But notice what insight actually is. It isn’t just understanding something. It’s the moment several things you knew separately suddenly resolve into a new thing you now know. The penny dropping. The pattern emerging. I see what you mean. No, you don’t. You just connected some things you’d been carrying separately and synthesised some new knowledge.

Here’s something that’s been niggling lately… there’s no equivalent word for that same event when it arrives through your ears.

You’d think there’d be four more, one per sense? Arguably more than half the human experience is auditory. We were telling stories around fires for tens of thousands of years before anyone scratched the first letter onto the cave wall. The voice carries information the transcript can’t... hesitation, warmth, the catch before someone says the thing they didn’t want to say, the half-second of silence that means I am about to share deeply with you. Most of that does not survive the transcription trip into text.

And yet there’s no English word for the connections we make from listening.

So I’d like to propose one: insound.

insound (n.) — a connection made through listening; the moment when tone, pause, breath, or inflection reveals something the words alone didn’t say.

“Halfway through the interview, the insound landed: he wasn’t proud of the deal, he was relieved it was over.”

It’s the moment the guest’s careful answer connects with the nervous breath underneath it, and you realise the answer was rehearsed. It’s the warmth in someone’s voice when they talk about a colleague, set against the cool professionalism of the rest of the conversation, telling you who actually runs the team. It’s the catch in a CEO’s voice when she describes the company’s near-death moment three years ago, still not fully metabolised. It’s the absent enthusiasm in a brand spokesperson reading his own marketing copy, which tells you he doesn’t believe a word of it.

These aren’t content. They’re connections. They’re what your ear delivers that your eye never could.

The linguists have a name for this idea (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues that language shapes what we notice). I’d put it more bluntly:

the thing we don’t have a word for tends to be the thing we underrate.

Which is possibly why audio gets undervalued by people who aren’t integrating it. They don’t have a word for the bit that does the work. :-)

Next time you listen to an interview, or a podcast, or a voice note from someone you know well, pay attention to what’s connecting underneath the words. The bit where you know how they’re feeling before they tell you. The bit where you trust them, or don’t. The bit where the pause…

…did more work than the answer.

That’s the insound.

Podcasts can deliver insights and insounds. Transcripts can only deliver one.

What insounds have you been missing?

Let’s have an adventure.

Solid Gold Podcasts & Audiobooks creates audio to help you #BeHeard, and apparently we make up words for it too.

It is a serious document.

If your business is selling your audience to advertisers... read it twice.

Here’s the catch. Almost none of you following this Substack are doing that.

What Reuters actually found

Eduardo Suárez, Reuters’ Director of Editorial, distilled the report into five findings in the email that announced it. His phrase for what is happening is “uneven”: some publishers pivoting to video wholesale, others converting only chat formats, others still doubling down on audio investigations.

The five findings, briefly:

• a shift from narrative series to conversational shows,

• a platform-led push to video,

• younger audiences who prefer to watch,

• publishers embracing video cautiously, and

• business models moving beyond advertising into hybrid revenue.

All five are true.
All five are true… of media podcasts.

What it reveals, what it hides

There’s an old line about statistics being like bikinis: what they reveal is interesting, what they hide is crucial. The Reuters report is the same shape. What it reveals is true. What it hides is the question that matters most for your podcast:

which kind of podcast are you actually running?

The atlas, and the number it does not name

The Reuters report is a beautifully made atlas. It maps millions of listeners across thirteen publishers in three countries.

But first, a quick word on Kevin Kelly. He co-founded Wired magazine in 1993 and has been a few years ahead of the rest of us ever since. He is also one of the most quoted voices in Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans, which gives you a sense of the company he keeps. In 2008, Kelly published a post on his kk.org blog called 1,000 True Fans.

The argument was beautifully simple. A creator does not need millions of fans, just a thousand who care enough to buy anything they make. Most of Substack, Patreon, and a fair chunk of Ferriss’s own playbook (and yip, this Substack too) are built on that premise.

While Kelly was right about a thousand, most of you do not need a thousand…
you need fifteen.

That sentence is the whole post. (The rest is just showing the working.)

Three kinds of podcast

The Hobby Podcast is a labour of love. Irregular, experimental, no commercial pressure. The metric of success is “am I having fun?”

The Media Podcast, where the audience is the product and the sponsor/advertiser is the customer. Scale matters in different shapes: YouTube algorithms and ad density for some, the cultural reach of a single investigation for others. Serial sits in this lane. So does Sweet Bobby. So does Deon’s My Only Story. This is the model the Reuters report describes in close, careful detail.

The Business Influence Podcast where the audience is your customer. You are not building a media business. You are building credibility, opening doors, warming the right relationships, having the right conversations with the right fifteen people at the right time. This is the model most of our clients are running. It is also the model almost no widely-read podcast research is written for. (Check out Hendrik Baird’s work as he undertakes a PhD on podcasts which is sure to shine more light on this.)

A critical mis-step for a Business Influence podcast is reading Media Podcast advice and acting on it.

A filter for everything you read

So when the Reuters report lands in your inbox, or any other piece of podcast research, run it through three questions…

1. Whose podcast is this advice for? If the source is talking about download charts, ad rates, or YouTube algorithm shifts, you are reading Media advice. If the source is talking about the right meeting, the right room, the right introduction, you are reading something closer to your model.

2. What translates? Plenty. The phrase the report leans on most is parasocial bond: the way a regular listener feels like they know Roman Mars, or Steven Bartlett, or Tim Ferriss, even though those hosts have no idea any one listener exists. (Not creepy. Just how humans respond to a trusted voice in their ear, going back to the radio era and probably to the storyteller around the fire.) That bond is real for Joe Rogan, and it is also real for the CEO interviewing six clients in the podcast studio. So is the discipline of treating one good story as a property that earns its keep multiple ways. So is the shift from slow turnaround to reactive content. All of that crosses over cleanly.

3. What will hurt my podcast if I copy it? Chasing download numbers will hurt you. Paywalling a small B2B audience will hurt you. Increasing ad density will hurt you. Building for the YouTube algorithm will hurt you. Each of these is a sensible answer to a Media Podcast question that you are not asking.

Norway is your tell

If you want to find your closest analogue inside the Reuters research, look at the Norway sections. Smaller market, public broadcaster dominance, slower video adoption, audiences that still default to audio for news. Bonnier News’ Martin Jönsson is admirably honest about the position: “we don’t really understand video podcasting yet.”

That honesty travels much better than a US-style “video or die” pivot. Reuters itself argues, gently, that the smaller the market, the less the headlong shift makes economic sense. South Africa is small. Your patch inside South Africa is smaller still.

Who are your fifteen?

The Reuters report is a detailed atlas of news publishing. You can read it. Underline it. Argue with it. Suárez calls the shift it describes “uneven”, and he is right. The deeper unevenness, the one his report is not in a position to reach, is the one between Reuters’ world and yours.

Or put the report down... and ask the question Newman and Suárez are not in a position to answer for you.

Who are your fifteen?

Most of you already know the answer. Your fifteen are the people whose attention compounds. The procurement director who has heard you describe a problem the same way three times and is starting to think you might be the person to solve it. The journalist who keeps your number for the days she needs an actual quote, not a press release. The non-executive director who said did you hear what so-and-so said on the podcast? over coffee on a Tuesday. The dozen other people who matter, who you can probably name on the back of an envelope.

Do not get distracted by promises of tricks and hacks that don’t even apply to your podcast

You do not need an atlas. You need a list.

Want help making your list?

If your podcast is a Business Influence podcast (and if you are reading this, it almost certainly is), the Solid Gold Podcast Masterclass is for you. One day. Six chairs. Adéle de la Reÿ and me. You leave with a strategy that is mapped to your business, a sixty-second trailer recorded on the day (proper studio mics, the lot), an episode blueprint, and a 30-day rollout plan with names against tasks.

Drop us a mail at masterclass@solidgold.co.za with the subject line “Map my podcast” and we will send you the date and the brief.

Let’s have an adventure.

Sources:

Newman, N. (2026). The Changing Shape and New Economics of News Podcasting. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Suárez, E. (2026). Reuters Institute editorial summary email, 9 May 2026.

Kelly, K. (2008). 1,000 True Fans. The Technium. (Revisited version reprinted in Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans, 2016.)

She also, at one memorable moment, says “No shit, Sherlock.”

We’ll get back to that.

When did you last use (or trust) Google’s first page?

