Ep 134 – Jen Moss, JAR - Podcasting That Connects: Story First, Metrics That Matter
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Featuring: Jen Moss, JAR
In episode 134, I sit down with Jen Moss, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of JAR, where she helps brands and agencies craft podcasts that move people—not just metrics.
Jen calls herself a podcasting doula, guiding clients through the messy middle of creative storytelling. In this conversation, we dive into how to create audio that actually connects, what makes a podcast worth listening to, and why “Job, Audience, Result” is the framework every agency should adopt before hitting record.
Jen and I explore why most branded podcasts fizzle, how to define success beyond downloads, and the difference between authenticity and algorithm-chasing. If you’ve ever thought about starting a podcast for your agency—or making your current one work harder—this episode’s for you.
Key Bytes
• The JAR method: Job, Audience, Result—a simple framework for podcast strategy.
• Why authenticity and storytelling beat reach every time.
• How agencies can use podcasts as pillar content that drives real relationships.
• Common landmines when launching an agency podcast.
• Why generosity and curiosity build audience trust.
• The most meaningful metrics: engagement, consumption rate, and return listeners.
• When to use internal vs. external hosts—and why it depends.
• The role of creative courage in a crowded podcast space.
• Why “connection” should always be your North Star.Chapters
00:00 Intro – Meet Jen Moss, podcasting doula and CCO of JAR
02:00 From theater to radio: Jen’s storytelling roots
06:00 The JAR framework explained: Job, Audience, Result
09:30 The real “why” behind launching a podcast
12:30 How agencies can use podcasts as strategic marketing tools
16:30 Internal vs. external hosts: what actually works
19:45 Common landmines and why most podcasts fizzle
22:00 Authenticity, generosity, and giving value away
24:30 Is podcasting too saturated? Finding signal in the noise
27:45 Connection over clicks—how to stand out
31:00 The metrics that matter: consumption, return, and reach trends
33:50 Rapid Fire with Jen Moss: storytelling, creative courage, and dream guests
In her role as Chief Creative Officer of JAR, Co-Founder Jen Moss loves bringing stories to life. With her clients, Jen acts as a “podcasting Doula,” helping them harness their strengths in service of great storytelling. Deeply steeped in the creative process, Jen is unafraid of its ambiguities, and enjoys guiding others through its twists and turns. Drawing on her strong background in theatre, arts journalism, audio documentary, and new media storytelling, Jen helps clients tell the authentic stories that matter to them, and to their audience. She spent many years working as a producer and award-winning content creator for CBC Radio, and as an interactive story producer for The National Film Board of Canada’s Digital Studio, which taught her to think of stories as living things, full of potential for impact. It also taught her to take an “audience first” approach. Jen is never afraid of surfacing big ideas, but understands that sometimes, it’s the little things – the specific lens that “only you” can bring – that will gain the most traction with an audience. Jen loves to look for “fresh tracks” in the form of stories that haven’t been told before. She encourages her clients and her team at JAR to try out new ideas, learn from what the audience data reveals, and let that inform future creative strategy. Finally, Jen keeps her own professional learning curve alive as she lectures part-time at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing, interacting with the next generation of writers, podcasters, new media producers, and audiences.
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Steve / Agency Outsight (00:01.217)
Welcome to Agency Bites. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. Today, my guest is Jen Moss. She's the creative... Shit, see, there I go. Bumbling my words. Take two. Chief creative officer. Also, is it pronounced Jar or J-A-R? How do you pronounce the agency name? Jar, I thought so. Okay. All right, take two.
Jen Moss (00:14.734)
Chief, chief. There we go. It's very important.
It's pronounced jar. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (00:27.127)
Welcome to Agency Bites. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. Today, my guest is Jen Moss, the chief creative officer and co-founder of JAR. Jen calls herself a podcasting doula, helping clients bring their stories to life with authenticity and creative courage. She's got roots in theater, journalism, and years producing award-winning content for CBC radio and the National Film Board of Canada.
Jen has a rare ability to blend artistry with strategy. We'll talk about what makes a story truly resonate, how to navigate the messy middle of the creative process, and why sometimes the smallest, most personal details can leave the biggest impact. Great to have you here, Jen.
