How to Build A Podcast That Works | Jake Doberenz

PROFITABLE TALKS...

On this episode of The Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim talks with Jake Doberenz, founder of Theophany Media, about how creatives can turn their expertise into a scalable, service-based business—starting with one simple signal: people keep asking you the same questions.

Jake shares how his journey evolved from creating his own content into building a podcast production and consulting business focused on nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. What began as a creative outlet became a clear business opportunity once demand revealed itself.

This conversation breaks down the realities of working with nonprofits, including budget constraints, complex stakeholder dynamics, and the challenge of measuring success beyond traditional ROI. Instead of focusing on downloads and vanity metrics, Jake explains how podcasting creates value through trust, storytelling, and long-term community building.

Christian and Jake also explore why most podcasts fail—trying to do too much without a clear objective—and how defining a singular goal (fundraising, awareness, or relationship-building) is critical to success.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Repeated demand is often the clearest signal of a viable business
• Podcast success starts with a single, defined objective
• Nonprofits require a different strategic approach than for-profit businesses
• Downloads are a weak metric—trust and engagement matter more
• Long-form content builds deeper relationships than short-form media
• Community is one of the most valuable assets a creator can build

Join our community of creative entrepreneurs and get a free copy of our No-BS Guide To Making Your Creative Business Actually Profitable delivered straight to your inbox. We’ll share smart, simple tips to help you keep more of what you earn—no boring accountant talk, we promise.  
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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.622)
Welcome to another episode of the profitable creative the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit I am your host Christian Brim Special shout out to our one listener and ala quipa, Pennsylvania. I hope I pronounced that right I probably didn't but I try it seems like I pick the hardest names Or maybe that's just where people live that listen to the show is in towns with difficult names. Anyway, thank you for listening

Joining me today, Jake Dobirens with Feofany. Welcome to the show, Jake.

Jake Doberenz (00:39.668)
Yeah, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Christian Brim (00:43.79)
Let's start with theophany. That sounds like a Greek word, maybe.

Jake Doberenz (00:49.59)
Hmm. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Theophany. Theophany is a, a Greek word. also a theological term, means appearance of God. You know, you have that word Theo in there. it's, it's when the divine shows up, which is usually weird, you know, burning bushes and things of that nature. pillars of fire in the sky. Those are theophany's, when, the divine shows up on earth.

Christian Brim (00:52.14)
What does it mean?

Christian Brim (01:01.486)
Okay.

Christian Brim (01:08.394)
Hmm. Yes.

Jake Doberenz (01:18.898)
usually in ways that are strange or odd, but maybe slightly more comprehensible to us than, you know, divinity, just showing up.

Christian Brim (01:29.878)
I love that. So why did you pick that name?

Jake Doberenz (01:33.969)
yeah, I mean, originally Theophany Media was my catch-all company for all my zany, crazy projects. and a lot of those were religious in nature, not exclusively, but I wanted to communicate these kind of, timely truths and things like that. from the, know, at first I was doing plays, I was doing fiction writing, I was doing nonfiction and what kind of all summed it up.

Christian Brim (01:51.107)
Mmm.

Jake Doberenz (02:03.572)
Not everything was explicitly religious, but there was sort of this thread of I'm taking these divine things and helping them show up. And some of that's weird and wild. Humor is a big part of my communicative strategy and all my various creative art forms. So it just seemed to fit, theophany. And then I realized later, not everybody can pronounce that very well, but hey, you know.

Christian Brim (02:13.997)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (02:28.084)
yeah.

Jake Doberenz (02:30.09)
It's stuck now. have the domain name theophanymedia.com. Not selling that anytime soon. So there you go. Here we are.

Christian Brim (02:37.856)
Okay, so my next question is how do you make money with that?

Jake Doberenz (02:45.738)
Yeah. So over the past like six years, it's changed. At first we were primarily the, we were the ones who were putting out our sponsored content. We had a podcast, the creatively Christian podcast went for like three or four years before that was sold off and turned into some other things. We had some other projects and stuff. So we were the content creators. We were selling our content.

