sometimes. Uh, and then That's really it in terms of tools just because I don't edit it myself. Uh, I just, it would turn out worse if I did. So, but I know like some people use Adobe Premiere, um, you can actually edit in Descript, I believe. Um, it's just like not quite as good quality as if you're doing it in like Adobe Premiere or something.

It's just, I would just recommend probably skewing. I'm assuming your audience is using it for marketing stuff. Like you should just go, go all out on production. Like you want, you're going to, I'm assuming the LTV on your customers are pretty big. You can afford to spend a little bit more to just like put together higher quality content.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

28:29

Same could be said for blog posts, uh, believe me. Um, what does distribution look like? Uh, so we've just filmed this episode. It's been polished. It's ready to shoot. Uh, sorry, it's ready to ship. Uh, what do we do once it's ready to go? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

28:48

So I upload to, uh, Spotify for podcasters, which used to be a product called anchor, um, which Spotify acquired in there.

It's just an easy way to distribute to all the different, uh, podcast networks. Uh, you can literally just like, it's almost like check the boxes. Like you link up an RSS feed to get all these different things hooked up. Probably the easiest way to do it. They give you a bunch of analytics. I also upload to YouTube.

I record every conversation in video and actually. Like a decent amount of the episodes do better on YouTube than they do on the podcast players actually because typically what happens with the podcast players is There's not quite as much of a back catalog like it's still there But if I look at the analytics like half the listens or views come in the first couple days Versus on YouTube sometimes it'll get like 50 views in the first couple days And then you look back a couple months later and has like 5, 000 views and you're like amazing Like it's just the YouTube algorithm because people want this so that I think is a big piece I post to Twitter, which is really probably where I get the majority of external traffic.

Uh, like I said, I have about 160, 000, 170 that follow me on Twitter. And then I have a newsletter about 24, 25, 000 people that subscribe to the newsletter, uh, that also get it that way. And it's actually, if I could, it's really interesting because I get a lot of unsubscribes every time I send my podcast episodes because most people subscribe to my email list over the years for more of my writing.

So my newsletter has probably been flat since I launched the podcast because I haven't been writing as much. Um, so if I could redo it, I might almost start the podcast newsletter separately. But I don't, I haven't done much writing since I started the podcast. So it's kind of this like weird dynamic of you wouldn't get anything from me if I didn't do the podcast.

Um, so I, uh, yeah, I don't know. I think it is like the, the newsletter or the email was like, I think beneficial, but also fewer conversions than I would have thought same with Twitter. Like, I mean, I think you're only going to get a couple percentage of your, your followers or emails that actually subscribe to, or the kind of convert to consistent listeners.

Uh, so I don't know how much it matters necessarily, like having a big audience helps, but less than you would think, but it still is helpful. Um, it would rather have it than not have it. Uh, I, I used to put clips up on Instagram and TikTok. I just haven't had time to do that consistently anymore. Um, But that definitely helps.

Um, and I, I basically put it on Instagram, TikTok, sometimes LinkedIn, sometimes Twitter, sometimes YouTube. I just think those things are 100 percent worth taking advantage of if you can, because it's kind of like that create once, distribute twice or three or four or five or six times. And I don't do that enough, um, but I, but I, I should for sure.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

31:54

I feel that. We don't do it either. Uh, you know, how many episodes do you have at this point? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

31:59

I just published the 50th episode last week. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

32:02

Congrats. You're almost, uh, almost to a hundred. You're halfway there. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

32:06

Um, yeah, we're like kind of on the same, same kind of track. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

32:09

Yeah. 50 podcasts. Like most people never get to 50 podcasts.

There's all those stats out there. It's like, you know, most people don't make it to 10 and then, you Only a 0. 01 percent of people make it to a hundred episodes. It, uh, it feels like, you know, consistency over long periods of time. It's really important when it comes to podcasting. Um, and it sounds like you've found that people will often go back and listen to previous episodes you've published once they, you know, listen to one episode and really have enjoyed it.

Does that, does that sound right? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

32:43

Yeah, it's hard to know. The analytics in podcasts are not as good as most other. Yeah, but they definitely do. Like I will sometimes, basically the easiest way when you're on Spotify's analytics, it'll just show you like a chart of your downloads throughout the day or week or month or whatever.

