#246 – Doing Content Right with Steph Smith of Trends.co
Episode
54 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Relationships, Fundraising & VC, Product & Tech Trends
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Audience depth over breadth: People listen to six podcasts regularly versus dozens of newsletters and hundreds of blogs annually. Podcasts create best-friend-level relationships through hour-long conversations, making them ideal for deep trust but poor for mass reach or quick monetization.
- ✓The thirty-day validation challenge: Record, edit, and publish one episode daily for thirty days to test commitment and content depth before fully launching. This method reached 200 listens per episode and validated audience interest while building production skills through real-world practice.
- ✓Twitter-first distribution strategy: Tweet controversial takes on episode topics first, let them gain traction organically, then append podcast links to viral tweets. One tweet with 10,000 likes about the forty-hour work week drove 1,000 downloads to the corresponding episode alone.
- ✓Realistic success metrics: The average podcast gets 27 listens per episode. Reaching the top 1% requires just 3,200 listens per episode. Understanding these benchmarks prevents discouragement and helps creators set achievable growth targets rather than comparing themselves to Joe Rogan's 7 million downloads.
What It Covers
Steph Smith explains why she launched her podcast "Shit You Don't Learn in School," covering podcast growth strategies, the thirty-day challenge method, content distribution tactics, and building deep audience relationships versus surface-level reach.
Key Questions Answered
- •Audience depth over breadth: People listen to six podcasts regularly versus dozens of newsletters and hundreds of blogs annually. Podcasts create best-friend-level relationships through hour-long conversations, making them ideal for deep trust but poor for mass reach or quick monetization.
- •The thirty-day validation challenge: Record, edit, and publish one episode daily for thirty days to test commitment and content depth before fully launching. This method reached 200 listens per episode and validated audience interest while building production skills through real-world practice.
- •Twitter-first distribution strategy: Tweet controversial takes on episode topics first, let them gain traction organically, then append podcast links to viral tweets. One tweet with 10,000 likes about the forty-hour work week drove 1,000 downloads to the corresponding episode alone.
- •Realistic success metrics: The average podcast gets 27 listens per episode. Reaching the top 1% requires just 3,200 listens per episode. Understanding these benchmarks prevents discouragement and helps creators set achievable growth targets rather than comparing themselves to Joe Rogan's 7 million downloads.
Notable Moment
Smith reveals that only four of Peter Levels' 70-plus projects ever made money and grew, meaning his success rate sits at roughly 5%. This demonstrates how even successful creators fail 95% of the time, making public failure essential for eventual breakthrough wins.
Episode Transcript
What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from ndhackers.com, and you're listening to the Indie Hackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these indie hackers to discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of so the rest of us can do the same. So I'm here with Steph Smith, the one and only. How's it going, Steph? Things are good. How are you? Great. You are, a very multi talented person. You run trends.co, which is, I guess, kind of it's my favorite part of the hustle newsletter, which was acquired by HubSpot last year. It's one of the best newsletters in existence. You guys have, I think, 15,000 plus subscribers. It's paid. It's really awesome. You also have a ton of personal projects that you've worked on over the years, including ebooks and your book called Doing Content Right. And you also have the project that you're here for today, which is a newish podcast that you started called Shit They Don't Teach You in Schools. Is that right? Shit You Don't Learn in School. Yes. Shit You Don't Learn in School. That's right. Love it. With a little asterisk and the I and shit. No so nobody knows what that word means. No swearing here. No swearing here whatsoever. I I started doing this thing on indie hackers. I don't know if you saw it, but we have a group called Show IH on indie hackers on the forum. And anybody who posts in Show IH could just basically show off something that they're working on that they think other indie hackers will find interesting or useful. And I've made a commitment that if somebody posts something cool that the community likes, I will bring that person onto the podcast, and we'll talk about it. So that's, like, Show IH the group, and this is Show IH the episode, I guess. And I think you posted the coolest thing last month. You had a lot of, comments and discussion about your podcast, Shit You Don't Learn in School. And I just kinda wanted to chat with you casually about what it is and why you started it. So maybe let's start there. Like, why should anyone start a podcast right now? Why did you start a podcast? There's obviously hundreds of thousands, if not millions of podcasts. It's really hard to get started. It's really hard to grow. It's hard to be consistent. Chances are you're just gonna give up. So why why start a podcast? Well, I wanna say first that I love that you brought up all of those things. Right? Like, it's so hard to grow a podcast. It's it's not an easy thing to commit to every single week or some people publish even more than that. But I think on the other side of that challenge is something unique …
Get the full transcript (12,112 words) + summary by email — free
One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.
One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.
You just read a 3-minute summary of a 51-minute episode.
Get The Indie Hackers Podcast summarized like this every Monday — plus up to 2 more podcasts, free.
Pick Your Podcasts — FreeKeep Reading
More from The Indie Hackers Podcast
#283 – Making $8k/mo Targeting $100M/yr with Lukas and Liz Hermann of StageTimer.io
Jun 15 · 49 min
Huberman Lab
Using AI to Increase Your Intelligence & Enrich Humanity | Dr. Fei-Fei Li
Aug 10
More from The Indie Hackers Podcast
#282 – Media vs Tech, Twitter Monsters, and Making Millions From Content with Steph Smith of a16z
Jun 3 · 64 min
The Knowledge Project
Joe Liemandt: Alpha School and the Future of Education
Mar 31
Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode
SignalCast may earn commission on purchases via these links.
podcast
- Shit You Don't Learn in SchoolBy guest
“Steph Smith explains why she launched her podcast "Shit You Don't Learn in School," covering podcast growth strategies, the thirty-day challenge method, content distribution tactics, and building deep audience relationships versus surface-level reach.”
More from The Indie Hackers Podcast
We summarize every new episode. Want them in your inbox?
#283 – Making $8k/mo Targeting $100M/yr with Lukas and Liz Hermann of StageTimer.io
#282 – Media vs Tech, Twitter Monsters, and Making Millions From Content with Steph Smith of a16z
#281 – Seth Godin on Indie Hacking, Doing Hard Things, and Finding Significance in a Changing World
#280 – Replacing Yourself as CEO, Living on a Boat, and Crowdfunding to Survive with Alex MacCaw of Reflect
#279 – Staying Indie vs Raising VC, Getting an MBA, and Disrupting the App Store with Emma Lawler of Velvet
Similar Episodes
Related episodes from other podcasts
Huberman Lab
Aug 10
Using AI to Increase Your Intelligence & Enrich Humanity | Dr. Fei-Fei Li
The Knowledge Project
Mar 31
Joe Liemandt: Alpha School and the Future of Education
Latent Space
Mar 24
🔬Why There Is No "AlphaFold for Materials" — AI for Materials Discovery with Heather Kulik
10% Happier with Dan Harris
Feb 11
Stoic Practices for Getting Rid of Mental Junk, Your Morning Routine, and Talking to the Dead | Ryan Holiday
Afford Anything
Jan 23
How to Teach Kids About Money, with Dr. Stephen Day
Explore Related Topics
This podcast is featured in Best Business Podcasts (2026) — ranked and reviewed with AI summaries.
You're clearly into The Indie Hackers Podcast.
Every Monday, we deliver AI summaries of the latest episodes from The Indie Hackers Podcast and 192+ other podcasts. Free for one show.
Start My Monday DigestNo credit card · Unsubscribe anytime