Charley Valher - How to Leverage Podcasting For Your Business

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flow.

Chart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Joey.

Joey.

Joey. Yes, sir.

We're back.

We're back again. Man, this has been a good day.

Yeah, you know what I really love? No podcasting.

Duh.

You know what we're talking about today?

Podcasting. Nope.

Steak.

I'm hungry, too. We haven't had lunch yet.

We haven't. It's 3pm, 3.30pm, almost 4 o', clock, and we haven't had lunch yet.

Is this why I'm getting skinnier?

Getting back in my schmedium shirts again? Between that and the cocaine, wow, got an issue.

But food will be good later after this cocaine habit. I'll address that later. I don't have that habit. Don't worry, everyone. You don't have to send anything my.

Way or send me help.

Joe does not have an addiction problem, okay? He's good.

He's good.

No, this episode's a total nerd out episode.

Yeah.

Where we brought on somebody that is a podcast nerd like us, who just loves talking about monetization and growth and systems around podcasting. And if you haven't caught this, we're kind of nerds about that same stuff.

Gaming. I. I'm happy to say we are the best of all the podcast nerd people.

We're the best nerds. We're the nerdiest of nerds.

We're just the nerdiest of nerds. But then I know Charlie's right there with us, so he can be in our cool nerd group. I mean, hey, I like being a nerd because we literally do geek out on this every single day. Like, half the messages Matt and I send each other are just like, oh, my God, do you see this new traffic technique? Oh, my God, did you see this new traffic?

Oh, seriously, last night. So obviously when I say last night, this was like 6 weeks ago from the time you're hearing it, but last night I went down this rabbit hole of looking up all these gross strategies for podcasting. And Joe wasn't on Slack, but I probably sent him, like, 20 links on Slack of, like, check this one out, check this one out. And this one and this one. And this morning he woke up and just started, like, giving thumbs up to each of my messages on Slack.

Like, oh, my God, it's the Holy Grail. Oh, my God, this next link's even more the Holy Grail. Yeah, so that's pretty much what you're gonna get out of this episode.

Yeah. And so Charlie, he's got a podcast called the Business of Podcasting. Really great podcast. I highly recommend listening to episode number one, his very first episode, probably the best episode ever. He interviewed me for that. He nerded out about podcasting on his show on that one.

Yeah.

So check out that. The Business of podcasting. And then he's also got his business, Valor. Valor Media. And Valor Media, he actually helps people create, grow, and monetize their podcast.

Dang. Right? So he'll handle production, all that fun stuff, and some marketing stuff. I mean, he has a whole bunch of offers and he's a trusted dude. So go check him out if you're interested. But either way, we nerd out on this podcast. We riff back and forth of like, what are the cool growth tactics that are working right now? But also, what's working? Like, what do you think's going to work in the future? And how do you prep yourself for it? Because is. Let's go where the puck's gonna go. It's Wayne Gretzky. And also talk about monetization styles, like his viewpoint on sponsorships, which you're going to hear a new sponsor after this, and it's gonna get a little interesting, and it'll be kind of like it's basically, there's. There's ways that you can approach monetizing sponsorships, all sorts of different things with podcasts. And everybody has their own perspective. It's like the wild, wild west is what Charlie was saying.

Yeah. And I do want to. I wanna make one disclaimer here. If you don't have a podcast and you're not thinking about starting a podcast, listen to this anyway, because this might change your mind. Like, this conversation is really a good conversation about, like, where podcasting is going and why it's important and what sort of industries it's disrupting. And there's a lot, a lot going on in the podcast world. And you're going to hear us, over several episodes, talking more and more and more about podcasting. We're going deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole. We're extremely, extremely bullish on the medium. We do have some insights into things that are coming down the road that, you know, a lot of the general public isn't aware is happening yet. But we've got some of these insights and we just know that podcasting is. I mean, it's massive now, but in five years, podcasting is just going to be insane. I mean, some of the stuff that's in the pipelines. We talk about we future pace a little bit in this episode about where podcast is going to. But even if you don't have a podcast and have no interest in starting a podcast, listen to this episode because we also talk about opportunities of being guests on podcasts. And you know, after listening to this, who knows, you may want to start a podcast yourself.

Yeah, start with guesting if you don't have one. But either way, yeah, you're going to get something from this chat. And it's very smart to be in the know of all of this happening.

And we do have a new sponsor for this episode.

Oh, I was going to talk about the notes, but we could do this too.

Let's talk about our sponsor first.

Talk about our sponsor as he points at me right in my face.

You.

You're going to read the spot.

Whoa.

Hey. No, not the anchor.

So who is our sponsor for this episode, Joe?

Well, today we have a sponsor, new sponsor, Intercom. And actually it's really cool because we use a lot of conversational types of chats in our marketing. I mean we actually use a lot of this, these strategies for closing even affiliate deals, which we've chatted about probably ages ago on the podcast. But any way that we can like kind of engage with folks in any way, I mean, it's gonna lead to a better relationship, but you're gonna sell more. I mean, that's pretty much all it is. So there's no room for idle chat and marketing. Of course. And if you have, if email is the only moneymaker you have in the business, you gotta make something for some. Make room for something new. New Intercom. Intercom's your thang. So Intercom's the only business messenger that starts with real time chat. Like we were saying, that's very. Ooh, like. And then keeps growing your business with conversational bots that actually guide the product tours. So you can actually have a streamlined path to actually your products and your sales. So you could take Intercom's customer unity. In just 12 months, they converted 45% more visitors through Intercom's messenger.

Say what?

It's true story. So make room for this new revenue channel. Go to intercom.com marketing and that's intercom.com marketing. Go there, go there now and go start chatting with your peeps. Go learn some stuff and go sell some stuff.

Unless you're driving or walking or, you know, parachuting.

That's a new one. Or, or what are they? What's the paragliding? No, hang gliding.

No parasailing.

The ones where they go down the Alps and the squirrel suiting.

Squirrel suiting. If you're squirrel suiting, do not go to the website yet. Wait till you get to the ground.

Unless you're really good at squirrels cooting and you want to film a video. No, I've seen too many videos that would go wrong on squirrels. Don't do that, please. We don't be liable, but go check out Intercom. They're awesome. Thank you for sponsoring. We love you guys. All right, so we do have the notes, as we were saying. You probably heard us say it before.

Big value. I mean, if you're new to this podcast, please subscribe. That would be amazing. That helps visibility of the show, hitting subscribe and whatever your player is. But also if you're new or if you're just been listening to these podcasts and you're just like, man, I actually get some nuggets of wisdom out of these. Well, you're going to get more for free if you actually go get the notes for this thing and it's at hustleandflowchart.com comp c o m p word. So those notes, you don't have to take them. That's the cool thing. So we actually have a note taker that listens to every single episode and pulls out all the.

All.

Pulls out all of the. All the freaking gold from this episode. All the tactical stuff. But also even like the mindset y things that we talk about, we actually like bullet point these things so you can highlight them, print them out, do whatever you want to do.

If you're not getting the notes, you a damn fool.

Use a damn foo. Well, you're leaving a lot in the table. And what's the big price on this one? What's the big sticker price on this map?

3.99 Freezel Free.

So hustle and fluidchart.com comp go get them, please.

We would love you.

Let's go talk to Charlie about podcasting, but get the notes also, because you're going to want them. But let's go talk to Charlie.

Peace.

Hey, Charlie, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Of course. Yeah. No, you are a. I mean, it seems like we just all talk the same language. We're going to probably riff and just nerd out galore on everything podcasting.

Yeah.

And I appreciate you waking up very early. Australia over there. 5:00am ish, I think it is right now.

It is. It is bright and early here.

Is it that bright?

It's actually pitch black. That's just the saying.

Well, it's cool because last night I just went down this rabbit hole. For whatever reason, I started going down, like, I Googled, like, how to. How to pay to grow your podcast. How, like, podcast growth strategies, podcast growth tactics. Like, every keyword you can think about about going a podcast. I. I probably read about 30 articles last night about different unique ways that people were growing their podcast. And I think that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today is probably like some growth, some monetization, some systematization around podcasting. Because I know you kind of offer all of those sorts of things as services in your business, right?

Absolutely. These are my favorite topics.

Yes.