Christian Brim (02:57.889)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (03:13.718)
We had some memberships and things for a while. There was also things you could buy. That is a way to make money. And then over the last, really, really the last year, year and a half or so, it became more less about not, not getting away from that, but more helping other people start their things. And we narrowed it on podcasts because

In the podcast field, like, I mean, there's a lot of people saying stuff, but if you have a little bit of knowledge and experience, you're probably, you are just better than the person that's never done podcasting before. And, um, the, the rule of thumb that I always heard is when somebody asks you three questions on how, do I do this? How do I do this? That might be your business idea. So it became enough people saying, how do you do the podcasting thing? You've done that for five, six years.

How do you do that? So it became more of what makes money now is, Hey, I'm going to help you create your podcasts. And more specifically, we work with those religious organizations, nonprofits, mission driven kind of people, help them do that. Whether that's we do it all or we come alongside you and consult depending on budget and needs and things of that nature. Yeah.

Christian Brim (04:35.564)
I love that. I love that when people ask you three things, that's a brilliant insight. Yeah, I hadn't really ever considered that. to clarify, your customers primarily are nonprofit in nature.

Jake Doberenz (04:54.815)
Yeah. Or money is not the number one goal of their business. know, profit is not the number one goal of some of these businesses. Although they would like to make that in some way, shape or form, there's a passion behind it. There's a mission, right? There's a story. There's a transformation they want to

Christian Brim (05:00.685)
Okay.

Christian Brim (05:16.098)
Yeah. I, and, I, find that segment very interesting. I, I've, I've, you know, I've been doing this 29 years and over the years we've done work with nonprofits in various capacities, various segments. And it's, it's, for me, it's always posed a challenge because,

Jake Doberenz (05:26.465)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (05:45.642)
Their paradigm is different and it goes into the way they make decisions. And it's not a right or wrong, it's just distinctly different, right? I think a lot of people that are in the for-profit sector look at the nonprofit kind of down their nose of like, that's not a real business. And I think that's the wrong question, because it's not a business.

Jake Doberenz (05:58.785)
Yes.

Christian Brim (06:14.72)
It is an enterprise. has the appearance of the business. does some of the things that a business does. But you know, the intent in the organization is distinctly different. So I guess my question to you is, have you noticed that paradigm being different and how do you adapt to that? How do you do business with that?

Jake Doberenz (06:41.695)
Yeah, definitely a different paradigm, but that it both attracts me to them and makes me question why did I pick this segment? Constantly, that's the battle in my head. But I love people that are doing something. And I'm sure a lot of your audience is in the same boat here where we would like to make a living, but we want to do something that we're passionate about. We want to do something that makes the world a little better. I love working with those people.

Christian Brim (06:48.522)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jake Doberenz (07:12.019)
as you probably do too, Christian. So I'm attracted to that. think it's awesome that we're dealing with people that are just thrilled about making the world a better place and they can do that through all these different things. But yeah, that specifically that nonprofit model just makes decisions differently. Money, not across the board, are nonprofits doing great, but largely speaking, lot of nonprofits are, they got a real tight budget.

When they get a grant coming in or something, often that grant is for XYZ and that is it. A lot of times little extra projects or something like that. They just don't have money for that. Operations are really tight. Different things like that. They're, they're constantly having to fundraise and do different kinds of events and things like that. So, so working with them is interesting because a lot of times they, say,

Christian Brim (07:41.356)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (07:53.41)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (08:10.603)
They come to me and say, I've heard about this podcasting thing or I like that podcasting thing. What does that take to do? And when we start talking numbers, they can get very scared or at least they kind of realized, that's not in our budget. That's not what I thought it would be. And I tell people all the time that podcasting technically could be almost free. Like really truly, could maybe, maybe a hundred bucks. Like we could get it. We could get it at something out there.

Christian Brim (08:22.135)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (08:40.253)
on an RSS feed, real cheap, real easy, but to like do it right, to do it sustainably, to get an audience from it, which is most of our goals. Well, there's some investment, if not in money, usually it's money, but if not in money, incredible time effort investment. And so having those conversations can be really interesting because

Christian Brim (08:54.114)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (09:06.913)
They don't often have the people on staff to do that. They're already stretched thin, you know. Barbara over here in this office is wearing four hats in different kinds of roles. But then the alternative would be to hire out and then that's a line in their budget that they just don't have room for. So I think I got away from your original question, but this is the things we have to wrestle with. Yeah.

