SEAN LI ON SHAKE THE COSMOS
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Today, I chat with Sean Li, a fellow UC Berkeley grad, about his journey into creating a service in podcasting and why podcasting is not going away in the future.
Sean is a serial entrepreneur having launched and sold multiple businesses over the past 10+ years. He has founded a co-working space in Downtown Los Angeles, multiple e-Commerce companies focused on inbound content marketing for DIY products, and numerous podcasts.
Sean is super passionate about connecting people and sharing collective knowledge which is why he is currently building businesses around Podcasting-as-a-Service (PodcastPros) and a content media network focused on university alumni (Alumni.FM). He is also a recent MBA graduate from the Berkeley Haas School of Business.
Also, did you know that you can get yourself a copy of the Shake The Cosmos Journal as part of the personal development course? Check it out here.
episode transcript
ABHISHEK: Hi, everyone. This is Abhishek from shakethecosmos.com. My guest today is Sean Li. Sean is a serial entrepreneur, having launched and sold multiple businesses over the past ten years. He has founded a coworking space in downtown LA, multiple ecommerce companies focused on inbound content marketing for DIY products, and numerous podcasts.
Sean is super passionate about connecting people and sharing collective knowledge, which is why he’s currently building a business around podcasting as a service, and a content media network focused on UC-Berkeley alumni. He’s also a recent MBA graduate from UC Berkeley. Go Bears.
SEAN: Go Bears.
ABHISHEK: I’m really excited to talk with you today, Sean. Thank you so much for making the time.
SEAN: Thank you so much for having me on.
ABHISHEK: Awesome. We’re gonna get right into it. I’ve already learned so much from you by talking to you just the past few days about podcasting. What was your journey into podcasting? How did you get into this?
SEAN: First off, I have to commend you, Abhishek, for launching Shake the Cosmos. I listened to the recent episodes and, as I was sharing with you yesterday, I really enjoy how authentic you are and your guests are.
ABHISHEK: Thank you.
SEAN: For the listeners, Abhishek started this interview beforehand with a meditation, and I thought that was really thoughtful and I really enjoyed it.
ABHISHEK: You’re giving away my secrets, man.
SEAN: (laughing) This is a tell-all of podcasting, right?
ABHISHEK: That is a good point. You’re right, you’re right. Yeah, I’d love to hear your journey.
SEAN: I’ve always been an avid radio listener growing up. To this day I listen to a lot of NPR. I only listen to music when I need to think about something. But I’d say 95% of the time, when I’m in the car, I’m listening to NPR, whether it’s Radiolab or This American Life, or regular KPCC in Southern California which I’m a big supporter of.
That really inspired me to do something at Haas, when I joined Haas. Berkeley Haas did not have a podcast when I started, and I thought that was very odd for a tech school, that we didn’t have this medium to hear the voices of students, faculty, and administration on campus.
Because I had prior media experiences in my prior businesses in ecommerce where we would, like you mentioned, shoot and produce DIY how-to content on YouTube for our clients. I transferred those skills into audio editing, which was much easier than video editing.
I think initially the fear that overcame me was the interview process, because I’ve never interviewed anyone before. Our DIY how-to videos were just me and my buddies standing in front of the camera, talking to the camera, teaching people how to do stuff. Once I got started, I started studying some of the greats: Terry Gross, Larry Mantle. Again, that’s NPR. And seeing how they interview people, and being very intentional about listening to how questions are asked.
ABHISHEK: Hm.
SEAN: I do have to preface that, that there are many kinds of podcasts. There are different styles. Mine, with OneHaas at Berkeley, and Shake the Cosmos, are an interview style. Then there’s the informational style. Then there is the storytelling style. I’m sure there’s so much more.
ABHISHEK: Yeah, and I appreciate this so much in the sense that you’re bringing in your previous industry experience that you had, and you translated into this podcasting and audio world. We’re doing this interview format, but what are some other ones that people may not be familiar with?
