[00:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number 455, entitled inside podcasting's evolution, Seth Goldstein on trends, tools, and finding your audience. It was published on Thursday, the 5th of February, 2026.
My name's Nathan Wrigley, and before we begin that chat with Seth about podcasting a few bits of housekeeping.
The first thing to say is that WP Builds is looking for some sponsors. If you are listening to this podcast, no doubt you are in the WordPress space. Well, it turns out that many, many, many other people also listen to this podcast, and they are in the WordPress space. So wouldn't it be a good idea if you had a product or a service, again, in the WordPress space to stick it inside of this podcast? And in that way you will be able to find an audience, hopefully share your messages.
We call that sponsorship, and WP Builds is a really credible way to do that. If you would like to get your product or service out in front of our audience, head to wpbuilds.com/advertise to find out more. Alternatively. Just send me an email, [email protected] and we can get that conversation started during the year 2026. I'm looking to onboard some new sponsors so that we can keep this whole enterprise going.
Okay. The only other thing to mention is that if you didn't know already, we do a This Week in WordPress show. We do that every Monday. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a technical gremlin this past Monday. The platform that we use to do the streaming to all of the different places, so YouTube and so on. Well, it completely collapsed. I've no idea why, but we had to pull that show. Sorry to the people who had nominated themselves as panelists. But also, sorry to you for not producing that show. We did produce the newsletter.
Anyway, all of that to say that if you want to join us Monday, 2:00 PM UK time, feel free to do that. The URL is the same every week. wpbuilds.com/live. You can find us there and join in the comments.
We'll obviously have another podcast episode dropping next Thursday. So the cadence really is we do the live on a Monday. We push that out as a podcast episode on a Tuesday, and then every Thursday we drop an episode as well.
Okay, there we go. That's all I've got for you this week in terms of housekeeping. So let's move on.
Today I'm having a chat with Seth Goldstein. Now Seth, just like me, is into podcasting. He's been doing it for many, many years, and so I've got Seth on the podcast today to chat about podcasting. And don't deny it, at some point in the past you have thought to yourself, I should start a podcast. You have, haven't you? You know, it's true. More or less everybody that I speak to has. Now whether you've acted upon that, I don't know. Maybe you did and it was a failure. Maybe you did and it was a complete success. Maybe you did nothing.
Well, Seth's here to have a conversation about why it's a good idea. So we talk about his past with podcasting, we talk about all of the modern technology stack for editing and all of the tools that you can use. Why it's a great opportunity for a business to launch a podcast and get yourself into that whole podcasting landscape, and get your messages out in that way. We talk about ways to engage the audience, the processes that you can involve yourself in. And of course, it goes without saying, we talk about why WordPress is a very credible place to put your podcast on, just like we do. I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by Seth Goldstein. Or is it Stein? Did I forget already?
[00:03:54] Seth Goldstein: No, it's steam. You got it right.
[00:03:55] Nathan Wrigley: I'll, I'm gonna leave that in 'cause it's funnier. Oh, it's absolutely fine. Leave it
[00:04:00] Seth Goldstein: Absolutely. I'm doing well, buddy. how's the weather? Cross the pond. It's frigid here.
[00:04:04] Nathan Wrigley: it's December and so it's predictably bad. You, so we had a two minute foray into weather just before we hit record. And,
[00:04:12] Seth Goldstein: always the
Always
[00:04:13] Nathan Wrigley: though you at least get proper weather like where you are. It gets properly cold and you get proper
[00:04:19] Seth Goldstein: it's bone
[00:04:19] Nathan Wrigley: Now we just get miserable. we just get like approximating cold, maybe like half an hour of snow once a year or something like that.
So.
[00:04:29] Seth Goldstein: which is weird 'cause you're farther north than
[00:04:31] Nathan Wrigley: further, but we have the Gulf Stream, so it keeps us, warm. Yeah, we're
[00:04:35] Seth Goldstein: you and keeps you warm, but in the
[00:04:37] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, we get lots of rain and anyway, what the heck. We just totally went off on a tangent. Seth is here to talk about my favorite thing on the internet, which is podcasting. You may or may not have realized, dear listener, that I, I do podcasts and so does Seth's been doing it way longer than I have.
Tell us how long you've been going in the podcasting
[00:04:58] Seth Goldstein: I've been doing almost 15, almost 16 years now. I started in 2010. I had been listening to, Leo over at the TWIT network since oh five, and we were talking about Leo a little bit before the show started as well, and how his are at the Sunday Times, 'cause they're at two hours long. I don't know how they do it.
He does these two hour long episodes of like, I can't do that. My show's around 30 minutes usually advise all my clients that they should be around 30 minutes. 'cause people lose attention span usually drift off after Americanized commute
[00:05:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, sort of
[00:05:30] Seth Goldstein: They, drop off and they
[00:05:31] Nathan Wrigley: 30 minutes, something like that. Okay. We'll, try and get this one in under the wire, in that case, under the
[00:05:36] Seth Goldstein: Well, we'll try. Unless you get really chatting with a lot of weather
[00:05:39] Nathan Wrigley: We could easily go off on all sorts of tangents. When you started though, I've got the feeling that when you started, it was pretty unusual to be doing a podcast.
