TBF 94 Crystal O'Keefe | Peloton Podcast

 

Podcasting has come to the point where you can talk about anything. Whatever it is, there is a big community of people behind it, that are willing to go into your show. This is the case with the Peloton fitness community. Crystal O’Keefe is one half of the hosting duo at The Clip Out Podcast. In this conversation with Tracy Hazzard, learn why Crystal and her husband, Tom O’Keefe decided to make a podcast on such a niche topic – Peloton. Discover how co-hosting makes things easier, how active the Peloton community is, their secrets to monetization, and more. Also, learn about Crystal’s new podcast, The Superset, where she tackles the world of Tonal.

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Watch the episode here:

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How To Make A Contagious Fitness Podcast For Peloton Fanatics Who Never Miss Episodes With Crystal O’Keefe Host Of The Clip Out Podcast

A Podetize podcaster is coming on the show. I’ve invited Crystal O’Keefe on. She’s got a show called The Clip Out. She does it with her cohost, her husband, Tom. She and Tom have run The Clip Out for over 200 episodes. I meet them at the She Podcasts event in October of 2018 in Atlanta. They were this very serious couple who were asking me all these very pointed questions about how we edit it and what we do. They were really detail-oriented and I thought, “What intensity.” When I found out that they have a show about Peloton, I thought, “This makes sense.” I’ve heard about these Peloton fanatics out there. They are obsessed with this machine and I thought, “Maybe that translates into such great details and other things.”

In this case, this is a tremendous benefit. I want you to learn in this episode when Crystal is talking about how everything is going. She is talking about the great details and purpose they put into everything that they do on the show. They create this rich environment for these Peloton fanatics who are their readers. I also want to read to you a little bit from their website about them. They have such a great sense of humor and interplay, and we don’t often get to introduce and talk to many cohosts, especially two that have this kind of interpersonal relationship. It sets the tone for why their episodes are so great and why you need to listen to them.

After months of listening to Crystal talk about her Peloton obsession, Tom suggested she start a podcast dedicated to the topic. His theory being he would then only have to listen to her talk about Peloton for one hour a week. Tom was very wrong. Every week Crystal and Tom talk to riders, instructors and other luminaries from the Pelo-verse. It’s hour-ish of news, tips, commentary, banter and inappropriate comments, mostly from Tom, about the “Bike That Goes Nowhere.”

First off, it invites you in. It makes you feel like you already know them when you haven’t even listened to an episode yet, but you’re going to want to listen especially after you hear the wonderful infectious laugh that Crystal has that I’m hoping I’m going to be able to get out of her in this episode. I know she thinks Tom is funny, but I hope I’m funny enough. I really hope that I’m going to be able to get both our Toms, my Tom, her Tom and Crystal and I together to do an episode with the four of us. I think that will be a lot of fun. We’ll try to do something with some magic and tips on cohosting. We will do a special for all of you in the future. Let’s learn from Crystal as she talks about The Clip Out and how she has gained that Peloton fanatic audience.

About The Clip Out Podcast Host Crystal O'Keefe
Bought her Peloton in July of 2016 and was quickly hooked.

Has a Master’s Degree in Business.

Is Project Manager in the health care industry.

Enjoys outdoor activities like hiking and camping.

Enjoys skydiving.

Used to work in the robotics industry.

Edits every episode of The Clip Out.

Drinks Mich Ultra.

Loves animals.

Follow Crystal O’Keefe on Social:

Social: Facebook | Instagram  | Twitter | Youtube

Crystal, I am so glad to talk to you. We left our Toms out and we thought we’d chat us girls, but we could have had both our Toms on here and that would have been fun. We may have to come back and do that.

That can be a second episode.

My favorite part of the way your show is that there are so few of us who have cohosts because it’s hard to do. Luckily, we’re married to ours, so it makes it a little bit easier. The interplay between the two of you is a fantastic part of the show. Your audience gets to know the two of you quickly and gets to know like, “Tom’s going to say this and Crystal’s going to giggle.” I swear I can hear you sometimes blush when you’re laughing because of something he says.

That’s accurate. I’m sure you can because it does happen a lot.

