From Aerospace to Podcast Matchmaking Magic

Struggling to find quality podcast guests or break through the noise of endless pitches? Join Jim James as he interviews Alex Sanfilippo, founder of PodMatch, who's revolutionising podcast guest matching. Discover how this innovative platform solves the twin challenges faced by podcast hosts and potential guests: connecting the right people efficiently while maintaining high-quality interactions.

Alex reveals his entrepreneurial journey from aerospace to creating a platform that's matched over 100,000 podcast interviews. Learn how strategic pricing, careful guest vetting, and a commitment to serving podcasters have transformed PodMatch into a game-changing service. With insights into building a successful SaaS business, managing dual marketing strategies, and avoiding feature creep, Alex shares valuable lessons for entrepreneurs.

Whether you're a podcast host seeking exceptional guests or an aspiring interviewee, this episode offers a blueprint for podcasting success.

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Chapters

• 11:09 [Ad] Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
• 11:56 (Cont.) From Aerospace to Podcast Matchmaking Magic

Transcript

Jim James (00:01)
My guest today has built one of the largest podcast community matching sites in the world. He's got clients from all over the world, but he's going to talk to us today about how he's built that business. It's essentially a SaaS business and he's grown to over 10,000 paying members who not only want to turn up, but who adore what he and his wife have created for them. We're going to talk today to Alex Sanfilippo, who is the founder and CEO of a company called PodMatch,

and he's in Jacksonville, Florida. Alex welcome to the show.

Alex Sanfilippo (00:35)
Jim, thank you so much for having me. As a listener of your podcast, it's truly an honor to be right here with you on the microphone.

Jim James (00:41)
Well, and for those of you that don't know Alex, you know that's actually huge, huge kudos that I feel because Alex runs an amazingly professional and successful podcast matching platform. So he has access to all number of shows, but also some of the best guests in the world. So we can talk today with Alex about how he's managed to build PodMatch from a start,

to a very, very successful business. We're also gonna talk about the impact of podcasting on business, how he's built the brand globally of PodMatch. And he's gonna talk to us about feature creep, one of the great challenges for any of us that are building software related products and more things beside. Alex, tell us about PodMatch and what problems that you solve for people that either wanna be guests on shows or people that would like to have guests like you on their shows.

Alex Sanfilippo (01:37)
Yeah, sure thing. First and foremost, PodMatch is a software that connects podcast guests and podcast hosts for interviews. Simply put, I always like to say it works kind of like a dating app, but instead of connecting people for dates, it connects them for podcast interviews. So in this example, you have The UnNoticed Entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur who definitely has defined myself that way. And so the system would  us together. We would message inside the platform and we'd be able to start a conversation schedule. It handles mostly the administrative functions.

And that's one of the big things we wanted to do. We wanted to basically remove the friction between podcast guests and hosts when it comes to everything involved in the booking process, the production process, so that they could both spend more time behind the microphone, finding those right people, putting them together faster and more effectively. And that's the whole idea behind it. That's what we started out to solve. And to this day, it's what we continuously have gotten better and better and better at being able to solve.

Jim James (02:29)
And Alex is being very modest, but actually what they've just passed a new milestone, which is they've managed to get over, is it 100,000 interviews matched on the platform? Is that right, Alex?

Alex Sanfilippo (02:41)
Yeah, well, we actually track is episodes released that we can track through Podmatch . And the number is actually higher, but we know we can't track everything. So the ones that were, we're a hundred percent sure that a hundred thousand podcast episodes released have come from Podmatch at time recording. We just celebrated this. My wife and I, who's my business partner and some friends and stuff like that just celebrate it. Cause when we launched the big dream, like the pipe dream we had was like one day we'd love to help get a hundred thousand interviews out into the world because we know how much value

podcasting does to serve the world, make it a better place. So reaching that is just like, I'm like over the moon with it. Like it's just such a cool thing.

