Your Business Needs a Podcast with Fatima Zaidi

Your Business Needs a Podcast with Fatima Zaidi

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 30 of the Business Development Podcast. And on today's expert interview, we have Fatima Zaidi of Quill Inc. And CoHost, and she is gonna teach you why your business may also need a business podcast. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca.

Lets do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. On today's episode, we have an amazing episode for you, Fatima Zaidi of Quill Inc. Total Rockstar Fatima Zaidi is the Founder and CEO of Quill Inc. An award-winning production agency specializing in corporate audio, and is also the founder and CEO of CoHost, a podcast growth hosting and analytics company as a member of the National Speakers Bureau. Fatima has spoken at various events around the world on media and tech trends leading to her keynote speeches on world stages alongside speakers like Gary Vaynerchuk.

In addition to being a commentator for BNN Bloomberg on the entrepreneurial challenges that female and BIPOC founders face, Fatima is a frequent contributor to publications including The Globe & Mail, the Huffington Post, and she has also been featured in publications like Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Over the past few years, Fatima has won two top 30 under 30 awards. Young Professional of the Year Award by notable life, Veuve Clicquot Bold Future Award, the Woman in Content Marketing Award and one of Flare Magazine's top 100 women. Outside of Entrepreneurship. Fatima teaches at the University of Toronto and is co-chair of the Tech4SickKids Council.

For SickKids Hospital here in Toronto, Canada. SickKids Hospital is the second largest pediatric research hospital in the world. She's on track to raise 25 million dollars to construct a new emergency wing of that hospital, as well as fund some of the world's largest data and AI projects. Fatima, it's a pleasure to have you.

It's an honor to have you. How are you today?

Fatima Zaidi: Aw, thanks so much, Kelly. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm excited to, to chat.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. I, I, first off, you know, you know that I, well my listeners don't know this, but I actually utilized your hosting platform CoHost, and when I got started kind of looking into the podcast space, something that's important to me as a Canadian, as an Albertan is to try to find Canadian companies to work with.

I like to utilize Canadian companies where possible podcasting's, kind of one of those spaces that has been very much Americanized like. A lot of the stuff regarding it, I, I have found, at least from my experience in searching, looks or appears to be American companies. And when I was looking for a hosting platform that would support us, I was really hoping to find one that was Canadian.

And with a lot of digging, I finally got to find out that CoHost was Canadian. And it's amazing. It's a really, really great hosting platform. Talk to me like, first off Quill Inc. How you're a serial entrepreneur. How did you f how did you even come up with that? Like what, what gave you the idea? You're Canadian, what, what made you decide, you know, what was it, 2019 to be like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start supporting podcasts here in Canada.

Fatima Zaidi: So the idea came back in 2014 when Sarah Koenig launched season one of Serial which, you know, hopefully everybody is listening, has listened to the story of Adnan Syed who was convicted of you know, murdering his girlfriend and they turned it into a narrative storytelling audio format show. And I find that podcast is really what made podcasting a household name.

It was definitely medium that was around before then. I mean, Joe Rogan's been podcasting since the ancient golden years, we call it. But 2014 is really when people started noticing Podcasts because of that show. At the time, I was running another marketing agency and we did the same thing, which is we ran content campaigns for Fortune 1000 brands.

And so some of our clients are really interested in dabbling in the medium. And I was like, okay, let's try it. Let's try to create like a podcast. I found it to be a really fascinating medium too, because it's. It's like one of the only formats where it isn't available to traditional advertisers. You can be driving to work and listen to a podcast, but you can't be watching a Netflix show.

So I said to a few of our clients, let's try it. Let's try telling your brand story in an audio format show. Now, the challenge back in 2014 is there was no centralized agency that you could go to that could do it all. Pre-production, production, post-production, audience growth, marketing, and then there was a whole data and analytics side of things.

There were a couple of agencies in, in particular, the one that I was like really focused on was Pacific Content. They're owned by Rogers Media and they're Canadian, they're amazing. But their price point was too steep. Who is going to pay that in a category that is not so pronounced, especially not as pronounced as it's today. So I hodgepodged a bunch of freelancers and we put together a couple of shows, but it was a lot of project management and I thought, you know, it would be really interesting if we could productize the services that we are currently doing and exclusively launch an agency that just created podcasts because there was a huge gap in the market at the time.

Now, fast forward 2019, pre pandemic, like literally right before the war world shut down and. In March, 2020 is when we decided to launch the agency. And that is sort of how Quill was born. We launched Pre Pandemic and everyone told me it was gonna be a risk cause the last agency was full service and this one was just podcasting.

