Anxiety and Trust In The New Media Economy With CEO Dan Granger

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2:31Dan Granger: I'm joined by Felix today to have a conversation with Dan Granger, who is the CEO of Oxford Road. And I met Dan at South by Southwest at a really cool podcasting event. Dan is a true innovator in the space of podcasting, advertising, monetizing, growing influence. and he's a really cool guy and he is an anxious achiever. That's how we connected. I told him what I do and he goes, oh my God, that sounds like me. So I said, you have to come on the show. And this is me being on his show as well as him being on my show. We talk a lot about media, which I love to talk about. We talk about AI and what it's gonna do to creativity and influence.

3:20Dan Granger: And we talk about managing anxiety as a leader, as an entrepreneur, especially in these super disruptive times. We get a little nitty gritty about podcasting and media. I think you're going to find it interesting, even if you are not a podcaster or a media executive. I always love to go inside the minds of leaders who are working through all the big issues that we talk about on the show. So my conversation with Dan Granger, CEO of Oxford Road.

3:56Ginger Johnson: Welcome to the Media Roundtable, where we explore the business of trust in the new media economy. I am your host, Dan Granger. I'm the CEO and founder of Oxford Road. And my guest today has spent two decades moving between politics, public health, and brand strategy. A lot of interesting areas. and she has built a podcast and a business around the thing that most leaders really hesitate to talk about out loud. She has advised four, four U.S. presidential campaigns, teaches executive education at Harvard, and still identifies as an anxious achiever. My guest is Maura Ahrens-Mele, who is the founder of MHL Partners and host of The Anxious Achiever, which is a wonderful podcast that we have many advertisers who are happily supporting.

4:58Ginger Johnson: She is also the author of the Harvard Business Review press book of the same name, The Anxious Achiever. and so more a welcome to the media roundtable I'm so glad we're finally able to do this oh it's so great how are you I'm uh I'm well I think for you know I'm not really a morning guy and we're doing this one kind of early but I feel I don't feel like that's a problem this morning uh so uh chalk one up for the uh nitro uh cold brew and listening to some of your stuff on the way down um I've been I've been trying to bone up and really excited about this conversation. You know, how are you feeling?

5:43Ginger Johnson: I think that's my first question. What's today like for you? And is anxiety like a kind of an always on thing? Or is it something that you've managed to the point that it's not even a signal?

5:58Dan Granger: you know i view my anxiety as my um sort of co-partner in life um we have a good relationship actually we we've had a very very bad relationship at many times but i'm getting old enough so now we have we kind of have a good relationship and right now my anxiety is is calm you know she's She's sort of chilling for the summer, please. I'm sure she'll flare up. But I have developed such a toolkit, such a bag of tricks, to be honest, that I'm pretty good at taking her down and calming her down most days.

6:43Ginger Johnson: Does she have a name, by the way?

6:45Dan Granger: You know, it's funny. She doesn't have a name. My inner critic has a name, and it's my mom.

6:50Ginger Johnson: Oh.

6:53Dan Granger: uh no i'm glad i just have a name because she's she's kind of a part of me to be honest

6:59Ginger Johnson: yeah does yours yeah uh it goes by dan uh most of the time so um well you know this is such an interesting subject i mean what are you going to do for work now that um technology and ai has really solved most of our societal ills and mental health issues. Oh, for sure. I mean, now that we've got things to do everything for us, tell us how to navigate any situation. I mean, it hasn't hasn't the the future that is now upon us really made this somewhat less of an issue.

7:40Dan Granger: Yeah. How are you feeling about that?

7:41Ginger Johnson: Great, great, great. An existential dread. Yes, exactly. And I noticed that our team members are feeling the same way. They're very not feeling any of the pressures at all. And I know that. So let's talk about that seriously for a second. I mean, so much of our world seems to be, you know, our capabilities keep increasing, right, as a society. and we do have more access to more resources, more tools, more solutions, more advice, more anything. And yet it feels like maybe that's not exactly helping. If you think about, because you've studied this so much, if you think about anxiety historically, where are we at?

8:34Ginger Johnson: Is it something that just now we talk about, we didn't used to talk about it? Or is it truly different now? and then I'm going to want to ask you a little bit about you know some of the ways you're advising people to deal with kind of the the the tech produced anxiety yeah yes AI anxiety you know

8:52Dan Granger: so anxiety and I'm going to talk about anxiety right now not as a clinical disorder for which you would get medication that's the most common mental illness in the world many many people have it but when I talk about anxiety right now I'm just going to talk about anxiety as like a normal healthy emotion that most of us feel. We need to feel anxiety. There's a wonderful writer named Rollo May who wrote a book, I think in the 60s, called The Meaning of Anxiety. And his point was very much that man, back then it was man, right, needs anxiety to keep us innovating and moving forward, even though it feels terrible.

