How to Build a Million Dollar Audience with Podcast Legend David Hooper of Big Podcast

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:00]:

The other day, David Hooper was at his local Whole Foods in Nashville, Tennessee, when something curious happened.

David Hooper [00:00:07]:

And one of the things you do after Whole Foods is you sort your stuff. You put the plastic here, the glass here, the compost here. And I finished my meal, and I'm up there trying to sort things, and I don't know what goes what. There's a guy next to mhm me, he doesn't know what goes what. And I looked at him and he looks at me, and I realize it's Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin. And we both kind of had a laugh, like, we're both here idiots, like not learning how to sort our food or our compost, or the plastic and the glass. That's how Nashville is. I mean, it's just a bunch of creative people hanging out.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:42]:

To call it a ‘bunch of creative people’ is putting it rather mildly, I think. Nashville IS essentially Music City, USA. And, having spent twenty years in the radio business in Nashville, Tennessee, David got the opportunity to meet a lot of music legends - Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin being just one such example. But, then again, his hobnobbing with celebrities was kinda foreshadowed very early on in his life.

David Hooper [00:01:10]:

My father was Oprah Winfrey's speech teacher. She's a famous Nashvillian.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:14]:

David Hooper's life is filled with many such anecdotes and interesting lessons he's learned from each and every one of them. And I'm hoping to learn some of these lessons in my journey to build a big audience and a big podcast of my own - this podcast. Ready for take-off?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:37]:

Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I am a first-generation Korean-American entrepreneur living the American dream. I started Urban EDC to cater to enthusiasts of everyday carry gear. I also own two other successful ventures: GrowthJet, a climate-neutral certified third-party logistics company for emerging e-commerce brands, and SpottedByHumphrey, an online boutique curating dog goods for good dogs. Through these three ventures, my business has generated over $20 million dollars in 8 years and I'm here to tell you how YOU can do the same! On this episode of First Class Founders, I'm sharing my learnings from the rich and insightful conversation I had with David Hooper of Build a Big Podcast. David is an independent consultant who helps clients use podcasting to grow their audiences and spread their work. And he has worked with some really big clients such as AT&T, RunDMC, Victoria's Secret, and Fedex, to name a few.I came across David's book 'Big Podcast', when I was doing my research for starting this podcast. And I was instantly taken by David’s level of depth and knowledge in the podcasting space. 

David Hooper [00:02:47]:

That's crazier for me every time I run into somebody who's bought one of my books. Yeah, it never gets old. So yeah, thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:57]:

David and I spoke at length about how his career shaped up over the years and discussed several things, such as how living and growing up in the Music City influenced his career, the long journey from a college radiohost to podcast marketing consultant, ideas and strategies to grow a big audience, which he picked up from his years in the radio and podcasting business, as well as several anecdotes from his interactions with celebrities in the music business. In addition, he also revealed an interesting tweak he uses to get the most out of ChatGPT and other AI tools that he uses regularly. Both of those things can be heard in an exclusive segment of this episode, available only in the private subscribers only feed. Premium members of First Class Founders can also listen to the raw, unedited version of my interview with David using the same feed. Become a premium member of First Class Founders by signing up at firstclassfounders.com/join. I'll put the link in the show notes as well.

David Hooper [00:03:58]:

Hey. My name is David Hooper. I host a podcast called Build a Big Podcast. Let's get down to business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:06]:

David is a proud Nashvillian and has been in radio and podcasting since 1991, which makes him a real veteran of both industries. He runs an independent consulting firm called Big Podcast, where he offers all kinds of podcast related services, ranging from hosting to training to production and marketing. He also literally wrote a book on podcasting. It's called Big Podcast, which is how I first came to know of him. After I read his book, I connected with him through Jay Clouse's Lab, which we're both proud members of. I invited him to join me on the First Class Founders podcast, and he agreed.

David Hooper [00:04:44]:

I'm glad to be here. I love being on a podcast for founders. I don't really consider myself a founder, but I suppose I am. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation and then there's a label for it. People say, oh, you're a founder. Okay, yeah, thanks. I just thought of myself as a guy who didn't want to work a job, but here we are.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:59]:

'A guy who didn't want to work a job.' Alright, I get it. See, I like to think that the found in "founder" refers to a purpose rather than starting something. As in, you 'found' something better to do than be "on the job from 9-to-5" and "spend their life puttin' money in somebody else's wallet" - to quote another famous musician and performer from Tennessee. My interview with David began with me asking him about his origin story. That is, his early days of his life and career in Music City USA.