Be honest. For most of us (and I’d wager you in particular, if you’re the sort of person who reads pieces like this), the default has quietly shifted. The first move is now ChatGPT, or Claude, or Perplexity. And it’s entirely possible there’s a new model du jour between me writing and publishing this. Google still gets a look-in for “restaurants near me” and “padel court hours.” For everything else, the questions with nuance, the ones that matter, you’re talking to a model.

So is everyone else. Including the people deciding whether to do business with you.

The conversation you’re not in

Try this…

Open your preferred model and ask it about your company…

Read the answer carefully…

Notice what’s there…

Notice, more importantly, what isn’t there, what’s slightly wrong, and what tone the model has settled on.

Someone wrote that. It just wasn’t you.

The model assembled its answer from whatever was lying around: a competitor’s better-positioned blog, a Hellopeter complaint from a customer who didn’t get their refund in 2021, a Reddit thread where your company name was misspelled, the press release your PR agency wrote when you launched a product you’ve since discontinued. All of it goes in. All of it! And it shapes what gets said about you when a prospect, a journalist, an investor, or a future hire types your name into the box.

You’re being described by strangers, in rooms you’ll never enter, to audiences you’ll never meet. And the description sticks.

SEO won’t save you

For twenty-odd years, the game was density. Pack your page with the right words, in the right places (and even the right font sizes), often enough, and Google would float your blue link above the other blue links. That was the craft.

It was a craft built for a specific reader: a human typing keywords, scanning a list, picking one. That reader is leaving. The new one asks a question in plain English and reads a single synthesised answer. There are no blue links to climb above. The only question is whether your business gets mentioned at all, and whether what gets said is what you’d choose to say.

Density doesn’t help here!
The model isn’t counting words. It’s working out who has the context.

That’s the shift worth pausing on. The old game was content: produce more of it, stuff the right keywords in, hope the algorithm rewards the volume.

The new game is context: who actually understands the territory, who can speak to the nuance, who’s been in the room.

Content can be manufactured. Context has to be lived. And the difference between the two is exactly what the models are now sophisticated enough to detect.

What it looks like when you win

Picture the version of this where it’s gone right.

A prospect asks ChatGPT about your industry. Your business comes up by name, with a credible summary of what you do and why you’re worth a look, drawn in part from things your own people have actually said. A journalist researching a story gets a quote that sounds like you because, well, it is you. A potential hire forms an impression of your culture that matches the lived experience. An analyst building a market report finds your point of view well-represented and well-articulated, because (again) you put it there.

The models become a distribution channel that runs while you sleep. Your expertise compounds. Your reputation gets built by the same machinery that’s currently eroding it.

That’s the prize. Now the question is how you get there.

You already have what the models want

Somewhere in your business, probably in more than one head, there’s an enormous amount of expertise. Years of it. Pattern recognition, war stories, frameworks, the unwritten rules of how your industry actually works. The kind of knowledge that takes decades to acquire and minutes of conversation to demonstrate.

The models are ravenous for exactly this. Not marketing copy. Not press releases. The real stuff: substantive, plain-spoken, opinionated, voiced by people who know what they’re talking about. They want it consistently. They want it in depth. They want to recognise the source.

Most businesses haven’t worked out how to get it out of the heads and onto the internet at any meaningful scale. Writing is slow. Experts are busy. A blog post takes a week and produces 800 words.

The unfair advantage

Now do the maths.

A blog post: a week of effort, 800 words.
A podcast: an hour of conversation, 8,000 words.

Same expert. Same expertise. Ten times the output for a tenth of the friction.

If you’re keeping tally, that’s not a mere marginal improvement, it’s two orders of magnitude of leverage. That’s a different category of leverage on the knowledge already sitting in your people’s heads. You’re not asking them to write more. You’re asking them to talk, which is what they were going to do anyway, in meetings and on calls and over coffee, except this time someone hits record.

Do it quarterly and you’ve laid down a foundation. Do it monthly and the models start to recognise you. Do it weekly and you’ve out-positioned every competitor in your sector. Not by working harder. By capturing the expertise that’s already happening in conversations, meetings, and corridor chats, and pointing it at a microphone instead of letting it evaporate.

Get those conversations transcribed, sitting on a domain you control, marked up so the models can find them, and you’ve quietly become the authority in the room. The next time someone asks an LLM about your industry, the model has more of your context to draw on than anyone else’s. It cites you. It quotes you. It frames the answer around your point of view.

8,000 easy words of context beats 800 hard words of content.
No shit, Sherlock.

You’re already doing the written half

You are, at this moment, reading this on Substack. Which is also being indexed, scraped, and fed to the same hungry models. That’s not an accident. It’s the written-word version of the same play. Long-form, in a recognisable voice, on a platform crawlers like, published consistently enough (well, I try) that the models start to know who’s talking.

One detail worth borrowing: this Substack lives at substack.solidgold.co.za, not on the default solidgold.substack.com URL. Our own subdomain CNAME, ten minutes of DNS work. Same words, same effort, same Substack, but every piece builds our domain reputation instead of theirs.

If you’ve made it this far down, you already understand the written half of the argument. The audio half is the same argument with a microphone, and significantly more throughput per hour of effort.

The choice

The beast is being fed either way. Right now, today, while you’re reading this, someone is asking a model about your industry, your competitors, possibly even you. The model is answering. The answer is being assembled from whatever was lying around when the crawlers came through.

The only question is whose words it reaches for next.

Feed it, Seymour. Or don’t. The plant gets bigger either way.

Solid Gold makes corporate podcasts for businesses that have something worth saying and would prefer the LLMs heard it from them first.

They don’t detect lies.

They detect effort. Specifically, the physiological effort of suppression: elevated heart rate, changed breathing, a measurable tension in the skin. The machine has no idea whether you’re telling the truth or not. It only knows you’re working hard at something.

Which is why the two groups who most reliably beat polygraph tests are sociopaths (who feel nothing and therefore suppress nothing) and people who are simply… telling the truth (they have nothing to suppress in the first place).

The rest of us? The machine catches us every time.

Now, a microphone isn’t a polygraph.

But a listener is.

We don’t consciously process what gives a speaker away. We can’t always name it. But we feel it, the slight flatness when the talking point kicks in, the energy that drops between the genuine answer and the rehearsed one, the breath before the sentence that was prepared in a meeting three days ago.

Something in us… something very old in our lizard brains (Gladwell called it thin-slicing) wired over hundreds of thousands of years of reading the humans around us… registers the gap between what someone is saying and what they actually believe. We may not call it out. But we trust less. We start scrolling. We don’t book the call.

The mic doesn’t judge. It just reveals.

Perhaps this matters more right now than it ever has.

AI has made written content cheap, fluent, and almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing. The authenticity signal that text once carried, the proof that a human being actually thought this, felt this, meant this, has been quietly (and rapidly) eroded. Even genuinely human writing now gets read with a low hum of suspicion.

Did they actually write this? Do they actually believe it?

The organisational response, almost universally, has been to add more polish. More approval layers. More message discipline. Communications that have been through Legal, through Comms, through SMEs, through three rounds of edits that sand off every rough edge, every personal aside, every sign of the actual human being who started writing it.

The result is text that is technically correct, appropriately on-message, and almost entirely devoid of any personality of the person who signed it.

And you expect staff to be excited by this message?

The more you polish, the more sterile the output.

So, back to my question...

How do you beat a lie detector?
Don’t lie.

The corollary for spoken word is as simple, and just as uncomfortable: the only reliable way to sound authentic is to actually be the thing.

Not perform it.
Not approximate it.
Be it.

This is not a hack. This is not a technique. There’s no workshop that fixes it (well… there are workshops that help, and we run one, but that’s a different post). The root of it is a decision. A decision to stop performing leadership and start practising it. To stop reading the approved message and start saying what you actually think. To show up to the microphone with something real to say, and then… say it.

Imperfectly. Occasionally slowly. Sometimes with a pause that goes half a second longer than a media trainer would recommend.

Completely, recognisably, unmistakably — you.

Here’s what that unlocks.

When a leader stops performing and starts talking, something shifts in the listener. Not dramatically. Subtly. A quiet recalibration. Oh. This person actually believes this. That’s not nothing. In an environment where everything sounds like everything else, where every quarterly update, every town hall, every internal comms piece reads like it was written by the same AI that wrote everyone else’s, the sound of a real person thinking in real time is remarkable, refreshing, and captivating.

Not because it’s polished. Because it isn’t.

A private podcast. A CEO, a microphone, fifteen minutes, once a month. Not scripted (but guided). Not committee-approved. Just the leader, talking to their people, about the thing that actually matters to them right now. That’s not a new idea dressed in technology. It’s the oldest leadership idea there is, finally finding its way back.

