Podcasts as a Small Business – Sponsors and Where to Invest for the Biggest Impact – Small Business Show 143

The Small business show episode 143 for Thursday, November 2, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the small business show here at businessshow Co. The show, you guessed it, by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it, man?

It comes and it goes, you know. Yep. Yeah, no, it's good, actually.

That's good. I'm excited out here. We're coming up on our first big storm of the season. And for those of you who know me, know that I'm an avid waterfowl enthusiast, a hunter, and I am headed up this weekend to hunt over about 150 acres of flooded rice, which is actually a small business in itself because these rice farmers, their kind of side gig is during the winter they lease out these areas for blinds. So it's. Yeah, it's pretty interesting.

That's interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Try to get. Get the guy to come on the show sometime and talk about it and whether he would or not. It's kind of interesting because they have to buy the water. The Sacramento. The water comes from Sacramento River.

Okay.

And where they used to. One guy made a comment to me one time when I was leasing the blind and I was complaining about the price because they're not inexpensive.

Right.

And the guy says, hey, this all I used to have to pay for to get rid of this rice. Double was a match because they used to burn it.

Oh, yeah.

And the whole Sacramento. Most of the rice grown in the Sacramento Valley goes to Japan for. For sushi and like this in. In the spring when they plant, these priests will come over from Japan and bless the fields.

So then.

And be sure that they're planted according to some sort of methodology.

Yeah, whatever the deal is. Sure.

Yeah. And so he says, hey, you know, this used to cost. Cost of one match. No needs to burn everything, and now I have to flood it. And the water is. I mean, it's great for. For the environment, the birds and the waterfowl and all kinds of other creatures that love the. That flooded rice during the wintertime. But it's expensive. The water is not cheap. It's kind of. Kind of interesting.

So that's so interesting. Yeah.

Fascinating how it works.

I have a buddy actually down in Austin, he was a former client that became a friend and he. And with his siblings, I guess it was passed down to him, they own. It's like an island somewhere in Mississippi that's. That they lease out to, you know, it's A. It's a hunting preserve or whatever. And. And I. I mean, they make a ton of money from that. Like. Like a lot of money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. I mean, you can, you know, hunt on public land, and you. There's. You. You wait.

We call it.

We call it the sweat line. Or you just show up and you have to kind of wait, and you can get reservations and kind of try to do certain things, but it's. And I've done that for a long, long time. But it's certainly nicer to put all your decoys out and leave them for the season. You know, we go out there before they flood, get everything ready, and then they flood, you know, so. And the water is only typically 6 to 12 inches deep.

Oh, okay.

So. But it's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty fun. One more. A different kind of business.

That's totally. Hey, there's. There's money in everything. If you, you know, if you stay within your, you know, your zone of expertise or whatever, that.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And speaking of money, we've been talking, you know, we've always said on this show that we really do it as a way to give back to the small business community.

Right? We do. And thus far, that's been entirely true. That's right.

Yes. That's it. And I, you know, we've been. You know, we haven't really actively seek. Been seeking sponsors and everything, but we got contacted by one recently.

Well, sort of. I mean, you know, I mean, I.

Do have some backstory.

I do have this other business, Right. Called Backfit Media, where that's what we do is we. We seek out sponsorships for a bunch of podcasts and websites. And we've been doing that coming on 19 years, I think. And so we put the. So this is actually, I think this is a relevant thing. We've learned that if you take on sponsorship too early in terms of something where the, you know, where you're growing, the. The audience. Right. So we. We will. And we'll talk about rates and everything, but. But in a general sense, you know, the more listeners we have, the. The more we can. We can charge for an episode. And the problem is, if we start taking on sponsors on day one, when we have, you know, essentially zero listeners, or you and me, you know, 10 friends or something like that.

That's right.

Then we have. No. Then the problem is when that sponsor goes to renew and our audience has grown, it's very difficult to get them to pay more. Yeah, right. Because you know, even though you tell them, look, you're getting whatever a hundred times the audience that you got before. Yeah. Well, we've decided, you know, that this show is worth X to us, and so that's what we pay. So you have to replace those sponsors, and you just have to know that going in. And we've learned that over the years. So we tend, and it depends on the show or the website or whatever, but we tend not to actively aggressively seek out sponsors early on. And then with this show, we sort of let that sit because of what you and I said earlier this year, though. I thought the guys were asking me, they're like, hey, can we put the small business show on the pitch list? And I said, sure. And so we came up with a plan. It's still not. We haven't put a lot of our own resources, time, money, etc. Into growing this show. So it's still not quite where we'd want it for ad sales. Of course, it's never going to be where we'd want it. Right. So I thought, well, okay, let's do this. You know, we have somewhere between. So here come the numbers. Right. We're going to be transparent here, which is totally fine. Somewhere in the, you know, three to 4,000 downloads per episode in that range. And some are actually much lower than that, but some are much higher than that, but that's where the average is. And so it's like, okay, really? With generally the way you charge and.

