The Client Whisperer with Pod People’s Rachael King

Rachael King: I have heard from more than one client that the podcast is their favorite part of their job. Someone who works in comms, or marketing, or brand, or content, or whatever, and so it's probably one of five to ten initiatives that they are overseeing. There's no higher compliment than, Working on this with you is the best part of my job.

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of The Podglomerate. Today on the show, we're speaking with Pod People co founder and CEO, Rachael King. Pod People is a podcast marketing and production firm that works with folks like CNN, Netflix, and Conde Nast.

Rachael is the first repeat guest on the show, last time appearing in September of 2023 on a panel episode with Amrita Khalid, formerly of Hot Pod and Alex Goldman, formerly of Reply All, discussing the state, past, present, and future of the podcast industry. On this episode, we chat with her about how her previous predictions held up today, how she learned to become what I call a client whisperer and what that means, and we'll discuss her predictions for the year ahead.

So let's get to the interview.

How are you doing, Rachael?

Rachael King: I'm great. How are you?

Jeff Umbro: I'm doing really well. So you are the first repeat guest on the show.

Rachael King: I'm truly honored. When I make it to five, I want like the SNL jacket that five time hosts get. I want like some version of that.

Jeff Umbro: We'll get you a coffee mug.

Rachael King: Great.

Jeff Umbro: Tell the listeners who you are and what you do.

Rachael King: So I am Rachael King, I'm the CEO of Pod People. We are a content marketing agency with our roots in podcasting and we work with all kinds of clients, a lot from the media space, your HBOs, your Netflixes, and then a lot on the tech and startup side as well. So a lot of, you know, B2B startups, a lot of financial stuff, a lot of VC conversations about the future of AI. So it's a really broad range, which is cool.

Jeff Umbro: So you were on the show for our first panel episode about 10 months ago with Amrita Khalid, currently of The Verge, formerly of HotPod, and Alex Goldman, who is about to launch his own new project that he talks about in his newsletter.

You had said that the industry was in the midst of a major course correction. So now that we are 10 months beyond that date, do you agree with that statement?

Rachael King: Yes, but the settling is still happening. The settling is taking a long time. And I think it's because it's so much more widespread than just podcasting.

You know, the media industry, writ large, is having a reckoning with its business model and consolidation. And what does that mean for entertainment as a whole? At the same time, the tech industry is like, oh, it's not actually growth at all costs. You do need to build a sustainable business with profits and a business model that works, which is all true.

That's all great. But I think having all of that happen at the same time means that it all trickles downstream. So I think the podcast industry, like leveling off, the settling has just, is still happening. It's still happening. It's still going on.

Jeff Umbro: How are you and Pod People doing in the scheme of this?

Rachael King: I would say we're doing good instead of great.

Like we're not having to slash the team or make any cuts like that. We're not growing the way that we have in the past. It's slower. It's, I want to grow again, and so I'm just getting impatient because I am a person who really likes to build and really likes to grow and so when it feels stagnant, I hate that, but then I look around and see how many of our colleagues and friends are not stagnant, but struggling.

And I'm like, Oh, it's actually okay. I think stagnant is pretty good right now.

Jeff Umbro: In that conversation 10 months ago, you said your goal was slow and steady growth.

Rachael King: Yeah. So we've achieved that against my will. We've achieved it.

Jeff Umbro: You're essentially a services company and you are a third party organization that can assist with production, marketing and everything in between.

And at one point you guys did dabble a little bit in like original productions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you do anymore, correct?

Rachael King: No, we did one slate of four shows in 2022 and they were fantastic. And then we've realized how much money it takes to put them out into the world. And we're not VC backed or anything like that.

And we're like, Oh, we just can't keep port. Like we don't, we don't have the funds that it would take to continue marketing and growing these. So, they were wonderful experiments, but yes, we have refocused on for hire, we're 100 percent for hire branded commission based work.

Jeff Umbro: Podglomerate is like 98 percent for hire commissioned work.

Rachael King: Yeah, we are also 98%. We have one project where we're like, okay, we really want to do this, we'll, you know, give you a break for an IP stake, but that was an exception.

Jeff Umbro: The reason I'm asking is because I want to talk about the crux of why that is. I feel like a few years ago you could launch a show and maybe you weren't going to get rich off of it, but you probably, well, sometimes you didn't lose money on it

if you made like a show for fun. The conversation surrounds the idea that that's no longer true. Unless you have years of runway, you're not going to make any money on it. Or unless you have some giant celebrity behind it, which we all know how that goes, but I don't know, am I wrong in thinking that? What is a sustainable model to launch a new original show these days?

