Podcast Monetization Strategies for Massive Growth with Adam Schaeuble

Hey, Adam, welcome in.

Yeah, Joel, I appreciate you letting me in here, man. It’s always an honor to share somebody’s platform when they invite me in. I just hope to over deliver for your audience

So we’re going to get in today to the business side of things and, podcasting tips a bit later, but we’re all on this journey. We’re at different stages, but we’re all on the podcasting journey. So I want to start with a bit about your actual podcasting journey, because I know you’ve had multiple podcasts.

Um, I want to hear a quick rundown of that history and where you are now. You’ve got podcasting business school . So like, when did you start? How many episodes do you have with that? Why did you decide to start? Just give us the full rundown.

Yeah. So, my original podcast I launched at the end of 2015, it was a weight loss show called the million pound mission is a weight loss podcast. I was a gym owner, brick and mortar gym, and I had a lot of people that wanted me to franchise my concept. And I didn’t really like that idea, but I did like the idea of So I went, I dipped my toe in the podcasting space and that show evolved. It became a, you know, a top rank show. And, you know, we did around 25, 000 downloads a month on average, which isn’t giant, but it’s very substantial in the, in the podcasting space. I started to have some success. It took about three years, but I started to have some success with building memberships in that space, selling courses, consulting, coaching.

And what I started noticing is, other podcasters in health space started hitting me up going, Hey, can you help me build. My online membership, like you’re doing. And, and so I started doing business consulting and I was like, wow, I really like this business consulting. I’ve been doing this fitness thing for a long time.

And that’s when I launched podcasting business school to kind of explore that avenue of my skillset. And so in, uh, 2019 I became a full, full time podcaster. I sold my gym and then in 2021 I sold the health side of my business. So I sold the, the show and everything that came with it, with the memberships and everything.

And just solely focused on business consulting and teaching through podcasting business school. And as of this Friday, we’ll have 500 episodes of podcasting business school out. And, uh, I’ve got a few other side project podcasts that are out there floating in the ether, but, uh, that’s, that’s my main, my main one right now.

But overall, we’re over a thousand episodes deep, uh, about eight years in the journey and just tons of fun,

That’s a big accomplishment. And one thing that really stood out there was the three years you said it took that long to really take off. That’s something I think we need to highlight because for a lot of people, they, they just don’t give it that much time or they get frustrated by the weight, but we’re almost, we only started ours maybe six months ago and it.

Like, it feels like it flew by. It’s really not enough time for anything to happen. So you’re a great example of why you need to stick in there for, for many years to actually get this stuff to work.

Yeah, When I get ahold of new podcasters and I consider anybody new, I’m like, if you’re in the first year, you’re a newer podcaster. Uh, and that first six to 12 months, I always challenged newer podcasters. I’m like, you got to kind of just give yourself some buffer and just learn how to be a podcaster and learn how you want to communicate and kind of get your rhythms and your workflows and get efficient with it and figure out who your ideal audience is and how you want to interact with them.

And there’s just, you’re not most likely going to nail it and go. Like, I don’t think there’s anything comparable to going viral. Like on social media, it’s like you can post it to a tick tock video. It can go viral and get millions of views. That doesn’t really happen in the podcasting space. So you have to give yourself some buffer, but I can tell you once you do put in your reps and you learn to leverage a show, you can really leverage it to grow your business.

And I’m living proof that like you can create an online business platform of your dreams and have a really, awesome lifestyle from that, from all that effort. And it’s totally worth it.

So yeah, you’re suggesting that the goal should not be to go viral because that’s almost impossible. It can be frustrating when you’re putting in all this effort to create great content consistently, and then you see, you know, a three second clip of a dog’s face or something is got 10 million views. I see that all the time, and I go, what am I doing wrong?

But it’s not meant, you’re not meant to do that, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, great example. I, worked my butt off to build up my online brand and, you know, get my social media following up. And my cousins they post this video of them talking to their grandma and they gets 5 million views on tech talk.

I was like, this is dumb.

Yeah, it’s maybe not fully discouraging, but it certainly makes you question. What is the real secret here?

what originally intrigued you about podcasting at all? Because you told us you had quite a history there. What was the first thing, reason why you decided to actually leap into podcasting specifically with your business?

I started listening to podcasts and I saw people like Tim Ferriss. I love marketing show Joe Polish and, uh, Dean Jackson. And I just started listening to these different shows. I’m like, I see him, like they’re making money with sponsors. I see them growing, and I was like, I can do this.

If these, People can do this. I could do this. Like I’m was an expert in my space I can teach and I love to educate. Like I’m so in love with the idea of creating some sort of a system or result and then duplicating that and teaching other people how to do it.