Let me just stop you. I think those numbers are great, especially the niche that we're in. We always talk on the show about return on energy and really? Yeah, I reach out and I try to find people to interview and I pretty much tapped every friend that I have that owns a business, and we do some things on Reddit and all that kind of stuff, but there's not a lot of time put into it other than sitting down and doing the show.

Yeah.

Which is great. And so from an ROE perspective, it's tremendous.

It's great. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously we keep doing this every week and it's. We make sure we do it every week. In fact, we always are scheduling to make sure that we can get episodes out. We're not just saying, well, we're busy, let's skip it, or whatever. No, you know, we're committed to this. Right. So. But the thing is, you know, you, you. The way we like to bill a show or charge for a show or price a show is a flat rate for a sponsorship in, in an episode Right. A sponsorship read that we're going to do in an episode, and generally that read is 60 seconds long, minimum. You'll hear us. It won't happen in this episode, but it'll start in the next one. I guarantee you we're going to go longer than 60 seconds and. Yeah, yeah. Because it's just how we are. But. But we promise not to blather on too long because. And I've been doing this on Macgeekab for, like, 12 years or whatever, so, I mean, we, you know, we'll keep it. We'll keep it interesting. Trust me on that. Yeah.

And that's the whole thing is we want to be authentic, transparent, and you want to be useful. So I was happy that. Oh, this is actually really cool because this is the type of product and service that I've used in every single small business that I've had totally. And have had some difficulties with it. So I was. Oh, this would be great. I can talk about this. I could do the whole show on this.

We could do a whole show on. On this particular sponsor. Yeah, that's right. It's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's a good fit, but when you price it, you know, you kind of look at the amount of listeners that you have, the size of the audience, and then a rate based on that audience size. So in the ad sales industry, that rate is generally calculated based on what we call cpm. Cost per mil, or cost per thousand is where that CPM comes from. And in the podcasting world, that CPM really can be anywhere from about 12 bucks on the low end to 100 bucks on the high end.

I see.

Okay. So with 3,000 listeners, you know, obviously you would love to always be on the high end. The good news is that this particular show with this type of audience actually does trend higher because we're, you know, you. You folks are business owners, but you actually spend money on things that matter to you. You know, you're not just like a consumer audience, especially a tech consumer audience tends to be on the lower side, like Mackie Cab. It's not 12, but it's more in the $25 range. Sure. And again, these are.

We're not a broader category. Right?

It's a broader category. Exactly. And we're not charging these based on exact downloads. We look at the trends of the downloads, what the size of the audience is. We multiply that by the cpm and we come up with a flat rate. Right. So. But I wanted to be able to keep charging companies more as we Grow this thing. Especially now that we have money coming in that we might actually use to grow this thing. We'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah, yeah. So the idea was, all right, well, what if we put the price at $500 an episode? Right now that price at 3,000 downloads is $166 CPM. We're not going to get anybody to pay that that knows their way around the industry. Right. I mean, maybe we will, but. But that's like, when you're talking with ad agencies, they, you know, they kind of have these numbers in their head. They. They do this for, you know, for a living.

Yeah. They know what's going on.

They know what's going on. Right. So I thought, okay, and we've done this before. I thought, great, we'll price it at 500 an episode and we'll special it and say, let's do a two for one deal. If you sign up for a minimum of three episodes.

Yeah, that's cool.

So it essentially becomes 250 an episode. Nobody is. Nobody has the wool pulled over their eyes about this, but we get to write it down on the paper that says 500 bucks an episode. And then that way, as it grows, we can say, yeah, that two for one deal is gone. It softens the blow a little bit.

I love it.

It's crazy that. It's crazy that this works.

You.

We should just be able to just have, you know, a logical conversation. But humans, we are not. We're emotional creatures.

Yeah, well, you're. And you're managing the customer expectation.

That is. Yes.

