Case Study: How PodMatch Became an Industry Leader (with Alex Sanfilippo)

Angela Frank: 00:00:00

Welcome to The Growth Pod. Today on The Growth Pod, we have Alex Sanfilippo, who is the founder of PodMatch.

And before I turn the mic over to him to introduce himself, I'd like to mention that this is a new segment on The Growth Pod where we're going to be diving deep into somebody's business. What they tried and what worked and what didn't, taking everything we've learned and applying it in real time. Alex, welcome to the podcast.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:00:25

Angela, thank you so much for having me. Truly an honor to be here. I've been a listener of your podcast following, everything you're doing.

So it's just really cool to be on this side of the microphone with you.

Angela Frank: 00:00:33

I'm very excited. We've been chatting for a long time and we finally been able to connect and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.

Before we get started, you are the founder of PodMatch. Can you tell us a little bit more about PodMatch, what it is and what inspired you to start it in the first place?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:00:51

Yeah, sure. To go really high level as to what PodMatch does is it's a service that connects podcast guests and podcast hosts for interviews.

So it's not like connecting listeners to podcasts. It is the guest seat where I'm at today and the host where Angela is today. It's making that connection.

People used to say when we first launched it was similar to a dating app. I always said, yes, but we don't connect people for dates, we connect them for podcast interviews.

So more recently, we've developed what I would consider like a better example, which is like where, like the Airbnb of podcasting or like the Amazon prime of podcasting. I like that better. It's making the connections faster.

And the whole vision behind it was just to solve the problem that I saw so many podcast guests and hosts face, which wasn't can I find a guest? It's can I find the right guest? And when I do, can I connect with them faster?

Can I make it more frictionless so we can spend more time behind the microphone together?

Because we all know that are in podcasting, anyone that's done this, we know the real value is this time because it's what adds value to the actual listener. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about, is finding a way to streamline that.

So that's what we've really set out to be able to do and how we want to serve people that are in this industry.

Angela Frank: 00:01:53

I love that as somebody who uses Pod Match both to find guesting opportunities and to find great guests, like, I mean, Alex, you're the founder, you're on there, obviously, but other guests as well. It's been an incredible tool, and I'm really excited to chat more about the different things that you've tried to grow Pod Match over the years.

That said, can you share what. What was that moment that really inspired you to start Pod Match?

And what were some of those initial challenges that once you made the decision to start podmatch, what kind of popped up? Because right away, something always pops up. So take us through that journey.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:02:30

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll share very quickly because this is not really the point of what we talking about, but, like, I.

I followed the most simple framework for becoming an entrepreneur that I had ever heard, which was four steps. Find an area of passion. Get into the area of passion by joining the community, whatever that meant. Right.

And then step three is to find a simple problem that that community was struggling with. And the last thing is to offer the fastest possible solution. So, simple problem, fast solution. And so I was a podcaster. Cause I was curious.

I really liked it. I wanted to learn more about the medium. So I got into it. And then I started speaking all the events.

et it. It was. It was January: 2020

And when I got off stage, I had pen and paper in hand with the intent of finding that problem that they needed a solution for. And I heard a lot of things, Angela.

But I did hear the same thing 100 times, which was Alex having trouble finding the right next guest for my podcast. And some variation of that. Right? And that point, I closed my notebook.

When I hit 100 people, I closed notebook, saying, that's the problem I want to solve.

th,: 2020

I'm like, what if we became, like, the dating app for podcasters, right? Because that's what people were saying whenever I explain it to them. And I'm like, all right, let's figure that out.

,: 2020

And that's kind of that whole connection piece and I guess like what kind of slowed us down along the way with that, right? Like you want to know like immediately what came up, right? The very first thing was finding somebody that could develop.

I'm not a developer and I knew I didn't want to raise capital and so thankfully I had built over years a good Rolodex of friends, colleagues, business connections, whatever you want to call these people. But the person I ended up calling first was someone who I had known for many years. And I called him, I pitched the idea to him. He liked it.

He had just finished like two days before like a long term contract contract that he was doing with the government actually. And he's like, yeah man, I got capacity. And so we immediately drafted up legal documentation. But I was really worried.

I'm like, hey man, I don't know what this is going to take. How much money do we need? Right. So for me as a non technical founder, that was the first problem that came up.

And also not knowing how to speak that language, I don't mean code, but like talk to a developer in a proper way immediately. Those were some things that came up that I would say slowed our initial launch, which really it was three months, it wasn't long.

Like we, we got to MVP minimum viable product really fast. But I slowed it down because of my lack of understanding on what it takes on kind of the, the, the backend development side.