And I'll show you like your top three from on any given day. And I'll always just like kind of highlight hover over and it'll be like an episode that's like, Eight months old is like number two on the day. And I'm like, what in the Sam Hill? Like, it must've gotten shared somewhere or people are searching for someone's name.

So I've kind of thought a lot of it was like an SEO thing almost in the podcast players and in YouTube. I've kind of noticed one of my portfolio companies specifically, it was one of those episodes on YouTube where it kind of fell flat initially. And I was like, well, I guess I got a couple hundred views, whatever it is, what it is.

And I noticed as things started to pick up more with the company and specifically as like it's probably investors are searching this person's name more often, there's just more consistent impressions. That's showing up in the views of also started to ticked up and the, um, the watch time on that episode has also gone up over time and I'm like, interesting.

So there's definitely almost like an SEO backlog or back catalog component that I think. It's just so hard to really predict how that will work, but it's definitely there in some capacity. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

34:18

You're hitting good keywords, and especially on YouTube, like, those episodes can then rank in search. So, you know, I don't know if it's the case for SecureFrame, but if someone searches SecureFrame, like, want your podcast episode with SecureFrame could appear highly in the standard search results where I spend most of my time.

But it sounds like YouTube has been a really great distribution channel for you. And you mentioned, uh, thumbnails like very quickly early on in this episode, like what makes for a great thumbnail? Do you test different thumbnails? How, how involved is it? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

34:51

I could do a lot better. I think thumbnails are super important.

I think it's easy to make them Too complicated and like spend too much time on them, but I don't think you should not spend any time at all because if you really think about it, like it, you just think about the average YouTube user probably has, we'll call it YouTube brain maybe. Um, so they might be seeing, like, let's say you've got like a tech SEO focused podcast.

They might also see like sports or Mr. Beast or like a 50 cent music video or something. So you're kind of competing with all those different things. So you gotta figure out like how do you make that thumbnail catch their eye, but also like, so there's like, like I talked about earlier, there's a kind of a clickbait element, but like you don't want it to be too clickbaity or you at least want to make sure you deliver on whatever you give.

So sometimes like I think about the thumbnail and the title kind of tying in together. So, um, I'm just trying to think of like one that I think worked pretty well. Um, there was this guy's name is Rahul Sunwalker. He started this company called Julius AI. It's kind of for just to make the description really simple.

Similar product to chat GPT, but it's for a data scientists. So you can do anything you do in like Python or Tableau, Excel, Julius is like custom built for doing a bunch of data analysis. So they have, I think the last public number is like 500, 000 users or something like that. Like they're doing really well.

A lot of people pay for it and use it, but he was also the guy who was known for the prank where he was like fake fired from Twitter when Elon acquired it. So. I knew when one, one of his investor, I kind of was already friends with them. And one of his investors pinged me and was like, Hey, you should have Rahul on.

So I was like, okay, how can I package this episode up? Because he's not really, no one's really heard of his startup. They're doing pretty well, but like the story's not 500k users. Like that's just not interesting for enough people, but this getting fired from Twitter, like everyone remembers that story.

So like, I kind of, my thumbnail like combined, it was this, the picture that went the most viral of him on that day with the heat. So they, they use chat GPT to get their original initial user. So I was like how he hacked chat GPT and it was like a logo of his company and chat GPT is logo. So I kind of tied in a bunch of things that people might be familiar with.

But then the whole episode we, and then what we did was we spent the first 10 minutes talking about the prank. And then the next hour was just like all the things they're doing, all the, the tactics, like his philosophies for building companies, life story, et cetera, all that kind of stuff. Um, so it was kind of one of those, like, I thought the thumbnail would be catchy enough and kind of, you know, click baity enough, but still actually deliver on.

What I was promising. Um, and it worked pretty well. I think I had like a 5 percent CTR, which for my podcast is pretty good. I think Mr. Beast gets like 10. He's just with like a niche niche topics, like tech founder stuff. It's like your audience is pretty small. So, um, but yeah, so that's probably one of the better ones.

Um, and simple. I've also found works better than you would think. Less text is better because you just got to think like if you write a novel or a full paragraph in a thumbnail, you just like think about how this shows up on someone's phone or on someone's computer screen. Like they can't read that. So you, so for this episode, you mean like I'm trying to think like what your YouTube thumbnail could be.

