Hear why freedom weighting is a powerful way to invest internationally, rewarding countries with greater freedom for their citizens. Find out how Perth Tolle has quantified freedom for international investing with her ETF: Life + Liberty Indexes.
067 - JJ Ramberg: Goodpods - What Your Friends are Listening To
Guest: JJ Ramberg is the co-founder of Goodpods, the new app where you can follow your friends, influencers, and favorite podcasters to see what they're listening to. JJ spent 13 years as an anchor on MSNBC and also co-founded the coupon site Goodshop.com. She is the author of two books -- the Wall Street Journal immediate bestseller, It's Your Business, and the children's book The Startup Club.
1-click play this episode in your podcast app.
Intro: We all love a little “good” in our lives. In this episode, host Emily Binder and JJ dive into the optimism and simplicity that JJ’s app Goodpods offers to its users. The app provides users a way to give and get recommendations for podcasts from their friends and fellow users in a world where podcasting is becoming more and more popular.
Emily and JJ continue their conversation to discuss the ins and outs of building an app, making money, podcast advertising, the podcasts they’re loving right now, and more.
Topics:
0:55: Meet JJ Ramberg
1:20: What is Goodpods?: Gravitating towards goodness.
“At its core, it’s just a way to find great new podcasts, and for podcasts to find new listeners.” - JJ Ramberg
3:45: Goodpods is Goodreads for podcasts. Download the app and claim your handle now. Follow @emilybinder and @JJ on Goodpods.
Co-founders and siblings, JJ and Ken Ramberg
5:00: The origins of Goodpods. JJ co-founded Goodpods with her brother Ken. They are both big podcast listeners.
“In 2019, 50% of the US population has at least listened to a podcast, and a third of them listen at least monthly.” Via Edison Research
6:05: These days, podcasting offers so much more than entertainment. More people are turning to podcasts for up to date news and information about what’s happening in the world, and sharing joy with those around them.
8:30: Podcasts are “low commitment.” You can consume information and entertainment more simply and easily. It’s a short-form content, and that’s the opposite of what we’re experiencing on social media.
9:20: Social media can be a negative space these days, linked to depression and addiction. But podcasting offers positivity, education, and entertainment.
10:21: Sharing podcast recommendations from the app: Ologies hosted by Alie Ward (check out the COVID-19 episode entitled Virology)
12:10 JJ loves Cool Mules podcast from CANADALAND and 10% Happier with Dan Harris
“These conversations are happening everywhere. We’ve just codified it, so you don’t have to remember them anymore.” - JJ Ramberg
15:55: Designing the Goodpods app: “We wanted it to be familiar” - JJ Ramberg
16:50: Beta testing: Goodpods is constantly adopting the app to be as simple and user friendly as possible.
17:01: So how does Goodpods make money? As a listener, a lot of people fast forward through ads. Is podcast advertising in a good place? Is it effective?
19:00 Podcast advertising is going to change in the coming years. Emily recommends: Six Pixels of Separation #700 – Seth Godin on Podcasting
“It’s not about how many people are listening, but what is the quality of the audience. Are they interested in a really niche topic? Because this medium lets you get so niche.”
21:20: Discussing parasocial relationships. Why do we sometimes feel like we are friends with podcasters, tv characters, etc.?
22:00: Growing podcast viewership is often the number one goal or metric for a podcaster. What is the best way to promote a new or existing podcast?
23:58: Emily and JJ discuss “Calls to Action,” or CTAs. It’s tough to get a reaction sometimes; you have to make things as easy as possible for the listener.
25:20: There are 800,000 podcasts. Don’t try to compete with the top podcasts on the charts, compete within your niche, and build the target audience for your specific brand.
“We weren't trying to be everything to everybody. We were just trying to be what we’re supposed to be for our audience.” - JJ Ramberg
28:38: JJ’s podcast recommendations: WeCrashed, a podcast about the rise and fall of WeWork, and the Ten Percent Happier Podcast with Dan Harris.
Goodpods is always looking for feedback and suggestions for their app. If you would like to submit a comment or suggestion, email JJ at jj (at) goodpods (dot) com.
