How to Make Your Podcasting Business Work FOR You, With Travis Brown

This whole podcasting thing is a lot more work than you thought it would be, right? You not only have to create and publish episodes regularly, but you also have to get the word out there. You gotta engage with your audience, do the whole social media thing, and somehow, among it all, you gotta figure out how to monetize. It all can seem like a bunch of different things that are competing for your attention at once, and are all working together to make you crazy, right? But what if that wasn't the case? What if instead, those things were all working together to make you money? That is what we're gonna talk about today on Grow the Show, because in my work as a podcast growth coach, I've come across hundreds of podcasters who all have podcasts, yes, but who also have different things that surround their podcast, different social media presences, different shapes and sizes of their listener community, different forms of monetization, and different ways that all of those things connect with each other. And while each podcast ecosystem is unique, every single podcaster that makes a living from this creative endeavor does indeed have a healthy, thriving ecosystem around their podcast. And so today, you're going to learn how to craft a thriving business ecosystem around your podcast. And you're gonna learn it from somebody whose creator ecosystem revolves around helping other creators with their ecosystems. His name is Travis Brown. He's the creator of Poddex, which is a really cool company that makes Dex of cards that help you make a better podcast. And he's somebody who has successfully made the leap from a soul-crushing 9-5 into full-time creative entrepreneurship. And he's done that by creating his own ecosystem of creative content, products, and services, which all allow him to make good money and feed his family by doing stuff that he's passionate about. And he gets to do all that while in creative flow and without having to put all of his eggs in one basket. So today, Travis is going to walk us through the key pieces of a healthy, growing creator ecosystem. And he's going to explain which pieces you really should have now if you don't already. And he'll also share which pieces you really don't need to worry about right now despite what others might say. So if you're looking to build and grow your own thriving business ecosystem around your podcast, then let's get started. This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidland and my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to get more listeners and make more money so you can have a thriving podcast business. Today's episode is going to zoom out a little bit from our standard fair and is going to focus on the bigger picture of your podcast business. And by the end of it, you're going to know exactly what you need to start doing or stop doing to put your podcast on the path to being a thriving monetized business. All of that with pro podcaster Travis Brown is now on Grow the Show. I'm Travis Brown and I help creators grow audiences and monetize them. Thanks to the internet, there are more creators today who have an audience and are making money than ever before. But Travis actually learned to make money as a creator before the internet. Used to be a gypsy. I used to tour the country in a van before there were cell phones. And it was amazing because it really taught me how to sell myself, how to manage a business at that point because there's gas money, there's merch money, there's units we're moving of CDs, there's you know, all these different elements. And I'm an extrovert just out of the gate. So for me, it's easy. And I think at that point in time, I really liked the attention and the audiences and all that. So it was this really great sales background that I didn't know I was getting. But while Travis was getting a crash course in how to be a creative entrepreneur, after a while, he started to feel the itch to, you know, grow up. I was very broke. Everybody around me had cars and health insurance and condos. And at this point, I don't know, 26 or 27 and music started to change. People weren't buying music anymore. They were all streaming. And I was looking at them going like, that's the life I want. And they were looking at me going, that's the life I want. You just party all the time and hang out, right? Funny how that works, right? The grass is always greener. Travis decided that he had had enough. And it was time to move on from being a creative entrepreneur. I said, all right, I'm going to get a real job. And I would drive drive to this cubicle of death. I called it cubicle of death. But I thought getting a real job meant becoming an adult and living the good life. It was like trapping a bird in a cage and doing work that's not fulfilling. And it was good for me at the time because it got me headed in a different direction. But it was really just like one of those things where you get in the car and it's just you know, you're going somewhere you hate. So Travis, who wanted the stability of a nine to five job, hated his nine to five job. He went from one extreme touring with his band and partying with no schedule to another extreme going to the cubicle of death and hating his life turns out the grass wasn't green on either side. So what's a guy to do? That's when I started to go, okay, how can I do stuff while I'm in my cubicle at lunch? Or how can I use extra time to potentially build something that I can jump to, right? Build my own little like parachute. So I could say, I'm out of here, guys. That's when I started building online businesses. One of those businesses would be inspired by