Matt: Welcome back everybody. This is not an episode number. This is officially our two year podcast anniversary. 

Lauren: Woo. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yay. 

Matt: Wait, why didn’t we have, like, confetti cannons and stuff?

Lauren: Do you know what's funny? You asked the exact same question on our one year anniversary episode.

Matt: Well, clearly, one of the things that I'm going to talk about in this two year anniversary is how Lauren doesn't take my suggestions to heart.

Lauren: No, because my answer is the same as it was last year.

Matt: Which was what?

Lauren: Which was it would be complicated on the audio and annoying to clean up.

Matt: How would it be complicated on the audio?

Lauren: Cause that pop? It would be really hard to edit. 

Matt: Oh my gosh. 

Lauren: And if we were standing too close to the mics or whatever. I'll edit it in in the after effects, how about that? 

Matt: What kind of two year celebratory episode is this without confetti cannons?

Lauren: Clearly just not as celebratory as it should be.

Matt: This is a two year celebratory episode that will also have a hiring portion at the end. Wait, maybe Ashley can edit some confetti cannons into this?

Lauren: I just said that I would add some in in the after effects.

Matt: No, I said Ashley, not you.

Lauren: Okay. I appreciate that. I'll let her know.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: You know, this is – you know, I mean personally.

Matt: So there’s definitely no confetti?

Lauren: There's definitely no confetti. There's definitely no confetti. But, you know, that's fine. I mean, I personally have always, I’ve always said that I want to die on my birthday. 

Matt: What about cupcakes?

Lauren: I have no cupcakes for you.

Matt: Nothing. 

Lauren: No. Yeah. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: Okay. 

[2:00] - Publish & Prosper’s Origin Story - Why Did We Want to Start a Podcast? 

Matt: So. Moving on. We first published October 31, 2023.

Lauren: It was a lifetime ago.

Matt: Seems like it.

Lauren: I've aged, like, ten years since then.

Matt: If I was in a cupcake right now, it wouldn't seem like it was that long.

Lauren: If you were eating a cupcake right now, I'd have that ASMR on microphone and everyone would hate it.

Matt: I'm quiet as a mouse when I eat. I'll have you know. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Anyways, our first video episode published October 2, 2024.

Lauren: Yeah, I didn't realize how close that timing worked out, that it was about right around the one year.

Matt: No, we had a conversation about that. 

Lauren: Did we?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I know that we took the month of September off because we were going to do, like we needed time to get the video squared away. So last year we took September off and then came back with our first ever video episode.

Matt: But we were – the conversation was, do we deliberately push the video of the first video on out around the one year mark?

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That makes sense. Matt said already that we put out our first episode on Halloween of 2023, which, definitely was not an accident. But I think we first… So Matt first started talking to me about this in April of 2023. That's when we first started or technically March, because technically, the first time we started talking about it was when we were at London Book Fair.

Lauren: But you were percolating on it for a while. 

Matt: The first time we started talking about it was in 2022. Towards the end of 2022.

Lauren: Well, not to me. You were keeping that secret to yourself.

Matt: Actually, that might be true. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Go ahead.

Lauren: Now, the first time you mentioned it kind of casually in passing when we were in London for London Book Fair. And I was kind of like, oh, that sounds cool. I'm not sure why you're telling me about that.

Matt: I'm not sure why I was telling you either.

Lauren: And then about a month later… 

Matt: Yeah. I was probably putting feelers out there, to test the waters. 

Lauren: Yeah. Looks like it. But you were thinking about it for a while before that. 

Matt: I was. 

Lauren: What kind of brought you to that?

Matt: Nobody in our space was doing it yet, and I wasn't convinced that it was something, a channel that we needed to pursue as a marketing team or as a self-publishing company, to be honest with you. I wasn't sure we'd be able to, to provide any value or entertainment or any of the things that a podcast really should do. So it took me a while to think about it, and to think about the ways that we might be able to, to deliver content. And it honestly, at the end of the day, we are a brand. We have, we have a goal and that is to acquire new users and continue generating revenue. But we're a privately held brand, which means we, we get some freedoms and some liberties on how we go about those goals and achieving those goals. So I think that's why it took others in our space longer to do what we're doing. They probably also wanted to learn from our mistakes. 

Lauren: Fair.

Matt: But yeah, I just think that everything we do, we try, we try to be first to market with. Because I think that's how we differentiate ourselves. You know, we'll never be as cheap as some of our competitors in terms of printing books. And we just try to be first to market, we try to deliver good value. And I think that for me it was like, okay, podcasts are really taking off. At the time I didn't even listen to podcasts. I didn't like them. They were too close to audiobooks for me, and I didn't like audiobooks. I don't know, it was just a weird thing, but I think ultimately, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It had to be done.

Lauren: Yeah. And I think that's a really interesting point too, is the idea that you were in at the time that you were doing this, or first brainstorming this, you weren't even really listening to podcasts, you weren't big on the medium in general, and now you listen to them a lot.

Matt: That is true. And I think that's also what helped me finally get to the point where I was able to walk up to you that day and go, we're starting a podcast.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I did start listening to them more. You know, I have a commute to work and back, and I think I started with true crime. Obviously. 

Lauren: Makes sense.

Matt: True crime. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And –

Lauren: That was also my gateway drug into podcasts. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Into podcasts. 

Well it works. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Or It worked for me. And then yeah, I really – the medium of podcasts really grew on me. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And then I did start listening to marketing and publishing podcasts. So there weren't many publishing ones, a few years ago, but there was a couple. Joanna Penn had hers, obviously, and some of the others. And I realized there is value to be had here. There is entertainment to be had. And why not?