David Hooper [00:05:34]:

I was born in Nashville, and I'm still here today. I've moved around but came back here. The first 18 years of my life. I was in Nashville, went to high school in Nashville, graduated, and I had an opportunity. Actually started taking college classes in Nashville.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:48]:

Music was an integral part of his life, and he always thought he'd spend the rest of his life in a music related career.

David Hooper [00:05:55]:

I was around people in that behind the scenes part of the business, so I was under the assumption, like, oh yeah, everybody makes a living off their creativity. And that, I think, had a real foundation for me growing up. It's like, of course you're going to do what you want to do. Of course you're going to do something that's fun. Of course you're going to do something that's where you can spread a message and be on stage and enjoy yourself and entertain people.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:15]:

But he realized something pretty early on.

David Hooper [00:06:17]:

So I knew what college was like in Nashville, and I realized that I wasn't as good of a guitar player as I thought I was. So I thought it was maybe big fish, small pond. I'm going to get out of Nashville and go do some other things. And I moved around about eight years and came back.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:30]:

And what did he do in those eight years?

David Hooper [00:06:32]:

College. Following a woman around, being a 20 something guy, trying to figure things out. I was doing record promotion.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:38]:

Pretty candid of him to admit that part about following a woman around. But then again, who among us hasn't done silly things like that for love?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:50]:

Oh, and that bit about record promotion that he threw in there as an offhand comment? Yeah, there's a lot more to it, and we'll explore that in a bit more detail shortly. But first I want to hear how David actually got into radio.

David Hooper [00:07:03]:

I always loved radio. I was the kid who was watching American Bandstand every Saturday, Dick Clark. People know him from TV, but he was a radio jock before then. And I loved radio growing up. And the first day of college, I walked into a radio class. The reason I did that wasn't necessarily because I had that interest in radio, although I did. But I was also in a band, and I thought, well, I'll just walk in, I'll get a job at the radio station, and I'll play my own music. That makes sense, right? And the guy's like, no, you can't do that. One, the station plays jazz and you don't play jazz. And two is a thing called plugola. You can't plug your own stuff and stuck it out.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:42]:

He stuck it out in radio, but also started a record label.

David Hooper [00:07:45]:

I was actually signing acts, recording acts, putting records out. And it was a harsh lesson for me because at the time you would produce CDs and you would do a minimum run of 2000, which doesn't seem like a lot until you've seen 2000 of them stacked up in your car. Then you think, damn, I got to sell these.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:03]:

Now, David never said this explicitly during the interview and I am sure he will reject this notion but I wonder if David started the record label just to put out his own music?! I mean, self-promotion was banned at the radio stations and he had to get word out about his music somehow! And once he had a record label, signing other artists was just good business and a natural progression, you know? So, anyway, the record label didn't work out all that well. But it did teach him a very important lesson:

David Hooper [00:08:35]:

People don't care about your stuff as much as you do.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:39]:

Makes sense to have this as the first lesson of this episode, right? Lesson number one, people don't care about your stuff as much as you do. This is a harsh lesson, but a lesson that all founders learn at some point or another in their lives. And a lot of founders learn this the hard way. But here's the thing.

David Hooper [00:08:58]:

There are different levels of caring. There's like, yeah, hey, that's nice. Hey, that's nice, but I'm not going to give you money there's. Hey, that's nice, but let me give you some money. I don't care about it at all. And that was a real harsh reality for me. And I think that's something that I bring to the table with the podcasters that I work with is like, I understand to be ignored and what that's like, and to have a message and a song in your heart, as we would say here in Nashville, have nobody care about it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:27]:

There are ways to make people care about your business - by making it their business and we'll see an example of how David managed that a little bit later, when I asked him about Music Business Radio. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Because after the record label, came the music conference - the Nashville New Music Conference or 2NMC, as it was commonly known. In fact, there's an interesting story about why and how David started 2NMC. David used to attend a lot of music conferences at the time.