Goodpods Co-Founder JJ Ramberg
066 - Audrey Hall: From Cash to Fintech - Brightwell
The Southeast Asian region’s internet economy has hit a key milestone, reaching $100 billion in market capitalization for the first time in 2019. This represents a 39% increase from the previous year. Money is moving in and out of this region in ways never before seen.
Audrey Hall is SVP, Product and Marketing at Brightwell, one of Atlanta’s fastest growing fintech companies
Audrey and Emily talked about Audrey’s mission at Brightwell, a payments technology company whose fintech solutions serve seafarers on the world’s major cruise Iines including Carnival, Norwegian, and more. We talked about the war on cash in the US and abroad, combatting fraud, and how Brightwell approaches educating users who are mostly unbanked or underbanked. Plus, the relationship between product and marketing.
Audrey Hall
is SVP of Product and Marketing at Brightwell, where she is focused on building financial products that transform global workers’ lives. Previously, Audrey served as VP of Client Strategy at 352, Inc.
Play this episode anywhere:
“Our purpose really is to help these underbanked, underserved communities who deserve the same access to the tools that we all have. That they are included in this financial world where You can have your dreams be possible by savings, by thinking about budgeting.” - Audrey Hall
TOPICS & TIMESTAMPS
1:39 Meet Emily’s guest, Audrey Hall
2:05: What does Brightwell do?
2:34: Brightwell is a fintech company out of Atlanta. They create financial technology products that serve the specific needs of migrant workers. Strong focus in the maritime industry. They help people send money home to their families and join the digital economy. Digital and financial inclusion.
“When we looked at payments in the cruise industry, it was kind of archaic.”
3:24: On-ship payroll payments are often done in cash. It’s risky and not cost-efficient. Brightwell offers a solution and serves people from 140 different countries around the world.
4:50: Brightwell’s clients include seafarers on cruise lines such as Norwegian, Carnival, Princess, Aida, Costa and more.
“The digital economy at large is something we’ve come to expect in the Western world.” - Audrey Hall
5:50: 2 billion people today are unbanked globally
6:05: These users offer tremendous opportunities for financial and corporate expansion, but their needs are unique and are impacted by language barriers, B2C interactions, education levels, and more
6:50: Build trust and empathy with various user groups
7:55: How do ATMs play a part in all this? ATM use is complicated and sometimes risky.
8:50: People are drawn to hard currency and the physicality of cash. Brightwell tries to help users understand why digital funds can be safer for them and their families, while respecting the ways that cash is still important for certain use cases and cultures.
9:25: Countries like Sweden are going cashless. 30% of Americans don’t use any cash in a given week.
9:40: Cash vs Digital. What are the pros and cons of each? How do you manage risk?
11:00: We’re more hesitant to offer up personal information (especially PII) these days. Companies like Brightwell work hard to ensure digital users are protected but fraud is rampant.
12:30: Real talk: Fraud can impact user experience and brand reputation. How do you deal with that?
“It’s something we will continue to iterate on and find new ways to educate users on.” “Yeah they are going to blame us, but it’s our responsibility to take care of them and make their experience the best it can be.” - Audrey Hall
14:34: Companies should be the guide, not the hero. Base your marketing and messaging around this guiding principle. It’s all about servicing the person who is using your product.
Each person who works at Brightwell is bought into their core principle and aims to put the user experience first.
15:05: Brightwell’s core principle: user first.
16:50: What is the difference between unbanked and underbanked? In the U.S. there are 55 million unbanked individuals
17:37: People depend on cash and keeping those systems in place is equally important as educating them on digital banking services.
18:19: How has Brightwell transformed itself in the last few years? Adopting more of a startup mindset.
19:20: Product testing: Brightwell works to understand the language and flow that would resonate most with clients based on their one-on-one user experience testing on prototypes (e.g. payment app Brightwell Navigator on Android and iOS)
19:50: “Focus groups are not your friend!”
21:17: Your product and marketing departments should be in constant communication. It will help you find the “why” behind your products. Collaboration is key.
22:00: What’s next for Brightwell and Audrey?
23:23: Brightwell is launching in the Philippines this year with a physical location.
26:00: Each year Brightwell is iterating and growing. Everyone there is committed to the purpose of the organization.
