The Best Money In Podcasting Comes From Serving The Fans - The Podcast Industry Report With Paul Colligan Episode #114

Finishing the season with a brilliant interview. It's the podcast report episode 114 show notes, links, conversation and more@thepodcastreport.com 114 so this, the majority of this episode is a interview with J. David Stein. He runs the Money for the Rest of Us podcast. And although it may if you click out there, if you head out to the podcastreport.com114 got a link to it. It might seem like a, like a simple little show, like a passion project, but when you see the here the numbers he's doing and understand his approach to this and pay close attention at the end the whole Mexico trip, you're going to see a model for podcasting that is absolutely fantastic. And I didn't know this was going to happen. I didn't know this was going to go in the order it was going to happen. But I'm dramatically changing the podcast report after this. This has been season three. We were doing the whole podcast industry thing and I think that's important and I'll still be following with that theme. But I have realized that I've been doing a podcast more to impress other podcasters of all stripes, of all types about what's happening in the podcasting industry. Keep everybody in the know in the go. And that's been great. But I haven't been doing a good job of serving my client base. I had several clients recently say should I listen to your show? And I've told them no. And I realized this is silly. I need to make the show for my podcasting clients, not necessarily the show for podcasters. So revamping the show, re engineering the show. It's gonna be fantastic. The first interview I've got lined up will blow your mind and it'll bring you a new level of podcasting that I think hasn't been seen in the podcasting space in quite some time. But it's gonna take a little while to rejigger. It's gonna take a little while to get everything going back again. So this is going to be winter hiatus after this. Probably start up late January, early February. But the podcast report remains. This season four is going to look very different and I'm really, really excited about it. This industry is getting more and more interesting. The announcement from Apple. I'll put this in the show notes as well. 10 billion downloads this year. Wow, this is crazy. And this is a great, great, great space to be in. So enjoy. David. He's got a lot to say. Yes, it is the answering the questions from a couple of episodes ago and we hit those seven questions and I think his answers are fantastic. I'm going to go deeper into that, but we go in some other places as well that are great. He ends with some wise words and like a smart editor. I'm going to finish this episode on that. So I'm going to say all the things that I normally say at the end here. A if this is the first time listening to the show, this is not the average show. But of course as you just heard, going to be changing the show pretty dramatically in the future. We do have 113 back episodes that you can go back and listen to. You can leave a comment on this episode or any thoughts you have about where the show should go@thepodcastreport.com 114. You can definitely reach out to me on social thepodcastreport.com Twitter, thepodcastreport.com Facebook. You definitely want to subscribe. Itunes, Stitcher, Google. However you subscribe so that when people. I'm sorry. So that when I come back you'll automatically get it updated and we'll go from there and I'll tell you, boy, Season four, Episode one is going to have an interview that will change your game. The funny thing is I haven't done the interview yet, know who it is. And yes, this is a bit of a tease if you will, but I know it's going to change my game and I'm really excited about that. Subscribe to the show, make any comments you want. Enjoy this interview with David. He's a smart guy doing some smart things with this podcast that you definitely want to emulate. Have a great rest of 2016 as 2017 comes. Enjoy. And we will start fairly early in the year with the new version of the show which will hopefully now definitely serve you even more. Here's David. Hey J.D. congrats.

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Hey.

Hey.

So seven points, the seven questions you thought through them and I want to just start at the top and work through and just chat about them. So number one main monetization strategy is your membership site complemented with sponsorships. So when I hear membership site, complimentary sponsorships, I hear two things. Number one, you know the membership site is the great goal in the sky where people say, oh well, I'll just have people pay me every month instead of just once. And it sounds great but it's got to be based on reality and experience. So tell me about your membership site right now and do you have people paying you right now oh yeah.

So yeah, I launched this about two years ago and it was my. Just about six months after I launched the podcast. Like with any membership site, it just, it just growly slows. You bring on one member at a time. So I have well over 500 members now and it's my main source of income. The sponsorships is something new. So I just, I signed with Mid Roll and I just started doing sponsorships this month of December 2016. And so it's an experiment. And you know, part of the motivation for that was something you said in an interview way back or one of your episodes about how to do sponsorships. Right. And to make them interesting. And so I run a solo show so I don't do interviews. So part of taking on sponsorships was another, another stream of income. But just the challenge of figuring out how to do them right to make them interesting for the audience, integrate them well into the show and things of that sort of.