David Hooper [00:10:00]:

So I had built a reputation of basically going anywhere and everywhere. I was up in a small conference up in, Pennsylvania. I was in West Virginia. I mean, I was going anywhere and everywhere. I was just trying to make a name for myself. So I'd seen the power of a music conference and what it could do for community.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:15]:

But, at all of these conferences, there was one thing he couldn't escape – being stereotyped on the basis of his 'Southern' identity.

David Hooper [00:10:23]:

I was born in Nashville, and I'd seen the good things about Nashville, but people think about Nashville now in a completely different way than they did 20 or 30 years ago. Used to be, oh, man, do you guys have indoor plumbing? Do you know hee-haw? Do you listen to country music? It was super stereotypical.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:38]:

This bothered him because he knew that Nashville wasn't at all like what most people assume it to be.

David Hooper [00:10:43]:

I said, well, we're a metropolitan city. It's not a bunch of rednecks. We're a very progressive city, a blue city. Blue city in a red state. And I want to bring you to my city and I want to show you what I know about this city. So the conference that I started was really more of hospitality and showing people, you've got La, you've got New York. But Nashville is also a music city and we know it, and a lot of people within the industry know it. But I wanted to make it even bigger.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:12]:

And that's how the Nashville New Music Conference or two NMC came into existence. And this conference provided a direct pathway into commercial syndicated radio, which would eventually form the rock solid foundation upon which David's current venture, Big Podcast, currently rests. But before we dive into that part of David's life, I want to say a few words of praise for our sponsor for this episode, Riverside. I'm really excited to have Riverside on as a sponsor because we record all of our interviews using, you guessed it, Riverside, and I love everything about it. My favorite feature is how everything is recorded locally to optimize sound quality, because as you all know by now, we take high quality audio pretty seriously around here. If you're a video podcaster, their video features are fantastic as well, allowing you to create short form video content to promote your podcast across your social channels. We don't do this quite yet, but it's something we plan on doing in the near future. Riverside is completely free to sign up and try out for your 1st two hours. Then when you're ready, use the code first class to get 20% off any paid plan. And trust me, you'll love using Riverside as much as I do. So go ahead and sign up for free using the link in the show notes. While you do that, I'll queue up the next part of this episode. Okay, now let's get back to David's story. For four years between 2001 and 2005, David and his team worked to bring hundreds of musicians and acts alongside dozens of music industry related panels in an annual five day event that attracted tens of thousands of attendees each year through the Nashville New Music Conference or 2NMC. A conference about the music business in Music City, USA. It just made sense. So David wondered if it was something that could be taken to an even greater population, say, the entire city of Nashville itself. A friend from his gym got him a meeting with executives at a radio station to pitch an idea for a show based along the lines of his music conference.

David Hooper [00:13:38]:

I went in there and said, listen, I've got this music conference. We're bringing in tens of thousands of people every year. And I want to go to people. I do not want to have people come to us anymore. It's stressing me out. I think, though, because this is Music City USA, what we could do is we could be ambassadors for Nashville. We're going to syndicate this. We're going to show the music business of Nashville, take it out to people. And I think because Nashville has so many musicians, we're going to have a lot of people here listening. And the guy said, yeah, there are a lot of people here that are musicians, but they're also the people who are listening to our stations. A lot of them aren't musicians. What are you going to do for the general public?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:16]:

This was a wrinkle he hadn't considered. He had been looking at radio as a bigger audience but he had somehow forgotten that radio was also a more GENERAL audience. In his own words...

David Hooper [00:14:26]:

And the reason they wanted a general audience is because we were looking at Coca Cola and Ford and some big general brands as a national sponsor for my radio show. We need a general audience. We need a Coke in there. We need whatever. What helped us to increase what you would call CPM cost per every thousand. Listeners and increase the money we were making on ads.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:38]:

So, he began improvising, tweaking and changing his idea on-the-fly, right there in that room with the radio executives. And he didn't have to reach too far for a tweak, either.

