MBA1070 Q&A Wednesday: How much has your podcast helped grow your businesses?

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. You don't have much time, but you and your business has to grow. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar's at home. I'm also the co founder of $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask and want to get answers to, just email me over@omar00mba.net and we'll get it on the show. This question is from Chris and Chris asks, how much has the podcast helped grow your business? Well, in today's episode I'm going to share with you the the direct and indirect benefits of running a podcast. How has it helped grow our business? Whether it's the 100 RMBA or webinar ninja, our software company, how is I able to track that and what are some of the intangible benefits? I'll also share some of the business challenges we have running a podcast while running a business. So I'm looking forward to answering Chris's question on today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is supported by the Sideline app. With the Sideline app, it's easy to add a second number to your smartphone so you can separate work and personal numbers on one device. This is absolutely brilliant. Sideline comes with calling, texting, picture messaging and more, giving you the value of a second phone for a fraction of the price. Right now, 100 RMBA listeners can download Sideline for iPhone or Android. For a free seven day trial, just go to sideline.com trial again, that's sideline.com trial so how much has the podcast helped grow our business? I'll be answering that question in today's episode. But first, a quick note or a quick heads up. In the near future we're going to have a guest teacher lesson by Kate Erickson from the team of EO Fire Entrepreneur on Fire, a very successful podcast. She's gonna be teaching a lesson on how podcasts can help grow your business. So she's gonna give you some really practical strategies in that lesson. But in today's Q and A Wednesday, I'm gonna answer Chris's question. How much has the podcast helped grow our business? Let me just start off by Saying it has. It has helped grow our business. Now, I know the question is how much? Well, there are things that we can measure, and there's some things we just can't measure. So let's start with the things that we can measure. Number one, we can measure how many downloads we get on the show, how many listeners we get, and if we have any calls to action on the show. Like I say, check out our free course or check out a free webinar we're doing. By the way, if you're interested in a free webinar on how to create a great webinar, just go to webinarninja.com workshop shameless plug. But by giving you that link, I can know how many people have come from the podcast, and I can track how it actually influences our marketing and grows our business. Also, I mentioned podcast download numbers. You know, how many plays each episode gets. These numbers are really important when it comes to sponsorships on your podcast. If you're gonna charge for sponsors on your podcast, you're gonna need to provide that information. On average, how many downloads, how many plays does each episode get? And you're gonna charge accordingly. So we are earning revenue through the sponsorship. This helps support the show, helps us be able to produce the show. Obviously, we don't produce a show on our own. We. We have a team that helps us, you know, edit the show, do the show notes, market the show, and there are obviously other expenses involved. So we do make a profit. So it does help our business in general. You're gonna need to do some sort of content marketing for your business, providing great, valuable information to build trust with your audience. Podcasting is a great way to do that. So podcasting helps in that way. Every day people listen to our show, they learn new things. It helps their business. They get to know who we are and what we offer, and they. And that builds that kind of trust and rapport so they can buy our products and services later on. But there's also intangibles when it comes to podcasting that helps grow our business. From 2014, when we launched the podcast in August, to the end of 2016, I spoke on stage about 22 times. I was asked to speak at different events because of the success of the podcast. So when you're on stage, you're automatically seen as an authority. And I always say speaking at conferences is like going to conferences on steroids. It's like, it magnifies and empowers you to really network and get to know people. It's so much Easier to meet people at conferences when you're one of the speakers. You also get to meet other speakers, other people that are prevalent in your marketplace. So this helps you build relationships, possibly do joint ventures, do partnerships. This also allows you to connect with your audience on stage. And it's a form of marketing, of course. So the podcast has helped me get on stage to leverage that part of our business. Having an audience in general will open up opportunities. We've been offered to write a book because of the success of the podcast and because the size of our audience. The book publisher knows that, hey, if you have this kind of audience, they'd be interested in buying your book. Now, we didn't go with that book deal because it just wasn't the right time for us to write a book. We had other priorities, and maybe down the line, we will do that. Now, I know the question is, how much has the podcast helped grow your business? And the hidden question in there is also like, hey, if you don't have a podcast or if you didn't have a podcast, would your business still be where it is today? Well, that's tough to say because the podcast definitely gave us a boost. It gave us an audience. And I really believe that having a business and selling products and services is a whole lot easier when you have an audience to talk to, to communicate with, to sell to. Now, I don't do any major selling on this podcast. I don't, like, promote our products constantly. But you're aware of what we do. If you listen to the show regularly, you also might subscribe to some of our