We’re back! And it’s just us this time for another round of our therapy sessions. We’ve been out speaking, talking with other podcasters, diving deep into the industry, and there’s so much exciting stuff happening we wanted to record all the reasons why we’re getting even more bullish on podcasts.
We’ve also been trying out lots of new strategies and it’s about time we showed you the tactics we’ve recently discovered are effective ways to drive traffic to your podcast. Think of it as a little preview of the virtual summit we’re launching later this year. We’re pretty excited to tell you all about that too!
And we wanted to share the best sources out there to keep up with podcasting news, the best place to send your listeners instead of your iTunes page, and the revenue source most podcasters are ignoring. When you’re done, check out the last therapy session we did after getting back from Podfest and our Biggest Lessons Learned Growing A Podcast for more insights about the business of podcasting.
“Let's smash this whole concept that you need to have a crap ton of listeners to actually make money with your podcast.” -Joe Fier
“Podcast listeners are the best possible lead that you could get in your business… they are the most engaged people that you can talk to because they're in your ear for an hour at a time.” -Matt Wolfe
From the age of 16 to 33, Robert Farrington worked at Target while slowly building his blog until he had 1,000,000 readers a month. He had used his side gig in order to pay off his college debt, build an investment portfolio, and now it was letting him become a full-time entrepreneur.
Robert is the founder of The College Investor, a leading personal finance site helping millennials get out of debt and start investing. He is America’s Millennial Money Expert®, and America’s Student Loan Debt Expert. He is on a mission to help people escape student loan debt and start building wealth for the future.
Time to brush off those old blog (or podcast!) ideas as Robert Farrington shows Matt and Joe how to build a massive audience with your content, the 3 primary ways to monetize a website, and ad strategies that cost nothing. After listening, go check out our conversations with Christopher Gimmer and David Sinick for more ways to craft top ranking content.
“Blogging is like compound interest rate... you put this work in and it might not necessarily do anything upfront, but over time you really do have this large nest egg.” -Robert Farrington
After shifting careers into marketing, Amber Spears was handwriting copy and barely making ends meet. Then she was offered the company’s struggling affiliate department and 10% on whatever she brought in. Always a saleswoman at heart, she leaped at the chance.
Now Amber runs her own marketing companies, helping clients do over $150 million in business a year with her affiliate methods. She is the co-Founder of East 5th Avenue, Affiliate Accelerator, SPEARS Method, and the Mimosa Mastermind. She is also a highly sought after speaker, trainer, coach, and consultant.
Affiliate marketing might have had a bad rap, but times are changing. Listen in as Matt and Joe talk with Amber about what a great affiliate partnership looks like, the right way to split revenues, and why an affiliate network is a fast, stable way to grow a business. When you’re done, check out our conversations with Stephen Esketzis and Dan Brock for more affiliate marketing strategies.
“These kind of handshake deals are just not the proper way to do business, it's business with a small b, not a capital B.” -Amber Spears
After a viral post generated $3,000,000 in new clients in just 2 weeks, Daniel Daines-Hutt was exhilarated and overwhelmed. Over the next year, he struggled to keep up with the work. He needed a way out, so he started making his own content.
Daniel is a self-confessed marketing nerd with a background in direct response advertising. Ironically, it’s his content that people actually know him for. He has made some of the top content on inbound.org and GrowthHackers. When he’s not in the ocean or nerding out with some good sci-fi, he teaches people how to write less often but get more traffic.
More content doesn’t mean more traffic, so listen in as Daniel shows you how to turn old blog posts into killer content, get direct access to people’s lizard brain, and crafting ads that get $22 back for every $1 spent. Nerding hard as Matt and Joe are? Then go check out Stephen Esketzis and Travis Houston too!
“You're more likely to get someone to take an action if you can make it simple.” -Daniel Daines-Hutt
One of the most stressful times in Caleb Simpson’s life was selling his energy bar business. The finances, lawyers, and buyers were all wearing him out, so he decided to give CBD (the non-psychoactive chemical found in hemp plants) a try. Results were so immediate that he knew exactly what business he was going to start building next.
Caleb is a father of three kids and ultra-marathon runner. After trying CBD for the first time his stress melted away and he found relief from the pain of his chronic injury. He founded Hemp Daddy’s to bring the healing power of CBD to those struggling with chronic issues like inflammation, anxiety, depression, and much more.