David Hooper [00:14:49]:

We had had something in my music conference. We called it the Demo Derby, where the bands that were coming in there, they could come in with demos, they could come in with albums. We put them in front of a record executive, and this was before American Idol. This is almost like American Idol, though, where you perform in front of a table of record executives and people would play their music. I said, what if we did that on the air? We call it Dave's Demo derby? We have people who are listeners, they send it in, we've never heard it. We pop it in the CD player at the time, listen to 30 seconds of it, or what we call a verse chorus to kind of get an idea for it. And then I have these people, they would not have access to review the music on the year, and I review I give a little color commentary and kind of tease it out and things.><David Hooper: I said, I think that the musicians would love that, but I also think because there's a chance of that's why I call it Demo Derby, like a demolition derby, there's a chance of things going horribly wrong. It's probably going to be pretty entertaining. If somebody sends in a bad demo, I think the general public would like that. And the guy's like, okay, I think that's what won him over.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:49]:

And just like that, the pitch had gone from 'probably disastrous' to celebrating the birth of a new weekly one-hour show on Lightning 100 called Music Business Radio. There's a lesson in this little anecdote for all founders, by the way. Did you spot it? Lesson number two, if people don't care about your stuff, you need to pivot if you want them to care. When building an audience, you will encounter many situations where you might feel like people don't care about your stuff. If you want to make people care about your stuff, you need to give them a reason to do so. Oftentimes this involves including something that your audience wants, like Dave's Demo Derby. It wasn't part of his original plans, but his audience at the time, the executives from the radio station, clearly needed him to make that tweak so that his pitch could be accepted. And incidentally, the launch of Music Business Radio in 2005 also marked David venturing into podcasts because they decided to make the episodes of Music Business Radio available on the internet, or in other words, make it available as a weekly podcast.

David Hooper [00:16:54]:

I wasn't thinking at all about doing a podcast myself, I was thinking about radio. And we had talked about syndication. And just at the very last minute of this pitch meeting, I said, there's a thing called a podcast. I said, we could put this online. It can go everywhere. And again, I'm an audience builder and I'm a guy who helps make celebrities out of people. I think that's going to make your station appear bigger to the world, get a little more credibility by putting something online that you've produced. I think that will help you. And that's when they're thinking a podcast, hey. They didn't really know what a podcast was, but they sort of understood having a website, and I explained that to them and it was just a couple of random thoughts.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:33]:

To think that one of his greatest successes came from an offhand comment that wasn't even in his original plans.

David Hooper [00:17:40]:

I think there's probably a lesson there, too. Sometimes you think you have it together and what people are going to like and have it all laid out. And sometimes it's like a random offshoot comment or chapter or book or episode that you do that really takes off. And that's basically what happened.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:58]:

That's the life of a creative person for you. You never know which piece of creative work will take off. In fact, I want you to think of it as a mini lesson. Mini lesson: Be open to receiving feedback and be flexible in your journey. The Music Business Radio show and podcast have been on air since 2005. That's nearly 18 years, and David still does regular episodes for the show. But somewhere along the way, David realized that he didn't really want to work in big radio for the rest of his life.

David Hooper [00:18:29]:

I knew that I was done with music because, let's call it a midlife crisis, but I didn't want to just keep making musicians famous. I wanted to use those same techniques and help people with equally important messages, maybe more important messages, spread their messages. And I had learned some stuff from my own time as a radio host, as somebody who owned a record label, owned a music publishing company, and had done various things, brought people to conferences.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:54]:

He was ready to leave the identity he had built as someone well versed with the music business behind, even though he knew that it was going to be difficult. Now, at this point, David was both a host of a radio show about the music business and a podcaster. Technically, he had just never explicitly reconciled the two aspects of his life and career.

David Hooper [00:19:14]:

Like, I was doing radio and had a podcast for ten years without really being part of the podcasting community. So I was working in a silo. I was doing things that nobody else was doing in a lot of ways from Big Radio, but at the same time, I was doing things in Big Radio from my music, stuff that Big Radio wasn't doing.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:32]:

So he decided to explore a new path for himself as a podcaster. But he needed to announce his arrival first.

