Episode 346 is dedicated to the memory of Todd Cochrane. Todd was the founder of Blubrry Podcasting, a Navy veteran and electronics technician, a geek and lover of technology at heart, a content creator, a podcasting pioneer, and a consistent friend to the greater podcast community. This week we’re airing our full interview with Todd as a single episode (previously released in episodes 250 and 251).
As we begin this week, Nick and John frame what you’re about to hear with a story from Podcast Movement 2025 where Nick got to meet Todd in person. Listen closely for the shifts Todd made to his company as market conditions changed, and think about the applicability of this strategy for your career.
Original Recording Date of the Interview with Todd: 10-06-2023
Topics – Meet Todd Cochrane, Naval Service and Technical Knowledge, Program Management, An Injury and a Different Role, Getting into Podcasting and Monetization, A Tech Wave and a Shift, Diversification of Focus and Expertise, Corporate and Individual Roadmaps, Leadership and Employee Engagement, Developing a Useful AI Strategy
5:49 – Meet Todd Cochrane
Todd Cochrane is the founder and CEO of Blubrry Podcasting. Blubrry is a full service podcast hosting platform.At the time of this recording they are working with around 100,000 shows / podcasts at a variety of levels (some shows using Blubrry for hosting, some for analytics, some using the PowerPress plugin for WordPress).The team at Blubrry is about 17 people, and they have been in business since 2005.Nerd Journey proudly uses Blubrry statistics and the PowerPress plugin!6:51 – Naval Service and Technical Knowledge
In vocational tech school Todd took 2 years of electronics and then joined the Navy in 1983. His official title at that time was aviation electronics technician.Todd also served as a back end operator in specialized P3 aircraft used more as platforms for intelligence collection. Todd tells us he was involved in this kind of work for 25 years.During his tenure in the Navy, Todd got exposed to something called special projects.People would bring a box for a specific function in the plane (a “box de jour”), and Todd would do the mechanical and electrical designs for these to get them in the planes quickly.Todd’s true Navy background was in synthetic aperture radar and involved work with Sandia National Labs.To pair with his deep technical knowledge of electronics, Todd started to tinker with other things like bulletin boards and downloading shareware while stationed in Guam.This was back in the days of dial up modems.“I really was kind of a geek in all aspects of job and life….When the bulletin board era died, I basically became a blogger.” – Todd Cochrane, reflecting on his time in the Navy.Todd calls himself a failed blogger, feeling he was not great at it. This was around 2002.In 2004 Todd got into podcasting but continued to work another job. After retiring from the Navy in 2007, Todd spent 12 years as a tech rep (basically the same job he had been doing but as a civilian).Todd continued to work with and for Naval personnel until 2019 while running his own company on the side.“Needless to say those were some exciting years because there was not a lot of free time.” – Todd Cochrane, on working a full time job and running his own company on the sideTodd has only been out of aviation for about 4 years now but has been running his business (Blubrry) the entire time along the way since it began as a side project.Todd retired from the Navy as a senior chief (an E8). He did have the opportunity to go warrant officer but was happy being a chief, “punching out” just before hitting the 26 year mark for Navy service.This was largely because they offered him a civilian job, and he took the opportunity to make the change.Todd tells us he was exposed to a great deal of high end technology during his work (much of it will remain classified for many years).Looking back, Todd says it’s pretty amazing to see the advances in technology from 1983 when he joined to when he retired and up to the time of this recording because of the technology changing so fast.11:08 – Program Management
Was designing the boxes for airplanes like being a product designer or a product maanger?Todd’s degree from Emory Riddle is in professional aeronautics with a minor in program management, and he was able to put the program management skills to good work.For systems that the Navy personnel designed, built, and owned they had input into the capabilities desired as well as features they wanted.“It was a full scheme. Some of the systems were born from an idea – built, designed, UX, UI, the whole nine yards…that I was able to have a hand touch in.” – Todd Cochrane, on working with a team to design and build systems for Naval aviationIn the last 15 years of his work, Todd says someone would show up with a box that he and others would have to wire up / connect. These ranged from computers that needed installing to electronics that need to hook into multiple systems in an aircraft.From day to day, Todd didn’t really know what might come his way. This made the job quite unique.They might get a call from a well known company who wanted them to test something, for example.“So our job was really to kind of test and evaluate, and more importantly, in a real world situation, not necessarily on some range….It was fun.” – Todd CochraneIn the case of 787 or 777 commercial aircraft, they are built exactly the same (with exception of some of the electronics in the cockpit). Often times the supply chain is setup so you could walk over to the airplane next to you and “rob it” for the parts you needed.In Todd’s situation, everything was unique, and each airplane was different in some sense. It was important to have configuration control across multiple aircraft.Sometimes they would need to upgrade multiple airplanes at a time.14:06 – An Injury and a Different Role
