Your Podcast Isn't Marketing — It's Proof You Have to Send (The Middle-of-Funnel Fix)

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Too many people, I feel like, with their marketing, especially business to business, are like, we're gonna put it out into the air, and clients are just gonna come beating down the door. I believe it's 86% of podcasts never make it past episode 15.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

How does someone actually know the podcast is actually working before downloads and views? Josh Trochet, founder of Pedal Stomper Productions and host of podcasting momentum. He built 19,000 YouTube subscribers while selling semi-trucks, then turned that into a production company and a video podcasting course he teaches at Tri-C.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

This is not the big attention grab. This isn't like putting up the shiny billboard, these aren't paid ads. We had someone email us that said, Hey, uh, we're having this problem. And I'm like, you need episode 32. If you are just going on and yammering on and talking about yourself, talking about your features, talking about whatever, no one is going to care.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

So you watch hundreds of businesses start podcasts. What separates what what separate You already have? What's I love it? What separates the ones? What separates the ones that move the business from the ones that quietly fade?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

That's a a banger of a way to start this out. I love this. To me, in fact, it it's so funny. One of my clients just had me on their podcast, and they asked the same exact thing, and it's it's passion. It's like the the want to, it's not only it's the passion for the subject matter, but it's also wanting to do a podcast. I mean, you know, this is work. Um, it it's it and it's it's why you have your business. It it truly is, because you're doing the work for for people in a lot of ways. But it it's it's the passion and it's the excitement about it. Um, you can always tell when someone gets on the microphone and they're like, oh, I I gotta record something again. And there's these other people that are like, I mean, like me, anytime I get the chance to sit in front of a microphone, I'm like, Yes, I'm amped up, I'm excited for this. And you don't necessarily need to be popping out of your skin the way I am, but in the same sense, is that excitement to want to do it and that just being authentic through that is huge. That's it, makes all the difference in the world because it's what gets you through the tough days. Passion.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

That is that makes sense, but it is definitely not something everyone can just have. Like you, like you, you, you're popping, you're ready, you're excited. I do find some enjoyment in this as well. But if I'm being honest, I don't always want to record. I'm a little tired right now. I'm like, man, what if Josh canceled? I can use some sleep.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

I see that side of it also. And but what's funny about it is the the the passion for it. Like there are days too where I'm sitting uh in front of a mic and I'm not like the, I'm not this amped up. I just had a big chocolate chip cookie too. So the sugar, I'm I'm like a toddler right now, is uh toddler with a sugar high. Is but to me it's those days where it is tougher. That passion and that passion to share your topic truly, I find is what gets you through that, those tough days. Because yeah, there are days, there's been days where I've been sick and I'm like, oh, I've got some, I gotta record this. And if I wasn't passionate about it, I would just it would be very it's the same reason why I initially dropped out of college. I wasn't passionate about it. I'm like, yeah, I'll I'll find something better to do. Yeah. Passion.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And the thing about that is so easy to say, but not always easy to execute. Like, what is something someone can practically do that'll help them be a little bit more excited for every episode going in so they can keep going and be consistent?

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Um, high like this is it, you're gonna love this answer. Hire you. Um, the big reason being is yeah, it's it's like it's finding the pieces that you love and then taking the pieces that you don't love as much and sending those off to someone. I know so many people that are like, I love recording, I love the conversations, I hate editing. And I know a lot of people like that personally. I kind of enjoy some of the editing process. But if if you like, if you there's a bits of it that you just don't want to do, find someone that does want to do those for you. Now, granted, it's gonna cost you some money to do that. You're I mean, neither one of us are donating our services to a whole lot of people. Um, but really it is it's finding those pieces that are are a drag for you and having someone else do them for you.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

So finding the pieces that you do enjoy and delegating out the pieces you don't, like the production, like editing and stuff like that is one practical way it'll help you continue to move forward and it feel excited for the parts that you enjoy because you do those parts and not the others. That makes sense, that's fair. One big question that you always bring up in your content is before you record, you ask, Why are you doing this? What is the purpose of that question? What how where did that come from? Why should someone ask that question before they record?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