I probably should watch the video and see if I’m right about this, but I can definitely hear it. Let’s start at the beginning. What made you decide to start The Clip Out?

I have a pretty buttoned-up traditional day job as a Project Manager. Tom and I were driving one day and I was expressing my interest in finding a creative outlet, the way that he has so many creative outlets. He said, “You should start a podcast.” I was like, “About what?” I couldn’t even think of it and he was like, “The bike that you never stopped talking about, maybe that would be a good idea.” At the time, Peloton only had a bike as their product. That was the only thing that they offered. I had my Peloton bike at that point for about eight months. I was like, “I don’t even know what I would talk about for an hour a week-ish.” He was like, “I can’t imagine you not talking about the bike. That’s all you ever do is talk about the bike.” He said something much funnier, but basically, “If I could get you to stop talking and only talk for a week, that would be a win.”

He pushed you into it. That’s so funny because Tom pushed us, too. It was my idea about podcasting, but he was pushing us into doing something media. He wanted to do video first and at that time, I jokingly said, “I didn’t want to have my hair done every day,” because videos were a lot more professional back then than they are now. I could come up with my Peloton ponytail and it would be okay right now. I didn’t, but I could have. We couldn’t have done that back then. It’s so funny that both of them pushed us into doing this podcasting thing. Your show is so highly produced compared to some. Were you a podcast listener before? Was that a concerted choice?

It was. That is another thing that I owe to Tom though because he comes from a radio background and we already felt way back in 2017 that Peloton was going to be huge. It felt to us that they were about to explode and that if there was not already a Peloton podcast, we wanted to come out of the gate very strong. We checked and there was not already a Peloton show at that time. There are now, but there weren’t at the time. When we started it, we wanted to create more of what you would hear on the radio. That was our thought process.

Right out of the gate, we were like, “Let’s get a theme song.” That was important to us. We wanted to have something that was catchy and unique to us and had the feel of what we were looking for. We had our theme song made. It ended up not costing a fortune, which is what we thought would happen. It was a very reasonable cost and then we had a set of bumpers put together. Tom had friends in the radio world that did voiceover work for that. I feel like those two things pointed us in the direction of keeping things at a very high level. We’ve added onto that and kept adding to that theme as we’ve gone on for years now.

TBF 94 Crystal O'Keefe | Peloton Podcast

Peloton Podcast: Find a creative outlet where you can talk about your interests that you can’t stop talking about.

 

You’ve made some smart choices here because sometimes some people produce for the wrong reasons. You are matching what your audience expects because your audience is used to the highly produced Peloton videos, all the things that go on, the energy of them, and the interaction level. Sometimes watching them, makes me a little manic. I’m sure its purpose was supposed to raise your heart rate, get you going, and inspired. That’s what your show reflects. It was a smart choice from that and that it’s mirroring what you wanted to achieve. I can say there’s a lot of times on here, after a call or after an interview, I’ll say, “You could dial back your production and save yourself some time and energy,” where I couldn’t say that to you because you need it. It’s part of what makes the energy of the show so good. It’s probably creating that binge factor and that attractor for you. Speaking of your binge factor, did you know people were binging on your show?

No, I did not.

Has anyone reached out to you and said, “I listened to all your episodes?”

We have had some people do that and listened from the beginning. They’ve listened to us grow, adapt, and change. We’ve had people that say they listened to every single episode, and then we’ve had some people that are like, “I only listen to this segment or this piece of every single episode.” I have lately heard that people are discovering us, as they discover Peloton. They have started where we are, but then they go back and listen to every episode, which is so shocking to me. It takes me by surprise and also it makes me feel like, “That’s great that we created something that people want to go back and hear the evolution of what has happened with Peloton, the company, and all the things that we’ve talked about.” That’s pretty cool.

I think that it’s the idea of something that’s bingeable. If I discover Peloton and it’s new to me, I might want to absorb everything I can about the culture and tips so I’m going there. You can see some people are going to be action and tip-oriented. They might skip to those segments that you do or want to know more about investing in them and you’ve got your tread section. Although I do like when at one point, you suggested calling it the rundown, which made sense from the tread’s perspective. You start to look at that and you think, “I want the financial information, what’s going on with the company and the marketplace,” because there are a lot of investors in that market. You’ve created that segment as well.