SEAN: I think one of the most powerful ones is definitely storytelling, and this is something I’m experimenting with right now. You interview the guest, but then you add narration. You add more color to the guest. Because sometimes an interview’s only 15, 20 minutes, but you lack the context, the backstory of the guest. Sometimes that helps a lot to give more color, and meaning, and impact in the story. So that’s definitely another style, that’s very typical Radiolab style.
ABHISHEK: Radiolab style. What are the benefits of podcasting that you’ve maybe found yourself, or in general, that you’re aware of?
SEAN: This is funny because this was a discovery process. I didn’t find, initially, podcasting to be all that superior. I thought video was the future, and still is the future, with TikTok and everything. But podcasting has its place, just like books have their place, and magazines, and articles. They just serve different purposes, for different audiences, at different points in time of the day. Sometimes I want to watch a video, sometimes I want to read a book, and sometimes I just want to listen to a podcast.
The benefit of podcasting is that it somehow is more personal and intimate. I think what drives that typically, like with most audio only interviews, you remove the visual layer, which is less distracting for the listener. But for the interviewee, for the people that are conducting the interview, it’s also less distracting because you don’t have to worry about your, like I am, my body language or how I look, which I don’t care because it’s Covid and I haven’t cut my hair in four months. But it’s totally okay.
ABHISHEK: Yeah, I appreciate that. So podcasting has its own place.
SEAN: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think it’s going away, at all.
ABHISHEK: One thing I’ve heard people say when I tell them I have a podcast, they’re like, “Oh, yeah. Everybody has a podcast.”
SEAN: Hm.
ABHISHEK: One thing I’ve also found is apparently 80% of the podcasters quit in six months.
SEAN: Yeah.
ABHISHEK: So I’m like, “I’ll just be the 20%. I’ll just keep going.”
SEAN: That sounds like any business, actually, any startup. People quit because they don’t realize that anything that’s good takes a long time to build. The OneHaas podcast that I started for Berkeley has been around for over two years now.
ABHISHEK: Oh, wow.
SEAN: It doesn’t feel that long, but it’s something that you chip away a little at a time. If there’s any advice I can give from an entrepreneurial standpoint, it’s that you do the same with a business. I think these days there’s too much of this narrative, of this “fail quick, fail often, fail hard, fail forward”... I’m all about failing, don’t get me wrong. I’m all about making mistakes. But there’s also something about giving yourself grace, being deliberate, taking time and patience to practice a craft, to hone a skill, to just do something for a while. The whole 10,000 hour rule.
ABHISHEK: What’s the 10,000 hour rule?
SEAN: I first read about it in Malcolm Gladwell’s early book, I think it was Tipping Point or Blink. It’s the idea that you become an expert at something after spending roughly 10,000 hours. It’s either the 10,000 hour rule or the 10 year rule. Many people have been saying over the years since the book’s been published, and that research, that they’ve somewhat debunked this theory.
But whether you debunk it, believe it or not, there is something to you spending a lot of time honing something, and deliberately practicing something, and becoming good at it. That’s something I foundationally believe. I don’t believe in passion. There’s another book I can reference by Cal Newport.
ABHISHEK: I can already see headlines, a billboard, by the way, “I don’t believe in passion. -Sean Li”
SEAN: (laughs) There is definitely this passion myth and this prodigy or talent myth that I think gets thrown around too quickly. When people say, “Follow your passion.” For a lot of people, how do we take that advice?
ABHISHEK: I appreciate that.
SEAN: Or this person is super talented. How do we take that into our lives? I think what’s more important is recognizing where you can focus and spend a lot of time on, again, to learn and deliberately practice and be a student always. And get so good where other people are then giving you some kind of recognition. Then you’re realizing, “Hey, I enjoy doing this because I’m good at it. Not because I was born with it.”
ABHISHEK: From your experience, because you’ve launched and sold multiple businesses, I appreciate connecting the two because I think about someone spending a lot of time and crafting the podcast stuff. But what about the making money piece of it? What are some opportunities there, potentially? Or maybe that’s too early for people to think about.