It it's funny. Uh, like it's something that we've asked for a while. And then I had the opportunity. I actually sat down in the studio with Dave Jackson, who's one of the podcasting OGs. Um, like he he joked about it when he typed in podcast into Google search in like 2004, there was like six results. Um, times have changed a little bit since then. Is uh, but he's he emphasized that too. And his explanation of this it was really is the why shows your passion behind it is the first part. The part that I add to it is if you don't have a why behind it, if you don't have a goal behind it, you have no clue where the hell you're going. And like podcasting, it once again, it it's this amazing thing, but you don't want to wander. You want to figure out where you're going and you want to do your best to get there. In the same sense, your path is probably going to change. Most good podcasts that I have been involved with, they've made a little bit of a pivot somewhere. Like typically you see it about eight, 10, 12 months, you see them like adjust. They still talk about the same things, but they adjust the messaging, they adjust stuff just a little bit. And know it like if you don't have a why, you don't know what you're adjusting. And that to me is is really a key. From a business standpoint, I mean, we both kind of know where this sits in your in your marketing funnel. This is not the big attention grab. This isn't like putting up the the shiny billboard, these aren't paid ads. But what this does do is it generates a ton of great content for people. And if you're looking, if you're looking to the podcast to make your business rich, well, I'm sorry, if that's your why, you are going to be severely disappointed. Um, if you are looking for your podcast to add this huge robustness to your funnel, that once someone's in the top of the funnel, there's a pretty good chance that they're coming out of the bottom of your funnel. Then, yes, if that is your why, you're probably gonna land that. So defining that, make sure that you know like what you're doing and what the goals are. Without the goals, you're just, I mean, I I guess I would say with the the World Cup going on right now, without a goal to shoot at, you're just kind of dribbling around on a field.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Without a goal to shoot at, you're just kind of dribbling around on the field. Yeah. May as well go with a sports analogy, right? Yeah, yeah. So you made a point to say that if you're using the podcast to be kind of the top of the funnel, you're gonna be kind of disappointed. But if you're trying to grab robustness on your in your pipeline and it's more middle of the funnel, it's where things are at. Can you give an example of someone using their podcast middle of the funnel and how it led to a business outcome like a sale? I great example.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Um my client that was just in is they're a marketing firm. And they're the they just talked about on this. They said, We had a client that called us that said, Hey, I I didn't realize you also offer this service. I saw it on the podcast. So once again, it it right there added that right to it. The other thing that they have found is when people are calling in, they have this, like, hey, we'd like to talk to you about using services. That they have this familiarity with the people. I have a great story about this. The way I got into video initially was I was at a semi-truck dealership selling trucks, and I'm sitting in my office, and in walks this gentleman that, I mean, uh has obviously an over-the-road trucker. Um, he's wearing his Crocs, his cutoff sweatpants, and he's got a like a gray t-shirt on with like four days probably worth of potato chip crease on it. And uh he just walks in and he sits down in my office, he's like, Hey Josh, finally glad to meet you. How you doing? And I mean, he sat down and he's like, Man, he goes, I've watched all your videos. And he just sat down like he was a family member. And I was like, Oh, this guy knows me because he's watched me so many times on videos. Um, he probably saw a little bit of a freaked out look on my face at first, but uh he once again he knew me, he knew my personality. He became very comfortable with me and he trusted me right up front because he felt like he knew me.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

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SPEAKER_00 11:31

He did not, he wasn't in the position to do it, but I've seen it time and time and time again with so many other people where it has worked to that that way. Where I mean, for there's been other instances where, like I said, the marketing firm that I work with that uh they've got their podcast. We've do some legal podcasts where the same thing. They trust the lawyer because they know the lawyer up front. And they're like, hey, I've I've seen your videos. When you walk into the office, they know how the lawyer's gonna talk, they know how they're gonna act. And I mean, we hear it all the time with that.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

