Podcast Junkies - Storytelling Interviews & Conversations with Podcasters Podcasting Passionately · Harry Duran

376: David (Ledge) Ledgerwood: Revolutionizing B2B Sales and Podcasting

·1 hr 2 min·4 clips

Listen Network ties podcast downloads to an exact ICP and claims 40% better retention.

1. Podcast Junkies 376 centers on David Ledgerwood's B2B sales strategy, podcast production work, and audience-targeting tools. 2. Harry Duran hosts David Ledgerwood, a serial entrepreneur and managing partner at one zero rig and Listen Network, and David matters because he has used podcasts to drive revenue in B2B services. 3. The episode asks how podcasting becomes a revenue function instead of a hobby show. 4. David says he started in programming, writing bash scripts and building websites when he came out of school in 1999. 5. He describes early work in the dot-com boom and recalls building with classic ASP, bare metal hosting, and hand-coded RSS for audio files. 6. David links his move into entrepreneurship to 9/11 in New York, when he decided he did not want to "die under a desk." 7. He says that moment pushed him to leave salaried work and keep starting companies, even after earlier startup and family-business attempts did not work out. 8. The podcasting strategy began when he wanted more conversations with his target market at a software company selling high-end freelance developers to CTOs and VPs of engineering. 9. David and his team built a podcast about software engineering leadership and invited leaders such as CTOs, CIOs, VPs of engineering, and principal software engineers. 10. He says the show felt natural because he was genuinely curious and wanted to learn how those leaders managed teams. 11. David says he followed each recording with a soft sales close, then left the relationship open for future work. 12. He estimates that 10 to 20 percent of those guests later became business opportunities over about five years. 13. He says the show took a staff of five to run and eventually produced millions of dollars of revenue. 14. David and Harry compare that model to coffee meetings, repurposing, and the value of repeated face-to-face conversations. 15. David says Listen Network grew from a problem in podcast agency sales, where marketing leaders struggled to justify budget using only downloads and long-tail editorial language. 16. He explains that Listen Network connects paid media to the exact ICP, annotates downloads with ad-network data, and gives agencies white-labeled reporting they can present to clients. 17. David says the internal version of that system improved retention by 40% and helped agencies keep clients because the business model became easier to defend. 18. He also contrasts audio podcast metrics with YouTube, where views and subscribers matter differently and paid promotion can still make sense in B2B contexts. 19. The tone is conversational, technical, and experience-driven, with Harry pushing for practical details and David answering with examples from sales, agency work, and startup history. 20. People building B2B podcasts, agency owners, and revenue-focused marketers will get the most from it, while listeners wanting celebrity stories or light entertainment may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical case for making podcasts part of the marketing budget.

This episode treats podcasting as part of the marketing job, not a side project. David Ledgerwood walks through how Listen Network helps brands and agencies use shows to build awareness, keep marketing teams aligned, and bring usable data into strategy talks.

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Why you'd press play

Your podcast needs to justify itself in a budget meeting.

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