I'm, I mean, I know the landscape.
[00:05:49] Seth Goldstein: was the se, it was the start of the second Renaissance. I usually call, I used to call it three Renaissances Renaissance eyes, I don't know, whatever you wanna call it. the first one was, oh five to 2010. And from 2010 to about the pandemic. Then the third Renaissances, everyone and their mother starts doing podcasting.
[00:06:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:06:09] Seth Goldstein: And then we're in the third Renaissance now where it's like it's democratized. People are trying to figure it out. Brands are trying to figure it out. Brands are trying to figure out do they wanna make money in their podcasts, on their podcasts or around their podcast. And that's kinda where I come in with Podcast Mastery that come in and I help.
Brands and individuals kind of figure out how they want to go about podcasting, not just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, but have an actual plan on how to go about
[00:06:40] Nathan Wrigley: So you've been doing it since, I'm gonna do the maths here. Very quick maths. 2025 minus 15 is 2010, something like that. I started in 2015, late 20 15, 20 16. Something around there. It, at that point it was reasonably easy to do in that you could download apps.
[00:06:59] Seth Goldstein: 20 20 10 was Google Hangouts on air. Google plus Google kind of democratized the, ability of the podcast. It wasn't like hooking up wires and all that stuff. So that's when I got in, I was like, I got in When the demo, the democratization of podcasting started, it was easier to do a podcast, not maybe not.
Well. But you could record a video and record. I was in video podcasts 'cause I had the video putting them up on YouTube for a while there because I could, because Hangouts on Air just kind of had the video
[00:07:35] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I mean, nowadays the barrier is virtually zero, I would say. Because you and I are recording on a SaaS app, you basically get an account log in. Click a couple of buttons, send somebody a link, and, that's it. And then even on the back end of that, the editing side of it, the bit where you finally finesse it and get it ready to go live, even that's a piece of cake.
Now, you know you don't need a separate recording app. You
[00:07:58] Seth Goldstein: you edit. You don't have to edit wave forms
[00:08:01] Nathan Wrigley: no, That's
[00:08:01] Seth Goldstein: You edit the text. It's like, what?
[00:08:03] Nathan Wrigley: I, I use an app, which you are no doubt familiar with, called Descrip. And there's a couple of rivals that do the sort of same thing, but nowadays you, edit basically a text document. So when, we've recorded this, descrip will consume the audio of my, speaking and it'll consume ethers and they'll be separate and then it'll
[00:08:22] Seth Goldstein: And I'll try and understand me the transcripts of the D script. Don't quite understand my
[00:08:26] Nathan Wrigley: oh, really? That's interesting. They get
[00:08:28] Seth Goldstein: No, you'll see when you look at it, it'll kind of get my, the gist of what I'm saying. But I talk, fast and I slur a little bit and it kind of messes up every now and then.
But it's good enough. It's good enough to edit, and then I throw stuff in the cast magic, which understands me
[00:08:46] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's interesting. But the, point being you get like a text document and you edit the text, so you just delete portions of like paragraphs and that just gets, it just gets rid of that from the audio. What I'm trying to say, dear listener, is that if you wanted to start a podcast, the only barrier is basically time.
Now, if you've.
[00:09:05] Seth Goldstein: Yeah. And having a plan. And having a plan.
[00:09:08] Nathan Wrigley: there's more to it succeeding, but in terms of getting started, piece of cake, the technology is right there for you, but
[00:09:14] Seth Goldstein: Press
[00:09:15] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, that's it. Basically press record and start talking. But your whole thing though now is, is making this sort of like an integral part of somebody's business.
So I, I began doing it just for giggles basically, just because it was a fun thing to do it. It has definitely become much more, I'm doing air quotes now, like professional, and it's definitely become more of a thing that you might expect a business or a charity or an organization to be involved in.
I'll give you a really good example. Like I'm a member of this thing in the UK called English Heritage. It's an organization where, they encourage people to go out and look at old monuments like castles and stately homes and things like that.
[00:09:56] Seth Goldstein: such a, it's such a
[00:09:58] Nathan Wrigley: But they've got a podcast and it's really, good.
And you just
[00:10:04] Seth Goldstein: but encouraging people to look at benches. It's such a Bri, it's such
[00:10:07] Nathan Wrigley: it's like
[00:10:08] Seth Goldstein: such a British thing.
[00:10:09] Nathan Wrigley: a British thing, but
[00:10:11] Seth Goldstein: Go for, a stroll and look
[00:10:12] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. But
[00:10:14] Seth Goldstein: But you actually have old
[00:10:15] Nathan Wrigley: Well, that's
[00:10:16] Seth Goldstein: UK that's really old.
[00:10:18] Nathan Wrigley: but it's really.
[00:10:19] Seth Goldstein: stuff is like, ours is like most
[00:10:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. the point being though, it's really well done, the eng like, it's obvious that they've put some resource into it. 'cause it's not like just thrown together at the last minute.
They've clearly scripted it. The point being they must have decided we need to invest because this will give us an ROI and I'm guessing that's your whole thing, right? There's an ROI of podcasting.