The podcast is generating a lot of trust. They're listening to the episodes, they're watching the episodes. It's allowing them to be familiar and trust that individual person to solve their problem rather than some random person to solve that problem. Is that is that it?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, very much so. They've, I mean, they've already you've already built a bridge of trust. And the other piece to that is with podcasting, is I mean, as you know, consistency. If I am showing up in your social media feed all the time, if I am showing up in your in your car every other week and I've done that consistently, well, I've already done something consistently, and trust is built on consistency.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Okay. Consistency, yeah, I agree, is important. How long before anyone with a pod like a founder podcast actually sees some results? Like, how long should they be waiting? Because it can feel like I'm how how I've been doing this, I don't see any results, it's a lot of work. How long before it's like, oh, I see this is why I've been doing this?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

It's the everlasting question. Um, it is the unanswerable question. Now, what I do say is having that why is a big reason that, and that's what gets you through those things. Part of it is like my one podcast, Podcasting Momentum, it's geared towards podcasters. It's geared towards a smaller audience. It's not, it's not geared towards everyone on the planet. Uh, and a podcast that I co-host called The Business Fix is geared towards middle and upper management in companies. That is a huge number of people. So knowing that total addressable market gets you kind of helps you figure out like when you're going to start to see some numbers out of it and what those numbers will be. What I always like to tell people is like when they talk about getting big podcast numbers, what's what's big? I mean, Joe Rogan has a total addressable market of basically half the United States. Well, that's not most people's market. So making sure you have that addressed correctly. The other thing that I always like to tell people too is it it builds. Podcasting is one of those things that builds. Your first episode, you're going to get 15 people and your mom will probably listen to it. Your second episode, probably only four people are going to listen to it. But then it once again, you've built this content that is out there forever, which is an amazing thing because we've got episodes on for some of our podcasts that are four or five years old that I'm still seeing listens on way back when. So, once again, as you build that library, it think of that as what you're doing is as you're laying bricks down for the foundation of your house. It's a long, tedious, arduous process in some cases. But if you do that well and you do that correctly, the rest of the house goes up pretty quickly once it finally starts to get that momentum. In the time, my magic eight ball is broken, so I can't say exactly how long it's gonna take. It's undetermined, is what I heard. Yeah, it it truly is because it depends on I mean, the harder you work, the luckier you're going to get. But some of it depends on luck. Who sees it when and shares it where?

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, that seems to be the the common answer. And but everyone will always say who's asked, who was ever everyone who's ever answered that question would always say, Yeah, it takes a while, but I have some real actual benefits from this, like relationships, or I had a client who specific who specifically listened to an episode and they came through because of that, and the sale was easy. This does seem to be worth it in the long run because of the compounding effect, even if you don't know when you're gonna see those results. For me personally, having time to be able to build up the reps and build relationships as well as have some intel about the market, it's already feeding me back, even though I only have a handful of episodes out. So that already feels worth it to me and wants me to keep going. And then maybe a hundred hundred episodes out, I can have my own real example of like, oh, this led to this business. But we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

The other thing that I I I love about it too is like let's take the the one business leadership podcast that I do, the the business fix. We had someone email us that that said, and I mean, we're we have speaking gigs and coaching that we do on leadership coaching that we do from that. We had someone email us that said, Hey, um, we're having this problem. And I'm like, you need episode 32. Um, and I was able to send that to him and then said, Hey, here we've talked about this once. If you'd like us to go more in depth about it, then so once again, you now have a library of content too that when someone says, Hey, I've got a question, you're like, Oh, I spent 45 minutes answering that. Go ahead and listen to this.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

I have heard a few people bring that specific thing up as well, where they had a certain episode that was specifically meaningful to a person's question, then they brought that episode up. And I've also had people say that they've made specific episodes because of a certain question someone's asked and sent it to that particular person once it was finished. Both seem very viable and good reasons to have a podcast. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah. I I mean it's it's the if someone's asking for content, if someone's art that already listens to you is asking you about something, by golly, answer them.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yes. How does someone actually know the podcast is actually working before downloads and views? What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 18:21

