166 | Retain, Grow, Monetize: The Ultimate Podcast Success Playbook

This is Grow the Show, the podcast that grows your podcast. My name is Kevin Chmitlin. I am your podcast growth coach and today's episode is going to be a little different. Usually here on Grow the Show you either get me interviewing a guest about how they grew their podcast or you get a solo episode for me where I teach you a specific framework or tactic. But today you're actually going to hear me being interviewed on Grow the Show. In this episode I'm going to be interviewed by Joseph Aaron who is an eight-figure entrepreneur who specializes in holding live remote summits. Joseph and I met in Orlando this past January. We hit it off and he invited me on his show to walk through my podcast ladder framework. Now if you haven't heard me talk about the podcast ladder before that is my four-step framework that outlines the four things that you need to do to have a successful growing and fully monetized podcast. So it's basically the 30,000-foot view of all that you need to know. If you have heard me talk about the podcast ladder before, maybe you heard my 12 days of podcast growth course earlier this year, well if that's you this episode is going to be helpful as well because Joe actually asked me some great questions about the framework that I've never been asked before. So either way whether or not this is your first time hearing the podcast ladder framework, by the end of this episode you're going to have a crystal clear picture of how to take a podcast from no growth, no ROI and no regular customers to consistent monthly audience growth and full monetization. And stick around to the end because at the end of the interview Joe and I announce a major partnership that we're doing, but we'll get to that, we'll share the details at the end. Until then, please enjoy this conversation where you learn more details about how to grow and monetize your podcast as I'm interviewed by the great Joseph Aaron. Here it is. What's up, everybody? Joseph Aaron, you're listening. If you are a creator, a business owner or an entrepreneur who wants to grow your audience and get more customers using podcasts and shows, this is the show for you today. I have a very special guest. What's up, Kevin? I want to read your bio, but say hello to everyone. Joe, it's so great to be here. What's up, everybody? It's so excited to dive in. All right. I want you all to know who this rock star is. This is Kevin Schmidland and Kevin is a podcaster and a podcast coach. This first podcast, Philly Who, was launched in 2018 as a side also, while it was a corporate software developer. Just months after launching the show, Kevin decided to leave his nine to five and go all in on the podcast. How many of you thought about that and then like, so scary, right? Well, within 18 months, Philly Who's surpassed 100,000 downloads in more than $140,000 in monetized revenue. In 2020, Kevin began helping other podcasters grow and monetize their shows as well. He launched, Grow the Show, a podcast and the Grow the Show Accelerator in intensive podcast accelerator program. That's a mouthful, Kevin. Since then, he served over 400 podcasters generating multi-seven figures in revenue and his mission now is help as many independent podcasters turn their shows into a profitable business. Let's give it up for Kevin. What's up, man? Thank you so much, everyone. It's good to be here. I'm so pumped. Well, welcome to my show and so fun to have you. What got you going with this? I mean, I hear the story, but what got you started wanting to help people grow their show? Yeah. So it started in 2018, as you mentioned, I was at that point, a software developer and a big insurance company, a level software developer. That sounded like a blast. I don't know why. Yeah. Yeah. I was not, believe it or not, I was not super passionate about either health insurance or software development, right? And so at that was funny is, I'm four years into my career at that point and I had had all these different side hustles, right? I tried all these different ridiculous apps. I just, I wanted to be an entrepreneur so bad. They all steadily won by one's failed. And I took a period of time where I was like, all right, I'm not going to try to be either do the startup thing and have a side hustle, whatever. I'm just going to chill out. And during that period, I got really into listening to podcasts and the shows that I really loved at that point were the Tim Ferriss show startup, which was a show by a company called Gimlet and how I built this with Guy Ross. Okay. That was a show. I'm listening to an episode of how I built this. That's about a company that was started in Philly, which is my hometown. And I was like, this is so cool. I want to hear more. Hold on. Wait. Was it West Philadelphia born in race? Not me. No. Not West Philadelphia. Was it on the playground where you spent? No, I'm okay. Forget it. Y'all. I was filling out Max and relaxing. Okay. Good. So I launched, I basically, I was like, you know what? This is the thing I'm going to do. I'm going to launch a podcast about Philadelphia. I'm going to tell success stories. And I was like, this is not going to be my thing. I'm not going to be a podcast guy. Well, I finally launched this show on day one of the show. Did pretty well. It got about 200 downloads on day one. And I was like, yay. Life