Kison Patel of M&A Science: How Use Your Educational Content to Create a Bingeable Podcast
By: Tracy Hazzard
Tags: Podcasting, Business, Podcasting Tips, Podcast, Mergers And Acquisitions

Can you tell us a bit of your “personal backstory? What is your background and what eventually brought you to this particular career path?

After a bumpy career in residential real estate, I found myself in a small M&A shop where I got experience selling small businesses and working with privately held owners. That’s really where I found initial success. A year later I opened my own consulting business to help people with M&A activity, both buy and sell side.

Can you share a story about the most interesting thing that has happened to you since you started podcasting?

I think the most interesting thing is connecting with people all around the world. I get inquiries or emails of people commenting whether generally or about a specific podcast. I’m always welcoming some introduction calls from them. Being able to connect with people from a variety of countries allows me to expand my network and led to speaking opportunities at conferences or even in-house events at large corporations.

Can you share a story about the biggest or funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or takeaways you learned from that?

Probably just spending too much time overthinking the process, when at the end of the day it’s all about the content. You have to start creating content in order to get better at it. I spent too much time focusing on the little things, like researching equipment, which distracted me from what a podcast actually is.

How long have you been podcasting and how many shows have you aired?

I’ve been podcasting for four years and as of now, I’ve aired 87 episodes.

What are the main takeaways, lessons, or messages that you want your listeners to walk away with after listening to your show?

I want the audience to get takeaways from the M&A industry they can actually apply. M&A Science’s focus is to provide educational material to provide ideas and give listeners new techniques to apply to their own practice.

In your opinion what makes your podcast binge-listenable? What do you think makes your podcast unique from the others in your category? What do you think is special about you as a host, your guests, or your content?

Well, the main thing that makes us different is its educational content. There’s a lot of content in our industry and podcasts in general, but they’re mainly focused on market commentary.

We focus more on the teachable moments, the mechanics of M&A. I’m taking the approach of a learning experience when I interview people. I’m really trying to learn as much as I can from them, and I’m bringing the audience with me on that journey. It’s awesome. Almost like the pursuit of becoming the greatest M&A practitioner is my goal. At the end of the day, I want to learn as much as I can.

Doing something on a consistent basis is not easy. Podcasting every work-day, or even every week can be monotonous. What would you recommend to others about how to maintain discipline and consistency? What would you recommend to others about how to avoid burnout?

When I first started, I only did 10 episodes and it was the only thing I did that year. I think, start by getting to a place where you’re comfortable, and then you’ll realize cadence is really important. People like having that consistency.

Just follow your gut on some of these things. If you want to change your content approach, if you want to change different things, you can experiment in the beginning until you find that that spot you’re really happy with.

What resources do you get your inspiration for materials from?

My inspiration comes from the people I’m interviewing. They all have a unique perspective and experience. So I really try to pull out from them and try to understand what they’re passionate about and I build topics around that.

On the interviewing side, in terms of where I get inspiration as an interviewer, I look at other people, other podcasts, other folks that are conducting interviews. I’m watching David Letterman’s new interview series right now. I look to professional interviewers out there to get ideas on their approach and how they carry a conversation.

Is there someone in the podcasting world who you think is a great model for how to run a really fantastic podcast?

I think in every segment there’s somebody that’s doing a great job of hosting a podcast. I think it really depends on what you’re going for. If you’re going for a specific tone, a specific theme look for people that are in that have that type of format. But I think the main thing is really to explore. Specifically, I think StoryBrand has a really good podcast.

What are the ingredients that make that podcast so successful? If you could break that down into a blueprint, what would that blueprint look like?

Just finding interesting people to interview. I think it’s always nice when you get good energy between the interviewee and interviewer. That mesh of the right personalities between guests and the host is definitely a secret ingredient.

Can you share with our readers the five things you need to know to create an extremely successful podcast?

Preparation is key. Getting good audio quality as opposed to a regular Zoom call will help people take you more seriously. The next thing I would say is nailing your intro. People like a catchy intro and it just makes everything more fun and interesting in general to open a show with matching energy. Also having a good process for sourcing guests, in the beginning, can be difficult. Utilizing your LinkedIn network can be a lifesaver.

Another tip is recording episodes in batches. That way you can get started thinking about how you’re going to edit them together and just do it as a process. Then, when you do release them, you sort of have a backlog ready to go. And that helps you because you don’t want to be scrambling to do shows and stuff like that.

I think the other tip I would add is the one that’s not the most fun to do, but listen to yourself. After you do an interview, listen to that podcast. You’ll learn a lot about how you can improve your content just by listening to yourself more than any kind of other feedback you can get.

I think the other thing that’s helped me quite a bit that you don’t probably hear about is taking a voice lesson because your content is so audio-focused. Taking a voice lesson helps you learn some of the techniques so that you can sound better.

Kison Patel, host of M&A Science shares the best ways to:

1) Book Great Guests. Look for people who have a following in the target audience. You can look at conference speakers or utilize your own network. Also, play the numbers game. Reach out to 100 and expect to hear back from a fraction of them. 2) Increase Listeners. Repurpose your content to increase the places listeners can find your podcast. Turn episodes into blog posts, social media posts, etc. 3) Produce in a Professional Way. It is definitely worth it to invest in a nice microphone, but also play around with different editors. Some have strengths others don’t. 4) Encourage Engagement. Call to actions, asking questions, and encouraging listeners to reach out are all great ways to encourage engagement. 5) Monetize. So far, we’ve made the choice to hold off on monetizing the actual podcast. We promote our other products instead. My advice would be to not prioritize monetizing the podcast. Focus on getting the quality to a good standard and then go from there.

For someone looking to start their own podcast, which equipment would you recommend that they start with?

For someone just starting, I would tell them to look for a basic USB microphone, which is around $200 and definitely gets the job done. I would start with that so you can keep it a good investment. That way you get good quality audio, but also something can build up from. You don’t want to get too overboard and spend a bunch of money on stuff you may not actually use.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Just general education and more accessible education. Learning is, I believe, truly one of the most important and valuable aspects of life.

How can our readers follow you online?

Website: Mascience.com

LinkedIn: Kison Patel

Check out M&A Science on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you listen to podcasts.