9:36Dan Granger: You know, anxiety has ancient roots. Anxiety was the pattern making that kept us alive when we were prey. Anxiety was the signal that helped us say, oh, that rustle in the bushes, that's probably not good. So I probably should avoid the rustle in the bushes, right? Anxiety is just the anticipation of a future that feels uncertain and scary. And so I love anxiety. You know, anxiety is really what has kept us innovating on our toes to focus, as has stress. We would be nowhere without stress and anxiety. And I think we have to accept that as people, because I believe it's really part of the human condition.

10:23Dan Granger: Now, I also believe that right now, we are at a level of anxiety that feels

10:33Dan Granger: unsolvable, because of two things. One, because we know so much about it, and we talk so much about it. And two, because the level of change and uncertainty is really, really intense. And we watch it in real time on social media. And we are not equipped as humans, most of us, to manage that level of uncertainty and fear in our nervous systems. And so we feel anxious chronically. We're always like at an 11, our worry is at an 11 because we're just, we're so overwhelmed with all the incoming.

11:07Ginger Johnson: And so when you are talking about anxiety all the time, I mean, it's the, it's kind of the anchor for the work that you do. you're really making a distinction between the clinical type and the the I don't know what you

11:22Dan Granger: would call it the natural type the emotion the type natural emotion yeah you know I mean I think that I think that anxiety it never feels good and it gets a really bum rap but my goal and the same with stress and there's been a ton of research on this is to help people really reframe anxiety and stress and understand when it's actually good for them, when it's activating them, and when it is a signal to say something's off here, I need to pay attention. Your anxiety is always trying to tell you something. It may be lying to you, it may not be telling you the truth, and you may have to tell it to shut up, but it's trying to reach you.

12:04Ginger Johnson: And when do you know that the anxiety is the healthy kind versus the unhealthy kind?

12:11Dan Granger: I think that there's a kind of like a two, two step I use. The first is, is this kind of appropriate for the situation? You know, we're never anxious about things that we don't care about. Like you're never going to be anxious about, I don't know, you know, am I going to watch like one mediocre show on Netflix or another mediocre show on Amazon Prime? Like that's another kind of thing that's going to make you anxious because you're not invested in the outcome. It just doesn't really matter. And so if you're feeling anxious before your first day at a new job or before a presentation or before you're about to, you know, star in a sporting event or whatever, I would say that that's like pretty good anxiety, right?

12:54Dan Granger: You care about the outcome. It's uncertain. You have a lot riding on it, but that's all good, healthy stress and anxiety, right? And the second part of that is that it comes and goes. It's short term, right i'm anxious i'm anxious about this announcement i'm anxious about this thing i'm anxious about oh god the company just announced a round of layoffs am i next yeah i'm anxious about that i care about it but hopefully that will pass when you feel a little bit more back on firm ground it's when the anxiety is not aligned to something that maybe is appropriate or it is aligned to something that's appropriate, but it never passes.

13:38Dan Granger: Like you stay anxious about layoffs for six months or a year.

13:42Ginger Johnson: I see. So when it just never, when it doesn't, when it isn't getting resolved, when it doesn't correlate to something that rationally you can determine is truly meaningful.

13:54Dan Granger: It does. Like you're anxious about, is AI going to take my job? But you don't really have a way of solving that. And so you just sort of swirl. Like I'm sure we've all felt that impossible swirl. Like our brain can't latch onto a solution. It's just free floating anxiety.

14:10Ginger Johnson: Yeah. And there is so much of that fear.

14:14Dan Granger: I mean, I think it's pervasive now, at least in this culture, because suddenly we we have this disruption moving at a speed.

14:25Ginger Johnson: and at a level of impact that maybe none of us have, maybe humanity's never really experienced. Like we really haven't had time to metabolize this. You talk about the noise in the brush and, you know, that took thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years depending, you know, and we had a chance to metabolize over generations. we haven't really had the opportunity to do this so um you know I feel like you know whenever you see the the Disney kids who are in that system and then they become adults and they're free and then they start driving off a cliff it's like they because I think they're given so much freedom uh so suddenly you know that they haven't really had time to grow into it people to get rich quickly, people that have sudden change, you know, and don't really have the opportunity to grow into it.

15:21Ginger Johnson: I feel like that's what's happening to all of us. And so what kind of counsel are you giving to workers and business leaders who are trying to navigate the sudden competitive pressure and, you know, requirements to adapt to all this in real time when it's, you know, the stress of that compounded by the threat that it represents for so many people, at least in their own minds.

15:52Dan Granger: That's right. That's right. You know, I think the first is to just sort of practice radical acceptance and say, I can't really control if AI is going to come for everyone's job. You know, know, it was like sort of during the pandemic, I can't control this at all. What is within my locus of control, right? Anxiety loves a job, right?

16:14Ginger Johnson: Well, we did great on that during the pandemic. So I'm glad to hear you say it.

