The 3 Core Skills You Must Have to Be a Successful Podcaster, with Eric O'Keeffe

There was a question asked in the free Grow the Show Facebook group earlier this year that got me thinking The question was asked by fellow Grow the Show podcaster Justin Williams and the question was this What are the core competencies that a podcaster needs to grow a show from nothing? It's a good question The idea behind the phrase core competency which is most often used in business spheres is that in order to find success In any job role or business, you need to have a certain set of skills a.k.a. core competencies I'm gonna use skills from now on Liam Neeson style and The idea goes on to say that if you're missing any one of those baseline skills meaning you have most of them But maybe you're missing one or two of them if that's true You will ultimately fail So bringing it back to Justin's question What are the core skills that we need as podcasters in order to be a successful podcast entrepreneur and to have a growing Thriving podcast business This is a great question and as somebody who has taken two shows past six figures and who has generated More than a half a million dollars podcasting in under three years I was super curious. What are the core competencies of a successful podcaster? What does this mean for me as a podcaster? What does it mean for the 125 students in the growth show accelerator? And of course, what does it mean for you as a podcast entrepreneur trying to make grow and monetize an amazing show? I've been literally thinking about this question since Justin asked it on June 14th 2021. I was like four months ago I've been stewing over it trying to boil it down and today. I'm excited to say I've got it After growing two shows myself interviewing dozens of other successful podcasters and helping thousands more via this podcast I'm happy to say that we here at Grow the Show can confidently say that we know or at least we have a theory for What the three core competencies and three baseline skills that you have to have to be a successful podcaster are and And today we're gonna share those three skills with you and when I say we I don't mean just me That's because today on Grow the Show we are joined by another full-time podcaster who has developed those three skills himself And who is here to share how he did it This is Grow the Show the podcast that helps you grow your podcast today We're joined by Eric O'Keefe the podcaster behind what if world a podcast for kids and it's regularly ranked among the top podcasts for kids around and While what if world started as a side project of Eric's while he was a preschool teacher It's since grown into a thriving business, which is now Eric's full-time job He's a Grow the Show listener like you and I actually didn't know that when we invited him onto the show So today Eric makes the leap from listener to guest and hops inside of your earbuds to share with you How he built the three core skills needed to be a successful podcaster what those skills exactly are and how you will soon have them too Hey, my name is Eric O'Keefe aka mr. Eric. I am the host and co-creator of the podcast what if world stories for kids Like most of us growing up Eric wasn't always sure what he wanted to do as a career I had no idea what I wanted to do as a kid you know I wanted to be a veterinarian then a writer then an actor and Except for the veterinarian part. I've you know, I now combine a lot of those things But truly it took me a long time to get here Yeah, and what kept bringing you back because you worked at this little gym of Brooklyn Heights you were You did children's theater like you kept coming back to working with kids. What about that is exciting to you? Or what about that? Are you passionate about yeah? I just you know, I feel like I always had these big lofty goals that I don't think I was actually ever too excited about I just felt like I had to be pursuing them One of those goals was to be a world famous actor and throughout high school college and afterwards he went all in I started with acting competitions and then I you know, I did musical theater of course all through high school I continued with theater in college and a sketch comedy group called the outtakes which you won't find anywhere We don't exist online anymore. It's a long time ago But a lot of those characters that I invented have made it onto the show granted they are you know a little more kid friendly Than some of our college sketches might have made them to be but I and then after that I moved to New York and that's when I really kind of hit the ground running with the I was at the actors Conservatory for five years studying under Lily Lodge and she's an amazing amazing teacher Of like Stanislav skates anyone those that it's like serious method acting I learned a ton and simultaneously I was taking improv at UCB While he was pursuing acting He was also working with kids programs and doing things like teaching preschool and instructing gymnastics and karate I Was always working with kids and always really really enjoying that and then finding that these things that I was pursuing on the side That I felt like we're gonna be my career and my future weren't actually bringing me a lot of happiness and So I finally you know I found that I had all this experience and I was like well What if I can take this experience and this training and you know put it together into something that is actually feels like me and fulfills me Some things that were already fulfilling him were his Skype calls with his young nephew that he had regularly And it was during one of these calls that Eric's wife had an idea I was