Frugalpreneur podcast features guest expert talks from Ampmypod

>> Sarah St. John: Welcome to the Frugalpreneur podcast. I am your host, Sarah St. John. This is a special episode where I am sharing one of the guest expert talks from my Ampmypod community. Ampmypod is a free online community for podcasters wanting to grow, market, and monetize their shows. If you are interested in amping your podcast, you can join for free at ah, ampmypod.com. that's ammpmmypod.com. hey, aunt, my pod community.

Sarah: If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me

I have Seth Silvers here today, and he's going to talk about podcast roi. So I will let him take the stage.

>> Seth Silvers: Cool. Awesome. Thanks so much, Sarah. For those of you that are watching this or listening to this, if you're in here live, then I would love to take questions, and we have space for that. But if you're watching the recording of this, If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. And let me know. I'm happy to have conversations going deeper into any of this.

Today we are going to talk about the Roi of podcasting

So today we are going to be talking about the Roi of podcasting. And I think this is super, super important to understand because a lot of podcasts, podcasters quit because they don't see an ROI. A lot of podcasters stop doing what they're doing because they don't feel like it was worth it for them to keep going. And so we're going to talk about that. Like, what makes it worth it? What doesn't? How do we measure Roi? All of those different things. A little bit of context. I likely have the privilege of knowing some of you, and to some of you, you might be like, who in the world is this guy with color coded books and an elephant behind his head? I do like color coordination. I'm not quite OCD, but I just like things organized. so that is why I, have my color coded books behind here.

Seth Silvers is the founder and lead strategist at Ah story on media

So, for those of you that haven't had the opportunity to meet, my name is Seth Silvers. I am the founder and lead strategist at Ah story on media. And we're a premier podcasting firm for businesses who want to podcast. So our focus over the years has gotten narrower and narrower into businesses that are like, usually our clients are already experiencing growth in their business. So they're typically not brand new. They've already kind of proven that, okay, we are serving people. We're serving them well. They like our product. Our business is experiencing growth, and we want to experience more growth through podcasting. So, usually we work with people where they say, we want to podcast, we know we should, but we want to do it right. And we don't really know where to start. And so that's why I think it's important to talk about Roi, is because most people that we're working with, they care about Roi. We care about the ROI of our business. And typically, if you are running a business or involved in a business, then you don't really want to be doing things throughout your day that don't have an Roi to it. So, that's what we're going to talk about today. Ah, we've gotten to work with, quite a few successful podcasts and very successful businesses, as well as really niche podcasts. And, I've even worked on podcasts that have never seen the light of day, which I'm sure some of you, in this room have worked on shows, designed shows, gotten shows ready for launch, and then the client has said, yeah, ah, just kidding. and that just happens. So we've kind of worked on the whole gaming. to get started, I think that we should be thinking about ROI in a 24 month timeline.

What makes a podcast worth it 24 months from now

That might sound a little crazy, because a lot of you are looking at your stats from the last month, or you're looking at your podcast from the last month and wondering, okay, was it worth it? We're asking that big question, was this worth it? Did I get a return on my investment? Whether that investment is time, that, investment is money. I want you to think 24 months from now, today is May 2. So we'd be looking at May 2, 2026, which blows my mind, because 24 months is not that far away. But if we fast forward to May 2, 2026, and you are looking at your podcasts, you published every week, you're creating the content you're creating, what makes it worth it? Is it sponsors? Is it number of downloads? Is it retention percentages that people are listening to 85% of your episodes? Is it YouTube subscribers? what is the actual ROI of your show to where, 24 months from now, you can look back and say, everything was worth it. This was worth my time, worth my investment. That's the mindset that I want us to be thinking about. And to get there, we're actually going to work on the foundation of the show. so I'm going to walk you through our framework at story on. We call it the story on framework, and it's a four step process that we take every show through, that we start, and then any shows that we are taking over from other clients or other producer, production companies or shows where people are diying it, and then they want a production company. We also make sure that there's clarity in these four areas, and these four areas are going to be that you have a defined audience, that you have identified your problems, you have a compelling, you have compelling content, and then you have a clear offer. We'll talk through all four of those. The fourth one is really where the RoI comes in.

In order for your podcast to be worth it, you have to have ROI

So, first off, before we get into that, I want to kind of talk through, like, the mindset. In order for your podcast to be worth it, in order to have ROI from a podcast, we can't just be looking at podcasting as a tool to make money. We can't just be looking at it as another thing to do. I think to really have a good podcast that gets an ROI and that returns the investment that you put into it, we have to look at it as a craft. You have to commit to stay, you have to commit to be here in 24 months in order for 24 months to go by in it to actually work. We also have to commit to learn and change. I can't just do the same exact thing every single week for the next 24 months. Never look at my analytics, never talk to anybody about my show, and then expect it to work. That is crazy. But thats what a lot of us do. We start a podcast and then we just do the same thing over and over and over again. Or we get tons and tons of interviews. We decide were going to interview one month out of the year and we have six months of episodes. The problem is, if you need to change something with those episodes and you have a six month backlog of your content and you decide, or your audience gives you feedback saying, hey, can we change this? Lets shift this. you cant really do it because you already have six months of interviews. And so unless you scrap all those and then start over, then it's really, really hard to, like, iterate. So we have to commit to learning what's working and what's not, and to changing our show concept or changing the details of our show to align with what our audience wants.

