The Acquired Podcast

https://www.acquired.fm I'd never heard of it. Then again, doing a bit of research I found it was blown up by the "Wall Street Journal," and I read that pretty comprehensively. Then again, I might not have found the headline appealing: "The Smartest People in the Room Are All Listening to the Same Podcast - How did Acquired become the business world’s favorite show?" https://www.wsj.com/business/media/acquired-podcast-tech-business-history-strategy-90e73603 You see I never went to business school. Where I went to college they didn't even have business classes. Business was taboo, at least until you graduated. But now business is the most exciting vertical out there, it trumps music, movies, television... Just look at the AI story. Now my eyes roll into the back of my head when I hear business school speak. As soon as someone tells me they're writing up a business plan, I'm out. I run on emotion. Does something feel good. If it does, if you're willing to dedicate all your time to it, it will be a success. Sure, vision is important, but execution trumps idea every day of the week. I used to judge people for being out of the loop. But that paradigm died with the internet. There's so much available that no one can be comprehensive. Not that people still don't put you down for not knowing about something. I laugh when this happens. This is how people feel superior, and I know how much they don't know. Actually, that's part of getting older, in my late teens and early twenties I knew EVERYTHING! I've been learning how much I don't know ever since. So I found out about the Acquired podcast in e-mail. I'd written about going to Costco and numerous subscribers told me about it. Which indicated to me it was worth checking out. Everything is word of mouth these days, marketing dollars are most often wasted, but even so, unless it's a trusted source, you have to hear the same story more than once to dive in. And I did, and I did. And... Now going back to the top. The two guys who do this podcast are not exactly nobodies from nowhere, but unlike the brand extensions of today's celebrities, they started from zero. With 500 downloads of their first podcast. Now they get in excess of 500,000 per episode and they make millions. They started in 2015. A ten year overnight success. With a who's who of listeners, everybody from Daniel Ek to Eddy Cue. So many would like ear time with those two, but the way you achieve this is by doing something unique in a spectacular fashion. The more successful you are, the less time you have. You can separate the wheat from the chaff. Which is why you can't get the music exec to listen to your demo, not without a story. They need to hear about you from someone else, they need to see numbers, because their time has been wasted so much in the past. And in a supposed attention deficit society, where we keep hearing people have short attention spans, the Acquired podcast goes on for HOURS! And that's one of the great things about it. Unlike too many other podcasts, the hosts are not injecting their personalities. Too often you tune into a conversation between buddies, laughing, talking about what they did over the weekend, and you feel left out. You feel included listening to the Acquired podcast. It seems like a secret society. Unlike too many influencers and wannabe musicians they're not constantly dunning listeners to subscribe and spread the word. When you do this you can't be taken seriously. Either your work stands for itself or... Turns out the Costco podcast is legendary, and it's two hours and fifty three minutes long! That's what people want, a deep dive. They have all the time for that which they deem truly interesting. You may denigrate youngsters for swiping quickly online, but if their attention spans are so short, how come they have streaming marathons, watching hours of "Friends" and other series? But I don't expect the mainstream to glom on to Acquired, because it's not sexy in the usual ways. It's not visual, based on beautiful people. It focuses on people who paid their dues, usually after a boatload of education. The general public doesn't want to hear this. They want it all, and they want it NOW! So as much as I knew about Costco... I learned a ton more. I knew about Sol Price. I even knew about the legendary Fedco. But what I did not know is when Fedco refused to do business with Sol that Price started a company called FedMart! Which was a juggernaut, and that's why we have WalMart and Kmart... They were trying to trade off the success of Sol's FedMart! And the history is deep, and there's all this info about margins... Costco caps its average margin at 11%. Never charges more than 14% to !5% on any item. It's all about the relationship with the customer. Who is incredibly loyal. Bands should listen to this podcast. Everybody talks about the Grateful Dead, but they did it by accident, only in retrospect does it look like a plan for success. Where everybody here took risk, but only after having experience and knowing what they were trying to achieve. And I'd tell you more about the Costco podcast, but I listened it to a week ago and I don't want to get anything wrong. Last night I just finished the Formula 1 podcast. It was four and a half hours long, and I could have listened to another four and a half, not a single lick was boring. Now I'm always wary of reporters, as opposed to those who've lived a subject, when the newspaper calls, beware. Most of the time I'm busy informing the writer of the industry. However these two guys who do the Acquired podcast go VERY deep. If you grew up in the vertical maybe you can quibble, but they know they're starting from zero, but they're fans of the story, they want to know more and more. Now of course there are multi-episode podcasts on one subject that last as long, however... This is old school, it's the same problem HBO and Apple have. They think they're increasing audience by doing this. They couldn't be more wrong. People want it all and they want it now. They want to go deep, they want to marinate, they want to bond with the project and then tell everybody about it. You can be early and own a show that's dropped all at once. You can watch the latest Netflix production when it drops on Friday and then boast about having seen it, you're a number one fan, you're hard core. But by time "White Lotus" drips out its episodes weeks later everybody's on the same plane, in a world where we're all looking for status. Acquired is a club. A pretty large one, but nowhere near as big as those who rule the Spotify Top 50. However, Acquired has a better batting average than the Spotify Top 50. They don't whiff. And they do it all themselves, except for the addition of an editor. This is what the internet affords, the electronic tools, you can do it and distribute it and if it's great, people will find it. Eventually. Eleven years, that's how long ago Acquired was started. Imagine telling a musician they've got to wait eleven years to reach critical mass. But that's the new game. You start off the radar screen, you refine your act in public and when you finally get it right you gain hard core fans that spread the word. That's your business plan, period. People want something more quantified, with success much earlier in the game. But almost everything that rises instantly falls just about as fast, that's what MTV taught us. Acquired is the sh*t. Check it out, it's not flashy, but once you start listening, you cannot stop. -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25