Christian Brim (09:15.992)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (09:29.462)
No, no, no. I think, yeah. And, and I think you hit it on the head. think the thing that is, is foundationally different in, in a for-profit and a non-for-profit is the nonprofit.

Ostensibly is working from a fixed pie, right? There there there is a fixed amount of resource be it time or money but I I wonder if as you were talking I'm I'm kind of reflecting on that and I'm like I'm wondering if it has to be that way or if that's just the way their mindset is for instance like

Jake Doberenz (09:52.097)
Mmm.

Jake Doberenz (10:10.881)
Mm.

Christian Brim (10:14.056)
If there was a way to produce value for them that costs them money and or time, but it furthered their mission, their goals, be that direct impact or awareness or fundraising, like, you know, it could show up in a lot of different ways.

Jake Doberenz (10:39.893)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (10:40.334)
you know, getting them to think in terms outside of a scarcity mindset, like if, if this is, if this is what you're really about, then it, it, it will further your goal. Then why not do it?

Jake Doberenz (10:47.413)
Yes.

Jake Doberenz (10:59.945)
Right. And those are the conversations I have constantly is reframing the objective. You know, I was talking with one nonprofit not long ago who already has a podcast and they're talking about the numbers that the board wants to see. The board wants to see download numbers and mostly numbers. And I always like to reframe the conversation of your best results are not going to be numerical here. They're going to be people that

Christian Brim (11:06.125)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (11:17.966)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (11:27.479)
Hmm.

Jake Doberenz (11:29.761)
come to the donor conversation being like, I already understand it I already love your mission. They're going to be the people who, who feel like, like you probably have this Christian. There are probably people that are like, yeah, Christian's like my buddy. He's like my friend who don't actually know you because that's what podcasts do to this pair of social relationships. Those are the wins we want. A lot of nonprofits, a lot of organizations in general have really complex things. You know, some places can say I sell X great.

A lot of organizations, well, I kind of do this so that we can do that. this podcast are way better to have those conversations that, that kind of storytelling doesn't show up on a social media post you see on Instagram and you see a nice little image and then you scroll past even a little 60 second tick tock video. You can't explain those hard things. Podcasts are way better for that. You know, people show up and they're, they're going to spend 30, 45 minutes with you a week.

Christian Brim (12:21.473)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (12:25.301)
Maybe if you have a weekly schedule, that just, that's just unmatched. the average American spends more time with podcasts than on Tik TOK or anything else like that. this is where you really truly get attention. So yeah, it's, it's constantly reframing those conversations. and oftentimes, you know, the executive director, whatever it's like, I'm on board, but then I have to convince the board of directors. have to convince.

Christian Brim (12:31.339)
Right.

Jake Doberenz (12:53.499)
trustees or the stakeholders or whatever. And then we go back and forth for like nine months until we get anything done. Super fun industry. But that's just the nature of the beast. Yeah.

Christian Brim (13:04.501)
Yeah, that that's the other dynamic is most, most nonprofits in some capacity have volunteer shareholders, if you will, either it's the board or trustees or deacons, you know, whatever. And they're not, they're not engaged in the nonprofit like the paid person.

Jake Doberenz (13:20.639)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (13:34.334)
is the paid professional, the person that's in it every day. And that also is an interesting dynamic because it is kind of a layered sales process where ultimately the stakeholder doesn't really understand the problem. Like they have a different perspective. Does that track with your experience?

Jake Doberenz (13:56.993)
Mmm.

Jake Doberenz (14:02.303)
That's often true. Dynamics are always different. There are some where they're like, we trust the executive director. We are putting our trust in them. Awesome. Other times, not necessarily a lack of trust. It's just a skepticism or again, it becomes, we just see numbers and numbers are important. You're in the accounting world. You know that. But there are other things at play here and sometimes there is a failure to imagine.

