Podcast Pros Shares Secrets to Growing Your Show!

Here.

Are you a podcasting entrepreneur struggling to grow your audience. You're feeling stalled, just kind of like, eh, I don't know what to do anymore. I've been doing this a while. Or maybe you want to start a show and you want the blueprint to grow the audience, the right audience, but also turn that into revenue for your business. You want to do it regularly, reliably, for every episode you put out. A lot of us struggle with this. I've been there, and it's okay. You can reinvent yourself and there's a blueprint for it. This is exactly why I brought successful podcaster and podcast coach Kevin Schmidlin to the podcast. This guy's gonna lay it all out. He's done it for hundreds of other clients to amass downloads quickly in revenue to tie it to your business. There's a blueprint for all this stuff. I've shared a lot of what works for me. Kevin approaches it similarly, but differently. And that's what's really cool. That's why I brought him in, to get different perspectives to help you out. So it's going to support you in your podcasting, your YouTube endeavors, even podcast guesting endeavors. Enjoy. Let's get into it.

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It is HubSpot. So visit HubSpot.com to get started today. So, Kevin, it's great to have you here, man. I mean, you and I and another gentleman who's been on the podcast recently, Luis Diaz, we've been doing like these mastermind things. So it's cool to finally have you on the show because we share kind of the latest and greatest of what we've been working on with each other. Yeah, man, I appreciate you.

Yeah, thanks for having me here. I'm excited to pull back the curtain a little bit.

Yeah, man. And that's why I hope we do. I know if you did not listen to the Luis Diaz episode, that's a good follow up after Kevin's here because we're all speaking kind of the same intention, which is. And myself included, you hear it a lot on my show is, you know, using podcasting as A tool to not only connect, but to grow your business, whatever that looks like, with intention. So. And Kevin's the man with Grow the show and your whole brand behind that, you know, your own podcast. And so I'm curious, Kevin, though, like, I want to walk. I want to walk back a little bit and be like, all right, so what was the point? Because you transformed, basically, podcasting as a side hustle, from what I understand, and then you created a thriving business from. From that show and obviously had some ups and downs. I want to get into that. But pretty quickly, it sounds like got to over 100,000 downloads, hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, maybe more. You can totally correct me on these numbers. But, yeah, what was like, was there a pivotal moment when you realized podcasting is the thing, like, the mechanism, the most powerful tool to grow my business?

It took me a while to get to that point. So, like, my background is basically, I was a software developer at a big health insurance company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was not super passionate about healthcare or software, but, you know, I did okay, and it was a cushy job, but I am super passionate about my hometown of Philadelphia. So, you know, I was like, what, 26 years old? I was like, I'm gonna launch a podcast. This was 2018. I was, like, listening to Tim Ferriss a bunch. And so I launched a podcast telling the stories of successful Philadelphians. The show did fairly well. They did, like, I got, like, 200 downloads on day one, which is, like, really good for a new podcast. And I had no audience, so, like, I did pretty well. And. But I was like, okay, this is it. You can take this job and shove it. I'm gonna be. I was super nice, but basically I gave notice, left my job, like, a couple weeks after launching the podcast, and I was like, I'm gonna go all in on this thing. So I had a lot of fun that summer, just, like, running around the city interviewing cool people. This podcasting itself was new. But then really quickly, I ran into a problem, which was I had no idea how to grow the show regularly, and I had no idea how to make any money. So fast forward, like, nine months. I'm out of savings. I have no job. The podcast is not really growing. It's not making any money. I kind of had this inflection point where I had my phone out with my old jobs phone phone number up. I was about to call him and ask for my job back, and I was like, you know what? I've made such a big stink about to everyone in My life, that I'm an entrepreneur. I'm this podcaster that I'm going to like put the show on pause and just like take a little time. Like I kind of borrowed a little money. I'm like, let me just buy a little bit of extra time and see if I can learn how this actually works. So I did that. I spent a few weeks, I took a bunch of courses, I listened to every single podcast on the top 100 charts to hear like, what they were doing, how were they growing, how are they monetized? And then after a couple weeks, I saw that, oh, there's a strategy for how to grow a podcast and there is a strategy for how to monetize it. So I implemented what I learned. A year after that, the show had generated over a hundred thousand downloads, which is a lot for a show about a city, right? Very niche show. And it had generated over 6 figures in revenue for that year. About 120k for that year. So, you know, at that point I was like living large. Like, I was just doing the podcast. I was like spending 20 hours a week on it, making six figures kind of was living the life. Then Covid happened. Everything shut down. My podcast had to go on hold because all of my guests canceled their interviews. Cause they had to like figure out what was going on.

So was everything in person at the time that you were doing?

It was, it was totally an in person show. Gotcha. And yeah, I like had pride in the fact that it was in person. And actually there weren't like, there weren't a lot of remote tools. I think zencastr was around then, but like, wasn't that great. So like there weren't that many remote options. So the show went on hold. And then over Covid, like a couple months in, I just found myself every week talking with other podcasters who were reaching out and saying, hey, like, how did you do this? How did you grow the show? How did you monetize? And after like the 40th conversation where I was kind of teaching the same things over and over again, I was like, well, damn, there might be an opportunity here. There's clearly a need.

