Celebrity Podcast Vs YouTube Cats - Which Earns Most?
Genevieve Hassan has achieved what many podcasters and content-makers dream of. She has built her content creation into a full-time concern.
Genevieve Hassan’s launched her award-winning podcast in July 2020
“I watch every YouTube interview they’ve ever done, I’ll listen to other podcasts, I’ll read every interview... I want to know everything about them because I don’t want them to repeat what they’ve said to other people.”
Listen in your podcast feed:
Genevieve’s show, Celebrity Catchup: Life After that Thing I Did, launched in Summer 2020, at a time when much of the world was in the grip of the Covid pandemic.
Podcasting saw a surge in interest at that time as workers in many industries were furloughed and brands pivoted hard to digital channels to continue to deliver services and stay relevant.
But Celebrity Catchup was not just a Covid project. The show quickly found an audience among nostalgic devotees of pop culture keen to get a glimpse into the lives of celebrities from the 1980s.
A distribution deal with Virgin Atlantic cemented the podcast’s success and put the show in front of a captive audience.
The Content Mavericks Club Newsletter
Get bonus content, enjoy early access to live events, and be first to know about featured guests.
Genevieve Hassan is a former senior BBC News entertainment journalist who interviewed hundreds of celebrities for more than a decade.
Stars she has spoken with include A-listers such as Chris Pratt, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Keanu Reeves, Mila Kunis, Justin Timberlake and Kristen Wiig.
She also once interviewed comic book legend Stan Lee in a lift...
Genevieve features on The Content Mavericks Club podcast, hosted by Creative Kin CEO Jason Caffrey
-
Get The Content Mavericks Club Newsletter to stay updated.
YouTube Cats Vs Celebrity Podcast - Which Earns Most?
===
[00:00:00] Intro - Meet podcaster and YouTuber Genevieve Hassan
---
[00:00:36] Jason: Welcome to the Content Mavericks Club, your go to for actionable insights from featured content experts that help you hit your content marketing goals. I'm Jason Caffrey, CEO of podcast agency Creative Kin, And today's guest has built her independent podcast into an award winning full time concern.
Genevieve Hassan is the creator and host of Celebrity Catch Up, life after that thing I did. We're going to unpack Genevieve's journey from first idea to landing a repeat deal with Virgin Atlantic, no less, to carry her podcast on its in flight entertainment. So let's meet Genevieve and get into it. Genevieve Hassan, Thank you so much for joining the Content Mavericks Club. it's so lovely to see you again.
[00:01:27] Genevieve: Thank you for having me Jason. It's been a long time since we last spoke.
[00:01:31] Six Seasons of Celebrity Catchup - show audience and reach
---
[00:01:31] Jason: It has. And Genevieve and I used to work together for a short period on the when we were both journalists at the BBC. So that's how we know each other. And Genevieve you've had a journey of leaving the BBC and going on to create and present Celebrity Catch Up: Life After That Thing I Did.
And I believe you just finished season six. Is that right?
[00:01:55] Genevieve: Yes, it's been a long road But yeah finally season six is in the can and now I have my much needed break before season seven starts again in the summer
[00:02:04] Jason: How long are your seasons and how many do you work through in a year?
[00:02:07] Genevieve: So each season is nine guests. Apart from this past season, which only had eight, purely because I went on holiday and I didn't have enough time to get another person.
[00:02:17] Jason: Outrageous.
[00:02:18] Genevieve: I know, it was already booked, it had been booked for a year, so I couldn't do anything about it. And uh, episode is every fortnight. And then in between seasons, I have about a three month break Because it's really difficult trying to make a celebrity interview podcast when you are not a celebrity. And you have no funding or marketing budget. So trying to book guests is, a struggle, not gonna lie.
And episodes go out once a fortnight because It would be impossible to do once a week, and it needs to be seasonal, because literally, like, most seasons, I'm chasing my tail, every two weeks, trying to book someone, then manage to schedule it, record it, edit it, get it out on time, and it's quite frantic when you're a team of one doing the job of about seven people, so yeah, I think I've got quite a good balance of how I've managed to do it.
I've gotten better at cutting myself some slack I mean, every season I have a bit of a wobble about why am I doing this? Oh my God, this is so difficult. I need to stop doing it. It's not worth it. But I've gotten better at giving myself a bit more rope about, there's only so much I can control. And if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.
