How Developing Your English Skills Can Actually Help Your Business With Lindsay McMahon Of All Ears English Podcast

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips, and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors, and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I have a podcast host today that has kind of an unusual title to the podcast, but it really does capture your attention. I have the host of All Ears English podcast, Lindsey McMahon, and she not only won me over and how amazing her podcast is, but she also won my business as I hired her to work with my company as well. So kind of an interesting and fun model today. So Lindsey McMahon is the co host of All Ears English podcast. It's downloaded 7 million times per month globally and has been ranked in the Best of Apple podcast categories in 2018, 2018, as well as number one in the US education language courses. Lindsay and her team have been featured in Podcast Magazine, Language Magazine, and Forbes. They are just killing it with how amazing this show is. But what it is is this show is such a big support to her business, which is really helping those with English as a second language develop their business skills, develop their ability to write better in English, to speak better in English, to converse in business better in Eng. So everything about what they're doing is just fantastic and they are working on monetizing and shifting into all of that. So I definitely want you to hear this episode. Tune in while we Talk to Lindsey McMahon from All Ears English podcast.

Lindsay, thanks so much for joining me. All Ears English, I love that it is such a great show and you have a huge library and Great download number. 7 to 8 million downloads a month. Astounding. Congratulations.

Thank you, Tracy. I'm excited to be here and see if I can give some wisdom to your audience on how to build a strong show.

Well, you've been doing this longer than I have, which I just love that I can talk to a seasoned vet in this industry. And this is the thing that I think most people don't realize is how much a seasoned show, a show that's been doing this as long as you have and built up as many episodes, I mean, you are 2,000 episodes. That's just amazing. When you get to that stage, it's really hard to unseat you. I mean, like, extremely hard. They have to spend a ton of money and a ton of time to unseat you.

Yes.

That took a lot of work and commitment. How did you stay committed?

Oh, my gosh. Well, number one is that I love podcasting itself. So we launched Allers English just as a podcast in 2013, and I thought it would be a hobby. I thought, oh, this is not my business. I had another business at the time, and I thought, this is just fun. On the weekends with my co hosts, we'll hang out, we'll make some episodes. It'll be great. And all of a sudden, right from the beginning, it did quite well. And so we built a business around it, starting by selling transcripts, which we can talk about, Tracy. And then launching an online course and another one, and another one. But basically, I love the art of podcasting. That's the first reason why we are able to publish four episodes a week, because I just love it. Like, I don't love funnels. I don't really love marketing. I don't really love course building, but I love podcasting.

Well, and it shows. You've had different co hosts over time. I've heard on different episodes, but you're still the anchor throughout that. And I can hear how much you love it because it really comes across. There's an energy level, and I didn't go all the way back to one, but, like, episode, like 900 to episode 1800, like, there's an energy level that still there and apparent. And you're not sick of talking about your subject, which is what I think people think is going to happen?

No, I'm not. You know why it comes back to. I've been in the position of my listener. I think about my listener all the time. And I've been in their position because before starting the podcast, I had my experiences living abroad, learning languages and living in those languages. I lived in Tokyo for a year and a half and learned Japanese. I lived in South America, learned Spanish. And our whole thing is connection, not perfection. We believe that language should never separate two people from connection. If they speak different languages, that should not be the barrier to human connection. And so I've been in the place where they are, and that's why I'm able to empathize. And I just feel like I want to help them when I get on the mic.

I love that. I mean, it comes across. It absolutely does. Because your show is really conversational. It's really in the moment, and then at the Same time, there's a great lesson to it. So, like I just said to my entire team, and I have over 100 employees that are out of the country in the Philippines. And so I said to them, your lesson on business emails, how to close a business email with a sense of urgency without being rude. And I thought that was just such an excellent deep dive. But niche, narrow topic, that is exactly the thing that people will find useful. They're gonna take away, get results, and then say, what more do you have?

Exactly. That's why it's always better to go specific. That's one piece of advice I could give to your listeners here on the podcast is don't go broad, go specific. Because that way you can offer more value on that one very specific thing. And there's more white space for commentary, for examples, for spontaneity, which is really what we're here for. We're here for edutainment, not just education. It's also entertainment. So you need to do both.

Oh, and you do that really well. I absolutely love how you do this. So what made you decide, though, that you were going to call it the All Ears English? Like, did you collaborate? Did it come to you? Like, how did you get that started?