What do you. Now you said it's just a test. What are you testing? Are you testing to see if it's worth the effort? Are you testing to see what do you test?

Yeah, if I like how the episodes come off. Right. One of the things I find I don't like about ads on podcast is disjointing. It can be disruptive. And so I only do live read ads. I don't do dynamic insertion. And I want to make sure that there's sponsors that fit well with my audience and so things and part of them that solve a problem that I necessarily can't solve on my own. I'm glad to bring someone like that to the table as a sponsor for the show.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So memberships are coming in and what do you charge a month?

It $20 a month, 200 a year. Although I just, I just. The site used to always be open and I heard Jeffrey Walker speak at a conference recently on his product launch formula. And I thought I'm going to shut the site down to new members mainly so I could control the amount of time as I onboard new members. And so at this point the membership site is closed until next April when I open it for several weeks at a time. And I'm going more with a product launch model more to I think one, it works better and two, to just kind of have a better, more of an enrollment period for new members.

I think, I think there's some. Yeah, I think that's a smart move. The strategy when everybody comes in at different times throughout the entire year. It's, it's hard for anyone to feel like they're part of the group. And it's hard to feel like them coming on last Tuesday was important because if nobody else came on last Tuesday, they're kind of by themselves. They could have come on last Thursday or they could have come on three weeks from Friday. So. But if everybody comes out at the same time, you can, you know, you know, welcome class of 2017, that type of thing.

Exactly. And I was well in. As Walker points out, people need. They need some motivation. I'm surprised how many people said, yeah, I've just been waiting because I always knew it was open and I could join anytime. And as soon as you said it was closed, I acted. Yep. And there were a lot of people and there were people that had quit the site and rejoined knowing that they could one, they could lock in the existing price because I'm going to raise the price next, next spring. So yeah, it was motivational for members to join.

So now 20amonth. You know, how long are people staying right now? About.

About a year.

Okay.

I mean it's hard, it's hard to tell. But I mean that the average. So you know, my typical membership life is a year more. I mean I have. Members have been there the whole time. Generally. Generally a year. So, you know, lifetime value is. Is around $200. But it's hard to say because it's still a fairly new site. But, but generally speaking, Turnover Attrition is 3 to 4% a month.

Okay. What's your take home for mid roll? What do you get in CPM after everybody gets their pieces?

It's their standard rate that I signed a contract not to disclose that you can look up and. Which was interesting. They use the same rate for all their shows.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is what I found. So.

Well, let's just work with a. Let's, let's work with an industry standard. Let's, let's put you really up high. Let's say you're 50 bucks and let's say that it's a, it's a 50, 50 split with mid roll. You don't have to comment anything past that.

So a little higher. It's a little higher than that. The split. But the. And I can bring my own sponsors also. So I'm using mid roll. But I've also negotiated with sponsors on my own. In that case I get 100% of the cut using the same range.

How many ads per show?

Two pre rolls and two mid rolls. So.

Okay.

And then the show is about 30 minutes.

Okay. Okay. So you, you got, you got four ads in there. So you could be. You could be in the. You could be in the 100 cpm range.

Oh, right. Yeah, easily. Right.

Okay. Okay. So then the question is, you know, the question that you want to ask, the question anybody listening to this wants to ask is, you know, if a customer is worth $200 over the course of a year and you can get 100 cpm, the question is, which is easier to do 2000 downloads or to get a new customer? And then, of course, the second question is, and are they mutually exclusive? You know, is anyone not going to join your membership site because of the ads? Is someone going to think, you know, those two things? Decide. But right now, for you, if you had a choice between or. Which do you think is easier, getting 2000 downloads or getting a new customer?

Well, I mean, I didn't at this point. I mean, I didn't do. I waited a long time to do ads for some of the math that you've shared in your episodes. And so, you know, my typical episode gets 26 to 30,000 downloads per episode. So, I mean, it started to get where the numbers were meaningful. And also I, you know, with my membership site, I launched an app this year for Android and iOS, and on the app, one of the things that's included is episodes from the regular podcast released without ads and released a day early. And so there's an incentive for people that to join. But there are a lot of listeners that have no interest in joining my membership site, which is perfectly fine. And in their case, they can skip ads or listen to ads like the ads, hopefully. And that's why I did it.