Jen Moss (01:10.798)
So nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:13.633)
Yeah. so talking about podcasting on a podcast, again, I think that's kind of an inception thing, but I like it. talk about kind of like your journey, your, kind of backstory of being like independent creative and launching jar and what you're doing there now.
Jen Moss (01:21.047)
You
Jen Moss (01:31.454)
Okay, yeah. Well, I guess I've always been like a round peg in a square hole. So I knew I was marked or branded early on for a creative life. Like I knew that it wasn't going to be like a the bank teller's life was not for me, right? This is just very clear to me from a very young age.
so yeah, I mean, some of the most alive I've ever felt is when I'm sitting watching a live performance, whether it's music or theater or whatever it is where people are in a space with other human beings taking risks and making emotional connection. So I knew that I wanted to do something like that. So that's how I started out. started out in theater, eventually got into playwriting. I'm a little too shy to really be an actor.
you know, so I had to scale that dream back a little bit and focus on the writing, which led me to study creative writing. And I took a course at the University of British Columbia, where I now teach actually, but this is many years ago, a man called Keith Millard taught it, he is literally about to retire. I'm going to his zoom retirement later today. And Keith Millard,
once told the class that a writer writes, like a writer doesn't sit in a cafe looking pretentious, nursing a cup of espresso and not, you know, like that's not what a writer like puts their fingers on the keyboard and types things, you know, so that was a really good lesson. And he taught a course in, it was called at the time, radio feature writing, which is really just kind of creative storytelling for audio.
And I just loved it. I just immediately loved it. I loved how you didn't need a budget. All you needed was your imagination and you could literally make anything happen. Like if you wanted to have your characters go to planet Zoran to fight evil aliens, you could do that. If you wanted to go to the Antarctic, you could do that. You could just go there in a nanosecond. And he really taught us the value of that creatively. so...
Jen Moss (03:46.508)
Yeah, so I just knew I wanted to do that. And then I went and lived in Hong Kong, worked as a journalist there for a while in the English publications there, freelance journalist, kind of cut my teeth. Then came back, got involved with CBC here in Canada, which is our public broadcaster. Also got some incredible mentorship there from actually like some really wonderful women in radio who were like,
really supportive of young me. You when I would go in with some ideas for some stories, they would encourage me to go out and get the stories, make suggestions for how to deepen the storytelling, and then help me with the edits, help me with the pacing and all of that. So that when it all came together, it was really listenable. So learned tons there, then was sort of kind of plucked to go and work at the National Film Board Digital Studio here in Vancouver, which
is no longer a thing tragically because it was a really innovative program where they just looked at evolving technology, emerging technology, and they tried to think about what is the impact of that format on story and storytelling and how can creators engage with it. And so I really loved that and all of that. And I just realized I'm sort of an audio first.
person, but doing that work at the National Film Board helped dislodge a little bit of the rigidity around that. So I started to think about more kind of cross-platform transmedia storytelling and things like that. And just really thinking about like, what is the advantage of each potential storytelling medium? And how do you rise to the occasion with each of those formats to like make the most of it? And so that's really what I love to do.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:15.586)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Moss (05:44.786)
is take an idea and then just think about where does it need to go, who does it need to reach and just sort of play in that space. that's how I ended up here starting my own company is because I wanted the space to do that.
Steve / Agency Outsight (06:01.091)
So you launched JAR and JAR stands for Job Audience Results. What's that mean? I've never heard that phrase.
Jen Moss (06:10.25)
Yeah, Jar is co-founded with my friend and co-worker, our CEO, Roger Nairn. Roger comes from an advertising background, quite a number of years in the advertising industry. So very, very different background from me. So what we sat down to figure out sort of what our approach was and how it was going to be different and how it was going to distinguish itself.
from other podcast companies. And I think we do take a really kind of strategic approach. So a lot of podcast companies will just be like, sure, I'll show up with a microphone and I'll make it sound better and I'll throw some music under the intro and outro. And that's great, right? Like that's kind of what I would call like a work a day podcast does its job, right? If the material's good and the audience is into it, great, that's all you need. But there is like a whole other sort of
There's much deeper way to look at what a podcast is and how it reaches people. And I think it's getting more important as podcasting gets more competitive, as there are more and more of them in the world. So job audience result just stands for like, what job does the podcast need to do in the world? Like, why are you making it? It's that kind of like know your why, right? And then audiences, who is it for? And where are they? And also, what do they want? What do they need? Because if you're not
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:29.239)
Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Jen Moss (07:39.23)
actually addressing that, you might as well stay home, right? Yeah. And then result is how do you measure success? How will you know if it's working? So it's not about reach like hint, newsflash. It's not about reach. Like reach is important, but reach, I believe, and you know, our philosophy at JAR is that reach is a byproduct of really strong engagement and really good strategy.