So we're going to. We're going to really nerd out and I think have some fun with some of these topics. But before we do, let's. Let's do the backstory. Let's kind of hear what you were doing before you got into podcasting. You know, what. What does your journey look like?

Yeah. So, I mean, we'll go back. I mean, not too far. I've got to keep in mind we only got an hour here, but Internet marketing and having an agency within Australia was where I started online. So huge focus on paid traffic. And this is going back almost 10 years now, I would say more luck than skill. I just hit the absolute perfect timing where Facebook ads had just come out. I was very interested in Google and have a bit of a systematic brain, so I took to it like a duck to water. It just really, really suited me. And there was such demand in Australia for these services that all of a sudden I had an agency that just took off. So very, very lucky, very exciting time, and grew that business to about 15 staff. And at one point, I think we were spending about $3 million a year on paid ads. So it was a really amazing learning experience.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. You're getting paid to learn, so you're just eating it all up. That's awesome. How long did you have that agency for?

So I had that for about four years or five years. And what was amazing is, like, this is back in the days where clicks were like one and two cents, so you didn't have to be that talented, to be honest. Like, when clicks are that cheap, used to be able to buy so much traffic that you could really learn on the job and you could learn into it, which I don't think is really possible anymore. Like, especially when we're seeing, you know, some keywords and Some even paid ads on Facebook, like up to like 10 bucks a click on some things now, which Crazy. Or more.

Yeah, on Google. I mean, you see in some industries like insurance and lawyer leads and stuff like that, you're talking 25, 50, sometimes even upwards of $100 a click for one click.

Wow.

Crazy. Can you imagine learning on that now?

No way, man. Yeah, it's a time and place thing. So, yeah, you're able to, I'm sure, gather a bunch of knowledge and apply it to the right places.

Absolutely. And unfortunately though, with like many of us with our first business, I just built the business all wrong. Basically built an extension of myself. And I used to joke that I actually ran an adult daycare center, not an agency.

Yeah. Herding cats and herding yourself around. Okay. Did it always stay that way within that four years or did you learn and systemize?

Well, at this point I got heavily into reading and learning because that's definitely one of the key things you have to do in business if you want to progress is you've got to evolve. I eventually came across Robert Kiyosaki's work in the cash flow quadrant and, and then realized very quickly I wasn't really a business owner. I was more self employed. And that really got to me. Kind of good stab at the ego. So from there, after learning that, I decided to move on from the agency and got acquired and sold that business, which was a good move at that time because I really, really wasn't enjoying it. And from there I went into outsourcing. So I started an outsourcing company with a good friend of mine, Lynn Pudetti, and we built up a VA company where we were finding talent in the Philippines and then hiring that to other businesses to help them grow their business or help within a business. And that business still exists today. It's Outsourcing angel, which has been a really fun experience and grew well over to a hundred people. So that was kind of my next voyage. But the key difference there was that I wasn't working in that business. Like I couldn't do VA tasks, which was one of the nice things that kind of forced me to learn a whole different skill set of how to be a business owner.

I like how you did that. You separated yourself a little bit and you're able to create a business run out of need, it sounds like. And yeah, you couldn't get in the middle of all the stuff going on. That's clever.

Yeah, it was the thing I wanted to really gain from that. Eventually hired myself out of that business, which was a sensational move, which freed up a lot of time for me. And this was the point where I was looking for what to do next. And I just fell in love with podcasting. Absolutely fell in love with it. It was a medium that I was enjoying listening to so much. I was like at least three pod a day, at least. And I found it was like the ultimate learning medium for me where I was like listening to all these conversations with people that I would never get access to.

How cool is that? When was that? When you started getting obsessed with podcasts?

I would say this is about three or four years ago now.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. So that's like, right where it started to really pick up steam with a lot of different industries and especially marketing. I'm sure you're listening to a lot of those.

Yeah, definitely. Heap of marketing podcasts. And I learned so much about so many different areas of business. And it wasn't just business stuff. It was even finance stuff, investing stuff, personal life stuff. It really became my go to for so many reasons. And when I looked at the effect it was having on my life, natural progression was for me to start my own podcast, which I did.

They're addicting, so it's pretty easy to start one and then start another and then another. But definitely want to stay consistent with one before branching out.

Yeah. And full disclaimer. It went terribly. We did 100 episodes, learned a lot, but was just the show that, well, you don't know what you don't know. I thought it was going to be easier than it was and ended up that first show failing.

What was the first show?

So the first show was called Confessions of a Business Owner, which I co hosted with a dear friend, Kim Barrett. And we did a ton of episodes, brought on some very high profile guests, but we were just kind of winging it and learning it as we were going. And I really, I should have known better because I came from a paid ads background. But I made some fatal mistakes in thinking that the show could appeal to everyone. I went way too wide in niche and I also didn't understand how to promote a podcast or build an audience. So we weren't really appealing to anyone. Our content wasn't stand out, unique, different, and then we weren't promoting it very well. And if you're kind of following those three, you're set for a very vanilla, boring experience where you'll probably end up hitting pod fade, which we did after about 100 episodes.

I love the name of that podcast, Confessions of a Business owner. I think that's a great title for a podcast.

Sounds like a book or something. Perfect extension. So that's what killed it, then?

Yeah, definitely. Because I started this podcast with all the intent of it was going to do wonders for business, and this was going to be a way for me to communicate what I was interested in and how I saw business, and hopefully help other people going through the challenges that I faced, hence the name of the show, and then bringing on other people to share that stuff. And then natural progression would be that they would maybe hire a VA or join a community or do something with my friend Kim's business. That's what I thought would happen.

Yeah. So you had an idea of the Ascension model from the show, but just didn't totally pan out.

Yeah, definitely. And I'd seen many guys doing it, like James Schremco, a dear friend of both of ours, and I just thought, well, surely I can do that. That's how it would come to be. Now, funnily enough, we actually got zero leads from the podcast.

But this is where the other side of podcasting really opened up to me. We ended up doing a ton of JVs with the guests that came on the PODC. So even though the show itself did terribly, as I said, like, it never got traction and never really grew out from there, the podcast actually ended up being our number one networking tool. And eventually it opened up a whole bunch of deal flow for us. So it kind of worked out in the end from the other side, just never from the actual podcast side.

Yeah, And I think that's a lot of. That's something that most people don't think about around podcasting. When we started our podcast, we actually started it with the intention of this is a systematic way to grow our network.

Right.

Because whenever we have somebody on the show after their episode goes live, we say, hey, do you have any, you know, connections that would be a good fit for the show? So it's sort of a systematic way to network and constantly get to know new people. But then also it's kind of a way for, you know, an hour at a time to get a little bit of consulting on topics that we know we could. We have a little bit to learn in. So, you know, we started with those two intentions in mind. We never started it with any monetization plans. We didn't even really start it with, like, huge growth plans. The main thing, we just wanted to, like, talk to people and then share those conversations. And, you know, I think. I think when people start with that goal in mind and.

The quality shows through of, like, look, we're trying to help ourselves first, but then we're also sharing all of the value that we're getting from these conversations with anybody who wants to listen to it. Then stuff starts to happen. That's been our experience.

At least that is my exact experience. And Matt, you came on my podcast recently and we're talking about podcasting. Of course. Love it. But you dropped some ideas that I've now rolled out in my own show, and I'm like, oh, I feel like I just got like, I feel a bit. How can I put this? Like, you gave so much. Like, I feel like some reciprocity is the word. I think I'm going for.

A little bit. Like, I want to over deliver here and promote hard in return.

Oh, I appreciate that. No, I'm. I'm just a huge nerd. And when we get on topics that I'm passionate about, I just nerd out and can't shut up about them.

Did you should have seen us in front of this. We're at a mastermind last week of all 40 podcasters of this event. We were attending New Media Summit and we were talking about this, like, growth and monetization strategies. And literally, like, we're just like a freaking. We're just vomiting all over the, like, in. Good, good vomit.

We're fire hosing. I like saying fire hosing better than.

But they were just like, oh, my God. And yeah, they're like so many questions. So many questions. And, you know, obviously everyone picks up on something bit by bit, but we all have so much to share with each other. There's so many strategies to grow and monetize these things.

Yeah.