just telling stories to my nephew over Skype and then I you know I met my girlfriend now wife And moved in with her and was telling these stories and she was overhearing them and just thinking That it sounded like I was good at this and she was like well Maybe you can make this into something I didn't believe her She forced me to sit down in front of a microphone and then with her audio Experience her editing experience. She created the first three episodes of what if world and and played them for me Like literally I lost it when she did it because I never realized that I could You know that I could sound like that. You know, this is six years ago I hadn't heard something like that as a podcast for kids and I was like wow this maybe there's a A place for this and I was like, you know I can bring some of that energy to this podcast and make it you know off the cuff But also have some life lessons behind it and then and then with my wife's experience You know introduce that high production value with like music and sound effects That well that I hadn't really been hearing in the space at that time and with that What if world was born? But How did Eric get From three unpublished episodes to becoming one of the top kids podcasts in the world Well usually on grow the show we like to zoom in on one part of the process and dive super deep on that particular skill But today on this show instead of focusing on depth We are going to be focusing on breadth of skills because like me and probably like a lot of you Eric wasn't really an expert on one part of the podcasting process when he started He had to figure all of it out as he went and what I've learned doing this for years and helping hundreds Thousands of podcasters is that building a podcast business can be broken down into three Discrete core competencies or baseline skills and those three skills are this number one mastering the craft and regularly publishing great episodes number two Growing your audience regularly and predictably and then number three monetizing that audience converting the attention that you and your show get Into cash So for the rest of this episode We're going to take you through Eric's journey through the lens of developing those three skills And we're going to learn what his advice is for you as you go through this journey and you develop those skills The first phase of developing the three core podcast competencies is learning how to make good podcast episodes and publish them with consistency And we start here because if your show sucks if it doesn't entertain educate or empower somebody Skills number two and three won't matter You could be the greatest podcast marketer in the world You could crush skill number two and get millions of people to press play But if you don't have skill number one and your show isn't good enough for people to stick around You'll be out of podcasting very soon And by the way, this is exactly why so many celebrities start a show and flame out in weeks They've got skill number two covered. They can grow the audience But they never develop skill number one, which is creating great podcast episodes And one of the great misconceptions about this skill is that it's done alone spending hours by yourself in cave producing your show Only to emerge months later with the perfect podcast No, it doesn't work that way in fact if you do that and if you stay in a cave and develop your show Your show is definitely not going to be a show that other people like because the reality is that in order to truly hone your craft As a podcaster you need help and you need to recruit a handful of people Within the audience that you want to serve and whose opinions you really trust I had those three episodes and I and I had some people listen to them people with kids And I was like, please like honest feedback be as harsh as possible if you need to be and You know, you especially need to do that if you don't have experience in the classroom Because if you're like a parent or caregiver and you're like my My like one or two kids that I have spent tons of time with really like that But just in case just in case you know your head is a little bit different You know, you just you just want to just want a little bit of outside perspective So I do firmly firmly believe in like sort of play testing these podcasts before you launch so that your premise is strong Even if you don't have a kids podcast It's important to have a group of people that you trust to run your show and ideas by We grow the show Facebook group Now after Eric got feedback from this group he actually began to publish his show He get the same laid back style that he had when telling his nephew stories over Skype And he also let his listeners have some control over the narrative In doing so, Eric was able to establish a unique lane a unique voice And really put a lot of thought into the content and the episodes that he was creating They call in with a what if question, you know what if rainbows could talk for example And I take that as kind of an improv premise, you know in improv you get a one word suggestion But I felt like with kids, you know, they would want to hear their voices They would want to feel like they were a bigger part of the story So we play their question or sometimes we read it especially with the early episodes I just completely improvise you know I've told a million stories, I've read a million stories So it's very it's very energetic and has a suddenness to it And a silliness to it that I hadn't heard at the time Granted, there's tons of great comedians and voice actors doing kid cast now I do feel like mine is still a little bit different because