Angela Frank: 00:05:12

Yeah, I think there's so many moving parts in any business that there's always going to be some unknown that you need to work through. And since you mentioned you're not a technical founder, that was something that you needed to work through.

But I think that three months to your MVP is pretty quick, so you must have picked it up pretty fast. That said, what was that MVP that you ended up launching with?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:05:37

Yeah, so it's the original version of what we have today. We built upon that from day one.

At one point we did like a full like tech stack switch, but that gets really technical and really not interesting for me to even talk about. So no one wants to hear it.

But when we launched, what I learned during that three months was the things that I was fixating on were the wrong thing again is more of like a sales marketing front facing guy of the business. The one that was going to go out there and push the brand. Right. I was like, man, we need a sexy logo. The website needs to be super fast.

Like, there can't be even like a second of a page load. Copy's got to be ideal. And I can just remember, like, Jesse, my co founder, being like, hey, man, like, I still need that logo.

I can't really do more over here. Hey, I need the copy. And I wasn't really great at that stuff. I just knew it needed to be top tier, or so I thought. And it turns out I was wrong.

I remember meeting with a friend who was in podcasting as well. I just told him, man, like, I'm having trouble figuring out, like, what the logo needs to work look like and stuff.

And he gave me this concept that was in his book. He has a book called Start Ugly. And the whole idea is just launch before you think it's ready. And so what took me a month to, like.

It took me about a month of pushing Jesse off to being like, you know what, man, here's a logo. And he's like, that's. That's what you want to use. I'm like, it's all we got for now. And he's like, hey, man, I found like, three typos.

I'm like, it doesn't matter. Let's just launch it with the typos, right? And he's like, hey, this page takes like, 10 seconds to load. Do you think that's a problem?

Like, yeah, but let's launch with it.

And so the reason we got there so quick, it should have been two months, but it was three, is because I let go of all of the perfection I felt like we needed. And it's funny that the day we launched, one of the first emails we got is someone's like, your logo is ugly.

And it's so funny because we launched it and I said, hey, thank you. How does the software work? Is it doing what it needs to for you? They're like, oh, yeah, it's totally great. The next person, hey, it's super slow.

Anything you can do about that? I'm like, yeah, maybe. Is the software doing what it's supposed to do for you? Oh, yeah, it's great.

And so, like, what I wanted to know is, like, did we build the right thing? Because me, I wanted to fixate on the logo, the copy, all that without confirming first, this product is actually wanted.

And so I'm the one who got in the way initially a lot. And those are kind of some of the points there on things that, like, I had to learn the hard way.

So at the end of the day, like, I still, to this Day, say, hey, we're going to start this next thing. We're going to start at ugly. We're going to launch it, see if it serves, and if it does, we'll improve it.

Angela Frank: 00:07:52

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of relatability in that story.

I think every entrepreneur, every founder can relate to really holding out on something, something that you feel is so important and critical to your launch or the new product that you're putting together. But at the end of the day, just launching it is really where you will find if you are working on the right thing.

So I want to focus on that a little bit. Your launch, when you launched your mvp, did you launch straight into a paid product or a paid version? Was there a free trial? Walk us through that.

How did you put it out there in the world, encourage people to come in, and what were you charging at that point?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:08:35

We launched it completely free. We didn't even build in anything that could process a credit card or anything like that.

We did two weeks after we launched, but for those two weeks we wanted to really like, we wanted to test and you know what, actually I'm going to call this quick side note out for everybody. Angela, you have a great solo episode on this podcast. You titled it I Fixed Dozens of Bad Marketing Strategies. Here's how.

And one of the main points you made it that you said is like, you need to create a marketing strategy, but it requires testing. You actually have to test it. And I find that so many of us, we skip that. And so we didn't.

I knew that we needed to make sure this worked before we put a paywall in front of anything. We, we knew that was kind of the plan is to make it a paid product. But we wanted to start off and say, what does it look like here? So we launched.

There was nothing.

And actually going back to January that same year, those a hundred people that told me that's what they were struggling with, thankfully I was smart enough to get their email addresses. So when we went to launch that day, I emailed those hundred people saying, here's what you told me you were struggling with.

Can you tell me if this solves your problem or helps? And so I put it out there and people started joining. I also posted it on LinkedIn, which I was a full time aerospace guy.

there. And remember, this is: 2020

And for Some reason, a few big name public speakers saw it and decided to join and decide to share it.

And so by the time we hit two weeks, when we started having like a paywall on it, we had over a thousand people join within that time without us doing anything other than one post and one email. And that's all we did. And I will just very quickly say that is no expertise of Alex Sanfilippo, who is me. That was strictly timing.