So.

So that's when I launched Grow the Show. I launched a coaching program. I did not launch the Grow the Show podcast at that point. I launched a coaching program and I spent six months trying to sell this coaching program to people and just having the door slammed in my face. Like, I think I got three people. Six months was on like a hundred sales calls and it just, it just was it was horrible. Like, I was like, man, how do you. How the heck do you do this? Then the one night I was super frustrated thinking about giving up. I was talking with my partner, Emily, and she was like, why don't you launch a podcast again without podcasting? I was like, huh, Brilliant. So I launched the Grow the Show podcast in October of 2020, and that's where the inflection point happened. Then I started getting 5, 10, 20 new clients a month. And what I learned there is how powerful a podcast is to grow a business. And that's. And I haven't looked back since. So it took me a while to learn, oh, this is a great way to grow a business. Because I was actually a podcaster first and then a business owner. But, you know, through that sort of path is when I discovered, wow, this is extremely powerful for anybody who owns a business.

I love it, man. And that's where I can. I can relate in a lot in the sense that I started with content first before the business side, especially coaching side. I mean, let's be honest, like, credibility. Good thing you did that, because some people just start coaching something they don't totally understand. Not good, you know, obviously, but, like, in something. I just picked up what you just said there was. So Grow the Show. You already had that, or, you know, you had the community, obviously had the Philly podcast before that, but you named the show Grow the Show. And so I'm curious of your take on this if that is because it's the end result for one. Like, I love the fact that you said Grow the Show, you know, or at least it's the action to get there. But, like, you can frame, like, okay, here's what I'm going to get out of this. Out of the business, but also the show. Like, do you think that's a big factor for. For building a podcast as a central way to get, like, direct tie into a business?

Yeah. So it depends. Like, if your business is named after an outcome or an identity, then, hell yeah. Like, it's like, it's been really, really beneficial that my business is called Grow the Show, and also the podcast is called Grow the Show. It's. It's really, you know, it's great. Where I see actually most business owners run into trouble is when they name their podcast after their business, but their business doesn't. Like, the name of their business is not a transformation or an identity or an ideal or something like that. It's like people don't really know what the name of the business means. So you know, it'll be like the. I'm trying to think of an example, but it's just like the, you know, the Schmidlin Bookkeeping podcast. It's like, wow, I don't really know. Right. So it's like, yeah, if your business is called something that is a transformation, then hell yeah, name the. Name the show after your business. But ideally, a podcast name conveys a transformation or an ideal or an identity.

Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, because that is a common question I've heard too, is like, you know, for one, should I have a podcast for my business? Probably, maybe, Depends. But yeah, the naming side usually comes up after. So that's kind of what I wanted to ask.

And one thing I'll add is that a lot of times business owners will be like, well, I want the podcast to expand my brand. And so I want to name the podcast after my brand. And I'm like, that's. It's going to do that, but only if you don't name the podcast after your brand. Like, you need to name the podcast what the show is about, and then you can say, presented by Schmidtland Bookkeeping. But like, that's what's actually going to grow your brand.

Kind of like a self sponsorship in a way.

That's where.

And it's a perfect tie in. And all of us can do that. And that first 200 episodes, listeners or downloads could be your most ideal avatar, you know, and boom, your business is right there, 100%. So when it comes to even thinking about a show, so I'm just going to say, you know, the person watching, listening right now, maybe they don't have a podcast or thinking about a podcast. There's a lot of questions, of course. So what do you think the first step is for someone to decide if this is something for them? You know, as a business owner already.

Yeah.

Are there some common first steps that you would recommend folks to take?

The number one thing is to get what I call a clear, unique premise. C U p, Clear, unique premise. What I see a lot of business owners do is they're like, I'm going to start a podcast. And again, they call it the Schmidland Bookkeeping Podcast. And it's just like, oh, what's a podcast interview? I'm going to interview successful entrepreneurs. Right. So it's like, oh my God, there's so many of those. The question is why? And so any business owner, and by the way, every business owner that I work with who already has launched their podcast, we usually rebrand it when we start working together because they don't have a clear and unique podcast premise. And so the two questions that you want to answer when you're starting a podcast is, number one, who is this show for specifically? Everybody's heard that, you know, you got to know your target audience. You got to know your target audience. Like, you got to be specific behind that. And the one distinction there is you don't necessarily need to niche down. You don't need to lower the amount of people that can. That it's, you know, the show is for. It's just specifically like, what psychographic are the people in that you're looking to reach? Not necessarily demographic, right? Like, what is it that they want? What problem do they have? So that's number one, who is the show for? And then number two, which is the kicker, the one that most business owners really, I'll ask this question, they're like, wow, I haven't really thought of that. It's like, that's what you need to do is think of this, what is the show going to do for its listeners? What most business owners do is they'll be like, you're listening to the Schmidlin Bookkeeping podcast where I interview successful bookkeepers and I share what I know, right? They make it kind of about themselves and they make it about like what they're going to do on the show. Instead you want to say, what is this show going to do for its listeners? Right? If you listen to this podcast, you are going to have pristine books and you're going to be able to make amazing decisions based on your business finances. Right? Same podcast, way more attractive. Because listeners are like, ah, I want that. I'm going to listen to this podcast.