You’ve got so much for so many different people within it that I could see some people skipping, but I could also see some bingeing on the whole thing and wanting to find those episodes and all the gems of things you shared over the years. You’re way past the stage of a newbie and it does come across. You talk with such knowledge. You’re only a few steps ahead of me. This is the thing. When I look at The Binge Factor for a show, it isn’t that you’ve got something that’s hot, which you have, obviously. This is something of great interest. It’s got a decent market size and all of that. You’ve created a show within it that is infectious and addictive at the same time, which is exactly what the Peloton is supposed to be.

It mirrors that audience so perfectly that it’s serving you and that audience well. They’re not going to go anywhere because of that. The other part about it is that even if you’re not a Peloton fan and you come and listen about the show, all of a sudden, you’re thinking like, “That wouldn’t be such a bad gift.” I think my Tom would fall over if I asked him for one. He would be like, “No. If I buy that and I’m so chilly like in the dog house,” so I wouldn’t do it. He’s thinking about it. He would be like, “What happened to you?” It would be, “I drank Crystal and Tom’s Kool-Aid.” That’s what you say in your description. That’s exactly it. That this is that infectious and addictive show that you created on an infectious and addictive product, which is a great blend, it’s good for you to have created such a great show.

Thank you. I didn’t ever think of it that way, as far as being infectious, but it comes from my genuine love of the product. It all stemmed from me not being able to stop talking about it. It comes through. We’ve had the opportunity to meet people who work at the company, not in the showroom. We’ve been able to meet people who run the company and they’re good people. Even if it’s not something that’s for you and even if I couldn’t have the bike, I would be rooting for them. I’m in their corner so completely.

When you’re talking about the financials, you’ve been talking about some of the lawsuits and the recalls that have happened. These things happen to all companies, but you’ve been saying it was such a nice direction. We’re not going to pile on this company. We’re going to say, we do love the product at the end of the day and recognize that they’re going through some horrible growing pains. At the end of the day, that’s serving you well in terms of creating that great rapport with the company itself, which gets you the benefit of them being a supporter of your show and giving you great information and insights over the years. It’s a place that Tom and I played when we did in the 3D print market. When we played in this world, we’re critical of the process, but in a great way that is trying to help critique the marketplace and move it forward, not pile on and destroy it.

Match what your audience expects. Click To Tweet

It can be a fine line because it would be easy to make fun of the situation in a mean way. We crack jokes, so I don’t mean to say we don’t make fun of a situation, but we also don’t make fun of people. We do try to keep it entertaining. Whenever you think, “You’re going to have a show about an exercise bike.” That sounds about as dry as you can possibly get. We wanted to keep it fun and light. That’s another thing that I feel like Tom brings to the show. He has a great sense of humor and always has. He knows how to keep things light and he’s got great timing. It worked out well.

I want to talk about that, but I want to first highlight the fact that you guys have won an award from the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts. You won a host award and the Best Independent Episode in Health and Fitness. The independent episode, that one was your interview with the Peloton wife, Monica Ruiz, and the reality is that the interview is like the 20-minute segment of this 90-minute show. The reason I think you won is because of the joke section of it, which was absolutely hilarious. I was laughing out loud. I clapped at the end of it. That’s how good it was. This is where Tom did his running list of the top ten reasons you can compare Pornhub and Peloton.

This was based on an article that had come out. It wasn’t like you guys made this analogy. It had already been in the news. He was running down the top ten list. I could have started crying and laughing. It was so funny and yet so good-humored between the two of you, and you’re giggling away because he’s telling off-color jokes. At the same time, there’s some truth there that is such a great move that I can see why that episode would win. That portion of it is the perfect mix of what you two do so well together. You add to every episode, whether you’re talking about Pornhub or not.

It’s so funny you say that because privately between the two of us, we’re always like, “Which one of us got the host?”