Like, yes, we found a problem that the industry needed, but I didn't know that the world is being shut down. We started working on it like it was really just timing, which I am very grateful for because that is completely out of my control.

So I like to give that context. There's no like superpower in my brain that tells me when to do things right.

So anyway, those are some of the things that like when we initially launched it was free. We just wanted to make sure it was really solving a pain point.

Angela Frank: 00:10:38

Yeah, I think that's really important.

Not, not only acknowledging that some element of your launch was the right place at the right time, but you still had to put in all of this legwork beforehand to make sure that you had the product, you were working to build it and you were working to launch it.

And it just so happened that so of the traction you saw at launch was due to the fact that, you know, the pandemic switched up public speaking and the way that people had to communicate and position themselves online.

So I think that there's a little bit of both from the people that you took the emails from at the conference and you emailed them at launch and said, you know, we've solved this problem. Were you happy with the percent adoption of those people who told you they had the problem and then went to use Pod Match?

And was there anything that kind of shook out during that time where you received feedback from, from that core group of people on features or anything other than having a logo that needed some work, right?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:11:36

Yeah.

Beyond the logo and typos and long load times, there were some things I started getting on one on one calls, which I think is really important for an early stage founder to do.

Especially if you're like us, bootstrapped, self funded, growing organically, you need to actually have that interaction to make sure that you can figure out who your ideal client was. What I didn't know at that time is that those hundred people weren't all the right fit for Pod Batch. They all agreed to try.

I say all of them, a large percentage of them got on it and tried it. Most of them responded and stuff like that. But some of them I was getting on calls with were not the person I was supposed to serve.

Some of them were running big B2B podcasts and like, hey, yeah, I think you should charge a thousand dollars a month for this. And here's the thing. Most people who will listen to this, like, that's not very many of us, right? That's a very, very small percentage.

I'm like, what, a thousand dollars? Is that what we should be doing here, right? Like, no, it, it wasn't.

But I was hearing this feedback and the, the, the thing is I had to learn to have some discernment and what I should actually be listening to and how to decide who is this actually for. So I heard a lot of things that were way off, but some things that were really very helpful immediately.

What I heard is that guests got too many, too much access to host.

We kind of gave them too much information that they could access, which made it really hard for a host to say no or even stop a guest from booking on their calendar. And so we had to put some parameters in space. Cause I'm like, oh, wait, wait a minute. The host is the one that owns the platform.

The podcast is the platform. We can't sell the guests. Here's free access to everything this host does, right? And so we learned that we got some bad feedback from people.

I was having these calls and man, it's like someone calling your baby ugly. Like, it hurts a little bit, right? But I learned to get at least somewhat comfortable with that. But very quickly, the we just call it crazy agile.

Like we just innovate in and change really quick in real time. But some of the early things I heard was too much access to the host and also figuring out who I was actually serving.

Those were some of the key very early stage things.

Angela Frank: 00:13:31

Yeah, I love that you bring up this element of feedback. This is something that we've talked about a couple of times.

And the other thing that you mentioned, not only did you take this feedback, but you had to run it through a judgment system. One, that was not ego driven, but two, still had your vision as a founder and making sure that you're building the right features.

Just because you're getting a piece of feedback doesn't mean you need to go out and instantly action on it.

But if it makes sense, if it goes through your parameters, it sounds like then you're able to action it very quickly using your crazy agile thinking framework and making sure that you're Implementing the right feedback.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:14:10

Yeah, to me that's a really important thing. We've held onto that to this day. Crazy agile. I'm using air quotes there. That's actually one of our three core values that we have.

Like we say we are going to remain that.

And three weeks ago somebody gave us an idea that we just hadn't thought of and it was the ability for a host to require a pre interview call and it be part of the flow inside of POD Match. Why I had never thought about that or no one else had brought it up, like I don't know.

But as soon as I heard it, it was one of those things again going back to discernment, I'm like, you know what, we're years in this thing. But I know that should have been there from day one, let's go ahead and implement it.

And within two weeks it was fully implemented and added into POD Matches.

And I, to me like, that is like, I know we'll get into some marketing stuff, but that is a form of marketing because now the person that had the idea is posting about it. This big company listened to me. Here's what they did.

And now all the people that were skeptical that happened to be in their network as well are like, oh wait, so real people actually run that company, like, and they listen to people who use their software. I'm all in on that. And so like that's the bonus.

That's not why we do it, but it's very important we make sure that, hey, we are in this for the community, the members that are trusting us and using our software.

