About this episode
This is where the series starts. Phuong and Jerome make the argument that every business should be running a podcast, and they are honest about how hard the consistency part actually is. They have started and stopped their own shows more than once, so this is advice from people who have made the mistake themselves.
The core idea is simple: virality does not matter nearly as much as showing up week after week. Most people quit somewhere around five to ten episodes, right before it starts to work. The pair walk through why a steady, unglamorous show quietly builds trust, how clients arrive months later saying they have been following along, and why having a real product to talk about gives you something to say every single time. If you are stuck on what content to make, their answer is one word: document.
If you are going to do a podcast, you need to make it consistent. There is a drop-off point that decides whether you keep going, and it is usually about five to ten episodes.
What you will take away
- 01Consistency beats everything. The single biggest factor in whether a podcast works is simply showing up. Most people who quit do it around the five to ten episode mark, right before momentum builds.
- 02Virality is overrated. A viral hit feels good but rarely moves the business. Steady, honest content that the right people follow over time is what actually turns into clients.
- 03You never know who is watching. Clients often arrive months in, saying they have been following along quietly. The audience number matters less than who is in it.
- 04A slow burn still wins. The Red Pandas show grew slowly over three years with a modest following, yet it keeps bringing in work because the trust compounds.
- 05Have a product to talk about. If you sell something real, there is always an update, a change, or a story to cover. Stuck for content? Document what you are already doing.
Your hosts
Phuong founded AM Visuals and hosts the series. He works with businesses across Sydney on video and podcast content built to do a job, not just look good.
Jerome leads production at AM Visuals and has spent years running podcasts for clients. He brings the hands-on view of what makes a show stick or stall.
Clients come to them and say we went with you because we have been following your content. You just never know who is watching.
Questions this episode answers
Phuong and Jerome argue yes, as long as you can commit to showing up consistently. A podcast lets you talk about your industry, share opinions, and tell the good and bad stories, and over time that builds real trust with the right people. If producing it yourself feels like too much, that is what our podcast production service handles.
There is a drop-off point around five to ten episodes where most people quit, usually right before momentum builds. Pushing past it is the hard part, which is why having someone to keep you accountable matters. The bar for consistency is genuinely low, most shows simply stop too early.
No. The hosts are blunt that virality is overrated. Their client shows often have modest followings of a few thousand, yet still bring in work because the right people are watching. Clients regularly arrive months later saying they went with them because they had been following the content.
If you sell a real product or service, there is always something to say, updates, changes, news, and the occasional horror story. When you keep your audience informed about your world, the content stays useful. Stuck for ideas? Their one-word answer is document: capture what you are already doing.
This is the exact trap the hosts admit to falling into themselves, getting excited, then getting busy and stopping. The fix is accountability and a system that keeps the show moving without relying on motivation. Handing the production side to a team is one way to protect that consistency, which is where AM Visuals comes in.
Full transcript
This transcript is auto generated and lightly edited for readability, so small errors may remain.
What would you say to people who don't know what content to put out? Document man. Document documenting is such a powerful tool because it tells you a story from point A, which is your beginning to point B, which is where you're going to become. I want to talk a little bit of strategy when it comes to podcasting, and why I think every single business should be doing a podcast. Hey, Jerome.
Yes. How many times have we actually restarted our podcast, mate? How many podcasts have we had? We've had one consistent long podcast we did. But I think we we had no views at the end.
I feel like this is the thing, right? And this is actually a message to to the people that we work with. And also for anyone actually are looking to do podcasts with us. If you are going to do podcasts, you need to make it consistent, because there's so many times that we ourselves have had that that issue where we started the podcast got really excited and we're like, yeah, this is going to be great. And then we got busy and just we just stopped doing it.
We didn't get consistent. But yeah, but that's why you need to to have someone to keep you accountable. Right. And I think this is where we come in. Now when I say consistent there's usually a drop off that people get to before, you know, that will determine if it will determine whether or not you're actually going to continue the podcast.
And it's usually about 5 to 10 episodes. Yeah. There used to be a statistic on this. Like it was like 20 episodes and you're like the top 1% already. I don't know if that's the same.
That's probably like 2022 data, but it doesn't take much to be that top one in terms of like consistency. It it's a low bar. Yeah. And there's too much I think the problem is that there's that sense of self critical judgement when people actually think about, you know, recording information. The cool thing with podcast is you just have to talk.
Just talk about your industry, have your opinions, talk about, you know, the good, the bad. You know the horror stories. People love horror stories, right? So. Yeah, man.
Like thinking about podcasts. Like, what's, uh. What's one of your. What's one of the things that you've seen over the years that we've done podcasting for our clients. And you get feel free to name some names because we do have some really good case studies in terms of podcast podcasting.
But, uh, who who comes to mind when you think of podcast success? So is a Red Panda's Red pandas podcast is has been a slow burn like I think if anyone saw the way they progressed they'd be like, oh, why are we even doing this? Because they've we've been with them three years. Just over three years of. Record, three years of podcasting.