What's in it for me? Kind of feeling, bingo, right?

And that's the question is, who is the show for and what is the show going to do for them specifically, right? So I don't say my podcast grow the show is me interviewing successful podcasters. I say grow the show is the podcast that's going to grow your podcast. Right? And then you're like, ah, yes, I shall listen to that.

Yeah. I mean, that's where, you know, this is my home. This is my. This is where I'm going to go and get my truth about podcasting as it relates to this. Because.

Right.

Yeah. It stops this searching for more where it's a clear, defined, not even hook. It's a promise. It's a. It's the premise of the show overall. And as a podcaster, let's be honest. It makes our lives easier as well, because now.

Yeah.

Solo episodes, if you're doing those, you know how to map them out. You already. You can just start, you know, probably list 20, 30 shows that you can record and then same with the guests, like, you know who you're going to invite in there.

It's the one question that eliminates a thousand other questions.

Bingo.

What is my show going to do for its listeners?

I love it. Yeah. And back to, you know, the first one, which is essentially your avatar. I call it the TLA Target Listener Avatar. Yeah, same thing. Like, I do wrap a little demographics in there, but honestly, it's the tiniest amount. That's almost like, totally. Totally. But the psychographics, like you said, that's what it's all about. Like, what are the pains, the now, the future pains, the. The anxiety, the. Where are they hanging out? Like, who are they following already? So you can kind of get into their mind a little bit. Yeah. Well, it makes them feel great. So that's. It all comes out and it feels like boring and like, tedious work. But, I mean, if you kind of hear it, if you. If you're listening like you did, you went down the top 100 podcasts in your space. Well, you get a sense of what's working and what's not.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Do the work. So when it comes to that, let's say I think it's a perfect. A perfect first step because there's no need to get into the nitty gritty of starting a show at this phase. It's like, if you can define that. And I know another common question is, like, oh, there's all these other podcasts out there. I'm too late. You know, what would you say to that? Both audio and YouTube, because now we're dealing with both.

Yeah. So when I launched my podcast in 2018, people said, don't you think it's a little late to launch a podcast? Right. So, like, it's probably the same thing now. The other thing that I'll say is that, like, there are actually, in 2022, there were fewer new podcasts launched than there were in 2018. So podcasting kind of had this bell curve where 2020 and 2021, there were tons of new podcasts launched, and that was a combination of, number one, Covid, everybody was at home, and you can podcast from home. But number two, also, podcasting really didn't become something that everybody knows about. Like, it. The Apple podcasts app was introduced in, like, I think, like, 2015 or 2016 or something like that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And so anything takes five years. Any, like, marketing tactic takes five years for everybody to find out about it. So, like, 2020 and 2020, the last of all the Americans discovered podcasting, and, like, half of them decided to start one. They, like, you know, created an anchor feed of themselves, just, like, talking with their friends, and then it went away. But now podcasting is more mature. There is high competition, but it is far less saturated than people think. And again, it's. When you look at the number of active podcasts, it's a totally different story because Everybody says there's 4 million podcasts. Don't you think it's a little late? But if you look, I recently tweeted at the founder of Rifonic, which is a podcast database software.

Love that.

And I said, yeah, I said, hey, James, can you, like, go and go do some database magic and tell me how many podcasts published a new episode within the last 20 days? Or, sorry, 90 days. And he responded like, five minutes. And he was like, Refonic is showing 300,000. So while, yes, there are 4 million podcasts available right now, roughly 4 million of them are not publishing anymore, only about 300,000 podcasts are actually publishing. So there's far less competition than you think, and it is far less saturated than you think.

I just did some quick searching. I love Perplexity AI just for quick AI searching. And, yeah, the number it came up with, it was about 400,000. This is other. Not from Refonic, but again, Refonic is awesome.

It's a great tool.

And it's all. It's tracking Apple podcasts. And what it's saying is, like, that represents only about 17. It's like 15, 17% of all of the podcasts, you know, so obviously do the math on that. But then you start to see, like, wow, yeah, it's 80, 20 rule at effect again, 100%.

Yeah.

If you know your target, your listener, your buyer, really. Because ultimately, let's think in game, right? It's not just about keeping them on the podcast. That's a great connector. It's like the glue is how I see it. But we're thinking, what. How can we take them on a journey, right? Like, who are the people I actually want to do business with, not just one time, but for a lifetime? And. And then you start. You're like, oh, well, I actually don't have a lot of competition because I know what the hell they want and who I am. I could be true to me and them. Yeah.

And all of the other people who had shows about what I talk about have given up, so they have no other options.

So keep showing up, but.

Exactly.

And do the homework that you've already told us here. And I would say that's like the 8020 of podcasting right there. Like, we should stop the show. We're done.

No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, that's it. See, everybody?

It was great, but yeah, man, told you I wanted it punchy. So.