But the pandemic was really, really well positioned for us in terms of a lot of brand experiential budgets going towards. You know, virtual tactics and there was no tactic better than podcasting from like an engage listener format. So that's how we initially launched the agency and started working very quickly with like the RBCs, the Sick Kids hospitals, the Microsoft PWCs of the world, and CoHost.

The idea of that only came a couple of years ago, so we primarily launched as a full service agency.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, so I came across CoHost first and then kind of had to do some digging into Quill, and I'll be honest, thank you so much for explaining that because I think. I think there are a lot of co-host users.

They may not necessarily understand the support services of Quill. I, I see your posts all the time cause you guys are very active on LinkedIn. There's always lots of good information coming through for podcasters, which hint for all my podcasters who are listening to this show or are looking to get into podcasting.

There's lots of support from Quill Inc. If you sign up with CoHost there's an absolute ton of information. You guys just signed a deal this week with another company, didn't you? What was that?

Fatima Zaidi: It could have been Jar Audio, they're like a, a production company based out of actually Vancouver, and they're amazing.

They create branded content. So we launch as customer on our platform. I mean, we've, there's been quite an influx of customers coming our way.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Well the, the thing that I see about co-host and Quill is that you guys are constantly looking for strategic partnerships that frankly, greatly improve the platform. And I love that about you.

I love seeing the things that are coming up. It feels like every month there's something new and useful for me to utilize. With CoHost thank you. And, and, and it's great because I want to stay in that Canadian space. So if you guys are consistently innovating and bringing me services that can improve my podcast, that can I, that can help my listeners and, and improve everything that we do here.

Why would I want to ch I don't want to change. I want to stay with a Canadian service. And I think there's a lot of Canadians listening to this. I know within the Edmonton area here in Alberta, I get. I get reach out a week of people saying, Hey, I'd love to launch a show like yours. This is just such a great platform to use.

How did you go about doing it? And if we can point them towards Canadian hosting platforms. Towards Canadian services, I wanna do that all day long.

Fatima Zaidi: Thank. Thank you so much, Kelly. Now I really appreciate that. And I mean, I think that the impetus really comes down to, I look at a lot of these hosting platforms and other softwares that are out there, primarily American, and none of them have actually launched a podcast.

And so how do you really know what the pain points of podcasters are unless you actually launched a podcast? So when we totally had the idea of co-host a few years ago, it was because the type of clients were working with the Fortune 1000 Brands. They were looking for like Google Analytics level data, and they weren't getting that.

 And we built the product for ourselves as an agency. We were the customer, we were the case studies. Yeah, you knew what you needed. Exactly and Quill, the, the agency is very complimentary to our product because that's where the learning happens. So you might be excited to know in June, in, in like literally a couple of weeks, we're launching a new feature set.

We call it demographic data. So we can show you the age, the gender of the household income, the social media habits, what companies are listening to you. The profile information of your podcast listeners. Wow. And like that has never really been done before. In fact, I know it hasn't been done before. And the only place that you can maybe find age and gender is the back end of Spotify, but you can't find it across all of your listening platforms.

Sure. And I just found that we needed to keep innovating based off of the pain points that we were seeing on the agency side. So when people ask us like, how do you decide. That you're launching X, Y, Z feature, and what do you base it on? Well, no, we're the customer, we're creating podcasts every day on the production side of our business.

Like in any month, we're creating at least 30 to 40 podcasts. So that's how we know we're the customer.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, absolutely. And like I get kind of the same thing. It's like with my podcast, it's very much The Business Development Podcast. We, we very much kind of go into business development tips. We have entrepreneurial interviews just like this.

We try to provide growth tips and like advice to new entrepreneurs and people kind of on the fence about kind of taking that jump of where, you know, trying to encourage them and motivate them to take the step into it. But yeah, like every single day, like people, people may or may not know this, I am actually active business development.

I own a business development firm called Capital Business Development. I work in business development all the time. So I speak to what I know and Fatima also speaks to what she knows, you know, like she operates Quill, but she also has full experience in setting up posting, launching podcasts, what podcasts need, how to market them.

And you know, why wouldn't you want somebody who's had that experience to be able to create the program you're utilizing? Cuz they're always gonna be innovating and thinking about what you need.

Fatima Zaidi: Absolutely. I think generally speaking, when we do demos for organizations or for agencies and producers, like the first piece of feedback we get is it's very clear that the UX and UI of this product, or this product has been built by producers.

