71. How this Podcaster turned his side hustle into a profitable business

00:00:00
When I was at Podfest in January this year, I remember a moment when this person comes up to me and he's waving his phone right in front of my face. And I was a little bit startled and look at the screen, and on the screen was a graph. It's a graph that had this really, really big spike. And I was like, Hi, I have no idea what I'm looking at right now. And he said this.

00:00:25
This is the impact Capsho has had on my download numbers. And that impact an over 3600% increase in listens from six for the previous episode to 1981. And that's only grown since then to a total of 21 606 downloads. And well, I know I am incredibly biased about Capsho and how amazing it is, but I also know that it's only as powerful as the Capchovian who uses it, because Capsho is only ever one piece of the puzzle. And that's why I'm so excited to have Jr.

00:01:03
Sparrow join me on this podcast to talk about how he was able to get these results over and over again with a framework he calls Listener Migration. So you are in for a treat. You are going to hear exactly how JR Sparrow uses capture and his specific social media hacks to not only grow his listeners, but to also grow his email list. My name is Deirdre Tshien, CEO and co founder of Capsho, the fastest way to repurpose and market your expert content.

00:01:35
And this is the Grow my podcast show.

00:01:49
I am JR Sparrow. I am the host of West Virginia Uncommonplace Podcast, also Sparrow under review, and also an archival podcast called West Virginia Uncommonplace presents a collection. And then my last title is I am a Podcast Consultant. Now remember, in the intro for this episode, I mentioned that moment when JHR brandished his phone at me to show me his download results.

00:02:13
I'm sure, like me, you're wondering how in the world he was able to make that happen. So I wanted to dig into that moment and find out how those results actually happened. I need to give a special shout out to the person that introduced me to Capsho, and that is Alex Cnfilippo, Podpro Professional Pod Match, and all the other things that he offers inside of podcasting. There was an instance that I scroll the Internet every morning like everybody else. I take 15 minutes before I start my day and I scroll the Internet.

00:02:49
And AI was the talk of the town. And Alex, I take him for his word on things. He said, check out Cap show. He said, See what Cap show can do for you. Well, I hesitated because at the time, I was one of those workhorses that just does all the stuff.

00:03:04
Even though there's an eight person team for West Virginia Commonplace, everybody has different facets. And inside of that, we ended up losing. We still have eight. We had ten originally, we lost two because you all took the place of the marketing and the advertising that we needed. So this is what happened.

00:03:20
I went to Podfest, and that was of this year. When I went to Podfest, all my shoes are curated. Like I set them up a certain way and I'm like, this is how we're going to line them out. And then I have to worry about advertising them later. That makes it easy for me.

00:03:35
So that's my little trick in podcasting. So the first episode was about a lady that helps people with weight loss in a nice way. She helps out with what we call community eating. She tells you not to eat like this, but to eat in certain ways. And I knew that show needed some kind of juice.

00:03:55
So I'm in Orlando, actually, because I stayed there. I came in for like seven days for no reason, I don't know why. And Stacey and I are sitting there and she's like, what is this? And she's watching me. And we put the episode in.

00:04:07
We put the MP3, I think it was, yeah, MP3 in. And then the sloth comes up and all this extra stuff happens and all this magic happens. So I'm given all these points and directions to go with my show. So let me give you the lazy story. Me personally, what I would do is I would do like everybody else does.

00:04:25
I would go to Instagram and just post something. But everything I posted everywhere was the same thing, regurgitated, nothing changed. Maybe a different hashtag here and there, but from TikTok across all social media platforms, even all the way down to Tumblr, same thing. So you all gave me a blog post, an email, so I could just threw that in MailChimp. And I was able to use that.

00:04:45
And I'll go into that in just a little bit of detail. So altogether, what takes me or what took me 2 hours and usually 30 minutes. So we'll say two and a half hours, you guys cut it down to 15 minutes. And it's very simple how this happened. With every social media post, I was able to walk to the social media and I encourage everybody to follow what all social media gurus say.

00:05:10
And you don't have to be everywhere, but when you have this kind of software, you might as well be everywhere. So we went straight to Twitter first, because Twitter is the easiest reaction I found in social media. Facebook is like a long pass down the hallway. So we went there and that's where we captured new listeners. And new listeners came in from Twitter.

00:05:28
Because using this information and the vast adjectives and whatever the drip is behind the scenes, we saw a jump right there. And I'm thinking the first 4 hours, I mean, it was a nice number for us to start out with. I think it was like 100 to like 200 people. And they were new listeners, straight, unique listeners. So I go back to my analytics when a show drops.