16:19Dan Granger: I mean, some of us, some of us did.

16:21Ginger Johnson: Some of us did. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. If you started a podcast and you found a therapeutic way to, and that's millions of millions of us really. Uh, but I mean, truly, um, it's, uh, yeah, I mean, it's so profound.

16:39Dan Granger: It's so profound. So, so you have to, what you have to do is you have to train your brain. And literally it's as simple as saying, I'm not thinking about this right now. When you get too many steps ahead, bring it back to the moment, bring it back to the present. And then I take a step from sports psychology and performance psychology, which has reams of data on how the best athletes win. The best athletes don't win because they're obsessed with the outcome that's going to happen a year from now, two weeks from now, two hours from now. They win because they are so prepared and they focus on the process.

17:21Dan Granger: They win the process. They don't think about the outcome. And that is really important for anxiety management. You have to train your brain. And this is what I try to do with people to get out of the existential dread that I have no control over that is just going to bring me into a miasma of swirl and worry. Come back to the moment and say, what am I doing right now? What is my process? When people are unemployed, this is really, really helpful, right? When you're looking for a job, it is so stressful. It's so demoralizing. When you get into the what ifs, you have to say, okay, what are my five tasks today that I have planned out that I know are high impact?

18:07Dan Granger: Have I done them? And when I've done them, I've done a good job and I'm done. It sounds so basic, but we know it works. And it is the only way to deal with now because if you get lost in the what-ifs, you're in a bad place and you have no impact on it. You can't. It's too big. So come back to what can I do? What has impact for me? And can I win the process today and this week?

18:36Ginger Johnson: So it's really about taking your thoughts captive and not living in the wreckage of an imagined future, which we're also...

18:45Dan Granger: And getting into action, right? Like there's a great therapy saying, when anxiety hits, just do something, you know? And honestly, like we need that. Our brain loves a task and it gets us into action and out of worry. I have a new driver in my family. And as an anxious person, whoo boy, is it testing me? And that's why I love Hey Polo. Hey Polo is the family safety app built on trust. I want to know if my teen has arrived safely. I want to know if he's speeding or driving safely on the road. And Hey Polo lets me do all that. Let's me check in with my family members and make sure we're in touch in the way that we want to be.

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23:22Ginger Johnson: What do you really think, though? I mean, I don't know that anybody can really answer this question definitively because it's about the future. but like is your view that workers truly do have, like is the level of fear rational right now based on what AI is becoming capable of or do you believe that it's sort of like, you know, printers and we're, you know, like you think you don't need paper anymore but you actually still do. You know, is it the kind of thing where we need people to manage this technology and that maybe the pie is not going to shrink for, you know, the human workforce? Or do you think that it's a legitimate fear because this truly is going to be just a massive disruption that's going to displace as many people as some might speculate?

24:28Dan Granger: So I think it's a both and. And, you know, last year I did a really deep dive kind of investigative series on AI and the future of work because I am very passionate about helping people manage their anxiety about AI. And what I came to understand is that it almost doesn't matter. AI is a symbol of how little we trust our institutions, our employers, our systems. AI is just the latest nail in the coffin for what many workers feel about how their employers view them and treat them. We don't expect our employers to really step up and shine, right? We don't expect capitalism or our system to take care of us.

25:17Dan Granger: And so we don't really have much hope and faith that they will this time. And I think that AI is just sometimes a really helpful, almost like boogeyman or scapegoat for larger broken systems, you know, that we've all been experiencing for many years. is a lack of trust, a huge decentralization, a sense that just capitalism just cares about the shareholder and not about us at all. And so I think that we don't know what AI is going to do. Like, I don't know. You don't know even the experts, Dario Amadei, like maybe he knows, but maybe not. I think the worry is founded in a lot of mistrust and fear that has been sort of brewing.

26:06Dan Granger: I don't know what you think. Well, I mean, and AI is amazing. And I think it is going to change a lot of things.

26:12Ginger Johnson: Right. It's changing everything. Right. So we, we are using it, you know, I've been trying to integrate it across the organization. And I'm also trying to be honest with our team, because I don't want to misrepresent what I believe the impact that is knowable is, which is it's going to change the way that we work period and you know it's like the what got you here won't get you there and if you've been doing rote tasks if you've been doing things that that we can see that it can do now or is going to be able to do that we can anticipate we do need to course correct we do need to find like I I believe there's so much value in the authentic you know I was just a can.

27:03Ginger Johnson: And one of the fascinating things is there's really two talk tracks in the whole, you know, in the whole city. One is AI and the other is creator. And so think about how polarized that is. There is an increasing demand for the authentic, for the thing that is not polished, that AI cannot create. And then there's another camp that says, how do we automate absolutely everything? And I think these things are both true at the same time. And I do think We're all distinctly, wonderfully made in a unique shape. And if you're trying to be the worker that is automated, that doesn't require your shape, that the machine can do, it's John Henry versus the machine.