Angela Frank: 00:15:12

Yeah, I think that this, this trust, this element of trust is something that we talk a lot about on the podcast, especially as it relates to the psychological safety in that every time somebody interacts with your brand, you have a chance to reaffirm that image. Or if you're not reaffirming, you're actually creating a moment of doubt.

And so what you're doing is you're taking this and you're implementing it throughout your entire process, including your customer service and those interactions where you have an a way for someone to provide feedback and you're actioning on that and they're saying, wow, like you said, there's someone behind this brand, they're listening to me, you know, they're taking feedback and they're implementing it and actioning on it so fast. So I think that's really interesting. So I do want to take it back to marketing.

And after your initial launch, what marketing channels did you try Were there any that were a standout winner? Were there any that were more challenging to you? Kind of walk us through that process.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:16:10

We tried a lot of things and a lot of things really fast, and most of them didn't work at all. We tried. One of the first things, though that stood out to me is we decided to do some cold email outreach.

But specifically, if a guest would join podmatch or a host, we'd find anyone else. We'd go do like a search on Apple. And I don't even know if Spotify was really on the radar yet at that point.

o go back a few years. It was: 2020

Everywhere Angela's been on other podcasts and let's, let's go ahead and email all of them telling them that she has joined Pod Match and they can leave her review on there if they'd like. And I thought I was like, that's a cool idea.

Like, there's nowhere else for guests to get reviews in podcasting, aside from PodMatch, so, like, let's send them there. And at this point, we had already added the paywall, so it was fully paywalled.

And to this day, Pod Match, like, there's, there's not a free tier of podmatch or trial or anything like that. And I'm sure we'll talk about that. And if we don't, then you can go to the website and find it, people.

But my point is, we were telling people, hey, go do leave this a review. And we weren't mentioning that there was any price and we would. What I did is I just BCC people.

So I just like blast out to a bunch of people to test it. Remember I sent it to a hundred people one time and a bunch of them were personal friends of this person who was a guest.

And I didn't know that or that would be a problem, but the person who was the guest emailed me. He's like, dude, you gotta stop whatever you're doing right now. Like, people are really angry at me, but it's your fault. And I was like, oh, man.

And it was exactly like that. I, like, didn't sleep for days after. I'm like, am I being a bad person? Like, I didn't mean to. I thought this was nice.

But I'm telling you, pay me money to leave this person review that you've already had A conversation with. And I didn't like say that in like the most eloquent way. Right. And I didn't say that like that directly.

I just kind of let them figure that out on their own. And so like, initially I was like, okay, cold email is out. I can't do it.

But I do want to share that cold email is now our primary way of bringing people to PodMatch. We do a lot of cold email. So that was one that didn't work, but it was because I kind of had the wrong idea of it.

And because it's an all paid platform, I'm not big on cold email outreach to a paid service. Like I personally just, I don't know, like now I think about, I'm like, man, I don't want someone to be like, hey, come buy my stuff, right?

So we really go heavily into a value add.

And so we've developed different ways and places on the website where we can really serve people that are in podcasting by saying, hey, would love to just be introduced to you, love to bring you into our world, would love to check out your show as well. And to this day we still listen to every show. If someone responds and sends a link to their podcast, we actually will listen to it.

And it comes out to be a lot. Right. But that's like some of the primary use of our, of our time because we found the highest ROI with it. So cold email has worked and not worked.

You have to be very careful with that. But you can do really good with it. If you show up in the right value driven way. We can get into more. But that's one of my favorite.

I want to turn back over to you, Angela, because you had something to add there.

Angela Frank: 00:19:05

Yeah, I think that's so funny.

We just put out an episode, a solo episode where I talked about cold email and the exact thing that you brought up where if you are spamming people like hey, pay me money and it's just like the most generic fluff email ever, you're not going to see the returns from it.

Where if you're actually taking the time to make a connection and try and build that relationship with someone and thinking of it less of like a one to many communication and you're thinking of it more as that one to one style and treating it a lot more personally like you are Alex, you're able to see a lot more returns. So I think it's really exciting to hear you say that and how that's played out in real time for you. So when you're doing your cold email.

Is there a specific tech stack do you use? Do you run this or does someone on your team run it?

Talk us through a little bit of that structure since it's still something that's driving growth for Pod Match.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:19:58

Sure. Yeah. We actually built something internally because it works really well for us. So we connected directly to Apple and their API.

If a podcast host says, yeah, I would like to be emailed, you have access to their email through Apple's API. And so we're able to email people now. I want to make it very clear we built this internally and we do not have an email sequence.

It is one email, one and done.

And a lot of people say that's not a great tactic, but I'm like, man, if they aren't interested and they're not checking their email, I do not want to show up in it multiple times. And we just found that that works the best for us. You're going to get one email.