is good. Yeah. Remember, I wanted to be an entrepreneur for a long time. So I was like, all right, take this job and shove it. I am out. I gave notice virtually right away. I don't recommend this. Okay. Please don't do it the way that I did it because I had some savings. I left the job. Yeah. I became a full time podcaster, full time creator. It was great until it wasn't. That's about six months savings I completely run out. And I could not figure out why my podcast was not growing. Every single episode, the download numbers really remained the same. In fact, they were actually freaking a little bit. And I didn't have the things clue how the heck I was going to make money from this thing. And I see a lot of podcasters who experience a similar thing today where you've launched a show, you've been spending tons of time making content. And back then, I was spending full time making the podcast. Literally 40 hours a week I was cranking out episodes. Wow. But the show wasn't growing at all. And like I said, you're very frustrated when you're in that scenario because you're like, I've been spending so much time on this thing. I know my content is good. Why the heck doesn't it get any reach, right? So I reached a moment where I had to make a decision. When I left the job, my boss who was awesome best boss I ever had said, when I told him I was going to be a podcaster or a creator, nobody even said creator back then, right? He's like, what's a podcast? He was like, all right, well, you've got a job here if you ever need it. I literally pulled out my phone and had his contact up and was about to give him a call back to ask my job. But I made such a big stink in my life about, hey, everybody, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm this podcaster. I couldn't take going back to the job. So I put the show on hold. I broke the rule that every podcaster knows you can break because you're told you can't, you have to be consistent. You have to publish every single week, whatever you do be consistent, which is true. But when you've been consistent for six months and you've been publishing episode after episode after episode and you still only have a hundred downloads, you're like, there's gotta be something missing here. So what I did was I put the show on hold for six weeks and I studied. I took a weekend and I listened to every single podcast on top of the podcast charts to hear what were these shows doing differently? These shows are getting so much reach. They're making money, they're making sales. What the heck? Yeah, I noticed some stuff. I was able to get in touch with a couple of podcasting legends just through work in my network just to like, it's come some questions. I learned from them, read some books on marketing, read some books on podcasting. And just through this period of intense studying, what I learned is that the internet is really bad at teaching you how to grow a podcast. It's great at teaching you how to launch a show because when you want to launch a show, you just Google, how do I launch my podcast? And there's a good Gillian websites and articles and YouTube videos on how to launch. And you're like, yeah, I did it. But then suddenly, again, you're going six months, you're publishing, you're publishing, you're doing everything that Google and the internet and social media tells you to do. And you're doing all the things that you see other podcasters doing, but you're just not getting any reach. Well, what I learned is that that's not how the best podcasts grow. That's not how the best podcasts actually generate revenue. So once I have to go right now, I'm like, I'm so like, oh, I'm like, tell me more. Yeah, so once I learned these things, I was like, oh my gosh, okay, I'm doing this all wrong. I brought Philly Tube back after six week hiatus and within a year, the show had generated more than six figures in revenue for me, about 120K and the show grew past six figures in downloads. So 100,000 podcast downloads within a year. A small local show. Yeah. And at that point, I mean, 2019 was a great year for me. I was living the life. I was working basically at that point, 20 hours a week on the podcast, in my mortgage, traveling around, it was incredible. Making money on ads and, you know, merch sales and events and all these different things. And then, that's when COVID hit. And done, done, done. Right. 2020 rolls around. COVID happened. By the way, all you listening, did you like, did you have that where you lived? Cause we did where we lived. And I was in Florida and we stayed. And he sure, yeah, pretty sure. It was, well, in Philly, it was a little bit more, I think, the floor. Yeah, yeah, sure. It was a pretty relatable experience. So what happened for me during COVID was all my interviews that I canceled, because the people I were interviewing, they had better things to do at that point in time, they had to figure out what the heck was going on the world. And so I found myself sitting at home like we all did. And so I filled the time with hearing from other podcasters, because Philly, who had made a bit of a name, and I had all of these podcasters reaching out to me, asking for help. And I would meet with them on one. And then I would say, how the heck do I grow? How the heck do I monetize? How the heck do I grow? How the heck do I monetize? And after this 30th call, where I was like, okay, there's