The New Way To Grow a Podcast in 2026
In this episode Nathan Barry interviews Chris Hutchins, host of the All the Hacks podcast, about how to scale a podcast like a startup. Chris shares his background in investment banking, consulting, and Silicon Valley startups, explaining how his obsession with optimization informs his podcast growth tactics. He emphasizes the importance of hiring top growth experts for short‑term engagements to build a world‑class playbook, then training an internal person to run it. The conversation dives deep into networking at conferences – using "leaving energy," targeting inner circles, and creating value before asking for a favor – and how these relationships fuel guest appearances and cross‑promotions. Chris outlines a systematic approach to guest pitching, including thorough research, tailored episode guides, and positioning oneself as a host rather than a guest to increase acceptance rates. The bulk of the discussion covers paid acquisition: the differences between Apple (download‑based) and Spotify (impression‑based) ads, the low‑cost potential of post‑roll ads, using Overcast and other niche platforms for cheap testing, benchmarking CPMs, and leveraging feed‑drop services like Podroll to run host‑read ads on other shows while subsidizing costs with programmatic revenue. He also compares podcast metrics to other platforms, arguing that even modest download numbers can be more valuable due to higher listener engagement and retention. Throughout, Chris stresses deep‑dive learning (the "rabbit hole") to become a recognized authority, sharing knowledge to build reputation and reciprocal relationships.
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The best way to find podcast listeners. I hesitate to share this strategy because I'm using it and I think it really works, but I'm going to share it.
My guest today is Chris Hutchins, the host of the All the Hacks podcast, where he has millions of listeners. And the goal of the show is to help people optimize their life, money, and travel.
If you're a business owner, and by business owner I mean you could have a blog, a podcast, a newsletter, don't go hire the cheapest growth consultant. Go hire the best people in the world for 3 months and then train someone that you can hire to run that playbook because you want to run the best Playbook.
That makes a lot of sense. In this episode, we dive deep on what it takes to really grow a podcast, how you can buy advertising, what works to rank in the charts, and so much more.
The real hack is to say, hey, I'd love to buy post-roll ads. I'm trying to grow my audience on Spotify. The reason— when you buy ads on Apple, you're buying downloads, but when you buy ads on Spotify, you're buying impressions. If 50% of the audience is missing at the end, well, that Apple ad costs twice as much as the Spotify ad.
Chris approaches business and content growth the same way that he once approached startups and investing: through obsessive optimization.
The number one strategy is— it is the one way that you can grow your podcast that doesn't cost you anything other than your time.
I love that. What is the career background that got you into this place of being a creator, but to this, like, extreme level of optimization?
I wish that I had a good answer to, like, how I became an optimizer. I think it maybe started somewhere in school where a lot kids around me had more resources and higher allowance than I did, and I had to find ways to generate income to keep up. So, you know, that probably happened early on. When I graduated from college, I didn't realize that you were supposed to get a job and, and like before you graduate.
Oh, okay.
Like this was a thing I ended up doing my last semester at college. We had to pick like a project in the business school and I was like, how about career advising? Because I don't think that the system we have here is good enough. Because it totally failed me and I didn't really realize what happened. And then I kind of had to kick into high gear and get creative about how can I work every possible angle I have to make sure I end up with a job when I graduate. And fortunately it ended up working out. But I went into the kind of first into investment banking and then lasted, I don't know, less than a year, went into management consulting by not my choice, lasted less than a year and got laid off. And, and it kind of was forced to figure out what I want to do. Because when you get laid off, you know, you kind of have to figure it out. At that point, I'd realized I wanted to work on the internet. Like, I wanted to move to the Bay Area and build things.
What year was this?
Uh, 2008.
Okay.
Um, so I got laid off. That explains the getting laid off.
Yeah.
So I got laid off, but I'd gone to this event called Startup Weekend where I was living in New York and I drove up to Boston and we built an app in a weekend. And it was an app that no one ever used. Like, we never actually— it didn't do it. All it did was a Windows app that popped up and gave you some stretches that you could do to like to remind you to get up from your desk. It was called Desk Happy. It didn't work. I think maybe my mom downloaded it, but like it didn't do anything. But I was like, oh my gosh, you can build things. I didn't know that. I was like, I have to do that. I have to move to the Bay Area. And in the process of moving, it was like November 2008, I get laid off and I was like, I've got to figure it out. And then I spent the next probably at least a decade in the kind of Silicon Valley startup ecosystem, building software and products, which is kind of like, You know, up until 4 years ago was my identity. Now I feel like I've left that identity for a creator, but I've tried to bring with it a lot of what I kind of picked up running that early-stage founder startup kind of mentality.
Um, I want to dive into how you apply that across the creator business because I think there's so many areas that people can learn from. But first, let's go through a couple of those companies or projects that you worked on, like What were those startups? You've had a couple of exits in there.
Yeah, I think it's funny, I never was a technical person, so I was not an engineer. So I was like, what can I add value? I found that, you know, helping people figure out what the companies can do, like business development, doing partnerships was the first wedge I had. The second wedge was in product, trying to kind of bridge the gap between what customers want and what we can build, which is in a way product if you're for consumers, that's like product. And if you're for businesses, that's business development. So I guess that's been my kind of sweet spot. And I remember I wanted a job at a really hot startup and I didn't know what it was. So my approach was, let's go to South by Southwest in— I think it was 2009 or 2010. And I was like, I'm just going to find whatever the hottest startup is and I'm going to find a way to get a job at the hottest startup. Like, that was my mission was how do I get a job at the hottest startup? So it was like go talk to everyone and just try to figure out what it is. Once I've identified what it is, try to figure out every possible angle I could have to get in front of this company. And so I had, in hindsight, wrongly identified what the hottest startup was as a company called SimpleGeo, which was, you know, on the heels of the iPhone 3GS launch, which was the first iPhone with GPS. They were trying to do all of the kind of data infrastructure to make location work for apps. So if anyone's ever done anything with text or voice, Twilio makes that really easy, right? This was how do we make APIs for every developer to do location? It didn't work, but I thought it was the hottest company. And so I tried to find, you know, the people that worked there. And then I found an investor and I got an introduction to an investor. And so I made a pitch, like a pitch deck, but not a pitch deck for the company. I made a pitch deck for me as a human to work at this company. And I managed to get this venture capitalist to let me pitch them on why I should work at their portfolio company. And then he invited the founders in and I gave a pitch for why I should work at the company. And the funniest thing was, in hindsight, as a founder, I now know what had been going on. In the moment, I didn't. I thought I had compelled them to hire me by doing this amazing pitch. Later I looked back and I was like, it was an awful pitch. Like it had nothing to do with what their business was doing. I just pulled a bunch of like Gartner reports online.
Okay.
Yeah. What was actually happening was I was just demonstrating that I really cared about working at this company and all they cared about was that I had the tenacity to do that.
And that, yeah, you would— wherever they pointed you, you would bring that same level of effort and desire towards that task.
Exactly. Now, I thought it was like, ooh, Chris put together a cool presentation. They were like, most people don't spend 50 hours of time to do research to try and get a job. And someone that would do that is probably not doing that to 70 companies. They're probably doing it to 1 or 2. And so they must really care about those companies. And so that's where I kind of cut my teeth, if you will, in the startup world, was just working at this startup. Um, and ultimately it didn't work out, so tried another one.
Uh, I actually want to pause on networking for a second because it's something that is wildly important as a creator.
Yes.
People undersell it because they're like, oh, well, I'll just post content on online. Once that gets attention, then like these opportunities will come to me, not realizing that so much happens behind the scenes. Who you meet at conferences, you know, who becomes good friends of yours, and then podcast appearances and YouTube collaborations and all of this stuff. I feel like, you know, really a lot of people in this space. Like, you know, I mean, even just people you had, like Tim Ferriss or whoever else you've had on your podcast, or like, you know, Rich Roll, you know, like just a bunch of these people where I feel like it comes from the same level of deliberate focus on networking and relationships and all of that. Is that accurate?
Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely the kind of person, if I look back one year, I got invited to this conference called the Goldman Sachs Internet Conference. Like, it had that silliest name. And I remember I was like, somehow they don't give a list of attendees. It's, it's not like a, they come with a, you know, Facebook of everything, but I just email them and be like, hey, uh, I'm trying to schedule some meetings. At the conference. Could you send me a list of everyone so I know who to reach out to? Because I don't want to waste people's time if they're not going to the event. And I got a list. Then I went to— ChatGPT didn't exist back then. I went and I like found the faces of all the people. And then I made a note on my iPhone with the Notes app with like the face and name of like the 20 people I thought would be interesting to meet. And I would walk into this room and I'd stand in the corner and I'd scroll down. I'd be like looking down, up, down, up until I find a person. And then I would go over and like just compel myself to talk to them, which is the most awkward part. Um, and then I didn't use this tactic as much as I wish because I had learned it from someone who I actually hung out with at that conference, which was right when the conversation feels like it's just going almost too long, you turn to them and say, I really appreciate your time. There's a lot of people here. I'm gonna let you get going. You know, like you be the one, you be the one to walk away. Yeah. Um, and this woman I know ended up telling me that she used this tactic once and I think she told me she used it with, I don't know who it was, someone, someone to a level of fame. But 10 years ago, like Elon Musk, we're like halfway through the meeting. She's like, you must have a lot of things. I got a lot of important stuff. I'm gonna let you get around the room and I'm gonna take off. Like, just, just such a power move, you know?
Like, so the way that I describe this is I think at conferences you, there's two types of energy when you're meeting people. There's lingering energy and leaving energy, and you need to show up like you need to have leaving energy. And so the example that I've used is I'm thinking about meeting Chris Brogan at Social Media Marketing World in like 2015, something like that. He and I were both speaking at the event. I was like teaching some tiny little workshop. He's like main stage, um, massive thing. I think maybe we'd exchanged an email once, so there's a chance that he would recognize my name. He's got, after his talk, he's got 25, 30 people lined up to talk to him. I walk past the entire line, walk up to Chris and just say, hey Chris, Nathan Barry. We, you know, exchange emails really quick. Um, just wanted to say hi. You've got a lot going on. Catch you later at either the closing party or we'll maybe we'll catch up, you know, another time. He's like, great, thanks. Okay. And then I leave and then he goes back to the fans. And so I'm like trying to completely differentiate myself from the fans. Like we're on the same level, but you've got your people, like you take care of that. And I think the trick is when you walk up to someone is to always have What you're describing is what I call leaving energy, where you're like, oh, I'm the first one to end the conversation. I'm the busier person. Not in a like, I'm more important than you, but just even in a like, oh, I respect your time. And it completely changes the game. Caught up with Chris Bergen later at the closing party, and then we ended up talking a bunch more. We spoke at a similar conference together like a few months later and hung out a ton, right? Because it's also people try to get every last important thing Like, I need to meet you, tell you how much of a fan I am, how much your work has changed my life, and ask you for this thing. Oh, and my other friend wants you to do this other thing, and I need to cram that all into 2 minutes. And you're like, no wonder the whole interaction was a disaster. So anyway, a long way of saying I love what you're describing.
I think there's another networking approach that is very underrated, which I've seen both used and not used.
Mm-hmm.
And that is that The inner circle of a person you wanna connect with is much more connected with that person than it might seem. And so I remember I worked at a startup and, um, one of my co-founders, a guy named Kevin Rose, he started a company called Dig back in the day. And every time people wanted to talk to Kevin and, and I just remember how many emails people he would get. And even I would get being like, I wanna pitch Kevin my idea cuz he's an angel investor. And 90% of them would email and say like, 'Can you get me a meeting with Kevin?' And 10% would be like, 'I'd love to show you— me, Chris— my startup idea.' And the thing that— I don't even know if they realize this, but if they did, kudos to them. If they got me excited, I can get Kevin excited way more effectively than they can.
And so— and they might have 20 minutes or more to get you excited, whereas they would have 90 seconds to try to get Kevin excited. And the chance of them pulling off like that level of excitement in 90 seconds is like very, very slim.
Yes. And, and, and the other great example of this, a really good friend of mine really wanted to connect with this guy at a conference.
Mm-hmm.
And he's based in Israel and this guy was speaking at the conference in Israel and he had identified who in the audience was that speaker's wife. And he went up and started talking to that speaker's wife. And you know, let's not debate the ethical side of this, but he, he was talking to her and he was like, you know what? Like, I'm kind of an amateur tour guide in Tel Aviv. He was not, I mean, like he lived there, so like he knew the city. Like, yeah, what is an amateur tour guide? And he was like, if you guys want, like, I am totally happy to take tomorrow afternoon and I will show you around some of my favorite spots. And she was like, that would be so amazing. Not once at the entire conference did he even try to have a conversation with the person he came to meet. Yet the next day he spent 4 hours and a dinner with him, 2-on-1, and his wife. And like, now they're best friends. Right. Like he took this approach that no one else did. Everyone else takes the, I'm going to line up and try to get my, you know, take my shot among 40 people with 20 seconds, you know, in a row. And he was like, how do I add value even obscurely outside of the world of what value do I have within your business? Like, I'm just going to show you around town. And so I think trying to find ways to give, give more than you get, even if it's not in your domain, is interesting. And the last time I was in Boise, I'd never met Pat Flynn. Pat Flynn knows a ton of interesting things about podcasting, but I'd recently gone down this really deep rabbit hole on some elements of podcast growth using a tool that very few people had because it was kind of in beta. And I ran into him and I was like, hey, you really have podcasting. Have you ever played with this tool? And I don't know if you're interested or someone on your team is, but if so, I'm happy to share because it's this new thing that's happening. And he was like, I'm so interested. Meet this guy on my team. This guy's really interested. And now all of a sudden I'm having this conversation. If I ever wanted to connect with Pat now, right, I'm sure that whether I email him or the person I met, that's like his right-hand person running his podcast, that is really easy. But I was not trying to secure a meeting. I was not trying to get on his podcast. That can all come later. I think there are podcasts I've wanted to maybe be a guest on that the groundwork to be on it was like 3 years. You know, it's like, let me make sure that I can add enough value to this person and help them understand who I am and how I might be interesting. Before I actually make the ask, because I want to even make sure it's a reasonable ask. I don't want to waste someone's time. I don't want to ask them to have, like, I don't want to have a bad episode.
Well, you also get in situations like, uh, Sam Parr will talk about this publicly with My First Million, where he's like, oh man, my, like, the thing that I hate most is people asking to be on the podcast. Right. And because you realize, like, once you have a popular podcast, you probably get asked that hundreds of times. And then he's like, it's one thing when a stranger asks, but then when a friend asks, then I'm like, I don't know how, like, is the episode going to be compelling? How do I say no? How do I say come back with a better pitch? He's like, it's just challenging.
And so I don't like it.
And so if you know that that's what people's reaction is going to be, or you know that's the thing that they get asked all the time, then you're like, look, why don't we go about it another way where, like you're saying, I deliver so much value and they're like, it'd be amazing. I don't know if you'd ever be up for this, but would you be up for coming on my podcast and sharing all of that? And you're like, yes, I would. Or It gets to the point where you have such a relationship and you understand the audience or whatever else that you're like, hey, no pressure at all. Like, I'm not going to be offended at all if you say no, but I think this would be an interesting angle for an episode if you're ever up for it or you find yourself in a gap in your schedule. Like, I'd fly out to make it happen or whatever. Yes.