00:05:49
And mind you, I'm at Podfest and people are doing whatever they're doing, and I'm just sitting over in a corner and I'm looking at it and we're watching the numbers rise and get higher and higher. And it could have been a fact of being at Podfest also, but we'll say it was all things, so everybody can get some credit here. But the amazing thing is, from Twitter, we took that same information and went to Tumblr. Tumblr is what we use. That's our SEO monster.

00:06:13
A lot of people sleep on it and don't think about it, but those people there that are on there, they're going to take those hashtags and move them. They're going around with them. So all the ones that you developed for that episode, that Cap show did, the AI beast, as I call it, we took the stuff there, took the third social media post that we got from you, posted it there. We racked up 75 people over 8 hours, which is good for Tumblr because it's one of our lower social media platforms. So then here goes the real crazy thing with the show notes that we got from you.

00:06:46
We took the podcast to Pinterest, and Pinterest is something, once again, I said, like I told you, I'm a social media guru on this part. A lot of people don't use all these, but I know Pinterest is my stay at home people, my work at home people, because they like to go look at the pins. So next thing you know, there it was, an astronomical number of listeners. I don't recount how much it was, but it was more than what I was doing prior. So Pinterest, booms, it's picking up.

00:07:10
So Stacey's watching her on her phone. Mind you, I think we were eating lunch with someone. And I had met Christy Brinkley at that time, shout out to her too, because she's great with what she does. And next thing you know, we move over to our platform, which is Snapchat. Now Snapchat, just real quick, is everybody knows it's the app that everyone uses to put things on SnapMap and place them in places.

00:07:34
Now, mind you, we were in Florida. We took the Facebook post that you gave us, or Cap Show gave us. I'm sorry, I keep seeing you. And we took all the hashtags because that's short form stuff, short form video, blah, blah, blah. So we went back to Spotify, got the episode, put the stuff together, and we went to the world's largest McDonald's.

00:07:58
Because I'm like, hey, I'm good with publicity. So I'm like, hey, these people are going to pick this episode up, they're going to do it. Next thing you know, I had 4000 listeners.

00:08:09
Now that occurred over a day's time, probably 8 hours. You get up, leave podcast, go to sleep, then wake back up to the next morning, we saw 4000 listeners on this one episode. Now this one episode, it's up there in the numbers, so we were getting real excited. All right, so we did that. And mind you, I haven't even said anything about Facebook or Instagram yet.

00:08:31
To us personally, instagram is a place that you go for reminders. It's the people that already listen, hey, here's a bright episode. Well, I didn't realize this one thing, but people actually search the hashtags and the definitive adjectives that are used. So that's one thing that I want everybody to keep in there, definitive adjectives. That is the greatest thing that you're going to get from Capsho, outside of all the drip and all the extra technical know how, that if you need to know about that, there's someone to contact over Capsho to tell you.

00:09:00
Now, Instagram we produced in our search because everybody has all the information you can look at. Our search went up over 100% from the day before. Now, mind you, we put our episode out on Thursdays, so that's Friday, which is Friday is a lackluster day for me because I'm not listening to too much. And Saturday, it's a toss up unless I'm doing something. So we get to Saturday, and I'm looking at all the results, and I want to say it was like 15K from everything that went on.

00:09:36
And from that point, we were just like, whoa, we can sit back. I didn't have to stress over what was going on, because Capsho took care of all that for me in that episode. So this is what we had to do, because I am a scientist to a degree, with podcasting, we had to not use it on the next episode. We had to let the next episode in, and I showed you the results on that. We watched it go down, and it came up a little bit, but we saw a 62% drop without using it.

00:10:09
So we let that other episode come out, which was an episode that came out on Saturday, because I didn't want to cram it together, because I wanted to see what this beast could do. So about the following week, I think I had capped at like 22, 25,000 listeners to the following Thursday. So I was happy with that because that was better than normally what everything else performs. And with us being the type of podcast we are, we see high numbers, but we don't never see anything that it takes seven days to usually get to. Maybe it may take more than seven days.

00:10:36
I'll be honest, in certain circles and certain content, it takes longer than that. Sometimes it's like 14 to 20 days. I mean, we get it, but it takes some time. So we were amazed there. And then we knew, like I said, we curated stuff that we had this episode that we had got approved by Disney Song of the south with the results that we got from you guys.

00:10:53
From like I said once, again going in because Capsho has so much stuff that you can use from us using the email from Matt to give our audience something to go on before it even came out. They were prepared, and people got to talking. And this was a little bit after Valentine's Day, too. So, you know, Valentine's Day, you're worried about whatever you're doing. So next thing you know, this episode comes out.