[00:10:44] Seth Goldstein: Yeah. It's figuring out are you gonna get sponsorship? I mean, you're not Mel Robbins. You're not Joe Rogan, and it's probably a good thing that you're neither of them. And you're not coming with a, well, more Joe Rogan than anybody else. But, you're not coming in with a preexisting audience, even Nathan here, who everyone in the WordPress community knows you have a small community you bring in and they know you do a podcast here, podcast, their podcast over there, and you're known quantity, but you're nothing personal.
Joe Rogan, thankfully. you, the Joe Ro in a WordPress no. But the idea is, that you gotta make money around your podcast. Like, like your English heritage, your British, what is it
[00:11:31] Nathan Wrigley: English heritage. Yeah.
[00:11:33] Seth Goldstein: English heritage, they're, making it as a brand play. As they, they're branding themselves.
They're talking about stuff, and then around the podcast they have tours, they have this, they have that, they have an app, they have this, and they picture it on the show saying, Hey, want to go see the old church down the street? We got the app for You and so they're building the ROI around the show, not necessarily in the
[00:11:58] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. That's
[00:11:59] Seth Goldstein: And a lot of people, a lot of people are like, I want to make money on my podcast. And I'm like, you're not gonna, or if you do, you're gonna make a few bucks, a few pounds in your case. that kind of thing.
[00:12:09] Nathan Wrigley: That's kind of interesting because I attended, this thing in London in, I think it was April. It's called the podcast show. It's pretty big.
[00:12:18] Seth Goldstein: Oh, you went to that? Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:19] Nathan Wrigley: it's maybe 10,000 people, something like that. it's in a great big auditorium. It's kinda like one big exhibition space with lots of breakout rooms and things like that.
And, I went with a friend of mine, Dan, maybe, and we, got a real intuition from that, that, that. The, bit which is interesting at the moment, which is hot in the podcast industry, is a, trying to inject ads successfully into, sponsor slots into podcasts. So some sort of automated way of putting ads in, but also that there's a ton of young people in the podcasting space who have got this kind of like YouTube.
Build it and they will come. I'm gonna be rich quickly mentality. I don't quite know how that's gonna work out for them, but there, there was a lot of people there with that.
[00:13:07] Seth Goldstein: I don't know. My kid talks about Roblox and has like 3000 followers on YouTube, and I have no idea. I, watch it and I don't get it. I'm, I,
[00:13:16] Nathan Wrigley: you don't
[00:13:16] Seth Goldstein: Dody, I don't
[00:13:17] Nathan Wrigley: you are not the intended audience,
[00:13:19] Seth Goldstein: I am
[00:13:20] Nathan Wrigley: I was super surprised by how many people of a younger age were in that space. I, thought it would be el more old people, but I think it was 70%.
[00:13:29] Seth Goldstein: want to say, you want me say, you want me said elderly.
[00:13:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think it was like 70% under 25. it felt, yeah.
Yeah. It really felt like that. And the other piece of that I really got an inkling of is just how seriously professional the industry has become. In other words.
[00:13:49] Seth Goldstein: Roy got, yeah.
[00:13:50] Nathan Wrigley: If you, wish to take it incredibly seriously and you wish to have all the bells and whistles, there is a complete back backstop of organizations, publishing houses, hosting companies, ad networks, the whole lot.
And I didn't really know that was there. So it was kind of. Kind of curious. Yeah. but what, in terms of your clients and the people that you deal with, are there any kind of industries or any, niches where you feel podcasting is a solid home run?
[00:14:25] Seth Goldstein: I think a lot of service-based businesses can really benefit from, podcasting. Like they can be like coaches. I feel like coaches, business coaches, life coaches, financial coaches, they tend to have a lot of knowledge that they can share and row people in. I've, yeah, I've worked with a landscaper who talked about landscaping.
It has Landscaping podcast. I mean, anyone I can work with. It's by finding, like coaches tend to be the ones that really, or nonprofits are the ones that really want to be out there branding themselves with audio or video or both.
[00:15:00] Nathan Wrigley: With the sort of coaching angle, I can see a complete through line with that. In other words, you can put like snippets of your coaching. Whatever that is. Course or masterclass or whatever it is, you, I feel that you could drop bits of that in and tease people into, come to my course and subscribe to me for the non-profit bits.
I, what's the deal there? Is it just more about like, building up the brand and having some
[00:15:25] Seth Goldstein: up the brand. Building up the knowledge. Knowledge. Talking about what they do, have their, have their people on the podcast about, talk about their latest projects. They could talk to. Let's say they're a, Arboretum for, I don't know where I came up with that, but an arboretum for, I'm just saying what's around here.
An arboretum, like Moores Arboretum in Philadelphia. They could have like the latest exhibits they have at the arboretum and talking to the groundskeepers or the curators and talking about what's going on at the arboretum and have it at a monthly podcast about happening at the arboretum kind of thing. And how, talk about that or talk about. thing that's going on there and have a talk about that.
[00:16:09] Nathan Wrigley: How do people, in your experience discover unfamiliar podcasts? So the way I'll, just tell you how it happens for me, is that I generally, I don't know, I'll see a website and I'll see something of interest and I'll notice that they have. Got a podcast, it, it's, in other words, I'm already there.
I've kind of got to their property, their website, or what have you, and then I discover about 'em. It's really rare that I stumble across something. Yeah.