Jim James (03:17)
And you've made a huge impact on the industry, but in a relatively short amount of time, right? So you've got over 100,000 interviews, but also for anyone that would like to go to the website, podmatch.com, or if you're on my YouTube, you'll be able to see I'm screen sharing. You've created over 69 million listens. You've managed to get also, it says here, over 300,000 hours of administration saved. So you're really helping people on every side of the equation.

Tell us a little bit about the journey, Alex, of getting this business up and running as an entrepreneur along with your wife.

Alex Sanfilippo (03:53)
Sure, yeah. First and foremost, I guess the framework we use is a very simple entrepreneurial framework. Maybe not easy, but it is simple and that's to find an area of passion, which we did. I started a podcast, it was a podcast before I had a software struggling with this same problem, but I got into the community, step two, get into the community. I was speaking on podcasting stages, I'll never forget. I was actually in Orlando, Florida. It was the beginning of 2020, before the world shut down and there's about 2000 people present and I made a point to

actually do step three, which I'll share in a moment. But right when I got off stage, I was like, you know what? I got pen and paper. And then I did what step three is, which is to find a simple problem that that community is struggling with. So my passion, I was a podcaster, I was in the community, I was speaking to them, and then I had pen and paper. I wanted to find that simple problem. And the fourth step was to offer the fastest possible solution. So like, because when I was there,

I was like, whatever this problem is, I'm going to, I'm going to get this done really quick. And Jim, heard a lot of things that day and everyone was really nice. Like I didn't talk to 2000 people, but I talked to probably about 150 people after I was done speaking. And, a hundred of them said the same thing. There's a bunch of random things, but a hundred of them said, Alex, I'm having trouble finding the ideal guest or the right guest. And at the same time they're saying, and also it's a lot of work when I do find them. Now I've got hours of administrative work I've got to do and they've got to do all this stuff as well.

And especially back in 2020, there was really nothing that was helping with that. And me as a podcast myself, I was able to say, yeah, this is a real problem because like sometimes I dread starting the conversation with a new guest knowing this is going be a lot of work. what listeners don't understand is like, Jim, what you and I are doing now, and you have a great process. So this is not the case with, this interview, but most of the work is not done with what we're doing right now. The conversation itself is a very small portion. And we found back then it was about 10% of the work.

And so it was like, man, could we flip that somehow and make it 90% of it being adding value, serving together. And I don't know is that we've achieved that 90% mark, but we are always doing our best to get closer and closer to it. And that's sort of how the whole thing kind of became something was just like, again, being in that area of passion, getting the community, solving the simple problem as fast as we possibly could.

Jim James (06:04)
Alex, I can absolutely resonate with that because when I started the podcast in 2019, finding good guests was a lot of work. And then you'd get them onto the show, you need to do the research. And each guest had it written down differently or at all, in fact, right? So it made research for me as the host really difficult. What was the, if you like, the evolution of Podmatch? Because now it's a

of really a very fully featured, I'm going to call it a SaaS product at the risk of making a podcast platform seem like a, you know, a technology platform, but you really are providing software as a service to people like me as hosts and also to guests. Can you just take us through, what did you need to build as the minimum viable product? Because that's the hard part. You've taken the conversations with all those people in the room, the 100 people, you had to build something and get

the first people to adopt it. So really interested to hear what you built and how you managed to get those first people into the PodMatch platform.

Alex Sanfilippo (07:15)
Yeah, this was a process that I think that many entrepreneurs overlook because we have an idea. We kind of skip everything other than our idea, right? Like we're like, I've got an idea, I'm gonna do it and people are going to love it. The reality is most of us are entrepreneurs, very few people on the planet think like us, but we're on other entrepreneurs, we assume everyone thinks like we do, but the reality is what you may think is a great solution to a problem might not be to the common man, right? The person who's out there. And I'm not trying to put anyone down, it's just that might not actually speak to anybody.