Interesting. Very cool. All right, let's talk distribution. So you can Distribute beyond iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, Tune and Spreaker, Iheart Stitcher, you can look at Spotify. Have you looked at any sort of. And I want to bring the app into this because I think it's key. Have you looked at any distribution that isn't someone listening to a regular show on a connected device? You know, if you looked at like CD of the month club, have you looked at, you know, transcripts as Kindle? Have you looked at any, you know, changing of your. Of your content to reach more people?

Some. First off, I'm now on Spotify, so that I just started that this month, and I have a mailing list. So I do. The way that I structure my show is the first 10, 15 minutes is based on a script. So I write a summary article because I write for a number of local papers. So I use that as a basis. So I'm distributing that written content to email. An email, some of which don't listen to the podcast. I've not done any type of monetization strategies with the content. I don't. I know I used to do transcripts, but frankly I found it frustrating to review them. And I mean, even if they did a good job, you still got to read over them. And I just didn't want to do it. So I find it easier to actually write the script beforehand, which is sort of like the transcript. And so that's typically a thousand words. General episodes about 3,000 words. So I mean it. That's kind of the process that works good for me.

Okay, how is your. The. The app is the app. The Libsyn one is. It's me. You had custom created. Tell me about it.

No, I had it custom created. What my membership site's hosted on Rainmaker and I ran into a problem is that my members, because they came through the podcast wanted audio content and they wanted audio content in a simple format, just like a podcast app. And so one of the things I do on my membership site is I do a premium podcast episode every week just for members. And so I did, you know, as a courtesy I put them out on the basically on itunes or I mean I had an rss, kind of hid it from itunes, but it ended up getting into itunes. And so I now have more listeners to this premium podcast than I do members of my site. And so that compelled me to. And I looked at the. I don't. I actually host with SoundCloud as my main hosting source. I use Libsyn as a backup. And you know, I looked at the Libsyn app, but it just one. They want a 5050 split of any premium revenue. And so it was a custom developed app that I did with a company called Fairwind Technologies, who happens to be one of my sponsors. And so they developed it and it was a little terrifying because I never developed an app before, but we got the first one released in November. We're working on version 2. Should be done in a few weeks and it's worked out well.

Very cool. I'd like to this multicasting strategy, the articles out to Seeking Alpha, LinkedIn, et cetera, like you said. And I think what's, what's. What's interesting is, is when you wrote that, you kind of reminded me of Amy Porterfield who creates a giveaway and then most of her podcast episode is about the giveaway, which is sort of list building, which is number four. These, these articles that you're getting out there. How, how, you know, what's the reaction? Are you tracking clicks? Is that something that you're 1, 100% into? Still trying. What's your feeling on all that?

No, I do it. I mean the main is on Seeking Alpha because there's a good overlap with my audience. I mean they've done well. A lot of my show, it's on investing in the economy, but there's a lot of philosophy involved. So some of them Seeking Alpha wants more nuts and bolts, including ETFs. So not every episode's a great fit for that, but when it is, I put it out there and people read it and they find it and continue to add followers on, on Seeking Alpha. So I do that about once a month. And you know, I've started to, to, to put snippets. What I've done is I've taken the portion of the audio about five minutes that works well on YouTube. I don't record the show on video, so it's all audio. But then my, my daughter's been taking basically that audio and putting some pictures that she's got from upsplash, I believe, and just kind of putting some audio, kind of the Ken Burns effect and you put some pictures and you got the audio in the background. I just started that in the last month or so. So I mean it, it's still, that's, it's still. There's plenty of potential, I guess, but not been realized at this point.

And the idea is more just turned on. Like maybe two months ago I turned on the Libsyn has the ability for you to publish to YouTube. And I had always thought YouTube was a visual medium, you know, podcasting was an audio medium. But what's interesting, the thing that got me to turn over it too is just the stats of how many people are listening to music on YouTube. You know, because the players are easy, the playlists are easy, you know, access is easy. Pretty much every device on the planet has one. So I started moving things over there and then what was interesting was I haven't marketed, I haven't promoted it, I haven't sent anybody there. So it's just type in stuff or subscribers, that type of thing. But what's funny is for a 30 minute episode I will get a larger. You know, YouTube gives you a great how far they listened or how far they watched, but of course they're just watching a single picture and I haven't done anything fancy like what you're doing with your daughter. And it's funny because a lot of my episodes are getting a higher completion rate than videos of similar length and similar categories are. Which.