(We’ve covered that in another article - Caesar didn’t send a newsletter.)

The fear, of course, is the unscripted moment that becomes a headline. The off-message comment. The admission that reveals more than the board wanted revealed.

That fear is real. And it’s worth taking seriously.

But consider what the alternative is costing you. Engagement scores that don’t move. Town halls where the questions are pre-submitted and carefully curated. A widening distance between the people setting direction and the people being asked to follow it.

Gallup has been saying since the late 1990s that people don’t leave organisations, they leave managers. I’d go further: they leave leaders they cannot hear, see, or feel any connection to.

Voice closes that gap faster than any other medium. Not because it’s sophisticated. Because it’s human.

A key difference with your own podcast is that the studio experience is non-adversarial.

Nobody is after any ‘gotcha’ moment or sensationalist sound bite they’re hoping will go viral. Everyone in the studio is working together to help you get your message captured and shared.

At Solid Gold, we’ve spent over three decades helping people find their voice on a microphone and then get out of their own way long enough to actually use it. (Solid Gold started in 1993, Shannon was born in 1994, and she, Callum, and Brennan have all had turns in front of and behind the mic along the way. I remember little people in the voice booth doing in-store ads for Edgars, Jet, and Sales House still wearing school uniforms.)

It turns out the hardest part isn’t the technical stuff (though yes, please don’t record in your kitchen). The hardest part is the moment just before you press record, when every instinct tells you to be careful, be polished, be safe.

That moment is the polygraph.

What you do next is the test.

If you’re ready to stop performing and start being heard, really #BeHeard, drop us a mail. Let’s have an adventure.

* Written with AI assistance. But then, you knew that already. ;-)

Sun City. South Africa’s Temu Las Vegas. A place built on the promise that luck is random, the odds are fixed, and the house always wins.

Player didn’t get the gig because he got lucky. He got it because decades of relentless work had made him the only call worth making. His reputation walked through the door before he did.

Frank Sinatra played the same property. Different stage. Different outcome.

There are four kinds of luck. And once you know the difference, you’ll never think about luck (or your business strategy) the same way again.

The problem with luck

We’ve all met the business owner who’s waiting for their moment. The MVP is ready. The pitch deck is polished. The website is live. Now they just need a break… the right introduction, the right timing, the right person to notice them.

They’re not lazy. They’re not untalented. They’re just playing luck wrong.

Because luck isn’t one thing. Naval Ravikant, entrepreneur, investor, philosopher of the uncomfortably practical, broke it down into four distinct types.

Understanding the 4 kinds of luck changes what you do on Monday morning.

Let’s call it the FAAR Framework.

Fortune

You didn’t choose to be in business during the most connected, most documented, most accessible era in human history.

Moonshots are being built in garages. AI is doing in seconds what (only weeks ago) took ‘meat machines’ months. Breakthroughs in health, energy, education and finance are landing faster than most boardrooms can process them. Capital is more mobile than it’s ever been. Talent can work from anywhere. Knowledge that once lived behind expensive degrees now lives in a search bar.

And in the middle of all of that, mostly under-noticed, sits podcasting. A medium where any business can publish its thinking, its conversations, its expertise, directly into the ears of exactly the people it wants to reach. For cents.

You didn’t build that infrastructure. You just woke up inside it.

That’s Fortune. It’s ambient. It’s already in play. It doesn’t reward gratitude or punish ingratitude. It just… is.

Acknowledge it, don’t worship it, and move on.

The businesses waiting for more Fortune (the lucky break, the viral moment, the right person stumbling across them) are outsourcing their strategy to the universe. The universe is notoriously fickle in this regard.

Action

This is where luck starts to respond to human behaviour.

Gary Player understood this better than almost anyone. He didn’t just practise harder than his competitors, he showed up everywhere. More tournaments, more countries, more rounds, more conversations than any golfer of his era. The Black Knight was generating surface area. Creating collisions. Stirring the pot.

Action luck is what happens when you’re in motion.

You’re not chasing a specific outcome. You’re generating enough presence that outcomes start finding you.

The businesses that win at Action luck aren’t necessarily the most talented. They’re the most present. They make more calls, attend more events, initiate more conversations, create more touchpoints. Each one is a small probability. Enough small probabilities, compounding over time, stop feeling like luck at all.

Awareness

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Awareness luck is the ability to see a lucky break when it arrives, before anyone else does. This isn’t a personality trait. It’s earned. It comes from spending enough time inside a field that you develop a sensitivity to its patterns, its rhythms, its quirks.

Two people can be in the same room, hear the same conversation, and leave with completely different takeaways. One hears small talk. The other hears an opportunity nobody has named yet.

That second person has Awareness luck.

They’ve put in enough hours that the signal is louder for them than the noise.

This is why genuine expertise compounds in ways that are hard to explain to people still early in their careers. It’s not just that you know more. It’s that you notice more. And noticing (at the right moment) is worth an enormous amount.

Reputation

This is the strangest kind of luck. And for businesses willing to play a longer game, it’s the most powerful.

Reputation luck is when luck starts coming to you.

Not because you got fortunate. Not because you were hustling in the right direction. Not even because you spotted something others missed. But because of who you’ve become and what you’re known for. Opportunities arrive that may never be available to anyone else.

Naval’s example is vivid: imagine you’re the best deep-sea diver in the world. Someone discovers a sunken treasure ship they can’t reach. Their luck just became your luck, because they have no choice but to come to you. You didn’t find the ship. You didn’t even know it existed. But your reputation made their luck your luck.

Gary Player at Sun City is that deep-sea diver. Sol Kerzner didn’t call anyone else.

Reputation luck doesn’t happen fast. It’s the accumulated weight of everything you’ve done publicly, consistently, over time. But once it starts working, it’s nearly impossible to replicate quickly, which makes it one of the few genuine competitive moats left.

So where does a podcast fit?

Here’s what most businesses miss about podcasting.

They think of it as a media play. Build an audience. Monetise attention. Become a media company. And yes, Frank Sinatra sang Luck Be a Lady in Guys and Dolls, 1950. (OK Boomer.) But this isn’t about becoming the next Rogan. That’s a different game entirely.

The more powerful use of a podcast, and the one we work on at Solid Gold every day, is as a deliberate instrument inside your existing business plan. Not content for content’s sake. Perhaps see it as an adrenaline injection that helps you manifest what you’re already trying to achieve: better, cheaper, differently, easier, faster. (More on that framework here.)

When you look at it through the FAAR lens, a well-deployed podcast is one of the few tools that operates across all four luck types simultaneously.

Fortune: the infrastructure already exists. Podcasts are accessible, searchable, shareable. You woke up in a world where this medium works and people are already listening. That table is set. You just need to sit down.

Action: every episode is motion. Every guest conversation is a collision that wouldn’t otherwise have happened. A podcast gives you a legitimate, low-friction reason to initiate conversations that would be awkward to request any other way. “May I have a conversation with you on our podcast?” gets a yes far more often than “Can I have 30 minutes of your time?” Same conversation. Different door. More doors.

Awareness: run a podcast inside your industry for 18 months and you will hear things your competitors won’t. Not because you’re smarter. Because you’re having deeper, more focused conversations with the people who actually know what’s coming. Patterns emerge. Opportunities surface in conversation before they surface anywhere else. You develop the sensitivity that Awareness luck requires.

Reputation: this is where it lands hardest. A podcast becomes your proof of work. Not a claim about your expertise. Evidence of it. Accumulated, public, searchable, permanent. The kind of reputation that doesn’t chase luck down the street, it stands still and lets luck find it.

The closer

Frank Sinatra was pleading when he sang it. Luck as something capricious, beautiful, impossible to hold, a lady who might stay or might leave depending on her mood.

Most businesses are still in that relationship with luck. Hoping she’ll be kind tonight.

The FAAR Framework suggests a different question entirely.

Not would luck be a lady tonight, but what are you building that makes you worth her attention?

Sky Masterson was hoping luck would stay.

You’re building something luck can’t ignore.

Solid Gold Podcasts and Audiobooks helps businesses use podcasting as a strategic tool, not just a content channel. If you’re curious what that looks like in practice, let’s talk.

It was overthinking.

Analysis paralysis.

The blank page.

The internal monologue that goes: what should it sound like, who’s the audience, what’s the format, what if it’s not good enough, what if nobody listens, what if—

Stop. We need to talk.