So the name itself, I think with my original co host, who left after the first year or so, I think we were in the kitchen and we came up with it spontaneously, thinking about fun little idioms and what could work for the name itself. And then the concept came out of our experiences again, teaching English abroad, learning languages ourselves, but also kind of seeing the gaps in the market, understanding our market. How do most people teach English as a second language? It's very stiff, boring. It is academic. But we wanted to take a fresh perspective. And so we kind of knew what the problems were, and we figured out a way to solve them through our own style that was kind of fresh and different.

Well, and I love the style of what you do, because one of the episodes that I listened to was when you were talking about Times Square, because I thought as I'm skimming through the topics, I got to think of something that was going to resonate with me. And I was like, oh, I know Times Square really well, but it doesn't get a bad rap. And this is the lesson that you were teaching them about what that means and how it's used in sort of the slang of a bad rap and what does that mean? But you used it by tying in a fantastic story about a trip to New York City and Times Square. Like that's just brilliantly connective in and of itself.

Thank you. I appreciate that. It's really nice to hear what other people think of the show. Right. Because we're so in it in our own heads, always just reading and we never stop. And so it is really nice to see especially people who aren't necessarily the target listener. You, Tracy, you're a native speaker of English. It's good to see what you see in the show and to know that. So thank you.

Yeah, I just think that that sort of conversational way, you've achieved that goal that you set out for yourself, even though it's flexed over time and you've obviously changed the show quite a bit over time and you've turned it into more of a business as it's gone. You've gotten multiple co hosts. How come you decided to keep the co host model?

It goes back. Well, first of all, number one, to not getting bored. So I. I'm not a big talk into the microphone by myself, talking to a video by myself person. A lot of my friends in my industry, and they are friends, like I know everyone in my industry, they love video, they want to sit in front of the video, talk to their people. On YouTube, I get really bored. Right. Even on the mic, I would just be really bored. And so I need the chemistry right now. Michelle is my main co host. Aubry's on there sometimes and I've had others in the past, but I need the chemistry between us. And Michelle and I have been working together for eight years and we do have a really nice level of chemistry, which is because we respect each other. We know we add different things to the table. She has a big radio voice. She worked in radio before working with me and I respect what she brings and she respects what I bring and it works. So it's the chemistry. I really need that one on one chemistry. And then beyond that, I know that my audience wants to listen to real English and real conversations.

So it doesn't sound like a lecture.

Yeah, exactly. There's just more you can do when there's someone in front of you. I think.

Yeah, that's so, so true. I think that it's also really interesting though that you've taken such a deep dive. So you've got 2,000 episodes. That makes it really hard to think about navigation and how do I go through and when I find your show? I mean, we talk about binge listeners here. They usually go to the beginning and listen to everything, but that's pretty daunting. So I can't imagine they're going to go all the way back. They're probably going to work backwards through it, which is an unusual way. Normally a binge listener comes into a show that's less than 100 to 200 episodes and they'll go back to the beginning and listen forward. But in your case, they're probably working their way backwards. And so how do you help them navigate it?

Well, we're doing a few things now. So over the years we've launched an app. So we now have an iOS and an Android app, which actually takes the podcast and puts it through the app. And with that app they're able to type in the search bar a number, a topic, a keyword, and the app is designed to pull up that episode. So that's one thing they can do. And now we're going to begin to launch shows that are composed of our episodes that we've had to take out of the main show because we can no longer put more than 2,000 episodes and we're grouping them around category. So pretty soon we'll be launching a feed or a separate show just for business English. So the whole thing will be curated for anyone that wants English for business. We'll do the same thing for pronunciation, maybe pop culture, who knows, Maybe there'll be a true crime allers English someday.

You'Ll have all these spin off shows. I love it.

Yeah, that's our plan now. That's what we're planning to do to address that problem. Because it is a problem. You're right. Fewer and fewer people over the years have said that they're going back because they just can't, right?

Absolutely. I mean, it just makes it so difficult when you get in such a large space and now you're hitting up against the limit. So you're starting to hit up against the limit that Apple puts on, which is 3,000 episodes. So then you hit at that limit where now you have to look at spinoffs, volumes anyway. So you might as well figure this out. It's the time to figure it out.

That's what I think. And it's kind of a fun challenge. I love a good challenge.