Like that's the number one thing that we typically get because I, I feel like the way that we've laid out the product is like, well, what are the things that production folks are looking for, let's lay out the, the UX and UI accordingly. And I honestly just love that, you know, your business is centered around business development.

It's like arguably the hardest and most transferable skillset. And so at some point I'd love to learn a little bit more about the services that you offer as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we can definitely have maybe an off air chat at some point, or when you get some time we can do that. Yeah, like I guess my background gives you a real brief one.

I've been in business development directly for 12 years and I've been in sales and business development for 16 plus at this point. It's, it's been a minute. We've been doing this a long time, but very relationship based and I think, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was, I know that you also have a business development and sales background, so I'm, I'm thrilled to have you here cuz we can definitely kind of.

Spitball when you got Quill going, what did you find was successful for you to market it? Like obviously it must have been pretty challenging at first to get people on board. I know any type of software can be tough. What were some of the tactics that you used to get Quill off the ground?

Fatima Zaidi: Yeah, so I find interest.

It's interesting because I've been in the service space for a really long time. I would say getting Quill off the ground was easier than getting co-host off the ground in that. Exactly. With agencies, you need like a few clients to sort of validate your work and then the rest will follow. So for example, RBC was one of the first clients that we closed, and as soon as we closed RBC, the rest of the banks all followed because they wanna know who's creating, you know, RBC Disruptors in this amazing content. And very quickly it's, it's almost like they have a sense of fomo where they just feel like they have to also jump on the bandwagon.

So I was really lucky, you know, ran another agency prior to Quill, so had a few clients that were willing to give us a shot and then we slowly, incrementally built up a portfolio. In our second year, we also acquired another production agency. And by doing so, we acquired some of their clients as well as their team.

And so that definitely significantly catapulted our revenue as well as our client list. And since then, we've just iterated and made sure that we know exactly who we're servicing and how we're servicing them. So You know, the big four at the banks, like Fortune 1000 brands. Like, it's very clear what our unique sort of value proposition is.

Absolutely. With product, it's really interesting. I feel like it's, it's a grind. It takes a really long time to build a product and we're completely bootstrapped. So we've never raised external funding. So we, we can't necessarily accelerate growth as quickly as we'd want. I would say. Our secret sauce is like the innovation, like we are constantly launching features that have never been done before in podcasting, and I think that is what's driving the influx of sales.

So one thing that really gave us big revenue. In March, we launched CoHost Brands, which tells us what companies are listening to your podcast. Yes. Yeah. And our customers are exporting that data and handing it to their sales teams who integrate it with their CRM tools and use it for lead generation and to like build a pipeline for their businesses.

And we're moving away from calling podcasting a brand awareness tactic and now moving more towards like what are quantifiable KPIs, in which way we can show you how a podcast impacts the brands bottom line and the ROI of doing so.

Kelly Kennedy: My opinion on, on B2B branded business podcasts is if you don't have one in the next five years, you're going to be in trouble.

I, I really, truly believe that. I believe that the world is really leaning towards, businesses need to do a little bit more. They need to do something to stand out. Just doing business as usual is not going to work moving forward. Totally. And. And maybe today you can still get away with that for a little bit, but I think that if you don't have at least an idea for a business branded podcast or some form of, of media advertising, I think is a way of putting it. But personal media advertising, I think is a better way of putting it of being able to kind of showcase who you are. Like if you're the CEO or the president of this company, who are you? Why do people wanna do business with you? Are you trustworthy?

Are you knowledgeable? You need to find ways to show that to the world because just having a website on its own, just doing your socials on its own, moving forward into the future, I don't think it's gonna be enough.

Fatima Zaidi: I couldn't agree more. What I always say is just like your business had a phone number in the 1980s, a website in the 1990s in social in the two thousands.

The next time five to 10 years is the wave of audio. And I think just like you know, people who are on Twitter, In 2007 are by default influencers today. Yeah. I think that, you know, people who are podcasting today are gonna be influencers or organizations who have a podcast are gonna be thought leaders in the next five to 10 years.

It's like Joe Rogan, do we think his content is amazing or has he just been podcasting for a really long time?

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. Everyone knows who he is and, and by default, people want to be on a show because they know who he is, right? Mm-hmm. I think you're totally on point with that. I really, and, and, and.

I want you to, to maybe reiterate, I think there's a lot of people who think they're too late. They are not even close to too late.