You have to have a clear path to monetize or bring revenue into the show

and then you also have to have a clear path, and this is what we're going to talk about. You have to have a clear path to monetize or bring revenue into the show unless you're in the position where you're fine losing money for a long, long time. I know that sounds silly, so I'm not saying that. Say like, oh, nobody does this. There are situations where individuals or companies where they don't need to make money, they don't need an ROI on the show, and so they can just be doing it for the impact of getting it in front of a lot of people. That's not most of us. I'm guessing if you're watching this, that's not you, that's not me. if I produce podcasts, I want there to be some kind of Roi, and that can look different to a lot of people. So, make sure you're committed to staying, make sure you're committed to learning and changing, and make sure you have a clear path to monetize and to get that return on investment.

If you don't have a solid foundation to your show,

So this first piece that we want to talk through is having a defined audience. If you think about this, we're like building the foundation of your show. If you don't have a solid foundation to your show, it's going to be, you know, it's the classic, like build your house on the rock or build it on the sand. If you build a house on the sand, water is going to come in. Its not going to have a solid foundation. Tides going to go up, tides going to go down. Industry is going to go up, industry is going to go down. Users are going to come in, listeners are going to leave, and thats going to shake your foundation. Youre not really going to have a foundation to stand on as opposed to, if you actually have a solid foundation for your show, then you can build on that. You might do some remodeling in the house. You might have to replace the roof. You might have to change the door, might have to, you know, fix the windows. You might be, you're still going to iterate. That house is not going to be the same now that it is 100 years from now, but you will have a solid foundation that you can actually build on and make changes on top of.

So the first element of this foundation is to have a defined audience

So the first element of this foundation is to have a defined audience. You might think, okay, I have a really clear audience. I actually shut down my show a year ago because I realized I didn't really have that defined, that defined of an audience. And the audience that it was wasn't necessarily the audience that I was going after. And so I realized, you know what? I'm going to be grateful for the show. It was awesome. I loved it. We did 100 episodes. but we're going to bring it to a close. We're going to say this season was wonderful, but we're going to bring it to a close. We're going to do something else.

You have to have a defined audience when you're creating content

for our current audience, the way that I like to walk through this process of a defined audience for people is think of one person. Some people call this your ICA, your ideal client avatar. Some, you know, there's a lot of different phrases for it, but think about one person. Who is your audience? If your answer is everybody, then just you're wrong. It can't be everybody. When you're thinking about this one person, think about what's their job, how much money they make? Are they male, are they female? That also might not matter. But to some people, it does. like to some, depending on your content, different things with your audience matter. Maybe how much money they make matters, maybe where they live matters. But you want to think about it, as if only one person listens to your content. And so I know we're talking about 24 month Roi, but what I advise my clients on is if we fast forward twelve months and every. You publish weekly episode, and you look at your metrics, one person listened to every episode. Just one. Your download metrics are, we'll say there's three downloads for each episode. Your ideal client, avatar, yourself, and probably your mom or your girlfriend or boyfriend or something. So you have one person listening, but they do everything you say. They listen to 100% of every episode. Every product you recommend, they buy, every software you recommend, they use. When your guests come in, they buy their books. When you make recommendations on how they can grow their business or how they can make changes in their life, they make those changes. And you get a phone call from that person and they say, thank you. You changed my life. And they go on to tell you about how different their life is now than it was before they started listening to your podcast, you hang up the phone and you realize, only one person listened to all my, episodes. But after that phone call, I know everything was worth it. That is the one person that I want you to create your content for. I want you to be thinking about one singular person. It might be you, but when you're creating content, if we have this defined audience, you're going to think about it very, very differently. If I am speaking, like right now, I talked to Sarah. I said, hey, who are we talking to? So she gave me context of who we're talking to. If I'm talking about talking through this process to podcasters, it's going to be very different than if we're talking to business owners through this process. If I'm speaking on a keynote stage in front of a bunch of 75 year olds about podcasting. It's going to be very different than if I'm speaking on stage to a bunch of 25 year olds. Your audience really matters. And so what's important here is to have a defined audience, and for that defined audience to be one person that you're thinking about every time you're creating content. I've seen people that they, you know, they use AI to create an image of this person. They write out, you know, all of their kind of, like, demographic information. They write out all of their questions, all this stuff, and they actually have that, like, on their wall when they're creating content. That's something you can do that works really well. But the point is, before you do anything else, notice we're not even talking about content. We're not even talking about the offer. We're not talking about making money yet. You have to have a defined audience. Then from there, you have to, have identified problems. So once you have that defined audience, then you start asking, what problems do they have? What challenges are they facing? With that, you're going to learn, what dreams do they have that are unfulfilled? You take notes of all of those things, and you have clarity on, okay, here's my audience, and here's the problems that they're facing. You want to get granular with these. For us, a lot of our clients, their business is growing, but, they're usually not as known in their industry as they want. So one of the problems is, how do I get known? Like, how do I become respected and known in my industry for the growth that we've done, for the impact that we've done, for the good things that we've already done? Like, our business already has made all this traction. How do we take that to the next level? That's one of their problems. One of their problems is also practical things like, should my CEO be the host of my podcast, or should we hire a host? Another problem that they might have that, our audience has, is podcasting worth my time? My time is busy. Might be running a, $5 million business or $20 million business. Is podcasting going to be worth my time? If I'm spending 10 hours away from my business each month in order to podcast, is that worth it? These are the problems that our audience has. And so you want to know who's your audience, make sure they're clearly defined, and then you want to have identified problems. Notice again, we still haven't even talked about content. We haven't talked about your episodes. We haven't talked about ROI because we have to have that foundation.