And actually I want to go back quickly to reference one of your episodes, Jim, that I really enjoyed. It came out on October 17th, 2024. And it was with a guy named Maxwell Nee, I hope I'm saying his name right. And he was talking about mastering quiz funnels. Great episode. I encourage anyone checking this out, go back and please check that one out. But I wanted to highlight something that both of you said, and you talked about asking the right questions to who you ideally serve being the key. We have to ask those better questions. And so for me,

again, when that day that I got off stage and I was writing down what people were struggling with, I also wrote down their contact information. And for most of them was email address. A couple of them were phone numbers, right? But I had follow-up questions because that was the beginning of year 2020. And I officially had what I'd call the Podmatch idea on March 10th, 2020. So like it was a little bit of gap there, but what I was doing was asking them questions and kind of the way that, that, that you and Maxwell said it was that we have to like put ourself in their shoes.

And there's no better way to do that than actually having conversations with them. So I kept on asking questions along the way, just like, Hey, so having trouble finding guests, like, are you actually looking for guests? Like, how do do it now? Like, what's the process? Right? And is the problem people saying no, or is it just, you don't even know how to ask, right? Like I started really doing all this. And I think the idea really to me became solidified again, March 10th, 2020. And that's when I reached out to my wife, who's my business partner and one of the business partner who's actually a developer.

I knew that when I launched this, wanted to do it bootstrapped. Like we didn't want to raise capital because we weren't really sure what we had here. And so I reached out to him and just, he happened to have availability. He finished a project two days before I called him and he's like, yeah, man, I would love to do this. So we draft up documentation for us three being partners and we just started seeking to solve the problem that we really believe we honed in on. And so fast forward a few short months, June 15th, 2020, we launched.

And people were like, wow, that's so fast. And yes it is, but there are plenty of software solutions that can help you with that, including some no code solutions. We use some no code stuff to start, even though had a true developer on the team, we were just like, we can spin this thing up faster. So we started doing that. That was huge. And then the other little piece of the puzzle was we made sure we didn't do more than what we said we were going to do. I'm having trouble finding the ideal guest. We were only going to solve that problem, not also help them figure out their podcast branding.

Not figure out how to reach out better, not all these other things that yes, might be nice to have as add-ons later, but initially all I want to know is this solve your problem. And the last thing I'll share here about this, Jim, that I think was really funny is the day we launched, I emailed and texted all the people that were on that list, so was 100 people, and I asked them one question, does this solve the pain point that you told me you have? Does this solve the pain point you told me you have? And my very first response was, hey man, I noticed you don't have a logo. And I literally responded, thanks for that feedback.

Does it solve the problem that you told me you're struggling with? Because the logo is not what you told me you're struggling with. And other people were saying in typos saying it took too long to load, right? And I did my best to ignore all of that. Cause I'm like, I need to know first, does this solve your problem? Because I have no business making a logo, fixing copy, making it faster, getting more resources for it if it's not even solving a real problem. And so many of us want to say, I'll fix that for you. I'll get working on that. And yes, over time we did, we focused on continuous improvement. But

that is how we launched and how I think we launched successfully is because we truly found the problem, confirmed it and only did that one thing.

Jim James (11:10)
I love your clarity there. And also at the risk of saying, you had the twin qualities of courage and vulnerability, right? Because as an entrepreneur, you have to be courageous enough to believe in what you're doing. And as you say, not everybody has the entrepreneur's intuition, instinct for something new, but you also have to be vulnerable to let people take shots at it, right?

So, a credit to you Alex for that because it's really hard to have both of those qualities playing and you can't need to have them simultaneously, don't you? That, you know, I believe this is right, but tell me what's not right about it because the bigger picture is that you're on a mission to solve a bigger problem for everybody.

What did you do to solve the problem that there were not necessarily the guests in the platform? Because in any SaaS product, we have to have both the customers and the suppliers in the same platform. And you need to have them both to meet the demands of both really sort of stakeholders in that. How did you get that

plate spinning because you have to get them both going together or else one party is disappointed, Alex.

