Real Voices, Real Impact: Dan Kendall & Unity Stoakes on Podcasting in the Age of AI

[upbeat music] Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators who are transforming health. [upbeat music] So Unity Stoakes here, co-founder at StartUp Health, and Dan Kendall, longtime friend, colleague. We've done all sorts of cool stuff together with the podcast network, and I'm so glad we're here at Health in Las Vegas and we get to have a conversation together. We're normally podcasting, interviewing other people, and now we get to have this conversation together, which I think is really awesome.

First of all, we're in your podcast studio now. You wanna share a little bit about where we are and set the stage? Yeah. I'm doing a little bit of faux pas here.

My phone is ringing while we're recording, which is a bad thing, so. Yeah. It's, we're live. [laughs] This is great.

[laughs] Yeah. I agree with what you said at the intro there. It is absolutely such a, a, a circle here that we're coming back together in this environment, 'cause I remember some of the first times that I saw you were, was at JPMorgan- Right... in January, and it was always such a he- At our StartUp Health festival?

100%, and it was always such a hectic period for you. Yes. And to be planning such a huge event in the run-up to the holidays and through the holidays, and then come back the first week of January and have that. And then to see, I remember seeing Health being advertised at JPM, and now here we are at Health in 2025.

Seven, eight years later. Yeah. Exactly. And your event has changed and evolved, and you've worked a lot with the Health organization.

Yeah. We've worked a lot with the Health organization. What I find is really incredible is actually Health really epitomizes a lot of what your organization does, which is around collaboration and innovation. Yeah.

And that's exactly what StartUp Health was founded to do, and that's what Health has done by working with you, and they have absolutely for years rolled out the red carpet for us. And I am, uh, so grateful to John, and Rich, and Robbie, and everybody, and the whole crew that have helped so much to make all of these Health podcast creators feel so welcomed. And now to see you on this side- It's great... in the booth, it's great.

You know what's so cool? A decade ago, 15 years ago, when we started StartUp Health, there was no ecosystem. The, this was not going on. There were not thousands of customers and innovators and collaboration going on.

So it's just, there were big conferences and healthcare things going on, of course. JPMorgan's been going on forever. But the innovation side of things has just really taken off. And what it feels like to me, and I'd love to hear your take on it, we're almost entering a new chapter, if you will.

I'm trying to get a sense of where that's going, but I think in the new age of AI, we're definitely entering, I think, the next wave of innovation, collaboration. I think more than ever, content, community, and these types of conversations really matter. So let's start there, because you focus on podcasting and really helping a lot of different startups in healthcare get going and do their own series, do their own show. How did this start?

I remember early conversations. Let's go back to the beginning- Oh... and set up what your organization is and does. Right.

So it's been a journey for me over the past 10 years or so. My company's called Mission-Based Media, and we really focus on elevating, amplifying, and demystifying the use of podcasts in health communication. How can we take the time that people spend off-screen, that we want them to spend off-screen, living life in real environments, and folding laundry, and making dinner, and commuting, and exercising, and picking up kids at school or at activities, and taking dogs for a walk.

How can we use that time when they're off-screen to feed that soft tissue between their ears and impact that in a really positive way to engage, empower, and make them a better version of themselves, whether they're trying to work for themselves or people that they care about in their family or community or as a medical or a clinician or healthcompr- healthcare provider. So that's really what we focus on. I've been a podcast listener since my very first 80 gigabyte color screen iPod that I got in 2005, and I started listening back then, and it wasn't until about 2016, '15, 2015 and '16, that I was looking for content around digital health.

And there was only one podcast that I could find that actually talked about the, talked to the people that were doing the sort of work that I was interested in doing and talking about the things that I really thought mattered. And that, Unity, was your podcast, StartUp Health. So yours was the North Star for me as I was, uh, I drank up every one of your episodes because I was commuting, I was flying, I was doing these other things, and I needed to, and I wanted to hear what was happening.

Yeah. And you did a great job- So... creating that content for us back in that early day. I'll tell ya, I remember back when Adam Curry just came up with the term, and I ordered a podcasting kit.