The third piece of this framework, after your audience and their problems, comes content

The third piece of this framework, after your audience and their problems, comes content. You want to have compelling content. This is where your podcast should be, reverse engineering the solutions to your audience's problems. So if you have this whole list of problems, you have a whole list of things that are probably going to be really good to create content on, whether it's episodes or whether it's going out and finding guests that can speak to those problems. You want your audience to be able to solve their problems on your show. Your show should be the bridge between them and their dreams. Your podcast should be the bridge between them and solving their problems. So they're coming into this space every single week to listen to you. You're helping them solve your problems. Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's guests, and in return, theyre going to trust you. Theyre going to know you like you trust you. And then when you make an ask, theyre going to be so much more likely to engage with you, so much more likely to want to work with you. So thats where we create compelling content. Maybe you realize its an interview show, maybe you realize its solo content, maybe its case studies. Theres so many different ways that you could create the compelling content. But the point is, dont just start a podcast and just start talking. Actually be thinking about is this content? Is every single episode that we publish? Is it helping to solve a problem for my audience? That's the thing that so many people are missing. Is your content solving a problem for your audience? You see, we just went backwards from, like, our four step framework. We have audience problems, content. You kind of want to work backwards from that three, from that third place. Okay, do we have content that's solving a problem for our audience? It's as simple as that. That is the strategy for your show, especially if you're a business that's launching a podcast or there's some kind of business focus to your podcast, then we can start talking about ROI. If you have those three things, you have those three things set, and you commit to saying, I'm going to do this for the next 24 months. If you do those things well, you show up with quality, you show up with intention, you show up with a clear audience in mind, and you do that for 24 months. You listen to your audience, you're going to grow, your show will grow, and you will have an ROI from your show.

One thing that I've seen a lot of podcasts do poorly is offer

One thing that I've seen a lot of podcasts do really, really poorly. They just don't have an offer. And by an offer, I'm not meaning like, hey, buy my course for 997 and you know, it's worth $10,000 and all of this stuff. Like that's not necessarily what I'm talking about. More so I'm talking about is there a clear path for a listener to engage with you off the podcast? That's the offer. So you want to, you know, I think Alex Ramosi talks about this really well. Like, you should have an offer that is so easy for them to say yes to that they feel stupid saying no to it. Like, yes, there should be some kind of an offer. Hey, go visit my website is not a good offer. Send me an email. Not a good offer. If youre a podcast guest on another show and you have a podcast that is super relevant and solves the problems of the audience that youre on, thats a good offer saying, hey, go listen to me if you like this conversation solving these problems. I have a podcast where we talk all about it. Thats a good offer. One thing that were working on right now is were initially one of our main incentives as an offer to when we're talking to people is we're pretty much going to have this like master document of everything, all of our recommendations for podcasting. Here's how we recommend interviewing guests. Here's how we recommend doing solo podcasts. Here's the gear we recommend going to be a living document. We're always going to be changing it based off of our recommendations. Here's the cameras we recommend. Here's the lights we recommend. Here's the software we recommend. So then, as businesses are thinking about starting podcasts, it's a no brainer offer. They're like, oh, I'm going to need access to this information, so I want to make sure that we get it. That's an example of a clear offer where they can give us their email address, we'll give them this document and it's clearly valuable for them. It's solving problems for them, but it's really, really clear. We've been working with one podcast, for the last we've been working with them for the last six months. It's show on positioning called positioning with April Dunford. Its fantastic. If you like b two b product positioning and you like getting really granular and detailed about positioning and like product development, go listen to the show. Shes worked with the best and biggest companies in the world and she gets brought in as a consultant with huge companies in order to like work with their product team over a three to six month period. So, high ticket consultant, very successful. And we talked with her, and she had a really successful season one from a downloads perspective. But she's like, they're just like, nobody's. Nobody's picking up the phone. Like, I'm not getting any calls. So we talked about it, like, hey, your audience is listening to your show. Like, because she was. Once people hired her, then they were like, oh, yeah, we've been listening. So there was a nurturing effect happening. But we asked her one really simple question, which was, have you asked them to call you? I was like, no. Sounds really simple. But sometimes we miss these things. Sometimes we miss doing the really simple things for our show.