And it’s low hanging fruit. It’s like, it’s super cheap. I didn’t have to invest thousands of dollars. And you know, back in 2015 it was just audio. So I got a 97 ATR 2100 microphone and I’m on the same one. This is the microphone that I started with. Like I’ve done a thousand episodes in this 97 microphone and hosting was like 20 a month.

I’m like, this is super cheap, super easy. I was like, what, what do I have to lose? And I’ll tell you Joel, like the thing when I first got started that saved me was I made a commitment with myself. I’m like, I have to put out one episode a week for a year. So I made a 52 week commitment. And that saved me because I wanted to quit like every single week of the 52 weeks.

Um, but eventually I started getting some feedback and a few people were like, Oh, I listened to your show and it’s really helped me out a lot. And those little boosts, you know, keep you going for a while. But yeah, I mean, when I first got started, I was just like, I want to impact more people. I enjoy podcasts. If these other people that I’m listening to are doing this and growing a brand and a business, I think I could do that too.

Challenge I would recommend that and I’m sure you would as well like bare minimum for anyone that wants to start a podcast, you should be thinking in those terms and longer. Really, if you’re not going to do that, it’s it’s barely worth starting. Would you agree with that?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’d heard the stat, the average podcaster puts out less than 10 episodes and I’m like, all right, we’re going to beat that. But I’m like, I got to give something a year before I even think about quitting because it’s going to take me that long as to figure out what the heck I’m doing.

Because I was starting from zero, like zero social media, following zero, email lists, zero subscribers, zeros across the board.

I’m curious to see when you started with this podcasting. I was kind of getting into it around then as well for the editing work that we do. Obviously there’s been changes in the industry since that time, but you were so involved with coaching people and launching podcasts to this day. What are the differences that you see from back then versus now, like, is it actually harder?

 Is there any, credibility to people that are asking, you know, is it really worth starting? There’s too many podcasts now. What do you think of that?

Well, I think back in the olden days of 2015, The biggest hurdle was figuring out how to start the show. . I had no idea how to make it go to Apple podcasts.

Like that was just some mythical journey you had to go on. I could not find any resources the recording systems weren’t that great.

It would drop my guests half the time and they would just disappear. And I had no idea what was happening. So all that has gotten so much better now. And so it’s easy to launch a podcast,

I feel like now the big quest is growth and monetization.

 When you talk about podcast such saturation, you mentioned that earlier. it’s still so young and, and it’s open. The big stat that I love promoting out there is okay. Over 4 million podcasts have been launched. That’s still a lot fewer than YouTube channels and blogs and things like that.

But around 400, 000, about 10 percent of those 4 million shows have more than 10 episodes and have released any content in the last 90 days. So really we’re talking about a game of. If you can just stay consistent and put consistent content out there and keep showing up, you will eventually figure things out and there’s opportunities and money to be made, you know, by doing that.

But I mean, 400, 000, you talk about the early days of, you know, being in YouTube or being in the first 400, 000 blogs, you’re like, Oh, I love, I love that kind of real estate. So podcasting, that’s exactly where it’s

right. Yeah. And so you’re helping people with their podcasts in a variety of ways. We’re going to talk about your business a bit, because yeah, we’re hearing some great, valuable insights from you in terms of actually podcasting. But one of the reasons we do this show is we’re talking to other entrepreneurs who are using podcasts as a marketing tool.

So the actual. Inner workings of your business are quite interesting and relevant as well. So we’ve heard about your podcast specifically and kind of how you got to where you are, but let’s hear a bit about your actual business. Like what does podcasting business school sell and who is it to? Four. And how does it all work?

Yeah, so like the brand statement behind podcasting business school is I’m helping service providers, coaches, and consultants to learn how to leverage a podcast, to get more clients and build their online business platform. So when, how that relates to my offers, I really focus on. parts of what I call the podcasting success timeline.

So this is this, this framework that I created that has four different, uh, zones and it kind of works like a choose your own adventure book. But depending on where people are at, I create offers to serve them in each one of those four different zones. So, if somebody has already launched a show and they’re like, struggling with growth.

I’ve got the download growth club is focused on podcast growth and that the main purpose behind that, that it’s a 97 a month membership is to get podcasters over a thousand downloads per episode that puts them in about the top 20 percent of shows. So that’s very pinpoint laser focus dial in to major pain point of my audience.

And then my other offers, are around helping podcasters build their online business platform. So there’s all sorts of online business academies, but my online business academy is only for podcasters. Like you have to have a podcast. Uh, it’s not gonna teach you how to launch a podcast.