[00:16:38] Seth Goldstein: Discovery is tough. I usually see it when I am listening to another podcast and someone mentions something that they have a podcast and I'll go. It's still word of mouth. It's still very much word, of mouth. there's direct and then you have to find the way directory they're on, and it's still a little wonky.
but then there's also networks. I'm one of the marketing podcast network and there's, like seventies shows on there of marketing shows and so they, we kind of crosspollinate in there. So other people's audiences, other shows on that network, have a little, we have a little bug that we put in at the very beginning where they say, listen to this other show on the marketing podcast network.
And
[00:17:23] Nathan Wrigley: I see. yeah,
[00:17:25] Seth Goldstein: So networks are kind of key to kind of. Cross pollinate and whatnot, and also social media. Just talk about your podcast and social media. Say, Hey, I just released a podcast, with so and so. do a, blue sky thread. God forbid an X thread, but do a blue sky thread or mask on, do thread where you can like, talk about with what you talked about and have a link at the bottom and people are like, oh, this looks a good
[00:17:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, when I'm browsing on the internet, there's loads of sort of serendipity. I kind of follow links and follow other links and follow other links and I end up very
[00:18:00] Seth Goldstein: how you got there. You're like,
[00:18:02] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, I'm just in some sort of random place and I don't really know how I got there. And so I often find things at random, which means that.
I may or may not wish to be there, but, my experience with podcasting is every single time somebody subscribes to your podcast, you've kind of gotta treat them like a hundred clicks or a thousand clicks on a website because they really intended that. There's no accidental way to subscribe to a podcast.
You don't by accident do it. So it's really
[00:18:35] Seth Goldstein: you get a little click, unless you get a little click happy in Apple podcast. But, even then, even then, if you get click, click, it's still intentional. 'cause it's not like. A list of podcasts of follow all. You still have to hit subscribe or join or whatever the term follow, whatever that term they're using now over Apple
[00:18:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, and then not just that. Then you've gotta commit like some significant portion of your actual time to giving that thing a go. on a website you might look at it, give it four seconds, no, I'm off. Or commit some time to reading or whatever. But with a podcast, you've gotta get like 10, 15 minutes in before you can make any judgment usually about whether this is.
Good or bad. And so I think like it's more of an uphill struggle to get people into your podcast, but once you've got people there, boy it is like you've got a friend for life almost.
[00:19:27] Seth Goldstein: Oh my God. Yeah. And if people like to like, people like let I say on your show, they like the Jolly British accent and they like you're talking about certain topic, they'll come back. But the thing is like most people have their top seven podcasts that they listen to, during the
[00:19:44] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, is that the number seven? That's interesting.
[00:19:46] Seth Goldstein: Well, it tends to be, 'cause you seven days in the week, and like they listen to one a day. You would think. And I mean, I listen probably like 15, 20 podcasts
[00:19:56] Nathan Wrigley: do. I'm right with you.
[00:19:58] Seth Goldstein: because I'm always doing something and I'm much rather listen to a podcast than a, than Spotify. I mean, I mean, I will go on Spotify when I run out of shows that I'm interested in listening to.
[00:20:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I'm the same as you. the, I think the biggest thing that's drawn me into podcasting in, in terms of listening, not making them, but listening to other people's podcasts is that I love the fact that you can just do other activities at the same time. So you could be vacuuming the house or.
I don't know, mending the car or whatever the heck it may be. And you can just be in this thing and kind of accidentally learning new stuff. I mean, maybe you're, gonna listen to a Diet of Entertainment podcast and maybe just giggling and having a laugh is your main thing. My podcast is, my podcast player is just full up of, educational stuff, really, where people are talking about web development or ai or the tech industry or what have you, and somehow.
Without even concentrating on it. Quite a lot of it goes in and it's really curious. Isn't that like you don't try and there it
[00:21:02] Seth Goldstein: a oid, and next time you're talking to your significant other and you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and like, where did you learn that? I'm like, I think on a
[00:21:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's exactly what happens to me. I will say something and then they'll say, well, where, how do you know that? And I will genuinely, most of the
[00:21:17] Seth Goldstein: you're like,
[00:21:18] Nathan Wrigley: haven't a clue. But it was,
[00:21:20] Seth Goldstein: I was loading the boot and I was listening to this.
[00:21:23] Nathan Wrigley: there was a podcast that I was listening to. Okay, so what exactly do you do for clients then?
What is it that your business is involved in? How do you,
[00:21:31] Seth Goldstein: Yeah, so I do everything up to production. So I'll do everything like, help you sort out your, the, cadence of your show, the structure of your show, the technology around your show, like the equipment you might want to get. I'll help you source the technology, meaning like, squad cast, which we're talking on right now.
Or Riverside or how you wanna go about that. The podcast host thing. I have relationships with a bunch of hosts that depending on what they want to do, they can figure, we can figure that out. And then when it comes to production, I know a lot of people that like, like to do the production side of things, so I'll refer 'em out to those guys and gals and people to, edit their shows.
If they don't want to edit it, themselves. So, and I said, I also said this, the, the, SOPs. And whatnot, and figure out how to go about, making things up in a process and figure out how to make it so you don't fizzle out after seven episodes. A lot of people, a lot of shows, like three to three or seven episodes, people fizzle 'cause it's a lot of work and let's you have a plan, an SOP, center Operating procedure on how you go about doing your show.