[00:03:27] Jason: You are bringing people on regularly. People are coming onto the show who's the audience for it? I mean, it strikes me that you've got a very Actually really quite a specific audience because Celebrity Catch Up is, I think the strapline is that it's unashamedly nostalgic, right? It's talking to celebrities who probably had their time somewhere around the 1980s, is that fair?
[00:03:52] Genevieve: It's 80s, 90s and noughties. So the audience are pretty much people who would have grown up within that period of time. So typically sort of 38 percent is age 35 to 44, 33 percent is 45 to 59 only 14%, 28, 34, I guess they're like the uh, really trendy kids who know about the 80s because that's retro. So it's kind of a pretty specific target market, which also makes things difficult for me because. Especially towards the upper age of my target, typically aren't really the people who are into podcasts, who know what podcasts are, how to get podcasts, where to get them from. So there's already a bit of a barrier to get them on board, because while they may be fans of the people that I'm speaking to, they just don't understand the means for how to actually listen.
[00:04:47] Winner of Best Film & TV Podcast and Independent Podcast of the Year
---
[00:04:47] Jason: I was speaking in a previous episode to Adam Bowie, he's another BBC body but he also unpacks all of the listening data when it comes down from RAJAR and others. And he was making the point that the podcast audience, the older audience is growing, because yes historically we've had this younger audience, but people of my generation who were early adopters have now become older. the audience is growing. And all of that hard work, Genevieve, I'm really happy to say is, paid off in a number of ways. And you got acknowledged didn't you last year in winning a couple of Awards, Tell us about that.
[00:05:31] Genevieve: Yes - actually still a bit in shock about it. But yeah , the podcast recently won Podcast of the Year at the Independent Podcast Award as well as Best Film and TV, so my mantlepiece .
now has two shiny awards sitting on it. I didn't even know that there was a Podcast of the Year award. I had entered myself for best film and TV. So when I won that, I was like amazed. I was like, Oh my God, I won this award. And then at the end they announced, and we've got this like last award Podcast of the Year.
And I was sort of turned to my husband. I thought, Oh, that's weird, I didn't even know there was this award and they ran down the nominees again and the nominees for Podcast of the Year is all the category winners from the awards. They had a screen up on stage where they listed all the winners and my name wasn't there.
So I was like, Oh, okay. I guess they've just. forgotten, they've just left me off, didn't bother including me on this list of winners. But it turned out they actually just forgot to add me on because I was the winner. So then when they announced me, I was like, my jaw hit the floor. I couldn't believe it. I'm so incredibly proud to have won it and I look at them, the awards on the mantelpiece and still think, oh, and then every now and again, my husband will say to me, did you know that you won podcast of the year? I was like, Oh, I did, didn't I? So yeah, it's quite nice, especially because, coming from the BBC, I was there for 15 years as a journalist I joined straight out of university, and I feel like I've been indoctrinated in some way. So coming out into the real world is a bit of a shock.
But I have a lot of professional pride coming from the BBC as a BBC journalist. And I know when I started the podcast, some of my former colleagues were a little bit snooty about me starting the podcast, they looked down on me a little bit of like, oh, well, you're playing at being a journalist now. This isn't a proper thing. It's not a legitimate thing. It's just like a hobby for you. It's not something that we take particularly seriously. And gradually over time, quite a lot of my episodes end up in the press. I get national press coverage for things that my guests have said. And on occasion, the BBC News website has covered those stories, which, I feel like a bit of validation for that, but then to win the podcast of the year as well is a bit of a like a,, ha, see, what I am doing is worthy.
People are recognising it. It's not just a hobby. It's not a bit of fun. It is legitimate. And people do find value from it.
[00:07:55] Booking Guests - Who Does Genevieve Bring On To Celebrity Catchup?
---
[00:07:55] Jason: I've come from a similar position. I spent a long time as a journalist at the BBC. And, for all of the good things about the BBC, I'm not sure that were always really good at congratulating each other for what we achieved there. So brilliant for you to win these awards. And, um, Let's talk about some of your guests .
I listened recently to Peter Ostrom is - that how you pronounce his name - who was the child actor in the first Wonka movie.