It’s like you’ve already launched and now you’re trying to get clients and like, that’s for somebody that starts, you know, Like I was back in 2015 with zero email lists. I don’t know how to do an online course. I don’t know how to do a funnel. I don’t know what a discovery call or a sales page should look like.

So I helped them build that out. And then I’ve got a different signature offer that is for the person that already does have some of that stuff. And they just want to focus on. So how do we convert more listeners into paying clients?

So with some of those things in mind of how you. Teach people to execute this in their own businesses. Can you tell us a high level overview about your situation, like how your podcast fits into your overall marketing strategy?

Is it the majority of your marketing and your lead generation or are there other elements? How are you using your podcast in your business?

Yeah. Joel, I love this question, man, because I am like podcast tip of the spear, top of the funnel guy. I want people to find my podcast before they find my website. I want them to find my podcast. before they find my social media because I want to be the, that voice that consistently shows up in their earbuds twice a week,

and I want them binge listening. And the reason that that’s an effective strategy for me is because of expert positioning. I feel like one of the major mistakes that I see service providers have that have their own show is they do interview only. And then they come to me and go, I’m not getting any clients.

I go, yeah, because when you do interview only the listener the other person, the guest as the expert, you’re not the expert. And if they’re going to buy something, they’re going to buy it from the expert I’ve had people that literally come to me freaking out and they’re like, I just had a guest on and they have a very similar service to mine.

And I had people emailing me to connect them. Because they wanted to buy that other person’s service. And I was like, yeah, it really sucks. Doesn’t it? And they’re like, yeah. typical scenario for somebody that does business with me. They will search podcasting tips on Apple or Spotify. My show shows up very high for that, that search term and they click on it. Usually people are like binge listening over the weekend. So they’re in a heavy dose of me doing what I do, expert positioning. And then they usually sign up for a discovery call on a Tuesday. And we’re doing business by that next week, and that happens every single week over and over and over again. So, you know, I don’t stress out about my website, SEO, and, you know, I do social media promotion and all that.

That’s mainly to keep my current listeners listening, but when it comes to client acquisition, having a strategically named show for organic discoverability showing up when people search certain things like podcasting tips or podcasts about podcasting. Those people get into my world, binge listen, hear all the expert positioning. They’re ready to go, ready to get to work. And that’s a very typical weekly scenario in my life.

that’s one of the merits of having a show like yours where you’ve built it up over such a long time horizon, because it can be overwhelming to a business owner. Like what do I do? There’s people telling me to have a mailing list, social media, podcasting. There’s just an infinite amount of choices that you have and you really shouldn’t be focusing on all of them.

Otherwise you’re just not going to be successful. Do a good job on any of them. So to see that you can actually mainly focus on your podcast that makes things so much more clear to a business owner. Like, here’s what you need to do. Just do that and you’ll be fine over time. So to see that that works out well for you is, is great.

One question I had too, when you mentioned the solo episodes, I think that’s a great point. Does this vary person to person or, or does the advice vary depending on the situation? Cause I do think. A lot of times the mix is pretty good. You don’t need to necessarily do interviews depending on the type, but I know for some people, interviews are a great way to connect.

And so that helps them. So it is a benefit to doing those on their podcast, but solo as well. So across different types of businesses, do you see a situation where you, you change up your advice if I’m wanting to get a lot of attention on social media, I’ll put out an episode about why I’ll tie to like why you should probably stop doing interviews, but I’m never, I’m not like the don’t do interviews guy. My rule of thumb is I call it my two thirds content rule for expert positioning.

So I challenge people to do two thirds. Of, uh, content where they’re positioned as the expert. So you still have that other third of your content to do interviews and, and, you know, feature other people. so that, that works pretty darn well from a client acquisition standpoint. So if you release one episode per week, week one, solo episode, week two, maybe a coaching episode or another solo episode, week three interview, and kinda keeping that, that type of a cadence, that way a third of the time you’re still connecting and building out your network.

But you know, it’s something where I really liked that two thirds content rule. It works well for me. It works well for a lot of the people that I work with where. You know, just a little bit more often than not.

You’re featured as the expert because again, you have to think about that binge ability factor and with, an interview, you know, typically interviews 30, 45, maybe 60 minutes, maybe a little bit longer. A solo episode is usually like 10, 15, 20 minutes, maybe even just five minutes. My coaching episodes are 20 to 30 minutes so people can binge on those more rapidly so they can listen to four or five solo episodes in the same time as it takes to, for, to listen to one interview.

There’s something to be said for that, like marketing, you know, like those exposures, you always hear that number, like 18 exposures before they buy something. But I’m like, what if, you know, 18 podcast cast episodes before they buy. Every episode I do with the solo episode.