And I think that's fantastic because, you know, you're, You're. You've learned over the years that you're going to have this issue come up. And so to avoid that argument altogether, you go, oh, you know, that was a limited time. We really appreciate your support that. And maybe now, hey, you know, maybe you can ease them into it. Look, look, we can't do two for one, but I can do three and get one free or something.

You can do whatever you want as it goes forward, and you can. Right. Ease them into it. So that's what we put on the rate card. Now, every sponsorship deal is different. They're all going to be structured differently. Sometimes somebody will come in and say, but if I do X, Y and Z, would you adjust the rate for me? And oftentimes the answer is yes.

Yeah.

You know, or they come in and they say, well, I only want to do one episode. And we generally, in that case, tell them to Pound sand nicely.

Right. But it's really not effective. Right.

That's the problem. I want them to succeed so that they come back and we need them.

We were just talking about this before we came on. The show is coming up with strategies to really help this client be successful on the show.

That's it.

And not, you know, I mean, a lot of podcasts that I listen to, to, you know, there's. It's a. There's so many broad advertisers that I think have. Would have a hard time connecting where. That's where I was really happy to hear about this sponsor, which we'll talk about in the next episode. That, you know, I think is very. Adds value to our listeners. So it's not just, oh, hey, we're selling shoes or whatever. And since you're a human, you wear shoes, you should. You should buy some of these.

That's right.

You know, this way it's like, hey, you know what? And here's some anecdotal, you know, evidence that this is something you should be interested in.

You know, and we're not going to tell you who this, but we'll make you listen to next week's episode. But, but there will be some. For the very astute. There will be a hint in the way in. In. In this episode. I'm just going to leave it at that. That, that it. You'd have to be really astute to pick up on, but you could figure out who the sponsor is. So. And that's just because we like to make it fun for you.

That's right.

Yeah. So deals can be structured in many ways. Generally speaking, the specifics of any given sponsorship deal are confidential. And that's certainly the case with this one. Again, we're just talking generally how we started going out and pitching this. And sure enough, it was priced in a range that people started saying, hey, like, we're a little bit interested in. And of course, then. Then it's up to the sales team to kind of roll that forward.

That's cool.

So now that we. And of course, if you have any questions about this, as always. Feedbackusinessshow.co. like, we'd love to hear from you.

We would love to hear from you.

Yeah.

It makes our day.

It does.

Yes. Yeah. Or go comment on the. You know, there's actually lots. You know, there's some good activity in the small business support group on Facebook where folks are posting questions. And I was just looking the other day and one of our, you know, the members up there was asking about you know, building credit and finance and this, that. And then. And a few other, you know, members of the group jumped right in and we're helping them out. I. I was going to jump right in. I was like, well, let's just see if we get some good response. And it was great.

And.

And you can join by just going to BusinessShow Co Facebook and get your name on the list and you'll get approved right away and we'll help out and maybe you can help us out.

That's right. Yeah.

Vice versa.

So, okay, so now that we're doing this, Shannon, we have. We have a couple of things that we need to talk about, because now you and I have a business entity that we started together years ago. We do deals on the web. Llc, right? That's right. Which is great. So we have that entity, however, and, you know, it's a taxed entity, and it's like, we're all good. Everything's great. With the one exception that we closed our bank account for that entity not that long ago, actually. We just got sick and tired of paying the little nickel and dime fees and was like, this is stupid.

Yeah, we close it out.

We're not using it. No sooner do we close it out. Of course, now that we have to deal with money. So we need to decide, and I don't know that we're going to come up with an answer for this in this episode, but that's one of the things we got to figure out because soon there's going to be some money, and we got to figure out what to do with that. I'm assuming we probably need to open a bank account. I mean, the money's going to come into Backbeat Media. Right. It's my company. With minimal flow, we can sort of leave it there and do what we want with it. But to do it right, especially if we're going to have money flowing regularly, it's better to have it separate and all that.

Yeah, I think that's really important.

You can run a business on cash, though. Like, you don't have to have a bank account.

And, And I'm actually, when we've talked about this on the accounting show recently, is, you know, I. I'm really bad at this stuff, and I'm very good at saying, hey, just get the. Get the money. Yeah, we'll figure everything out.

Figure it out. Yeah.

And, you know, that works on a limited basis, but if you wait and like, I'm. That I'm always. I always find myself in, like, February, you know.

Yes.