a lot of people that need help with this. I've managed to crack this code that not a lot of people have cracked. And so that's how Grow the Show was born. However, I made a huge mistake. I launched Grow the Show in 2020, and I launched it as a coaching program right up the way. Meeting, I just said, hey, I'm launching this program, I'm gonna help people grow and monetize. I got a couple of clients, which should be great, shout out to my OGs, right? But after I got my initial first clients, I went six whole months before I got another sale for Grow the Show. And here's the mistake that I made. I didn't have a podcast. So me, the podcast, here's how to grow your podcast guy for six months into the coaching program. I didn't have a podcast for my business. The thing that I know how to do the best, I had to stop doing the trying to teach other people how to do, right? So why was that a big mistake? Well, the problem with that was, I was trying to market my business, and I was just getting on sales calls all day long with podcasters who wanted to grow, they had problems. But none of them would buy my program. None of them would sign up to work with me. And for a long time, I was just fiber-gasted. I was kind of new at phone sales, I was getting customer show business like this. And then eventually, I was at the beach, I remember it, and I was there with a girlfriend Emily, and she was like, why don't you start a podcast and have a dish there? And I was like, yeah, okay. So six months without a fight. And girls, that sometimes they can just look into their guys' world and just be like, I know. I don't know where I would be. I don't know where I would be without Emily. So she's like, you're totally right. So June through October of 2020, I got four clients. I think I took 100 and 40 sales calls and four people joined miserable experience. Oh, yeah. Then I launched the Grow the Show Podcast and the Grow the Show Podcast. I think I just paused you for a second there. Oh yeah, for someone who's in a moment like that, who maybe you've been doing your show for a while, or maybe you're in that consistency moment, you talked about at the beginning, or maybe you're actually getting people who are interested, but it's just whatever you're trying to do isn't converting or isn't turning it. Like, I have a message for you here, and I think Kevin's saying it, and message number one is endure, like endure. However, also notice that Kevin didn't, he tried the endurance, it isn't just enduring. It is enduring in the right things with the right focus on the right thing. You were enduring and getting stuff, but there were missing pieces that needed to get the attention that it deserved, right? And we're gonna cover that here in just a minute, but nevertheless, I just wanna encourage someone who's listening because I feel it when you're telling the story that the struggle bubble sometimes you go through on the early stages to figure out what deserves my attention. Like, is googling how to launch a podcast enough to really start a successful six or seven figure business? Like, is that really it? Or, yeah. And there's some other things that we need to focus on, or if you're like many entrepreneurs, it's so funny to me, because you know how to grow shows, and that's what you were doing. But then you were even doing your own medicine, right? Dating your own medicine? Right, well, what I didn't understand at that point, I knew how to grow a show, because I had done that with the Philly show. But the Philly show wasn't meant to support a business. Right. What I then learned was how to grow a show in a way that grows a business. That was what I was missing. That feels like a holy grail for everyone listening, like I'd date, show school, but show plus monetization. 100%, that's where things are really cooking. And that's where I went from being a six figure entrepreneur, to being a seven figure entrepreneur, and beyond. And you're absolutely right, endurance is great, but I was doing the wrong activities, right? There were things missing. And it wasn't until I applied my skill set of podcasting to this business that I had created. Like I said, six months, four or five clients. After that, after I launched the Grow the Show podcast, within three months, I was getting 20 clients a month, just from podcast, right? Just from growing the podcast. What I knew how to do, right? So I really kind of went through two different moments of aha, the first was when I learned how to grow a show, but that wasn't enough to make significant seven figure revenue. It was, I learned how to grow the show, but then I learned how to actually grow a business from a show, and that is where things really began to take. And you got a system for this. I know that you've been, literally all I've been doing since that. I mean, we're four years beyond, and I literally have every single day my every waking moment has been how to grow podcasts in a way that grow businesses. It's literally all I do. Well, I know people pay you a lot of money to do this, but would you be okay with sharing the system here and like, digging in for some of the other? Yeah, I would love nothing more because I do not want people to experience, but they're probably already experiencing which is just that grind with no results. Yeah, all right. So tell me, what's the system? Walk me through it. Yeah, so