What if you could listen in on regular conversations between professionals working in money management?
We created the strategy and built a custom Alexa Skill for Ritholtz Wealth Management called The Compound Show. After launching their Market Moment Flash Briefing in 2018, in 2019 the RWM team wanted to expand on the voice marketing strategy to increase their early adopter voice marketing footprint.
As trailblazers in blogging and social media in the personal finance and investing space, the Ritholtz Mafia wanted to be early to voice, too.
Josh and Emily discuss Ritholtz's Alexa Skills. Hear why RWM is "kind of a big deal" when it comes to voice in the finance space.
Read more about Josh Brown (@reformedbroker) and Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz), the forces behind some of the most popular investing blogs, videos, television, and social media accounts: Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz: From breakout bloggers to RIA rock stars
Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz. Image courtesy of Citywire USA, 2018.
THE COMPOUND SHOW (Original version) - MINI-PODCAST AND ALEXA SKILL
Ritholtz Wealth Management is an RIA with roughly $2.57 billion in assets under management (AUM) as of May 2023.
In March 2019, we launched a first-of-its-kind custom voice Alexa Skill and mini-podcast about investing based on the popular The Compound YouTube channel.
Josh Brown explained our project “The Compound Show” in its first iteration and how his goal was to disrupt the traditional lengthy podcast format:
I invented the mini-podcast. All the financial industry and investment-oriented podcasts are an hour long or more. I think that’s because the person whose podcast it is feels bad about asking a guest to come on and then cutting them short. Some podcasts should be an hour – Patrick O’Shaugnhnessy interviewing Michael Mauboussin, for example, or Barry Ritholtz interviewing Ray Dalio, or Michael Kitces interviewing Ric Edelman.
But most podcasts are too long and not every guest has an hour-plus worth of stuff you want to hear. However, the format persists.
I think it’s just something that’s become a tradition – to interview each guest for an hour and change – even though that’s not what the listener actually needs or wants from every conversation.
-Josh Brown
Original logo for The Compound Show mini-podcast and Alexa Skill
For this podcast, Josh recorded 10-12 minute phone calls with investing experts to give the audience a behind-the-scenes glimpse. We synced the RSS feed to his custom Alexa Skill available by voice command.
2021 update:
With a growing audience, Ritholtz and team rebranded and expanded the show, making it a weekly full length YouTube podcast. It’s fantastic and has topped the Apple Podcasts top 10 financial podcast rankings as of 2023.
You can hear it on your favorite podcast app or hands-free by saying: “Alexa, play The Compound and Friends” or “Hey Siri, play The Compound and Friends.”