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:42.999)
Interesting.
Jen Moss (08:08.992)
And good storytelling. So what's more important to us is things like the consumption rate, how much of the episode are people consuming? How often do they return? You know, what are the first seven day downloads look like for each episode? That kind of thing we try to measure. And also other impacts like, are you moving the needle on climate change? Are you featuring voices from the margins? If that is your goal. like we...
really believe in understanding the deeper goals of the podcast and making sure that the podcast is always serving those goals by kind of adhering to that and clinging to the mast of the original job of the podcast. So job audience result is kind of our, it's evolved this way. Like we didn't set out necessarily with that clarity, but I think we were really clear on it now and we apply it to every project and it works.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:05.589)
Interesting. All right. So we're going to back, come back to that. Cause I really want to dig into like, not, yeah, maybe why, why should agencies launch podcasts, but not, not that maybe they should, if that's not what they want to be doing. Like I launched this because like I'm a marketing guy that hates doing my own marketing. And so I figured this will give me medium to use for marketing and allow me to help build a platform and allow me to help people have a voice on a platform.
Jen Moss (09:22.894)
Mmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:34.284)
And so like my two main goals with guests are I want to share tactical information that agency owners and leaders can listen to and be like, go back to the agency, like, Hey, co-founder, we should do X, Y, and Z because Jen was just talking about podcasts. Let's launch one and slash, or I want to share inspiring stories of like what founders have overcome in order to find their version of success and give that platform. So, so to me, a podcast made sense for that. And.
Jen Moss (09:58.818)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:02.627)
I've built some amazing relationships. Your episode 134, I've got another dozen or so already recorded. So like it's taken on a life of its own and I freaking love it. And I've gotten a few clients, a handful of clients who like call or email or text or whatever, hey I heard episode whatever, I'd like to hire you. Shortest sales cycle ever. That was an absolute byproduct. I wanna, yeah. So I wanna talk about the why behind.
Jen Moss (10:08.92)
That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.
Jen Moss (10:21.622)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:29.667)
how an agency can use this for their own marketing purposes. And then how do they measure is it successful or not? Because I don't believe people are always going to be knocking on doors saying, I heard episode 25, I want to hire your agency. So let's dissect that one piece at a time because that's a lot.
Jen Moss (10:33.496)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Moss (10:45.08)
Well, no, I mean, when that happens, that's wonderful when that does happen though, and congratulations. And that is the hope, I think, that like, because it doesn't take many people to make that podcast worthwhile. If, for example, like, you know, we're doing a podcast for a quantum computing company right now, and they're a good quantum computing company, they're legit. And if...
you know, someone who wants to invest in quantum, you know, scaffolding around their computational processes and their large company hears the right episode and has their questions answered, that's gonna go a long way. So it's that kind of top of funnel engagement. It's hard to measure, but it's very important. It's content marketing essentially, right, is what a podcast is. It's also though, it's a...
it's a way of connecting with your audience and building a community. So like you've created a situation now where other agency owners feel seen and heard by you and we feel part of a community. And I think that that's an often undervalued result, right? But the more you can do that, that's real engagement and thought leadership and all of those things too. And then I think too, like,
Agencies could make a podcast to sort of, think it's interesting for people to see how an agency works and show the strings a little bit, like go to the puppet theater and show the strings. Yeah, exactly. How the sausage is made. I think for certain creative professional types, that's really interesting stuff. I think there's also a wider opportunity for agencies to look at their clients and look at the...
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:16.355)
How the sausage is made almost. Yeah.