before you kind of see the matrix here, before you kind of see how these things work, what you're usually doing, is you're doing what everybody else does, right? You're looking around and you're doing what every other podcast or UC does. You're putting out episodes every week. They're 45 minute guest interviews. When it comes to a new episode, you're posting an audiogram or posting, you know, the crappy corporate headshot of the guest and saying, hey, everyone, new episode now, and you're doing this week after week after week and you're spending your time and you're spending your money if you have a teen working on it, hey, getting no results. And you understand that podcasting and content marketing can work, can be amazing for your business, which are just not seeing any results. And so I've seen it all the time with business owners who are podcasting. And so what I found through working directly with more than 400 podcasting business owners over the past four years is that it takes four steps to give a show to the point where the audience is growing and it's generating ROI. It's generating revenue, right? And so I call that the podcast ladder and it's really important to visualize that ladder because once you get to the top of the ladder, that's what you have. You have, you're putting in the same amount of time that you're putting in now, but every single week, your audience gets bigger, your download numbers go up or your views go up if you're on YouTube and you get more clients and customers, you get more ROI if you're monetized directly and you're actually getting paid to work on the show, which is also bringing you business. So it's a double, double why me. And so that's a podcast leverage. Yeah, and it's not even like some of you I know because I know this world, some of you are spending too much time. Like you mentioned, you were spending way more and then it's like, gosh, it's because you feel like you have to do everything, but I can't wait to hear these four steps because I'm guessing you're gonna tell us what the focus on instead of like trying to do it all. Okay. Before I talk about that though, the one thing you remember about the podcast ladder is that it is the ladder and like a ladder, you have to step on the rungs in order. If you try to skip rungs, you will fall off and break your back, which is what most people have to find or they haven't tried any of them, right? So naturally the first question is what is the first front, right? Yep. So this is where I see a lot of new podcasters mess up. And these are the podcasters who have launched the show and they have emulated their podcasting idols, which is great. You should learn from the best, right? But what they do is they create a 45 minute interview show where every week we're gonna share stories of success. We're gonna share, you know, we're going to share different perspectives on personal growth, those types of things. And those podcasters create that show. And when you make your show like that, it's easy to think that you should try to make things super, super broad, right? Where we're talking success, we're talking growth, we're talking business, right? And the idea is and you think, I wanna make this show as broad as I possibly can so that as many people would be interested in it as possible, right? Which makes sense. Yeah. But when you do it that way, that's when you experience no growth. And you're in what I call the friends and families out, which is when you're getting 50 to 150 downloads for episode, got bad news for you. That's not an audience, that's your friends and family. Those are the people that know you personally. They love you, which is great. They're tuning in every week because they love your voice and they wanna hear what you're up to. But it's not an audience who are into what you have to say because of what you have to say. And it's definitely not a base of potential customers. The friend zone, every friend zone. I know it's about the friend zone. Right, you don't wanna be in the friend zone. 100%. Yeah. And so the way that you get out of the friend zone is by having what I call a clear, unique premise. CUP, clear, unique premise. Once you take the show that you're making and you create a clear, unique premise, what happens is when potential strangers look at your show, right, they come across your show, they see it in Spotify, they see it in their podcast feed. Immediately, they're like, whoa, this is awesome. This is what I need. I wanna check this out right away, right? That's what a clear, unique premise can do. Otherwise, when your premise is super vague or it's just not, where people just, you know, it's like entrepreneur stories, right? It's something that's just like, I don't really know what this is. What happens is thousands of people see your podcast but never tune in because it's not, they don't know what's in it for them. Once you have a clear, unique premise, that's when you have a show that it attracts listeners. Before, it repels it, make sense? 