Fatima Zaidi: No. We're so early in the hype cycle. I mean, there's 1.5 billion websites, 30 plus million YouTube channels, 500 hours of content being uploaded every minute. I read a stat recently, there's 600 plus million blogs.

So like if you compare it to that, there's 2 million podcasts. 18% of them are active, so half a million podcasts in comparison to 600 plus million blogs. Like we're so early in the hype cycle. It is not a saturated space by any means.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. And you hit the nail on the head. And I think what it is is that a lot of people started podcasts not recognizing, yeah, it's a little bit of work, right?

Like the reality is to keep a good show going to, to be able to, to commit to a schedule, which is really the key to any podcast, you need to be able to commit to a schedule and stick to it, hold yourself to it, have that personal discipline to show up week over week. But if you can do that, it does not take much to end up in, in the top 10% very quickly, very quickly.

Fatima Zaidi: That's exactly it. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It's consistency. It's consistently posting at the posting cadence that you've selected. You know, honestly, Kelly, I don't really think you need me on your show. You like pretty much know all the chops. You probably just need to do a solo commentary on one episode and teach everyone what they need to do to make the podcast successful.

But arguably that is the most important thing. It's not easy to create a good show. It is not an overnight success. It's a marathon, not a sprint. And that's right. The most important thing is the consistency.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh no. We do need to have you on the show. You're a total rockstar and really y you know, there's no one else doing what you're doing here in Canada.

There's no question. You are a thought leader. You are a leader in pod in the podcast industry. Period. Period. Thank you. Bar none. I don't care where you're at. You are a leader in the podcast industry. The stuff you're doing with CoHost the people you work with, you know, Alison and Stephanie are amazing.

I've had to chat with both of them on multiple, multiple times just with little things that I needed or just some fixes that I needed, stuff like that. And the response time that you guys have, the customer service you have is next level, first off, next level. They, those two both deserve massive promotions.

They're amazing.

Fatima Zaidi: I think so too. It's funny that you talk about that. I just, they're, they're getting a promotion this summer, so timing is very serendipitous. Yeah, that is the thing that I'm probably most proud of. Funny story with Alison and Stephanie. They were the two co-founders of the production company that we acquired.

There's a third one as well, who's also still at our company. Nobody's actually left Quill yet. Like everyone, all of our employees have stayed and we're about 25 employees now across North America and. Alison and Stephanie are the OG employees, like they were. They've been there since day one. And oftentimes I think when we were chatting about potentially acquiring their company back in 2020, I got a lot of naysayers and people saying, it's very risky to acquire this early.

Generally acquisitions don't work out. And I really went against like the advice I was being given and went towards like my gut, which is I really value their product expertise and their production expertise. And they're so integral and instrumental to the business today. Like I could not do my job without them.

And it was one of the rare scenarios where you actually see an acquisition workout extremely well. Yeah. So yes, I agree with you. They are amazing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Well, acquisitions in general I, I'm, I'm a fan of them, but I do think they need to be in your wheelhouse. I think too many companies, they step away and they try to acquire something they don't understand or te it doesn't go with their other products, all that well.

I, I've definitely seen that happen multiple times and I find that if that's the case, it's pretty much a guaranteed failure. But the reality is the acquisitions that you've made truly just support the work that you were already doing. You already understood them, you understood how they worked. So it was right in the wheelhouse.

Of course, I, I. It should have worked out. And and it has.

Fatima Zaidi: And, and I think it, it's, it can be risky from like a culture standpoint, but no, they fit right into the culture. In fact, anything, they really enhanced it. And that's, I think the thing that we're most proud of at the company is we have like a team of really solid folks and we're like ruthlessly protected the culture that we've created.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, it's you know what I mean? Obviously I'm not part of your organization. I just, I know it from the outside, but from the outside, you guys look like you really got your shit together.

Fatima Zaidi: Thank you. Well, I'll pass along the feedback. I know they'll be thrilled to hear it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's always been a pleasure and like I said, I've, I've had lots of kind of back and forths as it always is, you know, as it always is, with any type of software you're working with, there's lots of, Hey, can you help me out with this?

Or, I'm having a challenge here, and I'll tell you what, whenever I've done that, You know, typically it's been Stephanie that I've dealt with whenever I've done that, and Ste. Stephanie was like within like an hour of an answer Pretty much every single time. Always kind, always on point and yeah. Does a great job at what she does.

Customer service at CoHost is, is amazing. Keep it up.

Fatima Zaidi: Amazing. Well, thank you. Yes, we, we wanted to make sure that every customer that came on. Had an account manager that was dedicated to them and that they could get a response within an hour. That is actually huge pain point that we had before CoHost.