David Hooper [00:19:40]:

We call it a thud factor in marketing the shock and awe package. And the first thing I did was write the book, the book you mentioned, Big Podcast, which is huge. It's huge. It took me four and a half years, writes 93,000 words, and that's only because it was edited down. It was originally 126,000 words. And I said, I'm going to dump everything I know about radio, I'm going to dump everything I know about audio building, niche marketing, direct messaging, and I'm going to put this in a book for podcasters because I saw the hole in the market.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:06]:

If you haven't read the book yet, I recommend that you absolutely do and I can vouch for it because I read the book myself and I found it incredibly insightful and inspiring. I couldn't resist the opportunity to ask him what advice he would give to founders and creators looking to build an audience for themselves.

David Hooper [00:20:22]:

I think you got to be yourself. I think you've got to make a system that works for you. I think bringing your personality into it is really the only thing that we can do to stand out. Finding a company that works for you, the personality that works for you, and bringing that to the table and not being fake or being different when you're on stage, but being who you are wherever you go. It's almost like they talk about not lying. Don't lie, because then you don't have to keep up with the lies, just always tell the truth. I believe that with personality as well. I think that's huge, making it who you are, somebody's going to be attached to you.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:54]:

David's advice to be honest and be yourself is something that we've heard a zillion times from various different sources, but that, in my opinion, only underscores the importance of that advice even further. Because the advice works. It just works. And David has an incredibly simple explanation for why it works.

David Hooper [00:21:14]:

People like to do business with other people.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:17]:

By people, he's referring to the part where he mentioned having a personality that works for you. So even if you're a brand, you need to have a persona that people can relate to. He gave an example that resonated closely with my personal life.

David Hooper [00:21:31]:

When I see your approach, Humphrey the dog, you're bringing in these personality elements into it. I was like, okay, they call it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:40]:

Twinning Humphrey, in this case, my French bulldog. And our Chief Barketing Officer. Over at SpottedByHumphrey.com. David is absolutely right. Twinning is indeed the strategy that I've used for my website, Spottedbyhumphrey.com. In fact, when you're trying to buy products online and you see promotional material with pictures of ordinary people using them, that's twinning.

David Hooper [00:22:01]:

Something on Amazon, for example, like, if I'm looking up, I've got a clipboard in my hand. So let's say I'm looking up clipboards on Amazon, and when I see that review that says, hey, I'm a middle aged white guy and I do podcasting, and I've got to keep track of my notes and I like to use this clipboard for notes, I say, oh, my God. I'm a middle aged white guy and I do podcasting. I'm connecting with him. And I think we can do that as founders, as just really employees or any kind of forward front facing person.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:27]:

I think that is the lesson that we as founders need to take from David. Here lesson number three. When trying to connect with your audience and customers, consider the twinning strategy. Twinning is a curiously unique strategy because it requires you to be both unique and relatable at the same time. You need to be unique enough to differentiate from the rest, but also relatable enough that people choose to imitate and immolate you. David used the example of the famous performer Buster Rhymes to explain the seemingly paradoxical concept.

David Hooper [00:22:59]:

Busta Rhymes. If you remember Busta Rhymes. So "Woo ha, got you all in check" - that was the first song that he did. Right. And when Napster came around and this was a really big deal for the music industry, file sharing, people could download music for free, more or less. And music industry was really scared about it. Like, oh my god, what are we going to do? People could get music for free. They asked Busta Rhymes, they said, are you worried about this? People downloading "Woo ha, got you all in check". And he said, no, I'm not worried because I go out and play live. Nobody's going to copy me. They can copy the music, but they can't copy me. And if anything, the copies of the music are actually promoting what it is that he does that can't be copied.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:42]:

There are several brilliant anecdotes that David shared about the various performers and musical talents he has met and worked with over the course of his career as the host of the Music Business Radio show.And you would be hearing all of these anecdotes in glorious detail right this very moment, if you were a premium member of First Class Founders. The members of the First Class Founders membership enjoy several perks, one of which is the premium content that I craft specifically for them.To give you a simple example, at this very moment, the members listening to this episode via the private members-only feed are being treated to amazing anecdotes of super-famous musical performers. But, what is actually cool about that is that there was a valuable mini-lesson about audience building and audience retention in each of the anecdotes he shared. For example, the anecdote about how Ian Anderson of the band Jethro Tull continued to be active at the age of seventy.