And so much untapped still. I still feel like we're in the very early days. Like, I'm constantly finding new things and new ideas here every day.

Every day. Oh, man. Just today we were doing that.

Oh, yeah. Well, last night, like I said, I was going down this deep rabbit hole. I read probably 30 articles last night about podcast growth strategies just because I want to grow our podcast. Now I'm. I've sort of become obsessive over the numbers I mentioned. We didn't start about with, you know, the numbers in mind. But over time, as I've seen the growth of the show now I'm like, obsessing over numbers. But before we get into, like, podcast tactics, you mentioned that you. You kind of started listening to a whole bunch of podcasts early on and that you were listening to three a day or something like that. What were some of the podcasts that were really big sort of catalysts for you getting excited about podcasts?

Yeah. So Joe Rogan was definitely influential to this day.

I still listen to that almost nightly.

Me too. I felt like with Joe show at this time, like he'd opened up a really different view on the world. And I was learning about topics that I'd always been curious about, but just had no access or even the intent to search. Right. So, like, he'd bring someone on. He still does come in and go, you know, this is a neuroscientist or this is a longevity guy. And it's like that stuff that, you know, just really, really fascinating. So that was one that was hugely influential to me because I was like, wow, I really feel like I'm getting something out of this.

You just feel like a smarter human.

Absolutely. And I think he's. In general, I think he's been great for the population of the world. I think he's educating, particularly a lot of young men.

Agreed. Yeah. And different perspectives, bringing on. That's what. And we've, you know, internally, and sometimes we mention on the show we're like, we see ourselves as the Joe Rogan of marketing or business, even though it's like. But like, yeah, we love to have these widespread conversations that just integrate life and business and all that. And that's pretty. Pretty much what Joe's doing. Not so much business.

Definitely not a very business show at all. But just there was one of the ones and then the second one, James Schremco's Super Fast Business show. So I really enjoyed that James show. I appreciated because he's just like straight to the point. There was no fluff, all about business. And he really spoke at a level of understanding that was great for me at that time. And I still listen to that as well.

Oh, yeah, James is awesome.

And then the next part was like Joe Polish and Dean Jackson. So I love marketing and a few of those shows were really, really relev. And then I used to channel surf hunting for topics and ideas, which was also really fun.

Yeah, Yeah. I think the Joe Polish, the I love marketing one with Joe and I even forgot about that one. But I used to listen to that, like every single episode of that show.

I was going to say that that was probably like five plus years ago they were doing that. Right. Like when they first. Because I felt like they were really going strong for a long time. Long time ago. And yeah, we were. We're both obsessed over that show.

Well, I So I started listening to podcasts around 2010, and I believe I love marketing came out around 2010, 2011, maybe.

It was that old.

Yeah. So, you know, eight or nine years ago, that one. Early on, I was listening to Pat Flynn's podcast a lot too.

But, yeah, those are.

Those are the two that are all the core ones.

Yeah.

Joe Rogan, We've been listening to that forever now.

Yeah, I think. I think Pat Flynn was the one who got me into, like, listening to podcasts originally. I think that was around 2010. He had his show, and I kind of liked what he was doing, and he was the one who. He was the catalyst for my podcast rabbit hole of listening to everybody else's shows.

So I'm curious, Charlie, like, what? So now you've been listening to a bunch of these shows. Your first one kind of pod faded out after 100 ish episodes. What do you do after that point?

Well, I was a little bit defeated, I won't lie. I definitely. I'd had a few wins in business, and I felt like podcasting was like, why did beat me so badly? Why did this? Like, I feel like I should have been able to perform a little bit better here than I did, so withdrew a little bit and took some time away from it. And still listening to a ton of podcasts at this time. Like, my obsession only got bigger. And then behind the scenes, I'd gotten involved with some other businesses, so I'd invested in some companies and was putting some deals together, and things were going really well there, I suppose, towards the end of 2018. And then some big changes came through in paid ads and social media, which led to a point where the marketing really stopped performing in these businesses. So these guys were doing, like, a lot of Facebook ads, webinars, value videos, a lot of email marketing, and results. I don't know if you guys felt the same thing or noticed this, but there was kind of like a really big change towards the end of 2018, and we saw some pretty big performance drops. So necessity is the mother of creation. Sure. So these two businesses I was working with had really strong niches, and I had a strong skillset in the actual tactical side of podcasting of how to put one together. And I looked at it and I said, you know what? It's time to get back in the ring. Just not myself. I was actually going to bring these businesses in and have them host their own shows, and I was going to help guide them. This time, leaning away from where I had gone so wrong, we dug into It. And this is probably about the start of 2019 now where it is. And then within three months, we saw some significant turnaround in these businesses. And then not only that, is by applying some good marketing tactics and paying very close attention to who's doing well in podcasting, these businesses took off. Took off massively. And then not only from that, of course, I was communicating with a lot of people, and then they started to go, hey, can you do that for me? And birthing out of that was my company, Velomedia. So that's now what we do. So we're. I call this, like a podcast media agency where people come to work with us, we work on, not just, like, the editing. I think there's a ton of people out there that can do that really, really well. But we actually work on, like, the show design. So, like, what's the show going to be about? You know, identifying the core market and hot topics, so to speak. We do help with the editing, production. We do a lot of focus on video. But then we're particularly biased in show growth and monetization strategies. I think any business owner who has a podcast, really, let's just be real guys, they want to see leads, they want to see sales, they want to see profit. I want to see their lists grow. So we pay a lot of attention to making sure those elements actually fire, not just getting downloads or subscribers.

That's right.

I love it. So let's. Let's dive into some of these topics here. Actually, let's start with the monetization. What are. What are some of the more creative ways you've seen podcasts monetize their show? I mean, obviously there's sponsorships, which is the most, you know, prevalent monetization strategy for podcasts. But outside of sponsorships, what are some of the other cool things you're seeing people do or you're doing for people?

Well, I know. I know you guys are already going to agree with this one, but sponsorships themselves, I feel like, is probably the least beneficial. So when we look at this, like, the numbers just don't make sense for sponsorships at this point, and I know some people do them, and there might be some outliers having some success with them, and that's completely cool. Keep going that path. But I feel like missing opportunities. But for right now, that's the one that I feel has the most chance of, let's say, creating some bad taste for your audience and for them to create the appearance that maybe you're a bit of a sellout.

Yeah, I also, when it comes to sponsorships on our show, we actually do have sponsors now, but we didn't actually start adding sponsors into our show until about 200 episodes in. So when we added sponsorships, it was at a time where it started to make sense. Sponsors were chasing us up, saying, hey, I'd love to sponsor your show. But until they started coming to us and asking to sponsor our show, we never even considered it.

Well, I mean, I'm very. As I said, I actually tune into your show. I'm a fan of this show. And the sponsor you guys got, I'll use the example is Ahrefs. I feel like that is a fantastic sponsor for you guys. And I'm not saying it's bad at all. Please don't confuse that. I think sponsors can be really done well and tastefully. And that's what you guys have nailed is you're actually offering value to your audience with the tool that you use. So to me, that's probably closer to an affiliate game. Closer. But in general, if you're putting irrelevant ads in your podcast and all of a sudden selling barbecue grills, whatever. Yeah.

Traegers like Joe Rogan.

But it works for Joe rogan. Cause he's 100. He talks about that kind of stuff.

Yeah, But Charlie, I think you nailed it perfectly. Cause we were very hesitant as well to bring in sponsorship folks. And, yeah, Ahrefs was actually the very first one that reached out to us. That was them inbound. So we're like, do we do this? Do we not? We're like, they're actually a perfect fit.

Yeah. Cause we used the tool before they ever offered to sponsor us.

Yeah. And in the ad, them, they gave us talking points, which are great, but they didn't say, like, we had to use their script. So we make it into our own little content session just because we can't help ourselves, but come up with a lesson around that tool. So, yeah, I like that it resonated with you as such, because that was the whole intention.

Absolutely. And I use Ahrefs as well, so I'm a big fan of their tool. So shout out Ahrefs. Doing a great job. Awesome.

Cool. Yeah. And with sponsorships, do you have an approach? Obviously, there's, you know, like the CPM versus flat rate. There's ways to bundle your audiences. Because we do a lot of different types of bundles. Have you, you know, when. When someone has maybe the visibility or the amount of audience that would demand a good amount of sponsorship money, do you have strategies around that? How to Approach it.