This is going back to maybe, I feel like it was 2000. It was, like, early. And I had this microphone, this little kit, and figured out how to get it up on, into MP3s, and it was wild. But we, I think we started StartUp Health NOW about 14 years ago.

Yeah. And really that was all about some of the things you're talking about, like storytelling, having conversations, showing people around the world, maybe giving them a sneak peek or access into people's lives and conversations that they might not necessarily get access to, and really opening up, from our perspective, it was the health innovation lens, and opening it up to the world. And it's something really interesting. I was very fortunate, got to briefly work with Quincy Jones in the mid-'90s, and he was- WowReally one of the first music streaming platforms, it was called Q Radio, and this was, I think, in 1996.

I helped launch that. And what he was doing was really cool. He was bringing... And this was dial-up era, right?

So- I remember... the bandwidth was not really happening. And bringing radio stations from all over the world so that you could listen to, from some remote village in Africa, you could be listening to it in New York City or Iowa or wherever you happen to live. And I was very inspired by, pre-YouTube, how we could start to learn about other cultures, other ideas, other places.

So when I got the chance to start podcasting, I'm like, "How could we use this at StartUp Health to tell the stories of these health transformers?" And I remember us meeting very early. What, what was it? 2005 you said?

2005 was when I started, w- when I started listening to podcasts, yeah. So I'm trying... When... We met maybe a couple years after that.

Yeah, yeah. But really there was al- an early kinda crew of us- Mm-hmm... starting, and it's so wonderful to see really extraordinary shows that are just the quality, the conversations, and what we get to learn. And I know many of these people now go through your programs.

You just recently did a summit. That's right. Can you talk about what that is and what- Of course... the outcome was?

Yeah, absolutely. So I, I find that when I look back across my life that really positive things have happened. Not, I don't mean for me, I just mean I've seen positive things happen when I start with an attitude of service. And earlier this year, 2025, I got pretty d- disturbed about some of the things that I thought might be coming in 2025.

Mm. And indeed, a lot of those things have happened, as we've seen budgets get cut and research get ended and- Mm-hmm... just a variety of things, that doesn't matter where you come down politically. I think when you talk about health, you just can acknowledge that these things are not really what I think most of us in the health industry would say is really helping us get where we need to go.

Yeah. So I got really concerned about that, and I thought, "How can I add something to help counteract the amount of information that's being, misinformation that's being spread on social media? How can I help people counteract some of the information that's being broadcast on traditional media, or even from some of our organizations and departments that have been revered for years?" And, and I thought, "One of the things that I know how to do is to help people raise their voice through podcasting."

And I thought, I spend a lot of time educating people about how they can educate, how they can use podcasts to reach their audience and r- inform their tribe and activate an audience. And I thought, "Well, if I could do that at scale, instead of having one-to-one conversations with organizations about teaching them how to do it, if I could try to have a lot of people, and actually not just have it be me telling them that this is important, but really have a variety of people who are doing it effectively and elevating that success and saying, 'Here's some people who are...

Don't, you don't have to believe me. W- you might think I'm trying to sell you something. I'm not. But look at these other people.'"

Look at Aaron Carroll, the president of Academy Health, and look at the success he's had and the passion that he talks about, the uniqueness and the positioning of the podcast platform. Aside from YouTube, which he's done since 2013, early days like you were, and aside from media clips that he's a- he's invited to, to be on different news programs, the podcast experience, he says, is very different. And it's that long form content, that long engagement that we can have with people in these spa- places and spaces that really matter.

So we did this Health Podcast Summit. We set a goal of having 12 talks. The lady that we hired to, to help us with this, she's put together over 400 summits, and she said, it was an all online summit, and she said, "You're gonna need to at least have 20 because you're gonna have some dropouts and you're gonna have 12." We ended up having so many fantastic people come out of the woodwork that I had never, I never even knew they were doing health podcasts, that we had them come in, and we had 37 different sessions.

So my team just did a really great job pulling a lot of hours- Wow... pulling it all together. 37 sessions, 42 speakers. And who was that open to?

It's open to everybody. You go to- Oh... healthpodcastsummit, healthpodcastsummit.com.

