209 | Podcasting Is Now on Easy Mode for Business Owners

This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach and today I'm going to share with you the five recent shifts in podcasting that have made it so that podcasting is now on easy mode for business owners. So by the end of this episode, you're going to understand the five things that have changed in the online world recently that are making it easier than ever to use a podcast to grow your business and grow your audience. Now is the best time to start podcasting as a business owner. It has never been easier. I've spent years studying podcast growth and content marketing and recently I've noticed five major shifts that make podcasting simpler and more effective than ever for business owners. Now to make sure these shifts are real, I've implemented them myself with hundreds of clients and the results. My podcast has driven over $3 million in sales and that's with me only having to spend about one hour per week making content and the same thing is happening for the hundreds of business owners that I've worked with as well. Podcasting has become a cheat code for business owners who want to grow their audience, build trust and drive sales without the daily grind of other content platforms. So today I'm going to break down the five shifts that have completely changed the game for podcasting recently and made it possible for business owners to thrive. It's clear to me that we are in a new era and once you understand these five shifts, podcasting is going to feel like easy mode for you to especially if you can master shifts number five. Now the first change that I've noticed is this we are now in the midst of what is being called a trust recession. So a few years ago, customers were more willing to take a chance on a new high ticket product or service with minimal research. Today, that's no longer the case. People are skeptical. They're cautious and they're far more selective about where they spend their money. And to me, there's two big reasons for this. First money is not as cheap to borrow as it was in the 2010s. Interest rates are higher, costs are up and even your customers, customers are a little bit slower to buy. And so that means that people are putting more thought into their spending and they need to feel like they're absolutely sure they're making the right decision before they purchase. The second reason we're in a trust recession actually has nothing to do with the economy. You see up until about 2022-ish, buying expensive products or services or online coaching was still kind of a new thing and people were more willing to take a chance on it because they hadn't been burned yet. But at this point, most high ticket buyers have had at least one bad experience and they're wary. They want to know that they're buying from someone who is actually going to deliver on their promises because by now they've bought things where the person they bought from did not deliver on their promises. So if you're a business owner trying to convert high ticket clients, trust is not optional. It is a requirement and podcasting in my experience is the fastest way to build trust. Unlike social media posts, emails or even YouTube where people get easily distracted, podcasts give your audience extended time with you because when someone listens to your voice for 30, 60, even 90 straight minutes, they're going to get to know you and who you are and what you stand for and how you can help them. It's like having a one-on-one coffee chat with each individual member of your audience at scale. You're going to have time to build a real connection and show them the human side of you and your business. Compare that to social media which the analogy I use is it's more like a crowded food court. Every vendor is shouting at passers-by to try a free sample. Hey, look at this. Look at me. Look at me. And yeah, even if somebody does stop and taste what you're offering by watching your 60 second video, they're usually not sticking around to chat with you for an hour. They're scrolling past and they're on to the next free sample, right? Podcasting on the other hand satisfies what is known as the seven hour rule from the popular book over subscribed. And the idea of the seven hour rule is that people need to spend about seven hours engaging with your content before they're ready to buy. With a podcast, just a couple episodes can get them to seven hours. Compare that to short-form video where if your videos are one minute long, you're going to need people to watch 420 of your short-form video clips just to get them to spend seven hours with you. How long is it going to take you to make 420 short-form videos compared to seven episodes of a podcast? Now I have seen the trust factor play out in my own business. 92% of my to date 464 high-ticket clients listened to at least one podcast episode before making a high-ticket purchase. This is why some of the most well-known business influencers in the world take the time to create and publish a podcast. These are millionaires, deck of millionaires, billionaires, and they are still taking hours out of their week to create long-form content. And that's because the trust recession is real and the fastest way to get online buyers to trust you today is through a podcast. But here's a question you might be asking. How can a podcast help me build trust if it's mostly me interviewing other people? Well, that brings us to shift number two. Today, solo podcast episodes are outperforming guest interviews. You see, when podcasting first started gaining traction in the early 2010s, almost every show followed the same formula. It was