That it's such a tough one. Um, it it and to me, it's one of those things, it's like any other thing in marketing. It takes those repetitions, it takes pieces. There's no, there's no magic bullet, there's no magic eight ball, there's no, I threw this out into the world and magically it worked. So many people have this mentality of viral, so to say, realizing that that is a complete crapshoot. And the the odds are against you when it comes to that. Building what you believe in is the strongest way to go. And once again, when you do that, you're actually building on a good foundation. You're building on good messaging rather than saying, hey, I went viral once and I'm gonna try and live this out for the rest of my life. We've all seen how that works. It doesn't. Um, you get the quick pop, and then most of those vaporize right after that. Building that solid foundation, just stay in with the reps, stay in doing what you're doing, stay making sure you're focusing on the message you want to convey. It will happen. It's gonna take a while, it's gonna get frustrating. You're it's like any other thing in entrepreneurship, you're gonna be like, Why in the hell am I doing this? Uh, but when you start to see some of those things come back and work for you, that's when the smiles start happening.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Back to the question, right? Why am I doing this? What's your answer to that question? Why are you doing this? Why are you making your podcast?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

It it's so funny. Uh, the the two reasons for the two podcasts that I'm the most heavily involved in that I like host and co-host, um, the podcasting momentum, it for me is to learn from other podcasters and it's to help teach other podcasters. Uh, when I get it, it is the way that I get to sit down with someone like Dave Jackson, who's been at this for 22 years and is in the Hall of Fame. It is the way that I get to sit down and talk with him about podcasting and ask him any question that I want to about that. It is so for me, it's it's that learning piece and the fact that I get to to help others learn from that knowledge. And additionally, uh, once again, it's marketing. 100%. It is marketing. On the the business fix podcast, it started without a why, knowing that we would, and as an experiment, to say, I think the why is going to appear. Uh, my co-host and I are both bullheaded, um, we're both stubborn, and we're like, we're gonna give this a little, we're gonna give this basically a little over a year. And we started, and about I would say six months in, we were just having so much fun with these conversations and how we were doing it. We're like, it doesn't matter if no one's listening at the end of the year. We truly enjoy this. We enjoyed the conversations that we're having. I I mean, I know I was enjoying the things that I was learning from her. And so to me, it started out as that enjoyment, but now we realize we're actually our why is pivoted. It's a once again, it's for marketing content for us, for speaking engagements, for coaching, things of that nature. Um, the other piece to that is to help business leaders be better. Most people don't have leadership training, they've just had a bunch of, as I've like to say, in my journey, I've had a bunch. Really bad bosses, and I've been very intentional about making sure I don't act like those really bad bosses. So for me, it's it's us helping people is the other why because we're seeing the we we are to the point, we're just over a year in, and we are to the point where we're getting phenomenal feedback. We're getting, I mean, hundreds of comments uh uh every month. We're getting, I mean, it it's been wonderful, and it makes us feel like hey, what we're trying to do with this for the people is really working.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

There's a few whys in there, you said it was marketing, content. It was you actually enjoy the conversations and it was learning as well as teaching and bringing value to others. And with all that, because you understand your why, you've made plenty of episodes. The one there's one show that didn't even have a why at first, you discovered the why later, and you're just having good conversations, a lot of value came out of it. Then from that, you not only already are achieving your why, because what is it? Marketing, you're able to put content out, but you also get some business results like potential clients or gigs. Can you give me one example of like when you had a client come in or a gig come in after the months of asking and answering your why and doing the episode?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Uh 100%. We have a speaking engagement coming up, uh, where literally it's 100% because of the podcast. Um we basically said we we actually reached out to them and said, Hey, we'd like to speak at your event. Take a listen. And they did. And they're like, Oh my gosh, yes, we would love to have you at the event. So once again, that's where the the the pot we found them, but the podcast very much was the supporting content that got us that gig. In the same sense with the uh on podcasting momentum, some things, some of the things that I have learned there as I go through things have allowed me to help coach people and have allowed me to like work with people on that side in terms of the way they're asking questions, the way they're working with the the guests. The the people see how I've done that and they're like, How do you how did like I I'm not sure how you got from point A to point B there? What what was the thought process? So we've had clients come in for those particular reasons that have been wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