Yeah, you love a good challenge. Well, this is the interesting thing. So I love the idea of the app because the search and I talk about this all the time, whether it's on our companion show, feed your brand or here on the Binge Factor. Is that the search algorithm within the podcast apps within Apple or Spotify, Castbox, all of them. It's not as good. It's really not good enough. And that's what you've built in, is you built in these keywords into it so it makes it more searchable for your show. That's a brilliant reason to subscribe to your app. So are you seeing a significant shift over from just general listeners, listens that are happening on a show and then all of a sudden listens that are happening on your app? Are you starting to see high growth?

There's, I think in the beginning it was a more of a way to get the app going. So we still mention it. It's still in our intro, you know, to get the transcripts live right in the app and to get keywords go to the app. But in the beginning, it was a way to get the automatic reviews credibility right away. I was asked this by someone a few weeks ago. They said, do you try to move your podcast listeners to your app? I said, no, I've actually. I've changed my mind around this. And I respect the listener a little bit more in the sense that if they found me in the podcast listening app, like Apple Podcasts, they're podcast listeners. You can't really change someone to become an app user at that point. You can do it around the margins. But if you're an app user, you're an app user, you're a podcast listener. That is fine. So we monetize both sides. We monetize the app. We have a subscription program which contributes a portion of our revenue. It's great. Then we're now launching. So the other thing we're working on this fall is Apple podcast subscriptions. So we're going to be adding little quizzes that come after each episode, and we're going to experiment there. So I've changed my answer to that over the years.

That's an interesting model. I'll be really curious for you to come back and report how it's doing, because we haven't seen too many premium podcasts actually work. But I think in your system it might just work because if I'm listening to your show as English as a second language, I need to know that I'm improving. I'm curious about that. And so that might be an ideal reason for me to subscribe.

Yeah. So it's not going to make the podcast premium. All the episodes are still going to be available on the main show as well as these new feeds I've been talking about. But now there'll be an extra audio inserted in the feed every day which will say quiz for episode 285. Quiz for episode Right. So it's optional. They'll see it. They don't have to join, they don't have to use it, but it's there for them. It's an extra five minutes after listening, which again, respecting our listeners time. They don't have an extra half hour to give every day, but they have an extra five minutes.

Yeah. So normally I don't recommend to people that they number their episodes. It's kind of old school. When you and I both started our shows, it was the common thing to do with the numbers at the beginning. But you're using them, you're using them within your show, you're using them within your app, you're using them as a search and function. So from that standpoint you gotta keep those numbers in. So.

Oh yeah, yeah, we need it. Yeah, I think by now we'd be a little bit lost. Listeners will send us a question. Oh, I listened to episode 285 about this. You know, tell me this other answer this other question. We need it. With this number of episodes there'd be no way to find the episode.

So how do you keep your team organized with all the episode numbers and like the cheat sheet on it? Are they just using the app themselves?

No. So we have a big document, a big, a simple spreadsheet. We actually don't use any of those productivity tools yet. I've tried them every January I say it's going to be this, it's going to be Trello, it's going to be this and that. No, it's too hard. So spreadsheets, Google sheets, we have one big Google sheet. It has date, episode number, where's the files? Is this on YouTube or not? Right, like this. If it's on video, it would be on YouTube title. What's in it for me? We call it our wifm, which is our what's in it for me. It's our little blurb, 20 seconds which says why you should listen today and what you're going to get Right. That's another important thing. Just has everything that they need to know. So everyone collaborates on that sheet. Even the people that work on the app for me, they collaborate there too.

Yeah. So now this is also interesting. So you have blogs for all your episodes and in those blogs they're not transcript style blogs like we do apologize, but they're, I'm going to call them summaries. So they do a little more of a summary but they're really written in much more conversational prose style. Although they're written in the third person. So it doesn't say I said this or I went to New York City. It says that Lindsay went to New York City. Like, so it says it like that in that kind of third person. But I think that's really interesting. And you spaced them out and made it simpler because I think that a transcript overall, unless I'm looking for, like the exact words, and I'm really trying to study this, it might be overwhelming to your audience. So I think that that's an interesting choice to be making for the way that you style your blogs.

Yeah, I mean, we do both. So we used to do every episode on a blog. Now it's two out of four. So it's two a week, sometimes three if I have a guest. And I want to make sure I cover the guest as well as the extra two ones. So two to three a week. And we also do publish and sell our transcripts separately. So we keep them somewhat as two sort of separate opportunities for our listeners.

Right. And how do transcript sales do?