weekly interviews with guests. And from 2015 to 2020, this was revolutionary, right? It was the first time we could listen to unfiltered hour plus long conversations with successful people, people who weren't doing interviews on the news and stuff. So it was the first time we were hearing them talk like this and it felt raw, personal, and exciting. But now the game has changed. The interview format isn't new anymore. It's everywhere. And because it's everywhere, most of the podcasts available right now are, well, they're kind of mediocre. There's just too many 45 minute interviews recycling the same topics with the same guests. Another thing that's making interviews work not so well anymore is that they often lack focus. Conducting a great interview is a skill that many people have devoted their whole lives to cultivating. And many of the podcasters that I hear anyway are amateur interviewers. The interviews tend to be all over the place. They cover the guests entire life or career all the way from I was born on a dark and stormy night to here's what I had for breakfast this morning. And it takes a lot of time for the host and the guest to actually share something that's unique, that's valuable, that's transformational. And so what happens is the listeners have to sit through all of the fluff background stories, small talk tangents before they get to the good stuff, anything valuable. Compare that to a solo episode like this. If you look at the top performing value driven podcasts today, many of them rely on solo content. These episodes feature the host speaking directly to their audience, sharing insights, teaching or telling stories. There's no guest required. But why is this? Why are solo episodes performing so well? Well, there are a few reasons. First, they're fresh listeners, like I said before, are tired of the same guests making the same rounds on the same podcasts. Solo episodes offer something new. Second, solo episodes are efficient. With interviews, you might sit through 90 minutes of back and forth just for a couple minutes of actionable insights. A solo episode cuts all of that out. There's no small talk, there's no tangents, just focused value. And third, solo episodes tend to be shorter. So instead of having to commit to an hour or more when a listener presses play, with solo episodes, listeners can get massive value just from 20 or even 15 minutes. For busy people who tend to be the ones who have the money to spend, that's a huge win. And they're going to pick a 15 minute episode to listen to first over a three hour episode. Now I personally stumbled into the solo episode shift by accident. In December 2021, I had a guest cancel on me at the last minute and back then my episodes were all guest episodes. I didn't want to skip that week's episode, but I didn't have time to book a new guest. So I decided, all right, I'm just going to try something new. And I recorded my first solo episode. I just shared a story of my own and provided an insight from that story. I published the episode and the response was incredible. My audience loved it. They were like, this is amazing. Can you make more of these? And I was surprised and honestly a little skeptical, but I kept experimenting. So every so often I put out another solo episode. And over and over again, the results were undeniable. Solo episodes performed better across the board. And while my guest's interviews had about a 65% completion rate, meaning on average listeners were listening to 65% of the episode, my solo episodes were hitting 80%, 90%, even sometimes over 100% completion rate, which means on average, people were listening to my episode more than once. And these episodes were getting more downloads than my guest episodes. But here's the real kicker. What I also would find is that solo episodes generate way more sales than guest episodes. And when you take a step back and think about it, this makes sense. As business owners, we're trying to use our podcasts to build trust with our audience, right? We want our audience to buy from us. But if your show is all guest interviews, guess what? You are not building trust in you. You are building audience trust in your guest. So your audience walks away thinking, wow, I really want to buy from the guests that I just heard from. But with solo episodes, it's different. It's just you. You are the one delivering value, building trust and nurturing your audience. And people finish your episode and they think, wow, I really need to work with that person. You. And if you look at the most successful podcasts striving real business results right now, they've all made this shift to solo content. Many of them now have at least 50% solo episodes and some have transitioned entirely to solo shows. Both formula, weekly guest interviews, it had its time. But today, the biggest opportunities lie in creating focused, value-packed solo episodes that position you as the expert. And this is good news because that feeds into shift number three, which is the third thing that puts podcasts into easy mode for business owners. And that is this. Creating quality podcast episodes has gotten cheaper while video content costs have skyrocketed. So now that podcasting is all about delivering value through solo episodes, you don't need an expensive studio, like I have, or a big production team to compete for attention. In fact, podcasting has become one of the cheapest and most efficient forms of content to create. Take one of my past students, Brian Lubin, for example. He's built a seven-figure business with nothing more than a $250 microphone. No fancy cameras, no costly gear, just a simple setup that