The digital media landscape is displaying immense promise for brand awareness, growth, and overall profitability for companies of all sizes. By knowing the key trends and optimizing content, leaders from a multitude of industries can leverage and optimize their content to maximize their full potential.
On today’s episode of Startups On Demand, I am joined by Jordan Kastrinsky, Managing Partner, Head of Marketing and Creative at JB Upscale, and host of the podcast High Tech on the Low.
Today, Jordan talks about the ins and outs of starting a podcast channel, the key to reaching out for interviews, the most promising marketing trends of 2023, and the art of optimizing video content.
Omri: Tell me something about yourself and the background of JB Upscale.
Jordan: Yes, for sure. My name is Jordan, 28, living in Tel Aviv, originally from Denver, Colorado. I’ve been living in Israel now for 6 ½ years. JB Upscale is what I like to call a digital media company. We specialize in design, branding, and marketing, generally for startups and high-tech ventures. It’s really fun because we work with people from the earliest stage of building the company, and also medium-sized, and even bigger companies. Hightech on the Low is a podcast by accident. My co-producer and I started it when Corona hit and we were running a bunch of high-tech communities in Israel called “Front-Team Communities.” It had about 3,000 members in it, and all our programming went array. With Corona, you can’t do meetups and Zoom got old real fast, so basically we thought “how do we still get value from this community and not let it die?” So we started the podcast. It was generally in the communities, talking to people who were there, and they all suggested at one point “maybe you take this and make it bigger.” Now, it’s about a year of making it a little bigger, and it certainly did become bigger – we have more followers so it’s really exciting.
Omri: What is the actual process of starting your podcast? What was that like for you?
Jordan: It was an organic process. When we started, I was using my terrible headphones in my studio apartment over Streamyard. It was a mess. But that’s how I started, and that’s okay, and I wanted to get the content out and get moving. And slowly but surely, I think it was 20 episodes in, I connected with a good friend of mine who runs a production studio and we began making it as a studio-based podcast with an environment and ambiance with better recording quality. And that also coincided when we took it out of the communities, and it helped a ton to build up. And we started getting more notoriety, which also changes the game in your head where you also start curating your content a little bit differently.
Omri: What is your podcast structure like?
Jordan: I work with Black Box studios and they do excellent video and audio productions. Basically what we do is I have the podcast studio setup, and it’s two chairs, and we do it on a partner basis with their goal of trying to help me grow my podcast. And it’s also beneficial for them by building another business mechanism for them.
Omri: What’s your process like in reaching out for interviews?
Jordan: At the start, I got so overwhelmed because you’re trying to set schedules, you’re trying to find relevant people, you’re trying to talk to the person, and it’s a little bit of a mess. But how I do it is I find someone I like and start an intro call and see if they’re really relevant to me, because sometimes some people aren’t really cut out for the show or their business is not really what I’m focused on. And from there, it’s an easy setup process. And I think having that intro call is really key because you learn about that person and find out if they have a connection with you so you can actually have a good conversation with them.
Omri: What are your two cents on handling high-profile clients and dealing with their egos?
Jordan: Honestly, I think it’s such a wasted opportunity, and they’re just holding time, and the podcast market isn’t getting any less saturated. At the end of the day, you got to execute. On the ego side, I’m also wondering if the client just doesn’t want to be vulnerable. Ultimately, they just need to be okay to be out there and roll with the punches.