Because Entrepreneur Enigma is too. 300 plus episodes. Now I know what the VP builds is what, four, 500 episodes
[00:22:50] Nathan Wrigley: on one of the shows, but on the combined shows it's about 800 or something like that now. Yeah.
[00:22:54] Seth Goldstein: Oh, there you go. And that's the thing is like, 'cause you got into a system, you got into a system, you got into a process, you know how to go about it, and then literally you just show up and you go about it and then you go from there.
[00:23:09] Nathan Wrigley: Do you have a whole kind of like playbook then of, different things? I mean, obviously I don't want you to give away your secret sauce or anything, but there may be, yeah. Seth making scary, face and, but nevertheless, are there some low hanging fruit, the kind of thing that you might advise people in terms of process or getting started or wherever you want to go with
[00:23:31] Seth Goldstein: The biggest thing I can say for anyone who is doing an interview show is have a tracker, even though it was spreadsheet and track your guess. When they're showing up on your show, and so like the record date, the air date, when it's gonna go live, and maybe if there's a gaff in the show, if you're recording and not live streaming, if there's a gaff in the show, you can make note of that so that when you go back and edit it, or your editor needs to go back and edit it, you can say, well, around this timestamp, Nathan dropped his banana on the floor,
[00:24:06] Nathan Wrigley: I'm eating a banana currently.
[00:24:08] Seth Goldstein: That popped my head, but you know exactly, or he clipped his lips, he smacked his lips a little too loud. Eating a banana, so make sure you edit that part or leave the part in, but make it louder or whatever. That
[00:24:18] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Yeah, so, like an SOP have it all written down, different bits and pieces. I did the whole thing by basically messing things up periodically.
[00:24:28] Seth Goldstein: Oh, I did that too for 15 years. I've learned. I made so many
[00:24:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. But, that has kind of been fruitful for me. But I'm guessing if anybody tried to drop into my system, so I do the lot I from, fi start to finish, it's all me basically.
But I got this feeling that if I dropped anybody into my process at any point, it would just be a hot mess because it's all held
[00:24:50] Seth Goldstein: Oh yeah. My
[00:24:50] Nathan Wrigley: by duct tape of, yeah. Or it's in my head. And, and having it written down in a process from the outset, which I guess is what you help people with, means that it's more of a, what do they say?
Like when you start a business, think about it as something
[00:25:06] Seth Goldstein: can delegate
[00:25:07] Nathan Wrigley: over in three years time
[00:25:09] Seth Goldstein: You can delegate it.
[00:25:09] Nathan Wrigley: same could be true of a podcast.
[00:25:11] Seth Goldstein: something you can delegate is kind of very important because you might wanna say, Hey, I want to edit this show myself for a little while there, but then you want to ha, but then you're like, this is getting to be too much. I wanna keep doing the show, but I need to delegate this out to a VA or editor.
And they need to know your process or as you say, pro process.
[00:25:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, we say process. Yeah.
[00:25:34] Seth Goldstein: exactly. Exactly. So, and the idea is kind of sitting down with also the format of the show is how you want to do, how you want. Is it gonna be a pontification show, just you talking to the wind? Is it gonna be you and a co-host? Is it gonna be you co-host and the guest?
Like what's the format? And also what the cadence is. is it gonna be a weekly show? Is it gonna be a. God forbid, a daily show, is it gonna be a twice, twice monthly show? Or, in the UK you guys call stuff fortnightly, which I had no idea what fortnightly is, but
[00:26:08] Nathan Wrigley: 14 days. Two weeks? Yeah.
[00:26:11] Seth Goldstein: every two weeks show?
There you go. Fortnightly it's not. And then that word is popped into everything podcast fortnightly. And I'm like,
[00:26:19] Nathan Wrigley: Oh yeah. Now you know. Now you,
[00:26:21] Seth Goldstein: I know. The more you know exactly. Exactly. Every 14 days show monthly, that kind of
[00:26:27] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. this is obviously a WordPress podcast. I do. You, do you have that as part of your jigsaw puzzle for like, for everything?
[00:26:38] Seth Goldstein: All of my stuff goes to the WordPress.
[00:26:40] Nathan Wrigley: And do you ever advise people? So, okay, dear listener, you probably don't know this. If you have a podcast, you need to put the audio somewhere and you have this thing called a podcast host. And so it's like a WordPress host for your website only. They basically only upload audio. You can write a bit of text, upload an image, the bare
[00:26:59] Seth Goldstein: they have crappy websites that go with it. they have crappy websites that come along with it. You don't want to use
[00:27:03] Nathan Wrigley: That's my question. So usually they have a like really super basic, ugly, horrible website,
[00:27:10] Seth Goldstein: Sometimes it serves a purpose to start off with. But like sometimes, like some shows are gonna embed it on their corporate site. Some people are gonna embed it on their dedicated podcast website. And that's where I can also come in and I mean, I've done WordPress web design for 17 years now, even longer than the podcasting.