They do okay? They're probably like 5 to 7% of our revenue. It's not a huge deal. And I'm always looking to the future. I'm always thinking, like, how can I stay ahead of the curve, stay ahead of technology? I know that within the next three years, I'm going to have to shut those down as a product because probably many of the listener apps will provide that at some point. We know that they're already transcribing for SEO for search of shows. Right. And that's where they're headed. So I know that. So I've already built new ideas into the business model, launching new things to compensate for that. So, yeah, I mean, it was a larger percentage of our revenue before. It's gone down just because we've launched more things and are doing a more variety of things now. But yeah, it does okay. I mean, it's a subscription product, which is nice to have, I think, at.

The end of the day. And this is just my gut. And maybe you want to try it on like a hundred episodes or something and see what happens for you. But my gut says is if you took a hundred episodes, the transcripts from them, maybe some that like the keywords really matter to you, but the sales of them, because they're not as current, aren't going to be as big a deal. Right. They're older, but they're really core keywords for your website if you put them into their own blogs following the bingefactor.com model. So go and Just steal liberally from how we style it at the binge factor. Go ahead and do that. I think that you'll find that the website traffic and the organic keywords for you will grow in by the thousands quickly. And that actually might be the best long term value because I just saw a Google for Creators report that says that anything you do like YouTube is 20 days of relevancy, search relevancy long term, but a blog is a year plus. And I suspect you and I both know that podcasts can be three years plus. So we, if we take that podcast and then we make blog relevancy now, we've gotten a lot more search, a lot more capability happening, and our website's growing in authority because of that. So I think at the end of the day, that's probably what's going to be your next bet, because it's great that the search apps are going to do this and the listing apps are going to have better search capability. But they're only doing it because their search is so bad. They're not doing it as a favor to us, the podcasters, or to the listeners. They're just doing it because their search algorithm stinks and they need to improve it. Right. And that's the only way to do it.

I love that. No, that's a great idea. That's something that I've thought about in the past. It's kind of been on lists at some point, right. But maybe I should bump it up to the top of the list for Q4.

Just even try 20 episodes from like what would be a month's worth pretty much for you? Try about 20 episodes and just do that and then see month over month. Am I seeing traffic growth? Is this really organic keyword growth? I mean, typically what we see is within 50 episodes, within a year's worth of what would be most people's content because they're not producing as much as you. They see thousands of keywords added to their website growth and that's a value to you. I mean, I didn't know you existed and I wish I did because I need training for my team. And so now that I know you're there, I'm sending them all to your new business podcast. It's going to have a hundred people listening to it right away, I can guarantee that. So I'll make it mandatory. So there's a bunch of things like that that if I knew about you, and normally the only way we do is to search, we'll go out there and say, I'm looking for A course in written business English. And wow, if you showed up everywhere, more value.

No, that's a really good point. And it's still so much. It's hard to get found in podcasting, but in reality, there's really only about 400,000 active shows that we need to worry about in terms of competition. It's not 4 billion or million that people are saying, but on the web it probably is 50 million websites that address your topic. So it's a completely different place.

It's crazy numbers, right?

Yeah.

I do this search and I double check it every so often just to make sure it's up. But I do like LA Wedding Planners, and if you go to the directory for LA wedding planners, there's something like 20,000 of them.

Like, it's.

There's a lot of them, but there's 23 million Google links, Google mentions of LA Wedding Planner. Like, that's too much for anybody to sort through. And how do you rise to the top? It's harder.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So that's a good point. I'm going to look into, seeing if we can key as a business owner is how do we decide we're going to try this? Set up the measurement, set up the sop, have our team get started and then put it on systems until we come back and see did it work, but making sure that we're on top of setting up those systems.

Yeah. Well, if there's anything that I can do to help you with the system, let us know. That's why I said go look at the way we do it on the bench factor, because we dialed it in for us and for our clients. So, like, we know exactly how it should look, what works best with Google. So if you follow our model, that SOP is already there for you. But I love that you're talking sop. And for those of you who don't know what that means, Standard Operating Procedure, it means that you don't really get systems, processes, and how to inform a team to get them to do things in a repeatable way. And Lindsay knows how to do this. So I really want to ask you, like, what does your team involve? Like, how much involvement do you have in the process? And like, where does this drop off? How does the system of podcasting work for you, especially when you're doing four to five a week?