Alex Sanfilippo (12:38)
Yeah, Jim, I smile, I laugh a little bit this because I know a little bit about your background and you've done this before. So, I didn't know, I'm going to be real. Like I didn't even that, that did not cross my mind at all until a week after we launched and people were saying, Hey, this is great. There's really no guests here. And I was like, I need to go find guests. And a friend of a friend was a, a software, software as a service to a SaaS coach. And so he just agreed to get on a call with me. Didn't charge me for it. We were pre revenue, right? So was like, sure.

And I just explained to me, he goes, you're building a dual avatar system. My response was, huh? And he goes, well, your system only works if you have both people playing. He's like, you need the guests and the host. And if it's out of balance, it's not going to work. And my head, was like, huh? He goes, I would advise people to not build a system like that. He goes, but here we are, right? And so it was a very eyeopening moment, which I'm very thankful for, because it me realize, okay, I need to go find people that want to be guests as well. I can only, what I'm about to share here, I can only give credit

to God form a person of faith. And I have to just give credit where it's due. The timing was so perfect. I posted the first time ever about podcasting on LinkedIn. And I was formally at that point, I was a full-time guy in a corporate job working in the aerospace industry, which I loved. was a great career. And I only ever posted stuff about that, but I posted, hey, we launched this thing, PodMatch, we're looking for guests to get on there. And that was right when, I mean, the world had shut down completely.

And we had people reposting it, including two different billionaires, a bunch of very highly influential people just saying, I used to charge $100,000 to be on stage. I can't do that anymore. Join Podmatch if you want to interview me for free. They said something on those lines. so overnight, Jesse, my co-founder, he was, he called me freaking out after I posted this. It was 24 hours later. goes, dude, what did you do? I'm like, what? He goes, a thousand people joined the platform overnight. And he's like, you told me when we have a thousand people for like a year. He's like, I didn't build a foundation to hold this. He's like, this whole thing could

collapse at any moment, right? The things that people don't think about. But again, I had very little to do with that other than just sharing it and asking other people to as well. And I think the thing we got right once again was that we had that connection with that hundred people we started with and they were willing to go out and share it as well, which I have to imagine their influence was greater than mine. So somebody saw what they reshared and eventually brought people. But since that time, I've now been very strategic with making sure that we have the right amount of guests to host. As a matter of fact, we have two separate marketing engines.

And we're at a balance, we slow one down, we speed the other up. We make sure our efforts are always focused on wherever there is more of a need at that point.

Jim James (15:11)
That's very interesting. Thanks for introducing the term a dual avatar strategy, Alex. And Alex is referring to a business I built back in 1998 in Singapore called goevents.com, which is a search engine for business events. Another war story for another day because Alex is much more interested than mine. So Alex, now let's keep to that Podmatch . So you've talked then about having a dual marketing strategy.

Alex Sanfilippo (15:29)
I don't know about that, but we'll keep on going here.

Jim James (15:39)
So let's just drive into that if we can, because we talked about the dual avatar, you need to have them both and you've understood that they're both levers that need to run on the business. How have you then allocated your time, budget, how are they different to one another?

Alex Sanfilippo (15:59)
So we found at that point, and Jim, you started in 2019, so you know what I'm about to say is true. In 2019, you couldn't convince people to be a guest on a podcast. They were like, why would I do that? Or at least for me, that was the case. Like, why would I waste my time? And now fast forward many years, people were like, please, I will do anything to be on your podcast. Like, just name it. I'll show up in the middle of the night if you need me to, right? Like anything. And because people have now seen the power of what podcasting can provide as a platform. It's very quickly rising to the very top

of the best form of media exposure that anyone can get. And I don't take that or say that lightly. Like that's a big deal. And so now people have realized that we found that the marketing engine for bringing guests to the platform is a fraction of what we need to do to bring hosts to the platform. And hosts love it. They need to understand it first. And we're always getting better at that. So we find that our marketing efforts have to be a lot more. And also people quit podcasting really quick, which is sad given the power you have in podcasting.