It's entirely free. We want it to, to free, be free 'cause we don't want there to be any barriers to learning how to use this effectively. So we're not charging for- So what kinds of things are you teaching, or what happens at the summit? W- we have a variety of different people in there.

So you go to healthpodcastsummit.com. You sign on. You'll get a link that, that will allow you to access all these different things.

We will be publishing this as a public podcast as well eventually, in the next few weeks. But they can go on and they can hear from people who have been doing it for a long time. They can hear about trust and how podcasts can be used to build trust with audiences. We talk about how podcasts fit into a multi-channel, omni-channel strategy.

Mm-hmm. Like, it's, you don't just start a podcast. You didn't just start a podcast. You had a website, an organization, a podcast- Newsletter, video- All of those things...

social. Yeah. Yeah. And I had so many people say, "We don't really wanna start a podcast."

In my view, you don't start a podcast, you add a podcast. Mm. You've g- already got something that you're doing, and now you're saying, "Hey, instead of making a brochure, a video, a website, an event," all those things require you to tune out every other thing that, that you have a- as an option on your screen, in your life. And you can say instead, "Here's a podcast.

Take me with you in your car on your commute." Absolutely. It's really powerful. It's so interesting.

I, right before I saw you here, I, I bumped into... I had a scheduled meeting with a, another podcast interview that I did with Gerald Wilmink from Cleveland Clinic, and we were having a private conversation in our pavilion here at the StartUp Health Pavilion at Health. And I said to Gerry, I'm like, "Let's just go get in front of microphones, and instead of having this private conversation, let's just go open up our conversation." Yeah.

And we talked about the same things we were gonna talk about. We just hit record and now open that up in hopes that maybe it's beneficial to some other listeners, innovators out there, help them. And all we had to do was hit record, and all of a sudden- Yeah... like you said, you're not starting something, you're-Getting into the flow maybe of content, conversations, dialogues, stories that you're already hopefully doing in your business or your life, and now opening some of that up.

Yeah. What are some of the things that you've learned and would recommend to others out there that are maybe want to add a podcast, and some of the lessons learned? Great question. I guess the first thing that I suggest people do is start.

Hmm. Because you don't need to wait until you have fancy microphones or until you hire a part- particular team or... You can just start, and actually, it's not a binary decision. In my view, it's not a question of whether you do or don't do a podcast, it's what kind of podcast do you have?

And one of the things I tell a lot of organizations is, think about the conversation that you're having a lot, or the conversation that you want people to be exposed to before you actually send a very expensive sales rep or customer service person to spend time with that potential prospect to educate them. W- who's your best person to carry the water for your message and your mission? And how can you connect them directly with the people who should hear that message? And if you can then take that and put that into an audio format, you can put it on the bottom of everybody's email signatures.

You can put it on a media page. You can publish it on Apple and Spotify. There's so many different ways that you can distribute it, and it doesn't have to be... One of the things I hear a lot is, "I can't do one a week," or, "I can't do one a month," or c- you know, kinda, "Is two a month gonna be enough?"

It doesn't matter. Hmm. If you just do a miniseries and say, "These are the six top questions- We're gonna do four, four episodes. Yeah.

Uh, four ep- uh, uh, four, six. Let's just say, take six for an example. Yeah. Here's our genesis story.

Here's a little bit about the founder. Just get to know a little bit about why we exist, whether that's 100 years ago or 10 days ago. Here's a little bit about the problem that we're working to solve, and then we're gonna talk to people that are in various stages of that journey, somebody who's just realized they have the problem, somebody who's in the middle of solving it, and then what it feels like on the other side of that promised land when they've solved that problem. Then we're gonna wrap it all up to you in the sixth episode.

That's our podcast. That's our season. That's our show. And then maybe we'll do a season two.

If you would like to be s- featured in season two, contact us. And you can promote that for the other 48 weeks of the year. Launch those six episodes. Do a trailer and launch those six episodes.

And put that out and give it every one of your sales reps. Give every one of them a postcard with a QR code that says, "I know you're really busy. I don't wanna take any of your time. I'm just gonna ask you to take this postcard, scan it, put it up on your bulletin board in your coffee room or wherever, and just share this with your friends, and then listen to it on your drive home."