Interesting.

Which is. Which is absolutely intriguing to me and Mignon Fogarty, you know, I mean, one of her things that she said is just, you know, the ad companies, they just want to know that the ad was heard and you actually get those stats on YouTube, you know, you're not going to get that with a downloaded MP3.

So that's true.

You know, so if YouTube is everywhere and they're consuming just as long as they consume everywhere else, well, what the heck, why not?

Well, right. And what motivated me to do it is some other podcasters I know that just sort of did the automatic Libsyn upload and just ignored it and then circled back and realized that they had thousands of subscribers on YouTube that didn't even realize existed. And we're listening to the entire. I mean, it was just like you said, the picture and the audio that was originally recorded. And so I thought, well, you know, I'll try it out. And it. So we'll see.

Have you tested photos movement with your daughter versus just a standard image and if there's any difference?

No, because at this point I have like five episodes on all of them, you know, less than 100 downloads. I've not had. I mean, I've had a YouTube channel for several years. I've not been a big. I haven't uploaded much. And so I. I have less than 100 followers on my channel. So this is more. We'll see. It could be, but you know, she kind of likes. I kind of like. I'm visual. I like the pictures. Sure, sure. I'd rather have pictures. I mean it. And I don't put the whole episode because I just figured I'd try doing sort of micro episodes, less than five minutes typically and see how they go.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

Now. Now, why tell me about this? Is it just because of the weird of doing, you know, an audio only on YouTube or.

Yeah, I mean, I think you've always been told people don't, you know, that want to listen to smaller ones and it's sort of a way to people because there's so many other ways to listen to the show.

Right.

So this is sort of a discovery mechanism. So I thought, well, if I. I do some different cover art, so perhaps pose it as a question and people will search and find it as a question and then just get their answer. So if the answer is four or Five minutes. So it's sort of a different. I don't say it's a podcast. Right. It's just this is a video that answers a question. And that was the idea.

I mean, but would it be a bad thing if you had a customer who only listened to you on YouTube?

Oh, no, no. I mean, I could do it. I mean, I could do the whole. I could do the automatic Libsyn thing. I mean, it'd certainly be something to experiment with. And no, it wouldn't be bad at all.

You know, that's the thing that I'm really investigating this year for me and my clients is just this. You know, I said, I think it was in the last episode. You know, I had a client who, you know, simply, smart guy making a ton of money, doing really, really well, who simply didn't know the difference between a YouTube video and a video podcast. I was just surprised that because he'd put his stuff on YouTube, it wasn't a video podcast. And I was just thinking that if smart guys are confused by this, you know, what about the general public? And if I, you know, I joke all the time about how my mom, you know, doesn't believe she can listen to my stuff because she doesn't have an apple, you know, and I just wonder, you know, if the content was available absolutely everywhere, you know, how could that possibly be a bad thing?

You know, I don't think. No, it's not at all. Yeah, and that's the, you know, it probably would be a good thing from a monetization standpoint, because if people, you know, within mid roll, you can put the YouTube link for the episode and add those to your stats, and, you know, that counts in terms of monetization. So I probably should turn it on, on Libsyn, be really easy to do, because that's what I'm using. The Spotify. It's a long story, but basically Spotify is pulling from Libsyn as opposed to from SoundCloud. I mean, it could have worked from SoundCloud, but we had a issue regarding the Author name on SoundCloud, so I just put it on Libsyn and it worked out. And it was a way to back up in case SoundCloud something happens. You never know.

Between you and me, I think it's a question of when that happens. But I am not.

Well, I know. Yeah, I know that. And that's the other reason. But I've been really happy with SoundCloud. It's worked well. I've never had technical issues, and you Know, part of it, I did it because everybody else was doing lips and I thought, well, why not? And so it's worked out just fine.

Oh yeah, yeah. It's not, I mean, yeah, it's, it's always, it's, it's never a question of what it does today for me. It's always a question of the future. And it's funny because lips and flip side, what's hilarious is I still just laugh at this business model of giving us unlimited bandwidth that they have to pay for. I'm still surprised.