27:52Ginger Johnson: You're going to lose that battle. But now is the time to say, what am I good at? How can I add value to a situation in a way that the machine can't? But it's not a linear answer. Like it's not obvious all the time how to navigate that when your job duties include 17 things. And AI may be able to do 10 of them. So you go, well, so how do I protect myself? And I understand where the fear is coming from. I think people come by it honestly. And I can't promise them that we're going to create the thing that uniquely shapes them. So there is some burden on a worker. bullet.

28:30Dan Granger: But I think that if you are feeling that way, like I am so I'm so anxious, I'm so stuck. I'm a media analyst. I build spreadsheets on media performance. Oh, my God, what is my job going to look like? It's really scary. And that perhaps the only cure is to get curious, learn this tool and keep going forward. Again, focus on your process because you can't control the outcome as much as you want. But maybe if you're really, really adaptive and curious, you will have more impact.

29:03Ginger Johnson: Yeah. So I think what we're landing on with this is that it's real. The fear is rational and we do have to adapt. You know, one of the things I've said is like, it's a dragon. Like you have to learn to ride it. You have to train it. You have to know how to, you know, get on it and steer it, or else it will be a very destructive force.

29:29Dan Granger: Yes.

29:30Ginger Johnson: So, so I think we have to have some level of acceptance that that's just part of our reality now. And we have to lean into that. Or else I think the most dangerous thing you can do is let the fear cripple you and hide from it and try to avoid it because it is so there does, it feels like there's an inevitability here.

29:49Dan Granger: I agree. And I think also just have a level, I mean, You know, climate change is probably a way bigger factor in the future of humanity than AI, to be honest, and something we all should be worrying about way more day to day than AI. And yet we don't because it's not a narrative that surrounds us and that we talk about over the water cooler. And so I think there's also a level of kind of being a critical media consumer, you know, and deciding. It's like gossip at work. Like, am I going to get wrapped into this swirl of gossip or am I going to be like, you know what, guys, I got stuff to do. And I think that there's a level of that as well.

30:26Ginger Johnson: So let's pivot a little bit and get back to your story. So how did you get into podcasting and how much of your world is that right now?

30:37Dan Granger: So I love podcasting and I love podcasting because I was a blogger. Remember bloggers?

30:42Ginger Johnson: Well, yeah, I mean, I think it was such a great forerunner to podcasting.

30:47Dan Granger: Yeah.

30:48Ginger Johnson: And was able to, at least for me, because I was working in talk radio at the time and I could see what was happening with the relationship between print and blogging. Yeah. Which made me say, OK, this the disruption is going to be podcasting.

31:03Dan Granger: Yes.

31:04Ginger Johnson: And so, yeah, that's that's really interesting.

31:06Dan Granger: I was so I was I was a digital marketer. And then but I always love politics. So when I was in my mid 20s, I left dot coms and went to work in Washington, doing digital marketing for campaigns. But part of what I did was I bought ads on the earliest blog blog networks, because this was when like political blogs like 2003 were really popping. And I just I just fell in love. I mean, and I started writing about politics. as a sort of like woman in politics and just fell in love and also worked in the earliest sort of blog advertising and citizen journalism movement. And then when podcasting sort of started growing, I was like, oh, oh, I like this.

31:54Dan Granger: This is like blogging, but it's really, it's even more kind of intimate in your ear. And I, I actually started my first podcast with Forbes. Forbes had a podcast network for a hot second. In 2014, I started a podcast called Hiding in the Bathroom. Which is an awesome name. Thank you. That was my first book.

32:14Ginger Johnson: Can you give the quick, I already know the punchline on this, but will you share what that is about really quick?

32:21Dan Granger: Yes. Hiding in the Bathroom is a roadmap for people who are introverted, socially anxious, kind of just like maybe a little hermit and are really ambitious. So I know I need to get out there and network. I know that I should be doing all this stuff to further my career, but I really just want to stay home. How do I have both? How do I have my cake and eat it too? And digital marketing and blogging and building your personal brand was a huge foundation of this because the coolest thing, if you're an introvert and you're ambitious, was that you could blog and that would be worth 800 networking meetings.

32:58Dan Granger: Like I profiled all these people, including myself, who built their whole careers basically on their blogs because it was like the best networking tool ever. So that was sort of the premise.

33:10Ginger Johnson: And since you've been doing it, I mean, how do you see, like how much of your world does it now occupy?

33:16Dan Granger: It, you know, it's funny. It doesn't, it financially.

33:20Ginger Johnson: Is it your core or is it a. No. Yeah.