Or let's go one step further. Yeah, I do this all the time. It's not I'll fly out, you know, I started— the reason I landed the job I got out of college, which was in New York at investment bank, And I was currently living in Northern Virginia with my parents, as people in, you know, like high school summer. And I remember I emailed this woman who worked at this investment bank and I said, hey, I happen to be in New York all week. I would love to come in if you have half an hour. Now, unfortunately, she wrote back at like 10:00 PM and was like, great, can you come in tomorrow at 8:00? And I took the like 2:30 AM Amtrak from DC up to New York. And I had, uh, my dad was fortunately in New York for that time. I went to his hotel room at like 6:00 AM. I took a shower, I had my suit and tie, you know, and I went to the meeting. So not, I'd be happy to fly out. I'm already here. Yeah. And you don't have to be here, right? Like you can figure out how to get there if you make it work. Mm-hmm. Um, but I can't tell you how many meetings, interesting things I've been able to make work because I was in town, whether I was, whether sometimes I, you know, I'm just like, I'll make a trip, but you know, it, it's so much easier to be like, well, I'm just already here. Do you want to just get this thing done right now? Oh yeah, no problem.
The version of that is probably 2015. I was working on Growing Kit early days. I don't know, we were like $8,000 a month in revenue. And, and because I had all this content from the ebooks that I'd written, Ramit Sethi had, we'd exchanged some emails and all of that. And he said, hey, if you're ever in New York, like, Let's grab tea in the East Village. And I was like, oh man, this is amazing. I was talking to Ryan Delk, a friend, saying like, and Ramit Sethi said if I'm ever in New York, we should meet up.
This is amazing.
And so Ryan's like, okay, cool. When are you meeting up? I'm like, well, I don't know when I'm going to be in New York. I guess next time I have a reason to be there. And he's like, ready to slap me across the face. He's like, that is your reason. Just email and say like, oh, I'm meeting a client. It's either next week or the week after. Do either one of those work for you? You just make up some reason, give enough of a date range like you did with like, hey, I happen to be in town this week. You're not saying I have an opening on Thursday between 8 and 1. It's nice and broad. And so I planned that trip, met up with Ramit, had a great time. He really challenged me to grow the business much faster, which I did. And You know, and then I lined up like 10 other things around that, that anchor meeting.
I think if you're doing anything, whether it's networking, whether it's building a business, try to be world-class at it because there's two things. And this is like a world-class networker is like, I'm gonna be in town, right? Try to put in that time, energy, and resources to make something amazing. And two things come out of it. The obvious thing that comes out of it is if you try to be world-class at creating, people listen. If you try to be world-class at building a business, your business grows. The second thing is you can take all the things you learn and share it with other people. And so I remember one time, I think it was Craft and Commerce 2 years ago, Chanel Basilio gave a talk and used me as an example doing this in her talk. And I had all these people texting me with a photo. They're like, oh, you're on the slides. And I was like, I've never even met Chanel. Like, I'd never met her. But the thing that I somehow indirectly told her was that by becoming like, as far By going as far down the rabbit hole as I could possibly go on podcast growth, I'd learned so much that any single podcaster I could talk to, I could teach them something.
Mm-hmm.
And the cool thing was every time I would have those conversations, I would probably teach 10 new tactics, 10 things I learned, and pick up one. Now I've got 11. Now I go to the next person and I talk about all 11 or whatever's relevant, and I pick up 12. And now I can quickly accumulate as much knowledge as possible. Now, So learning how to go down the rabbit hole and learn everything you possibly can about one thing can help your business doing it, but can also help you build a ton of amazing relationships. And I attribute most of the relationships I have in podcasting to the fact that I don't think anyone's gone as far down the rabbit hole on podcast growth that wasn't professionally doing podcast growth. And I would argue that many of them haven't gone down this rabbit hole that deep as well.
Right. This idea that you have, look, of sharing so much detail and people reciprocating with like a portion back is fascinating because at first it requires going down the rabbit hole and collecting everything there is to know. But also we're in this world where there's still so many undiscovered things, like whether it's in personal finance or travel or, uh, team structure or how you run your meetings. Like there's these one-off hacks or, or whatever else that like once you learn them, you're like, I can't believe I didn't understand that before. Like I was having a conversation with a founder who comes from more of the traditional business or creator business side of things and less from the startup world. He was asking about like company structure and all of this. And I was like, well, blah, blah, blah. 'Cause for QSBS you need this. And he was like, I'm sorry, what was that acronym? And I was like, ooh, you and me are gonna have fun for the next 10 minutes. You know, like let me explain QSBS to you in detail. And he like, mind blown. Now he wanted to reciprocate as I like shared all of this. Like tax and company structure stuff. He was like, hey, have you, you know, seen that? And he was trying to give me something back, which I genuinely appreciated because that's just like human nature. And so exactly what you're saying of like, if I show up with 10, you're going to give me 1 and now I have 11. And like, I love the compounding growth in that.
And I think that you can really build a powerful reputation as being the person that knows a ton about a really specific thing. Right. And in every single person listening's business, there's probably one aspect. I'm not saying you have to be world-class class at newsletters or courses, but maybe it's about, you know, the email sequence to invite someone to sign up for your course. Because if you can scope down what you want to be world class at to the smallest thing, but the more people that do that thing, like everyone's going to point to you. And I've heard random people talk about me as the podcast growth person on podcasts with millions of listeners, because I've just decided that that's the thing I wanted to learn the most about. And frankly, there just aren't that many people that know it. So like it was out of necessity. Like if there was just one thing I learned from Ramit is if you can find people that are world-class, pay for the world-class person, right? Like don't go hire the cheapest growth consultant to help you do anything because that person probably doesn't know that much more than you do. Go hire the really expensive one on a short-term, like educational style engagement, which is like instead of hiring someone for a year to operate the growth strategy of your newsletter, go hire the best people people in the world for 3 months and then train someone that you can hire or freelance hire to run that playbook because you want to run the best playbook. You don't want to run an average playbook. Like, we live in a world where I have no idea what the future of my job as a creator looks like, right? AI and everything. Like, this is not that conversation, but I just don't know. But I know that every time I do an episode of my show where I do 50, 60 hours of research on a topic, like that is something that is not going to get replicated by anyone else. If I'm just covering the daily events of the world that are just me kind of regurgitating stuff at surface level, that stuff's going to be just totally wiped over by AI, in my opinion, in the near future. So go really deep on something. And people love that. People get excited to hear your perspective going deep more so, or have fun banter. I can't do that that well, but that's another entertainment. People love entertainment. People love depth, but I just really think there's value in picking one thing and knowing it well. And it comes back to that networking. It comes back to growing your business. It comes back to success.
I love that. Okay, so we've teased podcast growth a couple times now, and since I have the guy in the room who's probably spent the most time on this, where should we start when it comes to podcast growth? Because I think that it is maybe the most difficult thing in a creator business.
Yeah, let's talk about one of my gripes with podcasting, which is just that the, the numbers, the raw numbers always look small relative to everything else. And, you know, I sit down with creators and we're in a room and we're, let, let's imagine we're at a conference and I'm at a table with 10 creators and all of them don't share anything about their revenue. They just share how many followers they have and, and how many downloads they get or whatever, all these metrics. And invariably someone's like, well, I have 10 million followers on TikTok. And then the next And this person's like, I have a million YouTube subscribers. And then I'm like, well, my podcast gets 50,000 downloads. And everyone kind of like brushes over that as if it's nothing. And the numbers are so small. But what people forget is that the engagement is just so high that I would take 50,000 downloads a month on— or I would take 50,000 downloads an episode on a podcast over a million followers on any other platform any day. Because The thing that's magical about podcasting is that I can tell you with certainty whoever's listening right now has been listening for lots of minutes. You know, like it's not a, I scrolled through a feed, I saw a thing for 4 seconds, I don't even really know who the person is. It's like I've built this relationship with them over weeks, months, and years. And that level of a relationship you build with your audience doesn't really happen in any other platform. I would say maybe long-form YouTube can get close, maybe long-form writing can get close, but you know, how engaged with the person are you when you're reading seen writing. Like, I think a lot of people are skimming as they read. They're not, you know, listening. People are listening to this 2x. That's fine. Um, I do that. But there's just depth there that you can't get anywhere else. And so when it comes to podcast growth, I think you first have to understand that the medium is so valuable that even though the growth side of it might be harder, it might even only look hard because The growth side is harder. Um, but the returns from the effort you put in can be really, really powerful.