And I scrolled right the way back to, and you're going to have to help me out with the actor who played Zammo
[00:08:35] Genevieve: Lee McDonald.
[00:08:36] Jason: Lee McDonald. Thank you, in Grange Hill. Give us a bit of an overview of the range of people that you've had on.
[00:08:42] Genevieve: Yeah. So there is quite a broad range and I, I will admit, I think I have a bit of a PR problem on the podcast because people assume it's a place for has beens to be on because you know, I started off with Lee McDonald from Grange Hill, Chesney Hawkes, Right Said Fred, Yaz, those kind of people Mr. Motivator, Jet From Gladiators. People think, you know, oh, you know, they're has beens, so I wanted to try and move away from that.
The original concept for the podcast was I was watching an episode of Top of the Pops 1991 at two o'clock in the morning, one weekend in
2020, and Martika came on and I was watching, I thought, wow, Martika, I wonder what happened to her? Went onto Google, tappy, tappy, find out, and then I thought, oh, this could be a good idea for a podcast of finding out what happened to people who, kind of like one hit wonders, those people that you remember. And then from that, it morphed into the more life after that thing I did. So nostalgia is the hook to get people in to listen. And then we move on to life after that thing I did. And the people I speak to, they may have had their heyday with that one thing that you remember them for, they may have left the business. They may have had a meteoric rise to success after. They may be somewhere in the middle, but that thing, that's the nostalgia thing inextricably changed their life in one way or another. So we reminisce and then we talk about their life after.
So on one end of the spectrum, I've had people who have left the business after, like Zammo from Grange Hill.
Lee's story is amazing. He was training to be, he was a boxer while he was on Grange Hill and he was so good that they thought that he was going to be an Olympic contender. And then he was driving in East London in the eighties, back in the days when seatbelts weren't compulsory. There was a police chase, police car was chasing a criminal getting away crashed into Lee's van. Lee went through the windscreen. He suffered terrible brain injuries, which affected his memory. And not only could he not remember lines anymore to not act, he was told he could never box again. Two things that he loved, he was told in that one moment, he can't do anymore.
And he's a locksmith now. And he's still, you know, trying to get back into acting and all that kind of stuff. And people don't know that about him. Same with pop stars that I speak to, like, Bewitched and Five and Steps and all that kind of thing. Yeah. People don't realize how they are at the mercy of record companies.
And if you, you may have one great album and then the next one comes out. And if the first one doesn't hit top 20 record companies think that's it, we're going to drop you. And then what do you do once you've been dropped? You can't release any more music unless you've got a record company. Once you get over a certain age in the music industry, they're not interested in you anymore.
And then I have other end of the spectrum of people that I've spoken to, like, Dexter Fletcher. We had a press gang episode where we reminisced about that. And, you know, Dexter Fletcher has a rollercoaster career where he disappeared for a bit and he had some personal troubles and then he came back and now he's like a massive director, you know, directed Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, The Offer, he's everywhere now.
But someone that I'm very blessed to have, I'm fortunate that he came on the podcast was last year, Jerry Springer guested on the podcast, and it turned out, sadly, to be his last broadcast interview before he died. I did think he looked quite frail when I spoke to him. but I just kind of thought, well, you know, he's getting on a bit .
With hindsight, when you listen back to the episode now, his, birthday had been a couple of weeks before and I said, happy birthday. What did you do? And he said, well, I was just happy to make it to 79. . And he died a couple of weeks later and he had pancreatic cancer. So he knew full well that he was sick. So it's particularly sad listening back to the episode now, knowing that he knew.
I feel really honoured that my podcast was the last broadcast interview that he did and I'm really glad that it was a platform for him to show the kind of person that he was. I think he was just tarred with this brush of he hosted a trashy show, so he was a trashy person and he wasn't at all.
He was just, he was a really, really nice, humble man
[00:12:49] How To Prepare Interviews And Get The Best from Podcast Guests
---
[00:12:49] Jason: Do you think Genevieve, that it's part of the popularity of Celebrity Catch Up that you do get behind that - I don't want to call it a veneer - behind the thing that your guests are known for.