In 2004 Todd was hurt badly in a swimming accident in Bahrain, which grounded him from flying.Todd was in Waco, Texas doing contract enforcement – making sure taxpayer money was spent wisely and monitoring aircraft builds.Todd says he saw a lot of the government / civilian interaction during this time, and it was a very interesting job to do for a few years.Todd had insight into the process of building aircraft from beginning to delivery of and testing of aircraft.The team was multi-faceted and in multiple locations (i.e. teams with some specialties in the northern US, others elsewhere, etc.).Specific systems might require their own reviews and discussions and planning.Budget and what could be done within the time frame were also factors. It was a team effort.Todd tells us there were also subject matter experts (or SMEs) for various systems.Todd has publicly shared that his background was in electronic warfare, synthetic aperture radar, etc. while on active duty for the Navy. He would have been considered a SME for these kinds of systems during his service.Todd would work with and support the team putting in systems for which he was SME as well as the sailor who was deployed and had run into issues (i.e. provide troubleshooting / fly out somewhere to resolve the issue, etc.).The role was part design and implementation as well as ongoing platform support.Nick feels like this SME role is extremely analogous to life as an IT generalist.Todd says it would have been very bad for someone to infiltrate the software they used software. As such a number of security measures were put into place to help prevent this.The IT group gave people like Todd the hardest time because they might lock something down so tight it causes something else to break. And Todd calls this “par for the course.”Todd says having this experience set him up well for success later when he pursued working for his company full-time.“For me the transition from military to civilian was pretty smooth because I had worked with civilians a lot….So I didn’t have this mindset of someone that maybe just came out of the military that had never had a lot of civilian interaction.” – Todd Cochrane, on transitioning out of the Navy and how it might be different than others leaving military serviceTodd had been running his company as his part-time job for a number of years until he transitioned to working there full time.While still working in the Navy, Todd had to be very careful about keeping his business and Navy work completely separate.The separation was an important part of security clearance reviews, and Todd even had to ask permission to have his own business.Todd would leave his phone in the car during his normal workday and take business calls either during lunch or after work to help keep the separation.“But when I transitioned, it really made me realize I should have probably done it about 10 years earlier.” – Todd Cochrane, reflecting on his transition to running his business full timeFor the last 4 years, Todd’s job as CEO of Blubrry has been coordinating with the software development teams, production, and marketing.Todd says they use Scrum at Blubrry and that he is essentially the Scrum Master in many ways despite being the owner. His project management skills have come in handy.19:29 – Getting into Podcasting and Monetization
When Todd speaks to being in Waco, TX he was in a full body clam shell after smashing his L1 vertebrae in a swimming pool accident.Todd tells us he was lucky to be alive and be able to walk after the huge spinal cord displacement from the accident.Todd worked in an unairconditioned shop after being able to walk again (still in Waco) and was exhausted at the end of most days.He would spend evenings on his laptop surfing the internet and stumbled upon Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, one of the early podcasts.At this time (October 2004) Todd was a tech blogger who didn’t have many people reading his site, but he liked to talk.Todd picked up a cheap portable microphone at Wal-Mart and started recording a podcast. He already understood things like XML that one needed to know to get a podcast online back then and was able to execute on his own.“Really the eureka moment came when I woke up one morning and my webhost said, ‘hey, you’re out of bandwidth. We’ve shut you down.’” – Todd Cochrane, on an interesting situation after starting a podcast in the early daysThere was no Blubrry at this time, and the only way to fix the problem was to spend more money on shared hosting accounts. Todd’s podcast website had to be moved around every few days at that time to keep it going.October 9th, 2023 marked the anniversary of Todd’s 19th year of doing podcasting!Todd was spending a lot of money to keep the show online. When he returned to Hawaii and let his wife know what he was doing, she didn’t really know what podcasting was (almost no one did at that time). But, Todd’s wife told him he needed to be making money from this endeavor after a year or two or would have to stop.In November of the same year, Todd received an e-mail from a publishing company asking him to write the first book on podcasting.At first he was not sure if they were serious. But it turns out they were and offered him a sizable advance to do the book even though he did not consider himself good with grammar or a writer.Agreeing to write the book fixed Todd’s money issue.Todd eventually started his own tech network and then in 2005 GoDaddy called Todd wanting to sponsor his podcast.GoDaddy is still a sponsor of Todd’s show Geek News Central.At this time Todd was one of the very few who had advertising on his podcast. He wasn’t quite sure how to charge in the beginning. After a month of sponsorship GoDaddy got around 370 customers and wanted to sponsor Todd’s show for a full year.