free courses and get our email list, and then you'd probably learn more about our products that we have to offer. So I'd say our podcast has definitely made making a sale easier, growing a business easier because we have an audience. But you can do this with other mediums. You could do with podcasting. You could do it with blogging, you could do it with YouTube videos. Hey, you can even do it with books like publish ebooks and have calls to action in the book to grow your list. Some people do this with free courses. I mentioned Entrepreneur on Fire. If you go to eofire.com, you'll notice on their site they have a whole bunch of free courses you could take. And that's a good way for you to grow your audience and build your email list. So podcasting is just one way to do that, and for us, that way helped grow our business. Now, I mentioned it's not all roses. There are challenges when you Run a podcast to grow your business. Number one, it's a huge time commitment, especially if you're going to be publishing more than one episode a week. Even if you're doing a weekly episode, you can't miss a beat. You can't miss an episode. That means you have to batch your episodes and you have, you know, make sure you prepare those episodes and record them well in advance. We run a daily podcast, so there is a time commitment that I have to dedicate to the show. Time away from my business, time away from my team, time away from me managing things, innovating, marketing, planning, all that kind of stuff. You have a limited amount of time, so you have to make sure that the sacrifice of time is well worth it for us at this point, it is. That's why we do the show, right? That's why it makes sense for our business. You have to answer that question for yourself because podcasting is a whole lot more work and time involved than blogging. For example, people think just because you hop on the mic and you just talk or you interview people, it's easy. No, it is not. It takes a lot of time to prepare, to script, to create these episodes, to come up with topics, to get guests, if you have guests, to schedule all these things, to make it all happen, to record it, to edit it, to master it, to add any music or anything like that, to get it up on whatever hosting you're using, make sure it publishes properly on itunes and the other syndications, having show notes, having a website for it. And then we need to get into if you have sponsors and getting those people involved and organizing that and making sure everything's fulfilled properly and making sure you have the right sponsor reads and all that stuff. So in essence, it is a business in itself and there are people that make a business out of a podcast. Now, I'm not saying this to deter you. I'm just giving you the reality so you understand what price you're going to be paying to help grow your business with podcasting. Guys, I got more on today's Episode, but before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Today's episode is supported by wgu. WGU is an online university that's changing lives by changing higher education. Its innovative competency based learning model was designed specifically to fit in the lives of busy adults. WGU is non profit and surprisingly affordable, offering bachelor's and master's degrees in business, IT teaching and nursing study anywhere. Anytime your schedule allows, you can move through the material you already know and spend time Learning what you don't. Which means the faster you demonstrate what you know, the faster you finish. What a concept. I love this. WGU works with employers to make sure your degree is current and relevant so you'll get the skills and credit credentials employers are actually looking for. It's also about half the cost of other online universities, so you can graduate with far less debt or none at all. At WGU, you get personalized one to one full time faculty mentors from day one to graduation. Get your $65 application fee waived at wgu.edu100mba. That's wgu.edu100mba to learn more and get your $65 application fee waived. WGU edu100mba so to answer Chris's question, how much has our podcast helped grow our business? Well, I would say enough for me to keep doing the podcast. Podcasting is a great way to grow your audience and that's really what you're trying to do. You're growing your audience, growing the scope of the people that you speak to about your area of expertise, about your product, about your services. You need to grow your audience. That's just plain and simple. How you do that is up to you. We chose podcasting. It's a good medium. And one of the advantages of podcasting is that you sort of build a relationship with the listeners, this very intimate relationship. Because, hey, you're in their ears on their commute, when they're doing their chores or you know, doing their laundry, walking their dog. It's kind of one on one time with that person. That's sort of the advantage of podcasting. Some people will watch passively on YouTube or skim through an article with a blog, but there's definitely some relationship building happening with podcast listeners. Chris, thank you so much for sending in this question. If you have a question you want to ask here on the Hundred MBA show, just email me at Omar MBA Net. That wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening. In tomorrow's lesson, we're going to be discussing do you need to offer phone support for an online business? Very interesting topic because, hey, this is actually something we had to explore if we needed to do this or not with our own software business. We get into all the details in tomorrow's episode. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Marketing is a full time job in your business. You have to keep on marketing, whether it's content marketing with podcasting or blogging or advertising. Or getting on stage. You have to keep marketing and promoting your business and your products and your services. You gotta keep growing. Business is just like life. You're either growing or you're dying. So stay on the offense. Stay growing, keep marketing. Thank you so much. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of sam.