Most podcast hosts now do some form of dynamic ad insertion

I was just telling Sarah, before we hit record, yeah, we're starting to talk about what we do. Like, we're tired. We're starting to market our company. It sounds really dumb to be in business and not talk about what you do, but we just haven't, like, I haven't. I haven't done a good job talking about what we do. So, this year, we're talking about what we do. And, I, can't really complain if nobody's picking up the phone, calling me, if I'm not asking them to call me. So, you know, with April, she's a very high touch service, very high touch consultant. And so with that, you know, we're crafting a really specific offer where nobody's necessarily getting something, but she's going really into detail about, like, hey, here's who we work with. Here's what it looks like to work with me. It's not super easy, but it's extremely valuable. If that sounds like you, then, you know, head to this page and give us a call. So, we're asking for a phone call, but it's very, very specific so that the people that are not supposed to call her, they're gonna be like, nope, they're not. That's not me. I'll just listen to the podcast. But the people that are designed for the, you know, the people who are her right audience, they're gonna be like, holy smokes, this person knows my problems, and I need to give her a call. So that's, like, one example of the offer side of things. logistically, with the offer, I definitely recommend inserting it. doing your offers dynamically. So using dynamic ad insertion for offers. This is, again, another thing that a lot of business podcasts are not doing. They're producing a podcast, and then they're just expecting people to like, show up and call them, and to go to their website. And so with that, I think it's super important to, be on a host. Most hosts now do some form of dynamic ad insertion. If you're not familiar with that term, it initially just means you create an ad that you can then insert into all of your episodes, your most recent episode and all of your back episodes. So we definitely recommend always having some dynamic ads that are well produced, that sound good, that are not super intrusive, that are actually promoting your offer, and you put that in all of your episodes. we use for a lot of our shows, we currently have shows on captivate, we currently have shows on Buzzsprout. We currently have shows on lips and, and blueberry. And I think all of them can do that. some of them, it costs more money than others. And so I have more specific recommendations if you want them. But it's important that your hosts can do the dynamic ad insertion. The reason you want to do it dynamically instead of like actually inside of your recording is because your offer might change, your website might change, and so you want to be able to go in and actually change what your offer is and what your call to action is. Just as part of the learning and iterating. Maybe, maybe. Right now, our offer is this like master document, for podcasters. Like, here's all the recommendations we have. After working with five top 100 shows last month, maybe that's our offer. And then for the next two months, maybe I realize, hey, that offer sucks. Maybe I get into that and I realize, hey, this actually didn't work as well, or we want to call it something different. And so we rerecord that ad, we put it into our podcast, and we see if it performs well. We're very familiar with a b testing on Facebook ads and on Google Ads and different things like this. We need to start thinking about testing our offers inside of our podcasts. and also we need to realize that dynamic ad insertion is not just for sponsors. It's not just for when you have ads to be able to put hello, fresh ads in there or whatever it might be. You can use these to actually promote your own offer. It needs to be done well, and there's definitely ways to do it really poorly, but it can be done really well. Podcast listeners are used to ads. They're used to sponsored podcasts. And so you might as well sponsor your own podcast through dynamic ad insertion. So, I'm going to kind of wrap this up, and if any of you have questions or if Sarah's questions, we can go deeper into this. But again, when we're thinking about the ROI, notice how I didn't say, like, charge a $97 a month product or, to your audience or start a membership community. There's no, like, there's no silver bullet in a sense of, like, this is the best way to monetize. The important thing is that if you have a solid foundation of a show, you have clarity on your audience, on your problems, on your content, and on your offer, and you commit to doing your show for the next 24 months and getting better and better at your show. And you look at your show as a craft to be mastered, not just as, like, a tool to be used, then you will be successful and you will make an ROI from it.

A really good podcast will not fix a broken business

the other whole thing, and this is another. This is kind of another thing that we can dive into if you want to, Sarah. or it can be another conversation is, a really good podcast will not fix a broken business. And so that's one thing a lot of people are forgetting. Businesses or, like, solopreneurs are starting podcasts. We're hoping that the podcast will save our business. When you don't have a good offer or you don't have a good sales process, or you don't have a good system to deliver on that offer, maybe a really good offer, but maybe you're really bad at, delivering it and your team is messed up. Like, there's all of these other business problems on the backend that sometimes we blame our podcast for not growing our business when it might actually just be our fault as a business owner. Like, I might just suck at sales, and that might be, like, our podcast might be getting a lot of attention, but maybe my offer is just not valuable enough. And so we can't. We can't put unrealistic expectations on our podcast. And that's why a lot of our recommendation at times is for. For businesses. Like, for sure, before you're spending money hiring an agency like ours to produce your podcast and to grow it, we want to see that, like, they're. That the business is doing well. because we can create the best business or the best podcast in the world. It can be number one. And business charts all over America, all over the world. And it doesn't matter if your business sucks. Like, if your business sucks, then your podcast isn't going to help grow, your business. And you're not going to get an ROI, but it's not going to have to do with your podcast. So for us as podcasters, let's make sure that we have a good podcast. Let's make sure that we have a podcast that has a solid foundation with a clear audience problems, content offer. All of those things have clarity. And then from there we can grow on that, we can build on that. We can drive people into a business and assuming that business is operating well and theres operational excellence there, then thats kind of when this like magic merging of a podcast and a business happen and everybody is happy.

