The Future of AI in Podcasting

Eric (00:04.064)
How long were you over there, like a whole week or just a few days?

Joe (00:07.682)
Around a week, yeah. Unfortunately, because the time difference and everything else, it's like to get back, takes two days really, because it might only take hours, then you've got the jet lag and everything else. But yeah, about a week, which is just right.

Eric (00:18.614)
I know, man. I know. We went over there, I swear. I think we were up like every morning, like at 3 a And the cool thing was that Target, which is just like this store, it's kind of like a Walmart, but a bit upper class. It opens up like at 5 a over there for some reason. And we were like the only ones in the store. And my wife was loving it because she loves that store. But it's like we had the whole store to ourselves at 5 a and we were the first one in line to get breakfast tacos at this other place. And it was really funny.

Joe (00:31.436)
Yeah

Joe (00:37.184)
Eric (00:47.958)
But yeah, yeah. All right. No, she's Romanian and I convinced her to move to the States in 2010. So she's American now. It's funny because we went to go get...

Joe (00:48.244)
Is your wife from the States as well?

Joe (00:59.842)
Cool. Yeah.

Eric (01:03.742)
our interview for her to become a citizen. And we had everything in order, but she was so worried. I mean, she brought like pictures and she had all this proof and she had this big album that showed like our address and how she, lived in the same apartment and she had like prepared. even knew like my favorite color. She knew all this shit. Right. And then the person doing the interview, this lady who walk in and she looks at me she goes, do you know this woman? And I said, yeah, she's my wife. And then she goes, okay, do you like her? And I said,

Yeah, she's okay. And she literally like it was almost like one of those those those TV sitcoms you see, like she got out of stamp and just hit approved on the paper because she knew she knew there was a this was a married couple, an actual married couple. Yeah, yeah, because if it was like, yeah, a fake couple, you know, the guy would have been like, I love her. She's the woman of my life and I can't live without her. All that bullshit, you know.

Joe (01:34.902)
guys.

Joe (01:44.193)
Ha ha.

Joe (01:47.87)
Yeah, yeah, that's the sort of answer, yeah. That's so funny.

Joe (02:00.212)
Yeah, that's amazing. I can definitely relate to that. Yeah, that's awesome.

Eric (02:05.285)
Yeah, of course it didn't go so well with my wife. We walk out and she's like, okay, you just think I'm just okay? mean.

Joe (02:10.876)
Yeah. So funny. I always get super nervous at the border. I mean, the, American sort of checkpoint, I nearly shaken sometimes because they can ask me about me, my business, when I'm traveling, I've got nothing to hide, but you still feel like, you know, why are they quizzing me so much? You know, gonna take me to a room and a recipe or something.

Eric (02:26.772)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let me do the intro. Okay. Okay. Here we go. What if there was a search engine that could identify specific podcast episodes that discuss talking points that are of interest to you and your clients? That's right. No longer would you have to listen to an entire episode or read the transcript where there is such a tool and it's called pod engine .ai. And in today's episode, we are chatting with co -founder Joe Tanarella.

In this conversation, he shares with us why Pod Engine is valuable for podcasters, advertisers, and marketers. Shout out to B2B Pod Pro is my agency that helps SaaS brands reach new audiences through B2B podcast sponsorships. If you're looking for a new growth channel, check us out. Now let's jump into the conversation with Joe. How's it going Joe? How are doing today?

Joe (03:16.812)
Going good, thanks Eric, how doing?

Eric (03:18.964)
Yeah, no, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. It seems like, you know, podcasts have really taken off and there's so many different tools and platforms that have started to hit the marketplace, not just for like recording and production, because you've got like Riverside and Descript and some of those, but you also are starting to see tools that make discoverability a little bit easier. So I was wondering if you could share for the audience, what does PotEngine .ai do?