SEAN: I think the opportunity, and this is something I’ve been taking the time to discover the past couple of months, is the same with YouTube or Twitch. Right off the bat, if you could build an audience then there is the potential for advertising revenues. Then there’s the potential for sponsorships and partnerships, collaborations, things like that.
But the problem with podcasting is that the platform is really behind the times. When I say that, I mean that the platform itself, the podcasting platform, the players: Apple, Spotify, Google Play. They are not created with the creators in mind.
I say that because you look at YouTube and Twitch, there is this harmony between creators and audiences. Creators benefit from having more audiences. They get to monetize in their content and get financial support for their creations.
ABHISHEK: Yeah. Just to reiterate, is it that iTunes and Spotify are really designed for the listeners, but there isn’t an ecosystem for the creators?
SEAN: That’s correct.
ABHISHEK: So that’s why it’s behind. Interesting.
SEAN: And it’s just budding. It’s just in the budding phases. We’ll cover some of the resources for creators later. It’s still in the nascent period of podcasting. I personally think, when I looked at this and why this is, because we always have to ask why, is that podcast was an evolution of radio. And radio was always treated as this ephemeral content platform. It wasn’t meant to last. You heard it today and it’s like, “I don’t need to hear it again tomorrow.”
I think podcasts have evolved to a point where some of this content, like the interviews that we’re conducting, it’s not ephemeral. They’re good three, five, maybe ten years from now. People still might look it up and listen to it. Just like a book.
ABHISHEK: Yeah.
SEAN: Because some of the advice and some of the knowledge that’s shared, from my guests and your guests as well, it’s everlasting, it’s evergreen.
ABHISHEK: Evergreen, yeah, I like that. I’ve never thought about the industry and the evolution, and putting where podcasting is in that evolution. I appreciate hearing it. Because to me, that also speaks opportunity.
SEAN: Yeah.
ABHISHEK: Get in on it early. It isn’t on the decline here.
SEAN: We’re still in the early, early days. I say that even though everyone’s saying, “Oh, everyone has a podcast.” Well let’s just look at the numbers. Last I checked, I think late last year, there are about 900,000 podcast shows. Again, not all of them are still around, as you mentioned.
Do you know how many YouTubers there are?
ABHISHEK: No.
SEAN: There are, I think, 40 or 50 million YouTubers.
ABHISHEK: No way.
SEAN: YouTube creators. I’m not talking about the viewers, I’m talking about creators. There are 40 or 50 million creators. There’s only 900,000 podcast creators? There’s still so much room for growth.
And the thing with the podcasting platform, going back to an earlier point, an earlier question that you asked was, “How is it different? Is it different?” And I truly think it differentiates itself in that it is much more accessible than video. You can’t drive and watch YouTube, or you shouldn’t, at least. I guess you could, but you shouldn’t. But you can drive and listen to a podcast. You can do your chores and listen to a podcast. That’s something that is very unique to audio, is that you can run and listen to a podcast. You cannot do that with video.
ABHISHEK: Totally.
SEAN: Again, you shouldn’t.
ABHISHEK: Yeah. I appreciate that. I’ve already drank the Kool-Aid. I’m doing the podcast thing, and you’ve got a great podcast as well. But what if someone’s like, “What is this thing?” Like, they’re trying to get started. I would love to dig deeper a little bit into that.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about someone just starting, they want to get a podcast?
SEAN: The first thing I think about is, what would you like to share? Everybody has something to share, whether it’s a story, whether it’s life experiences and lessons. Stories bind us. There’s a reason why there’s the word “history”. It’s got the word “story” in it.
The evolution of humanity is based on stories. We are where we are today because we know the stories passed down from our forefathers and mothers, and their forefathers and mothers. That’s how we got to where we are today. So there’s a lot of power to us sharing stories.
ABHISHEK: Good.