What are some other things? So I'm thinking of one of the things you talk about are the metrics to keep an eye on. So let's talk about, you know, once we're making some content now. And of course, this could be different for audio and video because we're living in this world where podcast for the longest time is just all about Apple. It's not anymore, you know, you have Spotify, but now you have Spotify pushing video like crazy. And YouTube, of course. So talk about metrics and what are your thoughts? And we'll dive into that a bit.

So the number one metric that I track when I'm working with a podcaster, because it's true there's only about 400,000 podcasts that are active. But you should search this as I'm saying this, but because I've never heard of that tool, we're have to check it out for perplexity. But the vast majority of the podcasts that are publishing only get between 50 and 200 downloads per episode. And that's what I call the friends and family zone, because those are people who either or both don't make good episodes that actually hold listeners attention and don't know how to market the episodes. Because audio podcasts do not have a growth mechanism baked in, you are the growth algorithm for your podcast. So you have to learn how to market it and get new people to find out about it. The vast majority of podcasters that have shows that are still publishing, God bless their hearts, have their friends and families are listening because they love them, right? But they either don't have a show that is specific, it's super broad, and it's not interesting to strangers, or they're not good at capturing and holding listeners attention. And the hidden metric that I always ask podcasters about, and most of the time they're like, I didn't even know that existed. That is a good indicator of whether or not you have a growable show is completion rate. So that's the metric where you look in Apple, you can look at Spotify and you can see on average, what percentage of my episode do listeners did listeners listen to? And the KPI that I shoot for for solo episodes is a 75% or higher completion rate. For guest episodes, it's 65% or higher. And anything lower than that is an indication that people are pressing. The people who do press play pull out their phones and turn the episode off before it ends, which means you lost them. They're like, I don't want to listen to this anymore. So I can give you the best growth tactic in the world. I can give you a growth tactic that would get you a million new listeners in a week. But if you have low retention rates in two weeks, you're going to be right back to where you are today because you lost all those million people.

That's spot on with the numbers I've always had in my brain. Because, like the guest episodes on here have been probably average is 75 to 80. Right around that range. Yeah. And I remember back in the day it was longer, you know, and I think there's, there's a lot of factors to. That was close to 90 plus percent. That blew my mind. And these are like hour long episodes and sometimes they'd be even longer. And I was just like, wow, you start Compare that to YouTube or Facebook a lot at the time I was thinking about that, like, you know, video there. I don't, I don't know what those rates are. I could search it up really fast. Like, just to compare podcast audio to something visual. Like, they're vastly different. I don't know what YouTube would be. Is it like 15, 20%?

Yeah, I was just gonna say I've literally never thought of it this way. And by side note, it's always fun for me to come on successful podcasts like this and say what I believe.

And I'm like, I wonder if they.

Think the same thing.

You got to throw it out there.

Yeah, but, so I'm glad you agree. But it's funny because if you like I say basically based on what I, what I just said. Yeah, I say if you have a solo episode, you want a 75% completion rate, which indicates that a 55% completion rate on a solo episode is bad. If a, if you told a YouTuber that they were getting a 55% completion rate on their YouTube videos, they would, their heads would explode because it is around like 50, 15, 20%, something like that. So, you know, the point here is that even 55% being bad is an indication that, my goodness, no other medium do we get this much attention from people? Which is just another reason why it's so powerful as a lead nurturing mechanism.

And pausing this episode really fast to shout out another show you should follow. It's called this Old Marketing. It's hosted by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose. These guys are expert content marketers. This show is also on the HubSpot Podcast Network Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Now Joe and Robert, on this show they break down all of the latest content marketing trends and things you got to know as a business owner. To attract and retain customers. They break down old marketing strategies called this Old marketing examples from the past and apply it to the now. So super useful. It is entertaining. They love to rant. Joe and Robert do so I would love to. And just go check it out yourself. Go check out their latest episode. Listen to this old Marketing Wherever you get your podcast. Are you tired of the hassle of building sales funnels? I totally get it. I've been there. You started your business not to be chained your laptop all day. You build it for freedom and thankfully there is an all in one platform that makes it easier for you so you can focus on attracting customers online. The platform is called Kartra and it gives you all the tools you need to grow your business. The best part is Kartra comes stock with all the done for you campaigns so you don't have to worry about thinking about building from scratch. Everything is designed, connected and written for you already. Also leverages AI to help you with some of this writing. All you got to do is just customize this to your liking and then boom, you got a fully built sales funnel for you. This is marketing made. Easy, easy. So go try it out for free. 30 day free trial over at hustleandflowchart.com Kartra will get you there. So again, that's hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A and I think audio. You know, you have your, you're in the ears of someone. It's. I've always said this and I think it's even more stronger now is the fact that you don't have as many distractions. You're not necessarily looking and I'm excluding the people that are on YouTube and listening in the background. I'm one of those people sometimes like I find myself using YouTube all the time now for podcasts. I didn't think I would but like, yeah, like you're, you're walking, you're driving, you're, you're, maybe you're working, but that'd be a little tough. But working out, let's say there's that retention. Like, there's just a different way of consuming content in this. I feel like the bond with the host and that listener is a lot tighter than most mediums out there. And, you know, getting them to take an action might take a little longer. From what I've understood, what I've experienced. You can throw out call to actions, but they're not going to be typically typing right then and there and going. But they're right.