Or even later, back, looking back at the previous year, going, okay, what happened here and how did this happen? And, you know, I would say you should avoid it if you can, but I can't. You know, it's like, do as I say, not as I do. Right?

Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're probably going to hunt around. You know, we've always just opened, I've always just opened bank accounts with bank of America. I've had a good relationship with them for a long time and still do. But, you know, they like to charge money to have a business checking account. I guarantee you there's somebody out there that'll give us a business checking account for free. So, of course we should try. We'll find that and there'll be a catch.

We'll poke around.

It will poke around. Yeah.

Well, you know, usually it's a minimum, minimum amount. It's easy for you to say minimum amount. And, and I have, you know, a bunch of accounts too. And I usually lean on a, you know, one of my bank people and say, hey, give me a free account.

Give me a free account for this.

Little business or whatever. And as long as you have good, good online access and that kind of stuff. So we get the money, we collect it, we've. We've got it in this awesome bank because you know how much I love banks. Yeah. And, you know, we've got it sitting there. And then what do we do with it?

Right. Then what? Then what?

And go ahead.

No, we both have had it and we, like, we try to, we try not to spoil our conversations before the show, but this one we started to have a little bit and then we sort of stopped it. But we've both had some ideas. Thankfully, we were each thinking along the same lines, albeit perhaps slightly differently. And that line is instead of taking that money and cashing it out of the business and putting it in our pockets immediately, even though we haven't talked about the details of this deal, you know, what we're talking about here. So it's not like this is life changing money. Right. But it could be properly invested business changing money.

Yeah, that's correct. And that's what we felt. Okay, where do we invest that? We both quickly decide, hey, you know, we just got to invest the dump that money back into, you know, the podcast.

Yep.

And, you know, where is the best venue or venues that, that we would invest those funds to grow and grow is. I think that's a, it's kind of flexible. Do we want to grow our Presence and look better. Do we want to get the, you know, the website redesigned or designed, you know, in the first place because we're just using a WordPress type of stock.

Awful. WordPress stock steam.

Yeah. Or do we want to build up our YouTube channel? Do we want to build out our social media stuff? You know, so those are all things that, you know, we've talked about before, but. But we've kind of gotten to this routine where this is kind of easy. And at the end of the show, we're both like, high five, man. That was great. I love talking with you. And I learned some things, especially when we have guests on the show, and I'm always very jacked up at the end going, wow, this guy taught me so much.

Oh, yeah.

And that has been the biggest thing for me. So we've kind of not gone, oh, well, let's build it up and let's. Let's become.

Let's become another business. Yeah.

Some of these. There's a few of these, you know, business podcasts that are just, I mean, you know, they post their listenership on the front page, and it's ching, ching, ching. It's like a speedometer. Right. Build and build and build and build. I don't think we need anything that extreme, but certainly putting it back in to get the word out and to make our presentation perhaps better.

Well, that's right.

Great.

Yep. And that's kind of where we both were thinking about this. And it's interesting, you know, before I. Even so, I mean, I'm always aware of, you know, who my team's talking with about, you know, various things, but I'm not always aware of, like, which shows a given sponsor is sniffing into. Sometimes I am if I need to answer questions or help build the logistics, but sometimes a deal will come in and it's like, oh, it's got these three shows in it. Okay, great. So I did not know that the Small Business show was on the list with this particular sponsor until very late in the game, maybe a week ago or less, which was fine and not abnormal. Maybe two weeks ago, I was actually walking across from my house to my office, and I thought, you know, the Small Business show is great because it means Shannon and I get to chat every week, something we sort of weren't in the habit of doing when we weren't in business together.

Right. Yeah, that's right.

So we got this sort of. This part of it going again, and it's great. But I started thinking, I'm like, why aren't we Doing like a, like a real business together. Like, we, we enjoyed that.

Yeah, that's true.

Right. I mean, we, we.

Well, we've talked about it on the show too. About finding the right partner.

Yeah.

The difference between, you know, employee and employer, you know, and, and that, that E to Earth thing. And, and so, yeah, I mean, we both are always, I think, have the right attitude towards it and.

Well, we have the same attitude, which, which is the key.

Yes, yes. And yet we each bring different assets to the table.

Totally.

Which I think is if you're looking for a partner, you know, that is. Is critically important because if you're both have the. If you're both the same. Oh, you know.

Yeah, it's.

It's really tough to make it work. You need to have some similar traits, I think. And like you said, the attitude and that kind of stuff.