00:11:18
I did the Thursday, Saturday, but this time the scientific trick was to see how much Cap show could do for both episodes with only a data spared. Both of those episodes, and we don't have to bolster over numbers or anything like that, set a record for us, for our podcast for this year, and they are still in the top five shows. And having that so quickly happen, I was able to take a step back in that two hour process or whatever process inside of Curating. I stopped because all I had to do was position. And that's one thing I want to say, that's key that people have to realize.

00:11:57
Capsho can help you with marketing, advertising, but you have to learn your positions. That's the only thing that nobody can teach you in this business. And that's one thing I had to learn. So I know my key demographic. My demographic is so big that it's age 27 to 72 because I live in West Virginia.

00:12:11
It's a retirement place. And basically I represent from Vermont to Florida, and we'll say in the Midwest to basically Michigan down to Texas and then back over. I got some people in the West Coast, but we'll just say what it is for whatever. Now, the thing was that we sat back and we watched the numbers, and we were like, hey, we've got to go back real quick. So we went back and looked at what happened in January till the end of February.

00:12:38
And that show right there, the show that we had about the weight loss or whatever, was my number one show at that time. It was continuously getting numbers, and all I had to do was regurgitate. And this is something that Capshovian should know. If you don't know and you're going to become one know this bit of practice, I want to tell you. I went back in and I used the different portions of social media that you post that you made that I didn't use.

00:13:07
And I went on what we call a blitz Craig. I took it everywhere, across all social medias once again, and those numbers kept jumping, kept jumping. That show today, and I'm saying this as a medium tier podcaster, which that's just an independent podcaster, just the name we tagged on there. I go to sleep and I make money off that episode. I wake up and that show is still making me money.

00:13:30
And the whole part that's important to me about this is that I'm an independent podcaster that doesn't sell anything. I mean, I advertise with the one company that I do business with, but outside of that I don't have any courses or anything. So that's straight money inside podcasting I made with your software and everybody around me does whatever they do. They got coaching classes, this and that. But I can actually say with Cap Show and also with Pod Match and different things like that, I'm actually able to make money inside podcasting without coaching, which there's nothing wrong with.

00:14:04
That because I should probably become a coach or something, but I make money inside podcasting, and I was able to take that to a whole new level. How does JR Sparrow make money with podcasting? Through programmatic advertising inside his hosting platform, which is very much dependent on the number of downloads you get. But it didn't just stop there. I was able to make enough money where I still work my normal job, but I don't work it as long and at one point and continuously going in the near future I will be able to leave my job and it'll be to the benefit of using your service or you all service and how easy it makes my life.

00:14:44
Because, to be honest with you, from April till this coming up Tuesday, I haven't recorded a show with anyone because I was able to sit back. And I know that my hard work, with the help of you all's hard work, is going to make me money and make it to a position where I can sit down and be like, hey, Jr. You don't have to go to work today. You don't have to go to work tomorrow. You're going to have a little paycheck coming in from whoever's paying you and you can live your life and pay your bills.

00:15:12
And that, at the end of the day, is more promising to me than anything else I've seen in the market when it comes to AI. Because I've been all over the place with what you personally know, and just to see how I built it, how I built it, and to see those numbers double and skyrocket, but to continuously grow, forget the skyrocketing, because that's up and down plateauing. But to continuously have listeners on old episodes, repurpose them with the same material that you gave me once, that's more rewarding than me going out there and making 50 different posts with ten different hashtags. Wow, I am blown away humbled and speechless. That capture has been able to have this type of impact on someone's life.

00:15:55
It really absolutely humbles me. And while I'd like to take credit for all of it, I know that would be a disservice to the amount of work and smart thinking that Jr actually puts into promoting his podcast so that he can grow his audience and his email list. And it's with a strategy he calls Listener Migration. Now, what is listener migration, you ask? Listener Migration is taking the listener from an app or social media directly to your podcasting host or podcasting reader or whatever they're listening to.

00:16:28
Player. So talking about that real quick, I want to spin this in there real quick. We are all YouTube Academy, and we're all self taught in podcasting. There are certain rules that we know stay consistent, provide content that makes people content with your content. All the necessary podcast frameworks that we always talk about.

00:16:47
My problem was that I listen to everybody and I keep a memory, but no one actually told me beyond the simple stretch of get an email address and then you'll know who's listening to your show. No one actually went into detail to tell me, hey, you can go over to an app, get listeners in a location, find a call to action to bring them back to you, and you can actually know who they are. Have one email list, have them defined, because the story of the email list is not everybody's going to give you their email. OOH. Are you intrigued?

