MBA1060 Q&A Wednesday: This podcast is huge! How did you grow your podcast audience?

Hey O welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show where we know that business is hard so we help you get better every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode on our Q and episodes. I answer a question from you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar100mba.net Today's question comes from Drew and Drew asks, this podcast is huge. How did you grow your podcast audience? Thanks for the question Drew and I will tell you exactly how we did it. I'll give you the background of how we planned the launch of our podcast, our mentality when it came to making sure that we had something that's worth the subscribing to trying to gain our following and listenership over the years and how to improve it so you stay relevant and you continue to give something that's fresh and new and valuable to your current listeners so they keep on listening and keep on telling others about it. I do want to say though, I am humbled by the question. Thank you so much. We are here as a successful podcast because of you. Yes, you who's listening right now? Our listeners, and it's been a crazy journey. I want to share with you a bit of that journey as well as how we have promoted the podcast and helped grow the audience over the years. Get ready, take some notes because this one's going to be amazing. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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So today's Q and A Wednesday's question from Drew is how did you promote this podcast? How did you grow your podcast audience? Well, I want to start first with some honesty. This podcast, the $100 MBA show, is not our first podcast. We had a podcast before this show called People who Know Their Shit. It was an interview podcast and it was nowhere near as successful as this one. In fact, one of the best episodes that we've had had like 400 downloads to it. Some of our better episodes here on the Hunter lmba show have over 150,000 downloads. So we know what it feels like to struggle. And we learned a lot of hard lessons about what not to do when it comes to doing a podcast that works. There are many things I could share with you, but the one thing that I would say is the most important thing that we learned was leveraging our strengths. I'm not a great interviewer and Nicole, who was my co host on that show, didn't enjoy being on the mic. One of the things about failing is that it makes you angry, it makes you think, it makes you wonder, what am I doing wrong here? I gotta fix this. And one of the things that we realized is that, hey, we're not leveraging our strengths. You know, I was a teacher for over 13 years. I was a high school and university teacher. I know how to teach, I know how to put a lesson together. Why am I interviewing people? And it really dawned on us. We need to do a lesson based podcast. We need to teach lessons in business instead of interviewing people. And that was kind of the inception of the concept of the Hundred Dollar MBA show. One other takeaway is also that the name of the podcast had nothing to do with our business, which is the Hundred Dollar mba. So we want make sure we create a new podcast that had the same brand. So we shaped the new podcast, the format, we kept it short. We want to make sure it was lesson Based, we leveraged our strengths. Nicole is a fantastic producer and editor and she was the producer and editor of the podcast for the first 350 episodes. He's now just solely the producer. After the first 350 episodes, we hired a full time editor for our podcast, Carl. Carl's awesome. I know he's listening to this right now as he's editing. But Nicole loves the operations of things and not so much being in front of the mic. And so we really made sure we did what we're good at and what we enjoy. So that's number one. Number two, the best thing you could do to promote your podcast, the best thing to grow your audience is to have a great podcast. Look at all the great podcasts out there, the ones that you admire, the ones that you love. Whether it's cereal or How I Built this or this American Life or whatever it is, it's just a good show. It's a great show. The quality is fantastic. There's so much you get out of it, whether it's entertainment or information or education or whatever. So one of the best things you could do, the best thing, is to have a great show. So I knew this going into the 100 MBA show and it helped me tremendously because I wanted to make sure that this show was killer, it was fantastic, it was different and it offered unique value. So before we even launched the 100 MBA show, we worked on the show for two months. I re recorded the first five episodes about 10 times because I wasn't satisfied with the way it sounded with the format. We, you know, worked on our broadcast clock a whole bunch of times and we fine tuned it and we still fine tune things over the years. So having a great show, having great content is the best thing you could do. So if you focus on that, you really have a competitive advantage. And in fact, that's all I focused on for the first four months. I had my head down trying to produce the best episodes I've ever heard. My life when it comes to the business genre. And I was unaware of how popular the show became. In fact, we launched in August of 2014, so it's been almost four years now. And in December of 2014, we won best of itunes. So we won the top award in podcasting as one of the best podcasts of the year. We shared that award with like serial and startup and Tim Ferriss. We were like, wow. And I was so shocked because I was so unaware of how popular the show became because I was so consumed and busy recording the best episodes. Possible. A lot of people ask me, hey, how did you get sponsors for your show? I never reached out to any sponsors. The sponsors came to us when they saw, hey, you have a lot of listeners. This show is popular on itunes. If you have something great, people want to be a part of it. So really work on the show quality, and not only in terms of the content, but also the production. Invest in good equipment, make sure you have a decent mic, make sure you have a decent place to record, make sure you have a great editor on hand that could produce a great edit and make it your own. Now, when I launched the $100 NBA show, I was conscious of the fact that, hey, I need to get the word out that this is a new podcast, a different kind of podcast, and people should listen to it. One of the best ways of getting people onto a podcast is being on a podcast. So I went to itunes, I went to the business section, and I looked at the top 200 podcasts that are there, and I contacted them all. I basically emailed all them all. I went to every single website, went to their contact page, and told them, hey, my name is so and so. I'd love to offer a episode in this topic. I researched their podcast. I took a look at, you know, their niche, their genre, their audience, and I tried to tailor something for them. Now, big surprise, not everybody replied. And here's another surprise. Not everybody said yes. But out of that, 250 podcasts got booked. A little over 50. And I was on 50 podcasts over a span of three months. So pretty much I was heard everywhere. And it gave me a lot of leverage because a lot of people to see what I'm all about, see what I can do, give them some value, give them a win on their podcast that they're listening to. And if they like me on the show that they're listening to, they'll be like, hey, cool, I'm going to check out the Hunter lmba Show. I listen to the podcast. I'm looking for something new, subscribe. So that helped big time. I also did a lot of webinars to promote my podcast. I know that sounds strange and different. That's why it works. Nobody does it where I just teach a lesson on one of the topics I had on that podcast, and then I show them how to subscribe, I show them how to rate and review. I tease them with what's going to come up next week in our podcast, and it's a great way to cultivate a new audience. I also did a lot of Guest posting, where I post on other blogs about different business topics. And at the bottom of the post, I showed them how to subscribe to the podcast. So basically a lot of work getting on these podcasts and doing the interviews, writing the guest posts, doing the webinars. It takes time. It took a lot of just elbow.