I thought it was hilarious too because it’s called the host award, not the hosts award. He graciously gave it to you though. I have to say, he was a good man. This ability for you two to laugh in the process makes it easier for us to laugh out loud as listeners and that’s why a co-host situation is so great. It’s weird when you laugh and it’s you, like, “It’s my joke and I laughed for myself.” It’s weird. We started to see that here with talk show hosts who have no audience. They’re so uncomfortable, in the pandemic as we’ve been watching this, but you guys have each other and you’re comfortable with that and making each other laugh and teasing each other. That’s why we’re listening to vicariously watch your relationship grow, too.

We definitely have fun together. That’s for sure.

Congratulations on the award. It was really well-deserved. I have to say and I mentioned this in my open, that met you both at the She Podcasts event in 2018. I thought you were the most serious couple ever because you were so serious about your show, about how its production went, and I thought, “They’re intense,” and that’s okay. I applaud intensity. I’m an intense person, but I had no idea that there was this wonderful sense of humor behind it until I listened to your show for the first time. It’s great that you have all that dimension to the both of you as well.

That’s true. We offset each other very well and we have opposites in a lot of things, but we take the same types of things seriously. I know exactly what you’re talking about because we came up and we were like, “What about this and what about that?” We talk everything to death, even in our relationship. If something comes up and we’re not sure about something, we dissect it from every angle. If one of us is looking at a job change, it can be hours-long conversation as we look at every single angle and what it’s going to mean to the rest of our lives, for example. We are very intense.

That meticulousness is coming across and you are making a great show. I posted on LinkedIn. The video was about having a goal with where you’re going and a great attention to detail. Along the way, people skip that stuff. They’re like, “I’ll wing it.” Having that can make a purposeful end appear. It can get you to where you want to go and that’s what I see you’re doing here. You’ve done over 200 episodes. Congratulations. That’s quite an accomplishment. How are you fitting this in with a day job?

I don’t know.

It’s the real truth there, right?

Yeah. It’s like a little of this and a little of that. Mostly I do our interviews at night, so that helps. I’ll do interviews right after work and then whenever it’s something that won’t fit in, we’ll do interviews on the weekend. That helps a lot. We have two pieces to our show that we put together. Every week we have an interview with somebody from the Peloton community, whether it’s an instructor, somebody else that works there, who rides a bike, or who has a treadmill. They usually have an interesting story that has caught my eye for some reason.

We do that, but we do that ahead of time. Maybe it might be 3 or 4 weeks ahead of time. The week the episode airs, I’ve been watching Instagram, Facebook, and all the different socials that are out there. I collect interesting stories that come up for Peloton throughout the week. We put all of that together in one show. The interview, since it’s already done, takes the pressure off. I don’t have to come up with those two days before we’re getting ready to air because things happen. I learned that pretty quickly. That was not a good idea to try to do the same day. The combination of those topical stories that we can whip through and our interview makes it easier to put together at the end of the day.

TBF 94 Crystal O'Keefe | Peloton Podcast

Peloton Podcast: When you’re making a podcast about an exercise bike, that’s as dry as you can get. So you need to keep things fun and light.

 

Your titles are interesting. You’ve some great titles. This is what I want people to hear because this is something that they do so badly. Typically, it’ll be like, “Monica Ruiz, Nicole Gonzales.” These were people who were on my show and that’s the title, but you’re not doing that. You’ve got, Are People Abusing the High-Five?. I have no idea what that means because I’m not a Peloton rider, but maybe if I did, I would know and I’d want to listen to that. My other one is, Turn Your Bike Into…A Sex Toy?. It’s intriguing. I don’t care if you’re a Peloton person or not. You’ve got to read about that episode. Will Having Tread Affect Your Home Owner’s Insurance?. Who would have thought of that? It sounds like it could be the driest subject in the world, but I bet it’s pretty interesting. People are like, “I never thought of that before.” These are the kinds of insider topics and yet intriguing to someone new and an outsider. That’s what you’re doing well to draw people into the show.

Thank you and again, I have to give that credit to Tom because he almost always comes up with the titles. He has a sense of humor about it. It’s funny because almost every week, he comes up with it without asking and very seldom, he’ll be like, “I’m stuck. What should we talk about?” I’ll say something and he’ll turn it into his funny. He’s great with that.

It’s so great to split the duties. That’s probably also how you’re managing to get this accomplishment and fit this in. Let’s talk about some of the five things because you do have some interesting guests that are unusual. I want to talk about how you get those great guests. How do you reach out to them? How do you get them?