Audrey’s podcast recommendations: Reply All podcast episode 102 “Long Distance” and 103 “Long Distance, Part II.” It focuses on fraudsters like tech support scams based, suspicious callers, etc, and takes you behind the scenes as they track down an Indian call center that is scamming people.
Connect with Audrey Hall on LinkedIn and Twitter: @ansianko
Learn more about Brightwell and follow @BrightwellApp on social.
Follow @beetlemoment:
065 - Alison Greenberg: What's in a Name?
Alison Greenberg is a naming expert, brand strategist, and verbal designer. As of 2023 Alison is the Co-Founder and CEO at RuthHealth. Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of aflow, a conversational AI studio designing and building AI-powered, NLP-backed chat and voice assistant experiences. Over the past 12+ years, she's helped brands find their voice in the marketplace.
Alison’s branding and naming work includes brands + agencies: McCann, VSA Partners, Siegelvision, Elmwood, OpenIDEO, Edwards Lifesciences, Stryker, Summit Health/City MD, Pfizer, General Motors, McDonald's, Hungryroot, The Helm, Fidelity, Llamasoft + others. (Alison Greenberg- LinkedIn.)
Alison Greenberg, Co-Founder & CEO of RuthHealth, and brand naming expert and strategist. Twitter: @ALiS0NLAURA
Emily spoke with Alison about her approach to naming products and brands with a few great examples from fashion to CBD. Plus, should voice assistants have a gender? And what makes a good chatbot?
This episode has good old fashioned branding, voice and conversation design (VUI), startups and women creating cool products for women, and the keys to designing a great chat experience for your customers or audience.
Bottom line: Naming is the way that you take language and make it work for a brand.
Topics & Timestamps
1:50: Alison shares her background and how she became involved with naming brands.
2:15: Language is a currency and in any form of advertising, marketing, or branding it is the core piece of the craft. Naming is the most condensed way to apply language to a brand. Naming is the way that you take language and really put it to work for the brand it’s poetry, but it’s also a strategic execution of ideas.
3:35: Naming can be subjective, so how do you objectively define the success of a name?
3:50: You can’t decouple a name from what it represents. The naming doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but the success of a brand is mostly qualitative. Is it succinct? Does it telegraph meaning?
5:20: Successful names often stop us in our tracks. In B2B naming you don’t have much of an opportunity to do that, but it’s becoming easier to be creative and innovative with naming.
6:00: Slack is a great example of this. It resonates with the user. People often say “slack it to me” or “slack me.” It’s simple and surprising: two criteria for a great name.
6:55: There’s a science behind why names with harder consonants such as k and z. Experts in linguistics study sound symbolism, phonosemantics, and phonaesthesia: the idea that the way a word sounds have lexical meaning and meaning in the way that they sound. It’s all about the relationship between sound and meaning.
'Phonaesthesia occurs when certain sounds become associated with certain meanings, even though they do not attempt to imitate the sound (as in onomatopoeia). ' 'Phonaesthesia has been described as a type of conventional sound symbolism.
Women in Voice is building community for women in this new technology space. Alison is chapter founder of Women in Voice NY.
9:11: Often, brands run into legal problems when trying to establish a name to their brand. One such company that Alison worked with is Where Mountains Meet. Brand owners approached Alison after being hit with a cease and desist letter for the brand name they were originally using when launching their sustainable women’s clothing business. See more about Where Mountains Meet on their Instagram.
11:05: calmbound is another female-owned business that Alison has worked with whose owners had a passion for language and creating a brand of CBD edibles curated with the proper dosage of CBD and available to people of all walks of life, i.e. veterans, elderly, etc. calmbound echoes the literal compound used in CBD, but also has a deeper meaning that resonates with the brand’s hope that users would be “calm bound” with their mental and physical health. See more about calmbound.
12:45: There is always a need for naming. Whether it’s podcasts or brands, the ability to be clear as well as memorable is a true art. -Alison Greenberg
14:25: Some of the most interesting perspectives can come from an intersectional and diverse background. When we’re thinking about voice, having a background in understanding the human element and how language and communication function on a level with human emotion is really helpful.
15:30: Being brief and getting your message across concisely is key. Brevity goes beyond just the way you look at brand communication. It has to be done visually and verbally because we are constantly being bombarded with information.
17:15: You don’t have a lot of real estate with voice. You have to use as few words as possible to get your message across.
