I'm Todd Miller of Isaiah Industries, manufacturer

of specialty metal roofing and other building materials.

Today, my co host is Ryan Bell.

Ryan, how are you doing today?

Hey Todd, I'm doing great.

How are you?

I'm doing very well.

Also, um, we had our first snow yesterday and, uh, a little bit of snow on that

Browns game, I guess, from what I hear.

And, uh, that was coming down.

So

Well, it's an excellent game to watch, yes.

The Browns came out on top, thank God.

Surprisingly.

surprisingly good

Well, hey, uh, you wanna hear a joke about pizza before we get started?

That's what I've been looking for all day.

That'd be awesome.

Well, never mind, it's too cheesy.

It exactly was.

yeah, yeah.

That's the, that was the un joke.

That was the un

is the un joke, yeah, yeah.

I got one more for you, though.

How do you know when your clock is still hungry?

Oh, now it seems like I should be able to figure this one out.

I think you should.

I don't know.

Got me.

It goes back four seconds.

I am confused.

Goes back for seconds like a

Oh, back for a second.

Oh my gosh.

Oh, that was good.

It got me.

That was good.

Maybe that doesn't qualify as a dad joke if it was, was not immediate.

Yeah, that one's a little more, uh, esoteric.

If you have to mansplain it, it is not, it does not work out.

That was a failure.

You should have stopped at one.

That was a failure.

Yep.

You're absolutely right.

My, uh, my first wife always used to tell me quit while you're

behind, you know, it's like, I understand.

I understand.

I think it's a couple levels above a dad joke.

It's just, uh, you're operating on a higher level today, Ryan.

I don't know what else to say.

Hey, well, I'm excited about today's show.

And once again, just so our audience knows we are doing our challenge words

for each of us on the show have been challenged by one of the others to work

some word or phrase into the conversation, um, as seamlessly as possible.

And at the end of the show, we'll kind of reveal what those words

were and whether we were successful.

So, you ready to go, Ryan?

let's dive in.

Good deal.

Well, in recent years, we've seen a rapid growth in the popularity of podcasts.

Uh, perhaps you're even wondering whether a podcast is right for your business.

Well, today, we have a truly special guest.

I'm really excited about this.

Been looking forward to this show.

I know it's going to be a lot of fun.

Uh, Joy, he's joining us to talk about podcasting, and I know we'll have a

few other things in there as well.

Uh, so Doug Sandler, uh, co founder of turnkey podcast is a seasoned

entrepreneur, author, and podcasting expert with years of experience,

helping businesses and individuals launch and grow high impact podcast.

Uh, Doug has been instrumental in turning conversations into

meaningful connections and profits.

He's also the co host of his own show.

The nice guys on business podcast.

Doug, welcome to Construction Disruption.

Hey, Todd.

Hey, Ryan.

I, I, like I said at the top before we hit record, I kind of

feel like I'm fangirl in here.

I've been listening to your show since, uh, since we met Todd and

Ryan and enjoying the content.

Thanks for putting out, uh, such, such excellent information for,

uh, for your listening audience.

I'm excited to be here.

Well, thank you for joining us.

We're excited to hear what you got to say and learn and see where this goes.

So I know you have had a career that has included a lot of things.

I think there's been some marketing in there, speaking, authorship,

DJing, and now you're a leading expert in the world of podcasting.

Can you tell us a little bit about that journey and how

Turnkey Podcasts came to life?

Yeah, man, thank you for, uh, thank you for

giving me the opportunity.

It seems like a lot of stuff that has been packed into my past, but

really there's only been two careers.

One is a, as an entertainer for 30 plus years in the Washington DC social scene.

And then the, um, transition to the new career as a podcast producer,

which just came by happenstance through 2014, and it came out.

We started the podcast as a result of, uh, of writing a book and, uh, I

wanted a promotional resource for it.

And I thought the podcast would be a great tool for that.

And it, and it was, and it has served a, a great purpose.

Um, it wasn't until a couple of years into podcasting that actually we

found our first production client, which started this whole different

avenue of, uh, of career growth and deliverables and services provided.

And, and, uh, happy to chat, to, to, to work into any of those things

that you want to, but have really enjoyed 10 years of podcasting.

1600 episodes, 6 million listens down the, down the pike.

And, and, uh, you know, literally millions of dollars in revenue

that has been created from it.

And I, I, I had no idea what I was getting into until I actually got started.

Very interesting.

Well.

You said it kind of started with promoting the book.

I'm curious.

What was the book you wrote?

So I wrote a book back in 2013 that came out in 2014

called nice guys finish first.

And, uh, it's all about the career journey that I took as an entertainer

and delivering an exemplary.

Customer experience, because I really think that the thing that

separates or differentiates a lot of people in any marketplace is not

just the deliverable, but how they deliver it, exceeding expectations,

you know, one step at a time.

And, um, I was a 5, 000 DJ in a 500 market and all of the competition

would say, how is this guy pulling down, you know, 5, 000 to do a job and

doing 80 to a hundred of those a year.

And they just didn't understand how that happened.

And I said, it's not about the fun.