Lauren: Yeah. Why not? Well, I'm glad you decided to take that leap. Even though I did say no when you first asked.

Matt: Jury's still out for me. But, we'll see.

[6:00] - Learning the Art of Podcast Content Creation

Lauren: No, I think it's been a lot of fun. I think it's been a really interesting learning experience and actually, really, definitely has reshaped and reframed a lot of how I approach content creation, content ideation. Even just like how I think about delivering information or sharing information or consuming information. We talked about that in a recent episode where we talked about how we like to consume media.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. And I do think that doing this podcast, every part of it, which I also had to learn, I didn't know how to do any of this. When we started. 

Matt: She didn't, she didn't I mean, we, we didn't have any equipment. 
Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: She didn't know how to do any of the sound editing. Nothing. I mean, we had zero. 

Lauren: Yeah. And if you're, if you're listening to this, I – because I know also like, if you're under the impression that this is a professional brand and therefore –  

Matt: Nobody’s under that impression. 

Lauren: I mean, well, yeah, no, I didn't, I didn't think so. But like, everything is done like – there's nobody else editing the audio, the video, the social graphics, the promo assets for everything that comes out of this podcast is created, edited, produced by me and Matt, so. 

Matt: Mostly Lauren, I get to just show up and run my mouth, but.

Lauren: That's true.

Matt: Or point of things and say, no, I don't like that or – 

Lauren: That is also true. 

Matt: I get the fun part.

Lauren: – often true.

Matt: That's a good point. Yeah, it is all 100% done by, by Lauren mostly.

Lauren: Yeah. You know, it's been interesting.

Matt: I think I did come back from Pod Fest with a little one cheater on like, this is how you get started. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: But I don't think it was extremely – it was somewhat helpful. But I don't think it was extremely helpful. Nonetheless yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It was pretty much from scratch.

Lauren: Yeah. But it was a fun, it was a fun challenge to take on. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. Because it's different – it's a different area of content creation and stuff like that. I mean, we've talked about this, before I was doing this podcast I was the social media manager here at Lulu. So that was my content channel that I was managing, creating all the content that went – 

Matt: Yeah. 
Lauren: – on all those channels. This is a brand new medium of content creation for me.

Matt: Right, but similar to social.

Lauren: Similar, definitely, yeah.

Matt: It wasn’t a huge leap.

Lauren: No, no it wasn't. And also, I mean, I was doing, you know, I am not the person that writes most of our blog posts, but I was always writing at least a few every couple of months. So that's also kind of like part and parcel for my experience here.

Matt: Imagine if I'd taken our SEO manager and said, hey, guess what? You're going to start a podcast. So it wasn't a huge leap for you, 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: There's enough similarities and enough, I think, of commonalities between managing social media channels and managing – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – a podcast, you know, as well as being the on air talent that I knew it wouldn't be a huge leap for you.

Lauren: No, it really wasn't.

Matt: And also, by then, I already knew you were a professional yapper at that point too, so. 

Lauren: Oh, so true. Man, that's the sweatshirt that I should have worn today.

Matt: Yeah. Well, again. 

Lauren: My bad, sorry guys. 

Matt: You didn't wear the right sweatshirt and I didn't get cupcakes and a confetti cannon, so.

Lauren: I know. We'll just have to read this whole.

Matt: Obviously, we're still learning.

Lauren: We are still learning. Still every day is a learning experience. But no, for you, I'm curious because a lot of your job, so much of your job – which also, I mean, your job has changed in the two years that we've been doing this.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: You don't really get to do a whole lot of content creation as part of your job. You are mostly managing our team and getting the people on your team to do content creation. So has this been like a fun opportunity for you to like to get to be involved in content creation in any way?

Matt: Yes. So your description is fairly accurate, although.

Lauren: Please, please go ahead.

Matt: Well, my role includes a lot of other stuff too, where this really becomes the fun part of much. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You know, like as my role progressed and what I'm doing for the company and the things that I do on a more regular basis, it is a lot less of the stuff that got me into marketing to begin with all those years ago. And so more and more, I have to live vicariously through you guys, my team, creative team, you, our social media people. This allows me to still participate in content creation and still have some fun, some marketing and creative fun. 

[10:01] - How Podcasting Helped with Public Speaking

Matt: But it also, I think has helped me, because part of my role over the last few years has been to speak more and be on stage more and facilitate workshops and things, and so this has really helped me hone in on public speaking, for lack of a better term, and it's helped me be more creative in that arena. Where being here on the podcast and talking about things with you and knowing that other people are listening to it, that helps me when I have to go into a room of people and speak to them, complete strangers, about some aspect of publishing or print-on-demand or whatever that might be. So yeah, I think this is my, this has become my creative outlet because I don't get a lot of opportunities anymore during my day to day stuff to be creative. It's a lot more strategy and things like that. So, yeah. 

Lauren: Do you think that this has impacted the way that you do the public speaking and the sessions and events and stuff like that?

Matt: 100%, yeah, yeah, and that's for anybody who maybe struggles with public speaking or wants to get into like, speaking at conferences and things like that. If you don't already have a podcast or you've not been on many or any, that's what I would do first if I were you. Like, either start a podcast, who cares how successful it is. Put yourself in a situation where you're speaking to strangers whether you can see them or not, I promise you it's almost the same. Or try to get invited to other's podcasts. Obviously, you need to have some sort of topic that's going to provide value. But 100%, yeah, that really helped. In the beginning, I wasn’t terrified to speak or, you know, be on stage at conferences or whatever it might be. It wasn't the most comfortable atmosphere for me, but. 