But I'll just share a quick stat. If someone wants to see the data, podmatch.com forward slash report has all this data, but the likelihood of making it to eight episodes alone is you only have a 47% chance of making it that far. So only 47% of hosts make it to eight episodes. And so again, like if we're gonna market to hosts, we need to bring a lot more because they're gonna opt out. They're gonna leave pretty quick because they're gonna quit podcasting altogether. Guests with 10, 20, 30 years of experience don't just decide to give up on that experience, right? Like they're there to stay.

And so the marketing that we do to bring guests to the platform is so much less. So we basically kind of keep that running really low right now. And at a much higher pace, we bring hosts to the platform. And that's kind of been the strategy that we've taken.

Jim James (17:39)
It's really interesting, I suppose in that sense as well, hosts are the value providers. I don't want to put myself as a value provider in that sense, but we've got the outlet and the distribution, if you like, and the people that come on the shows are in the same way with traditional public relations, are the people that are looking to exploit in the best possible term, the distribution opportunities and the branding opportunities that podcasts get.

So Alex, I have over 800 episodes, so I don't know where that puts me in that. I'm an outlier. But you have got here that there are some 380,000 active podcasts. So it is still a very, very vibrant part of the media. And as you say, the landscape is growing for podcasts. But it's a credit to your timing as well, as an entrepreneur, that your intuition was that

Alex Sanfilippo (18:13)
We don't track the outliers. Sorry, Jim. You are in every sense of the word.

Jim James (18:38)
there are more and more people that want to be on podcasts, but also as you say, for hosts, the challenge is of finding good guests. I will ask you this question as a host, Alex, how do you help hosts to be on a platform that doesn't end up being a little bit overwhelming with people that are not really qualified to get onto a show, but go, good, I found that person and it's

easy, a one click send, which is good if you're a guest, if it's a one click send, but as a host, this becomes really, one of the reasons not to be on a platform, to be honest, because there's just the danger, if you like, of Podmatch spam. Tell us how you safeguard with Podmatch the time of the host.

Alex Sanfilippo (19:31)
Yeah, we're working more and more on this and this is such an important point. Last year when we started doing that report that I just called out, we started looking at how many people were trying to be guests versus how many people are trying to be hosts and kind of looking at like, what's the balance there? And at any given time, there's 44 to one ratio, 44 people looking to be a guest, one to every one host. And that number continues to climb. And that number is, I will call this very early beta numbers. We worked with a data company to help us with that and they even said like, hey,

we're going to be very conservative here because we're not sure on this. Right. So conservatively, we kind of believe it's that. so internally in Podmatch , this was over a year ago. We, we immediately made that priority one. How do we protect hosts from the overwhelm that they get? And any host I talked to, they're like, I get a hundred LinkedIn messages a week. I get Facebook messages. People are finding my phone number for somehow their email, like everything and through and through the like, we're overwhelmed. And so we wanted to do is safeguard people. Podmatch is an all paid platform.

There's no free tier. It's a paid membership monthly subscription for as much or as little as you want to do. And we designed it that way because it at the very least removes the people that are not serious. And I'm not saying that you're not, I'm not saying if you don't use Podmatch that you're not serious, but in general, someone who's just like, I want to get on a hundred podcasts. I don't know what I want to talk about. They're not about to pay even 20 some dollars a month to do that, right. And so we kind of did that, but in addition, we added a very simple pass button and we tell hosts use the pass button.

If somebody's reaching out, does not seem like the right fit, hit pass. And we've also been adding some new tools, AI driven on some of these, one of which shows a match alignment. So can tell you, hey, this is a good match or it's not, and here's kind of why, here's the synergies. So it takes even the 30 minutes of research to determine if I should pass or match with this person down to just reading a single paragraph to basically say yes or no. If you do say yes, it also gives you more information on how to do some of your research faster. But the idea is we wanted

Podmatch should become also a safe space for the host who, like you said earlier, like the platform is theirs. Like being a podcast guest, yes, there's a lot of authority that comes with that, but being a host, I mean, the platform, like think about that. Like you are the gatekeeper to listeners ears. Like that is a gift and something to not take lightly. So you have to be very careful with it. And we want to make sure that we're helping hosts make that careful decision as fast as possible while them not experiencing overwhelm.