Four hours of the event, it's the year and a half that led to the event.

And then the year and a half after the event, staying in contact with your

clients that led to more business and bigger business as, as my career evolved.

And I just taught people all about the customer experience, not about equipment.

So that's kind of how that whole thing came about.

And that's how the book started.

Um, I knew I saw the writing on the wall.

Somewhere around 45, I'm almost 60 now.

So almost 45 years old, I saw a decline, not a steady decline, but enough of a

trickle of a decline in my DJ business.

And I kept thinking, do I want to be that guy out in the middle of the dance

floor, doing the electric slide and the, you know, in the cha cha slide at 60.

And I could see clearly that I did not want to be doing that.

It for that long a time, maybe at 30, it was fun.

And at 35, it was okay.

And 40, I'm like, I getting a little bit, you know, hurting

on this, on the weekends.

And then, and then at 50 though, it's like, no, I don't

want to do this much longer.

So not because I didn't like it, but because it took a toll as

you can imagine on, on the body.

So that's, that was the beginning of, uh, of the whole podcasting journey for me.

Very interesting.

Yes, sometimes we kind of morph those careers a little bit as we age.

Uh, I don't know if anyone remembers, I'm probably the only one who remembers this,

but there was a guy a number of years ago who came out with a video called,

uh, The Evolution of Dance, and it was one of the first huge YouTube videos.

You know, things that everyone had to watch and, uh, kind of interesting that

guy and I went to the same college.

He's younger than me, but, uh, I had met him and, you know,

it's been interesting to watch.

He had to change his career.

He realized he did not want to spend his whole life doing the evolution of

right, right, right.

I think it's, I think everything is a, uh, it's, it's a, uh, a

cooperative exchange from one place and transition to the next place.

And if you enjoy what you're doing, it doesn't matter.

Uh, what you're doing as long as you are doing it and doing it well

and you have a good attitude and you're really positive about it, you

know, just keep, just keep rolling.

Whatever your career is.

It doesn't, you don't have to be a DJ forever.

If that's what you want to do, then great.

Continue.

If I felt like I, I wanted to have a deeper impact with, with what I've

learned through the lessons that I've learned, learned through my,

my first part of my, my, my life.

So you started your own podcast, um, the nice guys on

business and you started doing this.

Well, at some point you decide, Hey, I think I can help other people do this.

Um, what kind of inspired you to think, gee whiz, maybe other

people need help with this.

You know, we, uh, we had no idea that podcast production was going to

be even something that we started with.

I was teaching people about customer service and customer experience

and building up the, the, uh, the, you know, the customer journey.

And it was one person in our audience.

His name is Lou Diamond.

And Lou, um, came to us through our audience and said, Hey, Doug, I appreciate

you sharing all that stuff you're doing about customer service and all of that.

And, but, but.

I want to learn how to start a podcast.

You guys have been doing this for now for two years.

You got 100 plus episodes out there.

How can I do this?

And I said to him through, this is all through email exchange because

we shared that in our show notes.

I said, Lou, I have no idea how much I would even charge you for that.

What would you pay for that?

And how long would you like that to take?

So we developed the product with, with Lou.

And that was the first of literally 350 plus clients, uh, over the

last seven years of, of doing this.

And it has been such a great journey.

So it found us.

Which is another lesson to learn.

If you're looking for opportunity, it will find you as long as

you have an open brain for what opportunity is as it comes to you.

Very interesting.

Good stuff.

Well, You know, you're in this world podcasting, you're helping others.

Can you give us a few facts and figures on podcasts?

I keep hearing things like there's 10 million new podcasts every day and

everybody's got 4 zillion listeners.

But anyway, what are some

Yeah, I'll give you some of the stats as I, as I know

them about 546 million listeners are worldwide in the podcasting space.

And nearly half of the population, uh, listens to at least one podcast a month.

Now, I listen to one podcast in an hour.

I'm, I'm a podcast junkie.

I don't necessarily listen to true crime or history, but I do listen

to a lot of news and, and try to stay up to date with things.

And I'm sure they all have their, their certain angle, you know, the

journal and the daily and New York times, all their, all their podcasts.

So I listened to a bunch of those.

Um, let's see, uh, 33 percent of podcasts are viewed on YouTube.

24 percent are listened to on Spotify.

And while it used to be that Apple was the, the big gorilla, uh, having

80 plus percent of podcast listeners, it's down to 12 percent of podcast

listeners listen through Apple podcasts.

So, um, that's a total of, I think it's 60, if I do my math right, 69

percent of the podcasts are listened to on those, on those three channels.

There are 6 million podcast titles that are out there today.

70 percent of those 6 million.

are inactive, which means they haven't produced a show over the last 90 days.

97 percent of podcasts that are out there, uh, make no money.

97 percent make no money at all.

There is a 0.

1 percent that actually make enough to support a podcast.

A living for anyone.

And, uh, and 1 percent of the shows make any sort of appreciable living

of more than a thousand bucks a month.

So if you are a podcaster or thinking about podcasting, you want to focus

on, if you have a podcast that's related to business, you want to

focus on how do you monetize and how do you grow your podcast financially?