it to this day remains unscripted Sometimes I have to write out a few bullet points because I'm like 211 stories in so just to make sure I'm not Repeating on myself and also to make sure that I that I round it out with a lesson Because I don't want to just have like fully fun Nothing on the air I it is for kids and families So I want there to be some kind of wholesomeness to each story as well One of the more important things going in is to think about your audience and your premise so Your main audience is your kid and and for me like that That is my nephew I do also have to remember that I'm talking to the parents too that they're listening and You cannot forget it for a second because if you just are like Kids like fart jokes. Boom. I got it. It's the fart cast Cominatio 24 like no, you know, you might some kids might like it but parents are gonna be like this is trash This is the kid version of lowest common denominator like where is the value here But people sometimes think oh if I'm making a podcast for kids. It's just gonna be Storytime, you know, I'm gonna do storytime like there's wow But then if you actually look there's like 50 popular story podcasts for kids So you have to find your niche use what makes you amazing what makes your life A value to you and those around you your own experiences And if that feels too niche like don't worry about it as long as the way you speak isn't like you know somehow Myopic or offensive to others which you know most kids entertainers. It's not gonna be like You're gonna find your audience, but just like really really think about your premise And eventually you'll find something This again is not just true for kid podcasts. It's true for all podcasts You got to have a unique premise that differentiates yourself at this point in the story Eric had that But he was still grinding at his day job So he had to figure out how he was going to be able to consistently produce a great podcast I had Wednesdays off every week and I would Record an episode on Wednesday no matter what I had to record every Wednesday And then my wife would help me edit it and get it on the air And I was just disciplining myself to do it every week. I thought that Weekly had to be My thing and I think in the long term that mentality has helped me a little bit Just because I have a lot of content out there But in the short term it really was making it a grind and it was distracting me From the things that I actually needed to do to to get it to grow the show It's tough, but you got to make sure you have room for both You have to be able to create amazing episodes with consistency skill one But you also have to find time to develop skill two growing your audience Eric had a full-time job and he had to fit all of this in his downtime But luckily for him his wife also had a full-time job and her full-time job was in marketing So she actually already possessed a little bit of skill number two And it was in this early stage of what if world that Eric's wife shared with him a little advice that you may have heard On this podcast before she went to the watering holes This before grow the show existed too, but it was right right it is great marketing advice So she would sort of search on Twitter for parents tweeting about content for kids and She just reach out sometimes one-on-one Some similar things on Facebook We would just get ourselves out there anyway we could and thank goodness for her because I have always been better at the creative side and I've had to learn a lot more about marketing But she's always the one sort of giving me that push and telling me like well Maybe rather than worrying you just need to take a step that's positive in the marketing sense And and just give yourself a break on the creative side most of us Don't have somebody next to us to give us marketing advice like Eric had in his wife But most of us can spare 15 minutes a day to get on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, whatever Interact with potential listeners and to then bring them into your audience 15 minutes a day It's all you need and if that concept is new to you check out episode eight of this podcast about targeted daily engagement It'll explain exactly how to do that But here's the thing Eric and his wife We're doing targeted daily engagement before I even made up that phrase Because they were intentional and they were visiting the right places the right watering holes They were able to find a lot of success and they started growing their audience one listener at a time Twitter is gonna good search algorithm and You can kind of figure out what people are looking for and then just be like hey We're doing this. We're working really hard. We believe in what we're doing. Please check it out And you know nine times out of 10 which is a crazy high ROI at least as far as I mean, but like you can't you can't help that 20% there's gonna be a there's gonna be 20% of people who no matter what you do How good your pitch is they're not gonna care But the rest most of the time they were like oh cool check it out And a lot of those people would email me you know a year later But come up patron and be like hey, we've been listening to your show. Do you remember us? At the same time They also started to reach out to small media outlets that they knew would have an interest in Eric's story This was in the hopes of getting their name out there to even more listeners and maybe even bigger outlets Yeah, at the time we were not Spending a dollar on marketing because we weren't making any money. Uh, yeah, right So I mean we had a couple of patrons, but that was Probably costing us almost as much as we get