“Here’s one of those things where you have to understand your worth, and I really had no idea what my worth was.” – Todd Cochrane, on having to come up with an amount to charge GoDaddy to sponsor his showTodd says he ultimately gave a price that was far too low (an underbid as he calls it), but in the moment he suggested a bonus if GoDaddy converted a certain number of customers as a result of the show. Ultimately Todd’s contact at GoDaddy agreed to this.The lady Todd was working with to construct a deal asked if he knew anyone else looking to advertise with GoDaddy. Todd said yes and that he needed a couple of weeks to get back to her.The tech network Todd had built had 12-13 shows he could potentially represent and take a percentage of the proceeds.“And on my next podcast I said, ‘I need a lawyer, I need a MBA, I need a graphics guy, and I need programmer. And we’re having a call in 10 days. If you’re one of those, be on it……’ And in the end we formed RawVoice, which is the parent company for Blubrry, over the telephone. And we all had regular jobs, so everyone was working this at night.” – Todd Cochrane, on the beginnings of his businessTodd made the ask on his show and got all the personas he needed on a call.The company was profitable from month 1, and each member of the group contributed some of their own money in the beginning to fund the startup.Todd was told he was too old at 40 to receive a round of funding from venture capitalists in silicon valley. And it would have required the entire team to move there (not feasible with everyone having a family).“But the one thing we were always smart with is we knew that we had to have money in the bank. We knew we had to be profitable. We knew we had to make payroll because…I didn’t have $25 million of VC to use. We had to build this slowly, and that’s what we did over the years. We built it slowly and never extended ourselves too far.” – Todd Cochrane26:16 – A Tech Wave and a Shift
John mentions Todd identified what we would call a technology wave, was passionate about what he was doing, and he made a bet.Todd maybe could have gone to work for someone looking to monetize in this space but made a bet. The structures Todd had put in place enabled starting a business without too much work compared to someone with a cold start.Todd says in a lot of ways the team figured things out as they went with the first product being an “abject failure.” But the team learned from this experience and made changes to their model."We build a lot of stuff, and if something is not working, I don’t dwell on it. I don’t ride that ship into the ground. We move on. Maybe we keep the product, and maybe we don’t. " – Todd CochraneTodd mentions many people with a product or idea believe in it so much they burn all their money and don’t make a change or shift early enough.In the early days Todd’s company was like a media agency and represented podcasters for ad deals. Most shows they represented were fairly small, and their second product in 2006 allowed them to track podcast listening statistics.As larger more popular shows came online, Todd could see the advertising budgets shrink and shift to be put into these larger shows.As a result of seeing this trend, Todd’s company did a strategic shift to become a service provider.“So as the advertising revenue was declining the service business kind of crossed in the middle, and we dodged a bullet. We would not have made it had we not shifted to a service business….Keep your eye on the ball, what’s going on in the space. At that time I had 5 competitors. Now I have 30.” – Todd Cochrane, on a strategic company shiftTodd tell us his product is commoditized today and competes today on features based on feedback from customers and the market.In the technology sector, companies have to look around and understand what is happening (cannot be blind to this).“You do have to teach the old dog new tricks. You have to.” – Todd Cochrane, on the need for companies to adapt to changing market conditionsThe above is also true for knowledge workers, especially with the growth and emphasis on AI (artificial intelligence). If people do not stay current and get educated on these technologies, they may find themselves out of a job in a few years.When Todd originally built his show (that first podcast), he was trying to build authority. Todd wanted a press pass to CES (Consumer Electronics Show), which he eventually did get.This was before his wife’s mention of monetization.“I did it out of pure desire just to go and hag out and check that show out….Then things kind of morphed as time went on.” – Todd Cochrane, on the reason he started his podcast in the first place30:42 – Diversification of Focus and Expertise