It was like podcast one Oh one or something or like podcast tricks or something like you try to make it as simple as possible. And then maybe you go into detail on the title or something like that. And I make them all in Canva. So like, just kind of finishing up the, the, the strategy, like the distribution strategy, I'll make all the thumbnail and cover art in Canva.

I kind of have a default template that I work with, which is pretty simple. And I'll kind of change some things in each one. And then I'll post on Twitter. I'll, I embed the full episode on Twitter. Which they get a couple thousand, like, you know, unique views or whatever. There's like, there's, there's views, which is basically impressions.

And then there's like people that actually click into the video. So I get a couple thousand views on Twitter, just people watching the episodes on Twitter, and then we'll sometimes post a clip to LinkedIn. Sometimes it's just like the cover art. Sometimes I'll do the YouTube thumbnail. Um, And then, yeah, and then, and then like sometimes if I remember, I'll like post on like my story on the TikTok account or the Instagram account, like new episode live, stuff like that.

Um, it's all kind of low hanging fruit that I don't always do. And then I, I'll always like email the episode to the guest right away. And then I'll email anyone who helped me come up with questions and anyone who introduced me, um, anyone that kind of talked to you about the episode. Like even if the, even if the, the guest didn't know I was like talking to some friend or some mutual, I'll be like, Oh, Hey, I like, Episode for who was live.

If you want to check it out and you're sending the links to social and sometimes they'll, they'll repost. Um, but it's really hard to know what's going to work on any one episode. Like there's always a different reason that some episode got an extra boost from someone or something. You never know how the algorithm is going to work.

You never know who's going to like chime in and like retweet it or comment and all that stuff. So. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

40:23

Yeah. And that was a great episode with Rahul, uh, one that I listened to. Um, and I, yeah, I can picture it right now. Like that picture of him with the cardboard box outside Twitter. And then there was like that CNBC reporter who had to like publicly apologize on air like the next day for totally getting it wrong.

The whole thing was just hilarious. Um, but, uh, but yeah, and as we, as you were talking, I was laughing cause I'm trying to picture like someone listening to a 50 cent music video and then stumbling onto one of my episodes and they must be disappointed. Yeah. 

Turner Novak: 

41:00

Yeah. Like what is SEO? Why? Why? Is that like a new acronym for like getting money or something?

‍

Nate Matherson: 

41:07

Yes, it definitely is. Because SEO is dead if you haven't heard. But you know, a lot of startup founders ask me, uh, they say, Nate, should we start a podcast? We see that you've got this podcast. Um, so I'm going to ask you, do you think it makes sense for a startup to start a podcast as part of their go to market motion?

‍

Turner Novak: 

41:27

Yes and no. My most likely answer is probably no, but it just depends on who the customer is. Like I think you should, what your expectations is that it's not going to be as successful as you think. So you should only do it if you think it's really going to help with customer stuff, whoever your customer ultimately is.

So like for me, part of it is just like branding. Just like someone might say like, Oh, this guy's had a couple of cool people on his podcast. Like he must be well connected to have a good network. Maybe I'll, I'll reach out to him about my startup or maybe like that's part of your considerations. Like, should I take money from this guy?

Like, Oh, it seems pretty thoughtful on this podcast. But like, I've definitely had, I've had like, like if you think about like founders as my customers, like there's definitely been cases where I'm talking to them and they're, and they're like, Hey, I want to come on the podcast. And it'll be like, All right.

Like we can, we can make that happen. Um, so I think if you can use it as an asset in, in the sense of like some of the customer conversations, so like if you sell some enterprise products, like maybe it's some kind of dev tool, like you sell to CPG or you sell to like farmers or something, and you know, You know, that you feel like there's a hole in the market for that customer segment.

So you create content that they want to listen to, that they'll learn something from, but then also like meeting them. And like I said, like you can, you might say like, Hey, Nate, do you want to sit down and talk to me for 90 minutes about my product? They'll probably be like, no, get out of here. But if it's an invitation to come on the podcast and you say like, Hey, we got.

8, 000 listeners all across CPG. We're like the top ranked CPG retail podcast. You then you're kind of doing them a favor of like, Hey, I'm flipping the tables on you. I'm trying to help you. And then like, by the way, like, Oh yeah, we also have this product that we sell. Like we do, we help you, uh, get your product into CPG into retail shelves or something.