They're in the squat rack. They're not going to put the bar down and go, like, buy your course.

Right. Oh, my back.

Yeah, right, right, right. But to your point, top of mind. Exactly. And like, I think about the podcasts that I listen to week in and week out, and, like, I hear that podcaster's voice more than most of my friends and family's voice. So, like, there's just a deep, deep level of connection that you can't get anywhere else.

Yeah. So, man. Yeah, I love it. And that's the exact reason why I'm like, the audio podcast. There's audio first. I mean, to be very honest, I love YouTube and I think there's gonna be that as a growth mechanism is interesting. And I'm actively doing a bunch there, organic and paid, starting there. But in terms of audio, like, just for the quality of listeners, you can't. You can't beat it.

You can't beat it. And like, I'm sure you get questions all the time. I get this too, where it's like, should I do, like, if I'm an audio podcaster, do I have to be on YouTube? And it's like, YouTube is extremely powerful. It is. It's expensive. It's hard. Like, it's basically, I have a radio show. Do I need to make a video? Do I need to make a TV show? Right. It's like, you can. You're going to have to convert your radio show to a TV show, or you can just say, I have a radio show, and that's okay. Right? So it's like, it's a decision.

Well, talk about your own. I mean, like, let's be honest. And this is in the Masterminds with Louis. I've noted every single time I'm like, damn, Kevin, your studio is legit. Like, looks awesome. And if you're watching a video right now on YouTube, because it will be there. Tell me what you think about Kevin Studio in the comments. I should get the same thing. Tell me a little bit about that really fast, because that's a common question, too. Like, things you've learned. Because I've seen. It's changed for you. I was peeking at some of your previous videos.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, what's the power there? Your thoughts behind designing that up?

Yeah. So first of all, shout out to Kevin Shen of Dream Studio. I basically. So I saw that YouTube was coming. I mean, it's. YouTube's been around since forever, but, like, from a podcast perspective, it was clear to me in, like, 2021 ish, that, like, okay, this is going to be a movement. Like, there will be a day where podcast is synonymous with YouTube show. And we're kind of there, maybe. So the whole time I was like, I need to learn video. I need to learn video. Who. Who am I to be a podcast expert and not understand video podcasting? And for, like, two or three years, I tried, like, looking at YouTube tutorials and buying lights on Amazon, and I just could not make, like, tried different cameras. I just could not make my setup look good again. Shout out to Kevin Shen of the Dream Studio team. They finally had a course and a program that taught me how this stuff works, like, how to actually make a good studio setup. And kind of ironically, though, it's through actually creating a studio, understanding lights. I mean, I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, like, seven lights around me right now. This is a bedroom in my apartment. The whole bedroom is dedicated to being a studio. It's intense. This is expensive to build, and it's a lot. You know, sometimes things fall down. Like, it's a lot. So I thought that once I built a fancy studio, I would be like, everybody needs to do YouTube. Everybody needs to do video podcasting. But now I'm like, yo, this is actually more complicated than I thought it was. And so not everybody needs to do this. Like, if you want to do it, hell yeah. And if you want to talk how to make a studio look great, happy to talk to you about it. Now that I know how to do it. But there were. Like I said, it's just through going through the process of building a YouTube studio and converting my podcast to a video show, I learned a lot about how different it is than making an audio show.

Yeah. And maybe. I don't know if you would agree, but maybe it's not totally something you should be focusing on when you're starting the show or even growing your show. Do you think it carries a lot of weight in that sense? Or is it just more complicated, complex?

So it's a decision. It's a. It's like, it's. It's not a. Well, Maybe I'll try YouTube and see if it works. It's like, you need to decide whether it's. You're already publishing audio only or if you're at, you know, in the beginning. Regardless of where you are, you need to decide, do I want to make a TV show, that the audio of the TV show is available on spot podcast feeds, but it's a TV show, or do I want to make a radio show where, yeah, maybe I'll, like, throw on a camera and I can, like, make clips out of it. But, like, primarily the show is audio only. It is a decision. And it's either. Either way is okay, but where I see podcasters languishing is when they're just, like, caught in between. Like, yeah, I kind of think maybe I should do YouTube. I throw episodes up. I really don't. Not really sure. I don't really have time for it. I'm like, just decide, either don't do it or go all in and learn lighting and learn thumbnails and titles and video editing and stuff like that. It is a gauntlet, but there's a huge reward on the other side of it. I quite honestly haven't even gone all in. Like, I have gone all in on making video episodes, but I have not gone all in on optimizing my YouTube channel, getting tons of subscribers, everything like that, because my bread and butter is audio. And so for now, that's still working for me. But, yeah, that's my take on it now is that it's not just everybody should do it. It's like, no, not everybody should do it. There's a lot of stuff to consider. So, like, make the decision for yourself.

Yeah, I'm with you, too. Like, my primary audience, audio. And it's been like that for what, eight years or something like that? And just now I make it like, all right, YouTube I'm seeing. And luckily I interview some smart folks on here strategically and sometimes. So I'm selfish, like, Sean Cannell being on here talking about, you know, organic YouTube. And then Alaric Heck the other day, got all the paid stuff out of them. So it's like, great. I'd love to share it here, but I'm going to implement it as well.