100% and my experience, the dilemma there is a decision because you start thinking and you'll be like, okay, I wanna go broad so I can reach a lot of people, right, and we think it with that way. And then like, you can't really speak specifically to the things and then the other side of it that everybody's afraid of is like, well, if I go over here and I just have this little audience, like quote, unquote little, which is probably really, really huge in comparison with anything you've ever done. But you go to the super little audience and you're like, well, then I'm missing out and so this feeling, I'm gonna miss that's on all this other stuff. And it's like, at some point you have to make a decision, right, you need a not only a clear audience, but the clear premise for how you're serving that audience. Am I right in understanding that? That's true. And I wanna talk on something because anybody who hears my voice right now and has even done a little bit of research on how to grow a podcast has probably heard the advice to niche down. Right. It's like, no, I'm gonna say, oh yeah, I have to niche down. That is not always the case. And most times I actually find that that's not required because when you niche down, you're making your potential audience smaller. You're like, I'm gonna make a show that's about underwater basket weaving for people who live in upstate Alaska, right? No, no, that's not what we wanted to. Okay, got it. It's not about niching down and constricting the size of your audience. It's just about being more specific about the value that your show will provide to listeners. That's it. Learning. And here's the best part is that many times you don't even have to change that much about your content because many times the content, the actual core of your podcast is great, right? I'm not saying you have to completely change what you're talking about on the show. We just have to change how we talk about what you're talking about on the show and make the premise more clear. So good. Professional speakers call that the frame. That was good. I learned a bunch right there. Thank you for that. So that's step one. Then one, what happens next? So after you have a clear, unique premise, everyone's like, is it, can I grow the show now? Can I grow the show now? I'm like, no, no, then we're gonna grow the show. I promise you, we are actually in the process of growing the show and step two deals with this. I've spoken with literally thousands of podcasters over the past four years. Every podcaster thinks they have a gross problem. Many of them do not. They actually have a retention problem. What do I mean by that? Well, before you understand step two of the podcast ladder, level two of the podcast ladder, what's probably happening, and you might not even know this, is that people are pressing play on your podcast. And within minutes, they're pressing stop. They're literally turning off your show. They're opting out of your show. And these podcasters should think they have a growth problem. They think that's the case because they see the same download numbers each and every week that they publish episodes. But what they don't see is that that 100 is not the same 100 people. You don't have 100 people who are listening each and every week. You have 80 people who are giving the show a try each and every week and not coming back next week. And then you got a new set of 80 people who are giving the show they're trying next week, not coming back to following week. So when you're doing that, a lot of times, the stuff that you're doing to grow your show is actually working. It just doesn't look like it because you're not keeping the listeners that you get. Wow. So once you learn how to keep listeners and what's involved in that is just learning how to shake your content in a way that keeps attention, right? Once you learn that skill, it's like your podcast is a bucket, right? And actually, what's a better analogy is that before you know how to keep listeners, your podcast is a wicker basket. And you are trying to fill that wicker basket with water. You're trying different growth strategies. You're trying all kinds of different faucets. What if I just grab this possible? What if I take it to the sink? I just don't understand why I can't fill this basket with water, right? That's a show that doesn't know how to keep listeners. What you know how to keep listeners, it converts your show into a steel bucket. Where not a drop is falling out. And then at that point, you can use the same faucet, aka the same growth tactics. We're gonna talk about growth tactics in a little bit, but you can use the same growth tactics and you actually see the water begin to rise because you don't have so much leakage. So that is step two. And steps three, step four, don't matter until you have step two locked in. And you know that if somebody checks out your show, you've got them. They're gonna become a rating fan within 20 minutes and you know they're gonna come back next week. And that is what we aim to do in level two. First of all, I feel like some of you who are listening right now, you know that you've been pouring your water into a wicker basket. Like you know it, you can feel it. You don't even have to go look at the data right now. You already know you can feel it, right? And so that's number one. Number two, Kevin, you're a really good communicator, man. You're a real communicator. I love that. This is a great work. Appreciate that. Yeah, how many of you on a steel bucket? How many of you on a steel bucket? I do, like I'm here listening, I'm like, oh yes, what am I doing, right? That really keeps people in a cycle too, doesn't it? All this labor and intense stuff, is if you think of it as the faucet to put it