[00:13:05] Genevieve: So I have quite a tough job, where I have five minutes before the interview gets going, where I provide IT support in making sure that their microphone is on and everything's working, and also I have to build a rapport very, very quickly so that they will open up and tell me things that they don't say anywhere else. And it's a particular skill I have. And that is how I end up with quite a lot of press for the podcast, because they tell me things they've never said anywhere else. And so it becomes a news line.
And I think one way that I'm able to do that is because I don't film our interviews. We can see each other because it's on zoom, but it's visible to see on people when people say, oh, is this being filmed? And I say, no, we're not filming it. It's just audio, you can yawn, stretch, pick your nose, scratch your bum, no one's ever going to see it.
And you can visibly see them go, Oh, God, thank God, you know, and then they relax. They forget that they're being recorded. They think it's just a conversation between two people. So I manage to get their trust in that way.
And I share things about myself in a way that also builds trust and rapport as well in the buildup. And then the other thing I do is that I meticulously research every single person that I speak to obsessively. Like there's probably, yeah,
[00:14:27] Jason: They really notice as Genevieve, I hear your guests say that, wow, you've really done your research.
[00:14:33] Genevieve: I spend probably like 24 man hours. researching everyone I speak to, I, watch every YouTube interview they've ever done, I'll listen to other podcasts, I'll read every interview, because I want to know everything about them because I don't want them to repeat what they've said to other people. So I learn everything there is to know so that I can ask a question that hasn't been asked before or rarely gets asked before. And I also phrase questions in such a way where they're very information heavy. So I'll say a lot of background about stuff and then I'll have a question at the end of it. And I purposely frame my questions this way because it means that it forces them to say something different other than what I've said.
I think, well, I know this story. They're probably going to tell these stories. So if I just. briefly mentioned them, they can't talk about it again. They have to say something different and that forces them into giving me new information.
So I think strategy that I employ when I speak to people has served me quite well in being able to gain trust and get them to be a bit more, open and honest than they might otherwise be.
[00:15:40] Jason: That is fascinating on so many fronts, because something I have been in conversation with on my social channels and other places is just about the difference between trying to get a fast win and actually doing the hard yards as you're describing. the time And investment that you put in gives you the result that nobody else is going to get.
[00:16:06] Genevieve: And also the guests, as you say, the guests notices, they comment, they'll say, well, you know, wow, you've done your research. And I think they appreciate the fact that I've done the research, which means that they then give me a bit more. They don't feel like, oh, this is a boring interview. I'll just repeat the same thing.
[00:16:21] A No-Video Podcast Promotion Strategy
---
[00:16:21] Jason: I wanted to ask you about a little bit more about not using video, because this is another subject that I'm debating on LinkedIn with other content makers and content marketers. And I'm just really fascinated with it because when Gen, we booked this, and I hope you don't mind me saying this when we booked this interview and you came back to me and said, Hey, I just don't do video.
And as you pointed out, Gen, even reviewing your Instagram feeds or something like that, there's no video of you at all. And there's, there's very little images of yourself actually. And I think there's just a very big assumption around the need to record video and approach social promotion or any promotion in a given way. So I really like to hear from you where that came from and what you did instead.
[00:17:17] Genevieve: So, I hate having my photo taken. Like, literally hate it. It's the worst thing in the world for me. My wedding day was particularly traumatic. Can't stand it. And I hate looking at myself in photos.
There are literally probably four different pictures of me that exist on the internet where you can see my whole face. One is the one that I've given to you that will be used for promotion for this. I have another picture of me with Zammo from Grange Hill in a hairdressing salon where he did my hair. This is a long story.
[00:17:50] Jason: I, I love that. And there's 25 percent of your self image portfolio. I'm like with Zammo in a hairdresser all day long. That's brilliant.
[00:18:02] Genevieve: There are a couple of videos that exist of me online that are from my BBC days. So in one video, I am arm wrestling Chris Pratt. there's another video of me where I'm playing foosball with Conan O'Brien. I beat them on both occasions. I'm very competitive. otherwise, mostly you will only have heard my voice and whenever I have pictures of myself on my Instagram page, you will only ever see my eyes.
When I won my awards, the awards cover half my face, you see my eyes. I just don't like being seen.
[00:18:35] Virgin Atlantic distribution - winning and renewing a commercial contract.