Um, it's probably like a similar strategy that you've used with positional and like with SEO stuff. So that would be the case where I think it makes sense is if you feel like there's a hole in the market for the content, and then you feel like you can add some kind of value to the customers that you're working with.

So yeah, it's pretty, pretty situational, I would say. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

43:39

Yeah. I think in our case, SEO is so dynamic. There's always like a new SERP feature. There's an algorithm update, like something is happening each week. So there's something for us to talk about usually, whereas I don't know if you're in an industry where there's not something new to talk about that often, maybe it's more challenging.

I'm not sure. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

44:03

I think it can be super helpful if you're the founder of the company and you're building your credibility in the space also. So like if you are building SEO software and you have like the CEO of Google come on the podcast, people are like, this guy must be legit. Like this must be a legit product.

Um, it's, it's kind of like speaking at a conference, right? Like if there's Mark Zuckerberg, there's the founder of like McDonald's or something like, I just think about like the biggest companies in the world, then like startup founder on the panel, people are like, this founder must be important. Because they're up there.

So I think that's another benefit that can be there. What I see that I think is a mistake is when people, it's not like the face of the company that's on the podcast. And like, you'll see this sometimes with Tik TOK, where like a brand will be creating content and it's not someone who's consistently going to be the face of the brand.

And then that changes. So like with podcasts, if you're just like, let's have the intern do the podcast, you get to a point where like the intern might be more known than the Anyone else at the company and like, why are they still an intern? Like, you know what I mean? Like, you're, you're maybe like elevating the wrong, you're, you're, you're investing in the brand equity of the wrong, in the wrong way, if that makes sense.

There's maybe ways that you can pull that off correctly. Um, but I just think if you're doing, if you're a startup founder, you're starting a podcast, you should probably have like the CEO or the person that, that converses with customers be, be the, uh, the person. I think it'd be helpful for recruiting too.

So again, it's like probably should be the CEO that's doing it. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

45:39 

Totally. Yeah. We had Chris Bakke, um, on a few weeks back where we talked about founder led content marketing. Um, and yeah, he reiterated that how valuable that, that founder's brand will be for the business and, uh, that, that personal connection that like a potential hire customer wants to have with that founder, um, versus the company.

And, you know, speaking of Chris Backe, he also has a fairly large following on Twitter. And I know you do too. Um, as far as like Twitter X goes, um, you know, what's, what's working these days. Has anything changed lately that we should know about? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

46:17 

Yeah. So the algorithm changes all the time. I would say, I don't know what's working.

I feel like it's just like changed so much. I think the best way to think about it is it's a lot like Tik Tok now. Yeah. Yeah. You probably, I'm sure people are probably familiar with that TikTok has algorithm followers don't really matter. I think Twitter is the same way. Like I like followers do matter to an extent of like, if I tweet something, it'll probably get like 10, 000 views.

But like I said, I have like 170. Thousand followers. So if I tweet something bad that like people just don't care about it won't get views But then on the other hand, like I'll have tweets I get millions Tens of millions of views So if you if you make something that people Spend time on that is basically like the thing that Twitter pushes right now is just time spent or dwell time And then it's definitely pushing video And pictures quite a bit.

Like if you open up Twitter on your phone and just, you know, just think while you're scrolling for a minute or two, you'll notice the majority of the stuff over 50 percent is going to be video or photo. We think of Twitter as like text based platform, but it's much more than that. Especially it's changed Elon.

I mean, he's. It's no secret he's talked about how he wants to turn it into to TikTok, which is a little bit scary I guess in a way like I am more of a text person Like I'm not the one who's gonna go on and make the the best short form videos But again, that's a benefit of having a podcast is like 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

47:54

Can repurpose it to Twitter and, uh, and given that you've got, you know, 50 episodes now, if you wanted to, like a lot of your content is very evergreen.

And so if you ever wanted to, in the future, you could probably like, you know, do a sprint and just cut up, you know, 25 of those 50 episodes into short form video for a platform like Twitter or TikTok. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

48:15

Yeah, I really think about the full, going back to the prep question, like, I, I try to make sure I'm asking questions that can most likely stand alone in a clip.

So like some of those companies that we talked about, like, like a Zapier, a Webflow, how did you get your first customers? Or how did you come up with the idea? Or how did you do your fundraise go? Like all these things are maybe potentially like viral clips on their own. I've definitely not. Lean into that as much as I could.