Yeah. So this has been my intent. So the first thing I look at is like don't do it on episode one unless you already uber famous.

Yes.

I think really take time to create immense value for your audience and respect your audience really well and focus on that in the beginning. And like ads should not be on your mind at all. Once you get to a more established stage where, like where you guys are right now, you know, sponsorship inquiries are going to happen, things are going to happen from there and you will see some offers and potentially looking at it now, my favorite thing to do, and I hope you guys have done this, is I look for a hybrid, I look for a bit of a flat fee and then I look for an affiliate option. So when you pick sponsors well for your show that are actually going to be useful for your audience, then I really want to do a great job of promoting very similar to what you guys are and make sure that everyone's rewarded on success in the back end. And that also opens up a much higher potential for gain for everyone because the sponsor is going to be happy because they're often able to attribute sales or give you a link where they can say, hey, this, this sponsorship is really worth it for us. So you can create some longevity in your deal. And then the other side of it, if you're a good promoter, if you know where to place links and do a great job with that, you get far more than you would have just from sponsorship.

I like that. Okay. Yeah, no, I think we totally agree and that's pretty much what we do.

Cool.

We're on the right path. Awesome. So other than sponsorships, do you have any go to monetization. Maybe we start with like a newer show. So under, I don't know, call it a thousand downloads or so ish a month.

Yeah, absolutely. So my favorite one, and I think this is the one everyone should be intently looking at is like, how can I be the sponsor of my own show? How can I be my own greatest sponsor? So for a lot of businesses and for a lot of businesses that have podcast is they have a natural progression to take leads and sales into when it's often the reason they are starting a show or their future looking at that. So I really like that as the main thing. And rather than promoting yourself through ads, like making your own ad within a podcast, I'm really big on make high quality content that solves a problem for an audience that creates natural progression into what you do. And when you look at it from that point of view of Being really helpful and then also creating solutions to the problems you're dealing with on your show. That's where you'll see the most of your success and build a great, respectful relationship with your audience.

So what are some examples that you would do to do exactly what you just said?

Yeah, so one of the clients I have, I'll use some examples. Let's use some real case studies because I think it's always very helpful. So one of the shows I have is in the space of buying and selling online businesses. That's what they do. Very similar to, like, actually, I suppose you guys would have heard of Empire Flippa or Flippa, the website Flippers. Like that.

Yeah, we had the chief marketing officer from Empire Flippers on the show, actually.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah. And Flippa as well. Yeah, that's a site we used to use to flip businesses. So totally familiar back in the day.

Good, fun. We'll get to the warrior soon.

Yeah, I know, right?

But anyway, essentially there's a lot of really big challenges when it comes to, let's say, buying an online business. In this show, what we've done is strategically made sure we understand all the main challenges and big problems when it comes to buying a site and then created an episode on each of those challenges or brought in an appropriate guest who can talk and help really understand these things. From a content creation point of view, we're very in line with what we do as a business. I feel like this is often really, really missed. Sometimes podcasters bring on people that like, they're just irrelevant and then the potential for the audience match just isn't there. So that's like your starting point. So you know you're going to create content that's going to be relevant. It's going to help these people solve a problem. From there. What we really love, and this is something I'm a really big fan of, from podcasts, is taking people into tools and frameworks. So we don't just go for the sale often from the podcast. Often that can be building the relationship a little bit too quickly. So from the podcast, we'll definitely maybe create like a website buying tool or a due diligence framework or how to not buy a lemon or some value videos on how to grow a website once you purchase it. So we go podcast, then we take people onto, in general, the email list through tools or frameworks or sometimes even case studies or something of value. And then we're constantly seeding something on the back end, which might be a course or a community or membership so they're the types of monetization strategies I'm a really big fan of because you can come at them from a lot of angles, can create multiple entry points, and then often create a nice recurring revenue business on the back end. So because podcasts are often recurring so you've always got content coming out recurring nature communities I think are really strong way to go about it. And that's probably one of my favorite monetization strategies at the moment.

I like that. That's super. I mean, it's so similar to we don't do the tools so much as a. As our opt in or you know, our freebie on the show, but we'll do our frame our companions. So us taking notes on each of our episodes is always our freebie on this show. And then of course they have the option to join our newsletter and subscription, which is a recurring element like you said. And it's very effective and it's good extension. If you keep it nice and relevant to the topic and make it where it's another value add or a time saver in our case, then it's an easy ask.

Definitely. I think it's nice and easy on everyone. You'll build a strong relationship going with that way. And I love the way you guys do your notes and show notes. One of my good friends just bought your printed version and he loves it. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Benetti is his name.

Chris is like, yeah, he's. He's a love affair with us. That's awesome. He's such a cool dude. He's always posting about on Facebook.

Chris is always Chris on Facebook all the time.

He's cool. He's a great guy.

Yeah. And we've even seen guesting on shows. So folks that are listening that are like, okay, well, I'm not quite ready to go start their own show right now. You can apply this same strategy we're talking about right here to guesting on other people's shows and pairing up a nice tool framework or cheat sheet or whatever around the topic that you're speaking about on that show and then have an offer on the back end offer too. And that works extremely well. We're seeing great results. I don't know, Matt, if you want to.

Yeah. We use a tool called Wicked Reports to track the effectiveness of various marketing strategies. And one of the things we track is every time we go on somebody else's this podcast, we offer up a unique link to that showed and say, hey, go to this URL and we'll, you know, we'll give away some sort of freebie. And then in the back end, in Wicked reports, we can actually see how much traffic every podcast we've been on has sent us and also how much revenue it's ended up generating. And going on other people's podcasts has actually been our top traffic and revenue driver for our. For sales of our products.

I mean, it averages out to about $1,000 per appearance that we go on. They're not all created equal, but that shows the power of using this simple monetization method. You just lined out.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can we go there? Let's nerd out a little bit. I got something here.

Of course. Let's go.

So I mentioned here that.

Essentially doing ads on your show or sponsorship is probably the least valuable way for your show at the moment. It's probably one of the least opportune ways for your show. I'm not saying it's bad. It's just by the numbers. I think that it's probably one of the lowest revenue sources you can create compared to other things like what we just discussed. But that also creates opportunity. So if you know these numbers are low and maybe you're not ready to start your own podcast or maybe you've got a podcast you want to grow, one of the best places to look for ways to grow your podcast and ways to do what you just said is, is to sponsor other shows. Like this is where the opportunity is. So if you want to, let's say, go and hunt around for some shows that are in your niche, reach out and rather than doing this whole thing yourself, sponsor their show and as a part of that deal, be a guest on their show. So be able to do a real episode and promote something on the back end or promote your podcast if you're earlier on as well. Now, I've seen that work incredibly well as a show growth strategy. I've seen it work incredibly well for people that don't have a podcast, that just want to get involved with an industry and have a chance to articulate themselves a bit better, because you get to go deeper with the content here. And then you can create maybe a free book or something like that to promote or promote your own podcast. Very, very strong way to kind of go about that opportunity at the moment.

Yeah, no, that's very smart because a lot of shows will offer, even if it's just a single episode sponsorship, or even if you just ask like, hey, can I sponsor your show but also guest on it? So you're almost just like, you're just all over the place on that show. And then you pair it up with a nice freebie. So you're capturing the leads that are totally interested in what you have.

Yeah, well, Nathan Latke, he's got the show the top and his whole business model. Not his whole business model, but a big piece of his business model on his podcast. The top is he tries to convert every single guest that comes onto his show into a sponsor of the show. He brings on guests that would be ideal sponsors for the show. And that's a big piece of his revenue model for his podcast. So, yeah, I mean, that's super smart. Now, how do you go about finding these opportunities? Are you doing cold outreach? Is there agencies that you use to help make these connections? What would the process look like to find some of these shows that you can sponsor and guest on?

Yeah, so I've been working on this a little bit. I think the sweet spot for this is using something like itunes. I use itunes. I'm a Mac user. But looking for shows that aren't in the top 10, but kind of the bottom of the rankings. And I'm not saying they're the bottom of the category. It's just what is ranked for. I think they rank the top 100 at the moment. But I look for shows that are on the way up because I think the value is probably there. And I also know that people that don't have shows, let's say in the top 10, they're probably opportunities for revenue are a little bit lower. So quite often is they're more open to, hey, come on the show as well. Like, it's easier to negotiate a deal. It's like, can you imagine trying to negotiate coming on the show with Joe Rogan right now?