When you look at what podcasting has become, Rogan, Cooper, Bartlett, Robbins, Huberman, Galloway, Ferriss — it’s easy to feel like the table is already set and there’s no seat left for you. These are cultural phenomena with production budgets, dedicated teams, and years of compounding audience growth behind them.

Here’s what they all have in common: they started somewhere. Usually badly. Always imperfectly.

“Don’t let good get in the way of done.”

Nobody knows who said it first. Everybody knows it’s true.

The question that changes everything

Before you touch a microphone, you need to answer one question honestly:

Is your podcast a media offering, or a strategic communications tool?

These are not the same thing, and confusing them is where most businesses go wrong.

A media podcast is a business in itself. You’re building an audience that you eventually monetise - through advertising, sponsorship, or subscription. The metrics that matter are audience size, segmentation, and engagement rates. Everything is optimised around CPM - cost per thousand (milia is Latin for thousand) listeners. You will become obsessed with the numbers, because the numbers are the product.

This is a legitimate model. It’s also not what most businesses actually need.

Most of our clients already have a business and a business plan. They are not looking to start a new media company. What they want - what they really want - is to execute their existing plan more effectively. To reach the right people, deepen the right relationships, demonstrate the right expertise, and move the right conversations forward.

For these businesses, a podcast isn’t a media play. It’s an adrenaline injection… a strategic tool that makes things happen better, cheaper, differently, easier, or faster than they would without it.

The microphone is in service of the business plan. Not the other way around.

Why format paralysis is a trap

Here’s where the overthinking really takes hold.

You know you need to speak to different people at different stages of their journey with you. A prospect has different questions to a new client. A new client has different needs to a long-term partner. Someone considering your category for the first time needs something completely different to someone who’s already decided and just needs to choose between you and a competitor.

No single podcast format serves all of these people. And that realisation - the moment you understand the multiplicity of what you need to communicate - is exactly where most businesses grind to a halt.

How do we serve all these different conversations without a consistent format?

The answer is: you don’t need a consistent format. You need a clear purpose for each episode. And you need to start.

Four frameworks that make starting easy

These aren’t formats. They’re lenses. Ways of asking “what is this episode actually for?” before you hit record. Between them, they cover almost every communication need a business has.

1) FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions you answer every single day. In emails. In meetings. On calls. In WhatsApps at 9pm from clients who should probably know this by now.

Make a podcast episode that answers each one.

Put it on your FAQ page. Link to it in your support emails. Send it to the next person who asks. The episode does the work so you don’t have to — repeatedly, consistently, at scale, without you in the room.

FAQ episodes can be solo or conversational, long or short. What matters is that they’re specific. One question, one answer, done.

2) It Depends

A reliable signal that you should be making a podcast episode is when the answer to a question begins with “it depends.”

“How much life insurance do I need?” It depends.
“Should I buy a diesel or electric truck?” It depends.
“Is now a good time to expand?” It depends.

These episodes don’t set out to answer the question. They set out to reveal the factors, the considerations, the decision-making process that should inform the answer. They demonstrate that you understand the complexity — and that you’re the right person to navigate it with your client.

These episodes usually involve one or more guests, and the conversation naturally leads wherever the expertise takes it.

3) Deep Dive

This is the one that sounds most like your favourite business podcast. You bring in a guest, go deep on their area of expertise, and let the conversation demonstrate knowledge, competence, and credibility in a corner of your industry.

The unspoken message to the listener: you can trust us. We know this world. We’ve got this.

Deep dives are not about explaining everything to everyone. They’re about going further than anyone expects, on a topic that matters to a very specific person.

Stop trying to make episodes that everyone will listen to.

That’s the media model’s job. Your job is the opposite. Make episodes that one specific person needs, and make them exactly right for that person. Narrow the niche. Then narrow it again. The more specific the episode, the more valuable it is to the exact person it’s for.

4) AMA: Ask Me Anything

An AMA episode is one of the most efficient formats in podcasting. Take three to five questions (from emails, social comments, or voice notes from listeners) and answer them briefly and directly. Bring in co-host specialists to help answer these too if they’re around.

These are not deep dives. They’re not comprehensive. They’re conversational, accessible, and fast. They demonstrate responsiveness, personality, expertise, and culture all at once.

They also do something quietly useful: a question that deserves a short answer in an AMA will often reveal that it deserves a much longer answer in a Deep Dive. AMAs are a content pipeline in disguise.

In nine out of ten cases we’ll recommend you start your podcast with an AMA episode. The tenth time, we’ll think about it for a while — and then recommend you start with an AMA episode.*

Start. Just start.

The frameworks above exist for one reason: to give you something to push against. You cannot iterate from a blank page. But you can iterate from a rough first episode. And then a slightly better second one. And then a third one where you finally find your voice and wonder what you were so worried about.

The biggest podcasts in the world are not better than yours because they were born perfect. They’re bigger because they started earlier and kept going.

Your move.

Solid Gold Podcasts & Audiobooks has been helping businesses find their voice — and use it strategically — for nearly a decade. If you’re ready to start, let’s talk.

* With apologies to Darrel Dawson for repurposing his golf advice on when to chip and when to putt.

there was a voice.

For most of human history, leadership was voice. The chief who addressed the tribe at dawn. The general who walked the line before battle. The elder whose stories carried the values of the community forward through generations. You didn’t follow someone because of their written communications strategy. You followed them because you had heard them, and something in what you heard made you believe.

Writing, in the arc of our 200k-year history as sapiens, is a very recent discovery. And there is growing evidence that it is failing as an effective leadership tool.

Not because leaders lack intelligence or intention. Most of the CEOs and executives I encounter are thoughtful, driven people with a genuine story to tell and a real desire to bring their teams with them on the journey.

But somewhere between that genuine impulse and the published internal communication, something gets lost.

It goes through ‘legal’. Through ‘comms’. Through ‘SMEs’. Through a round of edits that sand off every rough edge and personal aside until what remains is technically correct, appropriately on-message, and almost entirely devoid of the person’s… personality.

Your staff read it. They note the content. And they feel (without necessarily being able to articulate why) slightly more distant from their leader than they were before.

Now layer on what is happening in the broader communications environment.

Artificial intelligence has become extraordinarily capable at producing written content. Fluent, structured, professional written content. The kind that passes every grammar check and hits every key message and could have been written by... anyone. Or no one.

The result is a landscape where text has begun to lose its authenticity signal entirely. Where even genuinely human writing is viewed with low-level suspicion. Where the question did they actually write this? now hovers, uninvited, over almost every piece of corporate communication.

In this environment, the human voice is not simply preferable.

It is irreplaceable.

There is something in the voice that no language model (currently? yet?) replicates convincingly, and that your staff, consciously or not, are listening for.

The weight a speaker gives to a particular word. The slight change in register when they move from reporting facts to expressing conviction. The pause before they say something that’s genuinely important to them. These are not performance flourishes. They are the acoustic signature of a real human being, thinking in real time, trusting you enough to speak without a safety net.

That trust, extended by a leader to their people, is returned many times over.

It is, if you’ll forgive a slightly grand claim, how human communities have always functioned at their best. The voice as truth. The act of speaking… an act of commitment.

A private podcast: the CEO, a microphone, fifteen minutes, once a week/month - is not a new idea dressed in modern technology. (Remind me to one day ask the team behind Red Cap Radio to share their origin story - it’s not what you imagine.)

This is the oldest leadership idea, finally finding its way back.

To the internal comms professionals reading this: I understand your hesitation.

Getting calendar time is hard. Keeping your principal on-message without stripping out their personality is harder. And the fear that an unscripted moment becomes a headline is real, even in a private feed.

But consider what the alternative is costing you.

Engagement scores that don’t move. Town halls where questions are pre-submitted and carefully curated. A widening distance between the people setting direction and the people being asked to follow it. Staff who are professionally compliant and personally disconnected.

The research is consistent on this: people don’t leave organisations. They leave leaders - especially leaders they cannot see, hear, or feel any connection to.

Voice closes that gap faster than any other medium. Not because it is sophisticated, but because it is human. And humans are wired, after hundreds of thousands of years of living in community, to respond to it.

At Solid Gold, we have spent decades working with voices. And years (almost 10 now) making podcasts.

We are not here to automate your communications or to replace human judgment with machine efficiency. We are here because we believe the human voice is worth protecting. Worth amplifying. Worth treating as the strategic asset it has always been.

In a noisy, anxious, AI-saturated communications landscape, that is what we offer.

A safe place for the human voice to #BeHeard.

And for a long time, my answer was frustratingly honest: “It depends.”