works. And there's a few reasons why this is the case. And podcasting has gotten cheaper to do in a world where everything else, even eggs, has gotten more expensive. First off, solo episodes mean simpler content with less to manage. You're not juggling guest schedules, you're not chasing down busy people for interviews or coordinating in-person production, which is really expensive. It's just you, a microphone, and your message. Secondly, the cost of high-quality podcast gear has dropped significantly. When I started podcasting in 2018, creating a professional sounding show was really expensive. I needed a $500 shore SM7B microphone just to get that studio quality sound. And on top of that, I also needed a $100 preamp to plug it into. And I needed another thing that was called a cloud lifter. That was another hundred bucks just to boost the audio signal. It was $700 just for the gear. And that's just to record one person. I was recording guests, so it was really $1400. And on top of that, I had to hire an audio engineer to make the episodes sound great. I didn't understand how to use the fancy audio editing software. And so these costs are adding up into hundreds and hundreds of dollars just to make an audio podcast sound good. Today, though, it is a completely different story. Now, you can buy a shore MV7 microphone, which sounds just as good as this $500 one. For just like a little over 200 bucks and you don't need a preamp, it plugs right into your computer. There's no extra equipment needed. And on top of that, AI tools have replaced expensive editing. So platforms like Descript make it easy to edit your podcast episodes yourself. And for just $30 a month, you can create a professional sounding show without needing to hire a team. Now, I do still send my episodes to an audio engineer and a video editor, because I have the budget for it and it does make a difference. But if you're just starting out, you don't need that. A $200 mic and some basic AI tools can absolutely get your podcast off the ground if your content is good. Now, compare all of that to video production, which has not gotten cheaper. It has only gotten more expensive. The cost of cameras and lights and editing has not gone down. And the competition has gotten higher. So if you scroll through reels or TikToks or YouTube shorts, you're going to see Hollywood level production quality. And so in order to stand out, most business owners are spending tens of thousands of dollars on video equipment and editors just to keep up. Not to mention more and more hours every single week filming video. And with all of that, there's no guarantee that their content is going to perform and bring them any leads and sales. Podcasting, on the other hand, is the opposite. It is affordable. You can get started with a $200 mic and $30 a month software. It is fast. You can record an episode anywhere anytime. It is efficient. And you can focus on delivering value without getting bogged down by flashy production. The bottom line is this. Podcasting has become the most accessible way to create high quality content. You don't need to spend a fortune or hire a big team to start building trust and nurturing your audience. And as video and social media content become more expensive and more competitive, the simplicity and the cost effectiveness of podcasting make it an even smarter choice. But there's another thing that makes podcasting an even smarter choice for business owners. And that is shift number four. The social media hamster wheel keeps going faster and faster. So let me ask you this. How much of the content that you've seen on social media today? Do you think was published within the last 24 hours? Well, according to an annual study of the lifespan of social media posts, the average half life of a social media post on Instagram or LinkedIn is 19 to 24 hours. That's it. That means that your social media posts only get shown to people for one to two days on average. Two days after posting, you've got to start from scratch. That is the nature of social media and, by the way, email. Both of those content platforms are built on a hamster wheel of fresh, constant output. Now think about this. How much time, energy, and money was spent over the last year by business owners creating social media content? Guess what? All of that effort poof gone. Those posts that they made and posted last year are not being seen. That content, not generating leads today. Meanwhile, podcasts were completely differently. So before sitting down to film this video, I checked my lead tracking system and I ran some numbers. And what I found is that 54% of the leads that I got this year for my business came from my podcast and 48% of those leads came from episodes that I published more than six months ago. That is the beauty of podcasting. Your episodes don't disappear into the ether after a couple of days. They keep working for you, selling for you, and nurturing your audience long after they're published. And while social media and email lose their impact within like 48 hours, podcast episodes are evergreen. They bring in leads and builds trust for months, sometimes even years after they're released. And here's why this happens. Podcast listeners approach content differently. On social media, it's all about what is new, what is recent, but with podcasts, people are used to going deeper. They're used to going back and binging episodes from months or even years ago. That means that the work that you do this week to create a podcast doesn't just pay off this week, which it does, it pays off for the long term. It's kind of like the difference between long term investing and short