But yeah, yeah.

I still remember, you know, all those years ago when I, when I was like, hey, I want to start this, you know, deals on the web and who do I reach out to and what I, I knew what I could bring to the business, but what I did not have is any way to get sponsors and build this and build that. And I just happened to, with one of my other companies, be advertising with Backbeat Media.

Right.

And hit. I reached out to my rep and he said, oh, Dave's the guy you should talk to, you know, and, and you know, the rest is history.

Here we are.

Yeah, that was an awesome business for a decade, you know, and, and it. Great. So, yeah, and I'm all for it. I think that we really should build this out a little bit more and, and run it transparent, you know, so our listeners can see how it grows and see what it's doing. And yeah, as a small business versus just you and I hanging out.

Just hanging out. Yeah, because we can hang out and, and in a focused way, which we're already doing. So yeah, we go. Yeah.

But I do come back to. I want to be particular about our sponsors to be sure that if possible, that it really can add value and can be useful because I think that's the biggest draw to our three to five thousand listeners. And the feedback that I've gotten from the show is that, wow, man, this tidbit that you guys talked about really helped me. And that's, to me, the whole reason to do it is to. To, you know, have this discussion. I love talking about.

Yeah. Small business, I will say, having basically the same goal and experience with Matt geekgeb, although obviously a different, different topic. I Was going to say a different listener base. There are some crossover listeners, obviously. Sure. But, you know, it's a. It's a different topic focus. And we certainly always enjoy having sponsors that totally fit, where we can take the sponsor message and without obscuring the fact that it's a sponsor message.

Yes.

We can turn it into a tip or make it seem very, very in line with the content that we have in the show.

Yes. But I'm sure you can't do that all the time, right?

You can't. No. And the interesting part is, you know, first of all, when we get a sponsor, like the first time we got, the one that really kind of shook me was Warby Parker. The glasses company. Right.

Yep.

And when John, you know, internally brought that to me, and he's like, oh, yeah. He's like, I'm gonna need your address. Cause we're setting you up with this company that they're gonna do glasses. I'm like, wait, what the heck are we doing talking about glasses on Matt Geekaboo? And I thought, well, okay, I never told these guys not to sell to a glasses company. And they're salespeople, so they're going to hunt down deals. And it happened to be through an agency that we were also doing some tech stuff with. So it wasn't like this totally out of the blue thing to wrap my head around it. It was like, okay, let me learn more about this. I did what you normally do where you have a call with the sponsor and went through all that. And in the middle of the call, it was like, ah, okay, I see the angle here. Right. This is a company that's totally built for nerds. Yes, right.

That's correct. I was gonna say that it is targeted to your audience.

It is, but so. So I always go in with a very open mind, but. But a very targeted, open mind seeking. Where is the. Where is the angle for my audience?

And I guess that's. That is a great way to handle it, is. That's kind of part of your job.

Right, Right.

Is to look at it and say, okay, if you just look on the outside, maybe there isn't that connection. But if you. If you break it down this way, which actually helps you, I'm sure, do the sponsor pitch on the show.

Of course it does. Yeah.

Right. And so you then can connect with it, you know, like with this new sponsor that we have that we're going to, you know, roll out next week, the first thing I said was, hey, we need to be able to use their product and service on the show because we're using competitors now. So get us set up there so we can use it so we can have access to it and talk about it and see how it works. So, yeah, I definitely see that.

I think that's a really good point, you know, so. But it is. I mean, it's our job to keep us honest. But feel free to join us in that work as we've opened this door to sponsorships. If you feel like we're trying to pitch something to you that doesn't fit for you, tell us.

Yeah, talk with us.

And that's it.

And I think that we would love your feedback on where to best invest this money as well. I'm going to post a question to everybody up in the small business support group and just say, hey, listen to the show today and come give us some. Make some comments on where you think is or how do you think the best way to use that money is and to. To build up the show and, you know, build the business and see. We'll see what kind of feedback we get.

Yeah, man. It's good stuff.

It is good. I'm excited.

Very exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always good when you feel like you have to go get another bank account. Like, that's.

Yeah, that's true. That's a good problem to have, right?

It's not. I hate the banks, but at least you can look at them that way, like. Well, it's, you know, there's a reason for it. So.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. All right, well, we told you. Feedbackusinessshow.co. so let us know there. See us on the Facebook group. Catch you next time. Keep living that charm life.