into something that's not retaining it. And misdiagnosis, right? The misdiagnosis of, oh I'm just not put enough water and when really it's not a bucket. Real quick, I had a client that I worked with last year. He came to me, his show was stuck at 12,000 dollars per month. Really great, really impressive. He got to that point because he was using every podcast growth tactic under the sun. He was hosting short form videos 10 times a day. He was running paid ads to the show, showing up on other podcasts. Literally everything you have ever heard up to try and grow a podcast, he was doing all of it. And came to me, he was like, dude, I just don't understand why my growth methods aren't working. I pressed play on his podcast literally within 15 seconds. I was like Nate, I know exactly what we need to do. Your show can't keep listeners. I taught him how to talk in a way and how to create his content in a way that keeps attention. He didn't change his growth strategy at all within three months. His show tripled from 12k to 36k a month. Six months after that, he was already past 75,000 dollars per month without changing his growth strategy. He didn't have a growth problem. He had a retention problem. He had to learn how to keep the listeners he was getting. I love it. All right, all right, so that's step two. I'm learning so much here. All right, walk us through step three. Let's say that we start figuring out this how to retain them. We're following the system that you develop and now are any people, what's the third wrong? 100%. This is the good stuff. This is the moment you've all been waiting for. Because we've passed level one, we have a clear unique premise when people see it, they're like, oh, I mean, you've learned how to keep the listeners that you get. So when people tune in and they stick around, now you have a growable show. Now we are ready to talk about growth. And so level three is where we grow the show. And the key thing to remember when growing your show is to not promote, not promote. What, what do you mean? What, I thought I was supposed to go promote my podcast. Yes, in a way, but here's the thing. When you're promoting your podcast, when you're logging on to Instagram and LinkedIn and your posting posts that are like, here's a headshot of this guy that I interviewed. New episode available now, right? Here's an audiogram with this wobbly thing on it and some captions that's just a random piece of my conversation, link in bio. That's promoting. Nobody wants to see that crap. Nobody wants to see that crap. And people do the same thing in Facebook groups. Hey, everyone, new episode available now, right? Nobody wants that. When you do that, when you join a Facebook group, you literally have to check the box. It says, I promise I'm not going to promote. And then what did you do? You said, hey, everybody go listen to my podcast, right? So most podcasters look at the podcasters around them. They see the stuff that they're posting on social media, which is promoting, and they monkey see, monkey do. But what they don't know is that all those podcasters also don't have any audience. They don't have any listeners. What the best podcasters do, what the podcasters that are on top of the charts do, is they don't promote, they participate. Don't promote, participate. What do I mean by that, right? Basically, wherever you promote, quote unquote, your podcast, any strategy you have ever heard of, where you've been like, that does it work as that didn't work for me. It didn't work for you because you were from voting instead of participating. You participate on social media, right? You post content, that is good, that people like, right? That is participating on the platform that you're on. You participate on other podcasts, right? You go and you get interview, right? You participate in groups. You become a member of the group. You participate in the group. It sounds counterintuitive, but the less you promote your podcast when you're out interacting, the more listeners you get, because instead of being out there and saying, hey, everyone, go listen to my show, go listen to my show, you are participating via your growth strategy. And people are like, whoa, Joe's awesome. I just saw it as post on social media and I learned how to be a great interviewer. I want to learn more from Joe. Oh, crap, Joe has a podcast. Let me give that a try. And that is when number one, social media becomes more fun. To everyone's like, I don't like social media. I don't want to be a social media person. You don't like it because you're bad at it. Because the content that you're posting is getting no reach because it's not good. Did you hear what you went there on? You're correct. You're coaching of that right here. Right, that's why you don't like social media. I promise you. Once you learn how to be good at it, you're gonna love it. You're gonna love. And everybody in your life's gonna be like, oh, man, you're one of those people that gets social media. That was came naturally to you, right? You're like, no, I just learned that not to promote on social media. I learned how to participate on social media. I learned how to participate on YouTube on other podcasts. And that's when my audience started to grow. How many of you are having huge epiphanies right now? I love that. So good. All right. So if we stop promoting and start participating, what happens