Yeah, free learnings, right? So that's awesome, right?

You can't beat it and help others in the process. So thinking of the growth side now, and another question and something I preach often to others as possibly the first place to start. But if you have a show, you do it in tandem. Guesting, podcast guesting.

What's your take on that to grow a show? Because I know you're a big fan of getting featured in other places, you know, so what's the strategy there? Thought pattern, how to make it happen?

So I say that there's three ways in 2024, which is when we're recording this right now. There's three ways that I have seen podcasts grow really freaking fast. Way number one is what we just said. They went all in on YouTube, they became a YouTube show and POW, they got tons, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The other two ways are getting really good at organic social media growth, specifically either through text based social media on LinkedIn or extra threads, or by getting really good at short form video. Not posting clips that are just like AI generated, but like becoming a short form video creator. I've seen a lot of podcasts grow in that way. So the third way is podcast guesting. That's the one that I think for everybody, everybody should try. A couple weeks ago, I interviewed Chris Hutchins. Of all the hacks, really massive show. And he's, he's one of the few creators that I know where he's got a huge podcast that's exclusively monetized via sponsorships. He does not sell a product or service, and he's getting close or maybe recently surpassed seven figures a year. So like he's reached, right, the promised land of I have a show and I, my sponsors pay the bills. And I was talking to him recently, he's an optimizer. And when I ask him, when I ask, when I talk to bigger podcasters like Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, Jordan Harbinger, they all say the same thing. They, through years and years of testing different growth strategies, have not seen a strategy that gets more bang for your buck than your show being mentioned on other podcast feeds. And usually the way to do that is what I'm doing right now is being a guest. Right. Because think of all you, listener, hustle and flow listener who's never heard of Grow the Show. You just heard about it. And after this episode's over, you can search Grow the show and the app you're using to hear me right now and check out an episode of my show. Right?

So go leave a review while you're at it.

Yeah, yeah, leave the review first. Yeah. But here's the hack that I stumbled upon and now that I teach my clients for, well, how do I figure out what shows to be a guest on. How do I figure out what shows to target? Right. What you don't want to do is spray and pray. Like we said before, there are hundreds of thousands of podcasters who have no listeners and will gladly have you on your on their show. And what will happen is you will spend an hour with this podcaster. They won't be good at asking questions, and at some point, you'll be like, I don't think anybody's listening to this. And you're going to do that over and over again. And you're going to be on 50 shows that have no audience. And then you're going to be like, yeah, I tried podcast guessing and it didn't work. So you want to target shows that have a significant audience size. You can use Refonic to check that. But the key in identifying and what has worked really well for me and my clients is if you're a show that has guests, odds are that your podcast is not the first podcast that that guest has been on. Right? They've probably been on other shows. They have already done the work to curate shows that are worth going on. So what I say is take your top 10 performing guests, the ones that are the best ones, the biggest names, whatever, and just search what other podcasts have that guest also been a guest on in the past year and a half. You get this list. Let's say Amy Porterfield. I had Amy Porterfield on my show, you know, a couple months ago. I can say, okay, what shows have Amy Porterfield been on? I search, look, she's been on 30 shows in the past year and a half. What I'm going to do is I'm going to reach out to all 30 of those shows, and I'm going to say, hey, we both had Amy Porterfield on the show. You know, hey, like, just curious, what's the best place to send a pitch? And then if they say, email me here, or fill out this form, whatever, I'll say, have you considered doing an episode about, you know, podcast guesting? Now, it doesn't get you. Not everybody responds. Not everybody says yes. But when you spray and pray, when you just, like, send pitches to every podcast email that you can find, you usually get a 1 to 2% response rate. Not acceptance rate, but response rate. With this strategy, we see a 20 to 40% response rate, and then on that, a 20 to 40% take rate. And it's because you're reaching out to. You already have a mutual connection. You had the same guest on the show. Right. So Amy has already validated me. And so they're like, oh, wow, Amy was on this person's show. She was on my show. This person must be worthwhile. And so it's just a little hack that you can use. And every single time you have a guest, it unlocks 30 more shows that you could reach out to. And so it's this flywheel that goes forever and ever.

I love it, man. It's, it's great. I always love the warm intro, but in this case, you're not even asking for the intro. You're borrowing the credibility because they've accepted you as valuable to their time originally and you're just not hoping, but you're basically positioning yourself in a way for someone else to do the same but on their show because you obviously bring value.

And again, you get literally a 20x higher response rate. And here's the little tip for the shows that come up that are like really a dream show, you can ask for an intro. I wouldn't ask for intros to 30 shows, but you can pick one where it's like, hey, Amy, like, remember me.

Being, you know, would you put me.

In touch with so and so. And they often will.

Uh huh. Dude, I love it. And that's. And you're right. Podcast guesting. This is where I recommend folks if they're start. If they haven't started a podcast yet. Well, this is maybe the strategy when it worked perfectly, but at least the guesting strategy can work really well, you know, because you're now able to get in front of an audience that you can more or less position yourself in front of the perfect avatar if you've done your homework. And then, you know, in that route, maybe there's a different way to get accepted or asked, you know, or you know. Yeah, basically accepted as a guest to go on that show.