And within five days of them driving back and forth to work, they're gonna have listened to an hour, two hours of your message that you've spent unique time with them. Think about who you spend time in the car with. It's with your closest family and friends. Mm-hmm.

And when you can then take your brand message and say, "Go in the front seat of the car with the person- Oh, yeah... that you're targeting," it's a really powerful tool. Gotcha. But we keep overlooking it in healthcare.

We keep thinking, "I have this all the time. We'll make a video. We'll make a, an event. We'll do all these things."

Why do you think that is? Just- 'Cause-... education or- I think-... getting the word out?

So I had this conversation with someone earlier, that I think that people who have risen to their roles in their organizations or founded their companies, they got there because their, the world was a certain way. I'm part of this group. I'm in my 50s now. So the world was a certain way.

The world's changed, and the people that we're hiring that are in their 20s and 30s that are trying to figure out how they can make the products and services that, that we want to sign off on and spend our money on, they are often being tasked to do things the way that we did them 20, 30 years ago. Right. Podcasts weren't a thing 25 years ago. So I think that there's just a, a lack of awareness, and people think that, oh, podcasts, this is that little pun, cute thing in the movie that somebody's got a podcast.

And- It's interesting... it's not really taken seriously, but it should be. Because I gotta tell you, the completion rates that we're getting on podcasts, w- we get podcasts that are over- That, that's listening from beginning to end? To end, exactly.

So when you look at Instagram and TikTok, s- you're normally competing for two seconds of a person's attention before they flick away, because their phone's right there in their hand, and the next cat video is just a thumb flick away, a four-inch move away. Mm-hmm. Th- if you s- look at the YouTube videos as well, people don't spend a lot of time on YouTube videos. You do a lot of YouTube videos, and when people are watching video with the sound on, they don't spend a lot of time listening to it.

Right. Sometimes with the sound off, they might se- looking at subtitles or watching something, they might spend more time. But with podcasts, if you can spend 40% of, of completion of a podcast with someone, Apple considers that an engaged listener. Hmm.

And our, we, we have Health Podcast Network. We have hundreds of shows. We see the metrics. People are spending 70 to o- even over 100% completion with some of these episodes.

And I even wrote to Apple and I said, "How can people complete more than 100% of a podcast?" And they said, "People are going back- They're listening again... and listening again." Wow.

So imagine making something that you can say, "20 minutes," and people will listen to 24 minutes of it. You know what's interesting is a little hack that I do is I hit record, but I got the video on, and you're getting audio, and then you can put it up as a podcast and on YouTube. Then you can edit snippets. We talked about this multi-channel opportunity.

And then you can take the transcripts, come up with interesting insights, turn it into blog pieces, uh, all sorts of different multimedia. So I loved what you said a few moments ago about adding to s- maybe something you're already doing. 'Cause you can just take that audio stream, and I wonder if some people just are trying to figure out how to get started, like the process. Mm-hmm.

But once you get going, it's, it's not that hard. Right. And there's a lot of new tools. You've got, uh, I know you offer a lot of solutions and services.

Mm-hmm. But we also are advocating for every one of our Health Transformers in StartUp Health to have their own show. Mm-hmm. I'd like to see every one of our health moonshotsHave an ongoing program because there's stakeholders around particular health moonshots that care about that theme.

There should be ongoing discussions on every one of those things. So I couldn't agree more with your premise, and grateful for you really pushing this forward. I think you were the first podcast network in healthcare. Was that- Oh, certainly in health.

Actually, I, I shouldn't say that. I, I'm not 100% sure. It's certainly the first one I discovered. I was looking for- Oh, [laughs] I didn't wanna build one.

Right. I was looking for one. I couldn't find one. Okay.

So built it. [laughs] The one I'm aware of. Yeah, yeah. Uh.

There are some other people who do some different work. There's the Pharmacy Podcast Network, give a shout-out to them, and Healthcare Now Radio, and Bloodstream Media does some work, and a few different other ones. But we're, we wanna be very collaborative. You and like- And you always have been.