Jim James (21:50)
Alex, I think there's a couple of points in there that I'd like to pick up on. One is that as a host, that's actually really reassuring that as it's paid for, that's a natural sort of gatekeeper to the kind of quality of people that go on there because there are other platforms that are free and frankly, you just get whoever wants to get on for free and they're not necessarily qualified. So I think that's one part, just speaking as a host, very reassuring. So thank you for that.

But the second is as an entrepreneur, you've used pricing as a strategy to differentiate Podmatch as well, haven't you? Were you worried when you took that decision that you would lose customers? Because often people think they've got to offer things for free in order to attract customers. And there's a really good body of work around the impact of pricing on brand perception, Alex.

As an entrepreneur, I'd love to hear your thought process and the anxiety you may or may not have had when you went down an all pricing strategy.

Alex Sanfilippo (22:58)
Jim, the decision was whiteboarded out across multiple whiteboards, weeks on end, which I'm typically like a quick decision maker, but I was stressed about it. I was like, I think this is the right move, but I don't think I want to do it. I can't even remember what movie this from. There's a quote that says, I know what I need to do, but I don't know if I have the courage to do it. And that's how I felt. I was like, I know that this is gonna be right, but like, I know we're gonna cut the company size and potential size in half and we're gonna have to work a lot harder. I just knew that that was the reality of it.

And I'll never forget the day we flipped it on, like we turned on the engine. I did a post about that point. I had gotten very good about posting about Podmatch , about posting out podcasting. And so I just shared transparently why we decided to do it. And I don't remember everything that the post said years ago at this point, but I just remember sharing like the heart of it. Like, Hey, we, we get that there's some really serious people out there that, are going to like this and some that won't, but we just know that we're going to do better at serving people in this way. I kind of position it that way. And

the thing is that same day we had more signups than we even had at the beginning. And we had people emailing in saying, didn't, wasn't sure if I wanted to join, but now that it's a paid platform, like I knew that this was going to be, some people call it like the country club, right? Like I wanted to, I wanted to be in that. I wanted to be part of it because of who I'm going to have access to. And that didn't stay. It didn't like the trajectory of everyone signing up didn't happen. There was some like newness, some serious people started showing up, but in general, it's exactly what I thought it would be. It's an uphill battle. It takes a lot more work, a lot more effort.

But I will tell you this, because we didn't move anyone to paid who initially joined during that beta phase before we were like all paid. Those people stayed for free up until a year ago, 80%. We track it 80% of support tickets, complaints, questions came from the small percentage that was on it for free versus the paid. And it just confirmed it. Like, hey, if you're serious, you don't complain about how you didn't like the guests microphone who came on, right? Like if you're paying for it, you know that's not

our responsibility. Like that's on you to vet, right? And so we just have once again confirmed that this is the direction we want to go in. We're not for everybody. We're for a set group of people. We attract and repel very well, more than we'd like to, but it's working really well for us.

Jim James (25:11)
That's wonderful. Now, will just say, so Alex's standard guest is a $29 a month, which is accessible for anyone that wants to be on podcasts to pay sort of $300 a year. It's less than half you'd pay an agency to book you on one show, right? And you get massive amounts of value from being inside the Podmatch . Alex, let's move on because I'm loving your story because as a podcast host myself, I'm really fascinated what you've done.

But I also know I need to keep moving on the conversation. Let's talk about the branding and the marketing of PodMatch. You've talked about dual avatar strategy, but I also think that you've had a bit of a sort of a dual brand strategy when it comes to your own personal brand and PodMatch. I'd love to hear how you've built the two together.

