Hey folks — been making a few updates to the show and planning the future out. Today’s a quick changelog and a crystal ball tease.
Note: this is a subset of the Thought Liters newsletter where I try and open up the back end of this journey to building a content business. Let me know if you like this style.
New episode (+ some changes)
First thing’s first — a new episode of the show just dropped yesterday. It featured Becca Segel, founder and CEO of FlowCellutions, which is innovating within battery monitoring tech (specifically flow batteries, which are giant industrial “low and slow” discharging batteries powering things like hospitals and data centers). Becca is super smart, notably having made the most recent Forbes 30 Under 30 list — an important footnote in the lore of Adam making business content, since I started out in 2016 making podcasts specifically to interview 30U30 honorees. Give it a watch!
Beyond the story itself, I made a few updates to the show design:
I cut the whole “podcast trailer” at the top of the show. It’s way too much time and cost to make happen, at least for the scale of channel I have. I know the big dogs like Diary of a CEO do it. I’m not DOAC. When I have 17 million subscribers, I’ll consider investing in it again.
I replaced with a repeatable line which has shown up in other episodes: “I’m _____ and today we’re getting to the bottom of ________.” I can make a small amount of edit around that, and it’s quick enough to get the viewer’s intent confirmed that the conversation will be about what they clicked for.
I suspect this will work efficiently with cool founders that may not have huge brand recognition. If I ever had a stereotypically “big” name on the show, I’d probably tweak this again.
If you ever watch Hot Ones or any of the shows out of Mythical (Last Meals, etc), they do something similar: ~5 of establishing shot, then straight to the feature.
I cut all the drink taste reviews, and got almost immediately back to the interview post drink intro. I’ve noticed those are dropoff points. I get it with Hot Ones (which I modeled it after) because you’re expecting a spice reaction there. Doesn’t work the same with this, really. Unless it’s like, Malort. (easter egg)
In addition, each drink b-roll now has an indicator of how deep into the flight we are, illustrated by a graphic depicting show’s icon (the full glass) and a newer empty variant. So let’s say we’re on the third beverage out of 4. The graphic would show as two empty glasses, then the 3rd as the full glass with a pulsing glow, and the 4th as the full glass but dimmer / less opaque, indicating it’s yet to come.
I suspect new viewers don’t get that we’re sharing a full flight of beverage on the show. It’s not mission critical to getting a podcast shot; I just need to figure out how to showcase it.
I added a progress bar of sorts to each section of the video. As each new block of conversation kicks off, a thin vertical bar appears, gold in color with white towards the top (fashioned after a pint glass). As the section progresses, the bar slowly empties downward until the section ends.
This is literally just a retention experiment.
I (re-) added music design to the episodes. I really waver back and forth on whether background music adds to a podcast. So many of them are just dead air in the background (and I get why — music design takes a lot of time), but I feel like each of these episodes tells a specific story which could be benefited by it.
Time will tell whether these updates stick around — in the meantime, it’s made production slightly faster (the trailer change was huge).
Maybe next week I’ll have some stats to share.
Quick honor + thanks
Shout out to Technical.ly who listed Thought Liters in their recent article, 5 Pittsburgh podcasts tracking the founders, startups and AI stories shaping the region. I enjoy telling and featuring these stories, and I’m glad they’re appreciated!!
Glimpse into the future.
more to come in a future edition.
I’ve been doing a ton of thinking about where I eventually want this channel to go. Sure, it may seem silly to look ten years out — especially as a channel with 266 subscribers — but if I’m to take this big swing seriously in 2026, it’s worth looking into the crystal ball to see what the show might resemble in 2036.
This is just a tease. Got a full newsletter coming out on this soon. In the meantime — have you ever done a 5-year or 10-year plan? I never have, so welcome any guidance about how to actually do one in a reply to this.
The number one thing you can do to help me and the show is to watch, like, and comment on the new episode of the show on YouTube. If you scrolled all the way to bottom of this thing first, that’s the tl;dr. Consider subscribing as well.
I read everything, and respond to everything.
Cheers.
Adam