We were using a few other softwares, hosting platforms and we'd have to email the support line and 24 to 48 hours to have someone get back to us on a tech troubleshooting question. And unfortunately, when you publish an episode and it's not publishing or there's like bug or a glitch in the system, you cant wait 24-48 hours to get a response. Our clients are like waiting for their posting cadence not to be interrupted and their SEO patterns not to be interrupted. So that was something when we were building CoHost, were going to make sure we hold your hand through the process, and you feel like we are an extension of your team. I never want anyone to wait 24 hours to get a product response.

Kelly Kennedy: No, and I never have. It's been, it's been very fast, always, it's always been, been rectified to, to my satisfaction. I got, I got nothing but good things to say, period.

Fatima Zaidi: Aw, thank you so much, Kelly. Honestly, I feel like I should put your face on a billboard ad for Quill & CoHost.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. I'll advertise.

I, I love it. I love it. I got no problems. You know, what if, if, if I use it and I love it, I have no problems whatsoever shouting it from the rooftops because there's not enough companies that get recognition for the great work that they do.

Fatima Zaidi: Thank you. And also I think it's very authentic if you're an influencer, which you are as a podcaster, to only endorse products and services that you actually use and will stand behind.

I think about so many influencer campaigns that happen day to day and like, how are you promoting this product if you've never used it? Yeah. Like how do you know?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No, I totally agree. I totally agree. I feel like at bare minimum, those advertising companies need to at least send them their products so they can try it first.

Cause yeah, it's like how can we speak to something if you haven't used it?

Fatima Zaidi: Well, that's exactly it. And like I think podcast hosts need to be really mindful of that because people trust your product recommendations, right? Totally. So you build such an intimate connection with your listeners. And so for me, like the best type authentic marketing is that you actually use a product, then endorse it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, I, I totally agree with you. There's something else that I totally agree with you on that I wanted to chat about. Cause I think I get a lot of messages of people saying, Hey, I wanna start a podcast. Like, I think I'm gonna incorporate video and all this. And I'm just like, Hey, hold on, hold on, hold on.

You don't need video in a podcast. Yeah. And I've been saying that now for forever, basically since I started a podcast. And I loved, cuz I was watching a interview that you did a while back and that, that topic came up and. The reason that I like to think about it is like, think about where you listen to podcasts, right?

You're listening to a podcast, driving your car, you're listening to a podcast, maybe when you're doing data entry at work or when you're just kinda doing mindless tasks. But the reality is, is that you're usually doing something while you're listening to a podcast. So having a video doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Fatima Zaidi: It's not a video, it's not a podcast. You know, a podcast is an audio format show. If you're doing a video, you're doing a video. And when you add screen to the content, you're removing flexibility aspect. Which is what podcasters are seeking. I as an avid podcast consumer, I listen to about 10 podcasts a week. That is the way that I consume my content.

I don't really watch TV. I'm not like a video person. Truthfully speaking, I'm not really a blog person either. Like I consume audio content. And so if somebody adds screen to the podcast and I can't listen to it in an audio format show, I wont be listening to it. I wanna be able to be actively engaged in another activity while still getting educated and entertained.

Honestly, the proof is in the stats. 94% of people who start an audio episode end up listening to entire thing. 30 video only has a 12% completion rate. if you know these two stats. Would you add a screen to your content?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I think it's other people pushing the screens, right? Like I think, I think it's, you know, obviously YouTube wants to get more people on YouTube. There's lots of people saying, oh, well, why aren't you adding a video to this?

But they're not thinking about where people are consuming a podcast and who is consuming a podcast. Right? Obviously this show is very much a business oriented show. We inspire entrepreneurs. I know that most of the people listening to my show aren't watching a video. They're, they're, you know, they're either listening to it at bedtime.

They're listening to it. When they have a free moment, they're listening to it while they're working. Or they're listening to it while they're driving. Especially if it's my business development people. Cause we're on the road all the bloody time. Yeah. Like, why would I, you know, for the, those of you listening, they're like, why don't I have a video?

That's why, I just, I don't. I've never, ever watched a podcast on a video, and I just don't ever see the need for one. If I wanted to have a video, I would do a YouTube channel or something, but totally. I, I also find it boring to watch people just talking into a microphone on a podcast like really is that the entertainment value that you're after?