You gave an interesting little tactic where you reached out to someone specifically because you wanted to work with them, and then you gave an episode that said, Hey, here's an episode, this is my proof. I've actually never seen that particular one. It's usually the uh kind of the other way around where they listen to the episode first or they contact you first, but actually going out and being like, Here's my supporting, here's my here's why I know what I'm talking about, is an interesting way of going about it. Someone might even be able to intentionally ahead of time being like, I want to work with them, let me make an episode around this. 100% that that is an interesting one.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

It's it to me, it's the what too many people I feel like with their marketing, especially business to business, are like, we're gonna put it out into the air, and clients are just gonna come beating down the door, and it doesn't happen. To me, it is if you can find something that you can do to send to someone that fits their particular situation. I mean, I've done, I I've done episodes. I saw someone had a LinkedIn post. It was someone that I wanted to work with, and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna answer that question this week. Answer the question, said, Hey, it just and I mean, of course, it's this low-key, it just so happens this week podcast answers your question. Go ahead and take a look at that. Uh, so once again, it there to me, like I started at the top of funnel, but now I've got a ton of supporting material showing, hey, I'm a human. Like, and once again, the other thing that I love about it is too, is it you're going to attract the people that you're going to want to work with. There's, I mean, if someone's, I guess I would say if someone's super low energy, if someone doesn't like a little bit of snark and sarcasm, they're not going to be my client. At least not for very long. They're going to work with us for two weeks and be like, this guy's obnoxious. And they're going to go away. So this kind of helps us filter to find those right fit clients that we want. And so that way, if I approach someone that may not like the snark, the sarcasm, the whatever, they're going to watch me and they're going to be like, no way. And that's okay. That's not a bad thing because three months down the road, we'd both like on both us and the client are going to be beating our heads against the wall, going, Why the hell are we doing this?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Also serves as a a filter out for anybody who isn't a Yep. Yep. 100%. Is valuable. That's you don't want to waste time on the wrong people. That's exactly. That's in any any business knows that pain, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

We've all fired clients. I most people have fired clients, and as soon as that's done, you're like, oh my God, do I feel better? We've turned away clients. I had a I still remember one time we approached someone, they wanted to start their podcast back up. I'm like, awesome. And then we called and talked on the phone, and I'm like, something's up. And then we started to work on building the things. And the one day that, like, I was in the studio recording, they called four times in a row. Like, I caught like it, like the same thing that you would do if someone in your family was dying. And I'm like, mmm. So I sent a text, like, I'm in the studio. Well, I'll call you back in an hour. And uh, when I called her back, she's like, What took so long? And I'm like, We're not working together. Uh like, no, this is not how this works.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

So you gave one little tactic earlier where it's you have episodes that you can directly send to people and questions directly answered. What is like, what is the main way do you use your podcast to market? What is like the main priority of the podcast? Do you always have episodes that you're trying to send out to people, or are you just waiting for inbound at this point? How do you look at the priority of your own podcasts?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

That's a great question. For me, it it truly is, is it's creating the connections and it's from a marketing standpoint, it really is. Is I'm working with people to get those sharp little moments that we can put out on social media. Um, that once again, it garners attention. Now we found there's not a lot of crossover. People aren't going from Instagram to a podcast. It there's not there's not much crossover that way. But if we can still get discovered that way, it's a great thing. And we find that like working to get those sharper little segments does that that's what we've been focusing on from the marketing side of that.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

So sharper segments, as in like short clips from the episodes that you put out?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Not a lot of crossover, but discovery. So what is the funnel looking like right there? So they're like maybe scrolling Instagram, they they're into this particular type of content, and then they come across yours, and they're like, oh, that's actually valuable. And then what happens?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