Jen Moss (12:34.062)
projects that those people are doing and the campaigns that those people are leading marketing campaigns and think about how a podcast could feed into that. So you mentioned that you don't like doing your own marketing. So you do a podcast and now you have an it's an automatic marketing tool. You can chop it up. You can send it on to social. You can do various things with it if you choose. And so yeah, that is I think a smart way to think about a podcast is a kind of a pillar asset that can be
divided up, it can be used as the basis for a white paper. It can be a blog post. It can be a newsletter. It can drive a newsletter content wise. It can be chopped up for social. It can have a longer conversation about something that's more complex and nuanced that you can't get across in bullet points on a website, right? to me, it's like it goes back to my training at the National Film Board.
digital studio thinking about like, what is the medium good at? So the medium is good at connection. It's people reaching one another. It's me and you talking to a group of people, hopefully listening, going, yeah, we see you, we get how hard this kind of work is. We know that it's all about connection and trying to be real in an environment that encourages like AI driven schlock.
Like it's really hard, right? It's really hard to do what we do. And so if we can create an experience where people feel seen and heard, like that's super powerful. And I think that's what podcasting does well. So I don't know if that answered your question, but I, yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:11.681)
Yeah, do you think there's...
Well, I listen, I hear every day new podcasts pop up and I've heard crazy statistics of like 99 % of podcasts don't hit more than five episodes and they just fizzle out. And I don't know if that's accurate or not, but you could say a large majority don't hit more than, you know, a handful.
Jen Moss (14:26.723)
Yeah.
Jen Moss (14:31.916)
Yeah, I don't think it's 99%. That seems like an exaggeration, but I have seen those stats that imply that there are a lot of podcasts that what we would say, they just die on the vine, right? They just die on the vine. Because they're quite a bit of work, they take planning and consistency. you do need at the very least a kind of a sort of a, you need to understand your why, your job. You need to know who you're talking to and why.
And you need to have a manageable sort of scope and cadence as well. Because if you're trying to do like a weekly podcast and you've never done it before and you're trying to do it on top of your regular job, you're probably gonna burn out pretty quick. And if you're trying to have guests on the show, that's a whole other thing. You gotta figure out a mechanism around finding guests. How are you gonna do that? When are you gonna do that, right? So there's that. So people underestimate, I think, and then they also don't do their homework.
It's really important to look around and go, how many other podcasts are in this space? What are they doing? And what could I do differently? So don't be a follower, be a leader in your sector, right? So if that means doing a sci-fi podcast, then go for it. Like I've had long conversations with a brand selling solar powered panels.
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:43.629)
Yeah.
Jen Moss (15:56.91)
And I was like, you know, everyone's doing these technical podcasts about like why solar panels work, how they work, how long they last, where to plug in the battery, where to store the energy, blah, blah, blah. There's already a ton of those. Why don't you guys do a sci-fi podcast about a world powered only by sun? Nobody else is doing that. You will get noticed. So that's the kind of, you also have to have that kind of a little bit of creative bravery to be honest with yourself if something's already being done to death, maybe don't do it.
maybe do something different. So yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:28.791)
That's interesting. like that. Yeah. Do you think there's a, like a, I don't know, a stronger impact or greater efficacy if agencies are like doing it themselves as like, whatever, just these two people from the agency versus bringing in guests from the outside and like, what are the like true impactful differences there?
Jen Moss (16:42.958)
Mm-hmm. That's a great question. what how I would describe that in our world, we would call that an internal host, somebody who belongs to the organization versus an external host, somebody who's brought in. So there's pros and cons. So sorry, that's a bit of a agency marketer answer, but there are pros and cons. So it depends. It does depend. But I'll tell you on what it depends. So it depends on
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:03.563)
It depends. That's the answer. Yeah, that's the default.
Jen Moss (17:12.884)
if you're using an internal host, somebody from your organization, the advantages are they know the content, they know where the bodies are buried, they know like when, you know, every organization has their equivalent of like, don't mention the war, like from faulty towers. Sorry, that's a British reference, but anyway, but don't mention the war, don't talk about this thing, right?
Every organization has that and an internal host will know exactly how to thread that needle, right? Like they'll know, so in highly regulated industries, for example, healthcare, insurance, finance, those kind of industries, sometimes I find an internal host is in some ways easier because you don't have to kind of, you're not constantly saying, no, don't talk about that. No, don't talk about that, right?