Because.

If you don't get any ROI, a good business would tell you, look, if

there's no ROI coming from, then why would you continue doing it?

It's a waste of your time.

Yeah, good, good stuff and stuff that we kind of wrestle

with a little bit too, but so, so before I go too far in depth on that,

I do have to ask you a question.

So do you listen when you listen to podcast, you listen to

them on standard speed or at a

I wish I could listen to him on half speed because sometimes

I don't really, I, um, my podcast production business, while I would

love to say it's a 40 to 50 hour a week job, I have such a great.

Team that it represents about 15 hours of my, of my work, it represents

a hundred percent of my income.

So what I do is I really use, if you count how many, if you count podcast listening

as a part of my work day, I would probably put another five hours a day into it.

I love listening to podcasts like before I, but when I knew I was going

to be a guest on the show before I actually was sitting in the guest seat,

I'm ODing on, you know, on, on Ryan and Todd and seeing what you guys are

about and learning some of your lingo.

You know, it's, it's really hard sometimes when you are either a guest or you're a

host of a show, if you don't know about your guest and if you're a guest, if

you don't know about your host, doesn't it make for a great conversation?

So I do spend a lot of time listening to podcasts, even just normal ones,

like the shows that you and me have.

very interesting?

Well, the reason I asked that, yes, there was a reason.

I pretty much when I listen to podcasts, I listen to them at double speed.

And if I go back and listen to standard speed, it just

doesn't, it doesn't work for me.

So I listened to everything like, you know, their chipmunks careening

down the hill on a toboggan.

I mean, that's what it sounds like.

But, um,

Well, and for me, you know, if I listen at two speed, it is sort of

like a head on collision with information.

I can't take it in that fast and I need to listen to it a little bit slower so that

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.

So for me, I need to listen to it a couple times through.

And sometimes I do.

I listen to episodes a couple times once I know the person and

then after I, you know, and before I get to know them a little bit.

So that's that's a cool way to listen to.

Well, you kind of touched on it, Doug, you know, 70

percent of, uh, all podcasts are kind of inactive, but it seems like

there are lots of shows out there.

And many of them never make it past about the 5th episode.

Um, what are some of the challenges and surprises people run into that?

Prevent them from continuing.

I think the biggest challenge that there is with people

with podcasting as it relates to, um, continuing to podcast is they don't

set a, uh, a stake in the ground.

They don't have a target that they are shooting for, you know, a lot of

people have a, an unrealistic metric that they are, that they are comparing

their, their, um, their success to.

And, you know, we all look at guys like Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss and Tony

Robbins, these guys that have millions of people in their listening audience,

but they came to podcasting with millions of people in their community already.

So somebody gets started podcasting and they're like, Hey, if I don't

have a thousand listens or downloads on this particular episode or in the

next couple of months, podcasting.

Well, I don't care whether you have a thousand people listening

or a hundred thousand people are listening or ten people listening.

If I have ten people listening, taking action, it means a lot

more to me than a thousand people listening and doing nothing.

So people don't have their, their goals set properly as it relates

to community growth, influence building, uh, brand awareness.

Conversion of listeners to clients.

And I think they set the wrong goal as it relates to podcasting.

The other thing that's interesting is they don't realize the effort

that must go into podcasting.

They think, Oh, I just have my phone and, you know, I can record something.

Well, it's a little bit more complex than that.

You guys can see, you have, you know.

Two professional microphones, uh, Ryan, you mentioned earlier, you do the

editing, you hate doing the editing.

So it's like, okay, those are the things like, at least you have the skill set

to do the editing, but oftentimes people get into it and they don't have the

skills, which is where we came in, you know, quite heavily in a lot of our,

our clients, we have a B2B business.

So there are many things that people don't think that go into podcasting

behind the scenes other than just opening up a microphone and go.

You know the scariest part of everything you said there

was when you started saying a lot of people start without A stake in

the ground and i'm thinking that may be my whole problem for life.

I I don't know Maybe this goes beyond

And that, and that may be the case in, in life in general,

but in the podcasting space, if you don't put your, if you don't hang

your hat on a specific KPI, a key performance indicator, then you are

never going to know if you get there.

What happens if you get to six months and you turn around and you've had

these five deals come in as a result of you having a podcast, but your

goal was, Hey, I was looking for podcast listeners and downloads.

Do you care how many downloads you have?

If you were able to make a hundred thousand dollars from your podcast.

Probably not.

Um, it's all about putting the right, um, the right, uh, magnifying glass on the

right components of your podcast metrics.

Gotcha.

Well, we've just talked about some of the pain in the butt

aspects of the whole thing.

But Why is it that you think podcasting can be a real powerful tool for

connection and branding and so forth?

Well, I, I imagine podcasting in the future to be the

sales tool of all sales tools, because we have so many different opportunities

within the podcasting space.

One is you're creating, uh, the no like and trust factor with an

audience that's been listening to you.

I have been doing my show for 10 years now, 1600 episodes.

We've had some listeners that have been listening from the very beginning.