Lauren: Right. 
Matt: This certainly made it way easier and way more comfortable, 100%.

Lauren: I will say that as somebody who was absolutely petrified of public speaking, that has completely changed for me. That has like just completely – 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I have no problem with it anymore. And I really didn't expect that to be kind of the same thing. Like I did – cause I didn't – this is, I mean, yeah, there's a camera and there's a microphone or whatever. But I didn't think that this was going to make public speaking that much easier for me. But it actually really has. And that was a very unexpected turning point. So I absolutely like, double down on what Matt said from somebody who two years ago, I would have laughed in your face if you said to me like, not only are you going to be okay with public speaking, but you're going to be like, actively seeking it out and looking forward to opportunities to do it. I would have been like, that is insane. You are insane. Please go away. And now I am very much like, yeah, this has helped with that enormously. So if that is something you have any interest in. Yeah. Try podcasting.

Matt: Yeah. I was a little worried about, you know, we first decided to do London Book Fair. And speak publicly there and, you know, in the form of a podcast episode, I was a little worried. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But if you were nervous, nobody could tell. 

Lauren: I wasn't. That was actually kind of the point of realization for me. Cause there had been some other opportunities before then that weren't even necessarily public speaking, but like, can you talk about this for five minutes or something, or whatever, or even just like speaking to people at the booths at conferences that it's like, I've noticed that this feels easier, I feel less –  

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – like stressed about this, but London Book Fair, the morning of London Book Fair I was sitting there and I was like, I feel like I should be nervous right now and I never really got that way. And that was definitely an oh wow moment for me. Because I think in the past that would have been, I would have been having nightmares about that for…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: A week, if not longer.

Matt: Yeah. No this definitely was a huge, huge help.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: For sure.

Lauren: Yeah. Do you think that it's also like kind of impacted any of not even just the actual like part of public speaking, but how you present information to people? Like how you feel you can add value in those presentations? Because you're not a – knowing what I know from the way that you do presentations, you're not reading a script. You give yourself a very – 

Matt: I should, but I don’t.

Lauren: No, I actually, I disagree. I think that that's what this podcast has done, has made us go… We have an outline. We always have an outline for every episode, whether or not we stick to it in any given moment, including right now, remains to be seen. But I think our outlines have been getting less structured, like they're more bullet points, really. And when you give sessions, I've seen, you know, you don't have a whole bunch of notes behind the slide deck or anything like that. You are much more like this is the general outline of what I'm talking about. But I'm going to kind of be speaking off the cuff as I'm going through it. Which I think makes it a lot more like, digestible and authentic and relatable in the audience. 

Matt: I think it varies by person. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I do that mainly just because that's how my brain works. Like if I try to memorize something, it's only worse. Like I'll just mess it up. And I'm always talking about something that I feel very confident and comfortable with. So I don't really need notes per se, but I do need something that keeps me on track or I'll just, like if I get started talking about something I like. Same as you. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I mean, how many times have we looked at that stop clock in front of us and been like, whoa, like, who's going to stop first? But that's what I use my slide decks for. So that's – you'll notice I do look at my slide decks, but that's what keeps me on track in the right direction, on time.

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: And there's usually a timer in the crowd somewhere too. But that's just me. Like, I can't, I can't memorize things. I can't really – My brain just doesn't work that way. And again, I'm always talking about something that I'm confident or comfortable with, so I really don't need it. But I will say best practice is that you do practice your session. You practice your speaking, you practice some sort of a loose script and outline, and I'd like to be able to do that. My brain just doesn't work that way. I am going to…probably next year work with a public speaking coach.

Lauren: Oh yeah?

Matt: I'm going to work with Jay Acunzo. And if he's listening to this, which he's probably not, but if he is, he's probably like, yeah, you should be using a script everybody, like. There are best practices. But I mean, I just, I don't know, it just works better that way for me, and maybe for you. There are others that we work with where yeah, when you tell them like, no, I'm not going to, I'll be fine. They're just like, what? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Like they get really worried about it. But I don't know. That's just how my brain works.

[16:08] - Episode Formats and Episode Evolution Over Time 

Lauren: Maybe that is one of the areas that were similar. And so we're not able to provide another perspective on that. But I have been thinking about that too, when I've been thinking about like…when we first got started, like, how has this podcast kind of evolved from when we first got started? And things that we were doing back then, that like, not that we wouldn't be able to recreate it, but like, we wouldn't like…I think a lot of the way that we approach those first few episodes, we wouldn't be able to do now, even if we wanted to, because we were so like trying to stick to…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: We had a –

Matt: A specific format, yeah.

Lauren: – very specific format, and we were trying to like, really like, take turns talking and sticking to our outline. And were both heads down on our laptop, the whole – which we weren't on video, so it didn't really matter, but. 

Matt: That’s true. 

Lauren: But yeah, now. 

Matt: That's, that's a good point though. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Again, remember the first almost full year of our podcast? There was no video, so we didn't have that aspect to be thinking about or worrying about, necessarily. Not that we, we do today per se. Although I mean, to a degree we do. But you're right. I mean, so in many cases, we probably were heads down on our laptops, like looking things up or following the outline or making sure that, you know – so it definitely was different. Yeah. And you're right, I don't think we could recreate that today if we wanted to, which I don't think we'd want to. 

Lauren: No. No.