And the idea is that I can build 'em out a, a, blog, or a podcast site using Nathan's handy podcaster plus
[00:27:40] Nathan Wrigley: That we weren't gonna mention that, but Okay.
[00:27:43] Seth Goldstein: I love it, but I mean, there's a bunch of out there as well, like second line themes has one out there. there's a bunch of plugins that it can suck in the RSS s feed.
I think you can even do it manually with a RSS s plugin. I don't suggest doing that, use a dedicated plugin for that. But WordPress just works out of the box. It's what I think Matt, recently just, Matt just says like 43% of the web runs on WordPress, which is terrifying.
[00:28:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And if you're in Japan, it's like 50 something, 53.8 or something percent of Japanese websites. The point being, I guess that discoverability in the year 2025, because there's so many people thinking that they can just make a podcast and it will suddenly have this giant audience. Yes, sure.
If you are like Brad Pitt or you know somebody like that, you've probably got a fighting chance of that happening. But everybody else, you're gonna have to build it up
[00:28:35] Seth Goldstein: No, you gotta find your, you have to find your niche. You gotta find your niche and find your core group. If you get 300 people listening to your show, every episode, or every month listening to your show, and you get like five or six people listening to your show on the day of the podcast, that's great.
They're dedicated. They like your show, they're gonna tell their friends about your show. It's gonna grow naturally, slowly. Naturally, you're not gonna be the next Joe Rogan. Brad Pitt. Mel Robbins. Tony Robbins, ed, my, any of those guys that have other, they're known for other
[00:29:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Right, right. That's the, sort of.
[00:29:13] Seth Goldstein: Like Gary V. If Gary V can spin up a podcast and everyone knows about it within five minutes.
'cause it's Gary
[00:29:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah, it, I mean, I suppose the, playing field has
[00:29:22] Seth Goldstein: For better or for worse.
[00:29:23] Nathan Wrigley: field has never been level with that kind of thing, but, the WordPress website, a website that's got properly done, SEO and what have you, that feels like, yeah, that's gonna be, that's gonna be your best friend.
Because, if people are going out on the web and they are using, I don't know, AI increasingly, or Google or whatever it may be.
[00:29:41] Seth Goldstein: And they're looking for, they're looking for a
[00:29:43] Nathan Wrigley: Right. They've got a new hobby, they're interested in the same thing as you are. And I, I don't know how much, maybe this is something that, something about, I dunno how much people go to Google and say podcast about X.
Yeah.
[00:29:57] Seth Goldstein: All the time. Yeah. they're searching for that first probably. And then you wanna come up there. So if you're like, I mean, I'm sure Nathan, you come up with stuff like, WordPress podcast, building podcast, WP Building Podcast. You're gonna come up 'cause your podcast is WP Built.
[00:30:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:30:15] Seth Goldstein: I mean, that's really where, so having that site and having some age to the site is gonna
[00:30:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, so I think having a WordPress website is a really, useful thing to have. I mean, obviously you can really obsess about it. What's the kind of stuff that you do for your clients in terms of the website? Do you build it from scratch and
[00:30:33] Seth Goldstein: sip to sip to
[00:30:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, the whole thing.
[00:30:35] Seth Goldstein: to nuts. Yeah. Abs, absolutely. that's the main company. Gold Goldstein Media does website design, SEO, all that stuff. Then the podcast Mastery is kind of an offshoot that kind of is like, oh, this is something that people also want to do.
Let me stupidly make, build another brand for it. So.
[00:30:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. it just occurs to me, we've been talking to you now for nearly half an hour and we haven't figured out what your podcast is, do you, are you one, are you a bit like me? do you have a few on the
[00:31:01] Seth Goldstein: I have
[00:31:02] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I was gonna
[00:31:03] Seth Goldstein: have three right now. I have, entrepreneurs enigma that doesn't have seasons. Just keeps going. It's like I have 305 episodes about ent, entrepreneurial journey. So that's entrepreneurs enigma. Then there's digital marketing dive that I think today where I'm recording the last episode of season four.
So season four, episode nine. We're actually gonna talk about podcasting, exactly what we're talking about here when we're talking about digital marketing dive. So it's gonna be a duplicate kind of talk and point, but like that's all about digital marketing. It's me and a co-host, we. Kind of shoot the poop about that stuff.
And and then there's one that's kind of whenever I feel like it's called the Podcast Mastery Podcast, kinda inside baseball. When I have students say I have, I've self-hosted it on a VPS, I use a, what's it called? Casto Pod as the software that serves up the podcast. So I really went in the weeds just to try out a federated.
It federates to ma on it federates to all these blue sky, all
[00:32:05] Nathan Wrigley: Huh.
[00:32:07] Seth Goldstein: Casto
[00:32:07] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, I'm gonna check that out. Okay. So.
[00:32:09] Seth Goldstein: is really neat. But you have to have it on a, you have to have it on a decent host because it bandwidth
[00:32:15] Nathan Wrigley: but you, self-host that and then it gets federated out on all the how. Okay. I'll
[00:32:20] Seth Goldstein: ated out that way. And federate as an RS too, as an RSS too. So it gets federate the podcast.
[00:32:26] Nathan Wrigley: do you find that the ones where you do like a regular cadence, like once a week or once a month, and then you mentioned that there's this one where you do it more ad hoc.