John says we’ve heard about startups and the term “pivoting.” It may not be a pivot of the company but a diversification of where success and money will come from (which is also true for an individual).John shares that at one point his ability to crimp a CAT5 cable was a skill that brought money in. But if he had held tight to this and focused on it holistically forever, John would not have a job right now.Diversifying a skill base or what provides value to an employer or a business (i.e. your own business) is something we can do to keep ourselves from having market forces destroy us.As we age we get more expensive to employers, making it even more important to keep our skills current and requiring that we bring expertise to our next role.Early on in Todd’s Navy career a friend / mentor named Randy gave him some great advice.“You just need to attach yourself to the smartest person in the room and suck them dry, basically learn everything they know or everything they will tell you.” – Advice from Todd Cochrane’s friend RandyTodd says using this strategy has really paid off for him long term, and he does this today with his CTO at Blubrry (someone who knows the tech well and someone that Todd trusts to provide direction).“I think it’s more than surrounding yourself. I think if you are in a field that you’re trying to stay current on, you need to become the person other people want to attach to. But when you’re early in your career it’s easy to be annoyed by that older wise individual. But they have so much experience.” – Todd CochraneTodd tells the story of asking someone with more experience at Sandia National Labs for help on a schematic. The person told Todd exactly what to do to fix the problem (which worked). But Todd didn’t leave it there. He went back to the person and asked how they knew their suggestion would fix the problem.“A 15-minute conversation I had with him literally fixed hundreds of problems that I had going forward years in advance. When you have that opportunity to get help from…a genius and they can bring the topic down to your level, man you just need to…milk that dry.” – Todd Cochrane, on picking the brain of a brilliant colleague with more experienceTodd thinks that advice from Randy (who is still a friend to this day) was one of those pivotal moments / pieces of career advice.Nick feels like the above experience is an iteration of being mindful of our gaps in knowledge just like when Todd got on his show and asked people with different expertise for help. It’s learning from others but also humility.Todd says he was a high school graduate going into the Navy and didn’t get a degree until he had been in the Navy for 20 years. In a way he was getting credit for much of what he had learned via the school of hard knocks.Todd has seen people fail because they hung out with others who may have been fun people but who just were not going to advance in a company. It’s important to surround ourselves with good people.John points out that just like skills diversification when one is riding a technology wave, it’s also about having a diverse set of people around us whose experience we can call upon to fill gaps in our own expertise.We cannot be experts in everything. Having access to others with different expertise can enable the kinds of pivots we spoke about earlier (for the individual or for a business).As company owner and founder, Todd would rather collaboratively come up with a plan with his team than just give them a directive.Todd calls himself a geek and says there are times where he wants something geeky (i.e. a feature) that 90% of his customers may not ever need. It’s important to be careful and prioritize for the 90%.There are certainly times when Todd’s team are building a feature that is intended to promote adoption (i.e. building it for only a small subset of customers) like some of the podcasting 2.0 work they have done. But these occasions are pretty rare, and the team knows why they are building it.Todd says the team are very cognizant of the products and services roadmap when making decisions, and he looks at the year’s roadmap every day. Every 2 weeks there is an oversight meeting to discuss the roadmap with other company leaders.Priorities may need to change based on the marketplace conditions.“You have to be careful. Because if you’re working Scrum…if you interrupt the cycle you could really do huge damage.” – Todd Cochrane, on being flexible in your product roadmaps38:47 – Corporate and Individual Roadmaps
Nick posits that most of us do not have a roadmap for ourselves and our careers, nor do we look at it daily.Todd says the roadmap is the company roadmap but might as well be his personal roadmap.John emphasizes the company’s execution on a roadmap is analogous to a individual contributor’s view of themselves / their career as a product.Excellence in what a company is doing today is of course important.Companies often have innovation budgets to enable building products people might not know they need until they use it / can have it (i.e. the iPhone or perhaps certain podcast hosting features).Maybe as individuals, in addition to excelling at what we do today (a baseline of excellence in execution), we should have our own innovation budget allotted for building new skills and learning about the next / current technology wave. This avoids us from being locked into excellence in only what we do today just like Todd’s company was able to shift away from being only a media intermediary in the early days.Todd says his team is fully remote but does come together a couple of times per year for planning purposes (1 time in person, 1 time 6 months later remotely as a follow up to that).These meetings are a chance to look at what is going well, what isn’t, and a chance to solicit new ideas.During these discussions, teams criticize one another and give feedback. It is a very frank set of discussions that results in action items. Todd says they try to preserve people’s feelings during the discussions, but it is about honest evaluation of how things are going.The above will be quite difficult for companies with more than 20 employees. Todd says the approach works well for his company.Todd also tells us a bad apple (1 person) can make a very negative impact on the company. This person might not be staying current or is constantly fighting with others.