Sarah: I think before dynamic ad insertion was really a thing

So Sarah, thats all I got. I think youre here somewhere. Oh, there you are. Wonderful.

>> Sarah St. John: Unpack.

>> Seth Silvers: Wonderful.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah, that was awesome. I love how you had it like in four parts, like a framework. So I think the part that I want to focus on is definitely the offer part.

>> Sarah St. John: and I do agree, with Dai or dynamic? it's dai, right?

>> Seth Silvers: Dynamic dynamic ad insertion.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah.

>> Seth Silvers: Yep.

>> Sarah St. John: Because I use captivate, so yeah, yeah.

>> Seth Silvers: We use captivate for we most, we recently switched like 90% of our shows over to captivate and they're great. So shout out to mark if you're listening.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah, yeah. I think before dynamic ad insertion was really a thing or whatever, I did the baked in ads and it was a pain like you said, because then you have to go back in and like edit it out and you know, it's a whole thing. But yeah, I love, I've been using the dai with captivate pre and post.

>> Seth Silvers: Roles and I think they have a tool in there. I haven't used it, but I think they have a tool to go in and actually identify your baked in ads and then like pull those out and swap them out.

>> Sarah St. John: Oh, interesting.

>> Seth Silvers: I think it's called Amy or something.

>> Sarah St. John: Oh, yeah.

>> Seth Silvers: I haven't used it. I've heard about it and I know Danny has showed it to me where like there's So the point is, if you have all of these baked in ads over your last like 200 episodes, I think there's some ways to maybe more efficiently shift those ads and change those ads as opposed to having your editor go in and re edit every single episode.

>> Sarah St. John: Okay. Yeah, I probably because I think I did all that before they released Amy.

A lot of shows offers are not seeing traction because their audience isn't focused

But so one question I have is what have you seen to be good, offers or CTA's call to actions? And which ones have you seen not work so well? Because I've done like the whole PDF route ebook route and I've done like the free community route or now I'm doing like a slack channel for a couple of my shows.

>> Sarah St. John: So what have you found to be?

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah, so, I think one caveat with this is that I think a lot of shows offers are, they're not seeing traction on their offers because their audience isn't focused enough. and so I have to think about myself, like, and I'm not, I'm going to use the examples that you just gave me, not, because I'm saying yours are good or bad. but like I don't really want to join a slack channel right now. I am pretty hesitant to join another free community. I just joined one on discord with other podcast professionals and I like it. but I don't want to join another one. Cause I just joined one, the PDF route. It's like, it can work. But again, like, you have to think through, like, would I want this? Like if somebody else was asking me this and I was in their shoes, would I want this? Like, would I actually care? Maybe the answer is, is yes. Like, there's definitely ways to make a PDF super, super valuable, but I think that a lot of people, like, it's gen, it's super general information. So most of like the PDF's I've downloaded in the last year, it's like, cool. This is not that specific of information as well at all. It's like not really. You don't really feel like you got what you delivered or you got what was promised. So I think that's one thing is like whatever your offer is, make sure the content in the offer is actually really, really good. Like, it can't be general at all. And then if you're offering a specific, if you're making a specific offer that's really valuable to a specific audience, then it could, you know, that that's kind of where you start to see it actually work. if I'm speaking to like general entrepreneurs, it's going to be pretty challenging to make. Like, I have to be pretty thoughtful about making an offer that's going to apply to that audience because it's so broad. because it's like, well, entrepreneurs are facing so many different things. so that's kind of some initial thoughts. I think some offers that I don't really think are that valuable is like, go to our website. Unless it's the example, like in April Dunford, where it's like, she's super specific. She has a process on her website where she is like filtering through who's the right fit and not, and she doesn't want a ton, like, she works with like, I don't know, maybe 20 people a year. So for her, it's like, she's not, like, she doesn't want. Her show gets a lot of downloads. She doesn't need a thousand people to reach out to her. She doesn't want a thousand people to reach out to her. So for her, that offer, like, makes sense because of how it's positioned. I think free books are great. Like, I'm, I'm a fan, obviously, I'm a fan of books. I like books. I think free books are, I think that's a good offer. I am personally a fan of like, of situations where people just say like, here's all the information. So, you know, I mentioned her mosey Hermosi's done this really well, or he's like, great. Like, I'm just going to give you all of, I'm going to tell you everything that I know about building a business. And when the time is right, if you want to sell your business to us, then you'll sell it to us. Like, that's his whole model. It's just like, give, give, give. And we're, we're about to take a similar approach with content online, where it's like, we're going to start pumping out a lot of content that is specifically helping businesses solve every question they have about podcasting. It's not going to be for indie creators, not going to be for true fiction podcasts. It's going to be for businesses who know they want a podcast but don't know where to start. And they'll pay for implementation. So beyond that, we'll say, hey, here's all the stuff. If you want us to guide you through this, then here's what that, like, come reach out to us. So I think that a lot of people just, we just like throw PDF's at people that don't actually have that valuable stuff. So I think you really have to look at like, ask that question of, would I say yes to this offer? and I think people have pretty good b's meters of like, oh, they just want my email address.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah.

