Don't Hire the Producer With the Awards. Hire the One Who Cares.
hiring · awards
An award tells you what someone did for someone else. It can't tell you whether they'll care about you.
You've got a shortlist of three podcast producers. One has awards on the homepage. The other two don't. Most people reading this will already know which one feels like the safe choice.
It feels safe because it's easy to defend. If it goes badly, you can say you hired the award winner. Nobody asks many questions after that. But you're not hiring someone to be defensible. You're hiring someone to make your show work, and an award is a poor guide to that.
Here's why, and what to look for instead.
what an award actually tells you
It tells you that someone won something, in a category, for a show, at some point in the past. That's all. It doesn't tell you whose work it was, what the producer's actual part in it was, or whether any of it applies to your business.
It also matters how awards work. Many of them charge an entry fee, from a few tens of pounds at the low end to somewhere around a thousand dollars at the top, depending on the award and the category. One industry roundup lists dozens with their fees. Some are free to enter. And Forbes reported in May 2026 that there are so many podcast awards now that nobody keeps a single list of them, and that the big ones lean towards celebrity and established shows.
None of that makes awards meaningless. Some are hard to win and worth being proud of. But it does mean an award on a homepage is a fact about the past, not a promise about your show.
what you're actually buying
Clients rarely want the most talented person. They want the one who cares the most.
That sounds soft, so here's the hard version. You can't judge talent. Past a basic standard, nobody outside the craft can hear the difference between very good and excellent work. What you can notice is whether someone is interested in you. It's the one thing that reliably separates people when everyone's sample sounds fine.
One of us has hired freelancers as well as been one, and almost every pitch was about the person sending it. Here's how good I am. Here's where I've worked. Here's what I've won. It's an easy habit to fall into, because it's how we've all been taught to present ourselves. It also tells the buyer nothing about what happens when the work is theirs. What stood out was the person who'd looked at the business and said something specific about it.
Think about it from your side of the table. If a producer opens with their awards, you've learned that they're good at talking about themselves. If a producer opens with a question about your viewer, you've learned how they'll spend the next six months.
how caring shows up before you've paid anyone
You don't have to take it on trust. It leaves traces, and you can look for them in the first conversation.
They've done their homework, and it's specific. Not flattery. Something they noticed about your business that you'd have to have looked to see. A generic compliment is a template. A specific observation takes ten minutes of attention, and that's a small version of what the next six months will look like.
They're honest about what they haven't done. Someone who says they haven't made this exact kind of show, and then explains how they'd approach yours, is telling you the truth. Someone who's done everything, for everyone, with equal brilliance, isn't. A little honesty at the start is worth more than a long list of credentials.
They talk about your viewer before their showreel. Who is this for. What should that person do afterwards. If the conversation keeps drifting back to their work, you're being sold to. If it keeps coming back to yours, you're being listened to.
They'll tell you when you're wrong. A producer who agrees with every idea you have is protecting the sale. One who says that format won't work for your audience, and explains why, is protecting the show. It's an uncomfortable moment in a first call, and it's usually the best sign you'll get.
when an award is worth noticing
If you do want to weigh one, ask three things. Whose award was it, the show's or the producer's. What did the producer actually do on it. And is that show anything like yours.
If the answers are the producer's own craft, the person who'd actually work on your show and a show in a similar space, then it's a real signal. Treat it as one among several. It should never be the thing that decides, and that goes for ours too.
how to explain it to your boss
If you're the one who's been handed this, you'll probably have to justify the choice. Choosing the producer without the awards can feel like a risk you're taking on yourself. So here's something you can carry back to the meeting.
We chose the team that asked about our buyer before they quoted us. An award for someone else's show doesn't tell us how they'll work on ours, and their questions did.
That's an easier position to defend than it sounds. It's a reason, it's specific, and it's about your business instead of theirs.
where keystone fits in
We've won awards for podcasts ourselves. We don't lead with them, because they mean different things to different people, and none of them were made for your show. We'd rather have a conversation about what we could add to yours.
So judge us by the same four things. Whether we've looked at your business, whether we're honest about what we haven't done, whether we ask about your viewer first and whether we'll tell you when we think you're wrong.
Book a call and put the same questions to every producer on your shortlist, us included. The difference between them tends to show up in the first twenty minutes.
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