It starts off with a testimonial audio testimonial from a client. They’re hearing that they’re hearing one call to action. They’re hearing me do a solo episode. They’re hearing me coaching. So I want to get lots of reps with those types of, of, of content specifically. And then we’ll throw in an interview every once in a while.

So let’s talk first about the growth of a podcast. So I know you’ve got a framework for this. I want to get into some specifics on how to grow a podcast audience. Before that, let’s preface this with something. I hear this question a lot. How many downloads is good? Um, I say, well, it’s going to vary.

Now, what is your answer to that question?

Well, I like to say, okay, How about we shoot for a goal of getting the top 50 percent in all podcasts that are active like, but that sound good to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, that number is usually around 120 125 downloads per episode after 30 days. So if Joel and I released this episode today, 30 days from today, if we’re doing around 120 125 downloads and we’re consistently doing that with all episodes, This is a top 50, five, 0 percent podcast.

And people are always like, that doesn’t sound like very much, 100, 125. I’m like, well, it’s not because again, podcasting is a slower growth, uh, medium here. And it’s not like TikTok and going viral, like we talked about earlier. So that’s a great benchmark to start.

And then we go, okay. How about we go top 20 percent and use that as the next goal. That’s around a thousand downloads per episode and you know, a thousand true fans. It’s a very achievable number. So I like to put those numbers out there because most people are comparing themselves to Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Lewis Howes, you know, all the big business people, Amy Porterfield.

And it’s going to vary depending on the business. What is even necessary? Like you may not have 10 million downloads an episode, but your business is perfectly fine and people can run their business with far less downloads. So it’s different for everyone.

Yeah. I mean, I, I know service providers that are getting, you know, between 50 and maybe 200 downloads per episode and they’re getting six figures in clients every year, you know, and that’s

Mm hmm.

I mean, Joel, like you and I would both be psyched if we could go into a room and speak to 50 people live.

So why wouldn’t be psyched about sitting in our underwear, flipping on a microphone and recording content every week and being able to, to acquire clients via that effort. I’m like, that’s, that’s even better.

Yeah, with those, those big numbers we see on videos on the internet, it’s easy to forget that, like, a room full of a hundred people, that’s a lot. Or, you know, if you had a hundred clients paying you one or two thousand or five thousand a month, that’s pretty good. So, yeah, those numbers are Or perfectly fine.

So when it comes to actual growth here, you know, it’s easy to preach consistency. Like this is, this is good advice, but very common, like podcast every week, make it sound good, that type of thing. But what are the secrets here of the people who are really getting the results and growing their podcast? I know it’s not like a magical secret that we’re hiding and, you know, You find it out and overnight it blows up because there’s more to it than just that.

But what is the actual advice? Like, what’s the framework? How do we go about growing a podcast to get a bigger audience?

Yeah, so I’ve got three buckets and actually this is like breaking news. I, I used to only have two buckets, but I broke one of the buckets into two buckets, so I’ve created a new bucket. Uh, so three different buckets that we really look at with podcast growth. And two are very simple. Uh, one of them is, is I call effort based marketing.

So any effort based marketing, that’s like I do the video clip and I post it on social media and I do email marketing and I let my email list know and I build my lead magnet, build my email list. Like all that is effort based marketing. Then the other bucket. So Facebook and Instagram ads. I’m a huge fan of podcast player app ads like overcast FM.

I’ve always gotten ad rolling on overcast FM. If you guys go to overcast. fm forward slash ads, pick a category. Uh, I like shooting for anything that’s going to be 7 or less. Cost per acquisition. acquisition is a new subscriber on their platform. So you’re paying 7 or less for every subscriber that you get.

Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. I see people that are doing 15 downloads an episode. They run an ad, they get 90 new subscribers, and all of a sudden they’ve, You know, five, six X, their downloads and they’re, they’re thrilled and all they did is they paid 200 for an ad and it’s super simple. So that’s paid marketing bucket.

The bucket that I love to focus on and go deep dive on is what I call organic discoverability. I don’t use the term SEO anymore because people get that mixed up with website and blog stuff and it’s the same concept. But all I’m worried about with organic discoverability is Apple and Spotify search bar.

What is happening in that search bar specifically? People are screwing this up. So for organic discoverability to maximize this, we have to look at three specific areas, uh, with power. So the thing with the most power is the name of our show, the name of our show. The second thing is the description of our show and our host.

So the about this show segment and the third most power is each individual episode title. So we want searchable terms in all three of those areas to maximize for organic discoverability. So somebody searches podcasting tips. Uh, the first word in the name of my show is podcasting, podcasting business school.

My show will pull up. I have lots and lots, almost every single episode has the word, the phrase podcasting tips in it and the name of the episode that’s on purpose. So I’ve got a three step formula for naming a show. My perfect podcast naming formula.