---
[00:18:35] Jason: Fair enough. And just in terms of what the promotional journey then of building the show, because you've got this Virgin Atlantic distribution agreement, which has been renewed, I think at least once, maybe twice. And I'd like to
[00:18:50] Genevieve: Three, times now,
[00:18:51] Jason: Three times I mean, it's amazing. but you must have actually got to uh, a point that you could make Virgin Atlantic sit up and take notice of the show. What were the strategies, the tactics that you Deployed in the absence of the very well worn route of putting some video up on instagram
[00:19:10] Genevieve: So instead of having video, I started with audiograms and then the general consensus was all audio audiograms are bad. People don't pay any attention to them.
So I thought, okay, what can I do that makes them a bit more interesting and so now I make little animated. videos. I say animated, the loosest possible term animated. I have the audio playing and I make funny little animations with emojis that go with what the person's saying.
So yeah, that's my strategy around video. Plus also, I feel like the podcast is not about me. It's about the guest and I'm not a celebrity. People don't know who I am. I'm not important. They are the one that's important and I would rather put the focus on them rather than me. So how we got to Virgin, I approached them and I pitched them.
It was 2021. So we're in the middle of COVID and I approached them because I fly a lot with Virgin. So I've been quite loyal to the brand just through. I have a credit card and I have miles, so I use them to fly Virgin. So I like the brand. I like the in flight entertainment and I thought we were a good fit in terms of being fun, kind of a bit rockstar.
I've got celebrities, like sort of the nostalgia being a bit innovative. Virgin very much saw themselves as this challenger brand to British Airways, this upstart come in and try and disrupt the market. And I kind of see myself in those same kind of terms as in like, I do a celebrity interview podcast, but I'm not a celebrity.
And as far as I know, there has been no other celebrity interview podcast hosted by a non celebrity that has been number one in the Apple podcast charts in this country, other than me. So, yay for me! I know, when I was like beating Strictly Come Dancing in their podcast, I was like, really? How has this happened?
So, yeah. it took quite a long time from first approach.
Because I thought, you know, like, who, who do I approach? And then I had to stick on my investigative journalist hat to find who the right person would be to approach because I had no clue. And then finding who could possibly be the right person.
I then had to figure out their email address, and I sent emails to seven possible different email addresses. It was like firstName, surname, first name, surname, initial surname,
sent them all and then got six bounce backs and one didn't. And I was like, right, that's their email address.
And then I didn't hear anything back. Followed it up after a month, and then they came back saying, you know, sorry, a lot of us are on furlough. No one's flying at the moment. You know, maybe we can have a conversation later. But I kept pushing it and I said, you know, I, would really like to be on and maybe, okay, maybe I'll say this.
Initially they said, it's COVID, we're not flying. We have no budget for podcasts at the moment. And I said, I understand. And they said, maybe come back next year and we can have a conversation. So I said I would be willing to give you six episodes of my podcast for free because the exposure to be on your plane is worth more to me than the money.
And they thought hmm, this is an interesting proposition. And they agreed. So for six months from October 2021, I gave them six episodes and they were on the plane. It was the only podcast that was on the plane, because they had no budget. So great for me, because I had captive market. And You know, they pay me now, which is nice, but you know, if I, I think maybe if I'd waited and said, okay, well, I'll wait until next year when there is a budget and all that kind of thing, then maybe I wouldn't be here now.
And I don't charge people to listen to it anyway. So I'm happy to give them six episodes if it means it gives me more exposure on the plane.
Virgin has 5 million passengers a year. So to have 5 million people listening to my podcast, great. And in return for not getting any licensing money for that, I was promoted in the in flight magazine, which is like gold dust, I'm told according to other publicists, because again, captive market.
So I had like a full page feature in the magazine and then I'd get promoted really highly on the in-flight entertainment system on like, as soon as you start it up, it would be like Vera, that's the name of the system. Vera loves this and it'll be like some films and my podcast.
For me, that was worth so much more than a monetary value for six months. Then we renewed the deal and they were like, we'd like to pay you money now, we've got money. I was like, okay, yay, give me some money. Yeah.