Christian Brim (14:16.716)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (14:31.339)
kind of a long-term solution. Cause podcasting is the long game. You don't see success in episode three. Maybe, maybe you do, which is awesome, but in general, we're 50, 600 episodes. Like it is the long game before you really start to be like, that's why I did this crazy thing for all those episodes. Now I'm seeing it. Now it's paying off in however you define

Christian Brim (14:36.27)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Jake Doberenz (15:01.121)
paying off for you.

Christian Brim (15:04.108)
Yeah, I, I, I, I get irritated as a business owner when marketers, both internal and external say, well, you know, this is a long-term game, whether that's podcasting or SEO or content, you know, it's, it's, that's, that seems to be the universal excuse marketers use. Not that it's not a true statement, but it, you know, my perception is that it's often used as an excuse for lack of performance because it's kind of like, well,

Jake Doberenz (15:14.273)
Sure.

Jake Doberenz (15:31.903)
Mm.

Christian Brim (15:33.4)
You're not really going to see the results for two years and I may not be here in two years. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty okay making that commitment. you know, but, but it doesn't, it doesn't remove the fact that there are long-term, plays, right. that, that if done correctly do have a cumulative effect. I just think a lot of people are, are, are, there's a lack of trust with marketers when they say those things because.

it's been abused. So it would seem to me with your customers and your business that there is, if you were able to directly tie your efforts to something tangible like fundraising, that's probably an easier sell.

than something more ethereal like awareness of what you do or the impact that you make. Is that the case?

Jake Doberenz (16:30.913)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (16:43.265)
Um, yeah, I mean, it is, it's easier to talk about if I'm investing a thousand dollars, I'm going to get $2,000 back or something like that. Um, and it all just depends on what kind of podcast you're trying to create. think one failure that a lot of podcasts are due outside of nonprofit is we want to have the do everything podcast. Um, generally I find you got to stick with one. Are you a podcast to raise fundraising?

Christian Brim (16:51.15)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (17:06.51)
Hmm.

Jake Doberenz (17:11.413)
Yeah. Then we can talk about what does that need to look like? And then we can talk about that. Or are you community awareness? Do you want to just talk about what your event is next week or something like that? Well, that's going to do a different thing. So, there are cases where we can talk about it. You want to make money off of your podcast. You want to get donors. Here's how we need to position this. and sometimes it's not even the podcast itself. A really interesting strategy I have seen and it have encouraged is to like have your.

Christian Brim (17:23.213)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (17:40.694)
have your donor on the podcast. Why did you donate to us? And they start to feel good. They start to tell your story. Other donors can get involved with that. Maybe you squeeze a couple more, you know, thousand bucks out of them or whatever, cause they just like you more. That is a strategy to have the clients on. This is a popular strategy for, know, this, you want to turn them into a client or you want to, somebody who already is a donor or client, you want to.

Christian Brim (17:43.088)
Mmm, yeah.

Jake Doberenz (18:10.977)
butter them up sounds bad, but it's not, it's not out of this place of like tricking them. It's I want to thank you for what you've done for this. And I want to share your story and you know, so-and-so donor prop, you know, maybe they own the local roofing business and they can get a chance to talk about that. And we all win here. There are just, there are, there are, you know, 50 different strategies to do with the podcast. Um, and a lot of nonprofits, a lot of organizations, a lot of podcasters.

Christian Brim (18:20.654)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (18:29.111)
Right.

Jake Doberenz (18:39.605)
haven't even imagined, haven't even thought about the different things they can do. But every day I just am constantly saying, it depends on what you want your goal to be. And then we work backwards, is what I'm doing all day, every day. And that goal probably shouldn't be download numbers. It could maybe be fundraising, but there's all these sorts of other goals you can shoot for.

Christian Brim (18:41.707)
Right.

Christian Brim (18:53.357)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (19:09.045)
And we'll work backwards and create the thing that lets you achieve that.

Christian Brim (19:12.854)
I love that. know from like, I'm coming up on two years with the profitable creative. And when I started it, I had no idea what I was saying. No idea. I had published my book in 2000, 24, and I had gone on some podcasts to promote the book with audiences that I thought, you know, it would resonate.

