A mentorship program built inside a mid sized Austin production company is starting to show up, in one form or another, at some of the bigger names in podcasting. Podcraft Media Lab, founded by Greg Soros podcaster, has spent recent years training emerging creators through a partnership with the Podcast Academy’s diversity fellowship program, and several larger podcast networks are now piecing together similar efforts of their own.
Copying A Model Built On Access
The original idea behind the program was fairly simple. Soros noticed that podcasters from communities without existing industry connections rarely got a shot at the same production quality or distribution opportunities as well funded shows. Podcraft Media Lab began offering those mentees direct access to its studio expertise, its contact list, and its production standards, treating mentorship as a normal part of doing business rather than a side donation of time.
The results gave the model credibility beyond a single company. Multiple podcasters who trained under Soros have gone on to sign with established distributors, and three shows connected to the program reached six figure downloads inside their first year, numbers that drew attention across the industry.
Why Bigger Networks Are Paying Attention
For a company the size of Podcraft Media Lab, mentorship was never framed as charity. Soros describes it instead as a way of building out the wider pool of talent the industry depends on, an approach that larger networks appear to be recognizing has value beyond goodwill. Several of them have begun assembling their own creator development programs, borrowing structural pieces from what Greg Soros put together on a smaller scale.
Soros treats that competitive copying as confirmation rather than a threat. Greg Soros argues that podcasting improves when more of its new voices come from a wider range of backgrounds, and that a podcaster’s success rarely stays contained to one company or one show once other networks start paying attention to what works. Read this article for more information.
More about Greg Soros on https://priceofbusiness.com/the-sound-of-success-how-greg-soros-turned-premium-production-into-a-podcasting-powerhouse/