Yeah, I love it, man. Growth strategy, guesting all the way. You know, it takes time, but let's be honest, it's speaking on a virtual stage. That's how I see it. And it's evergreen content.

Yeah.

And there's ways to support your show. Yeah. Like what I love to do is to use a tool like cast magic, grab my episode over there and like, maybe they're not the best at marketing the podcast. That's. All right. Well now you can take that feed or that YouTube link or whatever, drop it into castmagic.

Boom.

You now have like a swipe file for yourself or them to say like, you know, hey, let's go, let's go. Share this around a little bit more. You can create it on your own side of things, too. So it becomes marketing collateral for you.

Yeah, exactly.

Some ideas. Now, monetization, I want to kind of go around to this. This is probably the thing that most people are thinking of. Most people. I mean, I want to hear some stats from you, but I know I've surveyed for so many years, it's like less than 10% or so of podcasts. People that actually start a show, end up making are breaking even. That is so they're. They're constantly losing money on the. Whatever, the process of their time, the team that they might hire to do the show and all that. So making money from the show is tough for a lot of folks. And I'm curious of your take on this, because you say there's a one, there's one way to do it, and I want to hear what this one way is. So, Kevin, it's yours.

Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen. No. Yeah. So what I say is there's literally only one way to monetize a podcast. Or put more simply and with less flair, every single podcast monetization tactic and strategy rolls up to this one thing, because I get that question. I get this question all the time, right? Every podcast I come across, how do I monetize? To which I say, terrible question, why? Right. Well, at what moment is your show monetized? Right. When does your show go from being a not monetized podcast to a monetized podcast? And Joe, what would you. How would you answer that question?

Breaking even is always the thing. Because I did that when I was starting my business. As long as I can, I know I'm breaking even on. On some part, return on my efforts. And for me, you know, could be a whole bunch of ways, but breaking even is kind of like that.

So in your mind, before the show breaks even, it's not monetized, but after it breaks even, it is who?

I would say, yes. I'm sure there's a deeper, better, better way to think about it, but, yeah, go. Go on.

Let's roll with that. I was fishing a little bit.

That's all right.

Basically, what most people say, that's a great way to think about it. What most people say is when I get paid, right? When I get paid from the podcast. So that's usually the answer that I get. And then the next. And then my next question is, okay, fine, who is paying you? Right? So if my show is monetized, when I get paid, who is actually paying you? And most of the time, what they say is my sponsors. And I'm like, okay, yes, that's what most people think. But let me ask you this. Who is paying your sponsors because your sponsor is not giving you money to support the show? This isn't pbs. They're giving you money for an outcome, right? And what do they want? They want your listeners to buy their stuff. Sponsorship is nothing but a company paying you in advance for your listeners to buy their stuff. And they will find it a failure unless they made more money.

From your listeners than they paid you. So if that's true, what's the other way to monetize a podcast? Not everybody says this, but some people are like, well, I could sell my listeners some stuff. And I'm like, yeah, products, services, tickets to live events, merchandise, whatever it is, right? So given that, if sponsorship is just your listeners buying stuff from other companies who pay you, same thing with affiliates, right? They buy the thing, you get a cut. The other form is you sell something directly to them. All form of monetizations boiled down to getting your audience to buy something that you get a cut of. That's it. All of it is literally just influencing purchasing decisions. That's it. So when people say, how can I monetize my podcast? A better question that will serve you better, that will get you better answers is, what can I get my audience to buy? Or let's, you know, we don't want to get them to buy things they don't need. But what, you know, could I recommend to my audience? What could I get them to buy that they want to buy, where I get a cut? And so from there, it's either sponsorship or affiliates, or selling directly products and services. I always root for selling stuff directly. That's the biggest bang for the buck. Whether you're a business owner already and you have an offer, or if you're a creator, you can create, whether it's a Patreon or merchandise or whatever it is, live events, like, if you look at literally any podcast that has made money, they are selling something directly to their audience. And so it just boils down to that. It's just, what can I get my listeners to buy? That's how you monetize the show.

I love it. And I like the reframe because that's ultimately what gets to happen here. For someone to say, oh, okay, that's actually fairly simple. So. And if you did your homework in the beginning, you know why you're even doing the show in the first place, right?

Yes. So if the thing that they buy can be really closely related to what the show is going to do for them. That's when you've created a business that can be super profitable.

There it is. And even easier, let's be honest. Like if you already have a podcast and you're starting a show on top of your business, well, you don't have to get that creative. Yeah, it's figuring out what the gap is right in between, you have your podcast listening or video, and then you have the service or product that you're already probably selling if you're in that. So what's the gap? What's the journey look like to take them to that point? Maybe it's a landing page, a community or whatever text message. It could be a whole bunch of stuff, 100%. What are some actually like? On that note, do you have some call to actions or ways that you like to bridge that gap?