33:22Dan Granger: It's not my core. It's never been my core. it's always been my love and my passion um and you know I sorry I want I want this is important

33:33Ginger Johnson: to me um so of all the different ways that you communicate all the different mediums is are you saying that it's it's your favorite even though it's not your core like is that what

33:45Dan Granger: you are most it's not my core so so I'll you know just to be totally honest so I launched the anxious achiever with Harvard business review and, um, had an ad share deal. And, you know, that was really, I was just very honored to be part of Harvard business reveal. Oh my gosh, they're letting me talk about anxiety and leadership on Harvard business review. And I did that. And then I joined LinkedIn, their podcasting network for four years. And that was very, that was a different level. That was very lucrative. Like that was a, Oh, wow. I'm like really a professional podcaster now, you know? And, um, then unfortunately LinkedIn and shuttered their program a year ago, exactly a year ago.

34:21Dan Granger: And I became independent, which is how I know you. And so the financial impact of my podcasting over the years has really gone up and down. But I would say that the core impact of my podcast is that it's my learning lab.

34:35Ginger Johnson: Yeah,

34:36Dan Granger: it is where I learn, I get to call up anyone in the world and be like, Hey, can we talk about this? And it's, I think, my primary way of communicating with people like that's, you know, when people come to my work. It's usually through my podcast. And so it's like my calling card. So it's been, it's been an interesting journey to have it be at different levels of my income, but, but consistently kind of my playground, if that makes sense.

35:05Ginger Johnson: Makes total sense. I mean, that's, that's what the Media Roundtable really started as. And for me is, you know, I, I think we have a lot of overlap professionally in that just media. And I wanted to do this show as an open lab. I always thought a podcast would be fun, but I didn't give myself permission to do it because I didn't think there was enough justification for how it would actually be helpful in the work that we do. And I really try to stay focused. But I saw in 2020, the impact of polarization on the way that we were doing business and advertising. Really? And yeah, and because we're dealing with creators and personalities and brands became very sensitive and really wanted to align their brand values with the environments they showed up in, but didn't really have a way to think about that.

36:02Ginger Johnson: I thought this is a fascinating topic that's useful to the clients that we serve, but also very interesting to me. And so there was this convergence. I started talking to everybody um you know national institute for civil discourse uh brand safety uh experts uh you know the washington bureau chief for cnn newt gingrich i mean literally everybody oh we've had you'd be it you'd be stunned if you saw yeah we've had we've had bill o'reilly we've had t-pain we've had uh we've had everybody um from all sides of the spectrum but my my core question was like you know why are we so divided? What is media's role in that?

36:46Ginger Johnson: And what does the advertiser have to do with that? Because the advertiser has a, you know, a significant amount of influence. And it was during the pandemic that that's sort of really manifesting in a material way. But I felt in a very arbitrary way. And I wanted to figure out like, what can we do to manage this? Because it was out of control and reactive. And I think you saw the pendulum politically swing from, you know, everything is cause driven and who you say you are as a business is more important than the core value proposition of the fact that you sell underwear or whatever, right? Like, and, and we kind of went to the full extreme of that.

37:23Ginger Johnson: And then I think now we've gone to the other extreme, which is full apathy and like, whatever, let's just, you know, go back to commercial interest. I actually think that it needs to be in the middle, but this podcast has been a tool to to have very productive conversations, to even think about how to think about that. And it's led to, I think, commercial development that's been useful. But because we treated this as an open lab, this is where we try to unpack it and work it out.

37:50Dan Granger: I love that. I think the lab analogy for a podcast is a really fun one. If anyone out there listening is like, why should I start a podcast? Don't do it to become rich.

38:00Ginger Johnson: Like, don't do it. You're not going to be Rogan probably. Yeah. And that's okay.

38:04Dan Granger: But if you feel like you have a specific thing that you want to like chew over and get access to people, you know, I can't normally call up the surgeon general and be like, hey, you want to talk about loneliness? But with a podcast, I can. And so it's funny. I want to go back to the pendulum. So my business was called Women Online, my political and issue advocacy consulting business that I started after years of working, you know, for other people in politics. and we really rode the wave of Girlboss and, you know, Dove Women's Marketing. Right. It was a good time. We started in 2009 and I sold it in 2021.

38:49Dan Granger: It's really good timing. It was really good timing and I thank God for that. And then all of a sudden I saw two things. I knew I had to get out because I felt like the ability of social media to shape narratives had kind of gone haywire and things had become really toxic in the creator space in the work that I did. I did a lot of work with parents and parent public health issues like vaccines for kids. And I just it was untouchable. You couldn't have healthy discourse anymore.

39:24Ginger Johnson: No.

39:24Dan Granger: And I saw companies appetite for this kind of stuff.

39:31Dan Granger: I don't know. I saw their budgets increasing and their budgets indeed have increased. But I saw that it was a lot about just video. And I'm not a video person. I'm a words person. And I thought, I think my era has kind of passed in doing this work as a business. And I sold it. And I'm really glad I did, to be honest.