SEAN: I think that’s a good place to start. That’s the easiest place to start, is just look at yourself and ask yourself, “What can I share with the world? And help people maybe hear my story and my trials and tribulations, or my challenges, and find comfort in that. Or find some learnings from that so they can avoid those mistakes.”
I think another easy path is just go do interviews. Go ask other people for their stories. Now go out and collect other people’s stories. There’s gonna be no shortage of that, there are a lot of people on this earth. For us, as these semi-pro podcasters, even if I interviewed one person a day, let’s just say 400 a year. I’m gonna live for another, ideally, 50 years. What is that? 400 times 50? That’s 20,000 I think. Is my math right? I’m in finance, I should know this.
ABHISHEK: Close enough.
SEAN: That’s 20,000 people that I can interview in my lifetime. That is not even a drop in the ocean. That’s like a drop in the cosmos.
ABHISHEK: Drop in the cosmos, I like that. I really appreciate this, how you’re going about it too, because I feel like, at least the technology piece, can be kind of overwhelming. Like, “Oh, what are the tools I need?” But hold on. What is the story? And maybe you can interview some other guests that could have the same story. That’s a really good point.
SEAN: You find a theme that you care about, that resonates with you, or that you have experience in. Maybe it’s SEL, maybe it’s coaching. Whatever it is, there’s always a theme that you can center your show around. And it’s going to evolve, so don’t get too hung up on it. Just like a business, it’s going to pivot.
ABHISHEK: Oh, yeah. I remember using my cell phone for the first few Shake the Cosmos podcast recordings, because the internet said there are really expensive devices. But I’ve now matured to a mic.
SEAN: (laughs) That is the best way. If you were to ask me how I would start, if I didn’t have the media background that I had, is how I advise some of my friends to start. Yeah, just start with your iPhone. Sure, the quality isn’t this thousand dollar microphone setup, but it gets the job done. It’s about the story at the end of the day. Can you get a good story?
If you can’t get a good story, it doesn’t matter what kind of equipment you have. If you have a great story, and then, as you work over time, build an audience, then improve your audio quality, then it’s just the cherry on top.
ABHISHEK: Yeah, and you mentioned some podcast names, and you’ve been listening to podcasts and stuff. When I think about stories, what are some podcasts that come to mind, top of your mind, that are doing a good job with the story piece? So people can listen and learn from them.
SEAN: I always go back to NPR, This American Life, Radiolab. Those shows really narrate. They publish how they publish, what their work flow is, for every episode. They spend all week just to make one episode. They record like 12 hours of audio just to get maybe 15 minutes, or five minutes of something. They are master storytellers, so I would start there. That stuff is easily available on Apple Podcasts.
ABHISHEK: I appreciate that. We’ll be sure to include links to that in the podcast description as well, so people can go to that.
You’ve changed my own perspective on this, because it almost sounds like a little bit of an art to it, where you’re going back to the basics, NPR and stuff. We haven’t even talked about any tools yet. I love that.
There’s a couple things, let’s say someone’s figured out their story, someone’s figured out their theme, and they’ve got an iPhone or a nice phone. What can get them up and running, at least?
SEAN: Sure thing. The lowest hanging fruit is a service called Anchor. I believe it’s anchor.fm or something like that.
ABHISHEK: I’ll be sure to include a link to that, as well.
SEAN: It’s just an app that you download. You can record on your phone, edit on your phone, and publish on your phone. Anchor will host your content, I believe it’s for free. It’s an all in one service.
If you want to move up a little bit from that, then you have what I personally just switched to and use, which is Red Circle.
ABHISHEK: Me too, now. I’m on that thanks to you. Shake the Cosmos thanks you for that because I’m saving like $120 per year.
SEAN: Yeah. Back in the day, the past ten years, you had your Blubrry, Libsyn, and Podbean. These are the top three podcast hosting services. Just to give our listeners some context as to how the mechanics of podcasts actually work, is that Apple doesn’t store your podcasts, Spotify doesn’t host your podcasts. It’s all a stream, it’s all an RSS feed.