Yeah. There's, how can we get more people in this? 'Cause I'm not out, elbows out trying to keep other people out of this. I want more people to understand the power of this, like you're, uh, articulating to your member companies.

Because if you can then take this, just as you said, multipurpose it across multiple different things, and then once you have even that miniseries I talked about, that six-episode miniseries that I just outlined quickly, once you have that existing, you could then add on a little thing from a news announcement that you do. Or you can do a monologue where, "Hey, we just-" Hmm... "have this new announcement. We just wanted to put this on here as a seventh episode as a little bit of an update."

Or, "We did a webinar. We invested a lot of money and time in a webinar. We had 600 people show up. We repurposed it, trimmed it down, and got it into a podcast format."

So there's just so many different ways that you can then say, "This is the way you can reach your audience in the time and place where they're spending their time." So what are some other things, insights? You talk with a lot of innovators. I know you're at different events.

Here we are at a, a big conference, the health conference. What else are you seeing? What's, what are some trends, insights, things that you're picking up on? What's exciting you?

What's- Yeah... surprising you? Great question. I think that as we're seeing AI come into our world, it, it's with such force and such potential, I'm really excited about that.

It really helps us in terms of the c- content creation process. How do we edit things? How do we prepare things? How do we research things?

And how do we prepare and post-edit things? And how do we even promote them? AI can be a very important tool for that. But what I think as we see more and more AI coming into the market and to people's lives, it's going to create a higher value on real stories.

Hmm. Because AI is gonna run out on what it can train on, and it's- You think there'll be, like, the sloppiness people are- I think that's already happening... concerned about? Yeah.

I think that it's already happening, and I think that puts a higher premium than on a real person's perspective. To understand, not have an AI translate what the mission of the company is, but have the real founder express in her voice about why she thinks that, why she far, formed this company, or why this is something important that she wanted to see existed in the world, uh, existing in the world. And I also think that it also puts a higher value on community. Mm-hmm.

So these sorts of opportunities where we can get together in person, and we're seeing that in the broader podcast ecosystem, not specifically in healthcare, but i- also in podcasting generally, that the live podcast events for SmartLess or Joe Rogan- Right... and things like that, they're becoming really popular events. It's like a live audience. Exactly.

We do the same with our showcases, our fireside chats. It's basically a live audience, oftentimes virtual, sometimes in real life, and it adds that whole aspect of community. I'm really glad you mentioned that because the past few years at Startup Health, that's what we've... If there was one word, it would be some form of community/collaboration.

And I think as a world, we want more of that. And it's so nice to see friendly faces at, and be on the circuits of some of these events 'cause I get to bump into people like you, or people who we build relationships with over time in, at different places. But that word community, I think in the age of AI, becomes the defining opportunity, the thing that sets you apart than others, and I think everybody wants more of that. Yep, I agree entirely.

And I'm really grateful for you. You were one of my early guests. You did a fantastic Yoda impression back in the day. [laughs] Yeah.

I remember that. And, uh, you've always been very generous with your time and with the, everything you're doing at Startup Health. I enjoy seeing your success and your continued, like, pumping e- en- enthusiasm and energy and batteries included into this industry. So- Thank you...

thank you for- Yeah... your support of what we're doing, and I certainly have a lot of support for what you're doing as well. That, that means a lot. I'll see if I can do my, my V...

So this is my note, our note to all of you considering maybe starting your first- Oh, please do this... podcast. Try? Hmph.

Do or do not. There is no try. There it is, ladies and gentlemen. There it is.

Yeah. [laughs] An encore presentation by Unity Stokes- [laughs]... founder of Startup Health. There he is.

[laughs] All right. And that was- Dan Kendall, it's great to see you. Thank you so much. Great to see you as well.

Thanks so much for having me. Bye, everybody. Bye. [laughs] [upbeat music] And finally, an invitation to all of the extraordinary health transformers, whether you are a startup, someone building the future of health, or whether you are an investor, funder, or buyer of the solutions out there in the marketplace, this is an invitation to you to join the Startup Health member community.

Learn more at startuphealth.com. Look forward to hopefully seeing you soon.