Matt: I'm trying to actively not have a laptop in front of me or do anything. I just – I think back to your earlier question, which maybe I didn't answer fully, but I just think that for us, giving ourselves a very loose set of things we want to talk about, and then just having a conversation on it, I think is better for us. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: The way that the way that we think and operate. And because this is not an interview show, by the way, right? The format of our podcast is it's not an interview podcast. So again, we we have that freedom to be able to just sit and have a conversation. Whereas others, if their whole format is interview based and that's the, then they have to, they have to stick to a set of questions per se, and they have to be a little more formalized and structured in the way that they do things for the most part. But we have the luxury of not having to worry about that. The other thing we have the luxury of not having to worry about is we don't have sponsors.

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So again, we can do whatever the hell we want. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Which I think only helps and feeds again, our particular sort of personalities in the way that, you know, we like to be able to do things. There's certainly some episodes where if we had sponsors that were paying for, they probably would have been like, hey, you know, maybe, maybe next time you don't say this or, you know. But that just doesn't work for us. So back to the whole being lucky that we're a privately held company, we get a lot of freedoms and creative liberties that we can take that a lot of other people can't necessarily do. And so. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I just think that helps for you and I and the way that we choose to put this stuff out there.

Lauren:  it definitely does. And I think even just from like the episode topic ideation side of things, we have a lot of back and forth about what our different episode topics are going to be. We have a lot of conversations about that, sometimes, for better sometimes for worse. But there's never a point where I'm afraid of coming to you and having you say like, oh, that's not an appropriate topic to talk about. Like the debate will be whether or not it's interesting, whether or not it's valuable, whether or not it's like, something that our listeners will care about, something like that, but there's never a point where you're going to be like, no, you cannot use our professional podcast to talk about fanfiction for an hour.

Matt: Well, okay, let's be fair. Let's be fair on two things. I really did not want to talk about fanfiction for an hour. And you absolutely hit on that when we recorded that episode, you knew that was a gimme. That was a gift to you, that was…

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: An early Christmas present. But yes, again, we have certain creative freedoms and license that we can take. And to that end, you and I both know what boundaries might be if we had them. I think the only thing we ever do really have to push back on each other about is it's again, it's not necessarily topic per se. It's can we get through this topic in sixty minutes? 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And that's usually where we have to or I have to come in and say, okay, this is a great outline, but you and I both know that we won't even get through half of this in sixty minutes because we're rappers and because we're usually talking about something that either one of us or both of us feels passionately or strongly about. So I think for us, it's really, it's less about struggling to come up with topics and more about struggling to make sure we keep them at the sixty minute mark or less. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So that once they're edited down, we're talking forty-five, fifty minutes, as well as making sure each person has enough time to speak on the topic. Because, again, I think there's been very few topics where I've been like, ugh. But there's been a few. 

Lauren: Can confirm. 

Matt: And honestly you could probably pick them out. They're the ones where I let you do most of the talking, because I just don't. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: But for the most part, yeah, I don't. I think we've been lucky in that way. 

Lauren: Yeah.

[20:47] - Learning to Understand Podcast Performance Metrics and Audiences

Matt: So speaking of topics… 

Lauren: Yeah? 

Matt: Are there any episodes that we've done where when you went back and looked at the stats, the number of listens and downloads and things, where you were surprised that people liked those episodes or that episode more than the others? Was there anyone where you were like, wow, I didn't think they'd like this one, and they really did? Or conversely, was there one where you were like, man, I thought this would hit harder or slap, and it's just nothing? Like one fifth of the downloads.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, definitely both. There isn't like a consistent…it's not like it's like, oh every time that we talk about events that episode consistently performs badly. So I'm always a little bit surprised when I see one that I thought was going to do well that didn't. And one of those is the one about how to survive when attending conferences or events. I thought that one would do a little better than it actually did, and it's one of our worst performing episodes. 

Matt: Huh. 

Lauren: But I do also wonder if something like that is like…we talked about it being very, you know, not that much of a leap for me to go from social media to here. One of the big differences here is that we only really can guess who's listening to this podcast. The availability of audience metrics…

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: What I have available to me to look at on the podcast things is a fraction of what I had on social media. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And on social media it was a lot easier, even when I couldn't see audience demographics and stuff like that, I could see…like, we consistently see a higher percentage of click throughs every time that we post a blog post about this topic. So that is something that I know our audience is interested in this content, so I should post more of this content. We don't really have that kind of data for podcasts. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So to a certain extent this is really just a consistent trial and error of are we correctly guessing who our audience is and what they want to hear from us? Also, for the record, anybody listening, one way to help that is to talk to us more. Email us. Leave us more comments, reviews, whatever. Tell us what you do and do not want to hear. Otherwise we're just continuing to guess.

Matt: It's not a full guess. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So, let me be clear – 

Lauren: Oh no, it's a very – no. It's a very educated guess.

Matt: There are metrics that support which topics people resonate – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – with most. So again, we get to see listens and downloads, things like that. The problem is there's such a long tail to it. So with social media like, you'll post something, you'll get a bunch of hits and that's pretty much it. You might get in a couple of weeks after that post a few stragglers, because somehow you showed up in there for you page or something, you know, whatever. But for the most part, whatever you get in that first twenty-four hour period of posting something on social media, that's pretty much it. Whereas with podcasts, or at least with us, you'll publish that episode and you'll get some immediate downloads and listens, whatever amount, an average. But then there's like a long tail to it. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Where you go check the numbers for that particular episode again in three weeks and it's now doubled, and then you check it four weeks later and… you know what I mean? Like, there's – it's still getting listens. And so at any given point in time, you can go back and look at a snapshot of episodes with listen counts or downloads, and it's always changing. And for whatever reason, one week somebody out there in the world could have put something out there that says every author on the planet sucks at doing email marketing, and you should soak up every bit of email marketing content you can. And all of a sudden, an email marketing episode got an extra couple hundred downloads for a week, and now all of a sudden it's moved up. So there's a long tail to podcast episode metrics that you don't necessarily see in social media. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And I think that's where some of the guessing has to come in, because we kind of have to take, let's say, the first fourteen days of an episode release as kind of the marker for whether it resonated or not. Because in the first fourteen days, we know that if we have any regular listeners besides our parents, they're going to listen to that episode in the first fourteen days we release it. So the first fourteen days is usually our window, our glimpse into whether somebody, our audience, our regular audience actually liked the topic or the episode. Everything else is long tail, and it does show somebody found the episode to be beneficial or funny or whatever it was, but I think for us it's at first two weeks or so.