If we don't hear back from you, we will literally never email you again. And so we just decided to do that. So, like, initially, yeah, we built the actual email engine, connect it with Apple Podcast API.

Beyond that, where we send people now is actually to a quiz that I built and I worked for. I think it was nine months or 10 months on this thing to actually find out what causes a podcast to succeed or fail.

And this quiz is completely data driven and fun.

It'll give you your podcast or personality type, again based on data, but also your exact likelihood of how you've positioned yourself for success or failure in podcasting. And based on that, it'll also give you tangible ways to improve and raise your score in those areas completely free.

The course that is freely included in that I used to charge $1,200 for, and now it's if you go through the quiz, it's completely free. And that's where we're telling people to go. As a matter of fact, podmatch is not mentioned anywhere in it at all.

And in the next version, it's in this signature. But in the next version of this email, we took it out of the signature as well. We can bring people into our world by adding a ton of value.

They will find podmatch if they really like the way that we serve them. And so again, Tech Stack is our internal built email system. Apple API plus Score app is who we do the quiz through.

And then we use Mighty Networks, which is like a community platform that has courses on as well. And that's the entire Sequence of how we bring people in through cold email.

Angela Frank: 00:21:46

And you mentioned that Pod Match is not mentioned anywhere in the email. Are you mentioning it during the.

The course that people can take through Medi networks or how do you then take this insane, by the way, you're just creating an insanely valuable resource for people that they can access, which is something that I love. You're leading with value. But how do you take this now and make it meaningful for what you're doing and building at podmatch?

How do you bridge that gap now from that course? Because I think that's where a lot of people struggle.

They get, they understand leading with value and creating VALU content, but they struggle to bridge that gap between what you're doing in your content and making a meaningful business outcome.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:22:24

Right. Yeah. This is a great follow up question, Angela.

What I didn't want to do is make it feel like, I don't know if you've ever been like, on vacation, like Mexico, and someone does like a trick and then when they're done, they put their hand out for a tip. Right. Like, I didn't want podmatch to be the tip thing I asked for at the end. It's awkward for everybody. Right?

So, yes, it's built into the actual, into the quiz itself because one of the primary questions we asked is like, how do you manage your guests? How do you manage, like, bringing them onto the show? Pod Match is one of the options there in the course as well.

It's part of it and it's mentioned in a few different places. Because podmatch has some ways to also help podcasters with their production pre, during and post as well.

So we recommend our own services inside of it and we have a disclaimer in there like, hey, this service belongs to us. Here are some alternatives as well. And we've really done our best to make sure that, like, hey, you know, like, this is us.

This is the option I would like you to use, but you do not have to. And so, yeah, we mention it everywhere throughout it and it's not like in a spamming way. The course is extremely valuable.

Like we put a ton of time into it. But where we can mention it and where podmatch truly is the best solution, we make sure that it's brought up there.

Angela Frank: 00:23:25

And I love the focus that you're creating on making sure that you're building a trusting relationship with those people who are coming through the course by offering alternatives.

I actually think that that probably makes them more likely to go through because you are Trusting that you have built a solution that you stand behind, but you understand that maybe not everybody, you know, would resonate with Pod Match. And so you're providing some alternative examples, and that creates even more trust with somebody when they're vetting these solutions.

And it probably makes Pod Match more highly rated in their mind, too, when they're going through everything. So I think that it's.

You've really smartly thought about how you can lead with value, how you can introduce PodMatch in a way that's more of a soft sell and provide alternative solutions for people.

If podmatch isn't the right solution for them, you're focusing on building that relationship and that trust and seeing that, you know, if now is not the right time, maybe they'll come back in the future. And it's a great way to just create a very strong relationship with people who are coming through that course.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:24:29

Yeah, and it makes it a lot of fun because going back to, I mentioned core values already, and for me, that's like everything, and it's got to align with that. Like, we want to serve first, we want to love people first, we want to make sure they're taken care of.

And the byproduct of that is maybe they want to work with us. And so, yeah, I'm glad you brought all that up because that really, at the core of it, it's very fulfilling as well.

Even if someone doesn't join, but we know we help them. Like, that's a great feeling as a business owner and someone who's actually seeking to serve the podcasting industry at whole.

Angela Frank: 00:24:56

Yeah, I love that.

So, moving on from cold email, what are some other marketing channels that you've tried that have worked and then maybe one or two that you thought would work and ended up not being, you know, what you thought they could be?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:25:11

Yeah, for me, I'll share the one that doesn't work real quick because I get really excited about the other one that works. It's my favorite, so I'll leave that there for everyone to hold on to that. But one that didn't work for me. And maybe it's just.