term day trading. Social media is like day trading. You can make a lot of money day trading, but it is fast. There is tons of competition and it is exhausting. And as soon as you stop trading, you stop making money. Social media is so much like day trading that Gary V. himself recently published a book about social media that is called day trading attention. Podcasting on the other hand is like long term investing. When you're a long term investor, you're not rushing around racing against the clock. You take your time. You're thoughtful. And you focus on making high quality investments that will pay off for years to come. That is how Warren Buffett invests. And it's how he has become the eighth richest person in the world. Last I checked, there are no day traders on any richest people in the world. List is all long term investors. So with your content, do you want to be an exhausted day trader who only gets paid while you're on the wheel and crank out social media content every week? Or would you rather be a long term investor like Warren Buffett and focus on creating a few high impact podcast episodes that generate ROI for months and sometimes years? The bottom line is this. Podcasting is one of the few content platforms that provides long term leverage. So instead of starting from zero every month, your building and asset that continues to grow in value and production with time. And that brings us to shift number five. Because now AI lets you use your podcast as the engine for all of your other content. Now, so far I've shared four really impactful shifts in the online content game, but this last one is really the granddaddy of them all. This one is the most recent shift. And it's the one that the fused business owners have really mastered in my opinion. And that's because it's so new. And so it might be the biggest opportunity that you discover today. But before I share that, let me call a spade a spade here. I have been poo-pooing several different content marketing channels in this piece so far. It's true. But if you look at my online presence, you'll see that I do still use the channels that I have been hating on. So I am on social media. I definitely use email and I'm on YouTube because here's the truth. The businesses that get the most out of content marketing, they don't rely on just one platform as much as we would love to. It just doesn't work that way. So if you're a business owner with a podcast and you're not seeing growth, this might be why. Podcasting alone isn't enough to max out your potential. The most effective content strategies that I've seen are balanced. They used three core elements. They used short social media content to quickly generate leads and grab attention. They used long content like a podcast to nurture those leads and build trust. And they use an email list to get those leads to take action today and become paying customers. Now, each of these three channels has its strengths. Social media platforms have incredible algorithms to help you grow really fast. Email is amazing for driving direct action and sales. And platforms like YouTube are fantastic for creating evergreen content that sticks around and keeps working for a long time. Case in point, this episode of my podcast is a YouTube video and I will probably get leads in 2027, 2028 from this video, even though I published it in 2025. So as a business owner, you really want to have all three of these things working for you to get the most out of your content marketing efforts. But historically, building this type of an ecosystem where you have all of this stuff working has been really hard, almost impossible. Because in order to make it work, you needed either a lot of time to create content for all of these channels, social media and email and short form and long form and podcasts on YouTube. Or you needed a big expensive team with social media managers, email copy raters, video editors to handle all of this stuff for you. And that's where shift number five comes in. Thanks to AI tools, you don't need either of those things anymore. You don't need tons of time and you don't need a huge team. You can now create a fully optimized content ecosystem even as a solo printer. And here is the key. It all revolves around your podcast. And so here's how it works. Your weekly solo podcast episode becomes the engine for your entire content strategy. Every week, you as the business owner, as the CEO, your main content focus is to just record one solo episode where you deliver something valuable directly to your audience. Just one, that's it. Once it's recorded, you run it through an AI transcription tool, like Descript or Otter or Riverside or one of the many other transcribers. And from there, you use other AI powered tools to help you leverage other platforms and channels. But not in the way that you think. So I'm going to stop you because I can see a lot of you going, oh, yeah, I understand. I'll just use AI to chop up a bunch of clips. No, that's not what I'm saying. You don't want to use AI to chop up your episode into a bunch of clips and plaster them everywhere. That doesn't work. If it worked, it would work for you by now. But most people who hear my voice right now have posted clips and are confused as to why they've got no results. And it's because clips don't work. And here's why. Imagine if you wanted to sell a book, right? You wanted to sell copies of a book. Would you just rip out random pages of the book and throw them everywhere and hope that strangers find the random page and read just that random page of the book and say, wow, I want to read the rest of this book. Yeah, maybe every once in a