Lauren: Yeah. And even that has been kind of a learning experience of like… so I do track, I track our seven day episode performance. So a week after – every week when a new episode comes out, I look at the metrics from the last week's episode.

Matt: Yup. 

Lauren: So the first seven days, and then I do monthly metric tracking. But then within that monthly metric tracking, I also have a running list of lifetime to date podcast episode metrics for each episode, and so I update that once a month. But that's something that has been an ongoing for two years for some of those episodes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And so that's always kind of interesting. It's interesting to see when one episode breaks, a new episode is suddenly in the top five that I'm like, wow. It did well really quickly. As opposed to like, you might think, oh, it would make sense that the top five best performing episodes of all time are all ones from the first six months, because – 

Matt: Cause, yeah. 

Lauren: – they've had enough time to grow. So then when I turn around and I look at our like, top five ever, and one of them is from the last few months? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's like a oh. Hm. Interesting. 

Matt: That's if you look at it, yeah, total listens or downloads. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah. If you took every episode and just looked at that first seven or fourteen day snapshot though, and that's what you rank them in order of, I bet it would give a completely different picture, to a degree. And again – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's what I was saying earlier. Like there's several ways you could look at it, and there's several ways you could try and ascertain what are your best performing episodes or topics that people are really interested in and which ones not so much. And so you're either looking at long tail in total, or you're looking at first seven to fourteen days of that episode being published. I don't know that any one is better or right over the other. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: To be honest with you, I think that's one of the things we're still trying to figure out. But one way or another, we could still certainly identify probably our worst performing episodes and our best.

Lauren: Yes. Yes, we could. 

Matt: I was surprised to hear you say it was the event one as well. Like...

Lauren: Yeah. Because I thought that was a good one in general. I thought that was like a, I thought we had some like fun conversation in there and some fun content in there. But I also thought that because it was a more general subject, like, you don't necessarily have to be interested in self-publishing a book or content entrepreneurship or whatever, or a lot of the other, more niche episodes that we talk about.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I thought that would be a more just like universally approachable one. So that was interesting to me. But then you look at things like one of our top performing episodes is How to Create a Custom Book Business Using the Print API.

Matt: Which I love that that's one of our top performing ones, because –

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – if I could just talk about that on every episode, I would. Using print-on-demand to build a business. That's my love language. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And so to hear that that's one of our best ones really makes me happy. And I again, I could talk about that all day, every day.

[27:46] - Top 5 Best Performing Episodes of Publish & Prosper

Lauren: Well, do you want to know what our top five are? 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: All right. So this is our top five to date.

Matt: Is this based on total listens and downloads, or first fourteen days?

Lauren: This is based on total downloads and video views.

Matt: Gotcha. Let's go from five to one.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Let’s count down. 

Lauren: So number five, and this one is actually one that I'm surprised about.

Matt: Email. 

Lauren: No, although that is in our top ten.

Matt: I knew it would be.

Lauren: Episode number ten, which was Marketing Your Book Pre-Launch, At Launch, and Post-Launch. 

Matt: Huh. 

Lauren: Which I'm always kind of surprised about. Not because that's a rough topic, but because that's one of those episodes that if I could, I would go back and redo. And I would break it out into three episodes and I would take a lot more time with it. 

Matt: I see. Yeah, I agree with that.

Lauren: So the fact that that one stays consistently high is, is interesting to me. Number four is episode 38, From Manuscript to Market: 5 Tools to Help You Draft, Publish, and Sell Your Book. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. Number three is the episode 61, Creating a Custom Book Business Using Lulu’s Print API.

Matt: Love it.

Lauren: Number two is episode 79, which is the one that's from the last few months.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And it's the one that is How Justin Moore Sold Over 1,000 Books in 90 Days.

Matt: Which, as an update, he just texted me the other day, he's crossed the 5,000 unit threshold. 

Lauren: Did he really? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Oh, that's awesome.

Matt: That's crazy.

Lauren: That's so cool. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, that was – pleasantly surprised to see that, how well that one did. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And our number one top performing episode to date is episode number 31, Your 7 Step Guide to Building an Online Bookstore.

Matt: Oh, love it.

Lauren: Which was your idea. So congratulations.

Matt: Episode three and episode one – or best performing number three and number one – are my favorites. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's great. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Huh.

Lauren: Yup. But those are both – 

Matt: Who would have knew that people like making money off a book?

Lauren: Well. Can you believe? But those are both – or actually, number four too, the 5 Tools to Help You Draft, Publish, and Sell Your Book. Those three are all more technical –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – episodes than I would have expected to see…

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: In that top. Like, they're all they're all more like where, you know, we're getting down to brass tacks here, and we are just talking you through like how to do this.

Matt: Well, other than Justin Moore's episode, which arguably also included this. 

Lauren: Yes. 
Matt: All five of our top five episodes are really about marketing and selling more books. It's not about craft. It's not about plot. It's not about tropes. It's not about the proper use of niche versus niche. It's how to market and sell more books. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Love it. 