39:54Ginger Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. So, so the medium, I think we've both seen like, it's a really interesting canvas. And, and, you know, I, I totally agree with you. It, everybody wants to be a podcaster, a lot of people want to be podcasters or are. But I think they, they're so few that are going to be commercially successful based on advertising revenue.

40:19Dan Granger: Yeah.

40:19Ginger Johnson: And that's going to meet all of their financial needs, right? And I try to encourage people to not look at it that way. And to, you know, that will work for some people. But think of all the other things that it can be for you, it can be a reason to have conversations you wouldn't ordinarily be able to have, advance your business in ways that, you know, it's a different conversation to say, can I talk to you versus would you like to come to my podcast, but right. And then if you think of it, like, if you're going to do a company newsletter, uh, why, why wouldn't you look at a podcast in the same way?

40:56Ginger Johnson: Because that kind of lowers the stakes a little bit and allows you the freedom to say, I don't have to worry if my clips aren't going viral or, and if I'm not, you know, ready to get signed by Spotify or whoever, you know, like, um, you can actually figure out how to use it, to, you know, it's cathartic and it's a growth opportunity. And it's just such an interesting medium to me for the free and open exchange of ideas. And it sounds like you've had a very similar experience. What is your, how do you think it's different for brands that work in this medium than other forms of media.

41:41Dan Granger: Podcast advertising?

41:43Ginger Johnson: Yes.

41:44Dan Granger: I mean, I think it's, I go back to like the original work with brands, working with user-generated content, right? Whether it was with bloggers or early Instagrammers, you know, it's the sense of influence and sort of trust that I think is really important. You know, I think I read recently that like P &G or Unilever, they basically have shifted all of their advertising budget to user generated media.

42:14Ginger Johnson: It's moving that way. Yeah.

42:16Dan Granger: I mean, that is a ground shift. That is profound for people like us who came up in, you know, a very different media landscape. And I think that with podcasting, one of my favorite podcasters is Anne Helen Peterson. She does this great show called Culture Study. and her ads are really long they're like three minutes long as they should be i know i hope yeah yeah please take a page um and they're so i so sometimes i have to admit i fast forward but but she really gets into it it's like you know her life you know her life story told through this brand. And I think that that that has always been and always will continue to be a powerful thing.

43:04Dan Granger: It's thoughtful. And, and I think I think it's I think it's really, I've always loved more than anything, the thought that you don't have to be rich and famous and powerful and elite to be heard. I think that's the really beautiful side of what we do that often gets lost. And that is so powerful. This episode is brought to you by Vinted, a secondhand marketplace app. You know, I love clothes. And I love when the seasons change to spend a good amount of time, you know, moving out, reviewing my summer stuff, bringing in my fall stuff. I live in New England, so I love a great sweater. I love a great tweed blazer.

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45:10Dan Granger: Riley has taught me to put on my seeing eyes. And when I do, I see purple mushrooms and red mushrooms, big mushrooms, gross mushrooms, cute mushrooms. And I was thinking about the holidays upcoming and, you know, how we use mushrooms as a decorative theme. Think about it.

45:27Ginger Johnson: You probably have a mushroom ornament or a little mushroom figure

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47:01Dan Granger: Monarch is like having a financial advisor in your pocket. It has easy to read diagrams that help me visualize exactly where my money goes each month. And it has investment views so I can compare my portfolio, say, to how the S &P is doing. All kinds of great tools that help me, frankly, take some of the emotions out of money and make it more practical and working for me. Most apps only tell you what you've already spent, but Monarch helps set goals, map out big purchases, and see if you're actually on track before it's too late to adjust. You can write your own money story with Monarch. Use the code achiever at monarch.com and get your first year of Monarch Core at half off just$50.

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47:51Ginger Johnson: So let's talk about the commercial side of your podcast business. What kind of brands do you think are the right fit for the anxious achiever and, and of in the sea of opportunities, what would be interesting to them about affiliating with a program like yours?

48:11Dan Granger: You know, it's really interesting. So for many years, like I said, I was with Harvard Business Review, and then I was with LinkedIn, and all of my advertisers were large enterprise companies, which was, and then occasionally like a coaching or a therapy company. and now being independent I have a much broader array of advertisers working with Yap Media as I do and oh you're with Yap yeah I forgot that connection okay yeah Hala is incredible yeah I mean she's amazing it's been it's been fantastic and I think that my audience is both really high powered executives who are making big purchasing decisions and people who are really interested in like shopping.

49:02Dan Granger: It gets the full panoply. And so I, I, in my dream, and I know this is kind of unusual, but I would have, I would have that mix because I am a business show that talks about things that are personal.

49:20Ginger Johnson: It's a really smart title, by the way.

49:24Dan Granger: Thank you.