The downside though is those people tend to be busy. They're already doing another job. So the advantage of a pro host that you would bring in or someone who's maybe an influencer in the space or a speaker who knows a lot about it, like, let's say you're doing a science show. I don't think you want an ignoramus necessarily hosting a science show, although that could be funny. like, you I think you probably, maybe you look for a scientist, someone in the field who
gets what it is that you're trying to do, has a basis of knowledge that they can authentically bring to the conversation and sort of elevate the conversation without you having to work too hard. And plus it's their job, because you're paying them to show up at a certain time. And if you need to do five takes of the intro, then you do five takes of the intro. Whereas if the CEO is hosting it, that guy's got to run. You're not doing five takes with that guy. You're hoping for the best. And so that's...
So the quality difference can be like I do find with external hosts, you have a little more control and you can, the overall production quality can be a little higher. But like I said, pros and cons and you know, there's the cost thing too. If you're trying to save money, doing it off the side of your desk, like any hustle is the way to go.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:26.007)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, it's, got $200 in a light and a microphone and AirPods and Riverside, like, and a VA that does some of the work. for me, it's, it's. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So for, for an agency that wants to launch a podcast more for themselves, for their own marketing, they want to break into the manufacturing space or like whatever verticals they're chasing down. What are some of the, I guess, things that they should be aware of as like,
Jen Moss (19:37.057)
the tools are there, right? The tools are there. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:56.215)
Don't step on these landmines along the way.
Jen Moss (19:59.096)
Hmm. Okay. There are a lot of landmines. I think the biggest one for me is be careful not to talk overtly about your product or service. people don't, you don't want the podcast to duplicate information that someone could easily find on your website, you know, or in a brochure or on a bus ad. Like,
the podcast should be doing something different that is additive rather than repetitive. So a deeper conversation, help showing your thought leadership by going out and interviewing people in your field who are really influential and then having intelligent conversations with them to elevate the whole field. So.
Those are good things to do. Try to be generous. Try to view the podcast as a gift to your audience. Give them something that they would want and benefit from. So if you're an agency doing a podcast, think about who you're talking to and what it is that they need. So if they work in, you know, engineering or something like that, and they're trying to figure out how to get a message across about their science, their product, whatever it is they're building,
and that's your target audience, then you need to do some episodes that talk about how to share highly technical information in a way that's compelling. For example, that might be something that that audience would appreciate. So I don't know, like it's really hypothetical until you know the actual audience and their actual journey and their needs, but it's that generosity of spirit that's important and also being careful not to turn it into cell, cell, cell because
The second somebody thinks you're selling them, there's like earbuds out. They're gone, right? They're not there anymore. So yeah, like that.
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:54.648)
Yeah, I love those. So my buddy Todd talks about, I'm going to screw it up, like the mouse's whiskers and when the whiskers detect that like the cat is selling too much or whatever, I don't know. I screwed it up already, Todd, sorry. Anyway, but yeah.
Jen Moss (22:09.59)
yeah, but those whiskers are highly evolved in the podcast audience because you're actually, especially audio podcasting. Now we can talk about the differences between audio and video, but with audio podcasting, you're whispering in somebody's ear. Like you're between their head. That is sacred space. Like you do not F with that. Like don't, you'll lose. So that's why I think you hear the word
bandied around authenticity. hear people talk about that to the point like ad nauseum has become meaningless, right? But to me, what it means is always honoring the need to be real with people and the need to connect and to acknowledge like, hi, I see you. I thank you for listening. I know you're there, right? Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:00.215)
Yeah, yeah. The other one that you mentioned, I believe wholeheartedly that like, I just want to give all the information away that I can. Nobody's going to like take it all and go run with it and execute. And if they can't, then they're going to come back and be like, Hey Steve, you talked about this sales process. Can I hire you to implement? Cool. Happy to talk, but I want you to have all the information and I want you to try and execute it on your own. The information is out there anyway. So if I can be a resource and I can provide some value to somebody's day and
the success of their business, like, yay, celebrate, let's do it. Yeah.
Jen Moss (23:30.636)
Yeah, yeah, it's relationship building, right? It's relationship building. The person who taught me that is a guy called Steve Pratt. And Steve started a company called Pacific Content a number of years ago, which was the first branded podcasting company. So the first company to see the opportunity to make podcasts with brands. And one of the things that they did at Pacific Content
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:54.882)
Interesting.