So the first thing that I want to check when I read the name of the show, I want to know exactly what it’s about. Nothing cute and creative. I want to know what this show is about. You’re not there to explain it. I just searched something on Spotify or Apple. Your image pops up. I want to know what that show is about.

The second thing I want to know exactly who it’s for. Like, who is this for specifically? And then the third thing is I need at least two highly searched keywords in that podcast name. So mine are podcasting and business. Those are two highly searched terms that I want to show up for. So if you can check all three of those boxes, things are going to go well.

 That’s the big growth component that most people are missing. And when I do podcast audits, we pretty much are always fixing those

hmm. Yeah, absolutely. That’s that’s great advice. Okay, so we’ve covered the growth aspect. Let’s say so we’re doing some things we’ve got are we’ve got a good name, we’re doing things regularly to help grow the podcast audience. Now let’s talk a bit about the actual business side, the generation of those leads revenue clients.

podcast before your website. So we’ll hear a bit about that if that’s your ultimate strategy for everybody. But, you know, Let’s hear the big outline here. What should we be doing or thinking about in terms of actually getting clients for our businesses through our podcasts?

One of the strategies that I messed up early on a lot of podcasters are messing up. It’s just like being strategic with their call to action on the show. I call it CTA vomit. Like we just are like, follow me on Instagram and Twitter, and here’s my home mailing address and email me if you have any questions and buy my thing and do this and come to my event and people don’t do anything.

So. I feel like it all starts when it comes to doing business. We have to build a bridge. I call it the community client bridge. Like you have to build a bridge from being a listener towards being a client. And we have to create stepping stones. And that first stepping stone is the, is the call to action that they’re listening to.

So I’m a big fan of, I don’t have like that canned intro with like, podcasting business school. Like I don’t have like a sing song intro. It’s just me. Well, I start with a testimonial. about whatever it is I’m talking about. And then I’ll promote something, whether that’s something free, whether that’s a discovery call, whether I’m launching something, a lead magnet, whatever.

And then I’ll have the same call to action for the same thing at the end of the show, one call to

Mm hmm. Mm

So I don’t talk about more than one thing because I don’t want to distract anybody. So I think that’s the first step is going, all right, how do we get business? But what’s that one call to action that we could focus on for eight, 10, 12 episodes, maybe get those reps in.

And that’s really, really freaking hard. Joel, like it’s, it’s still hard for me. I know, I know that it works, but I’m like, Oh, this is so hard. I want to talk about other things. But just really like, okay, starting out, we want to build our email list. So what’s that lead magnet that you really want your listeners?

That’s like the ideal, juicy lead magnet that everybody should be opting into. Now they’re going into a funnel or getting onto your email list. Like what’s that one call to action we could put out there to promote that. Do that for four, eight, 12 episodes in a row. Intro and outro putting in those reps.

Now we get them on our email list. Now we can market to them in that way. So I feel like that’s a really nice baby step is going out of all these calls to action. What’s the most important singular one that I could be talking about right now and for the next several episodes. And funny thing is people still find me on Instagram.

People still find me on, you know, threads. They still sign up for my lead magnets. They still figure out how to get to my website and do a discovery call. So I feel like if we can just focus on not confusing our audience and really give them a pinpoint action step, good things are going to happen.

Okay. So we’ve got that focus. Yes. And it’s so tempting to have multiple calls to action. You want reviews, you want all this stuff, but making that very clear. Uh, so say a lead magnet in the podcast. So then that that’s the start of the bridge to becoming a client, anything else beyond that, that we need to think about in terms of how our business is set up

Once we get that lead magnet in place, the next thing I like to do is I build a simple funnel off of that lead magnet. So like an ideal situation for me would be, all right, I do an episode that talks about podcast growth and I’m going, all right, what? You know, I’m promoting, uh, my, my podcast, grow, scorecard, lead magnet.

So I’m going to marry that content with that lead magnet. Cause it’s the same. Like if people see the title, 10 different ways to grow your podcast, they see the title, Ooh, I’m interested in podcast growth. Then in the intro, they hear podcast, grow, scorecard, freebie, outro, podcast, grow, scorecard.

Like, Oh, I need to do this thing. Let’s opt in. Now they’re going to get a 10 email funnel. And I, I build my email funnels a little bit differently, uh, because I, I suck at building email funnels. Uh, but this, I figured out this particular method because it comes back to me going, I really just want people to binge listen to my show.

Like I just want them to binge listen to my show and good things always happen. So with that 10 email funnel, here’s the structure. Very simple. The first email is all about how to use the thing they, they opted in for. So with my podcast goes scorecard, the first email is how to use the scorecard, how, what the points mean, blah, blah, blah.