Do, does the ad hoc one struggle to get the, listeners, or does
[00:32:37] Seth Goldstein: it's more that's more added for a blog post on the po. That's more like if I had thought some people know about it, I'll share it out. Say, Hey, I had a thought. It's a six minute podcast quick. Not nothing. It doesn't go that long. Whereas entrepreneurs goes about th 15 to 30 minutes does your mark and dive.
If me and my co-host Brian, get into talking a lot goes about an hour, and at that point, we're both about to kill over and fall asleep. That's when we know, when the attendance shows, when I'm like, I can't talk anymore.
[00:33:08] Nathan Wrigley: What's your, do you have any thoughts on AI generated podcasts and by
[00:33:12] Seth Goldstein: Oh, don't do it.
[00:33:13] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I was meaning like the, full range. So at the minute, if you, have, let's say for example, access to Google's notebook, lm the, so that's kind of curious because what they're trying to do there is give you a podcast for only you.
So the idea there is that you give it, you ask it a
[00:33:32] Seth Goldstein: But have you noticed with that, that they run out of the colloquialisms and they
[00:33:37] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, it's just, I mean, it's almost
[00:33:39] Seth Goldstein: it's like mp. No there. It's fun for a little bit because it sounds like KY Resol on a marketplace for a little bit like the back and forth banter. It's fun, but after a while, while you're like, all right, I get the gimmicks
[00:33:54] Nathan Wrigley: Right. And I was wondering what you thought about people who kind of recycle their blog posts and things like that into AI generated podcasts. Because my, guess is that you might get some people, but I doubt many people. Maybe I'm wrong about this,
[00:34:09] Seth Goldstein: I guess if, you have your blog post and at the top you say, listen to this blog post, and you don't wanna read the blog post every single time, that's a good time to use AI to generate the podcast
[00:34:20] Nathan Wrigley: feels like it's a different thing almost because it's more of a, it's more of a like listening to the thing that I'm, I
[00:34:28] Seth Goldstein: Molly White, over, over citations needed, she reads her toes, her really long blog posts. She reads them into the mic. Every time she issues, puts on an issue. She reads the whole blog post in her voice, and I've written her. I'm like, why don't you just put that in 11 labs and have it duplicate your voice.
Because people are coming for you for your newsletter slash blog posts over at Ghost and all that stuff. But they're not, they're not necessarily, they don't need to always listen. It's when they're doing something else, they wanna continue reading, but they have to go do the
[00:35:07] Nathan Wrigley: I think for me, the, what I'm looking for in a podcast, this is,
[00:35:13] Seth Goldstein: This
[00:35:13] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, right. So, and also some kind of connection and some kind of expectation, like a through line of how they behave in each episode, so we were talking about the, intelligent machines on the TWIT network. They always have a panel.
There's three of them. They, you often have a guest, but the point is they are, they're like people that you know. And
[00:35:35] Seth Goldstein: always so
[00:35:35] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And, '
[00:35:36] Seth Goldstein: cause Leo, because Leo and Jeff are the cranky
[00:35:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:39] Seth Goldstein: And then his Paris, who's the young, millennial xal. That is like, kind of keeps calls to them old men and kind of keeps 'em
[00:35:47] Nathan Wrigley: And you tune in.
[00:35:49] Seth Goldstein: the banter, you tune
[00:35:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, you tune in for them, right? I agree. And it's the personality that you bring into it. So maybe there's something to be said for that as well. I guess you've gotta have a, certain personality. I don't know. Maybe if you're doing like difficult physics, then maybe it's okay to, not have a personality because difficult physics is just difficult.
Physics
[00:36:11] Seth Goldstein: Educational is
[00:36:12] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. But if you are gonna do like entertainment or represent your brand or.
[00:36:17] Seth Goldstein: Oh, you don't want, you want to be on your show. You don't want to AI
[00:36:21] Nathan Wrigley: No, I would, but it would appear that in the year 2025, with everything moving the way it does at the moment, AI seems to be, I don't know, it's just
[00:36:28] Seth Goldstein: we're in a bubble. We're in a bubble. We're in a bubble, I think. I think with ai, I think it's not gonna burst like the financial bubble of oh eight. It's not gonna burst like the.com bubble of the early two thousands. I think it's, but it's definitely gonna burst and settle down. Into a cadence.
And I don't think it's gonna be like, I don't think it's gonna be exactly like the guy over at, what was the, guy that Leo and Jeff and Paris interviewed that was stable. The fusion
[00:36:55] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, I've forgotten
[00:36:56] Seth Goldstein: all gonna die. There's a 50, there's a 50 50% chance we're all dead in like five years 'cause of
[00:37:01] Nathan Wrigley: Let's hope not.
[00:37:03] Seth Goldstein: I don't think that's gonna be the case. I think it, it, everything's gonna settle and people are gonna figure out how to use it
[00:37:10] Nathan Wrigley: But it does feel to me as if the, certainly for me and anybody that I know who consumes podcasts, it does feel like that authentic voice is like 90% of why you tune in. You obviously tune in for the content, but you also tune in
[00:37:24] Seth Goldstein: The banter, the
[00:37:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, the banter. Yeah, yeah. And isn't it
[00:37:28] Seth Goldstein: Don't edit out the mistakes.