Ever since we started the show, I’ve looked for people within the community that interested me. Going way back to the beginning, there were people that stood out because they posted on all of the socials a lot. A lot of people who ride Peloton are really big Facebook users. As Peloton has grown in the last year, that has started to happen elsewhere. You see it on Instagram, Reddit and Twitter even now. At the time when I first started, it was almost all on Facebook. I could hang out in different Facebook groups because there are thousands of Peloton Facebook groups, and watch interactions and people that interested me. I would then friend them or I would start talking to them in the middle of the thread that was happening on Facebook. We would start having a conversation about if they wanted to be on the show.

They probably don’t refuse very often.

Find people who you find interesting. Click To Tweet

Especially early on, almost nobody did because it’s such a tight-knit community. People are so excited about the Peloton communities.

They don’t want to stop talking about it either.

It’s great to be able to have that conversation with anybody that will listen because some people will be like, “Please stop talking about your Peloton.” Especially early on when no one knew what it was, before the pandemic and the Monica Ruiz Peloton wife commercial, people had no idea what it was. They would get frustrated when you would go on and on. It started to evolve where all of these celebrities started getting a Peloton. We started trying to get into that a little bit like, “How can we leverage this?”

We started reaching out. We would reach out in all different ways. I’ve reached out on Facebook and Instagram. In fact, Tom reached out to Kimmy Gibbler. It’s not her real name. Her real name is Andrea Barber and he reached out to her. She used to play Kimmy Gibbler on Full House. She posted about getting her Peloton bike on Twitter and Tom started commenting on her Twitter. He told her we had a show and she was so excited about that.

We waited a few months, and then he reached back out to her on DM and she accepted. She was super excited to do the interview. By the way, the nicest person you could ever hope to meet who’s so sweet and so down to earth. She loves her Peloton. I feel like what has helped us in that regard is that celebrities who love their Peloton want to talk about it as much as we average people. When you reach out to them like Dr. Jenn Mann from VH1 and tell her, “I love all the things you’re posting about Peloton. I would love to have you on the show.” She said, “Yes.” If you don’t ask, you’ll never find out.

Being a guest on a show is hot, so if you can be on one that’s more relevant and in your interest, it makes it even easier for you. You were talking about this, and I want to highlight this before we go on to the next of the five things. When you’re trying to get great guests, one of the things that you’re doing is you’re seeing people who are already engaging on this topic and choosing to invite them further into having a conversation. You’re setting yourself up for greater success and gaining more listeners and growing the show. If they’re talking about this already, they’re going to tell everybody that they were on your show. Getting your guest to share your show is a hard thing to do if they’re not already engaged in talking. That’s a head start for you, so I can see why this strategy has really worked out. How do we take it from getting great guests to increasing the listeners? What do you do to help increase your listener base?

In general or in regards to those celebrities?

No. In general, what do you do?

In general, we talk about it a lot. Those Facebook groups that I was talking about, when we first started, especially I would post all the time. Every time we had a new episode, I would post in those groups. People were very receptive to that because, as you said, it’s a subject matter they’re already talking about. They’re talking about Peloton. That’s a group specific to Peloton, so they don’t mind seeing that.

It’s not promotional. You’re not selling Peloton stuff. You’re giving them information.

It's great to be able to have a conversation with anybody that'll listen. Click To Tweet

As long as I don’t post too much or get overboard, people seem to enjoy that. Another thing that we do is on Instagram, I started noticing that if I post articles about Peloton, it increases my engagement within Instagram. What I do is I spend a lot of my time on Instagram posting articles that are relevant, and I have enough followers now that I’m able to put the link in the swipe up on the story, but that took a very long time. Before that, I would start talking to people within those different threads. I’d post an article. People would have questions about it and I would bring up the show, and every week, whenever we have a new episode, I put it out there, too. It gives people who are interested in reading about Peloton another opportunity to see, “There’s this podcast. I didn’t even know there was a podcast about it. It’s a whole different way to bring in an audience that I have found is very effective.”

That’s a great strategy. I’m so glad you mentioned that. Do you post sometimes your blog posts as articles as well?