00:17:17
Are you intrigued with how it is that JR Sparrow was able to figure this out, how you can find people in specific locations, build that audience, and then get them onto your email list? Well, hang with us, because when we come back, we're going to delve into exactly how he does this. We are talking about listener migration with JR Sparrow. This is the strategy he's been leveraging to, one, get consistent growth in his downloads, and two, grow his email list so that he can retain those listeners. Let's jump straight into step number one of Listener Migration, which is to promote across social media.

00:17:52
Now, I do want to preface this particular step, because Jr does not just promote across social media in the way that you and I might. Nope. He has a very unique way of getting visible using underutilized platforms like Snapchat and Tumblr, even gaming platforms. Listen closely to the hacks he mentions as he talks about exactly how he does this, and allow yourself to open your mind to the possibilities of how you could use the platforms that you're already on in different ways to get in front of your business. Listen closely to how he thinks about podcast collaborations.

00:18:28
And allow yourself to think differently about how you can collaborate so that it makes people want to be a part of what you're doing. So with Listener Migration, we started with basic apps. We went to iHeartRadio, Pandora, and Spotify. And you would think, why is he even telling me this right now? I use those apps regardless.

00:18:47
Well, there's one thing that people fail to do. There's a Share feature on every single one of those apps. And that Share feature in turn, intertwines with other apps. So we'll go with the giant in the building, Spotify. Spotify, for instance, you can use this.

00:19:02
This is one of the greatest tools you can use for listener migration. So here it goes. You can share it across anything. You can share it across PlayStation platform. Xbox microsoft teams.

00:19:12
You can take it anywhere you want and share your podcast with people. But we're going to take Spotify, Iheart and Pandora and we're going to use Snapchat for instance, because that's my real special expertise here. Snapchat geolocation app. You can use it in many different facets. So let's tie into one of our rules in podcasting.

00:19:31
Podcast collaboration. Well, podcast collaboration, most people think of it just as an episode. I don't think of it that way. With Snapchat, you can take a show. So say, look, if I'm listening to grow my podcast show and to make it work properly, I'm going to listen to your show 3 seconds into it so it's automatically starting.

00:19:48
That's one key thing that some people miss out on. So I'll listen to it 3 seconds in or even maybe a minute or so, usually long enough, let the intro go by. And when I'm on Snapchat, I will share it to the public. Snapchat. Okay, I hope this is coming together for you.

00:20:05
Jr has some very cool hacks on how he uses Snapchat specifically to get visible, to get in front of his audience. And he approaches this in a very different way, not just sharing his podcast, but other people's podcasts as well because he knows that he's building goodwill by doing this. And by the way, not even goodwill with the podcasters he's sharing about, but goodwill from others seeing that he's even doing this because good attracts good. And now all these other people want to get to know him and what he's doing because he's just giving it's actually so amazing to hear about how he approaches collaborating. Okay, so let's head into step number two then.

00:20:47
Here's where the magic goes. It doesn't happen today, it doesn't happen the day after. It's an organic process and everybody talks about they want the organic process. And this is one of the easiest ways where if you're spending your money with Capsho so you're getting your marketing, your new advertising thing is Snapchat. These listeners, you can put a call to action together in your show, in your show notes or anywhere saying, hey, where do my listeners come from?

00:21:10
So this is step number two to listener migration, which is simply to ask a specific and easy question for people to engage with you. Now, where does he engage with his audience? So there's two places I send them. Now, if you're a normal, avid podcast listener, I will throw it in one of our shows. And the call to action is very simple.

00:21:30
How did you find our show? Or I encourage with something real sneaky. And I hate to say sneaky, but it's like this. I'll be like, hey, I'm going to be available for X amount of hours on this day. Like you have open hours sometimes.

00:21:43
So I have open hours, and I'm finding where these people come from. And I will send them usually somewhere where they can that's more intimate than Instagram or something. I actually have an app that I use that they can come directly to. You know, if you have something secure like know I'm not saying WhatsApp or nothing like that to somebody else, I send them there or I send them to my discord, because my discord is the only place that I've ever been able to find that people can interact with each other and then pulling off that side message or talking to someone separate and even going live like we're doing right now. I can communicate with my audience like this.

00:22:14
So that gives them that intimate setting that they need sometimes, or they want I'm not going to say they need, just want. So that's what I do there. And the last call to action that I do, if I can't get them either one of those ways, is just flat out. I'll go on TikTok because TikTok is our short form video, and I will ask, hey, how did you find the show in a clever way with some kind of video or whatever I'm doing? So those are the three call to actions that I'll do.