49:25Ginger Johnson: Well, you know, you look, I don't know. I don't know how many achievers don't err on the anxiety side of the spectrum. But the fact that you lead with some amount of vulnerability by self identifying, but also using some really powerful keywords to attract people that are, you know, achievers. and kind of using the side door because you're coming in and talking about something most people aren't saying out loud. They're just expressing it out loud. They're just indicating it without actually acknowledging it explicitly. So it's a really, it's a very smart packaging around a very interesting product.

50:13Ginger Johnson: I really like the work that you do. So your audience, what do you know about them? Besides, are you able to get any intel on who they are, where they are? Where do you get your data and what does that look like?

50:29Dan Granger: I don't have as much data as I would like. It's something we're definitely working on. What I do have a ton of data on is my LinkedIn audience. And so I sort of use that as a corollary, A, because the show was with LinkedIn for so many years. and then with hbr even linkedin and hbr have a lot of cross tabs and and the funny thing about my show is people think it's all women it's not it's probably 60 percent women but it's 40 percent men and i try to have a lot of men on the show i mean you said you resonate as an anxious achiever when you heard the name of the show yes i confessed um tell me why well uh can i can i patch in my

51:11Ginger Johnson: therapist really queer um I because um because I swing that way it's like it's it's it's part of who I am um I've always been an achiever I think um I think at least since I was a kid and um and I think sometimes I feel like you know there I wish there were more I wish I was more intrinsically motivated by better forces but sometimes I feel that you know the power of anxiety compels me to go and do the things that, you know, others may not do. And so, you know, I think a lot of the premise of your message as I'm understanding it, you know, is really about the fact that this doesn't have to be debilitating.

51:56Ginger Johnson: It can be rocket fuel. And I do think that, you know, if I've had any success in my career, it's from harnessing those types of feelings and using and channeling them into things that are really rewarding. Now we can talk about the price you pay for that or the price your family pays for that or the way that that is so, the way that the overwhelming feelings can compound and you can incite those in the people around you and why that's hard on the team members that work with me most closely. right? Like there's a, there's a price for that, that we pay and that the people around us pay when we embrace it.

52:40Ginger Johnson: However, there's also incredible things that can happen, you know, like one thing you were just talking about your numbers, right? And you're trying to get better numbers. Well, of course, because the whole industry is with terrible metrics, with terrible numbers, podcasting is so behind. And so like one thing that we've announced recently is we've got, you know, I started a task force, Achiever Stuff, right, a year ago, called the Alliance for Measurement and Podcasting. We got some of the biggest players in the space to sit around a table and we had, you know, a charter and methods for voting and quorum and everything like that.

53:18Ginger Johnson: And we actually have identified a definition of what is a podcast, what is an impression, and how can you measure ad performance consistently across platforms so that you and your sponsors are not working so hard to figure out the Spotify audience and what's that impression? Oh, my God, thank God. Does that work? I'm not saying that everybody's going to adopt it. Right. But, you know, we had a problem that's creating a lot of friction and so I'm like, well, we can, you know, let's do something about it, right? So it's the same kind of thing.

53:54Dan Granger: But that's the beauty. It's like the relentless curiosity and the sort of like restlessness and the like, I need to figure this out. I mean, I love Anxious Achievers so much because I believe that we are the world changers. I interviewed the president of Shopify, Harley Finkelstein, and who said immediately, like, I'm an anxious achiever. I have been all my life. And one of the things that he said I'll never forget is I think he was kind of like in his like about 30. You know, he was kind of he was always an entrepreneur. He wasn't where he is today, but he was, you know, rising. And he kind of had this moment where he realized that his anxiety made him who he was for good and ill and that he was driving a lot of people around him crazy.

54:44Ginger Johnson: I'll just, not to paraphrase Harley, but this is what I remember him saying.

54:48Dan Granger: And he needed to deal with that if he was going to get where he wanted to be. But he didn't want to lose the piece of him that was so essentially him as well. That curious, hard driving, don't stop, keep going, driven person. And that he developed the toolkit to sort of manage that double-edged sword. And like the people that I interview who are very successful are the people who have the toolkit.

55:18Ginger Johnson: But I want to maybe turn it over to you to anything that's on your mind or that you want to talk about. I could go all day on this one.

55:27Dan Granger: I want to talk about something controversial. Oh. So like we've established, I'm an introvert who was a blogger who's been podcasting for a long time. I don't love video. I love audio. And I want to know how you feel as a business person, as a podcaster. You know, I see a lot of podcasts almost becoming talk shows that you watch.

55:56Ginger Johnson: Right.

55:56Dan Granger: And is this something, how do you think about this evolution? Yeah. Like you said, you defined what a podcast is. Yeah. So what is a podcast and how do you feel about the evolution?

56:08Ginger Johnson: I'm not going to reveal all of it right now for our definition, because we released what we're calling the AMP Accords on the 23rd to the market. That would give you the full definition. But I'll tell you what the two main things are. Part of it is about RSS and the distribution. Okay. Is it a podcast? If it is no longer open to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and you have to actually go through a platform, give up data to get it, then is it still a podcast? because podcasts kind of started as something that was very, you know, everybody with the RSS. And so some of that's about distribution. But the big force that's kind of forced the issue and caused us to redefine and go, what is a podcast?