while there'll be a really great page where they'll be like, wow, this is great. But most of the time it's too random. People see just that little page or clip and they don't know who's talking. They have no context. They don't know what people are talking about. And it's like, these are just random words. That's what happens with ripped clips from your podcast. So instead, you want to use the power of AI not to extract clips, but to extract ideas. You see AI can instantly consume a podcast episode and give you 5, 10, even 20 atomic insights or ideas or lessons that are worth sharing on other content channels. Then you use AI to help you take those ideas and quickly make native content for those other channels. So you can make an email newsletter to nurture your list or you could have it write captions or text posts for social media. And yes, you can even have it help you write short-form video scripts that you can quickly record and publish. And this is the system that I use every week. I start with one simple podcast episode and from that single piece of content, I generate everything that I want to post that week, write an email, social media text posts, and sometimes even short-form videos. And the best part, this content performs better. With this system, your podcast isn't just nurturing your audience, it's also powering your other content channels. And so you get to show up consistently on social media and people's inboxes and on platforms like YouTube, all while spending less time, then you thought you had to on content. And so the shift is clear. AI has made it possible to create a professional content ecosystem without having a huge team and without a massive time commitment. And it all starts with just one solo podcast episode per week. All right, so to recap this video, we've covered the five key shifts that are making podcasting easier for business owners. These are the exact shifts I've incorporated into my own podcasting strategy. And they've not only saved me time and money, but have helped me generate leads and build trust on autopilot. So number one, we are in a trust recession and podcasting is hands down, in my opinion, the fastest way to build trust with your audience. No other medium allows for the same depth of connection so quickly. Number two, solo episodes are outperforming interviews. They are fresher. They are more efficient to consume and more efficient to make. They are more focused. And it means you're delivering value that your audience can actually use. Number three, creating quality podcast episodes has gotten way cheaper while the cost of video content keeps skyrocketing. So you don't need a fancy setup. You just need a simple mic and some basic tools to get started. Number four, podcast episodes have long term leverage. So unlike social media posts that disappear in 24 to 48 hours, your podcast keeps working for you for years to come, nurturing leads and driving sales in the background. And number five, AI tools have made it easier than ever to use your podcast as the engine for all your other content. From one solo episode, you can create emails, social posts and videos that actually work across every platform. All right, this was a lot, but those are the five shifts that are changing the game for business owners who wants to use podcast and to grow their business without burning out on content. And so if you have any questions about what I've covered or want me to go deeper on any of these shifts, drop a comment below. I've also linked some free resources in the description below to help you get started with podcasting for business growth. Check those out and I'll see you in the next video. I have two things for you before I let you go. Number one, real quick. If you've ever gotten any value from the show, please, if you haven't yet, leave us a five star review. I get a notification every single time reviews come through and they almost always make my day. So please, please, I would love to hear from you. It really, really helps us. And then the second thing is if you are a podcaster who needs help with production, if you are struggling with all the time it takes to make these things and you haven't yet, definitely set up a conversation with podcast boutique. They are the team that I've been working with for five, six years. They're my most trusted production agency. And recently they added an incredible service that you're going to want to hear about. They call it record and forget. I've been using it for months. It is amazing. You just record your episode and send it to them. They do the content editing for you. They create titles, show notes. They can make it into an amazing YouTube video, clips, and of course, high value production. So the content editing piece is the thing that I know people have been asking for for a long time. It is unbelievably good. All I do is record. I send it off to them. They handle the rest. And by the way, they are also closely in lockstep with me. So anytime I discover something that is working to grow and monetize a podcast, I immediately share it with them. We work to them, implement it with my show. And then they implement it with the other shows that they work on. So if you're spending time, yourself doing any of the editing or post-production or if your current post-production team isn't cutting it, maybe they're an internal team that doesn't know what they're doing or they're an external team that's either too expensive or does not keep their promises, which is very common. Check out podcast boutique and go to podcastboutique.com. Let them know that I sent you. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.