So you threw out even 50,000 downloads an episode, which I think of as a pretty large podcast.
Like, I would say 50,000 downloads an episode to most people that are not in podcasting would be like, that doesn't sound like that many. I know people that have millions of YouTube views. I did this experiment once where for a really large creator, I looked at their YouTube analytics and their podcast analytics. And if you looked at like the hour mark of their videos, the podcast had like 5 to 10 times the retention of YouTube. So like for every, for us, so a million views is kind of like maybe 100,000 views, maybe 200,000 views on a podcast.
Actually got to any.
Yeah. And so you'd rather have 5 to 10% of that audience on a podcast would be kind of equal in terms of value. And I don't even, that doesn't even speak to like how engaged are people watching YouTube versus listening. I don't know the answer to that question. Um, but yeah, 50,000 would be a surprisingly large podcast. Like when done right, a 50,000-person podcast is definitely making 6 figures of revenue if they're monetizing, right? You don't have to monetize a podcast, but if you're that big, like you can monetize at like a 6-figure level, maybe even a 7-figure level. Um, whereas most other creator businesses that have 50,000 anything are not making 6 to 7 figures, right? Okay.
So if we were to get very tactical and go to, let's say we have a, a podcast that is, I don't know, 50 episodes in, they've been doing it for a while. There's at least, yeah, I'd say a year or two worth of consistent effort. Um, so the, the product that we're offering has, maybe it's not good yet, but at least it's been like, it's gone through cycles and been really refined and all of that, but it's sitting at like 5,000 downloads per episode.
Where would you go? Like, if you're like, okay, new job of tackle this podcast, and I've done this, right? Like, I've on a very limited basis done some podcast consulting. Okay, very limited. And I overcharge for it, not because I want to be like, oh, my time's worth all this money. I just genuinely want to approach it from I don't want to do this a lot. This is not my job. And there's an amount of money that I want to charge. And that amount is the amount that when I see the appointment on my calendar, I don't think, God, I gotta go to this meeting. Like, I wanna charge enough that if I have a client, I'm excited. Like, I want to be excited to help you work and grow this podcast. So the first thing I would ask is like, is this good? Now, 5,000, the question is, is it okay and widely relevant or is it like really good but super niche?
Mm-hmm.
Because you could have a really good podcast with 5,000 listeners, but there's just not that many people that it's relevant for. Or you could have a massive space, like maybe you're doing comedy or sports or like, you know, news where there's a huge audience of millions and millions of people and you have 5,000 because it's just not good or, you know, it's just not that good.
Right.
So the first question would be like, is it, is it good? And how many, like, how big is the audience you're going after? And some ways I would think of trying to experiment to figure that out that I like are You know, I remember early on I ran these Overcast ads. So Overcast is a platform where, you know, it's a podcast listening platform. You know, you could listen on Spotify, you could listen on Apple, or you could listen on Overcast. It's a great app, but it doesn't have nearly the reach of Spotify and Apple, which is good because it's way cheaper to run advertisements on and they give you benchmarks. And so I'm not saying this is the end-all be-all solution, but for hundreds of dollars, not thousands or tens of thousands, you could run an ad And you can see how many impressions did the ad get, how many clicks did the ad get, and how many subscribers came.
Mm-hmm.
And they benchmark what they're expecting. Now they're lowballing the benchmarks such that they don't want people to be like, wow, it's awful. Right. So like, but how do you compare to those benchmarks? Like if you run an ad for $400 in your category and you're supposed to get, you know, 100,000 impressions, presumably you'll get the 100,000 impressions cuz that's what you bought. But if you're supposed to get, 1,000 people clicking on it and you get 200, well, that might tell me that maybe your packaging isn't good because they haven't even listened, right? Like they just read the, they saw the show art and they saw the title and they saw like, I don't know, 100 characters or whatever you're allowed to put in there. So I would say if you're really low, maybe your packaging is awful. And then, oh no, my click rates are actually 2x the average. And then subscribers, I got none. Okay, maybe the show sucks. Like maybe the topics you're covering suck because someone made it to the point that they were interested in what the show art promised, but what was there? And so I think anytime you're creating this listener promise of what is this show, and so you present what it is, you introduce what it is, and then someone listens. And so can you follow through on that promise? And does that promise resonate with people? And I would say podcasts aren't gonna grow on their own. So being at 5,000 listeners could be an amazing podcast that just hasn't gotten out there, or it could be a terrible podcast. It's probably not terrible at 5,000, but like an, a mediocre podcast or a really small niche. Let's assume it's amazing, right? Because I don't—
we're going to control for some variables here.
So, so refine the content. If the content's not good, think about wider niches. If the content is good, but the niche is too small. The inherent problem with podcasting is every other platform I'm aware of has a great way to make growth happen. If you publish a YouTube video or an Instagram reel, Instagram and YouTube are going to show it to some people. Every now and then I click on a YouTube video and I'm watching, I'm like, this video sucks. How did I possibly see it? And then I look and I'm like, this This creator has like 100 followers and this video has 20 views.
I am the guinea pig.
I got that one video and then I close it. I'm like, that guy's not going to get a lot more views.
Whoever made it.
Podcasting doesn't have that. You could create a podcast, the best podcast in the world. Let's take any podcaster that's huge, take their show and give it another packaging and put it in the podcast app directory.
No outside promotion.
No promotion. You'll get no downloads. Right. Like, that's just, that's not how it works. Spotify is very slowly with video starting to put like things out. But other than that, you know, there's like the best of the week, but that takes some traction to show up on Apple. You know, they have the like charts and so there's no growth. So the growth is something you have to create and you have to create it by word of mouth, paid growth, or, or, you know, kind of like in-kind growth. The best way to find podcast listeners is to be talked about on podcasts, whether you're paying for other podcasters to talk about you, whether you're going on as a guest. It's like the one audience where, you know, everyone's a podcast listener. I have tried promoting my podcast on newsletters, and the challenge is not all newsletter readers listen to podcasts. So not only are you trying to find someone that wants to listen to the podcast you have, you just need to find someone that listens to podcasts in general. And so I find that the number one strategy is have good content. The number two strategy is go after people where they are, which is on podcasts, because that's what you create. And then there's bunch of other things you can do to kind of tweak everything. So I think there are strategies to bring the cost down of that paid marketing. There are strategies to pitch people to try to be guests on podcasts. There are strategies to, let's say, repackage what you're doing, change the intro of your podcast, change the, you know, the pacing of your podcast, the content. How long is it? Experimentation. Where do you think it'd be helpful to go and how deep do we want to go?
Let's go. Strategies to guest on other podcasts.
Okay.
And then let's go into advertising because I think most people don't think about advertising to grow their podcast.
I think most people don't think about spending money on their business. Like it's, it's a foreign concept.
That's, that's a key difference of how you approach it. You're approaching all of this like a startup founder looking to scale and grow in the metrics and the spreadsheets. And everyone else is like, I don't know, I'm proud of the content. Why isn't it reaching more people? Yeah.
Most companies don't just like grow, right? Like their business invests in marketing, they invest in partnerships, like that is how most businesses in this world grow. And if you're starting a creator business, most of the time, the reason it doesn't feel like that is you didn't start it as intentionally. So we'll come back to the podcast growth. But real quick, whenever I started a startup, it was like, I need to raise money for this startup. That was the Silicon Valley version of a startup. But even if not, you need to recruit people in order to recruit people, in order to raise investor money. Like you need a pitch, you need some pitch.
And what are you building? Who's it for? Why is this going to work? Yeah.
