The death of legacy media

Hi and Hello!

Jared and Karthi here with the second Audience Haus newsletter! 

If you haven’t read our first one, you can find it here. 

This week, we sat down with Adam Ryan, Founder and CEO of Workweek. Workweek is a growing collective of industry experts who are changing the business world by creating content that is culturally relevant. 

So, it was kind of a given that we talk to him about revolutionizing content consumption and do a deep dive into podcasts. 

We began by discussing the power of podcasts and Adam elaborated on how Dana White, the President of UFC started the podcast trend by using podcasters to improve the credibility and reach of UFC. And how that connection lead to Rogan being convinced about Trump through all the podcasts and interviews he had done through UFC.

And we used that as the base to deep dive into Workweek’s tagline of “People follow people, not institutions.” And we said - tell us more! And he did, with examples of podcasters like Lex and Theo who have created their own identity through their podcasts. When someone is authentic on their podcast, you trust them even though you may not agree with them or like what they say. You feel like you know them so you understand why they say or do what they say or do. You feel like you understand them and that’s trust. 

We also touched on how American elections tapped into the power of podcasts to take the candidates straight to the people. Adam used the example of the two Presidential candidates - one doing a 60-minute scripted interview and another doing a podcast that went on for 3 hours. 

Adam used the example of Trump’s podcast, in Adam’s own words - “And what happens at a certain point is you become who you really are , and and so you become really relatable.” He also used Jared Kushner’s example to illustrate institution vs individual. The media houses branded Jared as weird and not smart. But when Jared goes on a podcast and speaks, the audience is immediately able to assess how smart and intellectual he actually is. And once the audience forms that assessment, whether or not they agree with Jared’s political views, they will no longer believe a headline that tries to brand him as something he’s not. 

So, podcasts can take away the control of the narrative from the established media houses because when it comes to trusting someone you hear or see on a podcast versus a headline, you trust the person because you don’t have a relationship with the institution that’s putting out the headline. And that is really a different perspective from the existing one where the media has always controlled the narrative of content. 

Adam also touched a little bit on the other side of the issue where if a podcaster isn’t authentic and says something off the cuff, just to get more views or more followers, they have to face the consequences of that. And they have to put in the effort to fix the impact of their actions unlike earlier days when it would be the editorial board or a publisher coming forward with an apology if a mistake was made. 

Now you are thinking - where’s Workweek in all of this? What does Workweek actually do?

Well, we have the answers for ya! Adam talked about his journey of starting Workweek and how it began when he shifted to a new city and had to find his bearings and build his network bit by bit. 

And how his best conversations were with people who actually did their jobs on a daily basis. And when he asked these people how they learnt to get better at their job, the first answer would be an online resource or knowledge bank. 

Digging deeper would always result in the name of one industry expert or C-level expert that they caught up with for coffee once a month or met on a 1-on-1 basis once a quarter. But these experts don’t do podcasts or create content that they share with people, even though they have so many insights and guidance to share. Why?

Adam calls this the knowledge expert paradox. The experts have an audience of people who want to learn from them but the experts don’t have the time or financial motivation to share their knowledge. Workweek was built to solve that. 

In phase 1, they just reached out to practitioners in different fields and industries (they are in 6 industries now) to share their insights and content via a platform and infrastructure created by the Workweek team. And they used these newsletters and podcasts to build their audience. And now that they have the audience, they have stepped into the second phase of building their own professional networking platform where you can connect with an expert practitioner in your field. 

At this point, we were like - can’t you do that on LinkedIn? Adam’s a step ahead of us - he explained how when you connect with an expert on LinkedIn, you can’t ask all the questions you want to sometimes. Because, you don’t want to look stupid or create that sort of a first impression on someone. But Workweek’s networking platform, which has been built through their newsletter and podcast audiences 

Our next question to Adam was about the LinkedIn point and what he thinks about Founder Evangelism. And that brought out another key aspect of what makes your audience connect with you - consistency. Adam elaborated about how they don’t support Founders on their platform because they are a completely different persona from the C-level experts and industry experts that they host on their platform.  

Adam suggests a different approach for Founders - pick a platform that you feel comfortable with and choose a frequency of posting content and stick to it. It could be Twitter, LinkedIn or even a weekly or monthly email. What matters is that you stick to the frequency, whether you have good news or bad news to share. Because, as founders, when you don’t share anything - the audience assumes that there’s something wrong. So consistency is really important because it builds relationships and creates accountability. 

Obviously, the conversation didn’t stop there. We spoke more to Adam about the kind of metrics he looks at, how they are building culture into Workweek, the meme culture, how they started the company and built it initially and so much more!

And of course, you can watch the full interview! Where? 

Join the Audience Haus Community to watch the full interview.