If you don't think that they know us, like us and trust us now at this

point, then we will never have that no like and trust factor for them.

In a traditional sales environment, when you're calling on a prospect,

you literally have two options.

10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, maybe 30 seconds to make that first impression.

And it's very, very hard to convert somebody into a trusting soul

in that short period of time.

So that alone, uh, the connections that you make with your audience, the

relationships, I always call it the hidden gifts that you get from podcasting.

Think about this in your 200 plus episodes that you guys have had.

Think about how many relationships that you've built with people or had the

opportunity to build with people that are sat in that guest seat of yours.

How many closer connections that you have been able to make with

those people that you wouldn't have necessarily made had you not, uh,

had your podcast as the, as the tool.

So, that alone is two reasons why I really feel like we are, even

though ten years ago when I started I thought, maybe it's too late, maybe I'm

getting started too late in this game.

Even today, when people are getting started, you are getting

started at the perfect time right now in the podcasting space.

Everybody knows it.

It's popular, more popular than ever.

Amazon, Spotify, huge companies are going all in the podcasting, spending millions

or billions of dollars on podcasts.

Why not be a part of the wave right now?

Good stuff.

Well, you have worked with a lot of clients through your business.

I'm just kind of curious.

Are there any standout success stories that really show the power of podcasting?

And, um, to what degree?

I mean, you mentioned that ability to connect with the audience, um, I'd love

to hear a little bit more on how that relates to the success of a show or or not

So it would relate to the success of the show if that was your goal.

So, if your goal is to connect with your audience, grow a community, be,

be more, having people be more brand aware, I would say that there are

absolutely success stories that are within our client umbrella that do that.

Many of our clients have a podcast related to the business that they're in.

Uh, for example, uh, Be That Lawyer, uh, Steve Fredson's one of our clients and he

has a business that he sells to attorneys.

So his goal is to grow his community filled with attorneys and also put

people that are in the guest seat to have an opportunity to learn

what he does to highly successful.

He does not have millions of people listening to listening to his show.

He might have 500 to a thousand people listening at any given episode,

which is great because that's all he needs to make a mid six figure

income from his, from his podcast.

So.

Steve is a great example, uh, Karen Briscoe, five minutes success.

Another, um, another example of a success.

She, she wrote a book.

She used the podcast as the tool.

Her book is called five minutes success.

She's built a lot of relationships with the people in her audience.

And as a real estate agent created a lot of transactions with those people

that are in the audience, because she has the right message for them to.

To listen to a real fun one, um, um, uh, Stan Haycock has a, has a show called,

uh, fun with annuities, millions of dollars in annuity business has come

to him by way of his podcast that he never would have had, had it not been

for his podcast and his YouTube channel.

So those are just three stories that I share of clients of ours that I didn't

have to sell them into podcasting.

But to understand where their goal was coming, they thought all of them thought

I got to build a big audience to make a lot of money from my podcast because

they're all connected to their businesses.

But the reality of it is they don't need to build big audiences.

They just need to build the right audience.

And that's one of the things that we really stress here at turnkey.

wow, I love that and and that really kind of sheds whole new

light on things for me because you know, we hear a lot about monetization

of podcasts but If your podcast if the whole point is to go out and create

business for yourself or create those contacts and those relationships

Well, that's the monetization.

It's not getting sponsors and

Yeah, I was going to say, can I ask you guys a question and think

you just answered it, Todd, you know, Todd Ryan, if I said to you when people get

started podcasting as clients of mine, what do you think that they think the

number one resource for getting money is?

What do you think, where do they think the money comes from in podcasting?

Ryan, I'd love to ask you.

I would guess that they think they're going to get sponsors.

Okay.

And how about you, Todd?

What would you think?

I would have said that they're thinking that they're

going to get more customers

Okay, cool.

Well, Ryan's answer of getting more, getting sponsors is absolutely

where most people think the money comes from in podcasting.

The secondary thought is exactly what you said.

Todd is they think, Hey, if I can't get it through sponsorship, I guess

I'm going to try to find clients.

However.

Most podcasts that are, I would say, active, meaning more than 90 days since

they've created their, they've created episodes within the last 90 days, and

longer than 12 months old, meaning they've been podcasting for 12 months

and they create episodes, you know, once a month, twice a month, four times

a month, they are actually making the majority of their money from their

clients, And And 0 from advertisers because if you look at the national focus

on advertising, the numbers are for every thousand listeners that you have every

thousand listeners that you have, you're going to equates to 25 in advertising.

Okay, so if you have the average show, which does about 200 listens per episode.

You're going to make 8 for advertising.

Would you change your messaging for 8?

Hell no, I never would do that.

So I always encourage everybody, can we put down the ego metric

for a second of, I'm going to get more downloads and focus really.

And again, I'll, I'll be, is it okay if I'm like completely open

with dollars and cents here?

Sure.

Our, our podcast makes 400, 000 a year for us as a business.

And not, I would say maybe $20,000 comes from advertising.

And that's only because we've been around for 10 years.

So the $400,000 in, in revenue that we make from, from, uh, from our show

comes a hundred percent from audience and guests becoming clients of ours.