Yeah. So this gets into the nitty gritty behind it all. But what I. Which is great and I'm sure everybody wants to hear it. We alluded to a fact earlier that makes it actually difficult to get podcast listeners to buy stuff, which is they're listening while they're driving, while they're in the squat rack, while they're doing different things. And so a lot of times they hear your call to action and they're in a position where they can't take that action. And if they don't take the action, the second they hear it, they're going to forget. Right. They're going to get distracted. So what I have found is that the podcasters who make the most money and the business owners who make the most from their podcasts are those who get their podcast listeners who join an email list via a lead magnet or just by just a newsletter. But you get your podcast audience to join your email list. And then on the email list is when you make CTAs to enter a sales funnel, buy a product, whatever it might be. But that's the secret is like yes, you can do call to actions on your podcast that are like, buy this thing. But you'll get some sales, but you'll get way more sales if instead you say, hey, if you want this information in your inbox every week, subscribe to the Schmidland Dentistry newsletter or a lead magnet. So what I say on my podcast is, you know, if you want a 12 day email course on how to grow and monetize a podcast, just go to 12 days of podcast growth, 12 days of podcastgrowth.com and you can get it. And people do that. And I can see that they came from the show and then they get the email course. And then I say, hey, if you're interested in help from me, you can click here to sign up. And they do. But if I just go, hey, if you want me to help you buy my thing, far fewer people do it.

Yeah. So I'm going to support you again on that call to action because I wanted you to say it anyway. I kind of was teeing you up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as I was saying it, I was like, oh, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves here.

That's perfect. It's a case study here. So, right, everyone, best next step for following Kevin is go to 12 days of podcast growth.com 12 at the beginning for 12 and yeah, that's exactly right. It's an email course. You get them on, get on your email list. 12 day email course that you go through.

In the email course, you'll find out how I can help you if you want it. But also it's an amazing email course and you can totally unsubscribe after you get the course if you want.

There you go. I mean, like, that's the thing. And I love that you're sharing this. Thank you for doing this so openly. And you know, both of us, we talk similar things and that's the thing. Go check it out. Go listen to grow the show as well. I'm just happy that there's. There's so much to go around in terms of people wanting to leverage podcasting. There's different ways to approach it. The fact is, just get started, stick with it and know, like, it's a great way to expand what you do your best, whatever that is, spread it to more people that need to hear it and then keep them tight, like, keep them coming back. And you're growing your business not only your show.

Couldn't have said it better.

There you go. So to wrap it up, like what I like to kind of focus on like a mindset thing or at least I've been starting to do this a little bit more. So like, what's a shift? If you were to think of like one mindset shift, if someone now is listening and I don't know if it's the same shift or different, like someone that wants to start a show or someone that is kind of feeling that little stuck or burnt out ness to kind of shift into making it feel like a passion and that will lead to business success because maybe they're in the grind or just overwhelmed.

Yeah, so a couple. So I'll speak to the person who has been podcasting for a while. They're feeling super overwhelmed or they're feeling super burnt out on it. Something that I've learned through the years of entrepreneurship is that burnout doesn't come from working hard. It comes from not seeing an end in sight or not believing that you're going to get a payoff for all this hard work that you're putting in. So when I see podcasters who are burnt out, it's usually because they have no growth. They have no. Like, they have. They're in the friends and family zone. They're at 50 to 150 every episode, and they've been publishing episodes for four years. I even had someone I worked with who has publishing podcasts since 2004, which is the earliest that you can possibly. Because that's when it was invented. Still very few, like, super passionate about the medium, obviously. Still no listeners. He said, I'm feeling burnt out. I'm like, I can't believe you're still here. Kudos to you 20 years later, right? 20 years later. But again, like, the burnout comes from doing the thing and not getting a reward over and over and over and over again. So if that's you, what I'm here to say is, number one, it's okay to take a break if you want. Right? Like, this is a long game, and the consistency rule has been hammered into all of our heads. Like, you got to be consistent. Don't miss a week. I'm like, if it's 150 downloads still, like, you can take a couple weeks off. Like, 150 people might, but, like, you know, but then I say, okay, look at your completion rates. Do they look good? Usually they don't. Focus on fixing that, and your show will be easier to grow if your completion rates do look good. It's very hard to not grow a podcast that has high completion rates. That just means that you just gotta learn how to get the. Get better at getting the show in front of new people. It's just a skill. It's either social media, it's podcast guessing, or it's YouTube. You can pick one of those, get really good at it, and you will start to see the numbers go up, and I guarantee you your burnout is going to just disappear because you're like, oh, my gosh, this is working. I'm starting to see the numbers go up. So that's the mindset shift. It's if you're doing the same thing over and over again, not getting any results. It's just there's a skill deficiency that can be solved.

Love it. That's perfect. It's take a break, y', all, if you need that. And yeah, especially if the results aren't coming in. Don't do the same thing over and over. What? That's insanity. That's right. Definition of it. So there you go. Kevin. I appreciate your insights, man. Your time here has been great. Everyone go to grow the show. Go, go check out the podcast. Obviously there's a whole, there's a whole coaching and all that fun stuff behind and then 12 days of podcast growth.com give you a little shout out. Go get some free stuff from Kevin.

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you, man.

My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. This was a blast.

Of course.