And they don't have the biggest following in the sense of like, you know, everyone's like thinking virality got us hundreds of thousands of like followers immediately. I think there are like 5000 right now. And I think they were getting like 100 subscribers a month. And and that's mostly from the consistency. That that some of the shows are seen as six figures.
It's oh yeah, it's. Still have like one or like every now and then they'll have like a short takeoff and but at the end of it, that's not even like the, the point because. What the variety of. It. No no no.
Yeah. The virality of it, it doesn't really matter so much for them because the amount of times they've gone like a client's come to them and gone, we've gone with you because we've been following your content. You just never know who's watching. You don't. And the the algorithm algorithm will figure out how to put your content in front of anyway.
Controversial view and to your point, controversial view virality. I can't say that word virality doesn't mean shit. And I strongly believe that because there's so many there's there's a couple of examples that we've had from Red pandas, DeLonghi, uh, talking about like, uh, good mates at packers, blinds and curtains as well that they don't have that many, uh, subscribers or followers. You're looking at about maybe 2 or 3000 followers per account, right? That's not viral.
No, no that's not. Like, not many people know them globally, but they are known in their field. Yeah, the industry knows them. So yeah. And indication of success of content for our clients is when someone comes to our client and says, hey, I know you from that post you did on Instagram or that post you did on YouTube, that to me, that brings me so much joy because it basically means that yes, people are watching your content, and it doesn't have to be that you have tens of thousands of followers or like some of your content have gone to millions of views because virality at the end of the day doesn't mean shit.
Mhm. I did a video on it. Yeah, yeah. And I did a video where um before about virality and then there was like this account of just an egg. Right.
And that that account got 4.8 million views followers. Sorry. And I'm just thinking to myself like, what are you trying to do with this? Really? What are you trying to do with this?
When people think about creating content, It's just like. Just talk your piece. Right. And we live in a world right now on social media where, uh, as long as you put in that content, people are going to watch and you just never know who's going to watch, who's never going to, who's going to consume your content, who may buy from you in the future. Right.
What would you say to people who don't know what content to put out. Mhm. Document. Man document. And this is something I've been saying from, from the, from the get go.
I've been trying to internalise it ever since I heard it from Gary Vee. Documenting is such a powerful tool because it tells you a story from point A, which is your beginning to point B, which is where you're going to become. Then point C how you've transformed. Oh, you've got ideas that you thought right before, now you think differently. Why do you think that's so important in business?
It's just important in general for content because this is how people consume. People want to hear stories, right? Uh, and for business, even more so because, uh, and we follow this, this, this, uh, we follow this, this framework code, they ask, you answer. And basically this, this content framework basically says that, hey, document everything that you have. That means client questions.
That means things that you did bad. That means things that you did good, the benefits of your product where your product could fail. Who's it for? Why some people might not be the right fit for this particular product. And this is why I say documenting.
And the thing is, we've seen it happen so many times. Red pandas, Grand Parkers videos Geelong is actually like seeing some take off from that. And anyone who even Edinburgh Holmes and I'm dropping that because these are some, some are really good case studies. I'm willing to actually put it out there saying like, these guys have done it. These guys understand the power of content, right?
And that's what I that's what I live for. And and this is why I do the things that I do that we do. So yeah, building the business is really important to me and getting like I think people underestimate how knowledgeable they are. Like going off documents. Yeah.
Going off the documentation. People underestimate that they're experts in their own businesses, and they have information that people don't understand. And even if it's like a typical conversation of what someone's already made content on, that it's like but not everyone's consumed that content, that specific one. Maybe they're waiting for your opinion on that. Maybe they're waiting to like it's there is some level of like recency as well that is important in terms of content, because old content tends to not get as much traction as recent stuff because opinions change as well.
Okay, getting technical, you're my understanding. And you love being technical. I want to understand this getting into you said okay what you said here that recent content isn't as popular. No, no, it's just as important. Like it's important to even refresh your content.
As you repeat some of the stuff before. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. The sense I agree with that I agree. Yeah.
I think it's cool that you repeat some of your own ideas that you had, maybe, you know, a year ago. Because you've grown a year, you've actually taken a journey. A whole trip around the sun. You've bound to have learned something new about that topic that you've spoken about before. Right.
I mean, for us in general, and this is a really great example, and you're going to love this one. We started off as just video guys. We just started we just we were just some dudes pointing the camera at things and not really knowing what to do with the footage at the end of the day. So the question that you and I asked and Jay, when he was part of our company, this is my brother, by the way. Check him out.
The watch guy. Phenomenal guy. Shameless plug to my brother. But the question that we had asked at the time was, what do we do with these videos? Where is the ROI?
How do we measure the success of the video? Right? And that idea, that idea has taken us through a five year journey of in marketing. Yeah. And to the point where now we can actually have conversations with our with our clients knowing where the videos that we make for them will end up, and knowing or being able to extrapolate what the ROI of those videos actually are.
Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So you can't underestimate. And to your point, you can't understand underestimate, repeating the ideas that you had before because you may have some new take on it. Going off that you've got your pillars like a, like a systems guy as well.
Like, as much as I am on like a technical guy in terms of like types of content, if you had to, you had to categorise them for people, where would be. I don't like pillars basically. I mean, if you're going to ask me about my pillars and this is something that people actually have to do and I highly recommend it. We have a we have a new, new staff on board who actually deals with content, branding, brand voices and all that stuff. And creating content pillars is actually one of them for me.
My content pillars, the things that I talk about on a regular basis is business marketing and communication. And I guess I would say even personal stories, right? So those are my main pillars that I would always talk about. And when I say personal stories, and I just released a video maybe a couple of days ago where I talked about how I flopped at a sale. I had a sale meeting, right?
And I was like, oh, I didn't actually do well in this sale meeting because of X. I think, uh, one of them could be like, oh, maybe I didn't research this client well enough. Maybe they didn't value the proposition I had for them. Maybe I didn't align with their business well enough. And talking about those personal stories and my personal growth really draws people into into the conversation, right?
And if I stay true to these pillars and this is this, you can see that, um, if I stay true to these pillars, people are going to be attracted to to those things that I talk about. And a case in point, we talk about business all the time. That's because that's that's the only thing I want to talk about. Yeah, you know what I mean? Where is everyone else?
But let's take it up. Up a notch. I want to talk a little bit of strategy when it comes to podcasting, and why I think every single business should be doing a podcast as a starting point for content creation, right? Do you have any thoughts on this before I go into this rant? In what sense?
Uh, in terms of like how they should go about creating a podcast for their business? Okay. This is my thinking, right? So when people think podcasting, they think, oh, I'm just going to be like Joe Rogan, right? That's the first thing you think about when you think about podcasting.
Right. I'm just going to do a four hour for our podcast talking about aliens, ancient civilisation, some form of like martial arts. And that's what podcast podcasting should be like. No, I think this time around, if you're going to be doing pipelines for your business and you might have some input on this as well, you need to be more strategic in terms of what you talk about. And if you want to use this as a marketing medium.
Mhm. Right. And that means okay. Well what are your products. What the what do you sell.
Right. How do you actually use your products. What are the benefits. What are the the, the um the negatives of the, of your, of your content. Right.
And having a wealth of, of content in that space, always answering your customers questions will give you a whole arsenal of content that you can use for your landing pages, for your marketing, for your ads, and which will actually bring you solid ROI through podcasting. Um, you know what I mean? So that's how that's how I think about, uh, doing a strategy. Strategy for podcasting. Um.
How have you seen podcast content being used? The example of, um, podcasting being used that I think is, is a really good example is actually red pandas. right. We've done their podcast for three years, as you said, and a lot of the their content that we produce from their podcast has been used in sales conversation. Being embedded into newsletters have been used for what's it called.
They just send it as a touchpoint to their clients. Right. Having them on on YouTube creates a search ability about their content, right? And really positions them as market leaders in the digital marketing space, right? So yeah, I'm super I'm super pumped about this.
I'm sure you are too, right? Yeah. I mean, I've been doing podcasts for years. So what excites you about it? Like, I mean, every time you think about red pandas, you, you we love talking about this stuff that you learn from them every time you go out.
Yeah, I do the thing with red pandas. Something they actually highlighted in their last week's podcast, actually was, um, the fact that they don't even have to think about, like, renewing content, even though we just talked about that. Is that, say, for example, HubSpot. Is something a podcast? HubSpot mentors is a podcast I have.
And HubSpot is always changing. Always changing. They're always updating stuff. And the way you would interact with it would change. And since they're experts at that, and their clients might not be following the most recent HubSpot kind of conversations that's going on or updates, they've got something new to talk about every single time.
And they're always having that conversation of, this is how you can utilise it to, you know, further refine your processes. And for the marketing stuff, the marketing wasn't like it's interesting, like, um, inbound buzz, they just talk about recent news. Yep. Recent news, recent changes in the the that industry. I think the what, uh, what they've found in that it's the product that they talk about.
it. And it's the same with like my brother Jay again, like we put with all these links in uh, in the description if you guys want to see some of these examples. But even with Jay, it, it actually works. Podcasting works really well if you have a, if you have a solid product to sell. Right.
Because if you have a product to sell, it means that if people want to buy this product, they are going to be updates, there are going to be changes. They are going to be some variation of of your particular product. So there's always something to talk about, right. And if there's if, for example, HubSpot releases a a feature or an update that's bombed, that's actually broken. There is something bad to talk about as well, right?
And because you're keeping people up to date with their particular product, it actually is helping, uh, helping your audience keep up to date with their products so that it benefits them in the end. Hmm. So that's that's the cool thing about, you know, if you do a podcast, make sure that you have something to talk about. And if you don't document.