Lauren: Yes. 

[30:15] - Developing a Content Strategy and Experimenting with Content Formats

Lauren: Which does kind of then maybe lead to the question of is that something that you would have done differently? As we've talked a lot about niche or niching down over time, would you…if we were going back to the beginning, would you want to niche down further in the podcast? Because we do kind of – 

Matt: No. 

Lauren: We did approach this with a broad stroke, initially.

Matt: I wouldn't, and here's why. If we niche down in the beginning, which, you know, for some people I think is the right thing to do. But for us, now remember, we're a brand with a podcast. So our mission is a little bit different. Obviously, like I said in the beginning, you know, we have some goals, some things we need to do. So if we had niche down further in the beginning, I don't know that we would have made it this far. And certainly not coming up on our hundredth episode here soon. Because I think we would have been niche down too far and then we would have had to work our way back out. I think it was smarter and easier. I don't know if it was purposeful or not, but I think it worked out for the better that we did start a little higher up, a little broader, and have gone down niche paths along the way. But ultimately, you know, we've still found ourselves in the niche that we want to be in, which is using print-on-demand to build a successful business. Around books, obviously.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So we still got to where we wanted to be, like how we niche down from the beginning, that's where I would have niched to. But we still got here. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And based on those metrics you just gave us, those are our best performing episodes. So I would say if we were looking at a two year plan from day one, we've probably hit a lot of the goals that we wanted to hit. So that's great.

Lauren: Yeah, I think that that's…I learned this from, well, I learned this from a lot of people. But I very specifically had this conversation with Lindsay. I'm pretty sure her last name is pronounced Dollinger, and I'm sorry if I got that wrong, Lindsay. But she and I talked about this when I interviewed her for the Creator Spotlight for the Tilt, and she was talking about her podcast that she's been doing for a while now, like several, several years. And she has reinvented it several times. And I was asking her if every time she reinvents her podcast, she starts it from scratch, or if she just kind of narrows focus on her existing one? And she does just use the existing one and keep narrowing focus. And that was kind of exactly what she said was like, you can niche down within your audience, within your existing audience, but you can't go back out again once you've gotten that really, really specific, concentrated audience. If you start broadening back out again, they're not going to be super happy about that.

Matt: Yeah, I was going to say, you can do it. I just don't know how successful. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Because if you get to a niche, let's say like we're getting to, where we're really speaking to and with people who are highly motivated to create and sell books as a business and how to be successful without using print-on-demand and, you know, all the things we talk about global scalability, blah, blah, blah. To niche back out or up, up to an upper level of just like, you know, whether it's hobbyist authors or some of the other areas that were originally along for the ride, I don't think that our core audience now would appreciate that. So, yeah, I don't, I don't know, I think whether it was by sheer luck or maybe some sort of strategy we had back then, I don't remember. I think we did the right thing. Thankfully. 

Lauren: Maybe a little of both.

Matt: Could be a little of both, yeah.

Lauren: A little of both. Yeah. Because I mean, I do think that there's also like when you have that kind of flexibility in, you know, we've mostly identified our niche, but we still every now and then might go off topic or might, might do something... It gives you that room to experiment, which is also, I think, something that you have to earn over time. Where you can say like, okay, we've done pretty consistent content for almost two years now.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So it's okay. We have done – you may or may not have noticed this if you are a consistent listener of ours. We have done a few anomaly episodes lately. We've done a few more, like we're interviewing people live at CEX. Or Matt and are approaching these episodes in more of like, sound bite, like we're doing the ones where we're pulling the post-it notes or the publishing horror stories, where those are more segmented then having like one straightforward topic. Maybe some interview ones, maybe some ones that we're bringing some guests on instead of Matt, I have had some of my teammates on as co-hosts with me. We had to get to a place where we could experiment – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – with different episode styles like that, and I think that if we had pigeonholed ourselves too much from the beginning, it would be harder to break that mold every now and then.

Matt: Well I think some of that also goes back to show format, though, that we set up in the beginning. So again, yes, I agree with you there, but part of why we get some of that creative freedom to experiment honestly whenever we want, but we were more comfortable with it now, is again, we don't have any sponsors. Lulu’s a privately held company. So we have a lot of these things working in our favor. There's a lot of autonomy that we're granted. So I think when you have all those things working together, you get to do those things and you get to have fun. You get to experiment as you're niching down and finding out who your core audience is and hoping that they align with who you thought they would be, which again, they are, thankfully so.

Matt: Yeah, but.

[35:23] - Revisiting Old Episode Topics and Considering Future Episodes 

Matt: I guess on that note, are there any topics that we haven't tackled that you'd like to? Or maybe ones where you thought like, I'm going to see if Matt wants to talk about this, but then you don't because you're worried I wouldn't want to, or...

Lauren: That's a great question.

Matt: I mean, I know fanfiction was one of them and you eventually won that battle, but.

Lauren: I know, and I do also, that's one that I would revisit if I could, actually. One of the things that I've learned over the course of doing this podcast is that there are a lot of times when I am editing the episodes that I will think, oh shit, I just have a really good point that I could have made there, and I didn't. Or like this, like we didn't like, I feel like this could have tied back together so nicely with this moment. But because we are doing this live, basically, it's not a blog post that we're writing or something like that. You can't go back and say, oh, let me insert this thing in there, in the past.

Matt: You can, you just have to rerecord basically the whole episode. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: We don't have the luxury of time.