And what traction do I have? How can I demonstrate that? So every time I've I've had some form of a deck, whether it was an actual physical, like slides, or it was just a story, but like I had refined that story so that I could share it to lots of people, which required me to think about how are we gonna acquire customers? Why would someone care? Who are our competitors? Why are we better than them? Like, there's just so many things you think about when you start a company. Most of the people listening that have a creator business probably started thinking, huh, I'll make a podcast. Like, we'll see what happens. I'll start writing something and sending it to a few people, which is awesome. Like, that's how I— when I started the podcast, I told the company I was working at that if they could just give me like 5 hours a week to work on it, they could own the podcast. Like, I never thought it would be a big enough business that I would want to own it. So it wasn't— it didn't even cross my mind. I imagine a lot of people are like that, but at some point this thing turns and you're like, this is a business. I should treat it like that. And so I think that's really important. But we'll start with how to guest on podcasts because it is the one way that you can grow your podcast. That doesn't cost you anything other than your time. And the number one mistake I see is just like networking, it's, it's just people are taking the approach of I'm just going to email everyone. I get so many pitches to come on my show that are very clear that this person has never listened to my podcast at all. They will send a note and they're like, I want to tell you a story about this. And I'm like, have, have I ever done an episode where people tell stories about things like this?
Never.
I have friends who have podcasts that don't have guests and they get all these emails that are like, can I come on? It's like, we don't do that. I have ones where like they're using some sort of email templating to basically mass send these out and they'll say like, I just listened to all the hacks with Chris Hutchins. And I'm like, if you wrote this yourself, you would never include my name in the like what you listened to.
One, one thing for me is if you change the name of your company, as I have done, and our LinkedIn is currently Kit, formerly ConvertKit, at some point we'll drop that off. Every cold pitch that I get is, hey, I see that you're having tons of traction with Kit, formerly ConvertKit, you know, would you want to sign up for our agency or whatever? And it's like the immediate filter of like, delete. Like you clearly, like this is not a human that I'm interacting with.
And so maybe AI makes those better in the future, but until then we've got a few ways to spot this. Yes. And so I can't tell you how far it goes to get an email of someone that very clearly listened to the podcast. When I'm pitching myself on someone's show, I would say I've listened to 2 to 5 episodes of that person's show. I've probably looked at the last 100 episodes they've done and all of the topics they've done. I've looked at who— what kinds of guests they have, how do they structure their show? What are the intros for the show? And depending on how obvious of a fit I might be, I will do everything from like, if it's a layup, maybe I don't spend as much energy. But there are times where I'm like, I think that this would be a really good opportunity and there's no obvious fit and you've got to find a way to create one. So great example, BiggerPockets is a podcast about real estate. My experience in real estate, especially real estate investing, is I bought a home. That is it. I didn't buy multiple homes. I didn't buy multiple homes. It was not an investment property. I just did it like anyone else who buys a home does. And so I don't have a ton of context on home buying. Now, did I go down the rabbit hole of all the things you would do when you buy a home? Yes. But their podcast is much more about real estate investing than it is about just buying a home. So I was like, but if you look at the business podcast charts, they're always in the top 10. They have a huge podcast on the topic of business, and the overlap of people who are interested in real estate investing and interested in personal finance is high, right? So how do I become a guest? My strategy there was they have two hosts that are always interviewing people about real estate. How do you unlock the knowledge in their heads? So I pitched them on what if we did an episode where I came on your show and interview your hosts about all the tips they need to buy a home, which was a topic that I knew enough about. I knew enough, a few tactics because I'd done it and I'd gone down some rabbit holes that I would be able to sound like someone who knows what they're talking about. And they were probably like some weird edge case things. Like I hired the seller's agent and had them represent me. And there's some reasons to do that, that if you're interested, go listen to that episode on Real Estate on BiggerPockets. But so I pitched them on this thing. That I wasn't even a qualified guest for the show, but I was volunteering to be a host. Um, and it worked so well that one time BiggerPockets was like, hey, can you come back and do one for our money show where you're going to interview and like host a debate about, you know, stocks versus real estate between the BiggerPockets money team and the BiggerPockets real estate team?
Um, and so, well, I mean, that's amazing because there's so many things every, every podcaster that only does an interview show knows the dynamic of I'm interviewing people and by episode 500 of this, I probably know more about it than half the guests or more that I have on. Right. But there's not, they haven't gotten into this like solo podcasting format or something else or done a Q&A episode where they're, and so they're like, wait a second. I know more about it, but how do I, and then here you walk in and you're like, what if I make you look amazing? And I do all of this, like, it's such a good pitch. So long as you have the credibility like you do of being an experienced podcaster and, you know, demonstrating that you're going to do all that work. And then the other thing that stands out to me is you do that episode and then you do the money investing episode for one of their other shows. Now at any point, if you reach out to the BiggerPockets team and you're like, hey, I'd love to pitch you an episode, real estate investors, you know, also deeply care about personal finance. I've got these 8 things that I think everyone should know. Like, what if we do an episode where we go through that and I just teach end to end, like a masterclass, right? Like the, that episode has gone from like a 10% success rate of it being approved or to like now it's 90%. They're gonna say yes.
That episode went so well that their producer reached out and said, this is one of the best episodes we've done this year. Now they regularly email me and they're like, hey, do you have any topics? Do you wanna come on? Like, but I prepared. So much for that episode because I was like, if I nail this, not only is that good, but now I've got a quote. The episode with Chris produced content that we shared on social that got more traffic than any social content we've shared this year or something. And I was like, awesome. Do you mind if I share that with other people? And now when I'm talking to other people, I'm like, hey, I would love to come on your show. I recently went on BiggerPockets. Their feedback was, quote, with the name of the producer. And like, now you have some evidence to make it a more compelling case.
And what does every podcaster want? Is they want growth for their own show, which is often driven through clips and quality episodes. And you're like, hi, that guy says I can deliver that, or I did deliver for them. I could probably deliver it for you as well.
We can come back to that because I don't do any clips and I'm not sure it actually drives growth, but people believe it does. So I still use— I still use the quote even though I don't think it's going to work. So I just think that you just have to be prepared to do the effort and research that it takes. To really deliver something. Sometimes I will go and say, you know, hey, here's a topic I think would be great for your show. Here's like 20 bullet points of a draft. I'm basically handing you the interview guide. Like, I think this would be a good topic for your show. Here's interview guide. One time this worked, I emailed someone and said, hey, I did an episode that I think would be amazing for your audience. It performed really well. If you're interested, I know it's summer and everyone's trying to think about how they can— can I step away from work for a few weeks just so they can get a break? I know podcasting can be a lot. This episode, I think, would really do well on your audience. What if you just recorded an intro for it? You can use my whole episode. I don't care if you want to. I'll give you the ad-free version. You can run your ads in my episode. I don't care. Why don't you run it on your show? And I've had multiple times where people were willing to take an episode I did, dump it in their feed. Which normally a feed drop is something that you pay a premium for. Like it's an expensive advertising buy, but if you position it in the right way as I'm not asking you to do this because I want to pay you to promote me, I'm trying to give you a week off, right? Like from this job that I firsthand know sucks. And they're like, oh my God, this is great. Now I don't have to come up with a content, content for the week.
Mm-hmm.
Meanwhile, I'm like, now I just saved $5,000 buying a feed drop. And, and, you know, just really try to make it so easy for someone to say yes, whether that's writing a bunch of interviews. Um, when Tim Ferriss asked me if I would come on his show, I volunteered to do all the research. I was like, I will give you, you know, a 20-page guide. I'll come up with all these topics. I will make your job so easy to do this because I want you to say yes. And so I don't know, it just seems like I've always believed, whether it's looking for a job, whether it's doing your career, whether it's pitching yourself as a podcast guest, that instead of trying to go pitch 1,000 people, you know, and play the numbers game, I would rather go so deep that every time I pitch, I have a really high success rate. It's not 100%, but I think people say, oh, if you email 100 podcasts, maybe you'll get 2 interviews. If I'm going to email 5 podcasts, I want to get 2 or 3 yeses. Yeah. Because I've done the work to know that it's not a waste of time and I'm delivering them something I think they'll say yes to.
I like that a lot. Okay, let's dive into the advertising side, the paid growth.
Yes.
You mentioned Overcast. What other aspects of paid growth do you think work well or you'd recommend, you know, for our 5,000 download show that you'd like dive into?