Rachael King: You need the trifecta of not a celebrity, but the right talent. And that doesn't necessarily mean someone who has a huge social following or whatever. It means that they are beloved or recognized as an expert in a field, or they are just like, so goddamn good at this that they are undeniable, thinking about like, Ron and Wait for It, for example.

Jeff Umbro: P. J. Vogt and Search Engine.

Rachael King: Exactly. Right? It's the exact right person who can go so deep and this content is so authentic to who they are that you can't help but pay attention. And then the show structure itself is also just phenomenal. Whether it is just really, really well done storytelling, like, best in class, or it's something creative like a game show or really interesting dating shows.

That, I think, kind of breaks through because it's something so interesting. Or there's a hook like Julia Louis-Dreyfus' show talking to specifically women over 50. I think that is because it's an underserved market. Like, that's one of the reasons that broke through combined with the right talent. And then you do also need some kind of marketing budget or, or at least an initial audience built in.

I think Wait For It broke through because Ron has such a following within the industry and being part of Radiotopia. Obviously, PJ also had that, that credibility.

Jeff Umbro: He had Odyssey behind the show too.

Rachael King: Exactly, right. So if you've got that, you do need that marketing power, whether it's actual dollars or an existing audience that you can bring over from something else.

Or it can take many shapes and forms. Or it can just be sweat equity, where you're like, I am willing to just pound pavement on this for two years. But yeah, I think you need all three. You need a strategy, a marketing strategy and or shit ton of money. You need the right talent for the show. And it has to be a really unique concept or just storytelling that is so good it's undeniable.

Jeff Umbro: This show in particular lately, and I think a lot of the industry has been like so doom and gloom, but like, we're never going to be able to make these great shows, but there is a way to do it. You just have to, lack of a better word, you just have to do it better than you ever would have before.

Rachael King: I think we got, because it was the early days and it was kind of easy in the beginning, then when it gets hard because there's competition, it feels relatively so bad compared to how easy it was before.

But like, think about trying to get a book to break out. You know, think about trying to get a TV show to break out that isn't plastered on the front of Netflix. Like, it is so hard in any media, in any industry, to make a hit. You need that perfect trifecta of the content has to be good and it needs the right marketing strategy and you need the right talent for the role.

Even if it's just, they could be a no name, but they're just so undeniably good. But I think that's true in anything. I think we just, it was easy in the beginning. Now it's not.

Jeff Umbro: So now that we've had like our therapy session, because I think I needed that. I don't want to speak for you, but I want to talk about you and my opinion of you, which I don't know if I've ever told you this, I call you the client whisperer, which is funny, cause like, I don't think I've ever actually seen you talk to a, an actual client, but, but you are really good at running your agency and you are able to communicate with people and stakeholders in that job in ways that help to assist the organization run properly. I want to talk to you about that idea and I want to start by giving a little insight to the listeners to like how you got to where you are. So like pre podcasting, talk to us about your days as a publicist and beyond.

Rachael King: I started my real career, you know, beyond like I was an admin for a while in a bunch of places that I think everybody sort of does that kind of stuff when you're starting out.

But then I hated one of those jobs. So I was so bored that I started a blog and that was right around the time when Twitter and Facebook and blogging were becoming things that brands realized they could reach, you know, audiences in new ways. So I gathered enough experience to get a job at an agency as like their first social media account executive and taught the National Guard how to use Facebook as a recruitment tool for a couple of years, among other clients, but that was obviously the most interesting challenge. And then went in house at Adobe for a while, realized I did not like being at a big company, but I was in San Francisco. So I looked around and joined a couple of startups and came up through social media, community building, content marketing, and eventually took on more of a comms role at one of them that turned into more like PR.

I mean, all of these things are helping a brand, an organization tell their story in a way that someone's going to care about, right? That's going to resonate and, or demonstrate their brand values in a way that will make people trust them and feel affinity for them. And then after a few years in startup world, I started my own boutique PR agency in Los Angeles, working with, you primarily underrepresented founders, super early stage folks who were basically launching their new product or service to the world.

And I wanted to help them like get that right. You know, that launch moment is so crucial. So I worked with a partner and we had just a two person boutique agency for a few years, started to get really burnt out after a while and I wanted to stay in client services. I do really love that world. And so I was like, what could I do that's related?

I had a podcast of my own at the time, just for fun with a friend. And right when, you know, Serial happened, I was like, Oh, same thing as brands needed to figure out social, and now they're going to need to figure out, the smart ones are going to need to figure out audio and podcasts and the ones who move quickly in this area and do it right are going to have the stickiest, like deepest, most, you know, deep trusting audience in the world.