Not every industry is welcome on Google and Facebook. Listen in as Caleb shows Matt and Joe 5 ways to market taboo products without the aid of big platforms, segmenting your audiences without special links, and the tech stack to manage everything yourself. When you’re done, check out our conversations with Mike Michalowicz and Nate Broughton for more advice about building a business from scratch.
“I see everyone complaining and moaning... When is Facebook going to allow CBD? Maybe they'll never allow it, so you don't need to sit around waiting.” -Caleb Simpson
With a personal promise never to cancel an event, Chris Krimitsos was hours away from introducing a major speaker with only a couple people in the audience. He’d given up, but sent out one more email anyway. When he walked on stage the room was full of people who’d bought tickets last minute, that’s how tight-knit his community has become.
Chris is the passionate professional who hangs around after the event talking and listening to anyone who wants his time. With over 2,000 events under his belt, he’s created a business community that brings everyone - marketers, brokers, and dog groomers alike - into the same room. And he’s the creator of PodFest Expo, one of the largest, and still growing, events in podcasting.
Tired of connecting just digitally? Then let Chris Krimitsos show you how to get people together while keeping expenses low, avoiding rookie mistakes, and creating a live community people can’t wait to return to. When you’re done, check out our conversation with September Dohrmann for more event planning tips and our story of joining the podcasting world.
“Can we take this whole ego worship out of the equation?... because that's how you create a cohesive environment.” -Chris Krimitsos
With his first venture, Abdo Riani struggled to convince local businesses to invest in his new recycling program. He needed to show results, but how do you do that before you have a product? So he did it himself, using just his cellphone and a spreadsheet to get his first 500 users, enough to finally get the funding he needed for a scalable product.
Abdo is the founder of Startup Circle where aspiring and rising entrepreneurs can connect with successful founders over daily live Q&A sessions. He helps entrepreneurs accelerate their path to paying customers by showing them how to launch and grow products and services efficiently and with higher predictability by bootstrapping their way forward and quickly proving ideas by doing things that don’t scale.
Get your head out of the sky and pick up your bootstraps as Abdo Riani shows Matt and Joe tools and tactics to do anything at zero-cost, a 3-step process to interview 100+ experts in just 2 months, and getting The Wizard Of Odds Mentality. When you’re done, get more advice about sharing and monetizing your knowledge from our conversations with Liam Austin and Jonathan Levi.
“It makes sense to a baby… how a simpler approach can help you move forward on stronger foundations.” -Abdo Riani
After years annoying people on the phone Perry Marshall realized that cold calling was a modern version of slaves building the pyramid. That’s when he decided to dive into the fledgling world of online marketing and ended up defining its future.
“If you don’t know who Perry Marshall is — unforgivable,” says Dan Kennedy and he’s right. Perry’s books have laid the foundations for what is now the Pay Per Click industry, and techniques he pioneered are now standard best practices for every business. He has been endorsed in FORBES and INC Magazine and is one of the most expensive business consultants in the world.
Gear up for the latest wisdom from a living legend as Perry shares about the deep fractal insights of the 80/20 mindset, finding a path to utilize your strengths, and the 8 axis test that shows the best way to sell. After the episode, get more advice about finding your success from Brad Spencer and Marx Acosta-Rubio.
“There's innumerable ways that people get themselves into situations where their strength actually is a weakness.” -Perry Marshall
What a wild 2 weeks it’s been! First, we went to the Traffic & Conversion Summit then hopped right on a plane to Orlando for Podfest Multimedia Expo. We had some flight issues too, but enough about that.
We’ve been out on the road speaking, hosting our brew events, flying solo at a podcasting panel, and getting to meet our fans face to face. Now we’re back with a ton to share about what we learned and how it’s shaping the next steps in our business.
This time it’s just us out in nature sharing everything we just presented on the road like our no maintenance system for selling merch and how we’ve been monetizing our podcast from day 1. When you’re done, go check out our previous Therapy Sessions and some of our favorite episodes we mentioned like Joy Houston and Moe Abbas.
“Most of the year we're kind of in our own little bubble… until we go to an event and actually bump into listeners and they're like, ‘I really loved that episode!’” -Matt Wolfe
“In this evolution of our business that we have to be true to our path more than ever before. It's like way easier to get distracted now.” -Joe Fier