Maybe it's just my lack of understanding of it, but I had a really hard time with paid advertisements and I tried them on a bunch of different platforms.

And the thing is, some of them did convert a little bit, so they're like, quote unquote profitable, but the people that were coming through them were not the same people that were coming organically or through like, cold outreach or anything like that any of our other ways people were coming through. This was a different type of person. They were. And I'm not trying to be rude. They were just much quicker to complain, much quicker to leave.

Much more opposition involved in the whole process. To the point where I was like, this isn't worth. And this is not worth it. Like, we just need to go away from this altogether.

have asked Alex at the end of: 2020

I'm like, we're gonna get really good at ads and we are just going to scale this thing overnight. And we completely backed off that we don't do any paid advertising at all anymore.

Not because we're not trying to spend money, not because we don't have the budget, but because we don't like who it brings to the platform.

Angela Frank: 00:26:19

Yeah, I love that.

I think you're really illustrating that just because something works for someone else doesn't mean that it's the right solution for your brand and it's something that you can test into and just feel good knowing that you gave it a shot. But leaning into your higher growth areas, which are.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:26:35

Yeah, this is my favorite one. So as much as I like cold email outreach and stuff, it's fun. Our podcast. So we have a podcast and it's called Podcasting Made Simple.

It's a show for guests and for host and helps them just learn how to level up. And the way that we've learned to do this, you know, I'll share another one that didn't work.

When I actually like hard Place some audio inside of episodes promoting Pod Match, talking about it, it didn't work very well. And so I was like, man, like I'm a podcaster and I can't grow my company through a podcast, right? What's going on here?

But what I found worked is just so much cooler and I love it. So our podcast right now as it stands, we have a 3 second intro and like a 5 second outro. No ad in between it. I'm not even on some episodes.

It's like kind of a unique format, right?

But what we do is we use a tool called dynamic insertion, which without getting too technical, the hosting providers of your podcast, if you're not a podcaster, you need a host and your host is the one that syndicates it to Apple, Spotify, Amazon, all the places goes all over the world through this one hub.

What a lot of them will allow you to do is what's called dynamic Insertion, which means at any point, I can include audio in the middle, the end, the beginning, or anywhere in between. At any point. And then I can add that by the click of a button. And a click of a button, I can take it out.

So what I do now, Angela, that I really like is it's not usually on there.

Like right now, if in this moment, if you were to listen to the podcast, there's no ad on any of them, but tomorrow I might press a button that says before the intro. That's where I like to do it. Hey, Alex here. We're going to get into the episode in just a moment.

Before we do, I wanted to tell you about a new Pod Match update that we just implemented. And I'll share a little about it and then say, and now let's get today's episode.

Then it rolls into the intro at the click of a button that's in the beginning of 300 episodes to our show. And we get around, I don't know, around a thousand people listen every week or something like that.

And so it's like, man, like, if you leave that on for two or three weeks, you've got 3,000 people that are hearing what you've done inside of Pod Match. And then the click of a button, it's gone.

That has worked extremely well for us and really brings the right type of people because they are hungry podcast host and guests, and they want to learn and better themselves.

Angela Frank: 00:28:31

So when you're doing these dynamic insertions, are you promoting the Podcasting Made Simple Live event, or are you sharing product updates?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:28:40

I do a little bit of everything. That's kind of the beauty of it is because you can kind of shift through it.

So, yes, we have, like, our quarterly virtual event, which has helped us grow a lot as well.

Leading up to every event we do every quarter the week before, I leave it on there and I ask people, hey, if you want a free ticket to this event, they're normally $97, email me message, right? I just tell them, hey, reach out. Right? We're able to do that. But sometimes, like, we just. Right now, we haven't announced it yet.

I'm saying it here, though. We just released a new AI update and we have so much, like, good information on guest and host. It's a very, very valuable update.

I will add that to the podcast that will be part of it. And someone who knows Pod Match is like, oh, I haven't logged in in a week. I need to check that out.

But someone who's like, never checked out is like, wait a minute, you helped me with my research of my guests. Yeah, I want to see what that is. Right. And so we're able to add whatever it is that we want.

So we always have something going dynamically inserted into the podcast. And then one week out of every month, there's just nothing. And you can just enjoy the podcast without having to hear more of Alex's voice in it.

Angela Frank: 00:29:35

I think that's great.

The product updates, I think are particularly interesting because you're sharing something that's by nature helpful and it's not like, hey, let me do a long ad read before the episode begins. You're sharing something where if somebody's not using podmatch, they understand that people do use podmatch and this is a product update.

And so instantly they're not like annoyed, they're like, keeping an open mind.