Good luck.

Yeah, it's like, obviously. And then where they're operating from is that's probably a harder one to bring in these types of things. So I'm kind of looking for, let's say the. If there's 100 episodes, 100 shows, sorry, let's say ranked in itunes. I'm looking to the bottom 50 of a category and then aligning the shows I like. Things that I feel are relevant to my audience and would make a good appearance for me. And then, of course, like just making sure ethical alignment, you know, you agree with what they do. You like what their stuff as well. I think is a really smart way to go about it. And then potentially this would be me personally, I would first look to my network to see if anyone can give me an introduction because I think if I can get an introduction from someone, my chances of this going well are substantially higher. And then apart from that, I would go to some cold outreach. Now, most podcasters are actually pretty good at getting emails or even replying to stuff if you're not going after the high profile shows. And that's where I would start. And then if I got into one podcast, let's say I got one sponsor, undoubtedly they know other podcasters, so that would be kind of my way into, can you give me an introduction to another show? And that's how I'd kind of get into the second and third sponsorship.

So what kind of cost would people be looking at to do that sort of thing?

Yeah, so I've played with a few and I've looked at a few. Like I've done like a straight amount where I've just literally, I think it was about. I think we ended up spending with them about $1,000 or be a guest on the show to do some promo, make some short clips, and then, you know, put an affiliate link and whatnot. That was just a straight out once of. But this is why I look at it as such an opportunistic space, is like this is the wild, wild west at the moment. There's no hard and fast rules. So I think depending on the size of the show and what downloads they go, I think roughly $20 per thousand downloads per month is about the industry average at a moment and a good starting point, but everything's up for negotiation. And potentially you could even look at doing some sort of joint venture with the podcast host as well.

Yeah, and that's how we see it. Yeah, that is the industry standard. Standard is what we've heard.

And.

And it's dropping from what we hear as well. It's dropped a lot already. Yeah, just in the last year or so.

But yeah, it used to be about $30 CPM. And just in the last year the average has dropped to about 20 cpm. So sponsors are paying less and less. And I think that's probably just a, you know, there's just so much more podcasts, there's so much more opportunities and more platforms and sponsors. So that, you know, I almost feel like with sponsorships to kind of go back to some of the points you were making earlier. It's almost kind of a race to the bottom. Like a lot of the sponsors are finding cheaper and cheaper podcasts and other podcasters are probably having to lower their rates, and it's not really a game you want to be in.

Yeah, Well, I think the, one of the things that's the podcasting industry down is the analytics going to be real?

Yep.

The tracking, I mean every podcaster is like just. It's the worst, absolute worst. Especially if you come from paid ads where they'll literally track anything for you.

To like here it's like wild, wild west. It's like archaic. It's like stone age in podcasting.

But that's changing. That's changing really, really fast. So what I think we can expect in the next 12 months, particularly I'll say 18 months, I'll give these guys some time. I know software can be hard, but I'm on them. We look at this and we say that consumption analytics is coming. So we already can see some moves kind of from Apple and then who are you as a podcast host? Omni, where they're getting much, much better and much more in depth. And what we're going to be seeing more of is you won't track downloads, you'll actually track more like a YouTube level tracking where you can see how much are people consuming. And I think as that comes in, I think a lot of podcasts with big downloads and terrible engagement are going to see falls and they're going to see drops in their sponsorship and all kinds of things. And I think a lot of shows that have got a captivated audience where they can see that they're getting huge engagement, the value of that CPM will change dramatically and it won't just be download for download. We'll get a really, really good kind of baseline and understanding and a way of kind of understanding what's a good buy and what's a not so good buy. It's true.

Because not every show is created equal. And that's. Sometimes these smaller shows have a more rabid audience or loyal audience that takes an action based off of the host that directing them somewhere.

Yeah, some of our biggest results of going on podcasts and actually getting a lot of traffic from being on that show. It's not always the biggest, most popular shows we've been on. Oftentimes it's, it's shows that nobody's ever heard of, but they have a rabid small fan base that all goes and ops in and goes into our funnels and it's, it's. Yeah, I mean it's, you don't have.

To start at the top. That's a beautiful thing you can go for. Not even on the charts.

Just let's be honest, download metrics can be, be gamed. Right. So like it's not really saying much with how many downloads you're getting. You could go on Fiverr and people are buying reviews on Fiverr, people are buying downloads on itunes. On Fiverr, people are, you know, paying to get to the tops of the ranks by, you know, paying for cheap labor over in India to go do it for you. So all of that stuff can be gamed. And the better the tracking gets, the better the sponsorship opportunities are going to get. And hopefully once that tracking comes into play and they get more detailed with it, we start to see those CPM rates creep back up and make it more and more valuable to have sponsors on our shows.

Definitely. And I mean, I'm holding out here, but I suspect one of the reasons why Spotify is being spending so much is this is going to be the platform where it's going to be like Facebook ads, but for podcasts. That is my hope.

We're seeing that too. Yeah.

And just as a side, if your show isn't on Spotify, definitely get it on. Missing since March this year. Enormous growth across there. Like, that is the platform that's actually scaling up the most of all the ones I see.

Well, they're really putting in some good effort to. To make, you know, make listening to podcasts more like you're used to listening to music, where you can make playlists and you can.

Discoverability.

Yeah, the discoverability. Like, hey, if you like this podcast, you'd probably like these podcasts and, and things like that. They're making it feel more like a YouTube of audio kind of.

Agree. Agree massively.

Yeah.

So cool. As far as growth strategies go. Let's. Let's stay on this vein a little bit. What are some other things that you've seen working really well to get attention on podcasts?

Great question. This is probably one of my obsessions at the moment. Me too. It's such an addictive thing. Okay, so what I think is really interesting is that if you've got an established brand, so if you're. I'm just going to say, like, if you're Richard Branson, you've already got leverage and you start a podcast and you just go, hey, I've got a podcast, it's going to smash it. Like, it's going to go really, really well. So if you've already got an established brand and you've got assets like email lists, getting your show off the ground isn't as hard as you may think. And I think this is also where we see a lot of really big shows have an unfair advantage because they had that prediction leverage coming in. So those guys, good luck to them. But I want to talk about the other people. So the other people coming into this that maybe don't have those leverage points from here, which is a lot of our clients. So for me, a lot of what I have to deal with and what we look at is like, if someone doesn't have the social media following, doesn't have the email list, doesn't have the affiliates or people that are willing to endorse them, it's like, how do we grow a show quickly for them? Like, how do you actually get some traction initially? And how do you scale up a show within reason? And this is something I've been thinking a lot about and these are the things I think you really kind of my combo I'm playing with at the moment. If you can get a high profile guest, so bringing someone on your show that your industry or niche respects, if you can solve a dominant problem in that episode, and then you apply paid ads to that as well, that's the formula for traction in the early days.

Now that's what's been working really, really well for me. So I've been doing a lot of that. So with our shows, I've been particularly on the new shows, very, very bullish on video as well. So not only just being on audio, but making sure we have a zoom recording of the video so that we can create marketing assets and push paid ads even harder with things like Facebook ads or YouTube ads as well. So I found overwhelmingly for newer shows, the paid ads element, particularly with some video, has been really, really awesome. And the platforms I've been having the most success on have been Facebook and YouTube. So they're the two I've been pushing particularly. So if I was a new show, that's what I'd be leaning into a lot.

Gotcha. So real quickly, let's start with Facebook. What kind of ad strategy are you using to get people over to it? And so one of the things that we all know is it's hard to track how many people come from a traffic source and actually become a subscriber or even become a download. We could kind of track traffic off of Facebook. We could say, okay, look, this is we've sent a hundred clicks over to this thing in the last, you know, two days or whatever. But we don't know if they're actually subscribing. We don't know if they're actually downloading. So, you know, I'm curious, what sort of Facebook ad strategies are you using and how are you gauging the effectiveness of them?