Jake Doberenz (19:19.861)
Nice.

Christian Brim (19:42.826)
And they were lovely podcasts, but they, the, the, the, shows and, or the hosts weren't, asking the questions and having the conversation that I wanted. Right. which, which I didn't have any strategic intent about it. This is like, I want to talk about these ideas that are, are in the book. Right. And so I started the podcast, wasn't even a podcast listener. Like, so I was starting from.

Jake Doberenz (19:51.933)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (20:12.202)
maybe a basement level. I wasn't even a ground level. And over the last two years, I've started to think about, what you're investing time and money in this, what do you want out of it? I've got some interesting feedback from listeners and some of them clients. And there's this

this struggle I'm in the middle of like, should there be more tactical, practical advice in the show? Either from the guests or from myself versus these maybe higher level conversations that are more strategic in nature, more mindset in nature.

And I'm kind of I'm kind of struggling with that but I go back to the question of who am I making this for right? Like, you know what who who but you know as a podcaster it's it's oftentimes difficult because you don't know who's listening and the feedback loops are are not good

Jake Doberenz (21:13.856)
Yes.

Jake Doberenz (21:22.559)
Yeah.

Jake Doberenz (21:26.145)
Right. We're not there yet with the Linux. It's a podcast is fun, there's, there's all sorts of gaps in everybody's knowledge. Um, and, and I guess at some point at the end of the day, you just have to pick who do you want to listen rather than who does listen. And then I just tailor all my content for that. do so much, um, on my main show, the podcast I host.

Christian Brim (21:46.723)
Yeah.

Jake Doberenz (21:54.752)
I do so much statistical analysis of what titles are performing well. And I get into the numbers and the things, and I quickly learn this resonates with people. And I get pitched a lot by authors with new books and I can look at their book and say, that looks like great book. My audience won't eat that up. They're not on board with that. doesn't check off the boxes. So I say, you're not my guest. love you, but you know, see you later.

we can start to make those decisions through little kind of metrics. But also at the end of the day, I just decided this is who I'm going to tell all my guests. This is who you're talking to. This is who I'm talking to. And people will self-select in or out of that over time, I think.

Christian Brim (22:38.968)
So who are your listeners for your podcast?

Jake Doberenz (22:42.495)
Yeah. So my, my personal podcast, Christianity without compromise are, are Christians who, maybe don't have a home and some of the different labels and things like that of, of either whether that's a label of an actual church domination or conservative versus progressive and things. there's some spiritually homelessness there. which is, it's, it's funny because, because there isn't a label, it's really hard to market that because it's like, there's not like a word I can use necessarily.

Christian Brim (23:11.224)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (23:11.617)
But there are people who love the church and want to also say there's some things wrong here. So each episode starts with here's what's wrong. Here's, we're diagnosing a problem in the church. And then where, um, we're moving outside of that, we're moving to a positive at the end. Here's how we could do things differently. Here's how we should frame things differently. So it's not, it's different than like a typical Christian devotional or Bible study podcast. Um,

It's not a, here's how to get closer to Jesus. It's here's a problem we're going to poke at, and then we're going to look at a better way to do it. and that is exactly what resonates. The titles that perform the best episodes that performed the best do exactly that formula. And when I stray from that less people listen and care, it's not about the guest. I've had very famous people on if it doesn't, work on the formula, it doesn't work.

Christian Brim (24:09.314)
So the Christian homeless, spiritually homeless, not, yeah, okay. How does that work into your business if it does?

Jake Doberenz (24:21.857)
Mmm.

Yeah, it's been a constant struggle. I mean, I told you at the beginning, the origin story of Theophany Media, Theophany Media is supposed to be my playground for my content, stuff I wanted to put out. If I had my way, I'd release like, I'd had like 10 different podcasts that I was in charge of. not sustainable turns out. And so in one sense, the, company now is my profit engine to support my living and existence.