[00:23:33] Teddy and Sushi - The 7 million-view Cat YouTube Channel
---
[00:23:33] Jason: Can we rewind Genevieve to starting I mean, you've given that, little story about how the seed came to you. Were you still at the BBC at that time, or had you moved on from there?
[00:23:45] Genevieve: No, I'd left I left BBC in august 2017 and then I had like a five month break, because when do you ever get a time for a break, really, in your career? I had uh, five very interesting months at the Sun Online it was completely different and it was a bit of an eye opener and then we had a values clash and I left and went straight from there into becoming the Head of Editorial for the Cabinet Office, then I actually ended up for, long story short, had a health scare. I made a lot of life decisions. And one of those was that. I wasn't going to work anymore. And so I kind of retired and in that period, I got two cats I then ended up becoming their social media manager.
They have social media accounts. They have a YouTube channel. They are monetized. They've got 7 million views on TikTok. They are, I think what the term is, micro influences, because they're not like, they're not massive, they're not like grumpy cat, but we get sent from cat food companies, toy companies, all that kind of thing, we get sent food, we get those like monthly subscription boxes, we get cat beds, we get toys, we get all these kind of things, treats for them to try and review and We post content about it.
The interesting thing is that I haven't actually posted anything on YouTube channel for ages, but the money just still keeps coming, so it's all right. It's good passive income.
[00:25:17] Jason: Brilliant. Wow. That's just completely blown my mind because I know that the internet was made for animal videos, but it had just never in my world of how do I generate a passive income.
Had it ever entered my mind that I would a cat to review a cat toy and that would work,
[00:25:40] Genevieve: It's, well, yeah, it is a
[00:25:42] Jason: That's the thing.
about the of content marketing there's room for that, right?
[00:25:47] Genevieve: Yeah, think it's closely related to podcasting because there's always a lot of talk about how much money can you make from podcasting and sponsorship and monetizing your podcast and how many listeners do you need before you can get a sponsor or advertise anything.
And it's all relative. If you have a fishing podcast and you only have an audience of 300 listeners, but you get a fishing rod manufacturer to sponsor your podcast, all your 300 people are gonna be
wanting to buy that fishing rod. Whereas if you have something really broad, like a celebrity interview podcast, like mine, you could, pick any kind of product I get people contacting me all the time saying can we advertise on your podcast?
And I've said no to every single one because I don't feel they are a good fit. It's the same with kind of the cat thing. As a cat account, majority of the other cats that follow Teddy and Sushi on Instagram, at least, they're other cats.
They're all other cat owners. There's a proportion of people that just like watching them because they think they're cute, but there's a lot of cat owners that also follow Teddy. Like watching Teddy and Sushi, they're my cats, by the way, and reviewing a cat product where you know that your audience is a whole bunch of other cat owners is really valuable.
On Instagram, I think there are like 2, 800 odd followers. Not that many on Instagram. I've like 28, 000 on TikTok, but it's a small audience on Instagram, but that's a very engaged audience that will likely buy a cat product.
[00:27:25] Takeaways for Indie podcasters from an award-winning creator
---
[00:27:25] Jason: Genevieve, we're out of time. I want to ask you for just one takeaway an independent podcast, the listening.
What's the one thing that you would say to them about how to go about their thing?
[00:27:38] Genevieve: The thing that I love about podcasts is that anyone can make a podcast. And Don't just do it because you think oh, I've got this idea, I want to do it. Really think about what you want to do. You always have to be thinking, who is going to listen to this?
Why are they listening? Time is valuable. Why are they going to give you an hour of their time to listen to what you're saying? We live in a world where people have very short attention spans, where people are constantly scrolling Instagram, TikTok, whatever.
If you don't get someone's attention in 10 seconds, that's it. I may get a lot of press coverage for my episodes, but actually that doesn't translate into many new listeners for me, because it's very difficult to convert that person from scrolling 10 seconds through a news story to pressing that button for an hour. It's really difficult to do that, so think about what are you doing?
Do people want to listen? What value are you offering people for their time? And then also think about, podcasting is like forever, pretty much. most podcasts like fade within 10. You need to think about, how often do I want to do this?
Do I have time to be able to do it? Do I have the resource? Do I have the skills? Do I have the money to be able to do it? Yeah. And then think, do I have content to make at least 10 to 12 episodes? Plan it all out on a piece of paper. If you can't think of 12 episodes that you can talk about, podcasting is not for you.