So I'm more involved in the business than I probably should be this many years in. Right. I'm still very much, you know, if I go on vacation, the systems will repeat themselves every week. Yes, but the important things won't happen necessarily. Things won't move forward in terms of the podcast creation and publication. The only thing I really do on that side is mostly just being on the mic. Luckily, my co host, whether it's Aubrey, Michelle, Jessica, or a guest, will generally show up with plan. If it's a guest, I have, I just have a formula for them and we go through it and they insert, fill in the blank. But my co host comes with the information, with the plan. We record together, we chunk it up. It's usually four out two to three hours of recording. So we get multiple done. Right. That's a key. We don't sit down and do 15 minutes of recording and then come back the next day. No way. And then I record titles and WIFMs and then send it to our editor. He edits, someone else kind of schedules it in and then someone transcribes and someone else edits those transcriptions, chooses keywords that are going to be tappable in the app, which is a feature. Someone else puts those in Amazon aws. So the app takes care of itself. The only thing I really touch on the podcast production level is sometimes ideas. I'll get good ideas and I'll just send it to the team or. And just recordings for the most part.

So that's nice. So you're living in that moment of what you love most about podcasting, which is making it more sustainable for you. If you were transcribing and doing all of that, by now, you'd be like, I'm done.

I would never attempt to do transcribing myself. No way. It sounds painful, but I have a great transcriptionist and she loves it, so I love her. I would also never attempt to do editing on my own. We've never done our own editing, except for maybe episodes one and two. No way. I have a great audio editor. He's in the Philippines as well. He's fantastic. And he's been with me for eight years and hopefully he will be with me for eight more. So these are things that we should never try to do on our own? I think.

So. Let's talk sponsors. You've taken sponsors on the show. How is it working for you? And is it really of enough value for you to have sponsors on your show?

Yeah, for sure. So we had our first sponsor. It's funny, we went into sponsorship in the beginning and then we came back out and now we're going back in again. So in 2014, we took on our first sponsor. Our first sponsor was A language tutoring marketplace. It's still out there. I think we got it going as a company. We kind of helped grow it from the start and is now it's doing quite well. We worked with them for like two and a half, three years straight. And then for whatever reason, I decided, hey, this is our podcast. We're going to launch our own courses and build out our education company. And we did that. That was when online courses were somewhat new. Now in 2021, 2022, the online course world is getting super crowded, to be honest, especially in my space. Post Pandemic, all these brick and mortar schools have gone online, and also individual creators have come online and have decided that they're English teachers, which is fine. That's cool. They're creating courses. Great. More power to them. This is capitalism. We can do it. It's great. But we have to find our own new path again. So where we really shine is our numbers, the size of our podcast. And so when I attended Podcast Movement last summer in 2021, I had more conversations with people and they said, oh, my God, what are you doing? Like, why are you not monetizing your show more?

7 to 8 million a month is high compared to most.

Yeah, I knew it was big, but I didn't really think about it, like, how it compared to the current typical podcasts. And so I started talking with different sponsors. And so, yeah, since then, the last year or so, we've gone gone heavily into how can we work with programmatic ads, host red ads, and direct sales ads in relationships I've built, as well as custom sponsored interviews, which we'll do sometimes, too. So we're doing it all now, and that does open up more scale in the company, for sure. I'm sure that this is the direction we should go in for that reason and the fact that we just enjoy it. But we're not going to leave the education course model behind either. We're still going to have it there. It might be 50, 50 or 40, 60 or something like that. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Well, I'm so glad that's working out for you. So I'm about to do our three things, and we'll talk about some other monetization features that you might be thinking about. But first, I want to hit on your binge factor, because I'm here to psychoanalyze your show and decide why it is so bingeable. And here's the thing. Binge listeners love to find a show that has a large amount of episodes because they know they're Going to get whatever questions they have are going to be answered. So by having 2,000 episodes, you won the authority game before they ever even explored another option. Right. So that is why all ears English is so bingeable, is because you earned the right to get them to click, subscribe and listen to as many episodes as they can or skip around and get where they're going. So your challenge is navigating them right now. But the rest of it, you earned that authority level. It is incredibly hard for someone to come in and be able to play at that level. They can't create enough content fast enough to compete with you there. So that's why it's so amazing that you've stuck with this as long as you have, because so many don't and they don't realize the compounding effect of that authority. Your 7 to 8 million listeners is earned because of this, because of this commitment and care you've shown to the growth of your listeners.