Oh well, yeah, because my biggest concern is transferring it over because they took all my episodes and I, you know, they had a rate that they were going to quote for that was, was going to be hundreds of dollars and they came back, don't worry about it. And you know, they had it done within an hour. I don't know how they did it, but, you know, so all the episodes are there. I can always turn on lips and for my primary feed if I ever need to.

Yeah. Their machine and the profits there. And they're in the black. So I guess there's just a lot of podcasters who just aren't making use of the bandwidth. I guess I'm not quite sure.

Right, exactly.

So, so list building. This is one of my most, this is one of my most exciting things because today people go, where's the money in podcasting? And for every single one of them, the answer is it's in the list that's built from it. And your, your idea of doing an episode specific freebie, you know, that is, that's the king of this. Because, you know, you know, you and I both heard podcasters who, you know, this podcast is brought to you by Free Report X that's been free for 10 years, will be free for another 10 years and you can get it at 1800 other places. You know, not intriguing, but a report specific to an episode, you know, this is the only time I'm going to listen to it. This is the only time I'm going to hear about it. So I'm going to want to sign up for it right now. Tell me about that. And have you tracked conversion on that to your membership site versus other sources?

No, I haven't tracked conversion. I mean I, A typical, you know, if I'll do a specific episode specific things, it, you could upwards, you know, I've had one where I did it on Robo Advisors. We had several hundred people sign up just on that episode. I, I haven't done it as much lately. Mainly And I was using lead digits where you could give out the phone number.

Yep.

And people would sign up, and I thought, that's the coolest thing ever. Until I did my 11th one, and they said, no, you only get 10 lead digits. And so because my thought was every episode, I could have a lead digit. Well, no, basic. You only get one lead digit, you get 10 free, then you're starting to pay for each lead digit. And so that became a little less economical. But I'll still do it. I'll send people to the show notes. But it takes work. I mean, reality. It takes work to do. Right. I run this business part time, and so part of it do. I feel like putting together a freebie for that episode. If it's something that ties in, if I'm sharing data on the episode, then I'll do it. But I don't necessarily do it because I want to do one every episode. I do it if it makes sense for that particular topic.

So you do this part time. What would get you to do it full time? Are you just the type of guy who likes to have a lot of irons in the fire?

Well, I value my freedom. So the idea is to be able to. To do, you know, fish and other stuff. So. And because I don't need to do it full time, and that's one of the reasons I shut the membership site down, because, you know, my bottleneck is how many emails do I get of people asking questions. And so. And I don't, you know, as you add more and more members, that gets more emails. So this was a sort of a way to better kind of manage my time and see what the experience will be as the membership grows, how much interaction there is.

Awesome. That is a refreshing response. Typically, people build, build, build, because that's what you're supposed to do. If you got one, you got to get 100. If you got 100, you got to get 200. If it's 200, it's five, you know, and they don't necessarily know why, you know, and one of the things that I adore about podcasting is that you can do the show you want to do for the audience that you want to do it for, for the amount of time that you want to do it for. You know, I just had a major realization, and you didn't hear the recording. You'll have to listen to the beginning part of this. But I'm changing the podcast report again very significantly after this, after this episode. And the change is solely for. Well, not really solely. It's the freedom the change is going to bring you, but it's also the impact. I think it's going to change on the show. But what's funny is I'm going on a hiatus and I'm starting it back up again and it'll be January, February, it's not like a long one. But I'm starting it back up again when it makes sense to me, you know, not when the network said we got to have you back. Not when the boss says, well, everybody else is doing it this way. But I can do it in the way that makes sense to me and makes sense to what I want. And then, you know, the podcast becomes your tool, not vice versa.

That makes perfect sense. One of the quotes that inspired me a lot was Seth Godin said, instead of worrying about how big you can get, why don't you see how small you can be and still have an impact?

There we go.

And, and that, that's what I want to do is it's like, I mean, the show, the audience will grow, etc, but I might, I want to spend time with my family. I want to spend time, we travel a lot and you know, this is, you know, I call it a lifestyle business and that we teach that on, on the show. I have a lifestyle business, something that you can maintain for, for years, if not decades and enjoy doing. Yeah, and that's the idea. This is not supposed to be a full time gig. This is something I enjoy doing because it's how, it's how I learn. So I'm learning along with my audience and I'm serving my audience and that's, that's how I want to do it.