Your podcast, when you upload it to the internet, is only stored in one place, which is your host. Then Apple, Google, or Spotify just stream from that one file. The beauty of that is that before, you had to pay for this hosting. Now, it’s free. And it should be, because the costs on AWS, Amazon Web Services, is so low that it should be free.
One of the few services that actually offer this free hosting is Red Circle.
ABHISHEK: Yeah. Full disclaimer, I’m not getting paid to refer to these services.
SEAN: Neither am I. I just love their mission and what they’re doing for podcasters.
ABHISHEK: Yeah.
SEAN: Now, how do you get on Apple? How do you get on Spotify and Google? It’s built into Red Circle, or any hosting platform that you choose. There are the distribution channels that you sign up for and connect. They have step by step instructions on how to connect to these services and sign up. And the moment you do that, once you’re all set up, every time you upload your episode to your host, like Red Circle, then it automatically sends it out to all the players. And now it’s accessible everywhere.
ABHISHEK: Wow. I appreciate that. This is now practical at this point. The host, the distribution, and the story, and the theme. Thank you so much for packaging it like that.
SEAN: There’s another big component of that, I realized I missed.
ABHISHEK: What is it?
SEAN: It’s the editing. There are two styles to podcast editing. You can either not edit, which is totally fine. If you have this Joe Rogan, it’s a popular, live podcaster.
ABHISHEK: Like, two or three hours.
SEAN: Yeah, if you have a two or three hour episode, you just want to shoot the-- am I allowed to swear?
ABHISHEK: Yeah, go for it.
SEAN: (laughing) If you want to just shoot the shit with your friends or with your guests, and really have a genuine conversation, an open conversation.
ABHISHEK: Raw, unedited.
SEAN: Yeah. Raw and unedited. Go for it. There’s nothing wrong with that.
If you want something more polished and buttoned up, that sounds more like an NPR episode, then you do need to edit.
And the editing process can either be done by yourself, using tools that we’ll link below. One of the big ones that we discovered recently was called Descript, where you upload your recording and it automatically transcribes the entire interview or recording. Then you can edit via text. You can edit the audio via your transcription. So if you delete a sentence, it deletes it from the audio, which is amazing.
You can even move things around, just like how you would copy and paste in a word file, you can copy this paragraph and move it somewhere else. It’ll move the audio as well.
That service is called Descript. It’s very inexpensive and cheap.
When we’re looking at costs, you have the free recording on the iPhone, or your Google Android device, and you have free hosting, and the only thing that you’re really spending money on is this Descript service, which costs $10 a month to use it. Actually, the first three hours are free.
ABHISHEK: Oh. Low barrier to entry at least.
SEAN: You could literally do six episodes a month, if you’re doing 30 minute episodes, for free.
ABHISHEK: That’s good enough for a minimum viable product to get started then keep going.
SEAN: But if you someday decide that you want to move up in production, then you enter the world of production. You have audio engineers, audio mastering, producers, all that stuff. Which is the world that I’m starting to enter into. But you know what? Starting out, just keep it simple.
ABHISHEK: Keep it simple. I love that.
As we’re wrapping up here, I really appreciate your time and condensing it for the audience, as well. Any last minute shout outs or anything else you would like to share?
SEAN: Aside from the podcast I’ve been working on, it’s called OneHaas on onehaas.org, where we collect and share student stories from Berkeley Haas, the MBA that Abhishek and I graduated from. Also, I’ve pivoted into alumni stories, where I’m focusing on alumni stories. The next thing we’re doing is branching out into other schools, and collecting alumni stories across other schools around the nation.
The site is not up yet, but ultimately that will sit on a website, in a domain, called alumni.fm.
ABHISHEK: I love that, love that domain. Good job on that. Awesome, man. Thank you so much. We’ll be sure to include the links to OneHaas in the podcast description as well. Thanks again for your time.
SEAN: Thanks, Abhishek.
ABHISHEK: Hey, everyone, thank you for listening. Please hit the subscribe button. We’ll be back next week.