00:22:42
Okay, so this is step number two, to ask a specific, easy question so that your audience starts to engage with you in the DMs. Sounds simple, right? But there's actually a secret to how Jr. Does this too, how he compels his audience to engage with him. And it all comes down to relatability.

00:23:00
And not just any relatability, but specific relatability. And if you want to hear how Jr. Creates that specific relatability, how he compels his audience to engage with him, then you can grab that as a free bonus clip, which you can find in the show notes. He has a very different way of thinking about how he creates that relatability. That honestly, I'm going to start adopting that myself.

00:23:22
So go ahead and grab that free bonus clip in the show notes, and then step number three is leading them onto your email list. So how does Jr. Do this? I will say, hey, this was an amazing conversation, but our BTS are behind the scenes. Our extra content is readily available to you, not at a cost.

00:23:44
If you provide an email address, if you want to know, that the inner workings, because we post videos and stuff, but the stuff that we do, like the stuff you've seen with the research and stuff, there's a time lapse video behind me that nobody will see except those people that are part of that email list. And they saw the time lapse video. They seen how I set up this operation today, where I'm at and all that other stuff. So they get that kind of intimacy. I tell them it's a whole nother level of intimacy that you get and you get to know me even from about car ride or whatever transportation I'm taking.

00:24:13
You get to see me hop on the bus. If I'm in a big city or something, you're going to see that type of information. But here's the catch. Without an email address, without you letting me send you this simple thing, which I only send one email a month. So I don't want to put pressure on them.

00:24:28
Now, if I had a service I was offering, yeah, they're going to get that thing four times a month. I'll let them know that it's just very casual. I'll let you know what's going on for the next month and in the middle of the month. And if we're doing something extra like a little event like when we podcast DJ, which that's another thing for another day. And that's what I do to capture people as long as people don't feel pressured.

00:24:47
Now, in the very beginning, I used to pressure people and I would get no results. My pressure was like this. I was like, hey, I'm Jr. From West Virginia. Uncommon place.

00:24:54
Oh yeah, snap into a slim gym, listen to my show. Let me get your email address and I'm going to send you a bunch of emails is not the way to go. Very subtle. Subtle is the word that has to go across in podcasting so much with listeners to keep them attracted to what you're doing. Some people have that aggressive nature that can work, but I don't have that kind of aggressive nature.

00:25:12
I'm a light hearted person. So as long as I've always kept this normal tone of voice, I don't enunciate any higher or do anything crazy. In those instances, people are going to stay along and that's how I get that email address. I make sure I'm the USB hub that you want to hook your USB cable up to. And it's as simple as these three key things here.

00:25:35
There can be no deception in what you're offering or what you're doing. There has to be a tangible. And when I say tangible, I will send them even once they send me the email, I will send them something extra exclusive just so that they know that it's me and it's not something that's automated to every person out there. Now, they might get automation later, so sorry for anybody that hears that part. But that's right there.

00:25:57
Now then, the third thing is authenticity in nothing. I let them know that I'm a talk show podcast host. The things that are authentic on my show are the people that come on and the experiences that I talk about on my personal level. So I let them know that I'm not an authority in anything but being able to ask certain questions and get captivating answers and make you feel like I'm Barbara Walters or one of these famous news reporters. And in doing so with that, that's a trust.

00:26:23
That's built because I'm not telling them that I'm Superman. Or Superwoman. Or super. Whoever. I'm just a normal person.

00:26:30
I work a nine to five. I do the show when I got time. As it's getting bigger, I'm making more time for it, but that's the truth. I'm just a normal blue collar person, just like you and whoever else. And I made my money off the back of myself and on the backside of sometimes, but mainly my own back.

00:26:46
And I'm just human. But you're going to still get the automation around you. But I'm human. And you can account for it. You're not just a number inside of my downloads.

00:26:55
And there you have it. This is exactly how listener migration works. One, promote across social media through collaborations. Two, ask a specific, easy question for people to engage in the DMs with you. And three, lead them onto your email list with behind the Scene content.

00:27:11
If you want to get in touch. With JR Sparrow, you can reach me at WW wvuncommonplace.com. Or you can send me an email over at wvinuncommonplace@gmail.com. Also on Instagram, you can find our link tree that can take you to any player. If you want to listen to West Virginia Uncommonplace or the other two podcasts that I'm involved with, and if you.

00:27:34
Want to get into the details with him on how he compels his audience to create that very important engagement, then grab that free bonus clip in the show notes. My name is Deirdre Tshien. Stay awesome.