Very cool, very cool. Other shows speaking to opportunities. Tell me about that. How's that working for you?

Good people reach out occasionally. I'm on, I'm on several lists that send out weeklies if people are looking for episodes. And it's just, you know, I don't do it a lot. I probably been on maybe half dozen different shows as an interviewee it's a little more challenging because I can't reciprocate because I don't do interviews on my show. And so, but you know, when I'm on a show I obviously distribute it to my, to my list as well as to, you know, social media. And so this is when I see an opportunity then, you know, I'll reach out sometimes. But generally it's people coming to me or if it's through some formal mechanism list and you know, I'll send an email and Participate that way. And it's a great way to build an audience. I mean, people have said they've listened to me on other shows how they found it. So it's probably the primary way that I know to build your audience from just being on other people's podcast.

Are you fairly, oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Are you selected to what shows you go on? Is it more just what topics intrigue you or just how busy you happen to be that week? Or is it. Do you just take them all?

I think I've taken them all. I mean, I look at somebody like John Lee Dumas and he's been so gracious with his time being on so many shows. I figure if somebody is starting a podcast or new, I'll be on their show, I don't have a problem. So I don't ask them how many listens they have. I mean, I'll make, well, let me step. I'll make sure that it's a good fit. I mean, I turn down an opportunity beyond a big time show. And I declined because I decided, you know, it was a show on how do you make the most money at what you're doing? And I just didn't, you know, I don't do this to make the most money. It wasn't a good fit for my show and, you know, they were a little upset I wasn't gonna be on it. But it's gotta be the right fit.

You know, it's funny, you know, John Lee is definitely gracious and definitely. Yeah, just giving. But what's funny is, I don't know. One of the questions I always have for John is, well, I always have this for the really, really smart people out there. Do they do this on purpose? Do they realize how smart they are? Kind of thing. But what's interesting is Google and the search engines and the AI that is coming, all of them want to see natural growth. If you have the same exact thing every single time, every single day, there's a really good chance that you're a robot. And someone who writes an editorial piece about something is much more important than someone who writes a piece about everything that ever crosses over the ticker in the newswire. I don't know if you've heard this, but the day Michael Jackson died was a huge day for the Internet because people were going to Google and they were typing in Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson was bringing back Thriller, Beat it music videos, that kind of stuff. And they wanted to know about this death that had happened and to Think about when you volunteer for a small podcast. Google still realizes that that podcast is about your niche and the people you interview with always link to you.

Right.

And you always get the Google juice from that, you know, and what's fascinating is, you know, you might see, you know, there could be a possibility where you could do a show where you don't get a single member, a single new listener as a result of doing that show, but because of what you doing that show does for your search engine juice, you might be higher up in the results for what you're doing as a result of what you did for them. So I try to do a lot of shows too. It's a great time for me to test things out. It's always fun to kind of run ideas and whatnot, but it's a really interesting thing and it is rewarded mathematically as well as just karmically and cosmically, I guess.

Well, right, yeah. And I agree with you. And not even other podcasts, I mean, there's a lot of, especially in the investing space. There's a lot of radio shows, like traditional radio shows that have reached out. I've been on that. It's just like a one time shot. I mean, usually they'll put it on to their podcast. But yeah, I just. It. And it's been interesting because I. If you search my name in Google, you know, in the top, you know, even, I think even on the first page, some of those are guest appearances on other people's shows.

Exactly.

So I mean, it adds to authenticity or credibility.

Well, and just that you're a real human being and not a robot who creates, you know, the text that you're supposed to create every 15 minutes in order to make the robots happy. And I think it's key out there. And I think you're. What was that quote from Seth Godin again?

Well, I'm paraphrasing, but it is essentially, instead of seeing how big you can get and how large you can be, see how small you can be and still have an impact. Focus on the small.

A lot of folk. The most amount of email I've ever gotten about a topic was when I said there isn't anybody out there who wouldn't do a podcast for one person if that one person was the President of the United States. Now maybe with, you know, what's coming in the next couple of months, maybe that'll change some people's mind. But it's, it's. Yeah, yeah, this, this is the power of podcasting. Not. Yeah, this is the Power of podcasting. Very, very good. So. So tell me about this. This. This scheduled guest appearance with Michael Port.