Christian Brim (24:32.844)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (24:53.291)
But also ideally my future crazy projects and schemes and things like that. my podcast that I just mentioned earlier is purposely not profitable. I am not trying to make money off that. have a different goal. and, and I'm comfortable sharing that that goal is I want to earn a traditional publishing contract. I want to build an audience and be associated with the right type of guests so that, I can get a traditional publisher.

And I can have people willing and ready to endorse me and say, Jake is cool. I like what he's saying. cause I have friends in that industry in that space. I'm not the biggest voice, but I have a voice in that space. That is my goal. And that's what that's doing. So it is sort of an under the Theophany media is the, is the production Theophany does the production side of things. It's a podcast that also allows me to experiment and tell people.

Here's what not to do. and here's what to do that I have learned that you might benefit for your show. but that's my baby. That's my project. that again is a, is, is an example of a show we have produced because we have produced it. That can be in our marketing material to say, here's the things that we have done. but it's a little bit more for me where the production company side of thing is, is a service for everybody else. It's for other people.

but they feed into each other, of course. Yeah.

Christian Brim (26:22.478)
I'm kind of reading between the lines. What I heard you say is that this podcast, its intent is to build a community. Would you agree with that statement?

Jake Doberenz (26:38.665)
Yeah. Community. Obviously I want listeners and then secondarily it's, want it, the guests, I want to befriend them. I want to connect with them. Yes.

Christian Brim (26:47.566)
Okay. Which I think to be honest with you is one of the most powerful things we can do in this age. this digital now AI age where, community largely is lacking. People feel disconnected. but, but that's, that's across the board. whether it's

Jake Doberenz (26:54.945)
Mm.

Jake Doberenz (27:00.438)
Yes.

Christian Brim (27:14.958)
Is nonprofit or for-profit like, you know, I, I, I would say that would be what

Jake Doberenz (27:18.645)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (27:26.132)
maybe my overall intent is to create a community of like-minded creative professionals that are interested in building a business as opposed to talking about the technical aspects or the creative aspects of their business and or like financial or tax

tips and tricks. Like that's not what this show's about, right? It's about building a group of like-minded folks, although it is asynchronous. Like it's one way. I'm not necessarily getting feedback. The listeners aren't necessarily, that I know, communicating with each other. But like your goal of getting published, you know, once you have that community,

Jake Doberenz (28:15.873)
Mm.

Christian Brim (28:24.886)
And that could be a podcast listenership. That could be an email list. could be like your LinkedIn network, wherever you that community resides. Then you have the ability to engage it further, but you got to build it first.

Jake Doberenz (28:30.049)
Correct, yes.

Jake Doberenz (28:43.199)
Yes. Yes. Which is just the thing that just takes effort. You can pay your way to shortcuts. And I do recommend that there are certain, you know, do some ads to get to your podcast, whatever that's good. Fine. We should maybe should do that, but then it's just, it's just effort over time. Just ever over time. but when you build a community, that's valuable. one of the weirdest ways I have ever made money.

is several years ago when Facebook groups on Facebook were like, actually a thing Facebook liked and cared about, and we're a little more useful. Maybe, there was like a super bowl commercial for Facebook groups. Like that was the thing they were pushing. I built a Christian writers, a Christian authors, Facebook group. I don't know. We had like 4,000 members after a while. and I sold that.

Christian Brim (29:32.685)
Wow.

Jake Doberenz (29:35.754)
At the, wasn't doing anything with it. I sold it to somebody who wanted to be in front of Christian authors who had courses and books and things to sell. They, they bought that from me because a community is valuable. And I'm not necessarily, I'm not doing that with my podcast community, although I have sold another podcast that I mentioned earlier. but communities are incredibly valuable. People that listen to you and to speak to you. Of course, you don't want to just all of sudden, like, you know, turn into some.

weird brand ambassador where you lose that trust and authenticity that people came to you in the first place. But there's all sorts of value just in having people that listen to you. It's, it's weird that people listen to me. It's strange. You know, last year I started sneaking in solo episodes into my podcast feed. I'd always done interviews. A lot of the people tell you that you got to do interview podcasts. A lot of people assume that switches to a podcast is,

But I started sneaking in some solo episodes, just me talking for 20, 30 minutes. Some of those are my most popular episodes. I'm like, why are you listening to me? Like, I'm just a guy with some thoughts and stuff, but apparently people resonate with some of the things I have to say. They like my approach to things. They like my storytelling and my little bit of humor. try to sneak in there too. Like that is valuable. That is valuable. now, you know, we can use that power for evil, which I'm not going to.

against that kind of thing. I try to use that for good, but there's lots of good that can be done when you have a platform of some sort.