Wow.

And I don't even focus on, you know, you give

somebody the opportunity to put advertisers in their, in their, um.

as a part of the revenue stream.

And I've just created another job for somebody because now you've got to go

out and look for, look for sponsors.

You've got to pitch the sponsors and that takes you away from your core,

your core services, which in your case is not, is not advertising.

well, and it's interesting.

We have tried a couple of sponsorships, folks that approached us and said,

Hey, I want to sponsor your show.

And, you know, at the end of the day, we're like, Oh, my goodness,

that was not worth the hassle.

beholden to them.

And you're kind of have to think about is my message aligned with what the

sponsor and it, did I represent them properly and, and all of the stuff.

And it's like, hell no, I don't want to do that.

All I want to do is continue creating fun content, great content.

And if I can make money at it, great.

The key is to understanding where the money comes from now.

Everybody has a different perspective on and a different goal

on where that money comes from.

Yours might come from, I call it the guest to gold strategy.

Yours might come from having referral sources in your

audience or in your guest seat.

Some might come from finding clients in their audience or their guest seats.

Some might find it in affiliate relationships.

Some might find it in joint venture partnerships.

Some might find it in this category that I call I don't really know where

you fit into my life, but I certainly love having conversations with you.

Let's talk a little bit further about what we can do together.

When you look for opportunity in podcasting, it finds you.

If you're only focused on how do I get more listeners, who the hell cares?

Do you really care about how many anonymous people

you have in your audience?

That's an egometric that will never be satisfied.

So for me, it's all about conversion of the right people

to the right services for me.

If I said to you, Hey, Todd, Hey, Ryan, I'm able to bring into Isaiah

industries, an extra million dollars a year for of revenue into your company.

Would you care?

If it comes from your audience or your guest or how many people

are listening to your show?

no, absolutely

and and that's what our goal is.

Our goal is to realign the brains of everybody that comes into our

ecosystem So they understand that podcast Monetization does not come from

advertising and sponsorship for normal people like you and me and it does not

come from The size of your audience size does not matter in this case.

Gotcha.

So quick question for you.

When you mentioned the statistic about, I think you said 97

percent of podcasts make no money.

Is that podcasts that make no money from their, their business or sponsors or just,

Any money they can't even tie it.

They can't tie a cent back to it.

I mean, you think about it.

Look at all the podcast.

Just go through the list of podcasts that are out there on Apple podcast or Spotify.

You're like, Oh, that doesn't make any money.

You know, you know, if you if you're a plumber and you have a

show about cooking, you're probably not making any money, right?

So if you have a podcast that's related to your business, which you guys

do, you guys should be raking it in.

I'm not saying that from a trying to prod the bear here.

You guys should be raking it in as it relates to revenue

when it for you from your show.

And that's not because you have an advertiser or a sponsor.

It's because you're generating business using the right words,

the right call to action and the right strategy to put that together.

Good stuff.

I love it.

Love it.

Well, you talked earlier about, you know, podcast.

You think are the next great salesman or something in the future.

I forget how you worded it, but tell us a little bit about.

Any, what you do see the future of podcasting being, do you see any trends

or innovations or changes or does it just kind of stay like it is, but maybe more

people figured out and get better at it.

Well, technology has made things easier than ever.

Things like show notes, if you're not using a, you know, show notes

style, AI tool to, uh, to write, write them and, and all of the things.

So it's not just about writing show notes.

It's about providing transcription for better SEO.

It's about.

Uh, coming up with, uh, key, key bullet points about the episode summary about it,

quotes from some of the guests or some of the, uh, or from the hosts of the show,

it's about promotion on social media.

If every marketing department of every company in the future, I see having a

podcast as a tool because it's not only a community growth and influence builder.

It's also a, a, um, a, uh, customer educational tool.

that could really benefit the organization.

Talk about a CEO of a company being transparent enough to have a podcast

and having their audience and their customers fall in love with that CEO.

Now we're talking about some serious connection and brand loyalty when you

have somebody that runs an organization, has team members from the organization on

the show, having an audience fall in love with them by being transparent That's the

greatest thing that podcasting provides.

And that's where I see the future of podcasting is that it doesn't matter

how many listeners that you have.

If you're a plastic surgeon and you want to educate your audience and

you have 200 people on your email list, send it to your 200 people.

You don't even need to post it to Apple podcasts.

You just send it to your customers and your patients.

That becomes a very valuable tool as it relates to business growth.

So, here's a question, um, do you feel like someone who is

podcasting for the purpose of, you know, growing their business, should

they not worry about being repetitive, uh, in terms of from show to show?

When you say repetitive, um, you and I are having this conversation.

You're asking me my story, but I'm sharing my story through us, uh, through

a different lens because you're asking the questions I'll go on another show

and, and share it slightly differently.

Cause that host is asking a question.

We've done 1600 episodes.

We joke about some of the repetition that we've had.

Uh, my partner is not a big fan of national parks.

I am a partner.

I'm a fan of national parks.

I love fishing.

I love, I love wildlife.

I love going out and visiting.