Yeah. It's so true. Thanks for saying that. I mean, it's the same thing as if you invest a dollar in the stock market when you're 12 years old. You could just do that every day. You'd probably be a bajillionaire by the time you're 85. Obviously, the quality has to stay high. You have to stay ahead of the curve. We just invested in these new mics, the shore mics. We were using the ATR 2100 until like two weeks ago. I mean, it was good enough, the quality, but I see that there are entire production studios now. They're like Hollywood production studio studios for podcasts.

Well, yeah, Podcasting's changed since you started in 2013 and the competition level has gone up.

Yeah. So you have to kind of keep. But sticking to your core and making sure that you understand. Right. It's just you and your audience. Like, you understand why your audience loves you. There are more people like that out there who are going to love it in the same way. So have a minimum or a good quality of audio. Don't go crazy. I think around the perfect studio and the perfect this and that. No, listeners can't tell the difference.

I really don't think they can. No, they absolutely cannot. And here's the thing. Even if you record at that level, the listening apps downgrade the audio.

Yeah.

Which it wouldn't be there anyway, so it's not necessary. Does it improve things? Yeah. I mean, great audio does make great shows, but it's not a necessity unless you're really competing against those other Shows at that level, right?

Yeah. I mean, what I would do is spend time building relationships. So in the beginning, something I didn't mention, but I'll just throw it in if we have any time in the beginning. In the first hundred episodes, I think 30 or 35 of them were guest episodes where we invited guests on our show, actually, people who are already established in our market and we just got to know them. And I still, many of them are still my friends. And I'm always kind of reaching out, getting to know people, going on their shows. They'll come on mine. It's just like a friendly world. Right. You have to build those relationships. So spend your time doing that, not making your audio perfect. We can hide behind perfect technology and audio, I think. Absolutely.

I actually gave a lecture just the other day and I said, good mics don't make a good podcast. Like, it's just not the thing. I actually stole it from Billy Bean Moneyball podcast. And I called it Moneyball Podcasting, but I stole it where they say good bats don't make kids. And so, yeah, so it doesn't matter what Mike, you actually have at the end of the day, still that kind of produce. So I love that.

Yeah, they'll give you a lot of leeway there. Yeah. Okay, cool.

They will. Let's talk about the three things. So you could have tons of listeners, but you didn't always. So what's some key to that? Listener growth? How do you get more listener growth and engagement?

You know, I think podcasting is still a word of mouth thing. So have a show that people feel kind of cool. Recommend goes back to human psychology. Right. Why do people make a recommendation? They know it's going to make them look good. Right. Because they've discovered something that's cool, that's fun, that's different. And it says about them to their friend that, hey, I found this new. In our case, a new way to learn English. It's cool. I'm not doing it the old way. I'm not doing it with textbooks and classrooms and stiff teachers. I'm doing it with these ladies from New York and Colorado, wherever, Boston, New York. And it's cool. Check it out. So word of mouth is the first thing.

Well, I could just hear someone. I can just totally hear that right there as you're saying that. I can hear someone going, yeah, like, they're like such and such. Gets a bad rap talking about this before. And their friend will go, like, what does that mean? And where did you learn that? Who's having the same struggle with their English as a second language. And they'll be like, oh, I learned it from this great podcast. Would you like me to share it with you? Like, you could just see that referral happening in action. So you're so right about that. I think that that's really important. But I think that we touched on something before that I do want you to reiterate here because we talked about it before the episode, but really the key to your success and listener growth is your consistency.

Yeah. And this is the part that's not sexy, and it's probably not what people want to hear, but it is the truth. So I could talk all day about other strategies. Guesting, promo swaps, buying ads on other shows. Yeah, maybe another day we'll talk about that. But consistency is the first thing. First of all, launching with multiple episodes already in your feed is kind of a known thing now because it goes back to the same thing you said, Tracy. When I find a new show, I'm very disappointed. Or I'm basically leaving and not subscribing. If there's not at least five to 10 episodes in the queue because I like it, I want to hear more. I'm not going to subscribe if there's one episode in the queue. I don't know how good you are. I don't know anything about this show.

And you don't know if they'll stick around.

Right, Exactly. So you're already starting your consistency game and the breadth of your content well before you launch. Right. So you're launching with a number of episodes, and then you're setting up a system so that you sit down once every two weeks, not every day. Can you break up your show to make it a little shorter and you publish more often? That's something we did right in the beginning. Initially, we did two episodes a week, 30 minutes each. And at some point we had a conversation. We said, could we break this down and make it shorter? We don't think people need 30 minutes a day of English. We think they need 12 to 15 minimum. And so that's what we did. We just broke it up, and now we've got four episodes instead of two. Huge, huge choice from the beginning. And then you're putting that volume of content into Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, and the algorithm just kind of picks up on it.