And what is one of the top features that people love about

Joe (03:51.67)
Yeah, perfect. So one way to look at Pod Engine is kind of use us as an intelligence layer across the world of podcasts. And that means something different every time I say it, because what it actually means is we're extracting data and insights from each episode. And so we've got a bunch of servers and they're whirring away. I was with them a few weeks ago in my co -founder's basement over in Oregon, and they're very loud and warm. And what they're doing is they're transcribing thousands of episodes every single day. And from those transcripts, then we're plucking out

Useful insights, which you then make searchable to podcasters, to marketers, to agencies. And one of the most useful features that they use it for. So most of our customers are guest book in agencies. And so the reason that we're talking to those is that a few took us through how they actually search for interesting podcasts for their clients to go on. And they said, look, what we do is this. They showed us how they Google or these other tools. And it just took them so long. And then they find an episode that might be of interest and they actually listened to it on 2X speed to find interesting hooks.

to use in the outreach to the podcaster, the podcast email address is probably incorrect. And they showed us this whole process and we're like, well, I think we've got something on our hands here. So we're gonna help those guys first. So that's what we've been doing. There's a bunch of other products we're building, but I can bore you with that later.

Eric (05:04.47)
Yeah, no, I know that process. And that was my process before I started using your product, where I go to Google, type in like top podcasts for maybe senior IT professionals. And then I would see like lists of articles that come up and here's the top 20, here's the top 10, whatever. And then you go look at those lists and you see like 10 different podcasts. It turns out half of them are not even live anymore. You know, the last episode they recorded was like a year ago. And so you can actually waste your time.

researching podcasts that are no longer, are no longer alive. And then the other thing too, I think this is important for the guests to know is that Apple podcasts is similar to what Google was like 15 or 20 years ago, where unless the keywords are in the title of the podcast, it probably won't come up. good example is my podcast, innovators can laugh. only interview European startup founders, but because I titled my podcast, innovators can laugh.

If somebody searches for a European startup podcast, my podcast never shows up in Apple. Right. But that's specifically who I interview. And so if you're trying to get on a podcast that specifically for European startup founders, you would totally miss my podcast unless you're, they're using a tool like pod engine .ai. what are some of the ways that brands can get started or these agencies that are looking for the tool? mean, how easy, how easy it is, is it to get going?

Joe (06:31.094)
I would love to say it's extremely easy and it is extremely easy to sign up. There's a free plan where you can use the tool without even having to log in to start with. If you log in, there's a freemium plan where without even paying, you get access to more data, more search results. And then we've got a super generous kind of pricing here at the moment. We're kind of figuring out kind of what pricing should look like. And in the meantime, it's just, super reasonable. If you'd like to get started, you can just send an email at joatpodhedge .io and happily give you a month for free. In terms of...

what that looks like. mean, there's a few different ways you could use it. You've got the search engine, first of all. So something you just said then about your podcast brought to mind an analogy, which is imagine you're searching Google and you're only searching the page title and page meta description. Like, be crazy. It just wouldn't be acceptable in this day and age. And Google certainly wouldn't be as popular as it is. And so kind of an analogy I like to talk about is we're actually making the whole page body searchable. And obviously we're talking about the transcripts in that sense. And so.

There's a bunch of search filters you can use. It's all accessible today. Over the next few weeks, we're actually, and over the last few months, we'd be working on something particularly exciting, which is making 20 plus new filters available. And so you mentioned, you know, if somebody's looking to be interviewed by someone who talks to startup founders, what we're doing is we're looking and we're kind of guesstimating what type of person is being interviewed on this podcast on an episode basis. And then we can roll that up to the podcast level as well. So instead of having to search for

individual keywords necessarily, you can search for the proxy, because they're just a proxy for actually who is being interviewed. You can search by topic, by guest type, by brand, is it being sponsored, and so on and so forth. There's a ton of new filters coming online soon. And alongside the search functionality, we also have a media monitoring arm, which is basically Google alerts for podcasts where you can just know if you're being talked about or your competitors being talked about.

Eric (08:16.96)
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. the search filters is what I love most. When I was using your tool, I was able to look for podcasts that at least had published it in this episode within the last month.

And that's very, very important if you're doing research, right? You only want to look for podcasts that are still alive, that are still active, and you just don't want to list a podcast to appear. And several of those could no longer be active. So there's a huge importance on the filters. What are you able to research, not just keyword level, but then also, you know, by language or by, by location, those things are very, very important for people in the business like me. Obviously I can imagine the podcast booking, you know, agencies don't want to book their clients.

on podcasts that are based in Singapore and they're in California because of the time difference, right? So you can't stress enough the importance of those filters. Okay, so what's coming down the roadmap? You said 20 new filters that are gonna make people's lives easier. Anything else that you wanna share with us?