>> Seth Silvers: So I think just asking that question of like, I don't know what I say, do I care about this? Would I say yes to this? I would say yes to, I said I wouldn't join a slack channel. Depends on who's in it. It all depends. I'm not going to join a slack channel just to be with you, Sarah, I'll email you, but if you're bringing this community, bringing this community, and it's like, I can talk to Sarah and this person and this person and this person. Oh, that's interesting. So it all just depends on who's there.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah. What about, like, a private RSS feed?

>> Seth Silvers: So I think that's really interesting.

I think private RSS feeds can work really well, assuming you're delivering quality content

And let me tell you a story about this. so we. I've been working with a client for the last, like, year and a half, on strategy. We don't normally do this. We don't normally do consulting for a year and a half, but it's been. It's been the right move for this client. They had a, sizable exit, multiple nine figures from their last company. so for the last couple of years, like, their wallet has been thick, and they've been golfing, and they've been trying whiskeys, and they've realized that you can only do that so much. I know a lot of us are probably saying, like, first row problems, I trade my problems for their problems, and I get it. and so this person's kind of been, like, behind the scenes with a big company that all of you would know. and they've been trying to figure out what's the right way for me to build, like, what's the right strategy for me to build content. So their goal ten years from now is to have ten more companies that they invest in that they get at least a $10 million exit from. So that's. That's this person's goal, work wise, the next ten years. So we are building a. We're building a framework for them, in a podcast strategy for them. And we even did a bunch of test episodes, and we're almost ready to launch. And they were. And then I actually talked to him and I said, do you care about talking to anybody or building relationships with anybody that's not in your ideal market? And they were like, no, not really. So I was like, okay, so if we did two episodes a week for the next year, that's a hundred conversations. And I'm typically not a fan of selling to your guests, but for him, it was really like using the podcast just to build or build a network and build relationships for his podcast to be the hub of where his network comes to connect with him. And so I was like, what if we make it completely private? Like, what if there is no public feed? and so what we're working on with this client is we will actually have a form that people have to fill out. and you actually have to verify that you are a decision maker at a company that's doing at least a million dollars a year. And once you are verified, we will manually approve that. And then you will get private rss feed, where there's two episodes a week, and you will know that everybody that's in this community is in your season of life. And so I think private RSS feeds, that's, like, an extreme example. I've never heard of anybody doing this, and I will tell you in a year how it works. We're really excited about it, and the client is. but I think a private RSS feed can be really interesting, especially when there's community attached to it, because you're giving access to a, like, private community. other than that, I think private RSS feeds can work really well, assuming that you, as the creator, are still going to be delivering really quality content. So if it's just more of the same, then the same has to be good. But if, like, it's actually more valuable than, you know, it's more valuable than your normal Tuesday episode, then I think that can be really intriguing. and so I think assuming that it doesn't burn, burn you out as a creator to be creating more, then I think it can work well. I'm just usually hesitant to do things as a creator that causes more work for us, like, for you to have to create a new workflow for private content. I think that's where a lot of people get held up, is they're like, man, I don't want to do another episode every week.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah. And then it's kind of, I think also the challenge of determining, well, what goes in your regular feed and what's special enough to go in the private, feed.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah, I do think that, like, private, super exclusive feeds are going to become more popular. yeah, I mean, I would be super interested, like, if there is a podcast feed, if there's a private podcast feed where it was only, like, podcast agency owners, mmm, I'd be there every week. Like, that would be really interesting to me. So there are ways to start that. Yeah, maybe so. I mean, there's. There's definitely, like, there's definitely ways where, like, ideally, offers are just giving access to things. And so it's like, what is an offer giving you access to? Is it information? And if it is, that information's got to be valuable. Is it a community? If it is, do you want to be in that community. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give up my email or my money to get access to random information or random people.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah. Another thing that I used to do this m was like way in the beginning of the podcast and I've contemplated bringing it back is like a physical giveaway. So like the call to action would be like, hey, go here and enter the giveaway for every month was a different book, some entrepreneurial book. and then usually I would give a copy of my book along with it. but yeah, so like, you know, a $20 book or whatever, plus free shipping, like the whole thing. And I think that that went over well. I don't know why I stopped doing it. But the thing though, with that is, okay. So, yeah, now you've captured people's email addresses, whoever, you know, signs up for the, the giveaway, but like you're not really, I mean, I guess you can continue to communicate through a newsletter or whatever, but like, I feel like the other examples we've given with private RSS feed a community, whatever, that's kind of more ongoing.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah. And I think, like, don't your, your offer is not your newsletter unless your newsletter is actually like really, really good, but like just a normal news. Like people don't want to sign up for a newsletter. Like we don't want to. Again, we do want valuable information that's going to solve our problems. So if your newsletter actually solves my problems, then maybe. but I think that's something that like a lot of people are, it's like, oh yeah, it's my newsletter. I ask them to subscribe. It's like people do not want to subscribe to new anything. so it's like, it better be good. And I also think a lot of people get tied up with, it's like that, I don't know the exact quote of it, but like it's something along the lines of like you would be, you'll probably be disappointed at what you accomplish in the next year and amazed at what you accomplish in the next ten. So it's this concept of like we're looking at the, like, if we're looking at the like micro, like the next twelve months or the next two months, we're going to be thinking about like, oh man, I'm not selling enough stuff. But that's where if you can afford to be patient with your show and you can afford to like play the long game of being like, okay, we're going to build this in a way that matters two years from now, ten years from now. And I think our offer gets in the way of that a lot of times because people are like, well, I need to, I can't give a book away. Like, you know that cost me $8 every time, right? It's like, yeah, your audience knows that too. Your audience knows that you are going to pay $8 to print that book and ship that book to them, and that matters to them. but I think we get caught up in like, well, I can't afford, I can't afford to, like, not be making all this money right now when it's like, it's the long game. And that's where having a backend business that serves your audience works really well, too. instead of just having to be like, okay, how much money am I making in the next week? if you can think about how much money you're going to make in the next 24 months and you can think about getting people into higher ticket offers, then it's, it's a whole different game.