next? So now the show's growing. Your face growing. People are coming in. They know what it's about. They understand the premise, right? And it's like, the water bucket is spilling on us. They were flowing even, right? Let's go. Let's build a bigger bucket. That's right, that's right. That's the beauty. The bucket expands for infinity. So yeah, what's the next step? Well, here's the thing. We podcasters love podcasting, right? We love doing it. We love having great conversations with the people. But we didn't just launch the show so we can hear ourselves talk. We launched a social that we can make money, right? I feel like we're on what was a Jeremy Grire. It's like, show me the money. Yeah, show me the money, right? And especially if you're a business owner, you launch the show to try to market your business. You launch this show to try and get ROI, right? So level four of the podcast ladder is the word, the big word that everyone asks about. Monetization, right? Fancy, fancy word. Now, before you get level four dialed in, you're in a place where you're cranking out episodes. It's growing, right? You're getting audience, which is super fun. But you're starting to wonder if it really makes sense to be spending the time and money that you're spending on the show. Because it's fun, but, you know, I'm not making any money doing this. So something's got to give here. Well, it's something that's quite just want to be famous, right? Remember that show back in the day? The lifestyles of the recent famous? Some people just want to be famous, but it's like, if you're famous, you might as well get rich while you're at it. Right, right. Why not, right? And there's also people who got super famous couldn't figure out how to make money and now they're not famous anymore. And back there were shaped them before, where they got famous. So, or not talking to you, we're talking business, right? I want to make money. I want to turn this into something, I want to turn this into an asset, right? And that's what we're going to do in level four. So level four, the question people ask me, how do I monetize the show? And I'm here to say, it's a horrible question. Well, what do you mean by that? Well, what does monetization even mean? At what moments is your show monetized? What do you think people would say? If I said, Joe, at what moment, what moment in time does your show is your show monetized? When I'm making money every time I do an episode. Uh-huh, who's paying it? I have advertisers, I don't know. Who's paying them? Oh, businesses. Your listeners. Oh, okay. That is their goal. So when you have a sponsor on your show, what are they giving you money for? They want your listeners to buy their stuff. Yes. They are paying you in advance for a cut of the money they're going to make when your listeners buy their stuff, right? So that's number one, advertisers. What's another way you can make money from your show? Who else can pay you? Well, your listeners, right? We're business owners here. We want them to become our customers. Yes. We want our listeners to pay us. We want them to buy our stuff. So we have two options for how to monetize the show. We get advertisers in which our listeners pay them. Or we get customers where our listeners pay us. In both cases, we are converting our listeners to customers, converting our listeners to customers. And that is level four. So we go our list of how you monetize. And I know when you're a podcaster, you sink, I want to monetize my podcast equals. I want to get sponsors. I'm here to tell you right now that's actually one of the artists and least reliable ways and the ways to make the least amount of money. You can do it. I can teach you how to do it. Once you get to a certain size, yes, it can become super profitable. But many shows need money to grow to the point where it makes sense to get sponsors. So it's not how do I get sponsors so I can make money. It's how can I make money so I can get sponsors, right? So either way, whether you're monetized with sponsorship or what I recommend, which is to convert your listeners to customers of your business, that is the better question. So horrible question. How do I monetize my podcast? Better question. What do my listeners want to buy? What can I get my listeners to buy? They'll be happy buying. What can I get my listeners to buy? In a way that I get a cut, aka either a sponsor or ideally selling them my product for services. So that's all we got to do with level four. It's convert our listeners to customers. That's so good. How many of you are starting to see like the podcast ladder? It's kind of obvious. You know that it can work, right? You're just kind of like, oh, I had about 15 or 15 of these while I was listening to you there. This is so good. Got to hear. And I had more questions, but you've like, literally been filling in the blanks and stuff. And so I just, I just think it's a perfect time to share with everyone. How many of you would love to spend more time with Kevin, hanging out with him so he can really go deep into each of the steps here? Because I think a lot of times, Kevin, in your experience, can you talk just real quick about time and like the time delay that people often put on themselves or experience when they're thinking about they hear this. And like, this will definitely work. I hope you're taking notes or listen to it again, take