it Really it was I was reaching out wherever I reached out to my hometown paper You know, and they were really excited because they're like look at this kid like our kid who is in all the shows When he was little and now he's now he's got his own podcasts, but I had already gotten publications on like friends newsletters, you know that and local papers And we were just doing everything we could to make ourselves Up here just squeezing out every little bit of exposure that we could and it you know, and it did finally pay off Eventually their listenership and media exposure grew so much that they caught the attention of a bigger media company One that they didn't even reach out to so we got um Shout out to common sense media. They after our first year they Released a list of like the best podcast for kids and We were on it and it was like It was the small bump at first and then that got but that article got a few other places And then suddenly like the times of London had us on their list and then we went over the course of six months We grew like 600 percent, you know, and that's and that's rare and we got lucky I mean we got lucky you could say, but I do think like It's because we were taking action and making good content We were putting ourselves out there and and I really believed in our content and finally, you know That led to some recognition and more discovery and then you know Once that happens and you're and you're popping up on the charts and people are clicking on you That's when the growth can really can really be amazing All right, so at this point Eric had worked to create amazing episodes regularly and he had grown his shows audience He learned how to do that on command. He had started finding success with skills one and skill two All that was left to develop was skill three converting the attention your show gets into cash money aka monetizing now after more than three years of doing this which doesn't sound like a lot But is an eternity in the podcast world. I have discovered That there are really three ways to monetize a podcast audience and really all three of those ways boil down to one thing Turning a small percentage of your listeners into customers That's it you either a turn some of your listeners into a customer of a business that you already have like a product service or consulting business That's how this podcast is monetized via the grow the show podcast accelerator Or you could be Convert some of your listeners into customers of someone else's business That is what we call sponsorship or podcast advertisement And that's what most people think of when they think of podcast monetization This though is kind of tough and the least lucrative without huge download numbers or you could see Which is what Eric did with what if world you could convert some of your listeners into customers or members or patrons Of your podcast Membership business or something else adjacent to the show itself like merch or live event sales More of a direct show monetization type thing So really skill number three monetizing a podcast all boils down to converting a small percentage of your audience into customers of Something for Eric and what if world that something is a patreon membership And if you are in that space Eric has a word of caution for you Don't over commit the number of people who promised a sticker to every single new patron To mail a sticker to them and are now just kicking themselves for it Your patrons generally speaking are your patrons because they like what you're doing The problem with this job is that it is kind of always hovering Like if you want to you could lose yourself an email on any given day You could lose yourself in some sort of marketing or or in serving your patrons I there's always that you put you really really have to work At compartmentalizing whether it's a full-time job or a part-time job You know give yourself those breaks At this point in the process Eric had honed his content creation skills And he built a devoted following some of whom he had converted into customers via a patreon membership With those three podcast competencies that we mentioned earlier now developed and growing The podcast game just turns into constantly getting better at those three skills as quickly as you can That's it And what's cool about that about having all three of these skills going having all three kites in the air Is that you start to see opportunities to achieve multiple objectives at once Meaning you'll find ways to grow and monetize your show in one fell swoop and that is just what Eric did I wasn't making the big bucks yet, but I started getting some touches for you know kids content Which gave me the idea of like oh like I've already got this backlog of episodes And because they're ever green you know their their fictional stories So they don't really get old so I was thinking you know What could I do with this back catalog that might bring value and you know I found some people that were interested in distributing it Distribution we haven't talked much about distribution on this show because generally most of us here Really need to develop these three skills that we've been discussing by ourselves first But if the opportunity arises to partner with a distributor, which is rare, but it could come up It should certainly be considered because in Eric's case he was able to make syndication deals with some radio stations and content platforms Which means they paid him a non-exclusive licensing fee to air certain ad-free episodes of what if world So you know it was some work and some editing to make like ad-free call-to-action free episodes that could be put on to different