Travis's daily commute to and from the cubicle of death. It was an hour there at an hour back. And at some point, you know, I got introduced to podcasts and I started listening to these podcasts, turning my car into a mobile classroom, which is why I think podcasting is amazing. But then I started listening to these podcasts and I was like, man, these are these really sound rough. Like, you know, and this is 11 years ago. So technology wasn't where it is. They didn't have all these cool new software apps where you could do all this stuff. But I thought there was a chance for me to help. And coming from music and production, there's a lot of crossover there. So as a side hustle that would hopefully blossom into Travis's full-time gig, he started an agency that provided editing services to podcasters. And this did pretty well. But before Travis could establish escape velocity where the business replaced the income of his nine to five, he hit a ceiling. I had sold all my time as an editing agency. The only way to grow that was to either get more employees or start marketing and doing some other things. So what else could Travis do to grow his business that didn't involve selling more of his time? You listen to all these gurus like sell. You sleep, make a course, right? So I made this course about podcasting. Now no one asked for it. This is also a lesson. This is why I will always pre-sell everything I do for the rest of my life. I spent six weeks making a course called Short Cut to Podcasting. It was incredible. Like soup to nuts, everything that I had documented in my own business. So somebody could take that and build their own little empire. So I rolled it out and I sold like five the first day. I was really excited because it was a little bit higher ticket item. And I was like, this could work. And then boom, nothing like zero. So I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by just asking people if this was something that they wanted. So the next time you think about making a course, I like to do the I'm thinking of post where you post on social media and say, I'm thinking about starting this thing. Are you interested? And then you can see does the market want what you want to make them? This is actually a technique that I recommend to new podcasters as well. Talk to potential listeners of your podcast and get validation on the idea before you spend weeks or months and tons of money launching something that potentially nobody wants to listen to. Travis and I both now know to sell before you build anything. But back when Travis created Short Cut to Podcasting, he didn't know that. He got a few folks who already knew him to buy the course when it first launched, but he had no idea how to market the course to strangers. So he started looking for new ways to spread the word. I was reading this book called One Page Marketing Plan by Alan Deb. I highly recommend this book. There's one chapter about marketing and how mail is super underutilized now because everybody's online. And so people have turned away from physical marketing in your mailbox and turned to digital. Well, what's happened is email and text is saturated in your mailbox is empty. So he recommends doing something called the lumpy envelope technique where when somebody buys something from you, you send them a lumpy envelope. And when you get a lumpy envelope in the mail that you're not expecting, it's the first thing you'll open. You're like, well, I have to know what's in here. So I was like, cool. I have these questions on my phone that I called friends questions. It was just the huge list of questions that I used at like dinner parties or just talking to random people, just like getting conversations started. And so I'm like, I could turn my friends questions into a deck of cards and send that as like a lumpy envelope surprise gift for the people that bought my course, right? So I did that. And when it stops selling, I started to freak out. I was like, by the way, you also get this deck of cards, like, you know, pulling out all the stops, like, maybe that was going to move the needle. And what happened was people were emailing me go and like, hey, listen, I don't want the course, but I'd love to buy one of those decks of cards. And my initial reaction was like, no, no, no, no, that's not what this is. I'm not a deck company. You know, I remember typing that out. I'm not a, I'm not a deck company. And about after the fifth or the seventh email, I said, shoot, this is actually something that people find valuable or would want to buy. And so I decided like, let's test this. So I call the pod decks. I ordered 10, which cost me like 30 bucks each to press because it was such a low number, right? Right? So it was like, all right, I'm going to invest like 300 bucks and see if this works. And so then I just made a quick ad on my phone, like I just videotaped like taking the cards and shuffling them and showing them. And I just did a promoted post on Instagram just to see like, will anybody buy this? And the first day sold out, I was like, okay, that's a fluke because I'm not a, I'm not a marketing guy. I don't know how to run ads. And I'm like, okay. So I took a little more money and press the next level up, which was a hundred decks. And I did the same thing. And I sold out again. And I was like, okay, we've got a spark here. We've got, you know, something happening. And from there just exploded through Travis's accidental success with pod decks, he was able to learn a valuable lesson. Sometimes your big idea that you put your energy into isn't your big idea. And you have to listen to what the market wants. If I just kept pushing the course of pushing the course of pushing