And then like you said, then if the product update is interesting, they might realize that, oh, maybe I should actually check podmatch out because this is something that I'm struggling with. And you're sharing like these really pieces maybe of your product offering that you wouldn't normally talk about in like a cold email, for example.

And it's something that is probably hard hitting because it's a feature that you've rolled out and it's solving a very specific pain point in somebody's process. So I'm really interested that you do that.

I think that's a really great way to think about it and just kind of, again, leading from that place of value and sharing the updates that you're making in real time.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:30:38

Yeah. Thank you. If there's anything I'm most proud of, it's probably that I just. The dynamic insertion has worked so well for us.

And the big thing is people get used to hearing the intro of a show and when there's something before an intro of the show that they're not used to hearing, it really makes someone say, wait a minute, what's this? It's different, it's new. Right. And so anyway, that's been a really fun thing for us.

Angela Frank: 00:30:54

I love that. And if you start hearing dynamic insertions before all of my episodes, you know who gave me the idea?

Because we've tried, we've tried, like post roll dynamic insertion, and I think people are just kind of ready to move on to the next thing that they have. So I love how you put it before and lead with that value.

We're coming to the end of our conversation, but I think there's one key element of your growth strategy that we haven't yet touched on and that is pricing.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:31:20

So.

Angela Frank: 00:31:20

So you mentioned that for the first two weeks after your launch, PodMatch was free and then you quickly moved to a paid model.

Walk us through how that's evolved over time and some of your thought process behind not offering a free trial and just moving people right now into a paid product.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:31:38

Yeah, this is a really great talking point. So thank you. It's a gift because no one really asks about this ever. So Angela, thank you for that.

The first thing that came up was this feeling of imposter syndrome. Who am I to charge? Was the first thing.

And I can remember like sitting with it was me, Jesse and Alicia, the three co founders, and I was like, man, like I'm the one responding to this stuff. Like, people are going to be so angry now. I want to mention we grandfathered anyone in.

So I wasn't like going back to those people be like, by the way, we're charging you now. Right. Like this was going to be forward facing in future, like thinking about the future. And they both just did a good job.

Remind me like, hey, if this is going to be a business, like there has, there has to be an element of this.

And since day one, again, like going back to our core values of really loving and treating people well, I'm not in agreement with most software companies that have like a quote unquote free software. They're selling your data like they're making money off of it. I'm not. Some people are like, wow, Alex, you sure that's happening?

Yeah, I'm positive that's happening.

They're making money somehow, even if they're giving your information to the shareholders that are then selling it to their clients or whatever it is. Right. Like it's getting put somewhere. And I was like, I don't want to ever be in that boat.

Like, and to this day, we are extremely protective of people's data and information. And when they leave podmatch, all that goes away. Like, we don't keep anything.

So if someone's like, I was on podmatch 2 years ago, can you look at your logs and tell me what I did? Nope, you're gone. Right. Like, we don't even want the temptation of having access to that.

And so because that we're like, we need to have an all paid platform. Like, if we're going to make money, it's gonna be off the service and value that we provide somebody else.

And I was really nervous and we launched like, I don't know we didn't charge hardly anything for it. And really, a lot of people are like, yo, you should charge more for this. Like, I heard that over and over again. People like, you need to.

You need to raise these prices. This doesn't make sense with the value that's being added.

But the real deciding factor was that if, like, some people were like, okay, well, don't charge host, just charge guest, or vice versa, right?

And what I ran into was the problem of, like, if we want this to be a premium community, everyone needs to have some skin in the game if it's really going to be that. And so from day one, like, when we decided to turn this thing on, we came with the verbiage of, hey, we help serious podcast guests and host.

If you are willing to invest in yourself, then we want you to be in this community. We want you to be part of this, right?

It's like, if you go to, like, a really fancy country club, anyone you have a conversation within, like, the lobby or in the restaurant, the bar, they're probably really high quality because they're paying a lot of money to be there, just like you. And I was like, we want to have something like that with the people that are saying, hey, I am a hobbyist maybe, but I'm really serious about it.

I'm really passionate so much that I'm willing to invest a few dollars to prove that. And because of that, we have a very active platform. Because you're paying for it, right? Some people quit podcasting.

They don't just leave their profile up. It's gone. And we like that. And then also we got people that are just really high quality with a real passion and purpose.

So for us, that's kind of how we got into this whole model. And we just did our best to talk to some people that really understood pricing to figure out where to charge. I have two things I learned.

Don't charge too little, but also don't charge too much.

There is a line that if you charge past it and you have a community aspect, people who can afford it are not the people that you really want to attract. Going back to that big brand that I met early on, it's like, you should be charging a thousand dollars a month for this, right?