Then the fifth and the 10th email are, I will drive them to a discovery call. Hey, if you’re wanting to, if you’re X, Y, and Z type of person, we should hop on and do a profit potential discovery call. That’s five and 10. So the other seven emails. Are all podcast episode based, so I’ll go, all right, what are the seven emails about podcast growth that would love this person that just opted into this thing to binge listen on and that’s, I feature those episodes in those in between emails, I don’t have any other call to action.

I’m not talking about discovery calls. I’m not selling anything. I’m like, Hey, here’s a little intro paragraph. Here’s the appetizer. If you are digging this episode 242, that’s where you need to be next. Download that. So I’m not pushing them down the line of like, I’m not selling in every email or anything like that.

It’s let’s get them binge listening. Let’s get on a discovery call. If people have listened to multiple episodes and they have on discovery calls me more often than not, we’re doing business and that’s awesome. So I think having a nice baby starting lead magnet using that tin email funnel and then I think every podcaster should have what I call a start anytime offer.

So I started anytime offer is something that somebody says, let’s get started right now. Here’s my money. Can we start on Monday? And you go, yes, yes, we can. So is that a course? Is that consulting and coaching? Is that a bootcamp? Is that something else? What we have to look out for and be careful of early on.

A lot of people that are new to online business, they see all these pro people like Amy Porterfield. She like does launches and you have to do her digital course academy twice per year and then it goes away and you can’t do that. And that doesn’t work as well for somebody that’s smaller building. Like if you have somebody wanting to hand you money, Let’s, let’s get them going.

Like, let’s, let’s get them going right now. Not going, well, I’ll put you in my November, 2028 cohort. Um, like that’s probably not a good idea. Cause you don’t have that level of authority in that space. They’ll just go to somebody else. So I think if you have those components, simple CTA into a solid lead magnet, into a simple funnel, into a starting time offer.

That’s the real core of a lot of businesses that, that I see doing well out there.

that’s great advice. Yeah, it keeps you on track to just pick one thing and focus on it. Don’t be distracted or feel like you need to be doing all this other stuff. It sounds like you’ve got a great system developed there, and that’s what you work with people on. So that’s great. We covered the growth. We covered some business.

I know you mentioned that the name is something you often work on. With people, but to kind of wrap up that section, what is say one top, maybe not mistake, but an effective fix that you see, like a lot of these people coming to work with you to focus on growth or generating their business leads.

It’s like the one thing you see over and over. It’s super easy to fix that. You’re constantly telling people to go fix right away. Does something come to mind?

I mean, more often than not, I mean, the naming thing is the big hurdle that we cross and then it’s right after that number two is expert positioning. So you get the, you get the. a name and you get the organic discoverability that brings the right people to the show. And then within the show and within the content, you are positioned as the expert.

Oh my God. Like the, the rate of conversion just goes through the roof because now you get the right people listening and the content is positioning you as the person they want to be working with. Like I like to keep people keep things super, super simple. And you check those two boxes. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s that simple.

It works extremely well, but you know, outside of that weekly content, I think, I think that is important. So that’s the other thing that like, I feel like weekly content is a podcasting superpower that not enough people are taking advantage of. I understand the person that’s working a nine to five and like, I can only get out one episode a month or every other week and they’re doing your best.

I totally get that. But let me challenge you thinking like, let’s think about YouTube content consumption, email marketing, social media consumption, podcast audio is unique because you can be mowing the yard. You can do, you know, be walking on the treadmill, walking your dog, driving your kids to school, lunch break at work, you can have your earbuds in and you can be listening to that podcast audio.

People don’t consume YouTube content like that. You know, email marketing, social media. People aren’t like, Oh, it’s, it’s Wednesday at 8am. I got to check Adam’s social media feed, but I do have people that like every Wednesday when they’re driving to work at 8am, they listen to my show.

I’ve inserted my content in their life routine and that is unique to podcasting because of the ability to multitask. So. having weekly episodes, same day, same time, regular cadence, inserts your constant into their life routine. If you break that, if you have a pattern disrupt, , they’re gonna put somebody else’s audio in there and you might not get that real estate back.

So I challenged that person. It’s like, Oh, I’m doing interviews only. Okay, cool. But it’s every other week. I’ll go, all right, break it up into part a part B and release something every single week instead of. You know, every other week, just half it and like, just take advantage of that superpower. Because like I said, like you become their person, you become their actual voice of reason in their earbuds every single week.

That’s an intimate thing. We’re inside of their ears. You know, it’s like, uh, you know, that voice and they finally get to talk to you on a discovery call or like I do, you know, the, the, the podcast audits or my pod pal, zoom parties and people like, you know, it’s like, you know, It’s awesome to actually talk to you.