Joe (09:17.792)
Yeah, for sure. mean, there's a lot of UX improvements we need to make because there's features available today. And we just know some customers are missing them because, you know, we're a small team and we're not expert designers. So it's quite hard to communicate where the value is in our own product even. there's some features that even I miss sometimes, which is embarrassing to say. One of them in particular, which is incredibly valuable, which doesn't get used enough is you can combine together multiple search queries. You could say, show all podcasts that have the word farming in the podcast title or description.

and where the words climate technology has been used in the transcript in the last 30 days. And you can nail it down and you can even add another one on top, which might be, or where kind of, for example, instead of farming, it's kind of mental health is in the episode title. So you can really like combine together and there's no other way, to the best of my knowledge, to get to that level of detail. And we've just released a new filter, which is show me all podcasts that interview guests. And that's an example, and that's live today. And that's an example of one where...

We're using LLMs, large language models to extract data. So I mentioned the other filters coming online. So they're being processed now, which is really exciting. Something I find particularly exciting as well is that we're kind of going to unleash, and we don't know what to call this just yet. I'm saying it's an army of AI agents to do the searching for you because ultimately what happens is you place yourself as a guest onto our platform. AI kind of enriches your profile. So at some point you'll be able to put in your LinkedIn profile. It'll say, here's what you do. Here's your ideal audience profile.

Here's your proposition and everything else. And because our AI knows everything about you, it can also do the searching on your behalf as well. Instead of having to go to our platform to do the searching every single day, you'll have AI agents doing the searching for you, add into your list. And at some point over the next kind of couple of months, they'll also create the outreach for you as well. And so you can see how the end -to -end experience can be not fully automated because what we don't want to do is build a tool to spam podcasters like yourself, because we've heard all the horror stories. And we can actually result in higher quality.

outreach to high quality audience of podcasters from the likes of agencies, marketers, and guests.

Eric (11:19.05)
That is a good point. get pitched almost daily by podcast booking agencies wanting to get somebody that they represent on my show, but never has an agency actually taken a screenshot and say, Hey, we realized that you had a conversation with so -and -so about this topic. And maybe show me like a screenshot of what we were talking about climate change, for example, or whatever. Right.

And, and then, and then also say in their pitch, like, you know, if you're still interested in, and, and for your audience to learn more about this topic, we have an amazing guest who's an expert or blah, blah, blah, blah. That's a very valuable and informative pitch right there, because all the pitches that I get are like, we love your show, but they never provide any sort of proof. They love my show. They never referenced an episode they listened to, or actually talk about something specific they heard in the show that they liked.

It's just like, love your show. think we have a great guest for you here. So, so it's all about the person that they're recommending and it's never about the actual content of, of the show and why they think their guests could be great for, for my audience. I, I'm not in that business, but if I was booking guests, that's how I would, I would pursue it.

Joe (12:35.264)
Yeah, a hundred percent. mean, I've been, I'm sure your audience are familiar with the term dog fooding, kind of using my own products to outreach to podcasters and do other various things. And actually I've got this little system now where it's, it's scarily useful, right? So I've got my guest profile. I can find interesting podcasts and I've got just my own sort of prompt, which looks the whole transcript and plucks out to a timestamp level when they've mentioned something interesting that I want to talk about, right? So I could say for you, and this could be fully automated and it will be at some point in the future.

You talked about podcasting. You mentioned guest booking at the third minute with this guest, but I realized that over the last 10 episodes, you haven't mentioned which databases someone could use to supercharge their guest book in. Today's like my guest, my client is Joe and he blah, blah. And so we can look at the white space. We look at what you have talked about and what you've not talked about that the client could be an expert in.

So that isn't possible today, but over the next few months, we're really kind of innovating that area. And I'm really super excited by that.

Eric (13:35.4)
Okay, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to put you on the spot. That prompt that you have for yourself, can you do that for me as well?

Joe (13:40.738)
Yeah, I'll share it with you. You know, I spent a lot of time like optimizing prompts and a new model comes out. I'm like, damn, I gotta go and try, try that new tool. I've got shiny object syndrome. I Claude, then in, I mean, OpenAI, I'm trying their new models. I've actually got some local models running as well, which are particularly interesting, not as powerful, but just blazing fast. And so, yeah, I will actually share these with you after.