Grease, really, a lot of work.

And I'm recording a daily podcast and I'm making sure that everything is getting better and better and better. But I also want to say this didn't happen overnight. We've been doing this for four years and a lot of the success we've had is that we just outlasted people. People quit so quickly in the podcasting world. They publish, you know, eight or 10 episodes. They don't get any traction and they kind of just quit. They don't publish anymore. When I look at our contemporaries, the people that are ranked high with us on itunes, they're people that have been here for a while. The Tim Ferrisses of the world, the Pat Flynn's of the world, the John Lee Dumas of the world, the Jordan Harbingers of the world. These people have been podcasting for years. Jordan Harbinger has been podcasting since 2006. That's before the iPhone people, right? So, you know, he's been doing it for a while. That's why he's got so much success. Not only is he good at the craft, but he's been publishing a lot of episodes. So being consistent really helps you grow your audience. Guys, I got more on today's Q and A Wednesday episode. Before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. In business, the right hire can make a huge impact on your business. But where do you find the right person? You could try posting on job boards, but can you really be sure the right person sees your job? Instead, find the person who will help grow your business. With LinkedIn. I can attribute the growth of our business to some key hires that we've made in our business. Our lead developer, Shane, has shaped the direction of our software company, Webinar Ninja, in a way that allows us to to be world class. One of our customer service agents, Anna, gets mentioned to me in person when I'm at conferences. People walk up to me and say, hey, you're agent Anna. She's fantastic. So hiring is so important and LinkedIn can help. LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network.

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That's LinkedIn.com mba to get $50 off your first job post. LinkedIn.com mba terms and conditions apply. To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday's episode how we grew our audience on our podcast one it's consistency. And it's also seeing your podcast as like anything else, like a business in itself. It takes improvement. It takes hard work. It takes consistency. Like I mentioned, it also takes a team. You know, I bootstrapped it at the start, but soon I realized if I want to take it to the next level, I need to get a great editor on our hands that can help free up Nicole so she can be a better producer. And that's when we hired Carl. Podcasts is not just about audio. It's about writing up great show notes and great media pieces, great snippets for social media so you can share your episodes and talk about them. That's why we hired Connor, who's a great content writer for our team. This allowed me to focus on being better on the mic. Nothing that's great gets done alone. You need a team. You need people to help you out. You need people that are experts in their area of expertise. Thank you so much for listening to the Underbody show. And thank you for asking that question. Drew. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me@omar00mba.net I'd love to answer your question right here on Q and A Wednesday episode. We have a queue of questions and we definitely will get to it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Having this podcast has been the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life because it's allowed me to get better at something every day. Every time I get on the mic and record an episode, I am committed to becoming better. I'm committed to being a master at this craft. And I know it doesn't happen overnight. I know it happens with just every day going at it. I also know that I can't expect people to love my show or for.

It to spread like wildfire or to.

Grow and be amazingly popular. If I don't bring something to the table, if I don't actually have my heart and my soul and my commitment to delivering great episodes, I need to hold myself to a higher standard if I want to be at a higher standard. And that's the challenge. Doing that every day, that's tough. But you could do it. If you want it bad enough, you can do it. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 ombre show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then.

I'll see you.

Take care.