formats That we're like kid and family friendly, but then you know I had those coming in as like regular sources of income and a little bit of patron income and I was like wow If I quit my job right now, I can be making You know Not a lot of money, but But it was you know, it wasn't like I mean, I'm finally making like middle class like a comfortable middle class income So you know, I took that time off and then I just really really tried to push out content and explode and you know Continue to grow for a few months and the podcast was bringing enough money that It just suddenly turned into my full-time job So that is how Erica Keefe was able to build a top 10 podcast and make it his full-time job He managed to develop the three critical skills that are required to have a growing podcast business number one He learned how to publish spectacular episodes on a consistent basis He learned number two how to grow his audience on command and he learned number three How to monetize that audience through membership and through syndication now? You might be thinking that his road to monetization was pretty smooth right He focused on skill one creation moved on to skill two growth tied it together with skill three monetization and boom He quit his day job right Well, here's the thing it wasn't that smooth and it's it's never that smooth for Eric for me or for you So keep that in mind as you compare your journey of which you know every little up and down With my journey or Eric's journey, which you've only heard via a well-edited 30-minute podcast episode Just keep that in mind the reality is the journey is bumpy for everyone you're not necessarily going to experience constant growth all the time you know you have to And I'm sure you've talked about this a lot you have to look into different avenues You know use it as your launch off point use it to bring other opportunities for you But don't expect the numbers alone to to be your the end all for you. So you know right now I advertise I'll when I have some money to play around with I'll throw on a Spotify ad because I really like people to hear You know 30 seconds of me 30 seconds of the music and the high production value and like that has a huge value to me I also my wife again has like some graphic design experience So, you know, we got some stock photos a stock video We scored that So we've got a few Facebook ads that we run and we play around with those I'm always sort of tinkering with those seeing what works and what doesn't and like playing around with where I put my money So I'm never spending more than like 10 bucks a day usually on ads and that's really just to keep kind of helping the growths day Helping me stay visible on the charts and things like that No matter what your podcast is you are probably pouring your heart and soul into it you are probably doing this podcast instead of hanging it with friends Or doing this instead of just like some chores that are piling up or doing this instead of like Taking care of yourself sometimes, you know, and because it is taking care of a part of you, right? But like that time is so precious and it's one of our more valuable commodities So like if you're going to pour your heart and soul into this podcast Why not do it the right way or you know, why not reach out a little bit take those chances do something scary Rather than just being like no, no, no, it's just it's just a passion project But like what if you just like put in that time at the beginning or in the mid you know or after you got rolling and and really just Saw what what you could do with this and or what opportunities it can create for you Even if you don't have, you know, 50,000 downloads per episode What if it's just like it helped you get to the next thing whether at the writing or Instagram or Crafting or you know or a Kickstarter for your next projects like You know don't spend your very very limited time doing something that's not going to help you grow That is the key takeaway here time is your most valuable asset and in order to have a thriving growing podcast business You got to make sure that you are divvying that time up evenly between creation growth and monetization Overall and that is the key overall in the short term you can really truly only focus on one of those skills at a time But in the long term make sure that you have a plan for developing all three of those skills because without one of them Your show will fail and if you're running through struggles now in making growing or monetizing take a look at your Tool set do you have those three skills sufficiently developed? Do you need to focus on one of them at this moment in time and really get it going before turning your attention to the others It could be Well, if you want feedback on that or if you want to take a shortcut in developing any one of those skills Be sure to join us over in the free grow the show Facebook group where you will find over 1200 podcasters who are on the same journey you're on But what's cool is that there are a couple chapters ahead or at least some of them are They may have already developed some or all of the skills we're talking about and they're ready to share them with you So that you can also have a growing thriving podcast business And so that you can get it quicker than they did where I did The link to join us in this free community and to develop those skills all together is in the show notes Girl the show is a Q9 production this episode was produced and written by me and Catherine nails with post production by Jeremy Bishop and a very special thanks to Eric O'Keefe Forward grow the show my name is Kevin Schmittland See you next time