the course, I would have died a slow death. But you have to lean into the thing that people are saying like, hey, I'm here for it. Where do I buy this? So pod decks blew up. They began producing tons of decks. Some of them had episode ideas. Others had truth or dare style questions. And some stayed with the classic original interview questions. But here's what's crazy. During all of this, Travis was still working in the cubicle of death. He was scared to take the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, which as I know, and which you might know is totally understandable. It is a terrifying thing to do. But then Travis had a revelation. I pictured myself dying of cancer on like a hospital bed. And I was like thinking about what my regrets would be. Because I've done a lot of stuff in my life. I'm really happy with my life. Like if my life ended right now, I think I'd be like super fulfilled. But I was thinking about what would my big regret be? I would be really upset with myself if I didn't go for it. Because I can always go get another job. But I can't have this chance again. So he finally made the move. And he felt amazing, like terrifying and amazing. At that point, I was working literally from 5 a.m. to midnight every day. It was just like, get up as early as you can, get as much stuff as you can done, work all day, work through lunch, get the kids to bed, work all night. And that's not sustainable. That's a recipe for burnout or whatever it is. So at first, it was like, okay, it was a relief. Kind of like a pressure valve. You know, it was like, okay, cool. Now I don't have to worry about all this middle part of my day. And things keep getting better. You know, opportunities keep popping up, which is just proof that like you close a door and another door opens. Today, Travis is a bit of a serial entrepreneur. Aside from Poddex, he's had his own podcasts. And his most recent venture is called Social Boom. It's an accelerator program where budding entrepreneurs learn who their audience is, what their offer should be, and what kind of content they need to create to grow their business. So my mission has now been to like, like I said, help you do this faster than I did. Because, you know, one of my favorite things is like, coming up with something in your mind and then making money off that. I think it's a really cool thing. Like, like you're doing or any creator is doing is we're manifesting things that didn't exist and then turning that into businesses. So how can you do this faster than Travis did? How can you take your podcast that you made up in your mind and manifest it into a thriving business ecosystem? Travis will share exactly that after the break. Okay, so we just heard from Travis Brown how he stumbled his way into full-time entrepreneurship via podcasts. And now he helps other aspiring creative entrepreneurs like you to build a profitable business ecosystem around their creations. But before we get into how a creator can build an ecosystem, what the heck even is an ecosystem? If you think about an ecosystem is just multiple things that work together. It's a journey. Okay, so somebody gets introduced to you in some way. This could be social media. This could be an ad. This could be word of mouth, but they're going to come into your world. And what you want to keep thinking of is a loop. So if they listen to your podcast, invite them to your community. And when they get to your community, make sure there's somewhere to go next, right? This could be your social media account. This could be somewhere else. When they get there, make sure they know there's a next place to go. And you want to keep people in your world. And you want to keep giving them. And I know this sounds overwhelming to some people because it's like, now I have to do all the platforms. You don't. Okay, I do one social media platform. And I'm just fine. I don't need Twitter. I don't need TikTok. I don't need Snapchat. Just it's so much easier to help people. There's one place to find me. But what I'm doing there is I'm continually sending people to the next part of the journey. And this journey can be anything you want it to be. Your ecosystem could be as big or as small as you want it to be. But you have to keep thinking about where you're going to send them next. So after the podcast, join the community, after the community, join my mastermind group, in the mastermind group, get them a product, right? After the product, send them to social media, social media sends them to the podcast. And you keep giving people the next step because the entire internet is based off of feeds and call the actions, right? Everybody's like, hey, stop here. Look at this. So let's get meta for a second. Right now, you're currently hanging out in my podcast ecosystem. You're listening to the Grow the Show podcast. At the end of this episode, I'm going to invite you to join us in my podcast community, the Grow the Show Facebook group. From there, when you request to join, you'll be prompted to optionally enter your email and opt into the Grow the Show newsletter email list, where you'll also learn when there are new Grow the Show YouTube tutorials available. On top of that, there's a good chance that the way that you found me was by clicking on one of my Instagram ads. Finally, since you are present in the ecosystem, there is a two to five percent chance that if you haven't already, you'll join us in the paid Grow the Show accelerator program, which pays for all of this stuff to exist. That is what my podcast ecosystem looks like. And hold on, hold on. I know what you're thinking. That's so much. There's no way I could build all that out at once. And you're absolutely