We will continue to bring up the national parks episode that we

did years and years and years ago, and our community still loves it.

Um, think about your kids when you, when they were young, you would go to tell them

a bedtime story as they were going to bed.

They always wanted the same story.

They want a good night moon or they wanted whatever, you know,

whatever it is that they wanted.

And we would tell that story over and over again, unless you're using

the same words and repeating, just hitting repeat on that episode.

As a classic rewind, you are going to be bringing the story out different

ways, different times, and each guest has their, a slightly different spin.

So keep doing what you are doing.

Just have to put your eye on a slightly different goal.

If you're not reaching that monetization goal that you may

have, or may not have set yet.

Very interesting, good stuff.

Well, tell us a little bit about your show.

Nice guys on a business.

Uh, what are you trying to accomplish through the show?

What, what, uh, what does that look like?

So the, originally the nice guys on business was just

going to be me and my co host and that lasted for about 30 some odd

episodes until we ran out of material.

I'm like, well, what, what are, you know, Strick and I, Strickland is his name.

What are, what are Strick and I going to continue talking about after episode 36?

Cause we ran out of stuff.

It's only so much wisdom that we have.

So we started having guests and starting to share their perspective, um, about

how they've grown their business, their journey, the things that they've

done along the way that have been successful and wins and victories.

The hurdles that they've over, you know, had to overcome the hurdles

that they're still challenged by, which is totally relatable to your, to

your, um, your listening, a listening audience is listening to your show.

Then about two years in again, this guy Lou came out and we discovered that there

was something else that we could provide.

We could provide a service that's actually somebody in

our audience was interested in.

So we started to explore that.

Then we started to.

Do these interview episodes once a week with guests and people like

Gary Vaynerchuk and Ariana Huffington and Ron Klain, Biden's chief of

staff and, and, and, uh, John C.

Maxwell and all of these people would come out of the woodwork

because they had stuff to promote and, and we would just get a little.

Hey, I'd love to be on your show.

And I'm like, why would Arianna Huffington want to be on our show?

I mean, we have at that point, maybe 300 listeners.

It was because she was promoting something and it didn't matter how big

or small she understood the value that the podcasting space could provide.

So that started to become one of the, um, avenues that we explored getting

these VIPs to sit in the guest seat because VIPs beget other VIPs, right?

I mean, you guys probably have seen that.

And then it, it, it started to, okay, now we're, we're doing well with this,

but how do we, how do we turn the corner and actually make money at this thing?

And then we really started to focus on instead of audience growth, And

community growth, we started to focus on just the dollars coming in.

What service do we offer?

What called action can we can we create and what opportunities can we find,

whether it's through the audience or our guest seat for our show.

And man, we turned that we turned the corner our first month and made 35, 000.

At doing this new strategy, literally we turned the faucet.

It went from off to on and it hasn't stopped.

ever since then.

And we keep thinking, why did we wait two years to figure this out?

It's because we were just had our, our, our site set on

the wrong, on the wrong goal.

And so when we teach people how to set their sites on the right

goal and the right strategy, they oftentimes will do, will do what they

need to do in order to get it done.

You know, I, I love, uh, you've learned from your

own experience and now you go out and teach and help others.

So, um, what does it look like for your new clients to get

involved with turnkey podcasts?

Why, how does that all start and what does it, uh, morph into?

Starts with a discovery call, trying to figure out what is it that

they want to accomplish with podcasting.

Many times, you know, I tell, I guess I use this acronym, get to know

your mom, M O M, get to know your market, your offer, and your message.

The closer that you can dial into who is in your market, what offers

do you have or what can we create?

And what is your messaging or what's your brand all about?

As soon as we can get, get really tied into those three success in

podcasting is now just a matter of time.

It's the challenge when you come into podcasting thinking, I don't

really know what I'm going to sell.

I don't know who's in my market.

I'm not sure how I'm going to put this, these episodes together.

When you have to find those in podcasting as, as opposed to bringing those to

podcasting, it's, it's more challenging.

So our first call is really about, let me understand.

Who your mom is, who your market is, what your offer is and what your message.

And then let's try to figure out how do we, how do we reverse engineer a show

that will, that will serve your market, your offer and your, and your message.

So discovery call into launch phase, then into production phase.

Launch takes usually about 30 to 45 days to put together the elements of

the show production phase, where we've done editing, producing collateral

information, all of the, you know, guest acquisition, communications,

all of the systems we put in place.

And we've dialed in so tightly right now.

Um, once we get into the production phase, then you're just off and running.

And now we're just fine tuning as, as we go.

Very good.

So tell me a little bit about guest acquisition.

What is that getting harder with all the podcasts or is it getting easier?

It, it is getting easier for us because the prevalence

of podcasting is enormous.

Everybody knows podcasting, you know, it's, it's almost like it used to be

when you wrote a book, you were the perceived expert in that space, right?

I mean, look, I wrote a book called nice guys finish first and everybody

was asking me how did nice guys finish first in business and how does that,

how would that help my business?

So me writing the book, I became the, Quote unquote, the authority

on the customer experience and customer journey mapping.

In podcasting, it's not far off from that.