I started Pod People officially in 2017, very much looking up to the Pacific Contents of the world, RIP, of which there was only one. There was only Pacific Content, but I love those guys and I think that their ethos, it was incredible. And I was like, I'll do that in the States. So yeah, that's how Pod People started.

And now we're almost seven years in, which is crazy, but yeah, we've sort of been along for the whole ride of the industry.

Jeff Umbro: I tell you this all the time. I kind of look at you as like the, the big brother or sister of Podglomerate, cause we actually launched at the exact same time, but I always assume that you're just like operating like a year ahead of where we are.

But I think that it's been cool to see how you work with your team and your clients and everything. And most of the people that we work with as agencies are not thinking about podcasting nearly as much as us or at all. So how do you kind of introduce some of your clients to this space when you know that this is like one of 20 things that they're focused on every day?

Rachael King: My first question has nothing to do with podcasts. It's always, what is it that you're trying to do over the next year? Like, what is your business goal and marketing goals? Who do you want to get in front of? And what do you want them to know about you? And why do you want to get to them? Like, what's the call to action?

Do you want to keep them around forever? I mean, it depends on like the product or service that they are selling, if that's what they're doing, or it could be a nonprofit where they're like, we want donors or trying to recruit, whether that's employees or members or what have you. So I would never start the conversation around podcasting at all.

I'd be like, what are you trying to accomplish in the next year?

Jeff Umbro: Let me try and figure out why you shouldn't work with us before I tell you why you should.

Rachael King: Well, yeah. And genuinely, I mean, sometimes I'll talk to a client and they'll be like, we want to sell more socks. And I'm like, great. You should not make a podcast for that.

Like you should advertise on other podcasts. Yeah.

Jeff Umbro: Are there general principles that guide your approach to working with clients in general?

Rachael King: Common sense is probably the main one. And I think it really comes down to like empowering all of our employees to make the right decision for the client in the moment.

That also is just more efficient. Like obviously we have all kinds of protections and delay fees and what have you in our contracts. But those are, like, we're not trying to nickel and dime anybody and we often don't even implement them when they would have been called for. It's more to protect us if a project just becomes completely unwieldy and, like, we had a project that was, usually our development is three to four weeks.

This went for three months. That's a problem, like the development for a B2B interview podcast should not be three months.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, and it also impacts the rest of your clients because you have to push other work out of the way. Yeah.

Rachael King: We have a weekly development fee for additional weeks that we normally wouldn't implement if we went over one week or two weeks, but if we're in a situation like that, where we're like, we really, this needs to, this is not helpful. Like we're spinning wheels and getting nowhere and have done four different treatments for the show. That would be an example.

But most of our clients, you know, they're wonderful people who have bosses that they answer to and other priorities as well. And we know that and we're cognizant of that. So I think common sense, but also empowering our project managers, our producers, to be able to make those judgment calls based on the client relationship and whether it's a repeated offender versus a one off or yeah, I think that just allows everything to run smoothly and to have to build trust with that client that they know we're not trying to nickel and dime them.

We're just trying to protect ourselves against like the worst kinds of circumstances.

Jeff Umbro: You touched on something just now that is near and dear to me, but you're a little bit removed from like the production process, for example. I'm sure that applies to a lot of different things at the company. Like, how are you able to kind of manage from the top seat in order to make sure that things are happening the correct way while still making sure that your employees and your team members are learning as they go?

Do you have any kind of principles that you follow or things that you think about when it comes to team building?

Rachael King: Yeah, I mean, I think the first step to making yourself obsolete, which should be the goal of any CEO, is to hire correctly. And so we hire people who are super self motivated, driven, ambitious, but also collaborative and kind.

You have to have that left and right side of your brain. You obviously could be more oriented towards the analytical side or the creative side, but being able to speak to both of those, I think is what makes us as a smaller agency really work. Everyone can speak the same language, even if you're coming to it from a little bit more of this side or that side.

And I think that's really important. But once you've hired fantastic people and they've proven themselves those first six months, you're like, Oh, great. Yeah. Okay. Learning curve over. You got this. Go do your thing. I think just getting out of their way, trusting them, but making sure that you're available to problem solve whenever necessary.

So that's, like, the only time I hear about an issue is if someone needs my help solving it, right? Which I'm happy to do. But I have three direct reports. And I just make sure they have everything they need so that they can make sure their direct reports have everything they need so that they can make sure they're, you know, and we're not making this sound like giant, you know.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. You're like what, 20 people now?

Rachael King: We're 20 ish. Yeah. Yeah. So I have three direct reports and obviously I'm available to anyone else who wants to chat about things, but as long as I make sure that they have what they need and then in turn, they... it does. It works. Yeah.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. You hear about the things that aren't working.