Well, and the algorithm picks up on it, and then somebody subscribes and then they listen to a ton of episodes and they have all these choices that they can binge on, which boosts your numbers. Every single time somebody new finds you. And that's really the key to the compounding success we were talking about before.

Yeah. So it feeds on itself. But one thing to set this kind of thing up, I mean, to be honest. So when it comes to your co host. So I hire my co host, I hire my team. My team, they work for me. And there's a benefit to that. I'm not at the whim of a co host who might be a co owner who was like, I don't think I want to. Yeah, I'm. Now I'm more interested in this and I don't know, maybe I like, I'm not at the whim of that. So when I hired my team, I said, guys, we publish four days a week. It's non negotiable. And they get that. Like when they're about to go on vacation, they know the a month before they have to tell me. And we're already working ahead. My co host, Michelle, has been on maternity leave since March. We finished recording for October episodes in March. So that's the kind of consistency that I'm talking about. We don't mess around. So they know that that's non negotiable and they love it too. So it works.

Oh, that's such great advice. So thank you for that. So let's talk about your guests, because I'm sure over time it's changed, as you said in your first few hundred episodes, you were really looking to build relationships in the marketplace and also looking for that authority boost of somebody else who maybe had a bigger name than you in the industry so that you could have an association. What are you looking for today? Like, what's changed over time? And do you vet your guests in a special way right now?

Yeah, it's really interesting. I've had some kind of flops around. People that have come on that I thought were more well known in the mainstream media space in the world, like people who have been on like, Amazon series, like little things that I'm like, oh, they know this person. Like they've worked with this famous, famous person on tv. I thought those ones would blow up. And they really haven't. It's more honestly like the other ESL podcasters that have done well that maybe my listeners already kind of knew, and now they know that we're friends and we know each other and we're all just one happy family of podcast listeners and creators, that kind of thing. Within esl. Yeah, it's funny what does well and what doesn't do as well as you think it will.

So I did a whole podcast and wrote. Actually, I lecture on this a lot. Is that sometimes you get these celebrities. I call it the John Travolta.

Yeah.

Because it has to do with an interview I did with John Travolta. But it's like sometimes you get these celebrities who's their publicists, they push them so much on you, and then you think, okay, this is gonna go so well because this publicist wants this so bad. They're gonna do a good job of promoting the episode. And then it pops and it doesn't work out for you. And it's because of how their system actually works and who promotes what. And their job is just to get the placements, not to promote it afterwards. Like, it's just too segmented and how that happens at a celebrity level. But the communities work better. When you have a match community, it works better.

You stay within your own. Yeah. Or even not. If they don't promote it, that's okay. Right? I know they're busy. Like, people are busy. You know, if you're on, you're making a TV series for Netflix. You don't have time to promote my podcast. It's cool. It's not about that for me. It's more about the actual, like the number of hits on the YouTube video or like, how does that episode do itself? Does about the same or slightly down from a one where the normal co hosts are on the show. So you kind of have to know your audience and what do they want when they go back to Allers English every day? Are they looking for Lindsay and Michelle? Are they looking for a new famous TV star every other week? I think they're looking for their friends, like who they know or other teachers. Well.

And I think that it is hard in your particular area. Like, they've gotten used to how you speak, how you do it, and so you bring somebody new into that mix. And that's actually. It's almost harder to listen. They have to work harder at it. And that's not always a good thing.

Yeah. At the same time, I'm always looking for. I'm going to have someone on in a couple of weeks who used to be a blue man in Blue Man Group and he was a clown at one point. So kind of cool, like, interesting takes on things. So now I'm really looking for very unique perspectives, interesting things you've done in life where you can add a lot of extra value to my listeners.

I love that. That sounds like a lot of fun. Well, we talked about monetization from in terms of sponsorship and other things. But what are you thinking about? You've done a lot of tests, you've done the transcription sales, you've done course sales. What out of all of that group of things has worked best for you and where are you going to go next?

Yeah, I think the scale, it's hard to say. So I kind of need to do all of these things. Right. I would never steer my business in a direction where we're 99% reliant on one revenue stream, especially as we might be. Who knows, maybe we're going into a recession. We know that advertising spend pulls back is the first thing that will pull back in a recession. I don't know if that's going to happen. Who knows? I would never say that. But the scale is clearly on the media side of things in advertising. As we grow at our numbers even more, this is more listeners for advertisers to be on the show. So that I think is where the opportunity is for us right now.