Alex Sanfilippo (26:04)
Yeah, I've never been like a huge social media guy. I had them all and I just never like posted a whole lot. Given my former job being in aerospace, there wasn't a whole lot to post. That was a pretty, I liked it, but it was a boring gig overall. Right. And so when I came into this at first, I was just kind of using all of my social media platforms as just updates on Alex's life. Here I am at the pool here. I made the beach here. I am doing right. Like all those things, which there's nothing wrong with it all, but anytime I would post about something podcasting related,

that wasn't like an ad, like new episode out, right? Like those don't necessarily do super well, but it was like, Hey, we just released this really cool update on Podmatch . I'm super excited about it. And then those posts always did so much better. And so I decided to invest in meeting with a, a coach, social media. I was like, hey, why are these posts doing so much better than like the fun picture of me and Alicia at the beach? Like, I don't get it. And she's like, well, because algorithms know that's what you do. And that's what people are like, that's what they're looking for from you. And that, that simple shift

really taught me that, I can work in my personal stuff, but it always has to be from the context of being a podcast host, guest, or podcast service provider. Educating in the space, whatever that might be, it needed to be from that. And since then I've gotten really good about every week. think it's a discipline for me at this point. And I do plan some of it out, but I'm disciplined to know that like when we reach a hundred thousand interviews released through PodMatch, I'm doing a post about that. And I try to just show up as simply as possible. Like I don't do any big like,

I don't know, like super well thought out posts that some copywriter helps me with or highly curated professional picture. I literally grabbed my wife's phone because she has a better phone than me. Did like a selfie video, pointed at the screen because I had it up on the screen and said, thank you everybody. And hundreds, if not thousands of engagements. As a matter of fact, that was posted this week at time of recording. And we had more people sign up for Podmatch that day than we've had. It was like a record day in the last eight months, which the week that we're recording this

where most of our clientele is, that should not be happening because it's a holiday week here. And so the fact is like that type of thing has just worked very, very well for us. I show up as transparently as I can, share from a place of leading the value and serving other people. And it is just, I love it. And it's actually made me actually enjoy social media because it comes, it feels very natural to the work that I do.

Jim James (28:20)
Yeah. And then it's a platform for amplification of your authentic self, isn't it, Alex, rather than it being a fabrication of a brand that you think you should create. And you can't see it, but Alex has got a very nice shirt saying, lead with value as well. Alex, we're drawing to a close, but I will ask you for a mistake that you've made from a marketing perspective. And then I'm going to ask you for a number one tip as an entrepreneur. So first of what would be a marketing

Alex Sanfilippo (28:26)
Well said, yes.

Jim James (28:49)
mistake that you feel that you've made with PodMatch or something we could learn from. I'm not trying to embarrass you in any way, obviously.

Alex Sanfilippo (28:56)
Yeah, no, I didn't get that vibe, Jim at all. I was like, are you trying to call me out? No. You know, the tip I'll give you and the mistake that I made, this is a marketing mistake. This is a product development mistake. This is an entrepreneurial mistake that I think so many of us fall into. I had the mindset that more features were going to be what grow our company. And from a marketing standpoint, I'm like, man, all my posts are doing super well. If we add a new feature and I can post about that new feature, it's going to go viral every single time. That has never once happened for us.

Jim James (28:59)
Okay, great.

Alex Sanfilippo (29:26)
Not once, other than the initial launch, we have never had a true viral post that was around anything that we added to the software. Now, again, a hundred thousand people have released interviews. That's not a new feature. That's just a milestone we reached that people really grabbed onto and said, you know what, this is real. I need to be part of this as well. But when I say, Hey, now you can do this on Podmatch . It never performs as well. And as entrepreneurs, that sounds so wrong, at least maybe to me and Jim, like you, you have achieved

so much more than I have. Maybe you have this mind that's more conditioned now, but in my, my mind, I'm like, okay, that makes no sense. Like if I release a feature, it should do more. And so the, the, the, what I really want to share is like the lesson that I learned is don't say we need to create more and do more. Instead, you need to learn to better explain that initial problem that you solved. Explain that initial problem better and just keep on diving to that more and more. The initial problem we solved was connecting podcasts, guest notes for interviews.