How do you make sure that you're also hearing the good stuff?

Rachael King: We create space to share those on Slack and then so we do a Monday sync where we always do a show and tell at the end and obviously just very much encourage for folks to share good news or anything that they need help with in a cross collaborative way.

And then on Fridays, we just do a little Slack that's like your win, your challenge and your shout out for the week. So it takes five minutes to be like, this was the best thing that happened. This was the toughest thing that happened. And this is the person who helped me solve the tough thing, or is just generally like rocking it this week.

So that's really nice too, because that's how I get to see, particularly from the people that I don't interact with on a regular basis, like what they're working on, what they're excited about, what they're struggling with. And then obviously they, if they had a problem or something that they would ladder up to their manager, then that would come into our Thursday department heads meeting.

So it's great communication up the chain, down the chain, and then creating opportunities for those visibility moments across the whole team as well.

Jeff Umbro: I love that. I'm stealing that. That's a great idea. We have very similar versions of that, but like, I'm not involved in much of it. So I'm going to start.

Rachael King: We also do on Mondays when everyone goes around, we always have like a fun question to answer that allows us to get to know each other a little bit better.

And the answers are always wild. This past Monday's was, if you had to compete in the Summer Olympics, which event would you do? And it was wild to hear everybody's, it's just so fun. And it's just a nice way to like, bring some levity, obviously to that first meeting of the week, but also get to know everybody on a human level.

Jeff Umbro: I'm stealing two things from you, at least.

Rachael King: Great.

Jeff Umbro: That's a very fun one. Even at half of your size, we're a fully remote company, so like you do have to like very proactively make those spaces or it just won't happen. What is some of the best feedback that you've gotten for you, the team, the company, just in general?

Rachael King: I have heard from more than one client that the podcast is their favorite part of their job. Because it'll be someone who works in comms or marketing or brand or content or whatever. And so it's probably one of five to ten initiatives that they are overseeing at any given moment. And I constantly hear from clients, certainly if it's ending, if it was like a limited series and it's coming to an end, they'll be really sad and be like, I'm going to keep trying to think of a way we could do something else together.

But yeah, I think that's like, there's no higher compliment than, Working on this with you is the best part of my job.

Jeff Umbro: Okay. So since you are a recurring guest on Podcast Perspectives, I want to get some predictions from you because that, that seems to be the only thing I ask you, which is funny, we've only ever done one prediction episode and you're the one who's been on it.

So what do you think the industry is in for in the future?

Rachael King: I don't know if this was my prediction last time, but I definitely said this and I think it still holds true. Diversification is your best friend, no matter who you are, no matter what, and obviously within reason, you don't want to spread yourself so thin or do things that don't feel, you know, authentic to who you are as a creator or a service provider or anything.

But I think when we saw like ad revenue dip down, everyone had to figure out how to spin up subscriptions and touring and events, and I think that was an awakening. At the individual show level, companies were able to sell their original ideas. They all came over into our backyard and started playing around, held their nose to do branded content and which was like, Oh, I've been here.

I get it. Like it's smart, right? You do need to diversify. And so for us, that has meant going into additional kinds of owned content like social and LinkedIn and blogs and because those all play so well with a podcast, right? Like if we make really high value, long form content, then obviously we need to be able to chop it up into a thousand different pieces that can live across all the different places that your prospective audience exists and can engage with it.

So yeah, I think it's diversification, whatever that means for whether you're an independent creator or a company or a service provider. But I think just figuring out how to diversify so that you're not so reliant on any one trick is just going to be the most important. And I think will happen out of necessity, but the sooner you start thinking about it, the better your survival rate will be.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. And honestly, that applies to everything. There's diversity of revenue, diversity of what you're producing and the content that you're working on. You can apply that to a lot of things and it always ends up being valuable.

Rachael King: Yeah. Or even how many clients. Like if you have one client or one project that's like 80 percent of your income, that's a problem.

You need to figure that out.

Jeff Umbro: That should be the thing you're always thinking about. What are Pod People's goals for the year?

Rachael King: God, I mean it was slow, steady growth last year. It is still slow, steady growth. But I think we have been really good about work life balance in the past. I think we are not as good about that this year.

I would love to get to the point where everyone is under 40 hours a week again and it's definitely not there right now. And obviously things ebb and flow. Sometimes this project is crazy, that project is crazy. Usually that will happen for a couple weeks at a time and then it goes back to normal, which is okay, but it has felt like very sustained,

exhausting weeks for the team. And I'm just, I'm always worried about burnout. And we make everyone's taking their summer vacations and all of that. But, is it Adam Grant, who says like, if you need a vacation, just to get back to normal, like a vacation is not going to fix burnout, like you have to be. He says it more eloquently like that, but like vacation isn't a band-aid to like prevent burnout.