Fatima Zaidi: So it's really interesting because I feel like the proof is in the stats. I mean, 94% of people who start a podcast end up listening to the entire episode, whereas video only has a 12% completion rate. So when you add screen you lose the flexibility. If im doing monotonous tasks, I wanna be listening to a podcast cause I want to be educated and informed at the same time.

And so I'm definitely a huge advocate of video for Bitesize social content. So totally. If you wanted to capture video and do a 30 second TikTok teaser for promotion or a LinkedIn teaser, great. I think video, in bitesize content. I definitely has higher engagement. But to your point earlier, who wants to listen to two people have a conversation on video for 30 minutes? What's the need?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I don't, I don't understand the drive behind that either. Like I said, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's like we were talking with the previous guest that I had, and it's like some people create a product and then look for a problem. I don't think it's really a problem needed to solve.

Like I don't think people are out there, just can't wait to watch two people have a conversation over a video.

Fatima Zaidi: Yeah, no, I totally agree. So we're, we're completely aligned and honestly, I think the industry knows it too. When you look at video podcasts and the views they get in comparison to like podcast downloads, there's a pretty big disparity in the numbers.

And then in terms of average consumption rate, for sure, audio is king. And so unless you have a very specific reason for wanting to create a video podcast, like your audience is like, Gen like Gen Z or like a very, even younger than that. Those are the folks who are maybe on YouTube. And so great. If that's the, if that's the reason, cuz you're creating hyper con, hyper targeted content for YouTube then, then under Understood.

But I would say if it's just for the sake of being on YouTube, like no, there needs to be some thought behind that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely know your audience, know who you're working towards, and I think know your audience. If you're in a B2B branded podcast, it's probably not young people.

Fatima Zaidi: No, no, no.

It's probably, yeah, you're not, you're looking at older millennial professionals, and I can promise you, we are not on YouTube listening to podcasts.

Kelly Kennedy: No, definitely not. Definitely not. We're too busy for that most of the time.

Fatima Zaidi: Yes. It's better to be something to someone rather than everything, to everyone. And that philosophy can be sort of transferred in every aspect of creating your podcast.

Not just whether it's audio or video, but even content, even audience growth, even marketing. Focus on who your ideal listener profile is and create a community for them rather than trying to appeal to everybody.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, Fatima, I, we could have like, We could have like five hours of conversations like this.

Like honestly, I would love to pick your brain for more time. I know we're on a really tight schedule today. You're incredibly busy. I do want to ask you a few things regarding just, just starting a podcast. The reason being is that most of the people listening to my show, they're either business owners, they're entrepreneurs, they're on the fence about starting a business, but I know a lot of them have had a question about, Hey, I really like this podcast.

I think this is something that my business can do. How does one even get into that? And I know for me it was a lot of trial and error, a lot of Googling trying to figure it out, but heck, I got a podcast expert on here. Would you have some advice for those people that are maybe on the fence or maybe looking to start their own podcast, just have no idea where to start, what would you tell them?

Fatima Zaidi: Yeah, so first I would say make sure that you try to focus or hone in on a content where you have like subject matter expertise and try to find like a niche topic. It's funny the. Clients that of mine that are probably doing the best in terms of the reach as well as the average consumption rate of their show are like the ones that have created a natural community around their content.

I had somebody approach me a few years ago, actually right at the beginning of Quill, launching and they wanted to create an open banking podcast. And I said to him, I was like, who's gonna listen to a podcast about open banking? Like, is that, is there a community for that? It's. It's one of our most popular shows.

We get fan mail about our, our client, and so he's like literally a celebrity in the world now. And I was wrong. And I think it's interesting because it taught me a very valuable lesson that day podcasters are seeking out your content. So no matter how big or how small your audience is, these folks are highly qualified to be interacting with your brand.

And so you're only reaching people who are interested in listening to your content. I mean, you're not gonna. Reach people who aren't interested. So if you can find a, a topic that's niche enough where there's a community around the world that would tune in and there's no competitors. So if you're creating a another, you know, B2B interview style show that's focused around top tier successful companies, then you're competing with the how I built this of the world.

Yes. If you're doing a cybersecurity tech hacking, Podcast, you're competing with the reply alls of the world news. You're competing with the dailies of the world. Try to find something where you are the subject matter expert and is a niche enough topic where you can create your own community.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. I 100% agree with you. When I started the business development podcast, at first when I was kind of thinking about, I was like, okay, like what would I talk about? But the more you dig into it, you realize, you know an absolute ton. You know a ton about the subject, especially if that's your career, that's your industry that you've been in a long time.

