Chlo?'s 3 Things: Could/Should / Tech Opt / AI

Hello!

Coming to you a little later than usual as I can’t post this from a tablet… so I had to wait until I got back to the office post IRX and The Podcast Show.

What a week! Thanks to everyone I chatted with at both shows, and to the IRX Clarion Events and SHOPLINE EMEA teams for letting me open the show with the panel with Jack Turner and Deepak Anand . And so cool to have the theatre overflowing, especially as the rain was screwing up the trains and the roads!

OK, so my mind is overflowing with half-formed thoughts from the last 2 days… so many ideas!?

Luckily for all of you, I started working out what I was going to share in this newsletter last night.. so it’s not quite as random as it could have been…

And I’m focusing on 3 things I’ve learnt from being at two such different shows, where I play 2 such different roles in just 2 days.

1. Should/Could ?? the key to all business (and life) success?
2. Tech optimisation ?? THE key to 2024 profits?
3. AI ?? is it about doing more? or saving time?

Let's get stuck in...

Thing 1: Should/Could ?? the key to all business (and life) success?

“Should/Could” is a phrase I came up with a few years ago, it occasionally appears in my longer keynotes, and I think about it a lot.

The aim of all my content platforms is to help the audience make better decisions. Whether I’m hosting a panel, delivering a keynote, plotting podcast content, writing books or planning the rebuild of the eCommerce Tech website… it’s all about enabling the eCommerce person to make better decisions in their business.

Why? Because well, because of a heap of things. (maybe a future 3 things…)

How does this fit with Should/Could?

Well… because the fundamental difference between the successes and the also-rans in eCommerce is that the right things were moved from the “All the things we could do” list onto the “Things we should do list” and then those those things got done.

There are an overwhelming number of things you ‘could’ do in any business.

And the key to success (whatever success means to you) is choosing the right ones to do.

This week my “could” list is overflowing with fresh exciting ideas:

• at IRX conversations with my customers (the SaaS companies) sparked so many ideas. For improving what we do, and for new products we can sell.
• at The Podcast Show so many ideas for improving our podcast marketing AND monetising in cool new ways

They’re all good ideas.

Most need a little sense-checking, running some numbers, and thinking through - but I’d happily spend next week working on any of them.

But… I can’t!

My core projects from now until September are decided and kicked off.

(and are 100% the right thing to do)

Managing the could/should

I will start working on these new ideas a little, hopefully finding time next week to get the thoughts down, and a little bit stress tested so it’ll be easy to pick up the right one when a bit of diary and brain space materialises.

At IRX I was the seller, so it’s almost certainly completely in my control how fast I move with any of those ideas

But at The Podcast Show, I was the buyer.

And several of those new ideas were sparked by conversations with sellers… so I find myself in the shoes of the retailer for a bit...

I’m now bracing myself for being chased, chased, chased and hoping that those sellers ‘get it’ when I say how it is a GREAT idea, but I don’t have the bandwidth right now…

I’ll be honest - the ones who respect that will be the ones most likely to get my business.

?? How do you manage your Could/Should list? And how do you manage other's expectations of it... On the sell or the buy side?

Thing 2: Tech optimisation ?? THE key to 2024 profits?

Another theme across both conferences.

Wow has the tech moved on.

Most of my takeaways from The Podcast Show were about how much the tech tools have improved in the last few years, and how I can make my whole team more efficient, save money, and increase impact by upgrading my tech stack.

It's going to make the profit of the podcasts so much easier to achieve, because it's going to make it easier for me to:

• Grow my audience
• Hit my sales targets
• Keep my costs undercontrol

Tech Stack Optimisation isn't quick or easy

Now a podcast tech stack is a LOT easier to change than an eCommerce tech stack, but it’s still going to be a ton of work to:

• research my options properly
• work out what I actually need (as opposed to the cool bright shiny stuff I don't)
• profits sense check - how will each change improve our profits? and will it do it at a level (and likelihood that makes it worth the effort to change)
• plan the migrations
• train the team

My initial rough calculations suggest the profit impact is big enough that I suspect we’ll have done most of it by September (despite the other big summer projects I’ve got on), and that anything that doesn’t happen by Sept will be done by the end of the year.

SO yeah - totally new podcast tech stack by the end of 2024… probably.???

Mirroring eCommerce

I’m actually feeling a little bit of a fool about it.

I’ve been banging on for at least a year about how the wrong tech stack in eCommerce will hold you back and how re-building your tech stack in 2024 is one of the best things you could do.

Because the market's changing, and the available tech has taken a leap forward.

But it hadn’t occurred to me that the same would be true in podcast land. Doh!

?? What do you think? Is there profit in the tech stack?

Thing 3: AI ?? is it about doing more? or saving time?

I am a skeptic of big news stories and clickbait new phrases in our industry.

I like to wait for the hype to die down and see where the value REALLY lies - and it’s rarely where the first news stories suggest.

So I’ve been watching “AI” with a lot of interest.

Had a lot of conversations about it (at both shows) this week.

I think we’re still a year or two away from the best use cases being fully fleshed out, but here’s where I think the biggest benefits are right now:

Enabling you (and your team) to save time (and money)...

• Internal process timesaving (identify the timestamps for the podcast episode).
• Handling the easy queries (where’s my parcel)
• Speeding up compilation of data (handovers, sales information) …to then redeploy those resources in high-value areas to improve the overall experience or product

you could say enabling you to do more off your ‘could’ list

I think we need to be careful of just seeing it as a time-saver, how we re-use that time is crucial.

Enable you to do more

Things which once were cost-prohibitive are now accessible.

We stopped doing audiograms (mini videos to promote the podcast episodes) a couple of years ago because the guests weren’t using them, and they didn’t create more visibility in our social than a graphic did.

Each audiogram has been costing me $25 + the tool subscription fee. Because the tool is clunky, and the automatic transcriptions are always wrong.

This also means we have a VERY poor game on Reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts etc etc. (you could say... non-existent)

Yesterday I saw a brilliant tool that will enable us to go back to doing audiograms for every episode, and create video social content for all platforms, without a specialist audiogram person on our team.

So I can remove a link in the production chain, and get one of our existing team to manage the whole creation process, spending maybe 10min per episode to get it from audio file to on brand videos scheduled for release.

A marketing strategy that I was putting off because I thought it would need too much of my time every week, and too much cost is now about 8 hours away from being fully briefed, trained, and deployed.

The "extra" is far more valuable (pending the test) than the $25 per episode saving.

If only I could find those 8 hours!!!

?? What's your AI take - time? new things? or is it all about generative for you?

That's it for this week, I'd love to engage with you in the comments, so please do add your thoughts below.

Have a great weekend everyone!

PS you can still be a part of our Episode 500 celebrations here