notes and you're going through. But what's one of those big things that holds people up with time? Let me speak to that. I hear it all the time. Like I share this information and they're like, that sounds great, Kevin. I totally get at what you're saying makes sense, but I don't have time to implement all that. To which I ask, how many hours a week are you currently spending on your podcast? And they're like, I don't know, eight, 16. And I'm like, okay, great. How about, are you paying anybody to help? Oh yeah, I got a editor, I got a teammate. I'm like, okay, so think about how much time and money you're already spending on on a podcast. That's getting nothing. Literally a money fit, right? So you are already spending more time than you need to on the show and you're getting no results. If we just took some of the time that you're currently spending on a show that it's not growing and just took a little bit of that time to learn how to actually grow it. Where do you think your podcast would be? So good, yep. So because of that, I think it would really help you all to hear about what Kevin is doing next because many times people are unwilling to invest the time to really like go deep to get the systems in place so that you can grow your show and get more customers from your podcast or show. And so that's why we created so excited. You guys ready? Grow the show live, right? And when you come to grow the show live, what we're gonna do is we're gonna spend five days together. Now, five whole days, because I know you're like, oh my gosh, five days, I don't have five days to give up. It's an hour a day. And then for those of you who join us, we're gonna give you one hour of VIP Q&A with Kevin and myself so that we can answer all your questions each day as we go deep into each of these topics to help you. Step one, walk us through it again to help you do step one. Yeah, level one, clear and eat premise. Level two, learn how to keep listeners. Level three, learn how to participate, not promote and then level four, learn how to convert your listeners to buyers. Now, many of you probably either attended an event before or something like that. This is not going to be like fly across the country, spend thousands of dollars, spend multiple days and all that stuff that typically happens. We know that that's a huge time investment and it's hardly been the family and stuff like that. So what Kevin decided to do is we're just gonna do it virtual. So literally you're just gonna be able to jump on a Zoom call with the people who are there and hang out for an hour a day plus an hour a day of Q&A. And we promise you, by the end of that, you are gonna go deep and you're going to absolutely have total clarity on, okay, here's what I need to do in order to grow my show and to create more customers from my show. That's what we're doing together. Now, many times, as you know, like if you come to an event or we all gather together in Orlando or Las Vegas or all the places people like to gather to do these kinds of events, probably a thousand bucks. We don't wanna do that. So what we did is instead of setting up some thousand dollar thing to come to the event and get VIP, it's just 97 bucks. Is that a good deal for an hour a day of Q&A plus an hour a day of training and through those five days at the end of it? If you don't absolutely love it and feel like this is like the best experience I've ever had on growing and monetizing and getting customers. If you never, we promise you it's gonna be the best event ever and if you don't think it's the best event you've ever been to on this, we'll give you your money back. How's that for a deal? So, Kevin, what's your vision for this five days we're gonna spend together with Grow the Show Live? Yeah, I mean, we're gonna dive into exactly what I just said. I mean, as you can tell, I love talking. I love, I can be a little verbose. I promise you, within an hour I can get you what you need and with each day we're gonna dive into the how. I told you the what already today, you already understand the what, we're gonna dive into the how, what are the actual frameworks, what I need to do to hit every level of the podcast ladder. Yeah, and at the end of each day, by the way, there will be a little bit of homework, right? We want you actually making progress through all this, making some of the decisions that need to be made and really just taking everything to the next level of clarity. So, if you're serious, not just curious about growing your show, speaking and impacting more people's lives and getting customers from that entire experience, all you gotta do is click the link below here. It's gonna take you to a page, $97, like we said, and we're looking forward to hanging out with you for a few days and going deep and getting immersive in this whole process. Thanks so much for being a part of my show here today as I interviewed Kevin, Kevin. Amazing stuff, big round of applause for him. Really good content, appreciate you bro. Guys, click the link below and we'll see you at Grow the Show Live. Bye. All right, so one more time you can head to GrowTheShowLive.com to grab tickets to Grow the Show Live, my first ever five-day remote summit in partnership with Joseph and his team. It's only $97, it's next week April 1st through the 5th. I would love to see you there and the link to grab tickets is in the show notes.