56:47Ginger Johnson: Do we even need those labels anymore? It's video. It's YouTube. Now, Apple, 15 years ago, you could watch your podcast on video. So that's not necessarily new. um but uh you know look we talked about before we started recording we talked about the traffic behind me the 405 and that's where I fell in love with the medium of the spoken word and why I went to work and talk radio because I was running tapes around LA sitting in traffic I found out there's there's people who just talk yeah and I started listening to that I'm like this is kind of this fascinating and I and I felt that that was a very meaningful canvas and just theater of the mind and what you can, you know, the way that you can unpack an idea that is different than if you're trying to play to the camera.

57:37Dan Granger: Yeah.

57:38Ginger Johnson: And so that's what drew me into the medium even before there was podcasting. And, and as podcasting has evolved, you know, it's been labeled by everybody, us included as audio, audio, audio. And then all of a sudden, it's like, wait a second, YouTube's like hold my beer and now you know you arguably a third of the consumption starts there it's the main discovery platform it's everything it's really important and kids these days uh they're not tuning into things they're watching things or you know but i think the key distinction for this medium is that um you know james cridlin of pod news says it's something for your ears to do and your eyes are busy.

58:21Ginger Johnson: I'm not that strict in my thinking. I think that it is, I like what, you know, Stephen Goldstein is a friend of the show, friend of the business and teaches the class on podcasting at NYU. And he says, you know, look at the morning news shows and the way that they would program, you know, one of these, any morning show is built so that you can watch it Or you can go brush your teeth and leave it on and you're listening and it's the same thing.

58:52Dan Granger: Right. So video can be there.

58:56Ginger Johnson: But if it doesn't work with your eyes closed, it's not a podcast to me. I like that. So I'm agnostic about whether or not you choose to lean into the video or not. I would say that if you don't have a video, you may be undermining some of your potential reach and distribution. Are you diluting the value of your content with that? that's for you to decide as a creator and I wouldn't want to legislate that for you I think that the audio only feed is one lane on the highway and then you got five other lanes that all have video I think that's where this goes yeah but I I think you kind of have to it's like AI there's an inevitability to it and I say embrace it um you know if you want to get your message out to more people and don't worry about it most of them aren't like staring you won't everything

59:43Dan Granger: anyway it's like and you don't have to look yeah you don't have to look yeah that's a good that's

59:49Ginger Johnson: it you know that's a good disclaimer we should do for our video feeds it's like just a friendly reminder you don't have to look i mean it's funny i i was i have a friend who's a tv producer and

1:00:01Dan Granger: she was like maura you don't need to look like the oprah show to be on video she said the actually gen z aesthetic is very they don't care they don't care unfiltered because i was all like i don't have a studio. I'm not going to get my makeup done, you know. And to me, that was a real aha moment. I will leave you with this. I do a lot of video for LinkedIn. The videos where I'm in a studio and I'm getting my makeup done, they do fine. The videos where I'm in my car crying are the ones that have gone viral.

1:00:33Ginger Johnson: Yeah. So speaking of, be yourself. Final bonus round. Anything else you want to ask or say?

1:00:42Dan Granger: Okay.

1:00:43Ginger Johnson: Okay. Yeah, this, like I wish this were a retreat and not just a quick conversation, but I'm really excited to get to know you better and to get into your world. And I do think what you're doing is great service to everybody really. And I'm glad that our clients are able to affiliate with the work that you're doing. It sounds like it's not only a great audience, but really helping people with some of the most challenging topics right now that we're all just trying to figure out in real time. It is.

1:01:18Dan Granger: And let me tell you, if you want to listen, it's not heavy in this news. It's not sad. It's like, it's fun. We have fun. You have to, there was a great podcast called The Hilarious World of Depression with John Moe. Oh, I loved that podcast.

1:01:32Ginger Johnson: Wow. That's a cool name.

1:01:33Dan Granger: Yeah. Go listen to the archives. So you can laugh while talking about this stuff too.

1:01:38Ginger Johnson: Any final plugs for how people can get in touch with you?

1:01:41Dan Granger: Yes. Well, listen to The Anxious Achiever wherever you get your podcast. I have a new book coming out and it's coming out next year. It's called The Atypical Achiever. How to thrive and lead when your brain is wired differently. And it's a continuation of all this work because we talk a lot about neurodivergence as well on the show. So keep an eye out for that. But please come meet me on LinkedIn, listen to the show. And thank you, Dan. Appreciate it.

1:02:07Dan Granger: that's it for this week's show if you like the show follow us and tell your friends and please leave us a review it really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content i'm your host maura aarons mealy lots more to come in the next episode

1:02:35Thank you.