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Winner Story
Forward Obsessed by Digital Surgeons
2022 Gold Award: Podcasts - Business
In 2022, Digital Surgeons won a Davey Gold Award in Podcasts: General – Business for Forward Obsessed. From devastating pitfalls to life-changing aha moments, hosts and serial entrepreneurs themselves Pete Sena and David Salinas push interviews past the surface for an in-depth, insightful glimpse at the future of business and brands.
Take a look at one of their most recent episodes “The Art Of Never Giving Up” featuring Larry Janesky, the CEO and Founder of Basement Systems, Contractor Nation, The School Of Entrepreneurship, and owner of over 30 businesses across the United States.
We spoke with the team at Digital Surgeons about the podcast to learn more about their creative direction, risks they’ve taken, and what they’ve learned throughout the process.
What inspired the creative direction for Forward Obsessed?
Forward Obsessed is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Our team set out to showcase what it is actually like to start a company from a foundational idea and take it through the entire life-cycle of growing and selling a business – warts and all. Pete and David found that existing podcasts like “How I Built This” only showcase the glamorous side of entrepreneurship while omitting the difficult events and psychological trails that a founder goes through. Having experienced those challenges first hand, Pete and David wanted to create a show that described every side of the entrepreneurial journey, including the devastating pitfalls and surprising pivots. It is these moments that resonate the deepest with our audience.
What are some of the creative risks you have taken up to this point in the series?
One of the biggest risks we took was starting a video podcast during the COVID-19 Pandemic that required guests to physically come into the studio to record their interviews. If you go back to the first couple of episodes, you will see that they are virtual. While our team loves those interviews, we found that there is no substitute for the dynamic energy that is achieved when everyone is locked-in to a conversation around a physical table. We decided that every interview should be in-person, no matter what. This decision has limited us many times, and we have lost the chance to do some amazing interviews because an in-person visit was not possible for the potential guest. Despite these instances, our team feels that sticking to the highest standard of quality has paid off, and we have even started to take our studio on the road to meet some high-profile guests (Our interview with David Cancel was filmed in his Manhattan apartment)
Which aspects of the team’s work are you most proud of?
When we set out to start this podcast, Pete described the goal that has driven every aspect of our creative process: “We don’t expect a ton of subscriptions on day one. All we are focused on is getting 1% better every episode. By episode 100, we will be on an entirely different level.” Our team has kept this mentality through every release, maintaining steady, organic growth while focusing on creating compelling content for our audience. Through every challenge, every mistake, every success, and every risk we take, we keep one goal in mind at all time – Let’s get 1% better, no matter what. This is the secret sauce that is turning Forward Obsessed into such a success.
How does the podcast represent Digital Surgeons’s creative ethos?
At its core, Digital Surgeons is a brand experience transformation agency made up of makers, marketers, and entrepreneurs that are constantly asking, “What if we did what’s next?” When we set out to create a podcast, we didn’t look at existing podcasts and ask how we could be like them – we set out to establish a totally new kind of podcast that could raise the bar on a number of fronts for the industry. As an example, Forward Obsessed is one of the first video podcasts in the world that was streaming video on the Apple Podcast app – this was an innovation that our executive producer Robert Roche found was possible through Apple’s technology that was not being leveraged by any of the big video podcast studios. We didn’t just stop at publishing episodes – with a small and dedicated team, we have also been able to turn every episode into a wealth of useful content for our audience, including clips and articles that drive more dialogue and interaction between members of our growing audience.
What has been your biggest learning or takeaway from this series?
We have an internal mantra that we default to every time we are about to try something new – “F#%$ around and find out.” It’s a crude yet perfect example of why Forward Obsessed is as fun a show to work on as it is to listen to or watch. We try to embody the entrepreneurial spirit of our guests in every part of producing a podcast. Our guests are all true entrepreneurs – every episode is a story of someone breaking the rules, trying something new, failing more often than succeeding, and learning every step of the way. That “FAAFO” mentality is embedded in everything we do because we are truly inspired by the people who come into our studio to tell their stories. We do it because it’s fun, it’s exciting, and episode by episode we are changing the game of podcasting.
What does winning a Davey Award mean to you?
When we learned that the Davey Awards are inspired by the story of David and the Goliath, we knew that this organization was the perfect embodiment of what Digital Surgeons and Forward Obsessed represents. We have always been the underdog, the small and nimble adversary that uses innovation and creativity to defeat unbeatable odds. It is an honor to receive a Davey Award because we live that battle every day.