You have stories, you have experiences, you have what work and what didn't work. I get to have interviews with people like you who can kind of say, yeah, this is how we did this. These are some of the challenges we faced. Maybe don't do this like, There's more than you think, believe me. Like if you're, if you're on the fence right now, trying to think like, what in the world would I talk about?

Believe me, there will be lots to talk about.

Fatima Zaidi: Well, that's exactly it. And then my second piece of advice would be, don't use Zoom or other conference lines that aren't optimized for podcast sound quality because it's about the user. Experience and one of the first touch points they have with you is your sound quality.

So highly recommend platforms like Riverside, which we're currently using right now, or Squadcast. These platforms are very much focused on podcast audio sound quality platforms like Zoom. While we may be comfortable with them because we use them day-to-day for work, they are conference lines. So when you export your audio, it actually distorts the, the quality of the, of the content. So think about the user experience. Think about the first touchpoint that you have with your user, your cover art, your, the title of your show, your, your audio quality, like these are all things you think about. And then, Honestly. The other thing I would say, and, and this is something we've already talked about, is there's no such thing as instant gratification.

The success of your podcast is like building your brand or building your company. It's no different. And so it's gonna take some time. It's a marathon and the key is consistency. So don't quit. And I think that is really frustrating to see that 18% of podcasts are active because podcasters give up so easily because they're not getting that overnight success and it really is a medium that takes time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It is a commitment. It is a commitment. And I think for a business too, it's important to look at it as an advertising expense, right? Yeah. Like the reality is you can charge this advertising expense to your company and it's actually not that much like compared to other types of advertising. Sure you have your initial equipment cost, you gotta kind of set up a few things like Riverside or CoHost.

But once those are kind of done and you get into a cadence, okay, this is how this works, this is how we put this together. It's not for the value you get from it. It's not actually that expensive. It's probably one of the cheapest advertising avenues you could go down and one of the best for your company over time.

Fatima Zaidi: Yes, a hundred percent. I would say arguably a much more sustainable strategy than a one to two minute TV ad or other traditional advertising methods. And yet still we hold a fraction of the budgets that these other categories get, and so. I think if you have a video content strategy, if you have a newsletter, if you have social, then a podcast is probably the next natural step, and especially if you already haven't built an audience for your brand and if you get it right, you will never find an audience more engaged than podcast listeners.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, totally, totally. And the connection you build to like my favorite podcast, I look forward to them every single week. And I thought about it from that standpoint when I, when I created this podcast, was I wanna make something that people look forward to, that people enjoy, that they find a lot of value.

And I think that's the other side, is make sure that no matter what your episode is, make sure that there's some value in it for your listeners. Don't just ramble about stuff that you did this week. You know, bring something that they can walk away with and say, huh, I didn't think about that before. But yeah, I think I'm gonna implement that in my business or find a way to bring some type of value, some hope, some inspiration.

To your listeners and I think you'll have great success.

Fatima Zaidi: Well, you just said something that I wanna touch on, which is you, your favorite podcast. You look forward to them each week, and I think that's really important to understand. It's no different from Netflix or Amazon Prime, or Crave, or Apple, where you know when your favorite shows are dropping.

Podcasts are no different. So with that, remember if you pick the second Wednesday of every month at 5:00 AM to drop an episode, you should stick to that posting cadence another. Hot tip about starting branded podcast because Yeah. Like Kelly, your audiences are really waiting for that content to drop.

They build a pattern with your posting cadence, and it's a very disappointing user experience. If you are expecting an episode to drop and it doesn't drop, it's actually very amateur to see an episode dropping on a Tuesday one day, and then three weeks later on a fri, like there's no consistency in rhythm.

That is, that is another. Like really important tip in terms of like how do you podcast well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, there's the secret to anything, and I don't care whether it's podcasting, whether it's business, is to be consistent and, and show up consistently week after week. And that doesn't matter whether you're marketing your own business or whether you're marketing a podcast.

Think about it. You have to show up. You have to set yourself a schedule, and you have to be self-motivated to make sure that you are continuously meeting that schedule. But if you do. It's just a matter of time. It truly is. It's just a matter of time until you get the results that you're after.

Fatima Zaidi: Totally.

That's exactly it. You just, yeah. Like I said, Kelly, I feel like, you know, you know what it takes to create a good podcast and I, I, it's really nice to see that you've done all the things that I would recommend, like your equipment set up and the software that you're using and the questions that you're asking.