right. I did not build this out all at once. I started by launching the accelerator program before this podcast in June 2020. One month later, I launched the Facebook community. Two months after that, I created the email list. Four months after that, I launched this podcast. Four months after that, I launched Instagram ads. One year after that, I launched the YouTube channel. And still to this day, I'm really only active on social media on Instagram. I'll expand to being active on Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and other stuff in the coming months. As you can see, this ecosystem is not something that needs to be completely built out all at once. And really, it can't be. But what you don't want to do is to have your podcast exist all by itself on an island. You need a place for people to go after your show to hang out with you. And that could be a Facebook group, a discord server, just a private text message on your phone. But the problem with podcasting is that if you don't take someone out, they're going to just go to the next podcast or they're going to go to the next place where someone is going to invite them somewhere. So it's really important to think, okay, when someone's done with the show, how can they hang out with me? Because podcasting is one way. We broadcast to them. They can't talk back. They can't really even comment on a podcast, unless it's a review. There's nowhere for them to go. So if you invite them somewhere, you can create a community. If you create a situation where they can actually hang out with you, you'd be surprised at how fast a community will grow. So if you focus on community growth as opposed to download growth, you'll be a much happier and healthier podcaster in the long run. Okay, so you want to create a listener community where your listeners can go for more after listening to the show. But let's face it, simply creating a community like a Facebook group often doesn't go so swimmingly. You create the Facebook group, yes, you invite a bunch of friends, and then it's crickets. So what the heck do you do to turn that Facebook group into an actual community? It's like hosting a party, right? You invite them in, you make them comfortable, you ask them how they are, you start a conversation. If people feel seen, they will invite other people and your community will grow. But you have to get out of the mindset that like there's only one person in my Facebook group just blow their mind. That's what I'm going to tell you, okay? That will grow. And you keep mentioning it in your podcast where you can hang out with us, where you can hang out with us. And then what you're going to do is you're going to ask people what they're struggling with, right? So let's say you're in the, I don't know, the coffee business, right? Maybe people want to learn how to do the poor over technique or how to roast their own beans or, you know, you start to pick up on things people are struggling with. And those become products, okay? Those become offerings. So we offer that to them and we solve a problem, right? So you want to start to encourage conversations about your industry or niche on where people are struggling. If you're in business, are people struggling with sales or marketing or leads or if you're in social media, like, are they struggling with growth or, you know, and so you find out what their problems are. And then you simply do this. You say, I'm thinking about offering a course on blank. If you'd be interested in this, just comment or send me a DM, right? And sometimes you have to do this a couple times because not everybody sees your posts, not everybody's always on Facebook. But people are going to tell you whether they want that thing or not. Yeah. Before you build it. So the reason you need to have a podcast community in order to have a thriving ecosystem is twofold. One, so you can actually interact with your audience, get to know them and they can get to know and love you even more. And number two, so you have the ability to sell before you build. And if you're a podcaster whose show is not business or industry related and you're thinking to yourself, but what about me? I'm an entertainment only show. This doesn't apply to me. Let me stop you right there because guess what? That belief of yours is the reason why you're not going to be able to turn this show into a thriving business with a great ecosystem. In order for any podcast to be a thriving business, regardless of whether or not the show is business related, it needs to be monetized, right? It needs to make money. Do we agree? Cool. So the only way to monetize a podcast is by converting some of your listeners to customers of something, customers of your product or service, customers of your Patreon or monthly membership, or customers of someone else's business via a podcast sponsorship or affiliate deals. That's it. That's the only way to monetize a podcast. So if you want to monetize this podcast, you're going to need to learn how to turn your listeners into customers of something. And people only become customers of something, AKA give their money to someone else to solve a problem. They are not going to give you their money to support you. They don't care. Their life will be fine whether or not you get to do what you love. They are only ever going to give their money away to solve a problem. Bonus content solves a problem. The problem is they want more. A paid community solves a problem. The problem is that they don't get to interact with other people like them. You can solve that for them. Even entertainment alone solves a problem. They're bored, but please recognize that people don't like paying for entertainment. They think it should