Christian Brim (31:11.712)
Yeah, I think I've recorded two solo episodes. and, and for a lot of the same reasons, I'm like, who wants to listen to me talk? but yes, they have outperformed they're above the average. and, so then I have to ask myself, why am I not doing more of it? Right. what I, I'm, I am going to ask you a tactical question since you asked what, since you brought up the subject, what, what

What situation makes sense for a podcaster to pay to promote their show? Is there long-term lift to that? And I'll give you, I have one data point. bought an ad on, I don't even remember what platform, about 18 months ago, saw a spike. What was interesting to me was,

Jake Doberenz (31:52.885)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (32:07.342)
It appeared that people went deeper. So like, I look at the spots that I paid for versus the downloads, it seemed like people were consuming not just the episode I promoted, but additional episodes. but I didn't see any, you know, as soon as I turned the ad off, you know, the listenership was not impacted, but that was a one-off. So.

What my question is, when does it make sense to promote your podcast on a paid platform?

Jake Doberenz (32:43.553)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, paying for marketing or some kind of paid promotion is, always going to be a little quicker than just hustling out there doing it yourself. Um, but you're right. There are certain times where that might be a nice little spike and then that goes away. think for somebody, and actually we're in very similar spots with our podcasts where we're like nearing this two year point. Um, and, and, and this is the time where.

maybe things start to slow down, not necessarily plateau, but you've doing it for a while at that two year mark, typically at hundred episode mark, that's where things start ticking up, generally speaking. And so I like to give it, I like to promote at certain times where you are feeling that little plateau, give yourself a little bit of a lift kind of thing. One thing I recommend though is to remember that

Two thirds of Americans are podcast listeners, but a third of all Americans is like a monthly listener. They'll listen to something every now and then. then a third of other third of the pod, I'm getting my math mixed up. Yeah. The third of Americans, another third listens to podcasts weekly. They're the ones you want to target the people that are actually listening to podcasts. And the best way to target a podcast listener is to

be on some kind of podcasting app to have some kind of, add on another podcast or guest on another podcast, or, you can, there's, there's a, there's a couple of podcast platforms that allow you to put an ad on them. while someone's looking at their podcast platform, they're seeing an ad to another podcast. Those ads, think typically perform better because you're automatically saying, I'm talking to podcasters, people who are into the podcasting things.

So I typically recommend that. Yeah. Is there like a right time? I don't know. There are more, there are more ad agencies and things in the podcast space that I've seen been promising subscribers, which is interesting because as you know, we can't exactly tell how many subscribers we have. know, Apple doesn't just freely give that up kind of thing. I mean, there's some things you can do in the backend. There's some.

Christian Brim (34:59.907)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Doberenz (35:06.527)
Some of the hosts will estimate how many actual people follow your show and get that new notification every time. But then I'm seeing a lot of more, a lot more podcasting ad agencies saying, we can guarantee you subscribers. We're not guarantee you listens. We're guarantee people are going to come back and again and again. those are pretty pennies. but that's, that's interesting to me, at least on that ad front there. Yeah.

Christian Brim (35:33.262)
Yeah, it is. And I have interviewed several folks like yourself recently because it seems like there's a growth in not just podcasting, but then the agencies that serve them, whether that's helping them produce it or promote it or be discovered, which is

Jake Doberenz (35:54.027)
Sure.

Christian Brim (36:02.798)
kind of an interesting trend. to your point you made a while ago, it's long form content that you can't get any other way. I mean, there's no substitute.

Jake Doberenz (36:17.097)
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could do long YouTube videos, but even then you're you're cutting yourself off from a huge amount of people that are going to want to listen on their run or on their drive or something. So, yeah.

