Live Q&A With My First Million + Andrew Wilkinson (Austin Live Event) (Part 2)

**SPEAKER_2** (0:13)
On the road, let's travel.

**Sam Parr** (0:14)
At this point, Nick Gray.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:15)
Yes, we're ready for questions.

**Sam Parr** (0:17)
All right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little Q&A, and we'll riff on some of that stuff.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:22)
Fantastic, let's see, please can I have house lights? And I would like to see hands up for questions for the panelists. I see one here in the center, I see one over here, thank you guys. I'm gonna ask you to raise your hands again, and we're gonna try to go through these fast. Please say who your question is for.

**Sam Parr** (0:37)
My question is for Sam.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:39)
Where do you think podcasting will be in 10 years, positive or negative?

**Shaan Puri** (0:47)
Questions stress you out.

**Sam Parr** (0:48)
What's man's role in the universe? I don't know, like when I have some light discussion, where will podcasting be?
So when it was Sean's idea to start our podcast, he came to me and he's like, I've got this finished episode, will The Hustle publish it and be our publisher? And the original version of MFM was not what it is now. It was him interviewing people and it was still good. And then one day someone didn't show up to the studio time that we had already paid for it. And he's like, oh, just come in and do the thing that we do. And that's kind of how it came to be.
And-

**Shaan Puri** (1:19)
By the way, you know that story is not true, right?

**Sam Parr** (1:23)
No.

**Shaan Puri** (1:23)
That's not actually how it came about.

**Sam Parr** (1:25)
I did not know that.

**Shaan Puri** (1:25)
Because I've heard you tell this, I'm like, is he telling this because things-

**Sam Parr** (1:29)
I thought a guest bailed.

**Shaan Puri** (1:30)
No, I told you that. What happened was, it was a good time to come clean, right?
In front of us and our 500 closest friends.
What happened was the hustle wasn't promoting the podcast enough. And I was like, how do I get them to promote it? Maybe I could tell them what's in it for them. Maybe I could bake better content. Or maybe I could just invite Sam on the podcast and he will for sure make them promote it. And so you guys are launching trends. And I was like, hey, come on and let's just bullshit about upcoming trends and startups. I was like, they have to promote that episode because it's like, that's their thing. And then I was like, let me do that every Friday. Then that became the pod.

**Andrew Wilkinson** (2:07)
Well, they call this the prestige.

**Sam Parr** (2:10)
Yeah, you honeypotted me, it worked. My point being, when we got into this, I thought podcasts were stupid. I was like, it's played out, there's too much.
And what I've learned, I'm not gonna entirely answer your question because the answer is, I don't know, but I'm gonna try and get around to it. What I've learned is I think it's the most powerful medium that we've ever come across. So like, because when you're, it sounds weird, but when you're in someone's ear, it's like literally the headphones matter. When you're in someone's ear for like 40 or 50 minutes per session, like three times a week, it's insane what people learn about you. It's way better than like an eight minute YouTube video. So where do I think, I don't know, Andrew, where do you think it's gotta go? So Andrew owns a podcasting company.

**Andrew Wilkinson** (2:53)
Yeah, I own a company called Supercast.
We help like Huberman and other people monetize their podcasts. And I was talking to the guy who runs it, actually yesterday, weirdly, and he said that podcasting, there's 62% penetration in the United States. So like 62% of people are aware, but there's only $2 billion in the market.
So all the podcasting, advertising dollars and stuff. And you think about like FM radio and how big that market is, I would just look at FM radio and be like, okay, how big is that? And if every podcast was monetized like FM radio, it's probably that big. So it can probably like 20X, 50X, 100X, I don't know.

**Sam Parr** (3:31)
Would you agree that podcasting is the hardest medium to grow?

**Shaan Puri** (3:35)
Yeah, for sure. I think that it has the benefit of what you said, that people become really loyal very quickly, but it's the hardest to grow. So you can go on TikTok and you'll get a bunch of followers.
But if you said, hey, we're doing a live show in Austin, you're not gonna get anybody to show up. In fact, there's funny TikToks of these TikTokers doing meet and greets that no one shows up to because they thought if I have 100,000 followers, for sure people are gonna show up. And so, you know, the trust is what matters, not how many fans you have.