So it's something I'm going to do over the next year. But yeah, like you said, I'm, I'm definitely sitting on a lot that I could do, which I think like, again, like that's just the value of podcasts. I just think that if you're very intentional about it, it can be like a very effective form of marketing. It can also like just be a complete waste of time if you don't, if you don't do it in the right way.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

49:09

well, hopefully I did something right today and it hasn't been a total waste of time for everyone that's made it this far. Turner, thank you so much for coming on. I've just got like a handful of lightning round questions. Are you ready for them? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

49:21 

Yeah, let's do it. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

49:23

So does your wife listen to your podcast?

‍

Turner Novak: 

49:26 

Yeah, she actually texted me earlier today. Uh, she said, I'll, I'll text you exactly what, or tell you exactly what she said. She said the Pock Pock podcast is really good, Turner. On that. Out of nowhere. Well, that's the most recent one. But it's one of my portfolio companies that I had on too. I wasn't sure how well the episode would do, but apparently people liked it.

It's a, it's a game for kids. So if you have kids, it's like an, it's almost like a digital toy room. It's like Montessori inspired toys. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

49:56

That's your most recent episode, right? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

49:59

Yeah, it's um, it's basically she's built like non addictive games for kids That's it kind of takes like if if you were to walk into a kid's toy room and just like cars on the ground some blocks Dolls that you can dress up.

They basically taken that and put it into an app It's like it's pretty interesting and I end up investing because my kids just loved it. They didn't churn they kept using it We've spent a You know, a hundred over a hundred bucks on it over the past couple of years as they've, it's a subscription. So there's no in app purchases.

Um, they don't do any like dark patterns or anything. Um, so yeah, my wife does listen and I guess she likes it. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

50:38

Well, if the kids don't share and you have to invest, um, speaking of episodes that have done well, what's your number one episode and is there a reason you think it's your number one episode?

‍

Turner Novak: 

50:47

Yeah. The number one episode was it's, it's like kind of a newsletter one on one or it's like the business of newsletters. Uh, it's my friend who used to work at ESPN and he kind of started this sort of ESPN for newsletters concept called the Sports Internet. He started it probably like 2015, maybe 2016, and then sold it to a company called Axios, which is, I think they were then acquired recently.

And then now he works for Yahoo Sports and writes Yahoo Sports daily newsletter. But yeah, we just like went really deep on how newsletters works and like his journey on a couple of these different newsletters that he's built and grown. Um, it was probably like a similar episode to kind of what you're doing where you're like, I'm just going to try something a little bit different, see if it works.

And the YouTube algorithm just loves that one. I think it has like eight and a half thousand views on YouTube. It wasn't that great when I published it, but just, I think there was kind of like a hole in the, in the YouTube algorithm. content library of just like a good episode on that. And like the retention is like one of the better retaining episodes.

People watch it, people, the click through rates pretty good. Um, so that's overall probably been the best. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

52:02

Yeah. That episode was really tactical. I remember it. It got into, you know, subject lines, monetization, the different types of monetization, the pros and cons of different types of monetization. Like, you know, it was, uh, you could get a pen for that one.

‍

Turner Novak: 

52:17

Episodes with VCs have Unfortunately done really well. I try to avoid having VCs on the podcast, but they, they, they tend to do better. And I try really hard to avoid doing too many of them. Also, just generally speaking, like if someone has a large audience online and they promote it. It has done better than average.

Just generally speaking. So 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

52:39

absolutely. Yeah. We found that too. Like we've been, we've tried to pull guests on that we know have like big audiences, especially in the SEO space, um, like people like Brian Dean, uh, Cyrus Shepard, where we know if they share it, like other people are gonna want to take a look.

Um, last question, I promise. Is there one person you'd love to have on your podcast that you haven't had on already? 

‍

Turner Novak: 

53:03

Probably the founder of PindoDough. It's this, uh, Chinese e commerce company. It was founded in 2015 and by 2021, it was like a 200 billion company. It pulled back a little bit. Uh, I don't know if you follow Chinese internet stocks that much, but like, The whole sector pulled back by like 75%.