I think that the biggest thing that you can do is find ways for your show to be heard in other shows. So you can buy ads or swap your own inventory. So if you have 5,000 downloads, you can find another podcaster with 5,000 and say, hey, how about in our two next episodes you talk about me and I'll talk about you? Now, the interesting thing is we found that we sell our ads for more than other people sell their ads for. So someone will ask me this and they'll be like, hey, do you wanna do a swap? And I'm like, actually, could I just buy your ads?
Right?
Because I would actually lose money swapping because I could buy your ads for, let's say, a $20 CPM and I'm selling mine for a $40 CPM. Or I'd say, let's be real, my ads cost twice as much, so I'll give you 10,000 impressions. You should give me 20, which is sometimes a little bit of a tougher pill to swallow. But reaching out to podcasts that you think make sense and offering to buy ads on them. There are some platforms that automate this, like Advertisecast has a directory. I think Gumball has a directory where you could just go and search and self-serve and buy ads. But I think it goes further if you can find a podcast, send them a note. Obviously you want them to do a host-read read, right? And, and ideally you're trying to track, track its success. Um, there was a platform called Chartable that was the greatest way to track all of this that is shutting down December 8th. So I will say whenever this comes out, I will try to find a suitable alternative and put it in here to send you a link. Cause I don't, I don't know what the alternative is, but I have to figure it out before December 8th because we're actively running ad campaigns that I would like to track. Um, But even if you don't track it, I think the important thing is getting a host-read ad that the person who's hosting that show is excited about and is willing to put in the effort. So if they send you, you know, ask, say, can I review the ad? And if the ad sounds like they don't care, be like, hey, you know, you're an advertiser, you're paying. This is not a favor they're doing for you. You're buying it. Say, hey, it doesn't really sound like the person reading this ad is that excited. Do you think you could try it again?
Mm-hmm.
Um, and you could do it a really nice way. Um, but that is something I've done. I hesitate to share this strategy because I'm using it and I think it really works, but I'm gonna share it. Um, in the podcasting world, ads come in 3 formats: the pre-roll, the mid-roll, and the post-roll. The pre-roll happens before the audio starts. The mid-roll happens in the middle, and the post-roll's at the end. When it comes to charging for ads, post-rolls sell for so little that most podcasts don't have them. Spotify has this advertising marketplace and they remove the floor. So if you say, I want to sell post-roll ads, you cannot set a floor. If they're open, they will fill. I just, for an experiment, tried. They never fill. I never have a post-roll ad on my show if I turn on Spotify's programmatic ads, which I don't normally do, but I did just to make sure that I was correct and that nobody buys post-roll ads.
There's a section of the marketplace and you're putting it on there and you're basically saying I will accept a post-roll ad from anyone and nothing came in.
Yes, exactly. There, I've reached out to numerous podcast networks trying to buy post-roll ads and they're like, oh, nobody ever wants to buy these. Like, this is crazy. It's like, great. Well, I'm going to pay way less than the price people are paying for everything else. The greatest thing about a post-roll ad is if you're running an ad for a podcast, you are hoping that the person listening will do— has two criteria. One, they listen to podcasts, and two, they will then listen to your podcast.
And you're catching them at a time when they finish the episode.
Yes.
You're not even like, please stop what you're doing right now and go do this other thing.
Yeah.
You're like, you're done.
Yes. It sounds so perfect. And so you can pay a fraction of the cost of a mid-roll and a pre-roll ad to get someone at the exact moment you want them. You get a podcast listener who just finished a podcast and is still there.
Um, and so are you paying for the, the download of the episode or like on Spotify and all that, you're actually only paying for someone who made it to the ad.
So now, now we're talking like 201, 301 hacks, which is if you're buying post-roll ads, you can negotiate a price. And if you're reaching out to one podcaster, you know, this probably won't work. But if you're reaching out to a network or someone who sells ads, the real hack is to say, hey, I'd love to buy post-roll ads. Um, I'm trying to grow my audience on Spotify. So could we just limit it to Spotify? The reason, when you buy ads on Apple, you're buying downloads, but when you buy ads on Spotify, you're buying impressions. And so if 50% of the audience is missing at the end, well, that Apple ad costs twice as much as the Spotify ad. So that's one. If we want to just talk about how my brain works to think about optimizing ads, there's this platform called Podroll and you can buy ads and what you're effectively buying is a feed drop. They're going to play your episode in their feed, except unlike a normal feed drop where the host will usually record an intro and say, hey, this is the Nathan Barry Show, but this week we're going to show you this awesome episode of this other show, and I really love it. And here it is. You're just— it's the audio file. It is your exact podcast played on someone else's feed. And it says like, you may like this in the title. So they retitle it. You may like this, you know, something, something, something. Um, the interesting thing is because they're pulling that podcast from your feed, I realize that whatever ads are in that podcast will play on that feed. Now, this audience doesn't know me, so running my host read ads isn't gonna have near the impact that it would on my audience where they know me. Like a host read ad is like, this is Chris. I know Chris. He's recommending this thing.
Yeah.
I should try it. This is a bunch of people who don't know me. So for those Episodes, I've turned off the host read ads. They're usually older ones. I've turned on all the programmatic ads from Spotify because Spotify doesn't pay you more for listeners that are yours or aren't yours.
Right.
And so I'll run these ads and I'll pay a CPM for every download of the episode. But that episode has 5 ads. And so for every 5 ads that get played, I get paid back a CPM for each one of those downloads. So the feed drop that I'm paying Podroll for might be $20 to $50 to $100 CPM, but I might make a $30, $40 CPM from all the people listening to that episode. Just subsidizes the cost of my advertising because I'm making money every time someone listens. Um, this is similar to if you're trying to grow your newsletter and in that newsletter you're either monetizing recommendations after signing up. Yeah, exactly. And so you could do that. You can put a, you know, some, an upsell something in the welcome sequence. And so if you can find ways to subsidize the cost of growth, then if you can get to the point that you're subsidizing it to zero because the lifetime value of that customer plus whatever you're making is greater than the cost to acquire them, then you can grow as fast as you want.
Yeah.
But the key thing here is you have to understand what your customer's worth and Not all customers are the same. Like sometimes I've found that through some channels you'll acquire customers, but they might not be like your normal listeners and you don't expect them to be, right? Like I don't expect someone who's listened for 4 years to be the same as someone who's coming over tomorrow. But to me, I have a good sense of here's how much the podcast charges for ads. Here's my rough number of downloads. If a new person comes, here's how many episodes I think they'll stick around for. Some of this is back of the envelope math. But I come down to say, oh, I know I might make $5 a year per listener that listens to half of the episodes or something. Well, if I can acquire listeners for a dollar, that's a deal I'm willing to make. If I can acquire listeners for $20, that is not a deal I'm willing to make. So I try to figure out at a, at a high level, it doesn't have to be perfect, right? Like how much money do I make on this whole operation divided by how many people are doing this thing? I have a rough sense. Maybe shave half of that off because new people aren't going to be as valuable as people who've been there forever. Are you even in that ballpark? Because I meet a lot of people who start trying to grow their podcast and they're paying $15 a listener and they're not even monetizing. And so like it becomes a very expensive proposition, right?
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm thinking about people that I've seen really try to arbitrage sponsorships. I think, um, Jordan Harbinger is someone that I've seen. Do it at some level of scale where he's going around and deliberately sponsoring all these other podcasts, knowing that he has good CPMs on his show and he's gonna take a portion and pay it back. Is that a lot of what you're talking about or is Jordan doing—
No, Jordan's doing exactly it. He's gone to the point of he knows how much money he makes from a new listener because he looks at how much money he makes divided by how many listeners he has with maybe some little tweaking there on how long are they gonna stick around. The data's not great on podcasting. Like I don't know if I get 20 new listeners from this channel, are they there? Like I love, that I can export data on Kit, be like, this source is still here or not here. They click at this rate versus everyone else. They open at this rate.
You're going to be excited with what's coming really soon of like all the cohort-based stuff. And yes, I would love that.