Jen Moss (23:58.798)
was exactly that, like basically give away the milk for free. So everything that they did, every podcast they worked on, they just kind of like opened the kimono, you know, and let everybody see how they did it, why they did it. And the whole industry was like, wow, that's a really smart idea. And I mean, I do the same thing, not the kimono part, but you know, generally I'm very upfront with our ideas and our theories and stuff because
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:03.437)
Yeah, why not?
Jen Moss (24:28.94)
I think it sparks some interesting conversations in the podcast community. And I love it when other podcasters do the same and say things like, I've tried this, it hasn't worked, but I've tried this and it seems to be going better. I'm like, great, that's good to know, you know? Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:41.805)
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think the podcast space has gotten too saturated and is too much signal to noise?
Jen Moss (24:50.382)
Well, the internet in general is we're drowning in a sea of can I swear on this podcast? Okay, we're drowning in a sea of shit right now people we are drowning in a sea of shit. And so I mean, I use AI for very specific reasons in my work. I teach it I teach writing for new media. I'm totally fascinated by it. I'm currently building an immersive AI driven experience with my students. So
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:57.261)
Fuck yeah. Yes.
Jen Moss (25:19.564)
I'm not a Luddite when I say this. I don't think it's helping because the content is that it's coughing up. You you'll see like 6,000 podcasts got made in a day or whatever. Yeah, okay, sure, great. That's awesome. Who's listening? Because a lot of people are not. And what I think we're finding is it's an audience driven endeavor and audiences are starting to balk.
Like they're not loving that stuff, right? So yes, we're saturated, but we're not saturated by real, authentic, great storytelling. We're not saturated by, you know, there's never a reason why you wouldn't want to listen to a story that moves you or a driveway story that makes you pull over in the driveway and listen to the end. Or like I commute to work, I listen to podcasts on my commute.
And there are ones that I arrive at my teaching job and I've got like tears streaming down my face because I've been listening to somebody's really powerful story. I'm like, there's that, I'll never get tired of that. And I don't think most people will, right? So it's really about finding the way through the the shite so that you can rise above it. So one of my favorite t-shirts ever.
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:36.803)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Moss (26:42.626)
was at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. it was stylistically, looked like, this is for the graphic designers who might be listening, it looked like an old sort of socialist propaganda poster with like a woman with a megaphone. And then out of the megaphone, it was written in big bold letters, real music in a sea of shit. And I've taken that to be my,
mantra when making work with clients is like always trying to adhere to that hold to the mast of the story hold to the mast of like what is what are you trying to do what connection are you trying to make is this content gonna make that connection if it's not don't do it right and just trying to be really strict around that and yeah it's hard to get noticed it's we're in an algorithmically driven world it's tricky
But, you know, and there's things that we can do, there's levers we can pull to try to make that work better. But I think what really ultimately works and keeps people coming back is connection. And if you're not making a connection, it's not going to work.
Steve / Agency Outsight (27:56.42)
Man, I hope I am every time I get like an email or a slack message or whatever like I listen to this episode It's really great like it really warms my heart and that's like literally all I care about so I hope I am making a connection from a
Jen Moss (28:04.866)
Yeah, yeah. It doesn't take much, right? It just takes a few people. So listen, if you're listening right now to Steve's show and you care, please let him know because he's a human being and it will make him feel better.
Steve / Agency Outsight (28:11.617)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (28:20.291)
Thanks, Jen. From a tactical standpoint, nuts and bolts to get back to if an agency wants to launch a thing, what are some of the metrics, just to kind of wrap things up, what are some of the metrics that they should look for? Like I don't watch for listens, I don't watch for views or shares, I do look if there's reviews or stars or whatever they call that. But what's, to be,
For ROI and for the sake of how do we define success around an agency centered podcast, what are some of the things they should look for?
Jen Moss (28:47.278)
Mmm.