Also, don't feel like you're going to make money from it. I think the conventional wisdom is that year three might be the year that you might be able to start monetizing realistically. If you're in it for the money. podcasting is not for you. You have to be doing it because you love the content.
I never set out to do this for the money. I wanted to do it because I wanted to tell people's stories.
And the other thing is don't get hung up on the numbers, especially in the early days of podcasting. You have to be able to, market your podcast in such a way where people can find you and then listen to you.
I'm lucky that I, interview celebrities. And so those celebrities share the episode on their social media feeds. So every single episode I put out, I get new listeners. So I grow, I'm lucky that I grow every single episode .
If you're maybe like a business B2B podcast, that may not happen for you. Your numbers will very likely be, very small at the start, and may likely be small for quite a long time. I always say to people, like, don't get hung up on the numbers because what numbers that are good for you may not be numbers that are good for someone else, or rather numbers that are good for someone else may not be numbers that are good for you. You know, you'll get, you'll see in the news, something like, Oh, the news agents has just passed its millionth download.
And then people, independent podcasts may be getting 100, 200 downloads a month. And I see people that are like super happy when they're like, we've just had our thousandth download and everyone be like, yeah, great. And I think that's brilliant. It's awesome because it's really difficult to get people to give you their time.
So long as the people that are listening to your content enjoy your content and get value out of your content, that is what you want.
Coming from the BBC, I came from this environment where I would write one story and in 24 hours I'd have over a million hits on it.
[00:30:49] Jason: Yeah.
[00:30:49] Genevieve: And I come from this like, wow, numbers are really big. And we also live in a society where. My cats have 7 million views on TikTok, and my podcast does not have 7 million downloads.
So, and it's also quite depressing, my cats are more popular than my podcast. My first episode was with Chesney Hawks and in my first week I had 300 downloads and I was like, wow, this is nothing. I've failed.
And then as I say, every episode I've grown, but I just don't want to demoralize people and think I've got this many because just because I've got this many, I have a celebrity interview podcast. It's a completely different beast you know, it's the numbers are really difficult to say what's good because it's not what's good.
It's just what's good for you. And that's what you should focus on don't worry about what other people are doing just focus on you.
[00:31:34] Jason: Genevieve Hassan, thank you so much for talking to the Content Mavericks Club. It's been lovely to speak to you.
[00:31:39] Genevieve: Thank you for having me.
[00:31:42] Jason: Genevieve Hassan, creator and host of the award winning podcast Celebrity Catch Up Life After That Thing I Did.
There's so much to admire and learn from what Genevieve has achieved with her show. I absolutely love it that her podcast beautifully aligns with her own passions and our own values.
She's really a fan of the personalities that she speaks to. And she loves pop culture and you can listen to her show, and when you do you hear that she's having such a great time and that rubs off on her guests as well. So thank you to Genevieve for sharing her experience.
Next time on the content Mavericks club, we meet small business branding expert, Liz Mosley. And we're going to dig into how Liz built her own professional brand.
I'm Jason Caffrey. Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to your company next time.
-
Get The Content Mavericks Club Newsletter to stay updated.
TOPICS COVERED
01:31 Six Seasons of Celebrity Catchup - show audience and reach
04:47 Winner of Best Film & TV Podcast and Independent Podcast of the Year
07:55 Booking Guests - Who Does Genevieve Bring On To Celebrity Catchup?
12:49 How To Prepare Interviews And Get The Best from Podcast Guests
16:21 A No-Video Podcast Promotion Strategy
18:35 Virgin Atlantic distribution - winning and renewing a commercial contract.
23:33 Teddy and Sushi - The 7 million-view Cat YouTube Channel
27:25 Takeaways for Indie podcasters from an award-winning creator
Support The Content Mavericks Club
Every contribution helps deliver value-packed episodes for our community
Resources
Follow Genevieve Hassan: X LinkedIn
Explore the Celebrity Catchup: Life After That Thing I Did podcast
From the Creative Kin blog
As the audience for podcasts continues to grow, their value as a marketing tool increases too. If you’re asking yourself if a brand podcast should be part of your content marketing strategy, you’re not alone.