Yeah, so this dives into like the crappy analytics side of podcasting once again. So I hope, like, surely Tim Cook's listening to this.

Please.

He listens to all of our shows.

Obvious.

Yeah.

With podcasting, what I've really paid a lot of attention to is you have to almost be good at macro analytics, not micro analytics. You have to be really good at understanding, looking at the smaller things and being able to take a step back and see is this having an effect on the bigger things. So if you're used to paid ads, traffic, where you can go write the CTR and things like that and see what links go where, you're not going to have that same visual. So what I really like to look at is on a weekly show, I'll look at the weekly snapshot. If it's a fortnightly show, then it's the fortnightly snapshot, and so on. And then monthly stats are also very, very helpful. So from looking at a podcast, analytics, whatever your release strategy is, is powerful stats overall. And then the monthly stats are also really, really interesting to gauge. So whenever I'm trying to measure the success of a strategy, what I want to do is run it ideally for a month or run it in cycle with the releases and then compare that to times that didn't have that happening. So let's say for a show, we'll use your show as the example here. For a month, let's do Facebook ads as the way to bring in new listeners. And then next month we might try some Google. I would never contaminate the pool at the same time while testing because it makes it even harder to understand what's working or not working. So that's an important thing, I think, to pass on because there's been a lot of learnings that have come from that and that's worked really well for me. So then the next part you asked is, how are we actually promoting this on Facebook itself? We'll use Facebook as the example. So for me, this is again why we do video is video ads are killing it on Facebook at the moment. They really are. And there's two styles of ads I really like to test at the moment. So one is full episodes. So we will literally upload a 30 minute video episode of the podcast, put it in Facebook and run that to an audience. And then in the actual links of things, we'll actually take them straight to the framework or the download that is I mentioned earlier. So maybe it's a tool of some kind or an opt in of some kind that's worked reasonably well. Surprisingly well. I didn't expect it to do as well as it would do. I can't believe people are watching full episodes of podcasts on Facebook, but they totally are.

Yeah, I believe it. Some people. And then you have the option obviously with Facebook, you could retarget based off of consumption on Facebook as well.

We'll get to that in a second.

Sorry, I'm jumping on like I felt like I was getting there.

I mentioned. But I tell people that because I think people would be surprised to see how well their show might do if they just put it on Facebook in a full episode. They really, really might be. And like, I'll give you some stats here is like some of our shows are literally getting, let's say over 50% consumption for around a dollar and up to $3. So if you could get someone to consume your episode at that rate, there's a good chance that that person is in line with your show when this is someone you want to engage with. And if you're getting that opt in, you're going to be able to follow up with them on email as well or some remarketing. So really powerful strategy. And then the second one, the kind of the top end of things is something I'm testing a lot of now is using short clips and snippets. So this is where we might cherry pick the best moments of the podcast. About under three minutes, one to three minutes. And then we're actually running them as ads with instead of links to the download this time like bitly links or some sort of tracking link towards actually subscribing to the podcast itself on their app. So they're the comparisons I'm running at the moment. Both have been effective and it's more of finding the right audience and I suppose testing what elements are working there. But they're the two I would lean into for a show and then compare your stats from there.

Gotcha. And how about targeting for these ads? Are these cold audiences? Are you going after specific, specific shows, your own lookalikes?

Yeah. So if a show has some assets, definitely we'll use them. So we might upload a customer list and then create a lookalike. Audience is always a great starting point, but in general we look to trying to find some broad targeting so we don't just target anyone. We do want to put in some factors, but I'm a really big believer in the Facebook algorithm at the moment. I think they know Far more than we do. So I'm kind of happy to put in some broader targeting. So, you know, let's say we're doing your show, for example. I would be happy to put in, like, digital marketer Ryan Dice. Anything in that realm. Or James Schremco stuff. I definitely would be as well. Or Perry Marshall. Any of your guests that you've had on, I'd be happy to chuck that in and then allow Facebook to expand based on consumption. And that will be something where I think I could build up a pretty good audience of people who are consuming content.

I like that.

Gotcha.

That's smart.

And then so back to the point Joe was making about retargeting video views. What are you doing with that kind of stuff?

Yeah. So this has probably been one of our biggest wins of the year. So going back way earlier into the stories I mentioned, a lot of the guys we were working with had webinars or were doing other things already. So what we decided to do is what would happen if we only ran remarketing ads to people that, say, have consumed, let's say, 20 minutes of content. Like, what would the results be if only the people who watched my webinar or got onto my list had already spent 20 minutes with me? And this is the part that's been kind of mind blowing is looking at the quality of the lists we've been able to create or the quality of people coming onto webinars or people that are just ready to buy.

So for us, like, the big jump in success has been that element. There's so our cold traffic strategy or our broader traffic strategies, like get people to consume the podcast, like, have that as the entry point, let people filter out. So if they're not into the podcast, that's cool, no biggie, move on. But if they are and they have selecting at that point to use remarketing to take them into deeper things, and we've seen conversion rates just go through the roof. Like, pages that were converting it, let's say 15 or 20%, are now sitting at 60 and 70%. Wow. And that's made a massive difference. That has justified the ad spend on the podcast up front there.

So cool. I mean, it makes perfect sense because with more consumption, the more trust and, you know, the more interest you have of them, they're just going to take the next action if you present it with them or to them.

Yeah, absolutely. And just lean into the point earlier about tracking. So from an analytics perspective, now I'm kind of sitting back and I'm like, I've got my Facebook stats, I've got my YouTube stats, I've got my audio stats that I'm getting from Omni and I'm bringing these together and being more macro. I'm not trying to just, let's say, judge the success of my show just based on how many downloads do we get, how many subscribers on itunes. It's becoming more omnipresence and multi channel.

Yeah, I love that. You probably get comments from people all the time going, man, I see you everywhere. Because once somebody sees you once, then they literally do start to see you everywhere.

Right.

So to that one person, you're everywhere. You're not necessarily everywhere to everyone, but to the right people, you're everywhere.

Absolutely. And I want to throw one more thing in here from remarketing. If someone spent 15 minutes listening to a podcast with you, rather than just remarketing solely to opt ins and purchase pages and things like that, we'll actually build that audience up and then send them the next episode of the podcast next week.

Sure, why not? I mean, they're interested.

We'Ll deepening that again. So maybe one episode wasn't enough. Like maybe they need another episode and you're just creating this massive amount of one, it's building up even more quality in your remarketing list. But two, if someone consumes that level of content from you, bringing them to the next episode to the show becomes even easier.

Yeah.

Now, do you see this strategy working? If you are an audio only podcast, you know, using things like, you know, repurpose IO which converts it into a video waveform kind of thing, or what's the other one? Headliner.

Headliner. You can manually do that?

Yeah. So I'm curious if you see it working as well for audio only shows or would you recommend pretty much every podcaster go straight for video again so.

It comes back to your leverage beforehand? So if you've got a great list or you've already got an audience or you're already well known, you can get away with audio only. I'll say that now you can be a little bit lazier than we have hope, Matt.

But if you're, if you're a new show or you're someone that is looking to, I suppose, grow a show, then video is just an unfair advantage at the moment because it still isn't big. So if you're recording interviews, like, you know, start using Zoom or something comparable and recording the video, even if you're not ready to publish it, have the assets building. If you're starting from scratch today. My opinion, and I'll say opinion, is definitely do video because it opens up so much more. And even if you're an established show and you're looking to access new people, like, I don't think people fully understand how many are listening to full episodes of podcasts on YouTube and Facebook now. Like, it's, it's actually a thing. Like I was astounded because I'm an audio guy, but it's definitely something that I feel is such an event advantage when it comes to marketing your show that you will have over other shows in your niche. Like, it's a great way to stand out and gain market access much more easily.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm actually always surprised when I log into our YouTube and see how many people are listening to our podcasts on YouTube. I mean, we don't even have videos. It's just a static image, but it's got the audio that plays over it with a little kind of like wave thing that goes. And I'm always shocked when I see how many people are in there listening to the shows on YouTube.

I mean, there's more and more folks saying they're listening to on show notes pages just in the browser, you know, so like not the apps and all that stuff, but in something that you can actually control and obviously put a pixel on your pages and whatnot as well. Yeah.