Jen Moss (28:54.114)
Well, I think you always want the reach to be going in the right direction. So the download numbers matter in the sense that if they're going down, you've got a problem, right? So I don't think that they need to be climbing at a ridiculous rate. And I think you need to have realistic expectations when you start out. So as long as those download numbers are going in the right direction, that means you are.
you're reaching people. that's number one. Number two, I would look for engagement rates, AKA consumption rate. So how much of the episode are people consuming? Because if they're only consuming half of it on average, then maybe you need to look at your format. Is it too long? Does it get boring in the middle? Like, do you need to do something in the first half to tease the second half?
you know, there's tricks. are you, if you're noticing a drop-off, for example, and you will notice drop-offs, for example, if you have ads, you'll always notice a bit of a dip whenever there's an ad. It'll come back up, but some people are kind of put off by ads. A lot of people skip them. So I personally am more of a believer in sort of just upfront funding a podcast as an offering and getting the value of it.
that way rather than through advertising if you can. That's my personal belief, but people have different approaches to that. yeah, so engagement rate I think is the most important. First seven day downloads, we look at that. And I think you can learn a lot about, I mean, you can see quite a lot of information, right? So you can figure out what cities people are in. You can figure out what companies, people who are listening, like what IP addresses.
the people listening at work belong to. So that's a possibility. can delve into that if you want to. You can't tell which person at IBM is listening to your show, but you can tell someone at IBM in Silicon Valley is listening to your show or someone in the Canadian parliament is listening to your show, that kind of thing. So it's helpful to be able to know that and it can inform sales.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:43.549)
wow.
Steve / Agency Outsight (31:05.421)
That's interesting.
Jen Moss (31:10.03)
yeah, so I think like who is listening, where are they listening, what age, what, what gender those kinds of things are revealing because it just helps you understand if your message is hitting the right people. And if it's not, you have to be flexible and adjust your creative.
Steve / Agency Outsight (31:28.417)
Interesting. Yeah, I love those. Awesome. So Jar is a podcast solution for businesses, agencies, brands. And so we'll drop the link in the show notes. Make sure, you know, if you're interested and you want to learn more about what Jen and her team do, check them out. Jen, I want to wrap up with a couple of random rapid fire questions.
Jen Moss (31:49.159)
okay, I'm ready.
Steve / Agency Outsight (31:50.721)
They may or may not be podcast related, but the first one is what's your favorite podcast? Other than this one, obviously, Agency Bites, obviously.
Jen Moss (31:56.416)
Ooh, okay, well, I'll put a shout out for Canadian podcast that I just listened to on CBC called Sea of Lies. And it's a narrative true crime podcast looks back at an old murder that took place on a boat and just unpicks it by talking to all of the police officers and people who knew the individual in question who was eventually arrested, which is not a spoiler.
It's a done deal. The guy's been arrested, but it's like how did he manage to fool all these people becomes the question and it's really really well written and really really well told.
Steve / Agency Outsight (32:34.723)
Very cool, that sounds interesting, have to check it out. We listen to a lot of stuff you should know and they dig into things similar storylines as that. What's a creative risk you took outside of work that totally changed how you show up professionally?
Jen Moss (32:40.036)
yeah.
Jen Moss (32:50.222)
Ooh, that's a great question. A creative risk I took outside of work. Well, I did go once and do, you've heard of the moth. The moth is a storytelling circle that travels around the United States and it actually goes now to Africa and various other places. And they get real people to stand up on stage and tell stories and they kind of work with them to kind of,
develop their stories for an audience. So here in Vancouver, Canada, we have our version of the moth, which is called the flame. So I went down to the flame once and told a story about my waitressing days. It was kind of a comedic story and, you know, just in front of a live audience, just to remind myself like what that connection is that originally attracted me to this kind of work, right? And, and so that
definitely was kind of, I would describe it as reinvigorated my awareness of like what an audience is and how to work with them.
Steve / Agency Outsight (33:56.055)
Yeah, that'll make you feel alive. love that. And then finally, similar to the dinner question, any guest you could bring onto a podcast dead or alive, who would it be?
Jen Moss (33:58.242)
Mm-hmm.
Jen Moss (34:05.348)
gosh, any guess I could be? David Byrne. I just really want to talk to that guy. Yeah. Or Billy Bragg. He's another hero of mine from back in my folk festival days. So, yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (34:10.519)
Yeah, who doesn't? Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (34:16.821)
Awesome. Jen, thank you so much for joining us, for sharing all of your podcasting experience. Again, folks will drop the links for Jen's contact info in the show notes. Make sure you check her out. Thank you again for your time. Appreciate you.
Jen Moss (34:30.242)
You're so welcome. Thanks very much for having me.
Steve / Agency Outsight (34:33.58)
anytime.