David Hooper [00:24:46]:

He's still one of those guys that's doing 130 and 140 dates a year at 70 something years old. And I asked him, "What's the deal, man? You're 70 something years old, you got 40 million records sold. You're bajillionaire. Why are you doing this?"

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:59]:

...is about how important it is to keep the momentum going. When he narrated the story about the lead singer from the heavy metal band Korn...

David Hooper [00:25:07]:

So Korn, interesting story because one of them turned born again Christian. Head became born again Christian.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:13]:

He related to the conflict that arises when you have to choose between fulfilling the expectation of the audience versus your own personal ambitions, and the anecdote where he compares the two bands Cheap Trick and Village People.

David Hooper [00:25:26]:

Not making a whole lot of money, but they were still on the road and doing their thing in the 90s. They were big in the 70s, so you're talking 15-20 years after the fact.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:35]:

That was about how important it was to keep showing up every single day. And that's not all, by the way. There's a lot more. I also asked him about the rise of ChatGPT and AI tools, and he listed a few different AI tools and the unique way in which he uses them.

David Hooper [00:25:52]:

One of the things that they have figured out, and this is how I would use AI for podcasting is they only analyze your content.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:02]:

This is just a small preview and the whole segment is definitely worth a listen. You can listen to all of it on the private, members-only podcast feed. Additionally, the First Class Founders membership also comes with a ton of other perks. For instance, members of First Class Founders also get early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes - including the entire raw, unedited interview - the ability to Ask Me Anything, and much more!Head on over to firstclassfounders.com/join - I'll put the link in the show notes. But now let's get back to the rest of my interview with David. One of the things I'm glad I asked David was whether there was a secret tip for building or bootstrapping big audiences quickly based on his years of experience in radio and podcasting. He started by recalling his initial meeting with executives from the radio station and how they insisted on having a show that can cater to a general audience. So here's the kicker: what actually helped them grow their CPM was in fact, not going general, but instead, going super specific.

David Hooper [00:27:12]:

What helped us to increase what you would call CPM cost per every thousand listeners and increase the money we were making on ads, but also to grow the audience was to niche down.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:26]:

Yeah, niche down, as in, rather than target a wide audience and make a show that was for everyone, they chose to drill deeper into a more specific niche: musicians. If it sounds highly counterintuitive and paradoxical, that's because it is a bit counterintuitive and paradoxical. How can you exclude people if you want a bigger audience? Right? Well, it's because excluding people actually makes your audience super specific and attracts the exact kind of people you want listening to your show.

David Hooper [00:27:55]:

If I was a country singer songwriter, I'm really going to love country music business radio because I'm talking to other country singer songwriters and we'd say, well, you're leaving money on the table and you're leaving a lot of people that aren't listening to you. It's like, yeah, but I've got, like, super fans. I got people who listen to every single episode. I got people that are buying all the stuff that we're doing. It's like, you can be more successful having a smaller operation. So that's kind of the counterintuitive thing for podcasting that I think people miss. And I understand it because a lot of people want to be famous. But, I always suggest people flip that on its head and say, how can I exclude people? That's how to attract people. And because of that, you're going to grow your audience.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:31]:

Having said that, it makes you wonder how much you can niche down before it gets too much. Is there even such a thing as too niched down?

David Hooper [00:28:38]:

You can go super niche down. Left handed people from Nashville, Tennessee, and this part of the city, that's maybe a little bit too niched out. But I will tell you that I've gone with the production that I've done as niche down as a per-neighborhood podcast only for this neighborhood. And we have made more money CPM - cost per thousand - out of any other thing I've ever been involved with. Because we can penetrate just a very specific part of, a city, a neighborhood. And for something like a real estate agent who wants to own that neighborhood, if it's a real estate agent, for example, with million dollar houses, and they can own that neighborhood, they're making a ton of money. And it's perfect. They don't need a lot of people. 500 people, 100 people, if it's the right people. I always tell people, if I had an audience of Oprah, Bill Gates, Howard Stern, whomever, Joe Biden, that's a good four or five people to have listening to my podcast.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:29:35]:

So yeah, if you find a niche that Oprah, Bill Gates, Howard Stern, and Joe Biden are ALL interested in, you can start a podcast aimed at just these four people and you will probably end up making money hand over fist!Let's make that the fourth and final lesson for the day. Lesson number four: the counterintuitive secret to growing as a creator or founder is to niche down and target a highly specific audience. Finally, before I wrap up my conversation with David, I want to leave you with David's thoughts on podcasting and continuing to stay in the business.