It was also an e commerce business. I think it's probably like up to 150 billion again now. Um, but they have more customers in Alibaba. So they target the low end of the market. It's kind of like an online dollar store. Uh, it's kind of like Disney. It's like a combination of Disneyland and Costco is kind of how they describe it.

But yeah, it's just like, I think it's like the fastest growing company of all time and just, he's like extremely not public because if you look at what happens with all these Chinese. Founders, like the government does not like when they get too powerful. Um, so he does no press. He stepped down from the company.

I think it's a quote unquote step down situation. I think he's still involved, but I don't think he would ever do. He would ever do a podcast, but I think he would be the most interesting guest just because he kind of grew up. His parents were factory workers. He was just super smart, got into some good schools, worked at Microsoft, worked at Google, and then went back and basically built like one of the most, one of the best businesses of all time.

And Pinduoduo also owns a company called Teemu. If you guys follow the app store in the US, they've been like on top of the charts for like the past two years. So I just think it's like a fascinating company. I think he has a cool story. But yeah, I don't think he does any, any PR of any kind. So, 

‍

Nate Matherson:

54:47

uh, well, you know, I love to that question.

Like Nate, I don't know how closely you follow Chinese internet stuff. Um, not that closely, uh, but you know, Disneyland mixed with Costco that, that just, if I got that pitch as a VC, I'd have to invest.

Turner Novak: 

55:04

I think, uh, this other guy's name is, uh, Zhang Yiming. He is the original founder and CEO of ByteDance, which owns TikTok.

I think that'd be another fascinating one. Just like. Just like the U. S. audience, they just don't know a lot about these companies. At a high level, they think it's owned by some Chinese company, like we should ban them. And I think there's, there's some validity to that line of thinking. Um, but these are just like, it's just like incredible stories.

Like they go from like zero to like a hundred billion dollar valuation in five years. Like, it's just insane. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

55:36 

The world wants to know. So this guy was like the, the OG founder of, of ByteDance. Is he still alive?

‍

Turner Novak: 

55:45

He's still alive. Yeah. I mean, ByteDance is only like 12 years old, I think. Um, but if you, if you basically take the revenue of, of a couple of different companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, just like the fastest growing tech companies, and then you put ByteDance over top, it grew faster than all of them. And then if you go and put Pindo dough on top, it grew faster than ByteDance even. So I just think they're like, it's just fascinating. It's just like hearing the stories of like how some of these like insanely hyper scaling companies that go from like Zero to I mean, I think I think ByteDance is going to be bigger than Facebook soon like within two years And it was founded like 10 years ago.

I forget the exact date it was founded, but like, it's just insane how fast some of these companies have grown. Um, and it's, you know, they don't really, there's no, they don't have us podcasts that they've done, like English podcasts yet. So I'm like, those would be amazing to have on. So if you know them, would love an introduction.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

56:45

I actually do know. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know these people. Um,

Turner Novak:

56:52

but it would be your dream guest. If you could have anyone on. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

56:54

Oh, man. Um, it's a, it's a tough question. Um, dream guests. Like are you still, 

‍

Turner Novak: 

57:05

are you still kind of leaning into SEO marketing or more broader now? 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

57:10

We're going a little bit broader lately because, uh, you know, I just got a little bit tired about talking about SEO for 50 weeks straight, so I'm like, we got to mix it up a little bit.

Um, but you know, I think an awesome guest would be, um, Oh, one of the Wayfair co founders because Wayfair actually started out as like a large portfolio of very niche SEO websites. So they had a site that was like, you know, best floor lamps. net or something like that. And like, um, that's how they started.

It was a collection of these like 20 or 30 different web properties, all very specific to very specific types of furniture. And they ultimately brought them all together. And that's what. That's what created web, uh, Wayfair. And so Wayfair is an SEO company from the get go. And I think having a conversation with one of their co founders would be really interesting.

So if any of our listeners know one of the co founders of Wayfair, uh, please reach out. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

58:13

I feel like I saw him on a podcast recently, like within the last six months. Uh, I don't know what his appetite is. Like, I don't know if he does a bunch of them or if it was like a one off. Someone with his name follows me on Twitter right now.

I'm just looking at this. It's not him. Okay. Yeah, that could be a pretty interesting one to have on. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

58:36

Yeah. I mean, just, just learning about that consolidation process would be so interesting to the, the SEO nerds out there. Cause anytime you bring like two websites together, that's pretty tough. But if you're going to bring like 30 websites together under a single domain, that is, that is some SEO level 900 right there.