Eric (14:01.886)
Yeah, absolutely. Cause I want to go on podcasts as a guest and talk about podcast advertising, how they can actually increase trust for a brand and innovative ways that we're innovating podcast sponsorships in the B2B space. And the old school way, as you know, is like, okay, let me see all the podcasts that are out there that are B2B marketing and then trying to find out, okay, which ones are active, even using filters that streamline streamlines, process helps, but using a prompt like that, that takes it to a whole other level.

And it's going to increase my response rates from when I do out, when I do start pitching to go on a show. So I think, I think if you could share that prompt with me, then this can make for an interesting, very, very interesting. come back on the show and I'll be like, Hey, we talked about this prompt. Here's the results that we did from using this. Okay. Very, very cool.

Joe (14:46.326)
Yeah.

My AI agents will outreach to you accidentally. I have to tell them not to.

Eric (14:56.662)
Yeah, I got pitched to be on my own show. Okay. Okay. All right. I got some rapid fire questions for you. Okay. What's the most interesting thing you've done, Joe, in the past 26 days?

Joe (14:59.296)
Yeah.

Joe (15:13.538)
Wow, 26 days, the most interesting thing I've done. That is a great question. I went camping in my camper van with my wife and my young boy who's two and a half years old. And more specifically, we went to this zoo slash theme park combination, which yes, it was as good as it sounds, down in Devon, which is the south of England. And the theme park during the week is closed. But if you camp on the theme parks campsites, then you can go in at any point.

And so there's one point for a few hours where it just my son and I and had the whole theme park to ourselves, not a single other person there. And it was fantastic. I really appreciate it.

Eric (15:50.442)
That is so cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now I don't want to do the camping part because I'm not a camper, but just to be in the theme park with your kid, I can totally see the fun in that. Yeah. Okay. Very, very cool. All right. Another question for you. What is one of the best advice that you ever got from maybe a parent or a good friend? It could be advice about life or work.

Joe (15:52.0)
It was eerie, it was like a zombie apocalypse film. was nobody else there, it was crazy.

Joe (15:58.795)
Yeah.

Joe (16:03.746)
Yeah.

Joe (16:17.826)
Wow, that's a very good one. I think actually I can apply this to kind of work, which is maybe a bit boring, which, so I met my co -founder Luke 15 years ago where I started freelancing for him in marketing and development and whatever else. And I am always overly optimistic with timelines and I'm a little bit naive on that front. And I've never learned for those mistakes in all honesty, but I do remember 15 years ago, he said, anytime you give me a deadline or a timeline, just multiply it by two and a half.

No matter how accurate you think it is, just at least double it. And then just tell me that because I want to be realistic. And even now he still says the same to me. I can't nail that. But yeah, that's always been useful and that's something I live by. Another one which actually springs to mind as well is from Richard Branson. It's a Richard Branson, is if somebody asks you to do something and you're not sure how to do it, say yes and then learn. And I've kind of lived my life by that. I show integrity and transparency. do say, look, I'm not quite sure if I can do this, but I'll give it a go. And it's always kind of opened up doors for me. So I do like that one as well.

Eric (17:17.044)
Yeah, I like that one. It's a very good one. OK, that actually answers my next question. I was going to ask you, what's a quote that's sort of like your life motto? And I think that's a perfect life motto right there, that one.

Joe (17:30.614)
Yeah, I think that would be, I mean, I can ask that as well. Another one, is, you know, everyone's been through lots of tough times during their lives and, you know, colleagues and friends don't always know what's going on. And so somebody kind of maybe snaps at you or responds in a way that you didn't quite expect. Something I live by is everybody's fighting a battle that you can't see. It's kind of like, well, just let it slide for today. They're probably going through something. Just ask how they are and like take that side of it and don't react in a negative way. yeah, kind of live my life by that as well.

Eric (17:59.124)
Yeah, totally, totally agree. agree. Joe, thanks for coming on this show. Where can people learn more about you and connect with you?

Joe (18:06.542)
So LinkedIn is the best place to connect, Joe Tanarella. Or you can email me at joe at podengine .ai to get a month for free or podengine .ai just to sign up.

Eric (18:16.618)
All right, fantastic. I'll put links to Joe's LinkedIn profile and his website for everybody listening. This is Eric signing off. If you enjoyed this, tell others about it and hit that subscribe button. Thank you.

Joe (18:28.834)
Thanks, Eric.