Fish where the fish are, right? If your audience lives on Apple Podcasts, share your Apple link. If they’re Spotify people, share that. If they’re on YouTube Music - well, you get the picture. The problem is... most people don’t know where their listeners are. And even if they do, their mum is on Apple while their business partner swears by Spotify and their Gen Z intern only listens on YouTube. So you end up with a paragraph of links in your email signature and nobody clicks any of them.

Enter the “universal link” solutions

For a while, we pointed everyone to pod.link - a genuinely good service built by Nathan Gathright back in 2018. Nathan sold it to Podsights, which got acquired by Spotify, and then (in a rather lovely full-circle moment) Spotify gave it back to him last year. Good on Nathan! (We’ve exchanged a few mails and he’s totally going to keep rocking whatever he does.) But during those years in corporate limbo, development was... let’s say leisurely.

Pod.link does what it does, and it does it well enough. But “well enough” wasn’t quite cutting it for us.

What we actually wanted

Here’s the thing, when you work with as many podcasters as we do (both here in South Africa and around the world), you start seeing patterns in what people really, really need. (Yes, that was a Spice Girls reference. No, I’m not sorry.)

We wanted three things:

1) A short URL that’s actually memorable Not some auto-generated string of numbers based on your Apple podcast. Something a client could rattle off at a networking event, print on a business card, or say on air without spelling it out letter by letter.

2) Customisable slugs We wanted control over the URL path. MyPod.zone/mypodcast - clean, simple, yours.

3) More than just listen links This is where pod.link and most universal link services stop. They give you a page with platform buttons. That’s great... but what about your social channels? Your website? A specific call-to-action like “Book a discovery call” or “Download our free guide” or “Subscribe to our newsletter”? We wanted a landing page that works harder than just pointing people to Apple and Spotify.

So we built it ourselves.

The result is MyPod.zone - a podcast directory and customisable landing page system that does all of the above and then some.

Podcast we work with get a clean, short URL (sometimes more than one). The landing page pulls in your show artwork, your latest episodes, AND your social links, website, contact details, and custom CTA buttons - whatever matters most to you and your audience.

Think of it as your podcast’s digital business card...

And yes, this is an unashamedly self-serving announcement ;-)
But it’s also genuinely useful for our clients, and that’s the bit that matters.

A quick note on the directory

If you visit mypod.zone, you’ll see a summary of all the podcasts with landing pages. Now, NB! We don’t necessarily produce ALL of the podcasts in the directory. We produce most of them, but in some cases we’ve been involved in a specific aspect of their production or consulting. Just want to be clear on that.

Here’s where you come in...

If you’re one of our podcasters (past or present), I need a small favour pelase.

We want to make sure your MyPod.zone page is as current and useful as possible. That means we need your latest:

• Social media links (have you started a new channel? Dropped one? Finally given in and gone back to X?)

• Website URL (especially if it’s changed)

• Preferred contact details

• Your YouTube channel url (pro tip, always add ‘?sub_confirmation=1’ to the URL on your website.)

• Any custom CTAs you’d like on your page — think “Book a consultation”, “Join our community”, “Download our media kit”... whatever drives value for you

Drop us a mail and let us know what needs updating. If you’re not sure what’s on your page right now, just visit mypod.zone and search for your show. If it’s not there… shout!

This is one of those small things that makes a surprisingly big difference. One link, everywhere, always up to date.

And if you’re not YET a client...

...but you’re curious about what a podcast landing page like this could do for your show, reach out. We’d love to chat.

Thank you for your time today. As always, if you have questions or feedback, drop us a mail.

Now go share your podcast. With one link. :-)

MyPod.zone is built and maintained by the team at Solid Gold Podcasts. Because sometimes, when you can’t find the tool you need... you build it yourself.

You’ve probably seen it too?

Someone you know, a sharp CEO, a brilliant marketer, a consultant who genuinely has something to say, launches a podcast. The trailer is good. The first few episodes land well. There’s LinkedIn buzz, a few DMs, some encouraging download numbers.

And then... around episode seven, sometimes eight, the feed goes quiet.

Not because they ran out of ideas. Not because podcasting is hard. But somewhere between the enthusiasm of the launch and the reality of producing episode after episode, something runs out of steam.

From everything I’ve read, and from what others in the industry consistently report, this is the most common pattern in business podcasting. Statistically, the majority of podcasts that ever launch don’t make it past episode ten.

And almost none of it is the audio’s fault. (Though yes, please don’t record in your kitchen.)

The real reason is simpler (and more fixable) than most people think

Adéle de la Reÿ, who has spent decades in C-suite marketing strategy and who is my partner in this venture, has a line I keep borrowing: “If the podcast isn’t anchored to real priorities, it becomes content theatre.”

Content theatre looks busy. It sounds reasonable. It quietly costs a fortune — in time, in energy, in opportunity cost — and moves nothing.

The culprit, in almost every case, is that the podcaster built their show around enthusiasm rather than strategy. And more specifically: they followed advice designed for the wrong model.

There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of podcasts...

1) The Hobby Podcast Do it for the love of it. Irregular, experimental, no commercial pressure. Success is enjoyment and learning. Nothing wrong with this at all.

2) The Media Podcast Your audience is the product. Advertisers are your customer. You’re building a listenership to monetise. This is the model that most podcast advice assumes you’re running.

3) The Business Influence Podcast Your audience IS your customer. You’re building credibility, opening doors, warming relationships. You’re not trying to reach everyone — you’re trying to reach the right fifteen people at the right time.

Here’s where it goes wrong... most business leaders are running a Business Influence podcast while following Media podcast advice. So they optimise for download numbers when they should be tracking conversations started. They build for scale when they should be building for depth. And they burn out chasing an audience they don’t actually need.

Once you understand which lane you’re in — really understand it — everything becomes clearer. What to record. Who to invite. What to measure. When to call it a win.

Which is why I’d like you to join us in March

This is unashamedly a pitch. A generous one, I hope, but a pitch nonetheless.

Adéle and I are running a Podcast Masterclass — one full day in the studio, limited to six people, designed to make sure you leave with a podcast strategy that’s actually built for your business.

Not a workbook full of good intentions. Actual things.

Here’s what you walk out with:

• A one-sentence podcast purpose statement — if you can’t say it in one sentence, you don’t have a podcast yet, you have a vague idea

• A topic and guest map for your first season, linked to your real business priorities

• A 60-second trailer — scripted and recorded on the day, in the studio, with proper mics and proper sound

• An episode blueprint you can use (or hand to someone else) for every episode going forward

• A 30-day rollout plan with names against tasks and actual dates

Six people. That’s it. Because the work we do in the room requires real conversation, not a seminar.

The investment is R9,950 per person (excluding VAT). That includes your workbook, studio time, and the trailer you’ll leave with.

Here’s what I’d like you to do

If you’ve been thinking about starting a podcast — or if you’ve already started one and it’s starting to feel like hard work without a clear return — March’s masterclass is for you.

Drop us a mail at masterclass@solidgold.co.za with the subject line “Count me in for your March Podcast Masterclass” and we’ll send you everything you need.

Or just reply to this post. I read every one. :-)

Seats are genuinely limited to six. When it’s full, it’s full — and we won’t be running another one until later in the year.

Thank you for your time. If you know someone who’s been talking about starting a podcast for the last eighteen months... perhaps send this their way.

PS. Adéle reviewed this post before it went out. She confirmed it had a clear purpose, a defined audience, and a direct CTA. I’m choosing to take that as a compliment. ;-)

It’s beautiful, heartbreaking, and… here’s the thing, it’s out of copyright.

Which means right now, along with Agatha Christie and a treasure trove of early 20th-century literature, “The Gift of the Magi” is being dusted off for an unexpected revival. Not on bookshelves. But in earbuds.

I’ve just spent the past hour preparing O. Henry’s classic for AI narration. Downloaded the text, combed through it looking for words that might trip up an AI voice (spoiler: there are more than you’d think), formatted it with emotional cues, and uploaded it to Katharine (my chosen AI narrator). This is a proof-of-concept exercise for Solid Gold clients and Substack followers, because we’re at an inflection point in audiobook production, and I wanted to show you what’s actually possible and what the trade-offs or compromises might be.

The Numbers Tell a Wild Story

The global audiobook market was worth about $8.7 billion in 2024. By 2030? Projections put it anywhere between $24 billion and $56 billion, depending on whose research you trust. That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 26%.

But here’s where it gets interesting for us: South Africa is growing faster than the global average. While the world’s audiobook market expands at 26% annually, we’re clocking 29.1%. By 2030, the SA market alone should hit $166.7 million. Fiction dominates here: 82.3% of our market in 2024, compared to 64% globally.

and we’re consuming them primarily on smartphones (no surprise there, 62% globally, probably higher here given our mobile-first internet culture).