Like, no, we're not ever going to do that because it doesn't bring the people that are passionate, that are have a purpose in it, but might still just be a hobbyist. We want to be at that point where it doesn't scare them away. It's a very sensitive game.

I'm not the guy to like, know all the, like, the science behind it, the data behind it. But like I always tell people, find a consultant that knows that stuff well, that can really help you come up with those points.

Angela Frank: 00:35:05

I think there were two really important points that you brought up there. One is that you didn't try to charge the people that you brought on for free.

We chatted recently about a SaaS product named, called Rella that launched for content creators and then when it came time for them to figure out their pricing, those content creators were used to paying nothing and they didn't make the commitment then to pay anything at all. Even though I think the price on that was pretty, pretty low in comparison. But like you said, they were, they were non serious hobbyists.

And so I like your pricing structure where you're focused on people who are professional, you know, they really want to, even if they're new, make something out of podcasting. They're putting a real effort in. And so like you said, there's some skin in the game.

And the other thing that I think was interesting that you mentioned is that you don't want to charge too little, but you don't want to charge too much. So in the beginning, did you play around with testing your pricing or have you kind of, you know, just slowly changed your pricing over time?

Talk us through a little bit about your thought process there. Are you charging the same today as you were charging after that two week launch?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:36:13

No, we've raised it over time, but just in small increments and not very often. I think we've done four price increases. One a year is probably we've done and they've all been fairly small.

Keeping in mind that there was like this upper level we could work our way to, but we just do a really good job of making sure we look at the culture of our business, of our community. What's the pulse? Who, who's in this, who's joining? And anytime we make an adjustment, we do see the type of people who show up change.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But right now where it's at, we'd be like quote, unquote, due for a price increase in, in a few short months at this point.

But I don't think we're going to do it because we really like the people that are showing up right now.

And I do worry that if we change it again, maybe it's a different group that comes in and because we're so happy with who's there and our Hosts and our guests, everyone seems to really get along and gel really well. We think we're going to keep it here for at least the foreseeable future.

omeone's listening to this in: 2075

And I, I, I think it took us four years to figure out that right price point.

Angela Frank: 00:37:22

Yeah, I love how you're saying that it was a journey to get to where you are now, but also you're paying attention to these other metrics that you maybe can't, which is the type of people that are showing up at this price point. And that's your reasoning behind, you know, why this seems like the sweet spot for Pod Match right now.

I think that it's easy as a, as a founder or somebody if you're looking at the numbers to get, you know, to lose the story behind those numbers. And over time you could create something.

We've had several guests on the podcast, you know, where they've worked with people who have built these huge businesses that they don't enjoy running or it's in the totally wrong direction because there may be just reading too much into the numbers and not paying enough attention to all of these other key parts of the business, like the community you're building, like the customers that you have, you know, good trust and that relationship built with already. So I really think that's important and I love that you bring that up.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:38:22

Yeah. Thank you. To me, that's like really key is again going back to the pulse, the people, the community aspect of it.

And I'm definitely like a human LED founder. Like I really think about the people, but the more I do that, the more people seem to show up. And that's not why I do it.

I just truly do love people, want to make sure I'm serving them well.

Angela Frank: 00:38:41

Yeah, it's like a self serving cycle. Right. Because you're putting out value, people are resonating with that and it all works together. Yeah, I like that.

Alex, I feel like we have just scratched the surface on growth and we are way over time.

But I really appreciate you coming and bringing these real and raw insights about PodMatch and some of the thought processes that you've gone through as you went from the concept of your product all the way through to development to launch and beyond. So thank you so much for your time today.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:39:13

Yeah, Angela, thank you so much. It was truly an honor and blessing to be here.

Angela Frank: 00:39:16

And if anybody is listening to this and they are interested in trying podmatch or just keeping up with you online, where's the best place for them to do that?

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:39:25

The best place to get welcomed into our world is podmatch.com free.

It'll give you five ideas, if you're a podcast guest host or aspiring guest or host, to really be able to take your idea to the next level or to grow a little bit further. So that's podmatch.com free. I don't want your email address or anything like that. It's just a way to add value and serve.

And really, I recommend people hang out with you. Angela, you're doing a phenomenal job here. So thank you again.

Angela Frank: 00:39:46

Well, thank you. And as somebody who uses podmatch, both as a host and a guest, I highly recommend it. And the link that you just mentioned will be in the description.

So if you're listening and podmatch seems like the solution for you, everything's right there for you.

Alex Sanfilippo: 00:40:00

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Angela Frank: 00:40:01

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Growth Pod. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.