be free. So entertainment alone is not going to pay the bills above all else. If you want your podcast to be monetized, you have to figure out how to turn some of your listeners into customers of something. And the only reason people become customers of something is to solve a problem. So if it's true that the only way for your podcast, regardless of whether it's entertainment only or business related to be a thriving business ecosystem is for your podcast to be monetized. And if it's also true that the only way to monetize a podcast is by converting some of your listeners to customers of something. And it's true that people only become customers of something to solve a problem. And that the only way to know what problems your listeners have is by actually talking to them, ideally via your listener community. Then my friends, I conclude my time here on the soapbox by asserting to you that the best way to fast track your way to a thriving monetized podcast business ecosystem is to start by creating a podcast listener community. Phew. Let's bring it back. We've established that creating a listener community is vital. But what's the biggest mistake that you see creators make when they try to build a community around their work? They don't show up. They start the group and expect people to come in and run the group. So in my personal experience, I started a group with one person. I just checked in with that person, asked them what they needed. They brought some people that started to grow. But I showed up every single day and talked to every single person, which is an output that you have to do because you're the host of the party. If you invited me to your house and said, hey, I'm having a party and I showed up and you were hiding upstairs, I would leave. People don't show up to their own thing and then they wonder why no one wants to stay. And it's really easy to just show up and be there and look at less people as more of an opportunity to have direct conversations. If you're talking to a thousand people, it's hard to hear what they're yelling at you. If you're talking to five, they're going to tell you and you're going to hear that. So you need to look at it as your advantage as opposed to a disadvantage. Okay. So you need to show up in your community before other people will show up and actually turn it into a community. Got it. But what about once you have your community going, what piece of the ecosystem puzzle comes next? Well, you kind already heard it from Travis because to him, it's monetization. He already explained how you can use your community to farm for product and service ideas. If you'd like to monetize your audience by selling a product service or membership. But what if you're a podcaster who doesn't want to do that and you'd rather monetize your audience by converting your listeners to customers of someone else's business? You're going to have probably two options to monetize your podcast and a podcast is an amazing output to have as a creator. But it's only one piece of the puzzle in my opinion because your options are going to be I can run dynamically inserted ads and it's going to be whatever the corporations want it to be. Okay. So as a punk rocker, I'm a little anti-corporation because I think they lean on the backs of creators and they don't pay them enough and it bothers me because we drew the audience. It's our show, right? So you can either do it through dynamically inserted ads. And if your show does a specific amount of downloads and meets some criteria, you can make some income there. I agree with Travis that dynamic ads that just get plopped into your show are not the way to go. I tried that once with my Philly podcast Philly Ho. And the next day, there was an ad on the show for the McMuffin and I made a whole whopping 50 cents for it. Not a good deal. Steer clear of those types of ads. The second option is brand deals and brand deals are accessible to all creators, especially creators that have a niche like a podcaster that's doing a health and wellness podcast has multiple different brands that they could partner with to do a live read ad. And that's going to be way more money. A brand deal ad would be something where you mention live on your show, you read a potentially a script that you've written or they've written about a product and you're going to get paid for promoting that product. So you either get like a lump sum of money or you get some type of backend on sales. And then dynamically inserted ads are just where a podcast hosting company just jams ads into the spots you say, okay, put some ads in. That's going to be a substantial amount more amount of money than dynamically inserted ads. But brand deals take a long time. And as a person who's had multiple brand deals, you have to have a proposal and then it has to go through corporate and then you have to do the work and then you get paid later. It's it's something that requires a lot of management. There is a third option though that actually doesn't require a lot of management. And in some cases doesn't even require you to contact the brand that will be paying you. You could start to get into affiliate sales and I know affiliate sales sound very pyramid schemey, but that's simply sharing a link to something that you love and use in getting paid a percentage of that income. After you've monetized the show and have cash coming in, then you can worry about adding in all the other pieces of the ecosystem, like tons of social media content across different platforms, an email list, a YouTube channel, all the other stuff. And really you don't need all of that to be successful here and make six figures as a podcaster. The bare minimum to a great