This was just, you know, I didn't know Michael. This is somebody. Somebody he knew. John Corcoran I met at a conference, the fincon, the financial media conference. He was there, and John's just a networker and said Michael apparently had done an article a year ago on podcasts that he listened to, and one of those shows was mine. I hadn't seen the article. And so John reached out to Michael and introduced me, and so he invited me on his show. And so, I mean, that's sort of. That's all part of the networking that you sort of do as you go to live events, conferences, etc. You just kind of meet people. And I have been on shows. Having met somebody at a conference before.

If you could change one thing at itunes, what would you change.

At itunes? Huh? Yeah, Well, I would change the way that it's not so much with itunes, but the heck out of me that they automatically picked up my feed and started putting it as a podcast, my premium podcast episode. So I, you know, it'd be nice to be able to talk to a person there. Yeah. Or just. I mean, they're kind. They're a black box. I mean, they've made it easier. I mean, at least now you can change the feed. If I. If soundcloud does go belly up, I could change my itunes feed and not feel like I'm going to lose my audience, which wasn't the case a year or two ago when they didn't have itunes connect. But, you know, I like, you got to give itunes credit. I mean, that there's so many podcast apps that pull from their free database, and so they're providing a really good service. And it's my main. Most. My audience is on itunes. Most of the discovery happens through itunes. And so I like them. Even if there's some flaws.

Yeah, I think itunes, they've had to be very, very, very careful. I've been in podcasting. I have. Over on my bookshelf, I have a copy of Todd Cochran's podcast book that came out before itunes covered podcasting. So it's. It's a book that talks about podcasting, doesn't talk about itunes. Then, of course, I have my business podcasting bible that came out before the iPhone. So, you know, I get emails every week. Hey, you know, read your book. But you never mentioned the iPhone. Like, well, look at the copyright data in the book. Podcasting has been around a little bit longer. Than the last couple of years, despite what the. The media may play. And I think itunes has done a tremendous job with. Has done a tremendous job of being as hands off as it deserves. You know, I think if somebody came in and were to put their claws down and go, you have to do it this way. You have to make this happen. You have to do that. You know, I appreciate that they've stayed off of that. You know, they've asked for a couple things to make it work, you know, inside of their system, but I appreciate what they've done. But there was a stat today that came out and it was really quiet. It was part of the whole iTunes 2016 best shows thing. And I think the number I'm looking it up right now, which of course is probably going to cause 10 billion podcast downloads and streams over the last 12 months. IPhone, iPad, Apple TV and desktop through iTunes.

Wow.

10 billion of them. This is a real industry. This is a real network. This is a real channel. And, and, and J.D. you're as much a real player as is, you know, pick financial person, you know, x, you know, you're as much real player as Dave Ramsey or what's that wild man on. On CNN or cnbc. What, Bill Kramer. There we go, Kramer. You know, and, and it's, it's, it's neat that you can decide, unlike Kramer, who has to show up regardless. And, and you know, Dave, who has a huge organization and I have tremendous respect for him, but he has a huge organization to feed, you know, and to manage through all this. And you can just go, yeah, you know, I'm not doing a handout this episode. I'd rather go fishing.

Oh, exactly. Which is why, you know, one of the, you know, I don't have assistance or anything. And part of it is just to figure out, you know, can I do this part time and not have any help?

Right?

I mean, not that I, I mean, I could get help, but the, I've always been fascinated how can you leverage the tools and the technology out there to be a soloist. And so, you know, maybe eventually I'll hire somebody, but if somebody emails me, I email them back. Which, you know, is a great way to build a show is when, you know, somebody listens to, you know, they'll discover a show. They'll listen to all 130 episodes. They trust you, they want to connect with you. The least you could do is respond when they email you. And I've always done that.

Any questions I can answer for you?

No, this is helpful. I mean, I've listened to your show from the beginning, and it has guided me tremendously. I mean, it's why I didn't do sponsorships at the beginning. I mean, I did the math you've gone through in earlier episodes, and I've seen the stats that you've shared in some of your conference talks in terms of median downloads. And so I figured I'm going to. You know, Paul's taught me a lot, so I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.