“Sometimes it’s better to cut those folks loose. Even though you think you shouldn’t, sometimes getting rid of that just maybe 1 person can completely change how a company’s atmosphere is and the flow and the speed….So I learned this late – that sometimes it’s just better to say ‘thank you for your work it’s time to part ways.’ It’s just like pivoting. Sometimes the employee mix needs to change.” – Todd Cochrane, on making difficult decisions around peopleTodd says there was someone who left the company about a year ago, and the business had a complete transformation (in a good way) as a result.43:10 – Leadership and Employee Engagement
Many people moving into leadership are not prepared for the hard personnel decisions. What are other challenges Todd has noticed as CEO, being in charge of the roadmap and the people?Todd says he has been quite lucky with very little turnover, having only a couple of people leave the company over time and a couple of others get asked to leave. Overall the team has been strong (a possible sign they are doing something right).“We all get bored if we’re doing the same thing, but we’re in a business where we can build new stuff all the time and have new challenges. So I think from my perspective…if you’re not innovating, then your employees are going to get bored, and they’re going to go some place that is innovating to give them a challenge.” – Todd CochraneIdeally Todd wants employees to feel their work is exciting, that it is making a difference, and for them to be excited to start work on it again each day.In IT sometimes work is drudgery (or “the thunking” as Todd calls it) and is not something we enjoy doing but need to do (i.e. keeping servers up to date).Nick mentions Todd recognized the need for people to be interested and engaged in their work, and Todd has iterated upon that methodology in terms of the way people engage with the company and its products.If you’re listening to this episode and intend to become a leader but have not thought through the importance of people understanding the purpose in their work, think on it. It was extremely important for Todd to share the vision with employees.“How is my role here having a larger purpose for this organization? And hopefully that gives me some personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment.” – Nick Korte, on the importance of leaders helping employees to understand the purpose of their workTodd says he came from a field where he was able to work on multiple projects on a monthly / semi-annual basis. This kept him excited about the job.There were legacy systems to support, of course, but there were brand new systems.“I understood that that job satisfaction of having something new to work on is fresh, challenging, you have to really think…I mean hard, hard problems to solve.” – Todd CochraneTodd gives the analogy of working with airplanes. Both power and space are constrained resources, and there is a give and take between them.Translating this to running a company, there is server space as well as mind space. They would not want to do something that will be an extreme burden from a technical support perspective, for example.AI (artificial intelligence) has Todd a little frightened, but the strategy for the company is to not be locked into a single language model (Claude, ChatGPT, Meta, etc.).“We’re using the dumbest AI we’ll ever use today. It’s exciting at the same time, but it’s hard to pick a strategy that is not going to be obsolete in 2 weeks.” – Todd CochraneTodd says right now (at the time of this recording), the economy is tight with podcasting being fairly flat. But he and his team have been through cycles of economic downturn and know what to expect, having been profitable every year of their existence.“As long as you keep the green line above the red line I think that’s the key in almost any business industry. Otherwise you don’t survive.” – Todd Cochrane48:36 – Developing a Useful AI Strategy
John understands the desire to stay flexible and diverse in terms of different language models and asks Todd about his AI strategy and where he feels like it will help podcasters.
To listen to other tributes to Todd, check out Remembering Todd Cochrane – Podcast Hall of Famer and Blubrry CEO and, GNC Host and Geek News Central # 1843
For links to the individual episodes with Todd that were combined for this special episode, check out:
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The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.E-mail: [email protected]DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourneyConnect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneymanConnect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YouTubeIf you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.