When you have a podcast, people perceive you as, and more than a handful of

episodes, all of a sudden people are like, Hey, he's got 12 episodes.

He must be in this game.

Cause he hasn't succeeded.

That, you know, he hasn't, uh, he hasn't succumbed to, uh, to pod fade, which is

basically I've done 10 episodes and no more, you guys are well, well beyond that.

So when somebody looks at your profile and they see crap, these guys got

200 episodes, you know, when somebody looks at my show and they're like 1600

episodes, do they think I'm a professional at this, at this point in my game?

So all we need to do is build content.

Just let's just build content.

Let's just get in there and build content.

Then let's use the content that we have built to market ourselves to

other people that are potentially interested in podcasting.

So, uh, as a, as a guest, so I would say it's gotten much easier, uh,

even in a crowded marketplace where there is no competition, because

even if there was another podcast that, that opened up called the same

title as you with two guys that do, Similar what you do, they're not you.

So you don't have any competition in this space and your audience gets to

love you as you are, you know, you and Ryan telling your jokes at the

beginning, doing your challenge phrases and words, you know, doing your rapid

fires, all of the stuff that you guys do, you've created a formula.

Whether you feel like it's a success or not just depends on what you're

measuring as success and how you're, how you're approaching getting there.

And, uh, that's what we really excel at is, okay, let's, let's take a deep

dive into making the show successful.

How do we do that?

And what does that equate to?

And I love doing that when we can turn that light bulb on for

a client that's out there in the world, that's looking for that.

When we can turn that on and then actually make it happen.

When we have a show that makes a hundred grand a year from somebody

that's making, Made no money.

You before us and we can turn it into a six figure show.

They'll never leave us no matter how much we charge them.

We're not a commodity of podcast production.

We are a strategy company that offers production as a

convenience to our clients.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, makes every bit of sense.

Good stuff.

Well, Doug, this has been great.

Um, fantastic discussion and, uh, has the, the wheels of, I'm sure

Ryan and myself turning and probably everyone in the audience as well.

Um, we're close to wrapping up what we call.

Kind of call the business end of things.

Is there anything we haven't covered today that you want to be sure to share?

has been.

It's such a such a fun episode for me because I oftentimes I'm the interviewer

and are sharing the stories of people that come on our show and very rare.

I get to talk about the thing that I'm truly passionate about.

While I love having guests on the show.

I'm truly passionate about helping those that are in this space to turn the corner.

So if there's anybody that is either Thinking about launching

a show or has launched a show and just struggling with where do I

get success from from this show?

Let's let's have a conversation.

Let's make it happen.

Cool good stuff Well before we actually close out I

do have to ask if you are willing to participate in our rapid fire

questions, which you're familiar with seven questions Okay Let's do it ron.

You want to ask the first one?

Yes, I would love to.

Question number one.

If you were lactose intolerant, what one food would you still eat?

boy Since I am lactose intolerant.

I have to tell you though the food that I still is my go to.

I love ice cream It just hates me, but but there are so many non lactose and non

lactose filled ice creams these days, but I still love the The, the, the, what's

it called a high test version of it.

Real, real milk ice cream.

Good answer.

Same here.

Yeah.

Okay, if you could use only one sound effect in your podcast

forever, what sound effect would it be?

Gosh, what sound effect we use.

Absolutely.

No, we have the worst, the worst, like, uh, like, uh, back end stuff that we do.

But I would say something like.

D'oh!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

perfect.

I'll send you the little clip of that so you can

just use it as a soundbite.

Simpson doing his dope.

Ha ha ha.

question number three.

If you could interview any fictional character, who would it be?

come on, I gotta interview Harry Potter.

I wanna see, I wanna, I wanna ask Harry Potter all sorts of I don't

know why, because I'm not a big Harry Potter fan, but, but, uh, if I could

talk to Harry Potter, I'd love to I have so many questions for him.

Good stuff.

Question number four.

Uh, what's a product or service that you've purchased recently that

was a real game changer for you?

Sort of a, where has this been all my life type thing?

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

Okay.

So sitting on my desk right now, let's see if I can show you guys.

Oops.

Sorry.

I didn't mean to bang the microphone.

I have this Ember mug.

I don't know if you guys know what Ember mug is, but it actually is

a, it's a mug that in the bottom part, it's a, it's a heater.

So, so you, you put your, put your coffee in there.

You can keep it on your desk, or if it's on the little cozy unit over there, it'll

stay warm indefinitely, but it keeps it.

And you can, it has an app for your phone, 135 degrees.

You can keep your coffee hot as long as it's in this cup.

I have to get one of

great, great, great

Yeah, that's going on my Christmas

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

We've sold a lot of these.

I don't have an affiliate relationship, but we have sold, we bought

them for everybody on our team.

Uh, and then we, um, and then we promote them all the time on the show.

How's it spelled?

Ember?

Just like you would.

E M B E R.

I think it's like ember.

com or Ember.

Yeah.

Yeah.

cool.

Very

put that link, put your, that link in the show notes.

See if you can sell some,

We will.

we need an affiliate

I don't have one.