Voice User Interfaces (VUI) are the primary or supplementary visual, auditory, and tactile interfaces that enable voice interaction between people and devices. A VUI can be anything from a light that blinks when it hears your voice to an car’s entertainment console.
18:34: When you’re building a custom voice experience responding in the fewest amount of words while maintaining a personality and conversational flow is a balance that you have to strike.
19:00: How do you bake the tone of the brand into pre-programmed chat responses while maintaining brevity?
19:19: You need to remove the formalities and just focus on conversation with chat. Telegraph meaning and utility. The whole point of a chatbot is to get something accomplished. -Alison Greenberg
20:35: Make sure that your chatbot voice is honoring that brand. A beauty brand might use emojis while an insurance brand would be establishing trust.
22:10: Bots and voice should use language to be solution creators, not just problem solvers.
23:10: Make it known that a chatbot is being used from the beginning. The BOT bill (Senate bill 1001) in California makes it illegal for bots to pretend to be humans online.
24:30: Considering gender with virtual assistants: The term virtual assistant is a better term for a chatbot. Using the first person plural can be a good way to stay gender-neutral.
25:40: There is no reason to give a bot a gender unless it’s strategic. For example, the brand Swoobie’s target customer is a female, so it makes sense for their voice and chatbot to take a female gender. In financial services, it doesn’t matter.
27:45: Staying gender-neutral with voice can be tricky.
28:48: Female topics can often be taboo, but some brands in femtech and sextech are starting the conversation around them: Lola, Cora, etc. Chatbots allow for these topics on women’s healthcare to be explored in an environment that feels safe and non-judgmental.
30:21: Book recommendation: Questions of negotiation are really common in the voice industry, especially for women. Alison recommends “Getting More” by Stuart Diamond.
Learning Links: Symbolism in language
041 - Don't Podfade - Phoebe Mroczek: How You Do One Thing is How You Do Everything
Guest: Phoebe Mroczek of Unbecoming Podcast and New To (Austin) Podcast
Topics: Podcasting, the business of podcasting, entrepreneurs, consulting, brain picking (ugh), commitment, intimacy through audio content
Phoebe Mroczek hosts Unbecoming Podcast and New To Podcast (a show about moving to Austin)
Hear Phoebe and Emily discuss:
Podfading - the overall mortality rate of podcasts or “podfade” comes in at a remarkable 50%
Phoebe Mroczek:
Phoebe Mroczek is a podcaster and marketing strategist who helps online entrepreneurs create a profitable business that is an honest reflection of who they are and what they want most.
ABOUT Phoebe:
She is the host of Unbecoming, a podcast and nationally-syndicated radio show that helps entrepreneurs release the judgments and beliefs holding them back from living a more meaningful life. Her show reaches 350,000+ listeners per month from 40+ countries, 16 AM/FM stations in 20 cities nationwide and across 20 Internet platforms.
She built and ran a six-figure online marketing business for several years before realizing that her real passion was in helping entrepreneurs amplify their message and have a greater impact by being more of themselves.
Phoebe believes that while what we do in the world is important, we’re meant to do so much more in life than just work. As an curious explorer and recovering perfectionist, she’s traveled to 65 countries on 6 continents, been cage diving with great white sharks, camped in the Serengeti and motorbiked across 15 countries in Europe.
Phoebe in the news:
019 - Marketing Yourself (Interview with Kristen Knepper)
Kristen Knepper from Work Like a Girl interviewed me about how to market yourself. We covered some of the challenges we face as women, especially young women, when trying to market ourselves to advance our careers or build our personal brands.
You can watch the full interview here.
COMING SOON: Tune in next week for my upcoming interview with Kiki L’Italien about Voice Marketing with Amazon Alexa.
Topics:
What's the resistance to marketing oneself for most people?
Why do women in particular resist "marketing" themselves at work?
I notice women being modest on their resumes/cover letters (e.g., "worked on team that created" rather than "created"). What advice would you give a woman who thinks she's not truthful or bragging when speaking boldly?
Can personal aspects enhance the professional brand? Should they?
Self sacrifice and giving to others is a feminine ideal, but many women compete with one another at work. Why is this?
Kristen Knepper Consulting: https://kristenknepper.com/
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