Yes, definitely, especially if it’s something that is controversial. That tends to get a lot of interaction. I love knowing people’s feedback on stuff. You can put something out there and everybody has an opinion. As Peloton continues to grow, the diversity of those opinions grows with it. It is mind-blowing to see something that you put out there that I don’t have to try to be controversial anymore because almost any opinion can be controversial because it’s such a large community at this point.

You obviously have already mentioned that you have a highly produced show. It’s produced like a pro, but what is the thing that you use personally to spend the most time on making sure that it’s the best production possible?

Right out of the gate, we spend a lot of time making sure our audio was spot on. I will say Tom had a show before this, that he had been doing for years, a movie podcast, so we had a studio that had microphones and everything in it. We made sure that everything worked correctly and that when we have multiple people in a room and Tom and I both have our computers here, we have a computer that’s mixing those levels and putting it together. One thing that I found that’s super helpful to me is having redundancies in place because every great once in a while, I will forget to hit record on the actual soundboard because we have the Zoom audio, it’s backed up. If you go through and you say, “Click every guest separately and record their files,” then you have the ability to get their audio as well. There are lots of different options out there, but we do use Zoom and I find that it’s good enough quality if that happens. It’s not the best.

You didn’t lose it and have to try to do it again. I can imagine because Tom and I are like this. It’s happened before where we do an episode, and then he forgot to hit record or do something on the board, and you didn’t have the redundancy in place. I cannot redo it with the same energy. It’s a different show. It’s not the same thing and then, the anger of having to redo comes across in the audio, and the frustration.

It’s hard to reset and you can’t always redo it because if you have a guest, you can’t get them to redo it. I forgot to hit record when we recorded with Snooki. She was so intimidating, not that she did anything, but her presence was intimidating and I forgot to hit record. Luckily, Zoom was the backup.

It’s auto-recording and it’s doing it for you.

Exactly and thank goodness because she was not going to come back and redo that.

It’s such a great tip there and it is more challenging. You have to pay a little bit more attention to those production quality issues and recording well because you have a co-host situation and you’re both in the same room. Otherwise, what are you going to do? Record from two different locations? You won’t take the cues off each other. You won’t have that fast dynamic that you have that is what makes it funnier. What makes it more interesting is if you were in two different locations having that Zoom delay.

It’s a lot more organic when you’re in the same room.

The next question I ask about is encouraging engagement. You were talking about engaging in the Facebook groups, but what do you do to encourage that conversation, that back and forth to happen? What do you do special in social media to try to make that happen?

TBF 94 Crystal O'Keefe | Peloton Podcast

Peloton Podcast: The Peloton community makes great guests because it’s such a tight-knit community. They love to talk about what they love.

 

I ask a lot of questions and what people’s opinions about things are. I will tell them my opinion to create a conversation because I have found over time that if you ask people’s opinions and you don’t state your own, people don’t always engage with that. If you state your opinion first, then they’ll agree or disagree with you and that starts a conversation.

That’s such a great tip there, Crystal. You’re placing a premise and then asking for that conversation pro or con against that. I like that. I can see how that works on social well. Does that work on Facebook and Instagram? Are you seeing it work everywhere?

Yes. I would say honestly it happens faster on Instagram, but it definitely works on both.

The last thing that I like to talk about is monetization. The reason why I put it last is because this is a bigger conversation with you especially. How are you monetizing your show? You’ve got commercials in there. You’ve got sponsorship models. Talk to everyone to give us a little bit of framework about what you’ve done over time here, and then talk about what’s working for you.

First things first are you have to build an audience. You have to have people for people to want to have a sponsorship on your show. Something that worked for us was having that niche, being able to talk about Peloton. When you talk to Peloton users, you’re talking to people who skew heavily to the female side and people with disposable income. You already know those two things about them. Because of that, we could ask people, “Would you like to be a sponsor on our show?” They were interested because they wanted to talk to those people.

One thing that we also do is we only accept sponsorships or ads for people that we genuinely have tried their product and we like. There are things we say no to because it doesn’t feel like a good fit. Either it’s not a good fit for us personally or we don’t think it will be a good fit for our audience. That’s important too, not to say yes to anything, because over time, I feel like you build that trust with your audience. One of our sponsors is Tonal and Tonal is a competitor of Peloton in a way in that they provide fitness instruction and they do it on a machine, but it’s about strength, not cardio. Peloton, they have strength, but they don’t have a machine that does nothing but strength. It’s a little bit of a crossover.