David Hooper [00:30:07]:

You know, there was a time when I was like, if I don't do music, what am I going to do next? This is who I am. And I don't know. But once I did that transition from music into something else and saw that it could be done, now I know it's possible for me to do it again if I need to do it again. I had somebody who wanted to buy out my music company. This is 20 years ago, and I remember telling him this is back in the, maybe more than 20 years ago, back in the.com days. And I said, I'm going to need enough money where I don't have to work for the rest of my life, because I don't know what I'm going to do if you give me money and I can walk away, it's got to be enough to where because you're not going to let me come back and compete against you. And these days I would be like, hell yeah, give me the money because I trust myself to find the next thing.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:54]:

...and that's definitely some great food for thought right there, especially because it applies perfectly to us founders. It also reminds me of something similar that another guest, Justin Gordon, mentioned during his episode, when he compared the success rates of startups vs success rates of founders.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:31:23]:

It definitely looks like David Hooper is not just a guy who didn't want to work a job, but actually a founder at heart. And with that said, let's quickly recap the four main takeaways of today's episode. Lesson number one: people don't care about your stuff as much as you do. Sure, there are different levels to it, but on the whole, it is difficult to find someone who is as passionate about your stuff as you are. Lesson number two: if people don't care about your stuff, you need to pivot if you want them to care. David needed to tweak his original music business radio idea to include Dave's Demo Derby. And that tweak was what finally got his pitch over the line. Lesson number three: when trying to connect with the audience and customers, consider the Twinning strategy. Twinning requires you to be both unique and relatable at the same time. As in, you need to be unique enough to stand out and relatable enough to connect with your audience. Lesson number four: the counterintuitive secret to growing as a creator or founder is to niche down and target a highly specific audience. If you find a niche that Oprah, Bill Gates, Howard Stern, and Joe Biden are all interested in, you can bet advertisers will be throwing piles of cash at you. You can connect with David through his website.

David Hooper [00:32:39]:

I'm a bigpodcast. B-I-G-P-O-D-C-A-S-T.com. What do you want? You want a big podcast? So go to bigpodcast.com. I've got some episode templates. I've got some free things that you can download. If you're thinking about podcasting, I'm online. You can look me up. David Hooper I'm always happy to talk to people about podcasting because it's not really about podcasting. It's about spreading a message, and it's about showing humanity among people. And that's just how I'm doing it right now, is podcasting. But yeah, bigpodcast.com is a good way to do it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:33:11]:

Alright, that wraps up today's show! In the next episode of First Class Founders, I’m breaking down my learnings from growing the First Class Founders newsletter from scratch. I have a lot to say on this as I’ve been nerding out about newsletter growth for the past several months now. I’ll reveal what I learned growing my newsletter and how you can get your first couple thousand subscribers. Tune in next week!And, one last thing before I go... If you're a new listener and you enjoyed this episode, you can follow the show by going to FirstClassFounders.com and clicking on the link that matches your preferred podcast player - like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, you can also add YOUR voice to the show by leaving a message on firstclassfounders.com - for example, what did you think of this episode specifically?And, when you get a chance, could you also head over to FirstClassFounders.com/review and leave the podcast a five-star review? It really helps boost credibility for the show which means more incredible guests for you! And why wouldn’t you want that? I’ll leave a link in the show notes to leave us a 5-star review. Thank you so much!If you wanna connect with me, you can hit me up on Twitter @YongSooChung. I’m pretty active there and would love to connect with you. You can find links to all my social accounts in the show notes.I'll see you on the next episode of First Class Founders.

David Hooper [00:34:29]:

One time in my life, I thought I was going to be a professional dancer, and I can dance about 13 different ballroom styles. Tango, foxtrot, west coast swing, east coast swing, cha-cha, rumba, waltz, viennese, waltz, quickstep. Where am I? Is that nine? Night club. Yeah. Hustle. Hustle. Got the disco music. Moringa. I forgot. Moringa. Salsa. Cha-cha. Yeah.