From that, it is that the the the thing that we all love that everyone says is like, follow, and share. Uh but once again, if something hits with them a couple of times, then it it it starts to it starts to pick up, just like anything else, be it a podcast, be it an Instagram, reel, be it a TikTok, whatever. And that's that that can be that mid-journey funnel. Eventually, we find that they do find their like the ones that become clients are the ones that do find their way to the website. They do find their way to other things, but no one scrolling Instagram is going to find your podcast necessarily. If they're scrolling Instagram, they're gonna have to go look for your podcast. Um, it used to be you could put like links and stuff like that in there, and we've found that anymore, especially in the past year, social media places, uh, social media platforms have become so siloed that they've become very, very good at keeping people on their platform. I mean, I get it, it's how they get paid. So to me, it's it's once again, it's that brand awareness and it's making sure that you're found one way or another.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Okay, that does make a lot of sense. But once you're found, what then? Do we're waiting for them to watch a handful of reels and then maybe like, actually, who is this person? And then look them up. Do you have a like a CTA specifically for your like offer? What is what's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 31:31

We put some of those in there on occasion. We don't want to be like I don't want to be like the Instagram influencers like use my discount code below. That's that's not what we're going for. Um, we are going for that awareness, and there is the call to action. We do some podcast consults, stuff like that that work fairly well with people. Um, those are the main things that we use as call to actions, but we don't do them as often because once again, it in this part of the funnel, in discovery, in the discovery end of the funnel, if you are getting discovered, you they've got to sit there for they've got to work their way a little bit further down your funnel before they're gonna get to the point where they're like, I want to do this. I I doubt anyone has scrolled across to Instagram and been like, I want to do a podcast. Well, no, I get let me let me rephrase that. There's a lot of people that have scrolled across and been like, I want to do a podcast. There's not hardly any people that scroll through and be like, I want to pay to have my podcast done and produced and all the social media stuff made for it. That there's there's there's a difference there because everyone w everyone wants a podcast. No one wants to pay to do their podcast. So for us, it's it's making sure to that someone gets down to the the point of that funnel where there's some, there's there's intent there. They've done a little bit of work on their own. So that way we're not we're not answering hundreds of calls on like, hey, I have this pipe dream of starting a podcast someday about something. Um, will you spend half an hour talking with me about it? Probably not. If someone says, hey, we have a business that we need to grow, we've got some intention behind this, we wanted to call you about this, now we're probably interested.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

So they take a while to get to that point, and not everyone is actually even scrolling who wants to pay for a podcast, of course. And so, how does someone go from realistically from watching your con, watching like Instagram to maybe watching the podcast to potentially being a buyer? How does that transition happen?

SPEAKER_00 33:43

There's gotta there, it's like any other thing in a funnel. There's gotta be some intent, unless you're like Amazon is one of the few places I know of that is able to get people to buy stuff they don't want andor need. We're not, I mean, we're we're not Amazon, we're not like Amazon prices, we're not, we're not that type of thing. We're not those types of products where you can spend five dollars and not think about it. And when it shows up, you're like, oh yeah, I forgot I ordered this thing and not care. This is expensive. So we want to make sure that people are showing some intent on it. And that once again, once they get to the point where they've got questions, that's where they've seen us enough times that, like, hey, I've seen these guys a number of times. These are the ones that I want to call. It's the same thing as when someone needs a lawyer. Um, they they have intent, they've got the brand recognition of the lawyer because they've seen them on billboards all over the place. But once they that once they have intent, that's when they I mean, you don't just magically teleport into a lawyer's office, you've got to reach out to them.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

So once they start having questions and intent, that's when things happen. And typically they're reaching out themselves at that point. And so it's more inbound. Is that what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 35:04

For the most part, yes. Yep. We get, I mean, most of the stuff that we get is people calling us, people emailing us. And I mean, the reputation helps, getting out there helps. It's all about having those multiple touch points on people in that funnel. That does make sense.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

And so I imagine there's still at some point, and I think you already said say this, there is CTAs, but not always, so that people know that what you do, not just, oh, I have a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Right. Right. I have a podcast about podcasts. Yeah. That sounds kind of boring. Um, so yeah, no, we do we do have some calls to action in there. We do talk to people about stuff. But once again, it it's not a high pressure sell because we have found that when we high pressure sell people to come in for a podcast, they record two episodes and we put in all that work and time and effort up front. They record two or three episodes and they just don't have the intent behind it. We want to find those high intent people that are like, I'm ready to do this. I'm in this for the long haul. When you realize, I mean, the last numbers I had, I believe it's 86% of podcasts never make it past episode 15. I mean, that's that says something right there.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

How do you make sure you filter out the people who have high intent and the people who don't? How do you make sure to do that?

