WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR THE INVESTOR’S PODCAST NETWORK

Dear TIP Community,

I’ve lately been asked quite a few times by people in our audience and companies who we collaborate with what the strategy is for The Investor’s Podcast network (TIP), and what the plans are for the future. I honestly didn’t have a good response (we never had a masterplan), so I’ve decided to share my thoughts in this post, and as a result start a conversation with kindred spirits about what the best strategy is that we can implement for the TIP Community moving forward.

Even since Preston and I started our podcast back in 2014 (We set up our first website BuffettsBooks back in 2012), we had no idea of the journey we’ve just embarked on. Today we have close to 1M people listening ever month to our main show “We Study Billionaires” and we’re the largest stock investing podcast in the world. Our team is no longer just Preston and me, but a real business with 11 people on the team and download growth of close to 30% annually (just for the main show + growth from our new shows).

As much as I’ve would like to say that it’s because we’re the smartest people that is surely not the case. Nor have we taken in investors to fuel growth like many other companies. The company is owned 50/50 between Preston and me, and everything has been financed internally in the business. Looking back, I attribute 80% of the success to TIP to the luck of timing. 2014 was the perfect time to start a podcast and so much of the exposure that podcasters today must fight nail and tooth was almost handed to us on a silver platter.

In a highly recommended book about Google, In the Plex, I read about how the best companies struggle because they have too many opportunities. This was back in 2014 when Preston and I were still struggling with how to set up our audio equipment – business opportunities were not something we had. TIP was at its infancy and the idea that Google could have too many opportunities puzzled me. How can a company have too many opportunities? Why can’t the company just be happy and choose the most profitable business opportunity? Looking back, I can see how naive I was, and how difficult (and fun!) it’s is to run a growing business.

Today we’re a podcast network. Aside from We Study Billionaires, we now also have Millennial Investing, Silicon Valley, later this month The Good Life, and in Q1 2020 we will also have a real estate show. Building a podcast network was an idea we got back in the spring of 2017 but we didn’t execute before earlier this year. Why? It’s surely a bad excuse but it honestly just seemed like too much work, and we were too busy with We Study Billionaires and building our team and SaaS product to focus on anything else.

So why did we eventually start a podcast network? Multiple reasons. Partly advertising dollars have recently started to roll into the industry and signaled that not only Preston and I, but also our future hosts could make a decent living of providing free content for the TIP Community. More importantly, we realized the power of distribution and systems and why that is so much more important than the product itself. Don’t get me wrong, we wouldn’t be anywhere if We Study Billionaires weren’t a great show, but think about it like this: Can you make a better burger than McDonald’s (I sure hope you can!)? One of the keys to McDonalds’ success is that they have a system that so efficient that teenagers run it, and they have a distribution that ensures that you can always access their food. You don’t even have to get out of your car!

For instance, we launched a paid SaaS product that we call TIP Finance, but you can have the best software or you can build the best burger in the world, but if you don’t have the distribution and system behind it, it will never take off.

We might be slow learners, but we finally realized the business opportunities that a podcast network brings. It’s the ultimate win-win, where advertisers allowed us to provide free content to our amazing community. The key was now to scale “the right way” and provide even more value. So what do I mean by that? Well, let me put it like this. If I wanted to make money and hate myself, I would still work as a commodities trader on a trading floor, as I did in my first job upon graduation. Not having fun at work quickly never seemed to be a real option for me.

While TIP is and will always be an organization that generates an income, at the same time it also has to be a fun place to go to work. We wanted to grow the business only with like-minded hosts who wanted to conduct business with the same values. How did we find them? By asking on our show if any of our fans would like to set up their own show. As simple as that… We’re very different people, but we’re driven by the same values of helping our audience as much as we can, have fun while we’re doing it, and the rest will sort itself out. So far so good.

In a few months from now, we’ll be having 5 shows, and the most logical question is whether or not it makes sense to set up even more shows. We haven’t decided, but I would be highly surprised if we did set up many more at this stage. From a management standpoint, it makes a lot more sense to have 5 shows with 1 million monthly downloads than 50 shows with 100,000 monthly downloads. And just as important having 5 shows with awesome hand-picked hosts you connect with just sounds a lot more fun than operating a huge business with so many people that I hardly know their first names or know anything about them except for their job description.

I mentioned above in this post that TIP has been super lucky and that it’s much tougher to get started today. That still holds true, but I do believe that podcasting is still in its infancy. Money is being poured into the podcast industry (for good reason) and just in 2019, we’re looking at an additional $1B investment.  Few in the industry expect this to slow down anytime soon.

So where is TIP headed now? Shouldn’t we have a firm strategic plan like all the management books are telling us to have? I’m honestly not sure – or if that is something consultants came up with so that they could sell their services to corporations in the first place. Preston said something to me when we first started TIP that I’ll never forget. “Let’s consciously make sure not to make money the first year, but just focus on creating value – the rest will come”.

It might sound a little naïve, but I’ve realized how smart it really was, and it’s still a leading principle today. That being said I would love to ask for guidance and feedback. Not so much about new opportunities – as mentioned above – all we have are opportunities, but if you have any experience with managing and leading a B2C SaaS organization or even better a podcast network please do not hesitate to send me an email at stig@theinvestorspodcast.com. I would love to talk more.

Thank you for reading!

Warmly,

Stig