I’ve listened to a hundred episodes and all this stuff, but that’s, I mean, if you get into that weekly content cadence, it truly is a superpower and it can be a superpower for your business.

Yeah, I can’t stress enough the importance of that consistency and momentum. On that note, you mentioned this splitting the content up. I like that one as well. Any tips that you present people like that who are having or struggling to be consistent or they’re getting a little burned out because you need to set yourself up for the long haul.

As we’ve mentioned earlier, you need to be able to do this on a long time horizon. So any couple of tips for those people, like how do you set yourself up for that where you’re not getting burned out and finding like, I can’t get this content out every week.

Yeah. Great timing, Joel. I just record an episode on this today. So I like all the notes are fresh in my brain region. So when it comes to like content planning, obviously solo episodes help quite a bit because you know, 10, 15 minutes, you can sit down for an hour and record your month of solo episodes. If you’re, you’re doing those every week or every other week or whatever, but I’m a big fan of creating a content, idea bank.

So I’m like, all right, Evernote file. Whenever a hot button idea hits me, I make a note there every time I interact with a podcast listener, whether it’s a DM like they DM me on Instagram. Hey, really enjoyed this week’s episode. Maybe I have a question. I answered the question a little bit of back and forth before we kind of sign off on that conversation.

I’ll go, Hey, What are you dealing with right now? Like, what’s your main pain point? Like, what, what do I need to put out more content to serve you? And they’ll tell you a hundred percent. And I think it’s cool. If I get emails, same deal. And this is why I answer all my own DMS. I answer all my own emails.

Nobody plays me on, on any of the channels or anything. And that’s important to me. So now I’m getting all this content ideas and it’s directly from the listener, which is the best, best type of idea. And I organize that in my idea bank and I like to keep a two to three week buffer, man. I think that’s huge where whatever I record this week, it’ll go live in two to three weeks.

So I have that in between time. That’s already Loaded, recorded, edited, good to go. Social media assets. Good to go in case I go on vacation in case I get sick in case I lose my voice. So having that buffer is really important because you and I both know. We get those first four episodes out there. We’re feeling good. I’m a, I’m a podcaster. You know, you just look at your phone every once in a while. Oh, there I am. There’s my show. I’m famous. And then you get to that nine, 10, 11, you know, three months in, it’s a little bit more of a grind.

Oh my God. And I got to get an episode up. Tomorrow’s my day. Oops. Forgot now I’m embarrassed. And then, you know, maybe it’s three, three weeks, three months, three years or never that you put out that next episode. So I like having that buffer, so that life can happen. You can still deal with it and , keep your rhythm going with that weekly content.

So those are a couple of things that I always tell people that that tend to help out quite a bit.

Yeah, that buffer is a great tip. If it becomes like full of friction when it doesn’t have to be, then that’s when it really just starts to fall apart. Because if you’re ahead, you’re not feeling stressed. It’s totally cool. But yeah, you slowly, Let the episodes go out. You didn’t record a new one and then, Oh, it’s stressful.

And you just, you skip one week and then you’re done. So yeah, that is a great piece of advice. I would agree. so as we get to the end here, I do want to chat about something you mentioned earlier, uh, I had, I had this concern and I share the same view as you. So it’s, it’s a good timing here with the ending coming up about CTAs, not having too many of them.

So we’ve spoken about how it’s important to limit the number of CTAs that you have. Um, similar to an MWR it’s called in the book, how to write copy that sells most wanted response. This is what we’re thinking about here is like, what’s that one thing that you want people to do? Now, something I’ve been faced with more recently is the It goes against the advice I would typically give, but I’m seeing shows who have a business like people were talking about here.

They’ve got their business, but they have successfully added in sponsors and it’s like, it’s a pretty good chunk of cash for them. I’m curious if you’ve encountered this, any tips that you’ve given to people to optimize for that, because they are having their own call to actions in the episode and like up to three sponsors.

And that kind of blows my mind. It goes against traditional advice. But it’s working. So what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah. I mean, I think if you go to the goal of your show and you’re like, this show is going to help me pay my bills and live the lifestyle that I want. And if that’s coming through sponsorship revenue, Then you got to kind of prioritize that and you got to obviously you got to make it happen.

 The Unique way that I attack a cta would probably work best Where in that type of a show what i’d recommend so if you come to me like adam Um, got a good problem here. Got paying sponsors three per episode, but I also want to promote my own thing. I’m going to tell you to ditch your traditional intro with the music and the welcome to the blah, blah, blah podcast that happens every time that everybody just skips over.

