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Good morning Launch Key 🚀 community!

Summer road trips are a reminder of how differently we consume information in 2025.

8 years ago, my wife and I listened to Undaunted Courage (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️+) while driving 4500 miles across the US to visit Sioux Falls, Mt Rushmore, Badlands National Park, Cheyenne, Denver, Nashville and more. Today the books-on-tape have been completely replaced with our favorite podcasts.

And podcasts may just be the digital product that you should create.

Let's get into it.

• Gmail users may wish to read online since some parts may be clipped.

• Comment below and let me know if we’re on the right track.

Table of Contents

• Pull to Eject

  • Launch Key Subscriber Pods

• Modern Tools

• Old School Wisdom

• Free Knowledge

• Recommendations

• Visual Crapshoot

Pull to Eject

Almost 160 million Americans consume podcasts every month (Statista), finding their news, comedy and personal interest content in the narrowcast of pods. Politicians finally figured out where we get our news during the 2024 cycle. And it’s a sea change from how we got information just a few years ago.

Despite what seems like a new trend, the technology is really pretty old.

Like 25 years.

Dave Winer, who helped create RSS, added enclosure and feed-aggregator features to the format for Userland Radio in 2000. Winer was prolific in the early web days contributing to outliners, scripting content management, web services, blogging and podcasting. We used Winer’s Frontier scripting language in my 90’s web development business because Frontier was the only system-level scripting environment for the Macintosh.

Apple played an outsized role in podcasting growth in 2005, when they added podcasts to iTunes. I’m not just a fanboy – Apple is the defacto standard for why consumer technology has become such a driving force.

For younger audiences (18-34) podcasts have become the preferred alternative to AM/FM radio. And pods allow for long form journalism - something that only print and television news used to do. Pods have become primary news sources for many listeners, particularly those seeking in-depth analysis beyond headlines.

Podcasting is relatively easy to start. If you can talk, you can record one. But most podcasts fail before 7 episodes. Your mileage may vary, but like everything else, practice and experience will improve what you publish. AI tools make podcasting even easier to launch. There are numerous software examples in this issue.

In 2023, April Tim Ferriss celebrated 10 years of his successful podcast with more than a billion downloads as a host of fantastic content. But he made some excellent points about how to stand out in a very crowded field today.

Launch Key Subscriber Pods

Two Launch Key subscribers who have differentiated their own pods are Gary Frey and Walker McKay.

Gary Frey naturally identifies with entrepreneurs. He has started companies, run companies and helped companies improve for as long as I’ve known him (spoiler alert: 30 years).

Gary co-founded the Anything but Typical Podcast to highlight local CEOs and their businesses, not as a selling tool, but as a genuine look at how lonely and hard it can be to run a successful business. He wanted to feature the vulnerable, behind-the-scenes stories of entrepreneurs and business owners who have humility. He and Ben McDonald have built quite the collection of inspirational stories in 5+ years and almost 150 episodes. They haven’t monetized the pod, but can point to goodwill of annualized returns of business gained at the firm as a result of the podcast audience.

Walker McKay started his No BS Sales School pod in 2018 as more of a marketing outreach for his consulting practice. And it has evolved from trying to interview other people to simply Walker sharing actionable information about sales concepts, strategy and tactics.  

McKay has dabbled in ways to monetize his pod but realized he didn’t want ad revenue, he preferred valued clients. So he has focused on giving away insight and sharing his beliefs in hopes that those people would share a podcast with others who they thought needed to hear the message. And some of those people would eventually reach out to become clients.

So is podcasting right for you?

It could be.

• Pods can help you find your voice.

• Or show the quality of your thought.

• Or promote your brand.

• Or highlight your clients.

• Or detail important stories.

• Or a host of other things.

You don’t have to get to a billion downloads to be successful.

But you do have to create the first one.

Now go launch something 🚀 

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Modern Tools

Do you want to know more about a topic? Pathaka turns your interest into a 20 minute pod so you can listen when you want the details about said topic.

Old School Wisdom

Maybe your summer reading prefers a tactile edition of the last great American adventure. Stephen Ambrose’ Undaunted Courage is the book for you.

In 1804 Thomas Jefferson had the vision to believe that Lewis and Clark could find a shorter route to trade with Asia. They weren’t sure what they would encounter - Jefferson suspected they might find woolly mammoths. Lewis chose only the best young frontiersman for a mission no one knew they would return from.

Besides just surviving – they discovered species, drew the first maps of the territory, sent back flora and fauna samples, created trading partnerships and had the incredible luck to find Sacagawea’s birth family when they needed horses. All but 1 survived to tell the most incredible tale of American adventure.

Wilderness prep tip: after 2 years and plenty of trading, the team returned to St Louis with enough gun powder, musket balls and knives to do the complete trip a 2nd time.

Free Knowledge

Turn your content into a pod with Monica. Get started for free.

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Visual Crapshoot