Yaagneshwaran Ganesh (popularly known as Yaag), the award-winning Indian marketer and Director of Marketing at Avoma, started The ABM Conversations Podcast in December 2019. Interestingly, he didn't have any guest speakers for the first 13 episodes.

Asking about it, Yaag says, "When we started the podcast, we were not even thinking about having guests on the show. My friend Manish Nepal and I were doing 5 min videos on LinkedIn in 2018-19, called Coffee Conversations, where we discussed topics related to marketing and sales in bite-sized videos. And at some point, we started getting a lot of requests to go deep on the topics we discussed."

"So, we thought of starting a podcast. It started as a show in the beginning days where we were two hosts discussing topics and pain points that most shows wouldn't deep-dive on. And from there, we started getting requests from people who wanted to be on the show. Now the show has evolved to a phase where we have stopped accepting requests from booking agencies and reach out to potential guests based on the topics we want to cover in a given episode", adds Yaagneshwaran Ganesh.

The ABM Conversations Podcast, though only 20 months old, is now among the top 1% in the world, featuring some of the hegemons in the world of marketing, including Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Rory Sutherland, Rand Fishkin, Nir Eyal and more.

"Yeah, it is amazing for us to see the podcast evolve into a top 1% show. We have always had listeners writing to us in detail about what they liked and disliked in an episode. In fact, as a podcaster, you can be nothing but only grateful to have such a committed listenership," says Yaag.

They conduct in-depth research for each episode. Though Manish Nepal, who was the co-host until the first 50 episodes, parted ways to start his marketing agency – he is still a sounding board for Yaag.

Yaag believes that one needs to be a podcaster only if they enjoy being part of the process. He believes that great podcasters go into every episode recording with enthusiasm to learn from the guest or venture into what was unknown to them until that episode.

"There is joy in moving from 'no idea' to being 'wow,' and that happens when you are not reaching out to guests based on fame, but based on topics you want to venture into," adds Yaag.

And hence, The ABM Conversations Podcast rightfully ranks in the top 1% of podcasts globally and might probably soar higher in the coming days.