Well, thank you. I'll tell you the one. So I was at a mastermind group that I belonged to a couple of weeks ago, and a chunk of the room was in my client base, and I was talking to a new guy who's probably going to become a client, and he asked me, he said, so you do a podcast, right? I mean, which is a fair question to ask if you're about to hire a podcast consultant. And, you know, I said, yeah. And he goes, well, what is it? You know, I'm going to listen to it. And I said to him, the very same thing I've been saying now for about a year and a half. Oh, don't listen to it. It's not for you. And then I had this realization that, you know, I've been making a podcast to impress other podcasters about my podcasting knowledge, but not necessarily serving the podcasters who are thinking the bigger picture. And I look at my episodes. The ones that have done the best are not the inside baseball ones, but are the ones like this seven Essential podcast strategy. I got a lot. There were a lot of downloads. There's a lot of interest, not a lot of people submitted, which I think is interesting. But the audience really wanted to go deep into these seven. And I realized that what I've got to do is I've got to basically outline my existing clients, write the shows that they want. And then I realized that my favorite listeners, people like you, are going to like that show even more and I'm going to serve even more. It's become more niche. I might drop, you know, I might get less downloads, but I can serve my audience and I'll probably get less downloads and more clients on this consulting side of things, because I'm now speaking their language and meeting their needs. And that's almost the anti podcast growth message that's out there. But it really excites me and it really puts me towards what's ahead. And I listen to you and it's like, I'm doing this. I'm having fun with this. One day I could bring on someone, but right now, the challenge is kind of do it all myself. I'll do this because this makes sense. This one, I don't fit inside the box, so I'll make my own box like you're doing with the, you know, your own app and playing with SoundCloud. But being smart enough to have Libsyn on the back end, you know, is intriguing. And I'll bet you, man, I will bet you there are more podcasters like us than there are the, you know, oh, my God, I got to get to a million or I'm dead.

Oh, yeah. And I don't know why. In fact, a mastermind I was in the other day that we were talking about this because somebody wanted to start an entrepreneurial show, and there's dozens of them. And one of the other podcasters in the group said, well, why don't you start a business entrepreneurial show, but just focused on your city. I mean, you live in a city of 2 million people and team up with just your typical businessman and do interviews, focus on just that particular city and be hyper local, and he'd be able to build a business from it. Yeah, I mean, that's being small and having a big impact by being small.

Yeah. And that's the power of this stuff. Because the thing is, if you're going to be Dave Ramsey now, you got to start broadcasting and you got to have 600 people at your offices in Nashville, wherever he's out of. But if you're smaller. I remember I've chatted about this on the show before, but I don't know. The day it all came home to me was when, you know, all the podcasters love. I mean, they love talking about John, but they also love, you know, talking about startup. And I think it was the end of season one, or maybe it was the beginning of season two, and he said, good news, 1.5 million in revenue, bad news, 1.6 million in expenses. You know, we're gonna have to start selling T shirts. And I bought the T shirt and I still enjoy the show. But the fact of the matter is that model is not necessarily it. I think you're closer to the model than. Than they are.

Oh, I know. I mean, I will. I will make a full time income next year on my podcast. A profit. Right. I made enough revenue this year that was a full time revenue or full time income, revenue wise. Next year I'll be able to live on my podcast and like the business with it, and which I think, you know, is everybody's dream to be able to do that. And it can be done. It doesn't. I mean, I love podcasting for that because. Because you can compete with you Search the top investing podcast. I'm right there with Dave Ramsey and don't have anywhere near the downloads he has. But all you need was it Kevin Kelly. A thousand true fans. You can. And that was sort of my goal. Can I find my thousand true fans and help them and serve them? And that's what you have. You have to do it with an attitude of how can I help and serve people? And. But do it in a way that you like to enjoy doing. Right. So I only do a show if it happens to be what that I'm interested in that week, which is why I don't have a six week editorial calendar because I don't know what I'm going to be interested in that week and I don't know what I'm podcasting two weeks from now. I just know that every Monday I got to sit in the chair and come up with something in an article. And it's usually whatever's interesting to me or whatever story I found. And that's, that's kind of how you do it. But everybody's gotta. You gotta find the right way to do it for your personality.

Very cool. I. If I was smart, I would, I would fade out right now with that music and let you. Yeah, I think you got it.

Well, great. I appreciate being on the show.