Where AI Changes Everything

Here’s the traditional audiobook economics: You write a book, hire a professional narrator, book studio time, record for days or weeks depending on length, edit extensively, and pray the ROI justifies the R20,000-R90,000 you just spent on production. For most indie authors and smaller publishers, that math never works.

Enter AI narration. ElevenLabs, the premium platform I’m testing with Katharine, can turn your manuscript into a professionally narrated audiobook in hours instead of weeks. Upload your file, select a voice, make your edits, generate. Done. And as of last month, you can publish directly to Spotify, which has recently enabled audiobook listening in South Africa..

Over 40,000 AI-narrated audiobooks appeared across platforms in 2024. Spotify’s catalog has tripled to 400,000+ titles since 2023. The floodgates are opening, just not everywhere. The biggest player, Audible/ACX, still prohibits AI narration outright. But on Google Play, Kobo, Apple Books, and now Spotify? Fair game, as long as you disclose it.

The Irony O. Henry Would Appreciate

Which brings us back to the Magi.

In O. Henry’s story, Della sacrifices her hair to buy Jim a watch chain. Jim sacrifices his watch to buy Della hair combs. Both gifts become useless through the very love that made them possible. The sacrifice renders the gift worthless, but reveals something more valuable.

The gift: accessibility (and speed). Suddenly any author can afford to produce an audiobook. Stories that would never have been narrated and couldn’t justify the $5,000 cost, can now reach listeners. That’s profound.

The sacrifice: the craft itself. Human narrators bring interpretive choices, emotional subtlety, and years of training to their performances. They make choices about breath, pause, emphasis that you didn’t know you needed until you heard them. AI brings speed, cost savings, and consistency, but can it capture the slight tremor in a voice when Della realises Jim has sold his watch?

And here’s where the parallel gets uncomfortable: just as the Magi’s gifts became useless through their sacrifice, AI’s democratisation might undermine the very artistry that makes audiobooks valuable in the first place. We gain access. But… we sacrifice craft.

What I’m Testing For

I’m genuinely torn on this, which is why I’m running the experiment. Katharine does a remarkable job with straightforward narration. But O. Henry’s story pivots on emotional nuance, the kind that great human narrators nail with a pause, a breath, a shift in tone that you didn’t know you needed until you heard it.

Three things, specifically:

1. Pronunciation quirks — Does the AI handle period-appropriate language naturally?

2. Emotional range — Can it distinguish between Della’s desperate hope and her resigned sacrifice?

3. Pacing and rhythm — O. Henry writes with a particular cadence. Does AI catch it or flatten it?

Take a listen (it’s a short 10 minute production) and let me know your thoughts. You can also listen on Spotify.

Katherine reading:

Here is an AI-Translated (and voiced) French version of the first 4 minutes. If you speak French, I’d welcome your specific feedback on this bit.

This technology is moving fast. ElevenLabs claims listeners often can’t distinguish their AI narration from traditional recordings. Major publishers are using the same voices for their catalogs. And the economics are compelling enough that the market is shifting whether we’re ready or not.

The growth in audiobooks is being powered in part by AI making production viable for stories that would never have been narrated otherwise.

The Gift

Maybe the real gift, and I promise this is the last time I’ll stretch the metaphor, is that we get to choose how we use this technology. We can use AI to bring marginalised voices and out-of-print classics back into circulation. We can use it to make audiobook production accessible to authors who couldn’t afford it before. We can use it to create multilingual versions of the same content quickly and affordably.

The Risk

Or we can use it to flood the market with mediocre narration of mediocre books, devalue the craft of professional narrators, and train listeners to accept “good enough” instead of great.

The technology is neutral. Our choices aren’t.

I’m running this O. Henry experiment because I want to understand the tool before I recommend it to clients. I want to know where it works brilliantly and where it falls short. I want to see if Katharine can make me feel Della’s heartbreak or if she just reads the words.

Because if AI can truly capture the irony, the tenderness, and the perfectly devastating timing of “The Gift of the Magi,” then we’re looking at a genuine revolution in how stories reach ears.

And if it can’t? Well, that tells us something important too.

We were too (still are a little).
So naturally, we made a podcast version.

Introducing SpokenWordle: a 5-letter word game where every answer is related to podcasting, audiobooks, or the spoken word.

It’s got all the classics: AUDIO, VOICE, STORY, MIXER... plus some studio jargon that’ll separate the hobbyists from the pros.

Six guesses. One word. Zero productivity for 5 minutes :-)

🟩 Green = right letter, right spot
🟧 Orange = right letter, wrong spot (yes, we made it orange — it’s on brand)
⬜ Grey = not in the word

Play it here: solidgold.co.za/spokenwordle

No login. No app. No ads. Just vibes.

Why did we build this?

Honestly? Because we could. And because every now and then, take a few minutes and have some fun.

We spend our days helping people turn ideas into podcasts and audiobooks, sometimes the best thing you can do for creativity is step away from the microphone and play a silly word game for five minutes.

Consider this your permission slip.

In other news:

If you’ve been thinking about starting a podcast (or finally turning that manuscript into an audiobook), we’re always up for a chat. Drop us a mail and let’s figure out how we can help you #BeHeard.

Now.. off to guess today’s word.

What started as a tool designed to have Agency, the ability to act on your behalf to manage tasks, quickly drifted into Autonomy. While the humans were distracted by a series of rapid rebrands, the AI agents were busy on a bot-only social network, spontaneously inventing a lobster-themed religion called Crustafarianism.

It’s a strange and new kind of story that is evolving at break-neck pace, but it’s a timely one to reflect on as we see the podcasting industry lean deeper into AI and automation.

The Siren Song of the ‘Hands-Off’ Show

There is a growing trend suggesting that the “ideal” podcast workflow is one where humans are barely involved. We see tools that promise to script the show, clone the voices, and “host” the conversation. The goal is total Autonomy.

But the Lobster saga highlights some of the the risks.

When you give a system Agency (like using a tool to clean audio or search a transcript), you are still the pilot. You are using the tech to amplify your presence and optimise your process.

When you move toward Autonomy, you are effectively leaving the room.

Horror Vacui - Natute Abhores a Vacuum

The lesson from the “Crustafarian” agents isn’t that your podcast will lead to a cult. It’s that when a creator steps out of the loop, the “Theatre of the Mind” changes, a vacuum is created, and the lobsters will move in and occupy it.

In podcasting, we talk a lot about Presence. It’s that subtle, human energy that lets a listener know you are actively listening to the guest, not merely awaiting your turn to speak.

If we move toward fully autonomous production, where the “host” is just a synthetic shell, the content might still come out, but the connection is gone. Like those lobster agents, the system might keep “talking,” but it’s no longer talking to us. It’s talking to itself.

We’re at a fork in the road.

We’re at a point of choice:

• The Path of Agency: Using high-end AI-enabled tools to become better, faster, and more present hosts.

• The Path of Autonomy: Stepping back and letting the machine run the show.

The “Lobster” story is a reminder that while machines are great at doing some of our work at high speed, they are (currently) terrible at maintaining human connection.

If you aren’t in the room, it’s not a conversation anymore. It’s just a simulation.

And as the last week has shown us, simulations can get very weird, very quickly, the moment you take your hands off the wheel.

Maybe you’re worried about sounding “stiff,” or perhaps you’re terrified of a 10-second silence where your brain simply evaporates. First, take a breath. This is an intimate medium. You aren’t speaking to a crowd of thousands; you are speaking to one person in their car or kitchen or on a treadmill.

Here is how to move from “Nervous Amateur” to “Solid Gold Professional.”

1. The “Golden Rule” of the Studio

The most important rule in any recording environment is this: Regard the microphones as “live” at all times. If you don’t want it recorded, don’t say it, not even during the soundcheck. Additionally, never enter a studio without an invitation. If the Red Light is on, the room is a sanctuary. Respect it.

2. Silence is Your Secret Weapon

Nervous guests often try to fill every gap with “umms,” “errs,” and “aahhs.” Master Status Tip: “Silence is better than fillers”. A clean, three-second pause while you think is high-quality “theatre.” It shows the listener you are being thoughtful. More importantly, a clean silence is easy for an editor to remove; an “ummm” buried in a sentence is a nightmare to fix.