The point being that Tonal was very interested in talking to Peloton users because they were looking for people who already work out at home, who were interested in technology and that kind of thing. That was a great opportunity for them and it was a great opportunity for us because that turned into a partnership. We found another great product that I love so much, and that turned into a whole different show.

It's important that you don't just say yes to anything. Click To Tweet

You have a second one. You had a spinoff.

You couldn’t build those relationships because they mean something and that you’re not like, “I’ll take the supplements, try those out, and talk about them.” You do try them and you have something to say about them that’s personal. That builds great relationships, which adds to something else.

The other show is called The Superset. That’s a directly sponsored show. How does that work?

Tonal still advertise on The Clip Out, but because we wanted to create a show for them because we love their product, they pay for us to have the talent. They paid for getting some of the startup costs done and they pay for some of the production costs. I wouldn’t say that they pay an exorbitant amount, but they certainly pay. It’s a great partnership between the two of us because it’s another way for them to talk to people that haven’t gotten a Tonal yet, that aren’t in the community, and they can talk to them about specific things. We often will have conversations with them about something new that came out and what are the benefits of that. We’ll have that conversation and then we’ll find people that are using it within the community the way that they intended and we’ll bring out those highlights. We’ll talk through the things that are important to Tonal to show people.

You got that inside track going on and that assistance. I’ve listened to that as well. They are not guiding what you say on the show. You still have full editorial and journalistic integrity at the end of the day. They’re giving you that inside track to help make it more likely that you could be ahead of the trend of what you’re talking about, too.

They’re wonderful to work with. They’re an amazing company. I love the people that work there. They’re good people.

That’s so great that you found a niche that you can work in that is giving you high access to a valuable audience at the end of the day. Monetizing your show, do you feel like you need to do more of it? Do you feel like you’re getting to stride? Where are you in this? You’re like 200 episodes, so there are lots of people out there going like, “Crystal, are you making it yet?”

I feel like we’re doing pretty good with The Clip Out. We found some good partnerships and we found some good affiliate programs. I didn’t mention that earlier, but affiliate programs are another opportunity that is good for any show out there. We’re in a good place for The Clip Out and The Superset still has a lot of growth that it needs to do. I don’t feel like we’re there to be able to start doing that yet but we’re in a good place with sponsorships. We’re always open to more. Don’t get me wrong.

Who doesn’t want to monetize a little bit more? That’s great. This is a question that I always wonder about. You’ve got a show that’s set up to do better with monetization because you have a long show. That means you can drop in physically more ads. Everybody’s always like, “What’s the structure of my show?” I got a 10-minute show. I was like, “You can’t do a lot of ads there.” You’re going to annoy your audience. It’s going to be all ad and no show, but that’s why Joe Rogan’s show is 90 minutes so that you can have more spaces for that and more space in between that, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming. You’ve got the setup right, but you probably aren’t getting any resistance from the audience. You haven’t probably gotten any complaints or anything about it because they don’t feel sold out.

We are sold out. We do about four ads right now in every show. We’ve had a couple of people express to us that they don’t like the ads, but I will also say, “People don’t like change.” We also have people that complained when we changed our bumpers to be more professional than the first set that we had. Honestly, almost anything that we changed, somebody has something to say about it, but our audience keeps going up, so I don’t feel like it’s something that is negative. I feel like it’s a balance and we certainly are mindful of, “We don’t want to put too many ads,” and I understand that it can be frustrating to people.

I listen to podcasts, too. I don’t want to listen to all podcasts and no show. It is definitely a balance. At the same time, I think that audiences should try to remember that they’re getting a product for free and that it takes a lot of time because we do have full-time jobs. Hopefully, they understand that we’re trying to do something that we love, but also make it worth the time that goes into it because, as you know, it is a ton of time that goes into these every week.

I want to touch on the part that you do have video as well, which is important because the Peloton is streaming on devices and I can cast it to my TV. All those things are going on everywhere. It is very multimedia already. How is the video doing for you? How is your YouTube channel going?

