ENTRIES ARE CLOSED | STAY TUNED FOR THE WINNERS ANNOUNCEMENT
Winner Story
What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood by Adalyst Media
Sit down with your “mom friends,” Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables to discuss raising children, where every day brings a new “fresh hell” to deal with. These two moms have different approaches to parenting, but can still commiserate over the shared inanity of motherhood. Produced by Adalyst Media, their podcast “What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood” took home two 2023 Golds in Podcasts – Features: Best Co-Hosts and Podcasts – Individual Episodes: Advice, plus a 2023 Silver in Podcasts – Individual Episodes: Interview or Talk.
Tell us about the first brainstorm session you had about the podcast.
We knew and respected each other as funny creators who downshifted our respective careers when we became mothers. Margaret had the idea to create a podcast together, and came to our first happy-hour meeting ready to pitch the potential show’s full title: What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. It was the easiest “yes” I’ve ever had for a potential collaborator.
At that first brainstorming session we also agreed that the podcast’s strike zone would be “funny with a point.” We were both excited to work on a show where every episode could be both entertaining and useful to its listeners.
Which aspects of the series are you most proud of?
We’re really proud of some of the guests we’ve interviewed, like Dr. Ibram Kendi, Dr. Gabor Maté, and Kelly Corrigan. We really do our homework for interviews, and now that we’ve done almost 200 interviews (among over 700 episodes!) we’re good at creating consistently engaging conversations with all of our guests.
We’re also insanely proud of our podcast fans, aka “hellions,” who have created a Facebook group of thousands of parents who support one another and offer one another advice. We think it’s the nicest and most useful place on the internet.
Adalyst Media was founded five years after you started What Fresh Hell. What was the impetus to create your own podcast network?
What Fresh Hell quickly became popular with advertisers because of our all-mom audience demographic. We built our own systems to manage that advertising and maximize our available inventory. When we were approached by larger networks about acquiring our podcast, we discovered that we were more profitable remaining independent because of these processes we’d created.
At the same time, we were hearing from other independent podcast creators that they either weren’t successfully monetizing, or were being told by the larger networks that their shows were too small.
That’s when we realized we had something unique to offer, and set about creating a network especially for independent podcasts with female and/or mom audiences.
What’s one of your biggest learnings or takeaways from this process?
Growing methodically and slowly was the right move for us. We launched Adalyst Media with four podcasts on our slate; two years later we have twenty. Putting it that way, it doesn’t sound so slow! But just like we did for our own podcast, we built great systems and put the right sales and operations team in place before we ramped up our acquisition strategy.
How does Adalyst Media define creative success?
Adalyst Media is female-owned and female-operated, and we consider ourselves successful whenever our small business helps other female creators increase their outreach and monetize their content. Creatively, I’d say we define a podcast as successful when it makes the lives of its listeners better—either by giving a sense of community, by offering useful takeaways, or by exposing listeners to viewpoints and ideas they might never have considered. Podcasts can bring an intimacy and depth of exploration that we think is unmatched.
What does winning a Davey Award mean to you?
It’s really meaningful for What Fresh Hell and Adalyst Media to have won two Davey Awards. They represent recognition that we are a small shop punching above our weight. Some of our own favorite podcasts are also indies, and particularly in the podcast industry, the last few years have shown that big budgets and talent deals don’t necessarily lead to successful or long-lived podcasts. The longer we’ve been on this path, the prouder we are that our podcast found its audience based on word of mouth and thrives because of the useful content we aim to provide for that audience, week after week.
We know it’s hard to keep up with awards deadlines while juggling family life and a career as an independent creator or small shop. If you missed our early deadline, don’t worry: there is still time to enter your best work before the Final Entry Deadline on Friday, July 26th.
Featured Image Credit: Jennifer Lee Photography