podcast ecosystem is really just a show, a community, and some form of revenue. Keep it simple stupid. That's what I tell myself quite a bit. An email list is only good if you send emails, okay? But the reason people don't send emails is because they think they have to write these Shakespearean novels. I love to send my audience a note. Hey, it's Travis. Today I found something really cool. It's this podcast called Grow the Show. You should check it out. Here's a link. That's an email. It's a communication. It doesn't have to be four paragraphs with headings and pictures. Think about it. That's so much easier for someone to read and open and go like, oh, cool. This email doesn't seem spammy to me. I'm going to actually open these emails. I used to do so for your email list to steal my thing. Friday, high five. Here's five things I'm excited about. I bought this dustbuster on Amazon. There's a cool new book I read. I released a podcast ecosystem. I did a YouTube video, ecosystem, and I'd love to know what you're working on. Communication, right? Shouldn't take more than writing any other email that you write, but you have to, if you start it, you have to send it. And you also just have to focus on like, everyone's not going to show up at once. And you don't want everybody to show up at once because you can't handle it yet. You slowly build up, right? You slowly build up and you listen to what people want. So let's just say, start small. Don't worry about small. Small is your superpower. Small is indeed a superpower. And the reality is, you don't have to be huge to do this thing full time. If you want to go full time as a creator, you're going to need to know how much money you need to make each month and you're going to need to prove that out before you can tell your boss to go do whatever he's going to do. So step one is to go, what am I spending or what do I need to live or what do I need to take care of my family? The second step is then to go, okay, there's some nice cities in here, right? I've got Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, HBO Max, YouTube, you need one. How much TV do you need watch, right? So you want to look at your budget, look at what you could cut out because that's the number, that's your creator number, that's how much money you need to make. And then this is the fun part, this is the best part. Let's say it's $5,000 a month, then you start at the end, okay, $5,000 a month. That means I need to have three coaching clients at $1,000. Maybe a physical or digital product that's doing X dollars, a brand deal that's doing X dollars, and you can build out your little creator economy and fill in the blanks, right? So it becomes more, you're in the driver's seat, as opposed to you thinking that you need somebody else to be in the driver's seat. And you know what? Even if you're not making enough money from the show directly quite yet, you might be able to make up the difference elsewhere with a part-time gig. To figure out how to do that, simply ask yourself this question. Can I solve someone's problem? Because creators were amazing. They're the kind of people that will never give themselves credit for all the skills that they learn across being a creator. So like, if you have a podcast and you edit it, you could be a podcast editor because you have a skill set that someone else doesn't have, right? I'm not trying to steal our business or anything, but I want to empower people. If you know how to explain it, you go around and we're fine. If you can edit a video, you could, you could be a video editor. If you can do really great stuff on Photoshop, you could do stuff for other people and be a designer. If you can sing, you could write people custom songs. It's amazing how creators cannot understand that you're developing skills that right now everybody needs, every brand needs, every company needs, the creative person. And you can offer your services. You're just afraid too. Yeah. Perfect. Travis, that's all I got my friend. This was awesome. I'm so grateful to be here with you, man. I love everything you're doing. And I think that if anybody could do me one favor as you're listening to the show, just take five seconds and go give this star a rating either on Spotify or Apple podcasts. You know, the work that goes into this podcast, you're not going to see it's behind the scenes. Kevin had to schedule with me. Think of what we're going to talk about. You know, edit this podcast, put it out. There's probably some social media promotions. It's a lot of work. The one way that you can let Kevin know, like, I'm listening and I'm on your team is to go leave a review and honest review, actually write something in the box or just slam the five stars to let him know that you're out there supporting this effort. You heard the man. I did not ask him to say that what a freaking gem. And while you're at it, be sure to follow Travis on Instagram at Travis Brown, because he's got way more knowledge to share than what you heard here today. And yes, you know, this is coming. If you would like to connect with other podcasters who are building themselves an ecosystem and you want to get feedback on which piece of your podcast ecosystem you should build next, then join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group where we would love to weigh in. There are almost two and a half thousand of us by now and the link to join us is in the show notes. Grow the Show is a Q9 production. This episode was written and produced by me and Catherine Nails with post-production by Jeremy Bishop and of course a huge, massive, very special thanks to Travis Brown. For Grow the Show, my name is Kevin Schmidland. We'll see you next time.