So other than the Facebook and YouTube ads and going and guesting on other people's shows, are there any other like kind of cool little things you've seen that have worked out for growth? Any other experiments or growth hacks or anything like that that you've tested that you were pretty surprised by?

I'll go through a few here. This one's going to sound really obvious. This is actually by a guest on the podcast recently. And I can't believe this works, but it totally does. He said a really big mistake a lot of shows make is like their thumbnail for their show isn't actually readable on a phone. And I was like, oh, they put off an image of themselves and then some really thin text and it might look like a sensational banner, but it's not really optimized to look good in any apps. And it wouldn't be readable if you actually open up, let's say the itunes app on your phone or Google podcasts or Spotify or whatever it is. So one of the things we actually changed recently is actually just a thumbnail that is more text based and a bold, thick, contrasting text and funnily enough, that actually works. So I think, like some little itunes optimization, or I shouldn't say itunes, it's really podcast optimization. Things like that can be really useful because if someone's browsing for a new show, then that can definitely make a difference because they can actually read the thumbnail. They can understand what's in the thumbnail itself.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, no, that's pretty good because there's a lot of people just trying to discover you in all these different platforms out there, and there's a million of these podcast platforms, so might as well optimize the show to make it super easy.

So some other ones on the audio side is titles make a really big difference. I think it's worth spending time optimizing your titles to either ask a question or solve a problem or have something that sits that would ring true to your audience and respect your audience. I think title optimization definitely makes a difference. And then had another one there. One other one. I suppose this is more in the video camp again, but short snippets of your podcast on your LinkedIn profile. So if you're in a B2B show, that's something we've been experimenting with. Well, and that's been going reasonable also, so those ones really stand out for me.

Yeah, just LinkedIn in general has come up on our show a lot lately. A lot of people have been talking about getting results with LinkedIn, which is interesting because for years and years and years, nobody ever really talked about LinkedIn that much. It was kind of like that other social media network where you just kind of accept everybody but don't pay attention to it. But now it's like, now like the last 10 episodes we've done in a row. I feel like LinkedIn has come up as a. As a topic of conversation. So they must be making some pretty big improvements with their algorithms and. And, you know, getting stuff discovered on LinkedIn, because that's definitely a hot topic right now.

Yeah, that's. And it can be compared to. And this is what we've heard, because having enough experts on this show that are all from different walks of life, if we're hearing similar things over and over, we're like, oh, wait, there's something there. But it's like Atkin 2 or it's similar to how Facebook was a few years ago with videos when they first came out. So your video strategy could probably work really well there too.

Yeah, it sounds like right now their algorithms are really leaning into video. And if you post videos on LinkedIn they're gonna get give you a little extra love right now.

Well that statement just seems to be true across the board. So every platform I'm led to believe. I don't know if this is true, but this is what I've heard. This is almost like a warrior forum rumor right here but when we look at it is that every feed has an algorithm on all the platforms and they're trying to balance an amount of video, photos and text obviously biased in certain ratios and video, as much as there's a lot of it, it still isn't the dominant thing. So I feel like if you are doing videos you are getting slightly more from the organic side of things. Particularly if you're using that on these platforms and you lean into that at the moment.

Yep, I agree. Now how about future strategies like growth strategies? Are there things that you're looking at that are like oh that's in development or that's something I've heard. Like an example with Google starting to index a lot more podcast related things, are you trying to set up the stages for the future months to come or years to come?

Yeah, definitely. Because this is a developing industry and I think people need to understand. I was reading this yesterday that npr, one of the major players in radio and podcasting in 2020 their advertising revenue will be bigger in podcasts than it will be on radio. That happened and I think that there's a long way to run with this and when you start hearing things like that, the money and investment into this industry will become huge as it becomes a requirement for advertisers. So this is something we can look at and like Facebook has already demonstrated an amazing model and Google that if you make an environment suitable for advertisers like money will flow and industries will boom. That's just what we've seen from there. So the thing I'm really interested in at the moment is who's going to crack the audio advertising space. Well that's what I think is going to become particularly interesting. So for me it could be Google. They're already looking incredibly strong in this space because they do create Android. So they access their podcast app has been massively improved and is I'm actually testing it and using it at the moment because I want to see how this indexing comes down. So that's one to pay attention to and then Spotify as well. So I think if you're going to be watching where are the future growth strategies going to come from? My hope or bet is that it's going to come out of Spotify or Google. I think it'll be either through a paid ads platform or some form of indexing that makes discoverability better. So they're the ones I would hope for. Because it still feels very clunky to advertise audio shows unless you're doing sponsorships. And I would love to see that developed more. So that's kind of my pick. I'm leaning into.

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think the first platform that has, you know, Facebook and Google like targeting for podcasts is going to just crush it. There's another up and coming company that we haven't played with yet, but we're looking at playing with, called NIT Audio, K N I T Audio. And they're trying to be an ads platform for podcasts that does dynamic insertions on very, very large podcasts. So we're talking podcasts that get, you know, 100,000 downloads an episode over millions of downloads a month. Small podcasters or small companies could go and advertise on these massive podcasts by buying small chunks. Because now, now that dynamic retarget or not dynamic insertion, dynamic ad insertion is, is a thing and it's kind of becoming more and more of a popular thing. You can buy small chunks of listens on bigger shows, right? So they can actually start to segment, you know, rotate out sponsors on larger shows. So it's not like in the future one show isn't going to have a single sponsor, but based on who's listening and the time they're listening, and any other demographic that's collected through that podcast app, they're going to be able to figure out how to put the exact right ads in front of listeners. And I think NIT Audio is trying to be that platform, but I think, you know, a company like Spotify is going to have the money and the resources to get it out there quicker. So I could see a company like NIT Audio actually being an acquisition play by Spotify in the near future here, but that's just speculation. But anyway, yeah, there was really, really cool stuff happening in that world that's really exciting that we can all kind of future pace and gear ourselves up for the future with.

I've got one in there that I think is slightly relevant. I have a friend who does live events and he's a podcast, so he can be traveling around the world and have an event in a city. And one of the things that's just opened up for him and his show is he can actually dynamically insert ads based on geography. So I can See this becoming huge as well. So that. Let's say he's traveling to, I don't know, let's pick a city. Let's say Paris. He could have an ad for people that just are in Paris listening to his show and then have that feed. More localized marketing as well. So I think that's going to become bigger and bigger in time.

Geotargeting ads and podcasts. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I could see all that stuff. See, that's the thing this stuff is. It's kind of all blend. All the digital marketing strategies we're used to using, especially the last 10 years or so, are going to start blending with podcasting. And like you said, Charlie, it's happening quickly. And every single day there's a new app or tool or strategy or something out there. We're reading POD News every day, the newsletter. So it's like, yeah, if you keep your finger on the poll, so you can kind of figure out where the movers are, you know, who's the one to kind of attach to and prep for.

Yeah, and I just love that we're all kind of right in the middle of this growing industry. You know, I have this. This thing that I want people like 10 years from now to look back at podcasting 10 years ago and see, you know, see our little circle of friends and podcasters as part of the pioneering group with some of these new technologies.

Do you want to statue made of your.

I do. I want a statue made of myself and I want to put it. The national podcasting headquarters on top of a mountain.

There it goes. This big microphone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

We're in the prime position to make a dent in this industry. In all honesty, like, with the timing of your show and how the industry is developing, like, you guys already are some of the leaders in this space, so thank you.

I appreciate that. I mean, I think we're all like if. If we just stay the course and consistent consistency is a huge piece for everyone listening. It doesn't matter what your focus is as a podcast or even just guesting. You can experience a lot of this trend just by going on other people's shows. And then you can do the marketing behind your episode with a lot of what we're talking about and then not only grow that show, but grow your own brand in conjunction.

Yeah, I mean, what we're talking about on this episode here is just barely scratching the surface. We talked about the tip of the iceberg stuff that, that, you know, we're all experimenting with and what's in the pipeline and what people are talking about, like this is just the very, very tippy top of the iceberg. There's so much stuff that's in the works.

Before we start to wrap up, I actually, I had one question that I wanted to ask you. What, what is your tool stack? What is. What are the software tools, the automation tools? What are the various things that you use to. To make sure everything's kind of systematized and running like clockwork in your business?