Our YouTube channel has grown. I feel like we talk about it every episode, but we don’t spend a lot of time pushing it. I would say most of our audience still gravitates towards listening to a traditional podcast. Usually, what I notice is a spike in YouTube subscribers when something funny happens that they want to go and look at. They want to see reactions to something that Tom said, my reaction to that, or we had a guest on that showed something visually they want to see and things like that.

Peloton Podcast: Build an audience. You have to have people if you want to have a sponsorship on your show.

 

Tom does say on occasion, “I’m wearing this funny T-shirt, you better go check it out.” You’re giving them this little fear of missing out while you’re doing that. You’re giving them a tease of what to go see. That helps.

That’s true. Yes, we definitely do.

I’m glad to hear it’s growing because I can see for you that as the audience grows on the Peloton side, it’s going to grow for you as well there. People will find you there first and not realize you have a podcast. That’ll be a great day when that starts happening regularly. You have such a great show. You’ve worked so hard at this. What advice do you have for other podcasters out there?

Don’t give up. Those first couple of episodes can be demoralizing if you look at your numbers and you’re expecting hundreds or thousands, and you didn’t get very much. That’s one piece. Also, I feel like not only is it important to have a topic that is important to you, but whatever it is, make it stand out among other shows that are doing the same thing. There needs to be some reason that people are going to come to yours versus everybody else’s. I know that’s easier said than done with some subjects, but I definitely think that’s important when it comes to shows.

That’s such great advice. Crystal, Tom, Tom, and I are all going to have dinner together, lots of laughs over that at the next live event that we get to be at together. Seeing things are opening back up, I’m so excited for that. I look forward to seeing where your show keeps going in the future because you guys are always watching it on the cutting edge of the trends. That’s the last question I want to leave with. What is next for you? Do you have something that you’re working on that you’re thinking about for the future now that you’ve hit past 200 episodes?

We’re trying to figure out how we add another show in like another episode every week? What makes sense? Numbers sometimes show that if you add a second episode, your audience is used to one a week and so that can make your numbers drop. We don’t want to do that, but what we want to do is there’s so much happening with Peloton that we want to stay on top of it and be able to do something small, a second day of the week. I’m hearing from sources that there’s going to be another big product coming out this fall, and then there’s another big product that’s coming out for Peloton in the first of 2022. There’s going to be so much happening that one episode a week is not going to cut it. It’s trying to figure that out and do it in a way that makes sense and is exciting for our audience and keeps them wanting to listen, not like, “Okay, enough.”

That sounds great. I look forward to hearing what you figure out on that and seeing where that goes. Crystal, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Thank you for having a great show and inspiring others.

Thank you for inviting me and for taking the time. I appreciate it.

—

I promised you an entertaining episode. I promised you with that setup of how interesting and funny she is and the whole thing. Even though you didn’t get to hear the interplay between her and Tom, you get this idea of how powerful her podcast is and how much she loves it. She also talked about the fact that she ended up with a spinoff podcast called The Superset. They’ve got The Clip Out, The Superset, sponsors, advertisers, and monetization going on but she is really cautious about it. She is saying, “I’m growing carefully. I’m growing it with the audience in mind. I’m curating and being careful about the choice of sponsors and advertisers. I’m doing this with a long goal and big purpose in mind.”

Wouldn’t it be great if she could quit her day job sometime soon? I think it’s in her future, I absolutely do, especially if you start listening to the show and you see what I mean. I’m not a Peloton user and I’d love to listen to the show on a regular basis. Maybe it will get me off my butt and get me on a bike. I don’t know. I think my Tom literally would drop dead if I ask for Christmas for my birthday. I can guarantee you, I’m probably not going to be the next Peloton wife.

If a show can do that, you can imagine what you can inspire your listeners to do like Crystal and Tom O’Keefe have on The Clip Out. Make sure you listen so you can get some inspiration of your own about how to create a great show. One with a fabulous binge factor, inspirational, energetic and fits the audience. Until next time and I have another episode for you of different podcasters and how they are bringing their podcasting messages and success to the world on The Binge Factor.

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