Podcasting doesn't give you any of it. Like it's basically, I know, which is a struggle because if you add 100 listeners and you have 5,000, you know, the difference between episodes is 100, right? Like, you don't even know.
Did you use a slightly worse title or?
Exactly.
So it's tough.
But, you know, that's where Chartable was helpful because it would tell you, you know, at least you drove this many new listeners and that kind of stuff. But you need to have some sense of what you're going to drive revenue-wise, which means you probably want to be monetizing before you're spending on growth in some way. That doesn't necessarily mean ads. It could mean you sell your course. It could mean you are a, you know, executive coach or something like that. But once you know how much you're making, then I could feel comfortable spending, right? But it's still hard, right? Like every dollar I spend is my own money. Like when I worked at Google, like it was, do I want to spend a little extra for this flight? Well, Google has a little thing that says if you spend up to this, you're fine. So like, yes, if I can get a better seat under the cap, I'm going to spend it. Here it's like, do I want to spend a little extra money to advertise or do I want to go out to dinner? Do I want to take a vacation? Like it's all kind of the same pool of money. And I think that's one of the hardest conversations I've ever had to have. My wife and I, with my wife was just like, how do we want to use the money the business makes? How much do we want to reinvest in the business versus take as a salary? And, you know, there is a little bit of a tax advantage there, which is like if I put a dollar into the business, it's an expense. If I put a dollar in my pocket, I pay taxes on it. Maybe it's only 50 cents, at least in California. And so it's tough. But once you understand that you can make money by investing in your own business, That's when it becomes really easy to spend. And I think that's where I see a lot of creators really build this flywheel of, okay, I invest the money in the business, the business grows, like I'm able to do so many things. I mean, you're the flywheel guy. I don't even know why I'm talking about it. You got to just, you know, you get up there and draw a lesson right now.
What's another example of, of like a reinvestment in your business that's paid off in a big way?
This is a very, very counterintuitive one, which is we experimented running trips.
Okay.
So we— a lot of the content we do is, I'd say, I'd say a third of the content is like travel points, miles, credit cards. A third is personal finance and investing. And then a third is this grab bag of other stuff. Could be health insurance. It could be, you know, anything negotiating at work. Within the travel, we have a lot of avid travel people. And so I really wanted to go to Iceland. So I did an episode on Iceland and I found the smartest person I could find in the world about how to have an amazing Iceland trip. And we were like, what if we just took people on this trip? Like, what if we just organized a group trip? And we did it once and it was awesome. It was the best trip I've probably ever taken. My wife came. We thought it was incredible. We created truly the most amazing Iceland trip you could take. And we were like, well, that's awesome. Let's do it again. And so the next year we took 2 trips. That was this year, 2 trips of people to Iceland. I didn't go this year, but the same guy who ran the trip, he was the one that led the trips. And where you might be thinking is, wow, you, you invested to scale this up. And one of the things I realized was that the amount of energy it takes to plan a trip is a lot. And when it's your trip that you're going on, it's so much easier. When it's someone else's trip, it's not that much. Like, it's, it's actually a lot less exciting. You're like, I'm planning an epic trip for other people. It was truly a job. And when we looked at the number of hours it took and compared it to, you know, the revenue it would bring, and even if you don't adjust for the— even if you don't factor in that we lost money because all of the tariffs happened after we sold the trip but before we paid for it. So the exchange rates were all like basically totally screwed the profit of the trip. Even if you ignored that, I think the best investment we've made in this business the last year was deciding we're not going to do this anymore, which meant we're not— we're losing money, which in a way is an investment, right? Like we invested by not making more money to get that time back, to get the time back to focus on things where I thought there was higher leverage. And I think, you know, the case that brought it in was, I mean, I think people will relate to this, but like, I like money. Like, you know, I like to think— I like to think that You know, I am not as motivated by it as some people, but when presented with an opportunity to do a thing that's going to make a lot of money, like, I kind of want to do it. I think people can relate. And so trips just felt like this easy thing because people— we had the trip dialed in. We knew how much we could charge. There was a little bit of a margin. It was fun, but it came with such a mental overhead and it was such a distraction. And there are certain types of businesses where you know, things are not timely and travel is one where this thing happened. You got to take it. You got to figure it out. This hotel canceled this thing. We got to solve it. It just, and Icelandic people are wonderful humans, but when it comes to like efficient business operations, they, it's not there. Um, hopefully no Icelandic people are offended. They're probably all like, yeah, of course. I can't believe you only just learned that. Um, so we looked at the business after that and we said, what are all the things we're doing? That are a total waste of time and bring in a very incremental amount of revenue? And how do we take 2025 going into 2026 and we say, let's cut revenue every single place we can where the energy that is required to generate that revenue is too high. And so the way we're investing the business next year is we're going to make less money and free up our time to focus on the things where we think there is more leverage.
What's an example of something where like you see a lot of leverage, you're like, okay, I want to take this time and energy and pour it into that in your business?
I think that right now the newsletter has gone through this wild arc of what it is. I don't even know if it's an arc. Maybe it's going down, maybe it's going up. It's at least a curve roller coaster. Yeah, definitely. Of what it is. And we kind of like looked over and I'm like, we're finally at a point where we're about at 100,000 subscribers, which is like a meaningful size of a newsletter. But it monetizes at a fraction of the rate of the podcast because, you know, we've tried so many different things with it and now I'm like, we finally figured it out. I think we finally have a format for the newsletter that works. We enjoy putting it together. I love doing it and I've just constantly punted on all the things the entire last year. It has been the like priority. If you drew a line on what we're going to do this week, it is the highest thing that never made it over the line. And every week we were like, why are we not looking at our welcome sequences? Why are we not, you know, creating cool content to be lead magnets? Why aren't we putting sponsors in the newsletter? Why aren't we like— the list is endless.
Cross-selling between the podcast and the newsletter to the same sponsors, all those kinds of things.
Why aren't we doing all these things? And the reason was that we were too busy calling the Hilton in Reykjavik trying to figure out whether they have 2 double beds because we assumed that these two people with the same last name were a couple, and in fact they were brother and sister. That is the kind of thing we were spending our time on. And so I want to focus on these things that I think could be huge and not focus on these things that were like quick grabs to make 4 or 5-digit amounts of revenue, but only become 6, 7 7 figures if you're willing to build an entire business around it. And I just wasn't like— some people want to build really big creator businesses. They want to hire a team. They want to have their social media editor. They want to have this. I do not want that. Like, I have run companies, I've had teams, and I end up caring so much about all of that that it's just— it's just consuming. We have 2 young kids. Like, now is not a time that I want an all-consuming responsibility. And I know the moment we hire people, the moment I'm going to feel that responsibility. At least as we hire lots of people, we have one full-time person aside from my wife. She's amazing. But like, if you grow that to 7, it just, it really, now you're having all these meetings.
It's a very different job. Yes.
And I don't want that job. Like, I like the job I have.
I like that.
Okay.
As we wrap up, I want you to start thinking about maybe 2 or 3, like, personal finance hacks or things or tips you'd implement in any business. Before we go to that, this is going to be the worst question ever. I have one podcast charts question because you mentioned Chartable and that's going away and all that. In podcast growth, there are often these shows that you look at in the top charts where you're like, I don't know if that makes sense.
It doesn't.
I don't believe that you're number 3 in marketing or number 20 in business or whatever. Like nothing adds up. What's happening behind the scenes with like the gaming of the charts?
So they're spending somewhere between $500 and $5,000 a month depending on how, how well they're able to find the right overseas person who's running some bot farm and some thing.
So that's what it is.