And I've listened to a couple of your episodes and I will say like, it's, it's very impressive.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, thank you. I really, and and by the way, thank you so much. It was a total honor to win an award this week from Quill Podcast. Like just next level, we won Best Business Podcast 2023 and I'm incredibly honored.

That is, that is a big deal. And thank you so much for considering us.

Fatima Zaidi: Thank you. It is a big deal and I have to preface that by saying we do not do any of the judging. So we organize the awards and we host them, but we purposely choose industry critics and experts to be the judges. For many reasons.

We're a production agency. We obviously can't put forward our clients. We cannot. Like participate in each category. And we wanted the, we wanted all of the awards to be incredibly authentic and no monetization tied to it. And the reason we launched the Quill Podcast Awards is we were so tired of seeing the same companies and the same shows winning.

And ironically, a lot of the companies that won awards for like the Ambies or the Webby's were also the sponsors of the show. So we thought it was a little bit disingenuous that the sponsors of the show were also winning the awards. So we were like, let's launch a category that is no monetization, so we, you know, are making or not benefiting from this at all.

And it's purely to highlight independent content creators who are doing great work, but may not necessarily belong to the big networks like Gimlet and NPR in one grade. And so the judges that we choose are completely like objective. To the actual categories. So whoever picked you, we had no say in whether or not you were to win, but we were so happy to see that you did win.

Kelly Kennedy: It was so cool. I almost fell outta my chair. I was so excited. And let me just preface this by saying all of you who nominated me, you guys are amazing. I love you. Thank you so much for doing that. I. It was honestly, I, I kid you not, I nearly f I was at work that day. I was actually one of my client's sites when I got the email from Alison and I nearly fell outta my chair.

I, I had a smile on my face the whole day and it, it is truly an honor to win an award like that. Thank so much.

Fatima Zaidi: Yes, of course. It honestly means so much to us, and I love that the awards are highlighting independent creators who are doing great content and just don't maybe necessarily have the opportunity to, you know, showcase their work like some of the multimillion dollar production budget.

So we're really happy to play a really small part in that. And It was really, it's always so heartwarming to see every winner's reaction, which is very synonymous to yours, where it's like, yeah, I can't believe I won. Like I never expected this, and, and you should expect it, cause its great content.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, thank you. That you still, you know what, like podcasting, and I'm sorry.

I know we're, I know we're on a tight timeline here, but podcasting is so much of a, I don't wanna say thankless, because I get lots of awesome fan mail. I get lots of, but it's very hard sometimes from this chair, from my little tiny studio to see the effect that we have on the world. But it's a gigantic effect.

Like the reality is if you get up behind one of these mics and you create a show, You are. You are affecting the days of a lot of people. Even though it's hard for you to see that from. From your little studio.

Fatima Zaidi: It's, it's like being a CEO. It's a very thankless job. It's like being a founder. All of the sacrifice you, you put up with all of the S H I T, you, but it's the most thankless job because like nobody turns around and asks you how your day is going.

Nobody asks you what the pain points and challenges are. You're expected to fix all the problems and keep all the lights on. It is the most thankless job. So you have to have tough skin and podcasts. Podcasting is no different. Honestly, it's, it's like building a business. Building a podcast is like building a business. It's like very, very similar.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, totally, totally. Fatima. It's been absolutely amazing having you, I just wanna say you are an inspiration to women everywhere, the work that you're doing. Next level. Next level. And I'm proud that you're a Canadian. I am proud that you're the one doing this work here for Quill, and I think Quill and CoHost have an incredibly bright future here.

I'm excited to see what comes next. I, you know, I mean, obviously I'm a, I'm a, I'm I'm invested, right? I wanna know. I'm, but I'm, I'm pumped. I'm pumped to see what comes next from CoHost & Quill. And if any of our listeners wanna reach out to you today, or if they have any questions what's the best way for them to reach you?

Fatima Zaidi: Thank you again so much for having me. It's such a pleasure. And yes, very proud Canadian. This country has given me a lot of opportunity. I moved here in 2007 and I'm so glad that I chose Canada to, to start over. And in terms of finding me, I'm, I'm pretty much everywhere. You can find us @ quillpodcasting.com or cohostpodcasting.com, and then we're on all of the social media channels except for TikTok, so you can pretty much find us anywhere.

Kelly Kennedy: No, that's awesome. That's awesome. And it's been such a pleasure. This has been a chat with Fatima Zaidi of Quill Inc. And CoHost. Serial Entrepreneur, total Rockstar, helping the world, doing great things. It's a total pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for joining us and until next time. We will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.