‍

Turner Novak: 

58:54

So they had like top ranking, like outdoor, uh, patio chairs. com and like, living room couch Furniture. com and then they like started redirecting the traffic to Wayfair or something like cross linking or how did you know how they did it? 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

59:09

Yeah, it was like, like top, you know, uh, top bathroom vanities. net, like things like that.

And, um, you know, that's like back when that worked, like that was a very different time in SEO. Like Google would favor like very like niche websites to specific topics. Um, so like you could outperform by having a website just very focused on You know, bathroom vanities or outdoor furniture, um, and, uh, versus a website that was maybe more broad, less focused.

But one of the things that's happened in search is that like, I would argue that like larger, more authoritative websites, um, that maybe have a broader focus have actually performed a lot better over the last, like, you know, five to 10 years versus very niche sites. And so what Wayfair did was they had this large, uh, Yeah portfolio of these very niche websites. And they took all of the content, all of the web pages and merged them all together. And then 301 redirected all of these individual domains to that single domain, which is now Wayfair. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

01:00:15

Interesting. What, do you know what years they, they kind of did this? 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

01:00:20

Um, that's a good Wayfair founder on and ask, um, I guess we gotta, 

‍

Turner Novak: 

01:00:26

we gotta leave it at a cliffhanger that 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

01:00:27

there are people.

We will, we will find out, we will, I, I might get my, from what I understand, it would have been like the 10s. I think that's when it happened, but, um, I'm not totally sure. We might have to cut this out of this week's episode of the optimized podcast. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

01:00:45

They, um, they went public and they're like 10 billion market cap or something.

Right? Like it's a, it's a big business now. 

‍

Nate Matherson:

01:00:51

Yeah, it would have been way before they went 

‍

Turner Novak: 

01:00:53

public. I've noticed for, uh, for guests too, just, I mean, in the sense this is helpful for people, it's like you, you almost like you have it as like a request from the audience. Like you say like, Oh, I have like this many people to listen.

And like, you're the top requested guest or something. Like I've used lines like that, where like, there'll be like two people that ask like, Hey, can you have this person on? And I'll like mention it in my outreach of like, You know, you're like my number one requested guest, stuff like that. So you could use that when you're, when you're reaching out to him, come on.

It's like, Hey, we had this. Come on. Like all the listeners want to know like 

Nate Matherson: 

01:01:26

how you did it. Yeah, no, that's a great tip. Um, yeah, we will get him on by the end of this year. I promise you Turner and to all the listeners. Um, 

‍

Turner Novak: 

01:01:39

you guys got a band together. What do you call your listeners? Do you like the, like, is there like a certain, like, like crew army?

There's like a phrase that you use. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

01:01:49

What are yours? The peels? I don't know. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

01:01:53

I need to come up with something. 

‍

Nate Matherson: 

01:01:55

We are the, uh, I don't know. The Nate Matherson fan clubbers. That's what we are. 

‍

Turner Novak:

01:02:03

I feel like that's, uh, something that could be, you could figure that out next six months. Come up with a name for the fan club.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

01:02:12

It's a great podcast. And, uh, for all of our listeners, you should definitely check out the peel. Uh, listen to all of the episodes, uh, especially the one with the founder of air garage, who will learn a lot about parking garages, um, And you know, even, uh, the, uh, the episode with, uh, with, uh, the Zapier founder was also great.

Talked a little bit about SEO in that episode. So we will include a couple of links to some of my favorite episodes from the appeal, uh, in the show notes. Uh, but turn, thank you for coming on. 

‍

Turner Novak: 

01:02:40

Yeah. Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.

‍

Nate Matherson: 

01:02:49 

And that's a wrap. And I just want to thank our sponsor positional. They've got what is a pretty awesome tool set for content marketers and SEOs. They've even got a couple tools for social media. We'd love for you to check out positional and the tool set that we've created over the last 15 months at positional.

And you can always reach out to me. If you have any questions, my email is Nate at positional. com. Whether you've got questions about our tool set or comments and complaints, uh, or even positive feedback about this podcast, I'd love to hear from you. Um, and don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button, uh, wherever you are listening to this podcast.

Uh, thanks so much for tuning in.