Lauren: No. And also, I don't know that I don't necessarily want to do that anyway. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: That feels a little too scripted for me. But there have been some opportunities where I've sat there, and it's been after the fact that I've gone, oh, I kind of wasted my opportunity to talk about fanfiction, because talking about fanfiction in general didn't really do much. But towards the end of that episode, we started talking about the impact that fanfiction has had on the modern publishing industry and marketing practices in the publishing industry, and that could have actually been a really interesting episode that had value. But we didn't get there until the end, and it's unlikely that I'm going to get the opportunity to do that again. So that's definitely happened, where sometimes there have been episode topics where I've been like, oh, or we'll say something in passing. We've had a lot of episodes that come up that we say in passing in an episode, maybe it would be interesting to do a topic on this, and I kind of jot that down in my notes when I'm editing later, and then we do wind up circling back and doing a whole episode on that. But I think that there's not necessarily topics that we haven't talked about, because I think we've done a lot of covering broad areas. I think I would like to spend a lot of our upcoming episodes niching down further into some topics. So like I said, with that marketing episode where I was like, we covered a three month window of time in a seventy minute episode, or something like that. You know, I'd love to break that down further and niche down a little bit further into like here let's, let's break down the, the marketing steps and get a lot focused in on like how do we do this one thing? How do we do this one thing? How do we really like nail this?

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So that you could listen to like a several part series by the end of that? Be like, I am a book publishing marketing pro. So I think that's really more of what I would like to do more of, is like taking episode topics that we've done and saying, okay, let's niche down a step from here.

Matt: I'd like to go the opposite direction with those – 

Lauren: Really? 

Matt: Well, to me, the publishing component of it is, is so… it's negligible at this point these days, the actual publishing component of what we do, it's almost just terminology there for terminology sake. Like the goal is to get content out there into the world for sale. You know, in whatever fashion that might be, whether that's on your own website or through retail channels or whatever that might be, and publishing has just kind of become a catch all term. And talking about publishing in general, I just think is… I just think it's old hat at this point. The marketing components, yes, as they relate to sales. And I think that's one of the things I like about where we're at right now, in 2025 as an industry, and as people creating content, not just us. But is that ten years ago? Yeah, ten years ago, when I first came to Lulu, when we would go to events or talk to authors and creators, not many people ten years ago called themselves creators, especially in our space. But it doesn't matter. You know, when you brought up the idea of making money, it was almost like a bad thing to talk about. It was – 

Lauren: A little gauche? 

Matt: This is a craft. Yeah. Like, I'm not doing this to get rich. And I call bullshit. And I always have, like, if you want to make a career out of it, then yeah, you need to learn how to make money with your books. And if that means you need to learn things like how to be a better marketer. If that means you need to learn things like what a PNL sheet is, or how to set up your own Shopify store front, or how to deal with taxes, or how to incorporate yourself as an LCS corp, then you need to learn those things you know, and you should. Because until now, everybody's given, they've given all the control to retailers and publishers, really, in exchange for not having to do those things. And now that the tools and the education exists to help people do those things in a very, I think, easy way, there's just no excuse for it. So going in the direction of, again, talking about publishing and, and marketing as it relates to publishing, I'm not interested in, but I'm very interested in continuing to talk about marketing as it relates to selling more books, and marketing as it relates to building your brand as a creator, author, whatever you identify as. I don't care if you don't identify as either. If you're just an entrepreneur and you want to sell books because you love books and it's a way to make money, great. I'm here to help you. But I think that's where I would want to keep going. To me, publishing is just a term that we use. At least here. That's just how you get your content into our system. You publish it. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: You know what I mean? And yes, it can have broader connotations for some people, and that's fine. But what we're interested in ultimately is helping you sell more books, period. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And growing a business, not being chained to a cubicle every day because now you're making money from your content or content in general or whatever that might be.

[41:06] - Defining Our Professional Niche After Two Years of Publish & Prosper

Lauren: You know, I do think to that point, and to the point of like, how doing this podcast over the last few years has kind of changed how I approach a lot of stuff professionally and personally. I was spending time with my family over the weekend, and you know when you have those conversations with family and they're like asking you questions about your job in a way that you're like, you don't know anything about this industry? So I'm going to answer this question and you're not going to know what I'm talking about. And this was the first time really that I was talking to them about what I was doing at work. And I kind of realized halfway through the conversation that I was speaking about my job as a content marketer, and not about my job as being related to books or publishing. And that was an interesting perspective shift. I think that is accurate, and I think that's probably like a result of this podcast. And the result of like…thinking about things from the perspective of a book is a part of your content business, content brand, whatever. And let's talk about how to grow that as a whole.

Matt: Yeah. No, I think that's really astute. We were talking about this earlier. Like, you know, if somebody was to ask me, oh your cohost Lauren, what does she do? What is she, what does she do? What is – I could say a lot of things. I could say, well, she's a podcaster, or I could say, well, she's a marketer. I could say she's a publishing expert. I could say she's a content marketer. I could say she's a writer. You know, you could say all of these things. But at the end of the day, if somebody asked me what your expertise was really in, I mean, that is what I would probably say. What you just did too. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: All those ways that you could identify yourself professionally, again, speaking to your family or whoever, like we do, tend to gravitate towards currently where we're where we're feeling we're adding the most value into the ecosystem, which is teaching people how to make money from their content. How to build a business, you know what I mean? Not just like, oh, I'm going to write a book and I'm going to put it into KDP and I'm just going to let it do its thing. Like that is not being an active participant in publishing. That is not being an active participant and putting money into your bank account, so that you can one day not be a part of corporate America and just create for a living. That is not active participation at all. That is somebody who's just throwing spaghetti in a wall and see if it sticks, like. So I think that's – I would want to stay doubled down in the niche that we're in and just keep trying to add value there and finding more ways to help people sell their content and build businesses from it. Build businesses from it, I think is the, the end cap there.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt” Right? Sell content, make money, great. But build a business, longevity, you know, have a long tail plan, I think is the cool part.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah I think so too. 