We announced we're helping a hundred thousand podcast episodes get released because of that problem. People grab onto that more than being like, now you can do this in here. And so we have to keep that in mind and features will cost cost you internally more than anything else. I'm not saying don't add features, just be very mindful with them. Go back to the initial thing, talk to the people using it, say, are you actually struggling with this? Knowing that no announcement is going to be as big as your initial launch ever, right? And, you just need to be very mindful of that. The mistake that I have made time and time again, and I believe it's behind me now

but was just to say, Hey, Jesse, my co-founder, who's the developer, we need more features, Alicia, we need more features. And I've just learned that that is completely wrong. And again, it no sense to even say, but that is the reality of it.

Jim James (31:03)
You know, it's tempting to think that we need to keep adding more things, but as an entrepreneur, we actually have to shift, don't we, from product development to market development and to market explanation education. Because although sometimes that feels an uncomfortable place to move into, doesn't it, Alex? But look, what an amazing transformation from working in aerospace to running a hugely successful platform that brings together podcast hosts and podcast guests. And I love that you've built in so much

Alex Sanfilippo (31:18)
yeah, definitely.

Jim James (31:32)
integrity into the system as well with the the paywall. And then you're bringing together really great quality. And we haven't had a chance even to talk about the money that Alex is being able to pay to podcast hosts. So he's actually got an amazing and amazing platform. I do encourage you to check it out. Alex, what would you suggest people read or listen to that you find gives you wisdom?

Alex Sanfilippo (32:01)
Yeah, I wanna call out a book specifically that I think goes well with our conversation here. It's titled The Mom Test. It's by a guy named Rob Fitzpatrick. This book teaches you how to ask better questions, how to formulate them in a way that will actually get you a true answer versus just, yeah, sure, that sounds good. And he calls it The Mom Test. I'll give you a very quick example here. My mom loves me. This is Alex's example. My mom loves me. If I told my mom, I'm gonna shut down PodMatch, I'm done. Instead, I'm gonna create an umbrella that doesn't block out the sun or rain. What do you think?

She would say, honey, you're the best, you're gonna do so good, everything you touch is super successful. If I ask my mom that same question this way, hey mom, what would you think of an umbrella that doesn't block out the sun or the rain? She would say, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. It's the same question I just removed myself from the equation, giving her the opportunity to answer it honestly. The Mom Test is a great book that teaches you how to do that with your future clients, your current clients, your customers. It helped me so much along the way to learn to ask really great questions.

Jim James (32:59)
And today really, really great questions in really, really amazing answers. Alex Sanfilippo, founder of PodMatch. If you want to find out more about you, where can they find you?

Alex Sanfilippo (33:10)
Everything I do is at podmatch.com forward slash free, podmatch.com forward slash free. And that'll give you five quick wins you can consume in less than five minutes. I don't want your email address or anything, whether you're a guest host, aspiring guest or aspiring host, there's something there for you. And again, that's podmatch.com slash free. But Jim, thank you for having me. It's truly, truly been an honor to be here with you today.

Jim James (33:29)
The honor is all mine and a really huge amount of respect and also gratitude because as someone that's in this space, I really appreciate what you're doing to move podcasting into a more professional era and also helping people like me get very well qualified guests. And so you are solving the problem today that you planned on solving all the way back in 2000. So thank you Alex for all of your work and for joining me on the show.

Alex Sanfilippo (33:56)
Yeah, thanks again, Jim. I appreciate it.

Jim James (33:58)
One small thing, I said that Alex was answering great questions, which I didn't mean, because that was being a little bit arrogant that I was thinking my own questions were good. I meant that he was answering everything with amazing responses. So a credit to Alex and a quick kill out for myself. If you've enjoyed his amazing answers, you will enjoy PodMatch even more. So do check it out, podmatch.com. And if you've enjoyed the show, do please leave a review on the player that you use

and share it with a fellow UnNoticed Entrepreneur because we don't want anyone to get left behind. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.