[00:37:30] Nathan Wrigley: when you're setting up your podcast, you might find it difficult to have that banter 'cause you feel like, oh, it's not the professional thing that it should be.
I, I love all that stuff. They're the bits.
[00:37:39] Seth Goldstein: don't listen to professional. You can have a professional, but you can like, even like the rest is classified over on the Goal Hanger Network. it's a UK network. They talk about spy craft and all that stuff and it's very buttoned up and stuff. It's a very cool podcast. It actually has made it into my top seven because it's, it's just so good and they still have fun on the show.
Joking around, one's an ex CIA analyst, one's a journalist. And they joke about the CIA, they joke about journalists. they joke about, oh, the friend of the pod. it's fun and it's enjoyable and it makes the half an hour go by Nice.
[00:38:23] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I, would totally agree with that. My, my thing with every podcast that I listen to is it's the person that I'm tuning in for, and the.
[00:38:32] Seth Goldstein: and AI can't
[00:38:33] Nathan Wrigley: Well, but also like the content is kind of, sometimes it's a bit mere, so I'll get 10 minutes in and I'll think, no, not this one, but I'll, you know next.
[00:38:41] Seth Goldstein: There's certain podcasts. I'll listen to the content, like, oh, what is it? Adam Curry and, Dave Jones on the Podcasting 2.0 podcast. They're very much in the weeds about podcasting 2.0. I'll just put it on as background noise because Adam Curry is the next VJ up from MTV, so he's funny.
He's got the voice. It's like this. And then Dave Jones is from Alabama and he talks like this and just the banter's fun to listen to and I'll tune in and out as
I'm
[00:39:10] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. I, think for me, my expectation is that podcasting is going nowhere. I think with a lot of industry and media, there's a bit of fear about AI and jobs and replacement and all that kind of thing. I feel that podcasting, you've got a fighting chance if you've got personality and you've got the ability to stick with it and keep going through the dark times as well as the good.
Then, then it's a, I, all I can say is it's great. You get to see, get to, in many cases, just stay at home and record things into a mic. And, I'm guessing
[00:39:43] Seth Goldstein: And it helps when you, it also helps when you have the Jolly British
[00:39:46] Nathan Wrigley: Well, yeah, that's true. I, I, can't deny that I have a British accent, but I dunno how, I don't, I'd be curious, be kind of curious to see though if I changed my accent.
Be kinda curious to see if the, listenership declined just because I was suddenly speaking with, I don't know, as you mentioned, an Alabama accent or an Australian accent or something like that. I
[00:40:09] Seth Goldstein: exactly. And I think American. I think American Podcast voices. The British accents have an upper hand or the queen's English accents. So, Australian Britain, Scottish. Dan, what's Dan? Danny, what's his face? Danny, he's a, he's lives in Canada now, but he's Scottish. He's next to impossible to understand 'cause he's Scottish. He's Scottish and he talks like this and doesn't open his mouth, but it's.
[00:40:45] Nathan Wrigley: And the nice thing as well is you don't have to be on the camera. You can, you can just hide. you can be in your PJs,
[00:40:53] Seth Goldstein: eat a banana
[00:40:54] Nathan Wrigley: Exactly. I'm just snuck in banana. I do that all the time. And you are the first person that's ever mentioned that I'm actually,
[00:41:02] Seth Goldstein: on the WVU
[00:41:03] Nathan Wrigley: no, I, well, I, so, I sometimes have
[00:41:05] Seth Goldstein: call you with a, they call you with a banana in your
[00:41:07] Nathan Wrigley: right. They did. Yeah. They,
[00:41:08] Seth Goldstein: you forgot you had a banana in your hand. You're like, wait, I have a banana in
[00:41:11] Nathan Wrigley: I do often have a banana in my hand. Seth, we've reached the sweet spot for podcasting, which is about 40 minutes, something like that. So just before we say Adi and goodbye, where could we, best reach you? What's the, best place, places, whichever.
[00:41:26] Seth Goldstein: Yeah, so I'm, find me everywhere at social Do Seth goldstein.me. That's where all my links are. You can also check out Podcast Mastery Do Coach. That's the coaching program Podcast Mastery Community is the community that I run with has masterminds and group coaching calls and stuff. So those are like the three big
[00:41:47] Nathan Wrigley: I will put those into the show notes. If you head to wp builds.com and you search for the episode with Seth Goldstein Stein, I don't know, Stein, then you should find it there. 'cause we have a WordPress website and it's good for discoverability. So Seth, thank you so much for chatting to me today.
What a
[00:42:05] Seth Goldstein: it's been so much fun. So much fun. So much fun.
[00:42:08] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That's all we've got time for today. If you enjoyed that, head to wpbuilds.com, search for episode number 455, and leave us a comment there. We would really love that.
Once more, if you are in the WordPress space and you would like to get your product or services in front of a WordPress specific audience, hit us up, [email protected]. Or go to wpbuilds.com/advertise to find out more. We'd love to get you and your messages in front of our audience.
Okay? We will be back next week. So all I really need to do now is fade in some very, very cheesy music. Here it comes and say, stay safe. Have a good week. Bye-bye for now.