Christian Brim (36:31.98)
Yeah, and I think that's that's why you've seen, you know, YouTube push so hard into the podcasting and then Apple opening up video. It's kind of like it. It's like they're trying to get in on the game, but I question whether that's not just cannibalizing. I don't know that. I don't know that that's.

Jake Doberenz (36:37.121)
Mmm.

Jake Doberenz (36:42.187)
Sure.

Jake Doberenz (36:55.805)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (37:00.615)
necessarily new users, but I don't really know.

Jake Doberenz (37:04.255)
Yeah, no, I think you're right. I, it's still an audio first medium as far as I'm concerned. I still, I, I throw my video out there, but I'm an audio first creator. That's what I care about most. Yeah.

Christian Brim (37:11.074)
That's right.

Christian Brim (37:19.138)
Yeah, and I have a face for radio, so that's why I chose this medium. did not, you know, what's interesting. I had, Vince Quinn on, the show. is an, OG voice actor. And if you go look him up, his image is nowhere. it's not on his website. It's not on his LinkedIn profile.

Jake Doberenz (37:22.113)
Hey, there you go.

Christian Brim (37:46.638)
He specifically requested although we did record video not to use video video in promoting the episode and I didn't ask him specifically about it, but I think in his line of work being a voice actor You know You you've all seen like, you know the Bart Simpson voice actor, you know all the voice actors They never look like what you think they would look like listening to their voice, right? And so there's that

Jake Doberenz (38:12.747)
Sure.

Christian Brim (38:16.11)
kind of like intentional disconnect between the two. I just find that an interesting point.

Jake Doberenz (38:27.317)
Yeah, power of audio. Yeah, I love it.

Christian Brim (38:30.178)
Yeah, you have to use your imagination.

Jake Doberenz (38:34.273)
Ooh.

Christian Brim (38:35.233)
Yes, yes.

Jake Doberenz (38:37.057)
I what people think I look like. Who knows?

Christian Brim (38:39.086)
Well, people that have only listened to me will be extremely disappointed when they I actually had somebody tell me this week Like I had a powerful resting bitch face and they said it is a positive Like it was a they intended to this in a compliment. Yeah, and I'm like, hmm. I don't know how I should take that Although I'm fine with it because that keeps people random people from coming up and striking conversations, so

Jake Doberenz (38:46.241)
Mmm.

Jake Doberenz (38:57.675)
Fascinating. Okay. Okay.

Jake Doberenz (39:08.531)
Well, you know, when you're in the South, people definitely do that. So there you go.

Christian Brim (39:12.352)
Yeah, I mean randomly and it's like I what made you think that I wanted to have this conversation I don't So the resting bitch face does come in and handy Jake how do people find out more about your podcast about theopathy theophany? If they want to learn more

Jake Doberenz (39:18.785)
Exactly

Jake Doberenz (39:34.593)
Yeah, we've got theophanymedia.com, but you know, I am just all over LinkedIn these days. that is just where I am showing up, talking about podcasting. so follow me on LinkedIn, love new connections and stuff. try to like personally send out a message to everybody that connects with me and stuff. Like let's strike up a conversation. Let's get to know each other, make social media a little more social sometimes maybe. and crazy thought, crazy idea.

Christian Brim (40:01.166)
Crazy, crazy.

Jake Doberenz (40:03.107)
but I'm posting there probably too much. don't know if there's a too much, but I'm, I'm on LinkedIn a lot. I host, obviously my own podcast and things. And for the podcasting space, I have the podcasting for good newsletter, which is a LinkedIn newsletter and like a real newsletter, quote unquote, off platform newsletter as well. But if you're already on LinkedIn following me, just go ahead and check out that newsletter on LinkedIn and get all those information every Wednesday morning. Yeah.

Christian Brim (40:31.65)
Perfect. Listeners will have those links in the show notes if I could speak correctly. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you heard, hit the little message button, shoot us a message and tell us what you'd like to hear and I'll get rid of Jake. Until next time, ta ta for now.

Jake Doberenz (40:50.497)
There we go.