And it might not be a bot farm to be clear. There are kind of two primary ways this works. The primary, the primary way this works is to create traction on at least the Apple charts, it's based on velocity of new subscribers. And so many of these things, if anyone ever remembers playing some Facebook game where it's like, go watch this video to get some coins, there are effectively a giant network of people who are being rewarded to go into Apple Podcasts and subscribe to your podcast or listen for 10 seconds and subscribe. And it's like, if you listen for 10 seconds and subscribe, we will reward you, whether that's with money or virtual currency or like farmland equipment. I don't know. But that is effectively what's happening. And so you can really manipulate the charts by just paying. And I know multiple people who have done this. In fact, I've done this both as an experiment and very tactically, which, which can help, but they're not real listeners. Like it's not driving any long-term value other than you're high in the charts. Now, if you're about to go pitch yourself on a PR campaign of, I want to go get on a bunch of other podcasts. Do you want to maybe for that month spend $500 so that when people look up your podcast, like, oh wow, this thing's on a tear, it's growing, it's like top 10 in business. Like, I wouldn't go too aggressive. You don't want to be the number 4 show of all time. You know, everyone's like, wait a second, this person has 3 downloads an episode on YouTube and like, you know, they're somehow number 1. And so that's one way. The other way that has been effective, and this is a little more genuine, but you can't sustain it is do a contest with your listeners. So I would encourage people that are about to kind of pitch themselves or try to recruit top guests. So even better than pitching yourself, if you're trying to recruit big guests, you know, you having a big show matters, right? And one of the proxies a lot of people use for that is how many reviews does your show have? And so I've done myself and I've advised other people to run a contest with their listeners. Find something that resonates with your listeners and give it away. And the way they enter into that contest is to leave a rating and review and click follow, you know, like send me, you know, a screenshot of your review. Most of your listeners are pretty honest. So I'm like, I do a Google form that's like, did you do this?
Yes.
If you are selected, we will ask you to verify this and we'll look at the dates of when the review was submitted. 99.9% are going to be honest. And like the likelihood that the person wins was not honest is like pretty low. And so you can do that and that'll will really push you for a short period of time, but you can't run a contest every week. So I think if you want to do that, I've seen people do this and spike from like 200th or unlisted to like top 5, but it doesn't last.
But it does give you lasting reviews.
It gives you lasting reviews. I mean, it gives you a lasting screenshot of being number 3. But like, you know, depending on who you're pitching, being able to send a screenshot in a, you know, some sort of like press kit that's like number 3 in business. Is interesting. If they look you up and now you're not even on the chart, you know, not that interesting, but, you know, maybe helpful. But if you were about to go on that press tour right now and you were trying to really drum up a lot of interest, book a lot of guests, well, maybe doing it right then, so the month people are looking you up, you're top 20 in the charts, that's meaningful for some people, for some uses. It's not going to grow your audience. It's not going to grow your listeners. Um, but it might, it might enable something else. Exactly.
I like that. Yeah. All of these things are a tool for, and then how do you use them if it makes sense?
Yes. And, and honestly, podcast listeners are so valuable that I would be looking for them everywhere. I'll give one fun story, which is very short, is I would put in my email subscription, like, because the nature of my show, I would say, um, something like, if you like saving money or traveling for free, check out this podcast. And it's obviously my podcast. Um, and I remember one time my dad for Christmas bought me some floor mats for my car. Car. And, uh, I, they were the wrong something or other. And so I went on the live chat on the site. I was like, hey, these are for like the old version of the car, the new version of the car. They don't fit for my car. And he's like, let me send you an email and, you know, we'll take care of swapping them out. Guy sends me an email from whatever floor mat company. And I wrote back to the guy on the floor mat company. I was like, yep, confirmed. And then he followed up. He's like, dude, I really love that podcast you suggested. Like he actually didn't realize it was my like foot He thought I was just randomly sharing a cool podcast with him. And so I've started leaving that a lot of places, like everywhere you can get a listener, like you're trying to, to grow this thing, like find ways.
That, like, get a listener or reader anywhere possible reminds me of, uh, Nick Gray with his book, The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, going around in New York or wherever else. Uh, and he would post photos of like Google reviews. So he is eating sushi at a restaurant in New York, post the like, fantastic sushi, here's the review, and the photo is is him and his book eating sushi. So you're like flipping through in New York, you're like, oh, there's Nick and his book.
I love it.
Get them wherever you can.
Yeah, I think find every opportunity to like truly embody the growth you want.
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so the, the podcast is All the Hacks. Yep. Where should people go listen to it?
Um, allthehacks.com, search All the Hacks in whatever, you know, podcast player you're on, search my name, Chris Hutchins. Uh, it's kind of everywhere. And if you want to upgrade your life, your money, your points, that's what we talk about all the time.
I love it. So to close out, what are 2 or 3 things that you're like, okay, I would definitely implement this, or whether it's personal finance or travel or something else?
I mean, if you're a business owner and by business owner, I mean you could have a blog, a podcast, a newsletter, you're making some money. Please don't leave that money in a Chase checking account. Like, don't leave it in a Wells Fargo business account. Like, they're at least today There are bank accounts, high-yield savings accounts that will pay, you know, at least 3%. Who knows by the time you listen to this what those rates are. But like, you know, as you start to build meaningful amounts of money, I have met multiple creators with six figures of cash sitting in a checking account earning zero. So that's like, you know, I'm all about don't go down every rabbit hole even though I might, but some of them are just too easy and they're set it and forget it. Similarly, if you set up that Chase checking account and they sent you a Chase Business debit card, please don't put all your business expenses on a Chase Business debit card that's earning 0%, right? Like at present, you know, there are many business credit cards that will reward you incredibly well for opening and spending on them. And so I just think that as a solopreneur, if you're running your business by yourself, the ability to use all of the spend you have on your business to generate, you know, rewards that maybe they're just revenue for the business. Maybe they let you and your family take a vacation, like whatever they let you do. There is an opportunity probably to add thousands of dollars a year, or if you like, if you go hard, I'd probably add tens of thousands of dollars a year doing this. But, you know, it just seems like something you should do. Yep.
I love that.
Okay.
We started with travel. Let's end with travel. What's one more travel hack specifically?
The thing that I will leave that every single person listening can try once, and I imagine half of them will get a wild story out of this over the next year, is the next trip you book anywhere you're going, assuming it's to a hotel that is not the Hyatt Place, the Courtyard Marriott, like a hotel that— a full-service hotel, book the hotel on the hotel's website. Email the hotel, and if you don't have their email, you can call up, you can Google for the sales director, the general manager, or call and say, hey, I want to send an email to the front desk. Email the hotel and say, hey, I'm so-and-so. You don't have to try to pretend you're awesome. You could say, hi, I'm Chris. I booked a reservation. I'll be staying here these dates. I'm coming here with my family. If you're celebrating something, let them know. You don't need to lie about it. You don't need to make some— we're going to get engaged. It doesn't have to be crazy.
Easy.
And just let them know, here's my reservation, I'm really looking forward to this day. 3, 4 days before you come, follow up and just say, hey, everything's still on, I'm excited to come, you know, looking forward to it. You don't need to ask for an upgrade, you don't need to ask for anything, um, but do that. I can't tell you the number of people who have had stories of all kinds of things, from free drinks, free parking, free suite. I just got an email of someone who did this. They were like, hey, we're coming to celebrate my son's son's 9th birthday. He's always wanted to go to New York City. They walk in the room, there's happy birthday balloons. Like they had mentioned, like the hotel had actually followed up and said like, what is your son like? He likes dinosaurs. They put in like a stuffed dinosaur. Like they did all this cool stuff. Hotels are still in the world of hospitality. Like it is still their game. When you book through Expedia, when you book through TripAdvisor, when you book through Travelocity, the hotel often doesn't even know you're coming with your name until that day. They want to know that they have a chance to earn you as a loyal customer of their hotel. They want to know that you're going to tell your friends. That is still a really big part of the game. And if you just give them that chance, I'm not saying every time it will happen, but I would be shocked if you give them that chance 3 times and at least one time you're not surprised.
I love that. That's amazing. A great note to leave us on. Chris, thanks so much for coming on.
Thanks for having me.
If you enjoyed this episode and want to get inside the mind of another obsessive content creator, Check out episode 55 with Mark Manson. We go inside his $2.5 million business and break down everything that works to grow that.