[43:22] - The Future of Publish & Prosper

Lauren: So I think that, not just because Matt is my boss and gets the final say on episode topics, but also just in general. I do think that if you're listening to this now – if you're listening to it when it comes out, I think it's probably likely that we will keep going in that direction, as you're listening into year three. And if you're listening to it in the future and there are multiple episodes out since this one, let us know if we, if we stuck to our plan. Let us get through the rest of this year first and then, you know, once we hit 2026.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: We'll see what kind of episode topics we come up with for that.

Matt: We’ll see if we survive the holidays of 2025.

Lauren: We’ll see if we survive 2025 in general. But, you know, we are also coming up on another milestone, that is going to be towards the end of this year too, and that is going to be our hundredth episode. Our hundredth episode comes out the first week of December. Just crazy. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Did you think we were going to make it this far? You can be honest. It's okay.

Matt: Honestly, I thought it was a 50/50 shot, and I thought if we don't, it will be because of lack of two things. One, technical ability and two, measurement or metrics to show, like what we're doing is resonating, we have some reach, this is worth it to keep doing it. I didn't, I didn't have any doubt that you and I could go for a hundred episodes because, again, I already knew professional yapper, you, and myself. Like, as long as you get me talking about something I'm interested in, like, I'll just talk, talk, talk. So yeah, I wasn't too worried about that. I was worried about, you know, getting technical because neither of us knew anything about podcasting, cameras, equipment, microphones, lights, you name it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: We knew nothing about it. Zero. 

Lauren: And very much still learning.

Matt: Yes. But then again, also measurement and metrics and I wasn't sure if we'd be able to know… I did know that, you know, in general podcast statistics, right? Like, I think the statistic is that if a podcast makes it past, I want to say it's twenty or thirty episodes, you're already in like the top 10% of podcasts, because most don't make it past that. And so I thought to myself, literally, if we can make it past thirty episodes, I think we'll be okay. A hundred is still a surprise in a lot of ways, but. And then others, I thought well, you know, if we could get past these few things, I think we'd be all right. So, yeah. Now, if you said we'll be celebrating 300 episodes at some point, honestly, I might be a little surprised. But – 

Lauren: You and me both.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You and me both, for sure. Yeah no I'm probably on the same page. Honestly, I think it was like a… I think I knew we would make it to one year because I knew at the very least, like we were going to give it, like we weren't going to give up on it before a year.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And then, you know, maybe we're going to see is this, is this worth it to keep going or not, but once we hit that one year mark, I was like, oh, no, this is...we got this. We're going to keep going with this. So we'll see. We'll see what comes next after this one. So 300. That's a little ambitious. But what's another milestone you'd want to reach? Whether it's episode numbers or – 

Matt: So…

Lauren: – like a cool thing we would do or something.

Matt: Duolingo has taught me to push my expectations further than normal.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Like, it makes you commit to a streak.

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: And if you try to commit to a streak that's too low it’ll be like, oh come on, you can do... And so I'm, I'm learning Japanese and it's like okay, I'll commit to a ten day streak. And it's like you can do twenty. And so I'll commit to it. And then if you break the streak, of course, Duolingo shames you. Like your phone just keeps sending you these little messages. So normally I'd be hesitant to say 300 episodes, especially since we're just about to hit one hundred. But in my newfound love of Duolingo and its bullish tendencies, I'm going to say 300.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Well, if we make it to 300 episodes, we're going to go to Disney and record it there. That's my milestone.

Matt: Oh well, if that's the, if that’s the…then let me bump that down to 200. 

Lauren: I – Hey, I'm not saying that we can't go to Disney sooner.

Matt: Okay, alright. 

Lauren: But you set the milestone, so I'm setting the reward for the milestone.

Matt: Well, if the reward for the milestone is Disney, then I'm going to drop that down to 200.

Lauren: Not 101? 

Matt: Dalmatians.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Well, maybe that should be the number, yeah.  

Lauren: Perfect. 

Matt: No, we'll say 200. 

Lauren: Alright. 

Matt: I didn't say we couldn't up the cadence to two episodes a week to get to that 200 faster.

Lauren: I was going to say. Alright, we'll see about that.

Matt: Up the cadence and cut the time in half.

Lauren: That's the only way we'd be able to up the cadence, is if we cut the time in half.

Matt: Oh, cause you couldn't talk for an hour twice a week? Give me a break.

Lauren: No, I couldn't produce two episodes in a week. 

Matt: You're saying the quality would suffer.

Lauren: If they were an hour long. Yes.

Matt: Gotcha.

Lauren: If it was two hour long episodes every week, it would take me twice as long to do it.

Matt: All right, we'll stick with 200. 

Lauren: All right. 

Matt: If Disney's the reward.

Lauren: Sounds good.

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Alright. 

[48:02] - Wrap Up

Lauren: Well. So, thanks for sticking it out with us. Whether it's been for one episode or one week or one month or two full years. It's been fun.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next and where we keep going from here. And hopefully you guys are all along for the ride with us.

Matt: We'll see. We'll be counting. 

Lauren: Yeah. So like, subscribe, leave us a review, leave us a comment on Lulu’s social, or Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. Let us know what you want to hear more of in the future as we come up to year three of this podcast. And we'll be back next week with another new episode for y'all. 

Matt: Later. 

Lauren: Thanks for listening.