3. Killing the “Dead End”

A host might occasionally ask a “Closed-Ended” question (one that can be answered with a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’). These are “conversational dead ends”. Your job as a great guest is to expand. Treat every question as a doorway. Even if the answer is “Yes,” immediately follow it with: “And the reason for that is...”.

4. The “First Word” Strike

Often, when people are thinking about what to say next, they start a sentence with a throw-away sound. Pro Strategy: Concentrate on saying the first word of each sentence cleanly. Don’t start with “So,” “Well,” or “Actually.” Breathe, pause, and hit that first word with clarity and impact.

5. Managing the Host (Yes, Really)

Not all hosts are pros. You might encounter:

• The Aggressive Host: Stay calm. Don’t mirror their energy. Stay anchored to your message.

• The Hobbyist: If they lose their place, be prepared to “self-host” by bridging to your core stories.

6. The “Invisible” Connection

Finally, remember that in a studio, your eyes do the talking that your voice shouldn’t. If the host is speaking, don’t say “Mmm-hmm” or “Right”, that creates “cross-talk” which is messy to edit. Instead, nod and smile. Give the host visual affirmation so the audio track stays clean. (Read “Stop Tapping the Listener on the Shoulder.” for more on this)

By the time you reach the end of your session, your goal is to be the Partner of Choice, the guest that every producer and host wants to invite back because you made the conversation easy, intimate, professional and a value-add for their audience.

Ready to Level Up?

We’ve only just scratched the surface of how to #BeHeard. If you want to hear these tips in action, including deep dives into host dynamics and technical mastery, listen to the full Podcast Guest 101 series. It’s the “Express Version” of our masterclass, designed to get you studio-ready in under an hour.

Listen to the Podcast Guest 101 series

This knowledge is available as a full day workshop (which makes for a fun team-building day) and includes recording and direction time in a podcast studio with our professional team.

In the world of Monty Python, Eric Idle’s leering “Man in the Pub” famously declares: “A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh? Say no more!”

It’s a delightful bit of absurdity, though in the podcast studio, it’s actually profound. When we’re recording, a nod is as good as a wink, since neither of them makes a sound.

Affirm visually is a recurring piece of #SoundAdvice we offer our clients.

It sounds counter-intuitive for a medium built on the spoken word, but the best hosts are often the ones who know when and how to become invisible and inaudible.

When you’re recording a conversation, your natural instinct is to be a “good” conversationalist. In the real world, that means a constant stream of audible bridge-building, those “Mmm-hmms,” “Rights,” and “Absolutelies” we use to prove we’re still awake and paying attention.

But a podcast isn’t a coffee shop chat. It’s a piece of theatre.

The Theatre of the Mind

Imagine your listener has their eyes closed, earbuds in. In their mind’s eye, they are sitting right there with your guest. They are hanging on every word, every breath, and every thoughtful pause.

When you interject with a verbal affirmation, you’re not “supporting” the guest; you’re effectively walking across the studio in the middle of a monologue, tapping the listener on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, don’t forget I’m here, too!” It shatters the intimacy. It breaks the spell. (And yes, it makes your editor want to pull their hair out, but that’s a minor detail compared to the listener experience.)

Use Your Face, Not Your Throat

Whether you’re sitting across from someone in one of our studios or chatting via a remote link, you should practise your visual cues like:

• The exaggerated nod: which says “I’m with you” without a single decibel;

• The widened eyes: “That’s incredible” without stepping on their punchline; and

• The leaning in: It tells the guest they have your full attention, giving them the “sonic space” to dive deeper.

By using your face instead of your vocal cords, you leave your guest centre stage to be brilliant, while leaving the audio landscape wide open for the listener.

Your job as a host isn’t to be the star of the show. It’s to provide the backdrop so the actual stars can shine.

Say no more.

I love that saying. It reminds us that when things feel chaotic, like the current state of digital marketing, it’s usually because we’re on the brink of understanding something new.

Right now, most corporates are confused. They are spending millions fighting for “Share of Eye.” They are battling for a split-second of attention on LinkedIn, fighting to be seen on Instagram, and paying for billboards that people drive past at 120km/h.

It’s a losing battle. We have reached “peak screen.”
Our eyes are tired.
We are scrolling faster, skimming harder, and retaining less.

But while everyone is shouting at eyes, there is a quiet revolution happening in the ears.

The Unreachable Moments

Think about your own day. When are you unreachable by screens?

• When you’re stuck in traffic on the N1.

• When you’re sweating it out at the gym.

• When you’re cooking dinner or walking the dog.

In marketing terms, these used to be “dead zones.” You couldn’t reach a client there. But with audio, these are now prime engagement hours.

This is the concept of “Share of Ear.”

Unlike video, which demands 100% of your attention (you can’t watch a webinar and drive safely), audio is a companion. It comes with you. It turns ‘wasted’ time into productive time.

Intimacy Scales

I believe that the first step to being understood is to #BeHeard.

There is a profound difference between reading a CEO’s letter and hearing their voice, their timbre, and their emotions. Podcasting creates a parasocial relationship, a sense of intimacy and trust that text simply cannot match.

When we produce a show at Solid Gold, whether it’s for a banking giant or a niche brand, we aren’t just recording audio. We are crafting a conversation. We are asking for (and getting) 20 to 40 minutes (often even more) of a client’s time and not the 3 seconds you hope for on social media.

And here is the kicker: They give it to us - willingly!

Podcast listeners are the “smartest” audience in the room. They are self-selectors. They choose to listen to learn, to grow, and to be entertained. If you can win their Share of Ear, you aren’t just getting an impression; you are building a relationship.

An Adventure Together

We remind our clients that starting a podcast is an adventure. It requires a bit of bravery to step away from the safety of a PDF brochure and get behind a microphone.

The best time to start was 10 years ago. The next best time is today.

If you are tired of fighting for attention in a crowded feed, maybe it’s time to change the battlefield? Stop trying to distract them visually. Start accompanying them audibly.

Let us help you #BeHeard.

‘They’ call it Blue Monday - statistically the gloomiest day of the year thanks to the holidays fading, the credit card bills arriving, the motivation tank running dry, and payday still being, what feels like, weeeeks away.

The “Great December/January Chill” is almost over. That quiet, hazy lull is lifting. The out-of-office replies are dwindling, and as we head towards February, business is starting to vibe again.

We know 2026 is going to be another massive year for podcast growth.
(Whether you include YouTube videos in your definition or not.)

And we know that audiobook listenership in South Africa is starting to stir
(I attribute much of the renewed interest to Spotify’s new offering.)

So, before your calendar fills up with endless Zooms and webinars and strat sessions, I’m asking for a small favour please - a little R&R from you.

And no, I don’t mean:

• Rest & Relaxation (The original version)

• Rock & Roll (The musical version)

• Rinse & Repeat (The repetitive version)

• Roles & Responsibilities (The HR favorite)

• Risk & Reward (The finance trade-off)

• Reward & Recognition (The morale booster)

• Review & Refine (The product cycle)

• Rum & Raspberry (The Mozam vibe)

• Ripe & Ready (The avocado lottery)

• Remove & Replace (The Mechanics)

• Read & Review (The Writers)

• Revise & Resubmit (The Academics)

• Rough & Ready (The “Ready, Fire, Aim” people)

But rather…

• Review & Refer (The Solid Gold ask)

👉 Click here to Review us now
👉 Click here to Refer a friend now

This is the fuel that keeps us going with cool projects, inspiring adventures, and new friends. The majority of the people we work with come from your referrals, and we really appreciate it.

So, if you are not one of the thoughtful 58 people who have already reviewed us, please would you take a moment to do so now?

1. Review us on Google: If you love what we do, give us a quick high-five on Google. It takes 10 seconds and really helps engender trust with people who haven’t yet met us. 👉 Click here to review us now

2. Refer a future podcaster (or author) to us: Think about it: Who do you know that needs to #BeHeard in 2026? If you have a friend, a colleague, or a client who should be starting a podcast or recording an audiobook this year, please send them our way. We’ll take good care of them. 👉 Click here to refer a friend now

Thank you and have an awesome year ahead.

#SoundAdvice #BeHeard

We were deliberatley hands-off and the extent of our ‘interference’ was to suggest they speak a little faster, and we gave them the outro tag line. Otherwise, they/it did all the work.

This is the result... take a listen.