SPEAKER_00 36:24

It's it once we've been on a number of those calls, it's it's easier to spot. Um, and once again, too, we're not turning people away. We're just making sure that we're targeting with our marketing people that have higher intent, people that have to, we want to make sure that they take a step. Um, we don't want to be forcing, we don't want to be forcing anyone to podcast. Um, we want to make sure that they've got the the want and desire to do it too. Because like for me, like our like success is a shared thing, is our core value. And for we want to make sure that we're gonna work with successful people because that's how we'll be successful too. Um, it's the same way I look at it with my employees, my editing team, my social media team. If I make them success successful, well then I'm gonna be successful too.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Imagine that comes out in a lot of the wording of the marketing, qualifying people versus in your words. So saying if you're someone who's in it for wants to have a podcast and for the next year or something like that, just a basic example. Is that how you go about it or am I off?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

No, for us, we offer just a a consult, but we're we're trying to aim. I don't want to spend my entire life consulting with people who want to do a podcast or have a podcast that have zero, I mean, zero skin in the game. And that's why we are making sure that we're making people do a little bit of work in order to get to that point. Phone call, I imagine. It's a Zoom call. They're like Google Meets. Google Meets is what we actually use because you know, at least it's not Teams or WebEx.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

I've heard things. And that's where you do the main filtering, asking specific questions that let you know that they're strong intent versus not strong intent, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Yeah, and most of the time it's not, I mean, i if someone isn't that interested in it, they're not gonna devote the time to jump on a call either.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

I think I'm getting the picture. I actually one other question. Sure. I imagine that the podcast isn't just isn't the only thing marketing your business. It might be, but I'm imagining it's not. Is is that true?

SPEAKER_00 38:44

No, we've got, I mean, we've got a whole bunch of other marketing stuff that's happening. Um w be it outreach, be it um, I do, I mean, with us having the studios here especially, I do a ton of like local networking. Um, I do a bunch of speaking engagements also. I enjoy those. Um, so I talk about podcasting and marketing in general to a bunch of people.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

So generally you see podcasting as kind of a supporting marketing asset rather than the main way of marketing the business. Is that true? 100%.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

And I mean, marketing is one of these things where people put a lot of stuff under the umbrella of marketing, but if you just only do one thing, you're gonna have a you're gonna have a tough road to hoe. There's there's gotta be multiple touch points. And I I'll use the lawyer lawyer example too. I mean, it's the reason why lawyers have billboards, it's the reason why they have Google ads, it's why they have ads on the sides of buses. They're they're going for that, those multiple touch points. It's the same thing as let's take a Ford truck. Um, you see print ads for Ford trucks, you see ads on TV, you see ads on the internet. I mean, it's those multiple touch points. They no one's just gonna be like, no one sees a Ford truck on TV and is like, oh, I should go buy that. Final question.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

You have 60 seconds uh to get it out. You know, you could talk all day.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

If someone has their business, they have their podcast, and it's not getting any business results for them yet, what's one thing they can do going into the next episode to change to get that result? One thing.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Make sure that the why is solving a pain point for the people that are supposed to be the listeners. If you are just going on and yammering on and talking about yourself, talking about your features, talking about whatever, no one is going to care. Make sure that you are talking about something that solves a problem for someone. They should get a value for their time. Time's our most valuable asset. Make sure you make it worth it.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

All right. I like that. All right. Thank you, Josh, for being on the show. Highly appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. This has been the Founder Podcast Lab. See you in the next episode.