And it's so interesting because it's actually flipped for, I would say 90% of the podcasters that I talk to because they don't have your numbers. So when you don't have their numbers, they think that it's going to be that advertising media model and it will never work out for them because they don't have those numbers to begin with. So right now there are so few of you with these kind of numbers and then there's more advertisers than there is, if you want to call it inventory. That's what they call it in the media industry. There's not enough inventory for all the advertisers that want to advertise. So you're at that sweet spot right now where others are so far behind and that model isn't going to work for them. They need to do all those other things you've tried. They need to do those things first until they build that up.

And that's totally viable in certain markets. A high end coaching program really works in our market. I mean, there is a slice of our listener base that would go for a high end coaching program, but not the majority. The majority don't necessarily want to spend $300 on an online course or definitely not 1500 dollars for one on one coach. It's just not what we do in our market. And so it makes more sense for us. But for a lot of your listeners, if they have like a business coaching program that could totally work, right?

So now you are looking at segmenting your show because you've got to sort of figure out this new navigation system as you get too close to the Apple limit. So you're looking at that and you're going to be doing some more business training styles, business English style courses and programs, and you're going to do more episodes and series than that. Is there a reason? Do you see that segment of your marketplace growing?

Yeah, for sure. We built the course in business English in July of 2020. It did really well, and I'm still not sure if it did so well because everyone was at home and doing business online because of the pandemic. But it's a solid course where we actually interviewed native speaking professionals from the US or from around the world, but just basically who could offer their thoughts on business, not just us saying what to do in business. And so, yeah, basically we're going to go deeper into this space. We define our audience as global professionals looking to improve their communication skills for work and life. Right. So global professionals either moving to the US or the uk from Japan, Singapore, wherever, or just doing business with, let's say, the New York office. If you live in Tokyo, you have to get on that conference call with your boss or your coworkers in English once a week. It's stressful. That's the person we want to help.

I honestly think it's only growing because so many of us have remote teams, and so that means that we've hired in such a diverse way. So I actually don't think you're going to find. Find a decline in that. I think there's an absolute. We're realizing an absolute necessity to make sure that our communications levels come up to what we expect as a corporation as a whole. And we don't always have internal trainings anymore.

Yeah, the stakes are high when it comes to doing business in English. Very, very high. And so people are willing to invest and we want to feel good in our careers. We want to feel like we are achieving our dreams. And English cannot be the barrier for that.

Really can't. And we hope we all get to that conversational level. So I so appreciate what you are bringing into this world All Ears English podcast. This was a winner way back when, and now you really have just championed this whole entire segment in the podcasting market. Congratulations, Lindsay.

Thank you so much, Tracy. It's been a pleasure chatting with you today and I hope that your listener base, your listeners feel motivated after today. There is a way to make this work. I love it.

I love it. When we Talk to podcasters who are really building their business and growing it and turning it into a business, which is the path that we heard here from Lindsay about how courses and programs and all kinds of things have developed out of the podcast itself and how it supports this community that she's built, who've been taking her courses and who have been a part of all of this program. But not just that. She also is a model for so many things that she's doing just right. She has multiple co hosts. She's paying them. They're a part of her business, a part of the core of what's happening. So it's a part of their job, which is really to helping to make the podcast more professional, make it more consistent and constant. It's doing all of those wonderful things and she's making money from the show. Tremendous amount of flow through, from the effect of what's happening, from creating it all the way through to monetizing it and developing this business as she goes along. So I'm so glad we could hear that. But she's got challenges just like all of you. In fact, she's got some bigger challenges when she's got over 1800 episodes. So kind of talking through some of those things and what am I going to do next and how am I going to arrange that? These are things that all of you might be struggling with at some point in your journey of podcast business building. So I'm so glad we could bring her on and we could have these conversations. And I'm happy to report that not only did I hire Lindsay's company to provide some support for our own customer service team, but it has been tremendously successful for them. So if you are working at all with any kind of VA or virtual assistant or any other assistants or customer service teams in other parts of the world, I encourage you to reach out to Lindsay and start to work on your communication skills with your team as well. So thanks everyone for listening. I'll be back next time with another great podcast host here on the Bitch Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and video casting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.

Sam.