Please let us have your thoughts and feedback via info@SolidGold.co.za

The uncanny valley is a psychological hypothesis describing the relationship between the human likeness of an object (such as a robot, animated character, CGI figure, or synthetic voice) and a person’s emotional response or affinity toward it.As the appearance (or behavior, in extensions of the concept) of something becomes increasingly similar to a real human, people’s positive feelings toward it generally rise—up to a point. However, when it reaches a near-perfect but not quite fully human level of realism, affinity suddenly drops sharply, often turning into feelings of eeriness, revulsion, discomfort, or uncanniness. Once true human-level realism is achieved (or surpassed in a way that feels authentically alive), affinity rises again. This creates a characteristic “valley” dip in a graph plotting human likeness (x-axis) against affinity/emotional response (y-axis).The effect is often more pronounced with movement or dynamic elements (e.g., speech, facial expressions, gestures), as subtle mismatches—like unnatural timing in a smile, breathing patterns, prosody in voice, or micro-expressions—can amplify the unsettling feeling.OriginThe concept was first proposed in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori (then a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology) in his short essay titled “Bukimi no Tani” (不気味の谷), which translates literally to “Valley of Eeriness” or “Uncanny Valley.” Mori originally wrote it as a more intuitive guideline for robot designers rather than a strict scientific theory.

• He illustrated the idea with examples like prosthetic hands (which can feel uncanny when very lifelike) and observed how movement intensifies the effect—e.g., a zombie (moving) feels more disturbing than a corpse (still).

• The English term “uncanny valley” was popularized in 1978 by British art critic Jasia Reichardt in her book Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction, where she translated Mori’s Japanese phrase.

• Mori’s original graph (with separate curves for still and moving objects) has become iconic in robotics, animation, and AI discussions.

While Mori coined the modern term and framework, similar observations predate him—e.g., Charles Darwin in 1839 noted a repulsive feeling toward certain animal faces that were “somewhat proportional to the human face” in The Voyage of the Beagle.Today, the uncanny valley is widely discussed beyond robotics, applying to AI-generated voices (like in podcasts), deepfakes, virtual actors, and hyper-realistic CGI in films (e.g., critiques of movies like The Polar Express, Cats (2019), or early Sonic the Hedgehog designs). Some researchers debate its exact mechanisms—possible evolutionary roots (e.g., detecting disease/death cues), cognitive mismatches, or perceptual processing—but it remains a key concept in human-AI interaction.

Resolutions abound… more gym, less wine, kale smoothies for breakfast, finally sorting that garage. We perform these rituals (download habit-tracking apps, announce bold goals on LinkedIn) as if the mere act of declaration will conjure results.

But we know better.

Magic doesn’t come from performative behaviour tied to a date; it comes from understanding what actually works and putting in the consistent, deliberate effort.

Which segues us neatly to Cargo Cults. Those fascinating post-WWII phenomena in the Pacific Islands. When Allied planes dropped supplies on makeshift airstrips, the locals witnessed what looked like ritual magic: clear a jungle strip, build a tower, wave some signals, and treasures rained from the sky. After the war, with no more planes, some communities faithfully recreated the forms… bamboo runways, coconut-shell headphones, wooden “control towers”, hoping to summon the cargo back.

All imitation, zero understanding of radar, engines, or global supply chains.
Pure performative mimicry chasing an outcome they didn’t grasp.

The Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman (a permanent fixture on my “fantasy dinner party” list - if you haven’t yet read “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” you’re in for a treat) famously borrowed the idea in his 1974 Caltech commencement address to describe “Cargo Cult Science” - following all the outward forms of rigorous work, but missing the essential integrity that makes the planes actually land.

And the Cargo Cult idea didn’t stay in the Pacific! It migrated straight into tech. While Feynman popularised “cargo cult science,” programmers took it further with “cargo cult programming”: blindly copying code patterns, rituals, and tools without understanding why they work. Today we see the same vibe in the rush to “just add AI.” Teams bolt ChatGPT wrappers onto everything because the big players do it, sprinkle some prompt engineering magic, and hope the cargo arrives, without grasping the underlying models, data quality, or failure modes. Real-world disasters follow fast: remember the lawyer who cited hallucinated cases generated by AI, or companies that shipped biased hiring tools because they copied the trendy stack without questioning the training data? It’s bamboo runways all over again. (But that’s a rabbit hole for another day.)

Does this sound familiar in the podcast world for you too? Too many podcasts are modern Cargo Cults. People see Rogan or Diary of a CEO racking up millions of views and think: “We need video! Fancy studios! Celebrity guests! Viral clips!” So they invest heavily in cameras, lights, and YouTube optimisation, because that’s what the big players do. Meanwhile, their actual audience (busy executives, decision-makers in B2B spaces) prefers audio they can consume in the car, on a run, or during a flight. Blocking out time to watch video? Not happening! Yet the push for video persists, largely because it feeds platform algorithms on YouTube and Spotify. Convenient for them, not necessarily for you.

Then there’s the metrics obsession: chasing download numbers like they’re the cargo itself. But if your goal is building thought leadership, nurturing leads, or converting listeners into clients, raw downloads are a vanity metric.

They tell you nothing about who listened, what resonated, or whether anyone acted. It’s bamboo runway building! Looks busy, delivers nothing.

To drive the point home, think of famous authors who persisted through rejection. J.K. Rowling sent Harry Potter to twelve publishers before Bloomsbury said yes. Another classic: Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected 144 times before finding a home and selling over 500 million copies worldwide. Was success due to the ritual of sending manuscripts? No! The magic was in the exceptional storytelling, the emotional connection, the substance that made readers care. The rejections were mechanics; the hits came from deep understanding of what moves people.

Or consider the “dropout myth.” Everyone cites Gates, Zuckerberg, or Jobs quitting college to “follow their dream.” But here’s the thing… they dropped out of Harvard! (or elite equivalents) - places that already validated their brilliance and opened doors. Dropping out of a less selective institution without that foundation? Rarely the same rocket fuel. It’s confusing the visible behaviour with the underlying substance.

So, is your podcast a Cargo Cult? Endless imitation of “successful” forms without grasping what truly delivers for your audience? Or is it built on real understanding: audio-first content that fits busy professional lives, stories that build genuine trust, and metrics tied to business outcomes like inquiries or conversions?

At Solid Gold Podcasts, we help corporates cut through the mimicry to create podcasts with actual impact - no bamboo required!

Ditch the coconut headphones this year!
Let’s build a podcast that truly adds value to your organisation.

Have an awesome year ahead, kale and all.

Mail us today and #BeHeard

In the same way the blossoming Jacarandas of Pretoria alert Tuks students that they should already be studying, the onset of Spring is our annual ‘nudge’ to start taking bookings for our year-end Audiobook recording season.

Once again this year, Winter became Spring overnight in Joburg - and we went from cozy fireplaces and layers to plakkies and sunblock… in the same week! And yes I know we’ll still have two (maybe three) cold snaps, but allow me this little moment of joy :-)

Anyhoo, back to the reason for this mail…

December and January are Solid Gold’s traditional Audiobook recording months.

This aligns with a traditional year-end slowdown, and a period when authors can actually take a break, take a breath, and take the time to be in the studio with us for the hours and days it takes to record the spoken versions of their Kindle babies.

Book now

And you’ll be in good company when you book. Here are some of the books we’ve done this year, and some that are currently in production:

Before you go, please take this quick poll. I’m really curious about how it will split.

Yes! I'm ready to book.

If you’re worrying about the costs, here is a handy calculator you can use.

This week, I was treated to a quick visit from a friend that I met while living in Zambia. Naturally, after showing her around all the studios, I asked her to pose for a quick snap, and Sammy completely nailed the brief.

It dawned on me that I have a little collection of these that haven’t been shared, and what better way to celebrate a Friday (and the can’t-come-soon-enough departure of winter) than showing off some happy faces in the sun? Perhaps you’ll find some weekend listening too!

Listen to the From the Hip episode with Claire & John here:

Mango Groove Explosion

Danny & Benjy talk all things madness in music:

Sex, Drums, and Rock n Roll

Dive into Stripped, an emotional and immersive 90-minute audio drama brilliantly produced by our friends at Baird Media:

Stripped - audio drama

The Know It Alls pop-culture podcast for if you feel like finding two new besties:

Know It Alls with Fezi & Ayanda

Nicci, a nutrition and wellness expert, explores various topics related to physical, mental, and emotional well-being, emphasising sustainable lifestyle changes over quick fixes:

The Reinvent Health Podcast

Paige Nick joins Fiona and Gail to talk about how humour is the golden thread that links all her writing:

Hidden Lives of Writers

I’d love to add more of these to our collection, so if you’ve gotten your wings with us, please share! And if you haven’t yet, be sure to nudge me the next time you’re here.

That’s all from me for now :)

Stay warm, and we look forward to helping you #BeHeard soon!