Great question. That's actually my most common question. People love the gear and tech here. They really do.

So I'll go through quickly and we can expand on anything you would like from here. So from equipment wise, I'm a big fan of like first off road. So I use a road microphone, the podmic, and I use the Rodecaster Pro as an audio interface.

That is the exact setup that we're going to have probably in a couple weeks from now.

Yeah, yeah. That's on our radar.

It's been sensational. I've really enjoyed it. It's. I don't think you can go wrong. I've really, really enjoyed that so far. Huge fan of what they do from a recording point of view. For local recording and recording Zoom, I use Reaper as the. It's called a daw. So this is what actually captures audio files locally or from Zoom calls from me. So I really like that just for the controls and the multi tracking. So when I say multi tracking is like each person has their own audio file.

It's free for about 90 days if you want to try it. And then I think a license is about $100. So I think it's sensational. I've really enjoyed that. My editor loves that because he's been able to do a lot of magic with editing behind the scenes as well. So recording tool for video, I use Zoom. So I'm a really big fan of Zoom. I think they've done a great job with particularly the video quality. So I use that with a Logitech Brio webcam, which is, I think, about the best webcam you can get. It's about 200 bucks. So that covers my video stack from there. So from a recording point of view, that's what I'm using personally. That's what I would recommend for anyone who's getting into it. It's not hugely expensive. You can definitely spend more and there's certainly some cheaper ones. But I think at value, that is the best on the market at the moment, in my opinion.

Sure.

And that entire Stack that you just mentioned is all like under a thousand.

Bucks for all of it that's less than a grand. And you're getting a total tech stack that you can produce audio, video, all that stuff. Like, top notch.

Yeah, because the Rodecaster Pro, I mean, in US dollars, right? In US dollars, it's like 600 bucks for a Rodecaster Pro for the road. The podcast mic, it's like, what, maybe 100 bucks, maybe 200. I'm not. I'm not sure. Somewhere between 100 and 200 bucks for.

The mic, and that's 200.

200 for the camera. So you're at like 900 bucks. Ish. All in.

It's pretty amazing because most people feel like we go to these. These podcast shows, you know, the trade shows or the conferences, and there's. There's people blowing thousands and thousands of dollars just on a microphone and, like a couple things, and it's like, hasn't even started their show yet. And like, no, don't do all that.

Save it for advertising, please.

I actually have a Heil PR 40 mic in my office too, which I think is like a $400 microphone. And we don't even use that. We use. Joe and I each use $100 mic each.

SM58 the Sures.

Yeah, it's. But it's astounding what these companies are now doing. Like, the cost of entry is just so much lower than it used to be. Like, you can get a really, really great setup for under $1,000. You really can.

Okay, so into the next part. I also do have sound treatment in my room. So the room I'm in at the moment, I have sound panels on the walls. I think they're a phenomenal investment as long as you buy the right ones. There are some cheap, crappy ones out there that will just, I suppose, look professional and do nothing. Probably good for video. So much audio quality. I have some of that, and then I also have a few lights in the room. But all up maybe 200 bucks spent on sound panels, which I actually got off ebay, of all places. There was a guy making them not far from me. So I think that's a really good investment from just making sure that your equipment sounds great as well. When it comes to hosting of shows, I'm a really big fan of Omny. It's called Omny. The reason is I just enjoy their analytics platform. I think it's probably one of the better ones. I've also. I like Libsyn as well. I think Libsyn is Okay. Both will do the job well. I think there's probably just some personal preference that sits within that. So hosting that, that is my go to. That's what I think are the best ones in my opinion. Again, from the editing side of things. So I'm very fortunate that, like, from day one, with my existing resource of an outsourcing company, I was able to kind of cherry pick great talent. And I've got a great eye for talent in the Philippines as well, just with years of experience. So I've had a team right out of the gate. So I've got a team of growing fast here. We've got 12 now just on the podcast team.

Wow.

And sitting within that, I've got an editor, a designer, and that's enabled me to have a really good quality audio. I think a mistake you can make though here is like, you know, of course, if you're starting out like, and it's the difference between doing a podcast and not just get it up and get it done straight with reasonable equipment, that's okay. But I've certainly found that when you're recording zoom interviews or when you're recording online with any of these tools, like, my editor is often able to kind of weave some magic and improve the quality of that quite substantially. So he uses like filters and mastering techniques, and we've got some plugins and stuff. I'm not. Obviously you can tell I couldn't edit a podcast very well at all. But he does a great job. That's good.

That's preferable.

Yeah. But even then, there's some fantastic talent on even things like Fiverr if you needed to as well. So I think there's some editing side of things that could work really well there. So that's what I would probably lean into as an overall setup from Tools.

I think that's a solid setup and thanks for sharing that. Very specific. And a lot of things that we haven't even heard about.

I like that you said that you use the Rodecaster Pro, because I think we've done about four or five other interviews with other podcasters who just swear by the Rodecaster Pro. And we keep on saying we're going to get one, we're going to get one, we're going to get one. And I think you mentioning it now will probably be the final straw. We may even order one after this recording is over.

Why not? Why not? Awesome. Charlie, man. Is there anything. Well, let's talk a little bit about what you have where folks can go after listening to this episode and explore More of what you have to offer.

Awesome. So, I mean, you know, Shameless plug to my own podcast? Of course not.

Shameless. We asked you to plug it.

Well, then, intentional plug.

Prideful.

Prideful, yeah. So podcast wise, I have a podcast called the Business of Podcasting, which is all about basically what we've discussed today. It's all about how to grow a show, how to create a show, how to monetize a show, how to turn listeners into subscribers. Like the business side of actually having a show and making it a viable option. Now, I kind of weave some things in here where, like episode one is actually with Matt, and I released that last week, knowing that I was coming on here so that guys could come and check out the conversation we had about show growth from there. So if people want to learn more about what I do, the podcast is a great starting point. So it's the business of podcasting. It's on all the apps. You'll be able to find it nice and easy. Then my company is Vella Media, and that is a podcast media company where people can come and become a client. And then we'll help them build their show and create, hopefully, an amazing business growth engine that will accompany what they do and, yeah, create a nice, successful podcast in the making. Awesome.

Love it.

Yeah, I think that's wonderful, man. And we'll link everything in the show notes, of course. And actually, what's a great book that you just find yourself referring to often? Maybe recommending to some of your friends, your business associates, your podcast clients, Anything that's been super impactful.

Great question. There's a book I've gone back to so many times. Probably one, it might have been recommended, but I doubt it. But it's by a guy called Keith Cunningham, and it's called the Road Less Stupid.

I don't think I've heard of that one.

I heard about it at a Mastermind recently. Travis Houston mentioned that book as something to check out, but I have not read it and I don't own it.

Oh, that's the book. See, I love it when books pop up just within like, a week of each other or two, and you're like, okay, cool.

That's usually a sign we should pay.

Attention to that one. Exactly. The Road Less Stupid. Okay, what do you love about that book, Charlie?

So Keith is a phenomenal writer, but I tell you what, he's got a great Texas accent. So the audiobook is amazing. It's really amazing.

Travis said the same thing. He said, listen to the audiobook.

Perfect.

So I really appreciate the audio quality of it because he's put so much into it and the way he says things and brings his tone to it, it's a really enjoyable audiobook. I would preface that as well, but Keith's book, the Road Less Stupid is like he's had a phenomenal journey and what he's done is broken down a lot of really important life lessons and then also introduced ways of solving things that I think are unique, especially in Internet marketing. And I don't want to name and shame or put this out there, but often I feel like it's just the same recycled content over and over and over, just with a new frame where this is a really good standout and I think a great business perspective. So really enjoyed it and I think it will be very useful to anyone who has a business. Awesome.

Thank you for sharing. Cool.

Well, the website is Valormedia.com and the podcast is the business of podcasting. So go check those out.

Go check out episode one.

Episode one is my favorite episode. Everybody needs to listen to that one.

Totally not selfish at all. Not at all. All right, Charlie, thanks for so much for just dropping all this knowledge. I feel like we will need to stay in touch and maybe we'll do some more guesting on each other's shows as we learn more and as time goes on with podcasting.

Absolutely.

Awesome. Have a good one, man.

Good talking to you.

Go eat some breakfast now.

Thanks guys.

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