>> Sarah St. John: Mm

Do you know of any, um, private RSS feeds that have community features

Do you know of any, because when you were talking about private RSS feeds, you also kind of mentioned in passing something about community or something. Is there a particular RSS private RSS feed? Whatever, like, hello, audio. That's the only one I know of where it has a community feature as well. Because I think the thing that, that is an issue for podcasters is unless you're on good pods or podbind or maybe even pod chaser or something, but like Apple Spotify, all those, there's not a way to like comment or communicate. Yeah, yeah. I think that's the big kind of hurdle which you can do on YouTube. So.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah, yeah, so, we have really, we haven't used it yet. We're in the process of setting it up with supercast. So I know, like with, with supercast, you can do the private feed. they also have a set price per subscriber, so that's nice. It's not like a percentage of revenue. but I know inside of there, you, can like upload, like, there's like ways to like comment and like upload on stuff and you can do like live Q and A's there. So I know, like Andrew Huberman is one of the biggest podcasters that uses supercast. So he'll go in there and like, post like, hey, what are your questions? Or like, what are the topics that you guys want to hear me talk about? And people will actually like, be able to up vote, and so then he'll be able to see, oh, these are the most pop, most popular topics inside of my community. And, sometimes they do live Q and A's in there. And so I think that's a good tool to have some community element. I think, like the, we have to remember that podcasting. Part of the beauty of it is it's decentralized, which means that you're not really, it's not really designed for you to have like, a name, phone number, email address of your podcast listeners. That's not really, like, how podcasting is supposed to work. And so we can add on these, like, second and third layer products to be able to get some of that information. But there's gonna, there's always gonna be people, they just want to listen. so I've seen good things happen with supercast where people that just want access the private feed, they can do that, but people that want to, like, actually engage in community level, they can do that as well. I know captivate also has private fees. but I. I don't know of any others. Doesn't mean there's not any. There are. Then please let me know. But I don't know of any others, like supercast that are bringing together the feed and the community aspect of it.

>> Sarah St. John: Okay, I want to say, let me look real quick before I, you know, so, Pat Chung. Pat Chung. he used to have pod inbox, and now it's called fan list. I want to say that might be a new feature. Yeah. So you can have a private RSS feed, and you can get tips and donations, paid perks, fan messages, lead capture memberships, chat rooms, widgets, whatever.

>> Sarah St. John: Maybe I need to look back into that because that, that might be.

>> Seth Silvers: Anyway. Yeah, I know he's done, I know he's done really good work with, like, from the community side. I know, like, that's always been a big focus of pats has been building that community. So I wasn't aware that they do private RSS feeds, but I think there's, there's going to be more and more tools. Yeah, there's going to be more and more tools that make that possible.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah. So I might go that route and to support him as well.