You have to have a sustainable work life balance on a regular basis or that is going to consistently be a problem that you're facing.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. I don't know if this applies to you, but even when we last saw each other was at The Podcast Show in London, half of that trip was a for fun vacation, but I came home and I was just like, Oh, great.

Now I have like a hundred hour week that I have to work just to get back to normal. That's not the thing that. And hopefully that's only me and like nobody at the company, but what are some of the innovations that you expect to happen in the industry in the year to come?

Rachael King: Everyone's going to say AI that you talk to, but it is true.

Like it is, we are making a real concerted effort to use tools for anything related to analysis, brainstorming, first drafts, you know, like anything that we could have the research, you know, a first draft of the research done. At this point, I think it's really about habit building. It just, it needs to get to the point where it's like your first inclination when you have a task or a project in front of you is like, is there any way that AI could do part of this faster?

If no, great. But like, baking that into your daily habits so that you're always asking yourself that question, can I save myself some time here? And obviously, you know, the output is not going to be perfect. It's always going to need human touch. And, you know, like these five show title ideas are trash, but these two are good.

I'm going to take that one and iterate it and make it better. Optimizing things for SEO. Like there are just so many ways that it can make us work smarter, not harder. And so I think that is going to be, the biggest change to any creative work is like, how can I speed up that very slow first stage where you're like, staring at a blank page and you don't even know where to start.

Jeff Umbro: What is an example of like some data process that you can automate with AI?

Rachael King: Airtable is basically how we've run our entire company, like each department has their own Airtable base and they all talk to each other. So if production delivers an episode, they check a box that lets ops know that that milestone was reached and it may be time to invoice.

And so they all talk to each other. And our head of operations Andrea uses different AI tools to write a ton of formulas for, she does a lot of work in our financials. She's always just goes to like a chat GPT or whatever to be like, can you write a formula for da da da? And it saves her so much time.

Jeff Umbro: Last question, who or what is someone or something that you are watching in the industry? Like someone doing something great.

Rachael King: My favorite two podcasts that I've discovered in the last year, like my new discoveries to me, The Handsome Podcast with Mae Martin, Fortune Feimster, and Tig Notaro. It is basically a lesbian version of SmartLess where they don't talk over their guests the whole time.

Because there is no guest. The guest gives them a voice memo that is a question and a prompt. So it's just the three of them shooting the shit. There's not even a guest there that they're ignoring the whole time. And it is, I shouldn't say lesbian because Mae is bisexual and non binary, but a very queer, very queer version of SmartLess.

And I find it, it is the one that I smash the play button on the fastest and then like text my friends about the new inside joke that came up because we're like all in on it. And the other one, which I think is really interesting, it's called Blind Boy. Ira Glass actually shouted this out at one of the conferences last year and I was like, Oh my God, I thought I was the only person who listened to that because he's Irish and it was one of my Irish friends who sent it to me. So he basically is monologuing, going down these incredible rabbit holes, like he just had food poisoning. So yesterday's episode was on the history of food poisoning and how it's like born out of colonialism. He had an incredible one on like where pumpkin spice lattes came from around Thanksgiving last and just goes down these deep, deep rabbit holes that discuss biodiversity and colonialism and classism and like these really big complex issues by breaking it down through the lens of one seemingly very small insignificant thing and it's over this beautiful piano music and he's just the most thoughtful human and it is so beautiful and zen to listen to. It almost feels like a meditation to listen to one of these episodes. So those two, I'm very, I'm just endlessly grateful to those humans for doing the work that they do.

Jeff Umbro: Well, thank you, Rachael. This was awesome. I'm glad to have you back and we'll have you back for your fifth time so that you can get the jacket.

Rachael King: Absolutely.

Jeff Umbro: Love it. Cool. Well, we'll see you next time. Thanks.

Rachael King: Yeah. Thanks so much.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Rachael for joining us on the show this week. You can find her on any social platform just by Googling her name, Rachael King, R A C H A E L. Or by checking out podpeople.com. For more podcast related news, info, and takes, you can follow me on Twitter @JeffUmbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate.

If you're looking for help producing, marketing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at Podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all social platforms @podglomerate or @podglomeratepods. This episode was produced by Chris Boniello, and myself, Jeff Umbro.

This episode was edited and mixed by Jose Roman. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Vanessa Ullman. And a special thank you to Dan Christo and Tiffany Dean. Thank you for listening and I'll catch you all in two weeks.