I’m going to go, all right, whatever your call to action is, if it’s a lead magnet or if it’s an offer, grab a testimonial from somebody that has done that thing. Make that the first sound that they hear on your show. Um, and it’s, it’s especially works well if it’s like, I’ve got a lot of female clients.

So it’s a female voice. It’s a pattern disrupt. Somebody, they will pump their brakes and go on. This isn’t Adam’s voice. This isn’t an interview. What is happening? I better listen. And they’ll listen. Then whenever they just gave a testimonial on the next audio is me going, here’s how you do the thing that they just talked about.

And then you can go into your sponsorship stuff. So I would start and end, I would bookend it with your own CTA. I started with a, so I go testimonial, my CTA. At the very end, another CTA for you and what you promoted at the, at the beginning. So you kind of sandwich it a little bit, then the issue is people are like, Oh, it’s just, it’s like more sponsorships and CTAs than actual content.

So, you got to make sure you deliver on the content, but also if you can make the sponsorship reads at least mildly entertaining and different and not always the same. I like reading them in the moment a lot more than the same canned, the same music, same whatever, skip, skip, skip. So when I had my health show, I did have sponsors.

And I eventually had some co hosts and we would ask for like comedic license. I’m like, can I make fun of my co hosts? Can I make fun of these products a little bit? Can I make people remember what we’re talking about? And they’re like, yeah, go for it. So like athletic green sponsored our show. And Tim Ferriss, one of my podcasting heroes is a big, like, I think he’s an investor because he talks about it so much.

So I ran an ad where I was making fun of Tim Ferriss and like I was making fun of Tim Ferriss. I’m like, even little, little nerds like Tim Ferriss take out Athletic Greens and look how cool he is now. And like, I was just ad libbing and saying weird things about Tim Ferriss and Athletic Greens loved it because they thought it was funny that I was kind of poking at their main, influencer guy and people listen to the ad because they were like, we don’t know what Adam’s going to say when he starts doing these ad reads and that made them mildly entertaining.

We’re at the point where I actually got Instagram feedback. We’re like this, the sponsorship ad reads my favorite part of your show. I’m like, I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not, but I’ll take it that you’re listening to the ad reads. So you have to think about how do you be different? How do you be entertaining?

How do you. , help your listener or encourage your listener to not hit the skip button during the ad reads, make it a part of the show. So even you saying something weird, like, at the end of my show when I’m doing my outro for the show, I’ll say things like, Hey, they’re good looking.

Or, but wait, there’s more. Or, my best, most listened to outro ever. I use the, uh, the movie trailer voice where I’m like in a world full of podcasts about podcasting, you know, and I’ll just do like the whole movie voice thing just as a pattern disrupt to get them to listen to what I have to say. So that, uh, those are some kind of out in left field strategies that I use that that tend to work.

That’s great. Yeah. It’s, I mean, being unique is, is extremely important to finding that stuff that works. And I love that idea about the sponsorship reads too. Cause I’ve. Fallen victim to that for lack of a better term or like, there’s no way I’m turning off this particular podcast. Cause you set up the audience to expect it.

They know your ad reads are going to be something they can’t miss. And that’s completely opposite of what you would traditionally consider an ad being right.

yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my favorite podcasts is the Bert Cast is Bert k Reiser. He is a comedian. He is really funny and. He just reads, he has a, I mean, tons of ads, probably more than Joe Rogan. And his like wife is yelling at him in the background and he’s just screwing him up and it’s, it’s, and he’s laughing at himself cause he’s screwing up the ad reads.

And then he goes off on a tangent talking about something. Cause he like, one of them is like a meal delivery service. And he’d be like that last one. You know, the chicken was not my favorite. And like, he’s talking about like the, the thing. And so it’s, they’re very funny, off the cuff, entertaining. So if you want a good example, listen to the Bert cast and he’s got some good ad reads.

Great. And sponsors take note. Yeah. They should be open to that kind of stuff and giving you that creative freedom because it’s working better. So good stuff, Adam. Well, that’s a lot of great insight. I know your, your website, podcasting, business dot school. We’ll have in the show notes, but you actually said you prefer people to hear your podcast first.

So we’ll put that link there as well. And that’s like, that’s step number one. If people are curious to know more about your possibly work with you is head to the podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you are new to my world. Go out and listen to episode, start with episode 499. I know that’s kind of a random number to start with, but, that’s a more recent episode. I break down the three scenarios that cause most podcasters to quit and how to avoid that, those situations.

I feel like I kind of put my, my coaching hat on. I delivered a heavy dose of motivation in that one. So I think that’s a nice one to start off with. So check out episode 499.

Awesome. All right. Thank you.