>> Seth Silvers: I think it's just the thing with private RSS feeds is like, you just. There's not a shortage of content. So I feel like, pretty hesitant to say, oh, let's add more content options for our people. and so I think people, just. Not that it's like, I think it can work really well, but I think that us as creators and as podcasters, I think that we should be aware of content fatigue. Like, for an options like there, every single day there's more and more options for what content to consume. Like, podcasting is still under saturated in my book, but that doesn't mean that like my, like the things that are vying for my attention every day, there's more and more of those. So I think that's where it's just like being cautious of like adding more options and then knowing, having proper expectations for like, I'm not going to have the same expectation if I'm publishing once a week and a thousand people are listening. It's foolish of me to expect that if I publish twice a week that I'm going to have a thousand people listening twice. That's like, that's not how things work in a world where people can only consume so much content. And I think a lot of people are like, well, we have this awesome RSS feed, we have these awesome offers, and it's like, yeah, but are you thinking about how much you're expecting your audience to, to listen to you? And I think that's important to consider.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah, that's a good point. because there's only so many hours in the day, you know, some private feeds that I've actually subscribed to. And I feel like this actually might be a good way to do it is instead of doing some kind of consistent weekly private whatever, someone, records, you know, 510 20 usually at most episodes on a very specific topic, almost like an audio course. And then that's the private feed. They never add to it again. I mean, I guess they could if they wanted to, but typically they don't. and that's like the lead magnet or the offer. Like, if you want to go deeper into this particular topic, I have a five step, you know, whatever those, that might actually be a better route than like a consistent.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it's similar to what you're saying. It's like an audio course. And I think stuff like that can work well. and yeah, I mean, I've seen people in the last year that have published their audiobooks as podcasts and different things. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different things, different ways you can do it. I think we get in trouble when we assume that, like, okay, I'm publishing a podcast. Why isn't it working? Like, why aren't I? Making money. And so all of this stuff that we're talking about, all of it requires work. It requires attention. It requires testing things. It requires putting an offer out there and then realizing it actually sucks and nobody wants it. And that, you were just looking at it through your lens, and you forgot to look at it through your audience's lens. All of that is necessary.

Tim Ferriss just crossed a billion downloads, which is wild

And that's why I think, like, like, Tim Ferriss just crossed a billion downloads, which is wild.

>> Sarah St. John: so is he now above Joe Rogan or.

>> Seth Silvers: I don't know. I don't know. Total. Yeah, I don't. I would be surprised.

>> Sarah St. John: You know, it's interesting.

>> Seth Silvers: I'll be surprised because I think Joe Rogan does like, 30 plus million a month, which wouldn't take that long. Get to a billion.

>> Sarah St. John: Oh, yeah. It's interesting because they both live in Austin now.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah. Yeah. As does, lex Friedman. Yeah. There's a lot of podcasters there.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah.

>> Seth Silvers: They, Like, there's this episode, and if you search in Tim Ferriss's library, and you just search 700 m so 700 million. Then he did an episode like two years ago or three years ago where he just went really deep. It's like 3 hours long. Talking about his podcasting process and his journey. And it's really intriguing because you listen to it and you're like, hello. He's looking at this as a craft to be mastered, not just like a tool to be used. So, I think a lot of businesses, a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, we're getting into podcasting. We're just expecting, like, podcasting is booming, so it's going to work for me. Like, we still have to put the work into it. And so that's where it's like, we can talk about all these offers, but, like, all of this requires work, and people just need to recognize that. Like, it's not going to just, you know, one in a million are just going to, like, launch a show, and it's going to grow, and it's going to make a ton of money. So, we, all of these are good conversations, but I think that's, like, that we have to recognize, like, this requires work. And if we, if we work at it, it can be worth it, but it's probably not gonna be worth at it worth it if we're not working at it.

>> Sarah St. John: You know, every time you said, worth it, during your presentation, I was thinking of that Missy Elliott song.

>> Seth Silvers: Yes.

>> Sarah St. John: Is it worth it?

>> Seth Silvers: That's awesome. Love it. I heard that a long time. I need to listen to that.

>> Sarah St. John: Yeah, I love it. she's actually going on tour for the first time in like, couple decades. And I thought about going, but it's expensive. Anyway, that's a. Another side tangent. but I really appreciate your time today and answering and giving that framework, answering my questions. And, I will post this in the community. And if anyone has any questions. Because you're in the community, right? You joined?

>> Seth Silvers: I don't know. Oh, okay. Well, whatever.

>> Sarah St. John: Well, what? if someone has a question, then is there a good way to reach out to you directly or.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I'm always up for you reaching out to me. if you reach out through our website, storyon co, then that will get to me, through my team. And then also, like, my email is just Seth at story on co. And I'm always happy to jump on, jump on a call with any podcaster and just talk through any challenges. And I might not have the answers, but if I do, I'll be happy to share them.

>> Sarah St. John: Just don't sign, you up for any slack channels or newsletters or any of that stuff. Don't take your. Don't take Seth's email address and sign him up for a bunch of crap.

>> Seth Silvers: Unless it's really good crap. So if it's really good, there's different.

>> Sarah St. John: Levels of crap, I guess.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah. Yeah. We only want the good stuff.

>> Sarah St. John: All right, well, thank you so much.

>> Seth Silvers: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much, Sarah.