Yeah.

All right.

Uh, next question.

We're on to question number five, I believe.

What's your biggest irrational fear?

This is so, this is so crazy.

My, my biggest fear in life is throwing up.

It's an irrational fear.

I don't know why I have it.

I think I threw up when I was 13.

That was the last time.

I'm 60 years old right now.

And I think my, my mom must've just Completely just smothered me in, in

like warmth and kindness and goodness.

And just like, Oh, he's so sick.

I, so I don't know why it's a fear.

It just is, but I'm being, being straight with you guys.

Very, I will be thinking about that the rest of the day.

That's interesting.

Okay.

Um, next to the last question.

If you had to eat at any one restaurant every day for the entire year,

what restaurant would you choose?

Oh gosh.

Okay.

So many, uh, um, if I could only eat at one restaurant, I would

probably, can I give you two?

I'm going to give you one.

That's my, I'm going to give you a blaze pizza because I

love pizza and it's so good.

It just come in out of the, out of the oven.

I live in a small town called Ohio, California.

Yeah.

There's a restaurant in town, uh, that's called The Duchess, and they

have the greatest food, uh, as long as I don't have to pay for it, if I

could eat there every day, that would be great, because it's an expensive

restaurant, but they have wonderful food.

Uh, one of these days I'll make it to Ohio and

I will take you to the Duchess.

We'll do

alright, come on, let's go.

Can I come

Yeah, please.

invite myself?

We have a, we have an, we have an Airstream in our backyard.

We just surrounded it with a very cool, like, whole little oasis back there.

We have, it's got a guest room and an extra bed, so you

guys could both come and stay.

You wouldn't be able to bring your spouses because it would, wouldn't be enough room.

Or, one of you could come with a spouse.

You pick who's coming.

We will show up someday.

okay.

You are welcome to be here.

Alright, final question.

This one's a little more serious.

What do you hope to be remembered for at the end of your days?

You know, I've, um, I had thought about this question many,

many, many times before I even got the, this might be one of the questions.

Cause I think I heard it on another, another, um, podcast that you had done.

Um, I always say on my, on my headstone, I always wanted the words, he made

me laugh, put on the headstone.

So in addition to all of the other things, you know, the from and

through dates and all of that stuff.

And I don't even know, cause I'm not getting buried in a cemetery.

I told my kids, I want my ashes sprinkled on three fly fishing

rivers across the country.

And I'll tell you which ones I want.

But if I had a headstone, it absolutely, it would say, he made me laugh.

That's a great one.

I love it.

And the world needs a little more laughter.

So, um, kudos to you.

Good stuff.

Well, Doug, thank you again for your time to get day, uh, for folks who want to get

in touch with you, uh, or learn more about turnkey podcast, how can they do that?

Yeah, really easy non committal way to get more information

about what we do and how we do it.

Just go over to turnkeypodcast.

com forward slash money, M O N E Y, and you'll get a couple of things.

You'll get, uh, five ways to make money podcasting and a, and a video

series that is in there as well.

So feel free turnkeypodcast.

com forward slash money.

Good deal.

We will put that in the show notes as well and encourage everybody

to, uh, check out Doug and turnkey podcast and what they're doing.

So good stuff.

So, uh, we were all successful with our challenge words.

Good job, Ryan.

You had the word.

the phrase lactose intolerant.

And actually there's a dad joke out there where lactose

intolerant is the, uh, punchline, but I, I will not even share it.

But anyway.

You used it very well in the, in the, in the

first, uh, first question.

That was very, very good, Ryan.

You, uh, you put it in there.

It was, it was good.

Hey, can I come back and do this again?

I want to, I want to sit in the guest seat again, not for the guest seat.

I want to, I want to interview, I want to have the three of us and

interview a fourth person on the show.

Let me know if that's something that's even possible.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get off track there.

That'd be fun.

We'll do it.

So, uh, Doug, your word was, or phrase,

Mine was head on collision.

did a great job working it in, and I had to bargain, and I

even threw in some chipmunks running it

Yeah, you did good.

I think we all did good.

You know, the thing that helped me out a lot was at the beginning, before

we got started, after you told me my challenge phrase, you said you

don't have to use it more than once.

There's no extra credit for that.

So once I used it once it was gone out of my head.

I did not think about it one more time.

Exactly the way to do it.

Well, thank you again, Doug.

That's been a blast.

Enjoyed it a great deal.

Thank

My pleasure, Todd, Ryan, very, very good.

And I'm excited to continue listening to your show and getting more wisdom

from, uh, from those in your guest seat.

Sounds good.

And thank you to our audience for tuning into this episode

of Construction Disruption with Doug Sandler of Turnkey Podcast.

Watch for future episodes.

We always have great guests.

Don't forget to leave a review.

Give us a thumbs up, whatever is appropriate.

Till the next time we're together, keep on challenging, disrupting, looking

for better ways of doing things.

And most of all, don't forget to encourage everyone that you

encounter, make them smile, make their life a little bit brighter.

Um, so God bless and take care.

This is Isaiah industry signing off until the next episode

of construction disruption.