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- [00:00]
Fonzie
We've got some fresh talent.
- [00:02]
Luis
And I'm Luis, and you're listening to.
- [00:04]
Jeremy
The Content is Profit podcast.
- [00:07]
Luis
And we spend the last four years learning the strategies and techniques from some of the top marketers in the world on how to create content that turns into profit.
- [00:15]
Jeremy
If you'd like to learn more how to turn that content into Profit, go to ContentIsProfit.com and pay attention to today's episode. Oh, yeah, what are we talking about today?
- [00:24]
Luis
That is right, guys. Today building a podcast that grows itself. Disclaimer. I did take this headline from their website because it feels so good. I was like, this headline is so juicy, so good. We gotta share it with the world.
- [00:37]
Jeremy
So juicy, so good. Say it, Fonzie, say it.
- [00:39]
Luis
So juicy, so tasty.
- [00:43]
Jeremy
Anyways, Fonsi, do we have a sponsor today?
- [00:45]
Luis
Indeed we do. And it is the one and only your own, the Biz Bros. With Content Momentum.
- [00:53]
Jeremy
Let's go.
- [00:53]
Luis
You might be asking yourself, what is content Momentum? Well, if you produce a long form piece of content and you want to turn it into meaningful, right, assets that you can share into the world and contribute your message, contribute to the world, amplify it, instead of adding some more noise, then we want to help you out. We want to help you turn that valuable message into value bite size assets. So slide at the dms, at Bizbrosco, on Facebook, on Instagram.
- [01:22]
Jeremy
Yeah. Oh, that was so good. Fancy.
- [01:23]
Luis
I appreciate it.
- [01:24]
Jeremy
So you're so good.
- [01:25]
Fonzie
Okay, it's a coffee.
- [01:26]
Jeremy
Go ahead and subscribe. Hit smash that subscribe button. So you know those episodes dropping on your phone every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, with tons of golden boulders. And go ahead and follow us on.
- [01:37]
Luis
That is right. And if you find this episode impactful, please, our only ask is for you to share it with somebody because today's guest is gonna share all about the importance of podcasting. And I'm sure we're gonna discover here a few things that might change somebody's, you know, journey in the podcasting world. So please, please, please, don't forget to share it and leave a five star review. Thank you.
- [01:59]
Jeremy
So why are we going live so early? Well, because today's guest is across the world. Today we have an eminence of PODC House. Not only that, he's also Canadian, which proves that our hypothesis is correct. Successful people come either from Utah or Canada.
- [02:16]
Luis
That is right. You just stated the truth, my friend. But today's guest epicness doesn't stop there. Check this out. He has visited over 45 countries, biked 3,500 km across Europe. That is a lot of miles for my American friends. And walked 300km from Portugal to Spain on the Camino of Santiago.
- [02:40]
Jeremy
What about the podcasting side of things? Today's guest is the owner of Counterweight Creative. He created the Podcast Marketing Academy, where he teaches podcast strategy, marketing and production. And check this out. He wrote over 250 blog posts in 20. 20. 2020.
- [02:58]
Luis
That's right.
- [02:58]
Jeremy
How insane is that?
- [02:59]
Luis
That. That is pretty epic. Can you Even imagine writing 250 blog posts in one year? I feel like at the end of the year, my fingers would be like this. Like, I'll be like, cramp all my fingers. But, you know, with that being said, please welcome master podcaster, founder of Counterweight Creative, and citizen of the world, Jeremy.
- [03:25]
Fonzie
Hey, thank you guys so much for having me on today.
- [03:28]
Jeremy
Absolutely.
- [03:29]
Luis
Jeremy, welcome. As you can tell, we are pretty pumped up that you're here with us today.
- [03:35]
Fonzie
Thank you. I'm. I'm pumped up to be here with you guys as well. You guys are bringing the energy. This is good.
- [03:41]
Luis
It's early in the morning, you know, so we gotta.
- [03:43]
Fonzie
We have.
- [03:44]
Luis
It's late in the afternoon for you, early in the morning for us, so we're like, we gotta get the. The day started, you know, with all the. This energy.
- [03:51]
Jeremy
Dude. Jeremy, tell us a little bit.
- [03:52]
Luis
Where.
- [03:52]
Jeremy
Where are you now?
- [03:54]
Fonzie
So I and my girlfriend, we just got to Belgrade, Serbia. We spent the last three months in Croatia. We were in Split, Croatia there, and we were for. In Lisbon for three months before that, and then in the UK for six months before that where. When the. The lockdown started. And so we've kind of been jumping from place to place, wherever we've been able to kind of get into. Travel has been pretty restricted, obviously, over the past year. And, you know, we're not. We're not out there, like, sightseeing it much. It's just kind of wherever we can go. She's American, I'm Canadian. So if we were to head back to North America, we would have to be separated, as Americans aren't allowed into Canada, and I would only be allowed in the US For a few months at a time. So we're just trying to, like, stay together wherever we can. And so Serbia was. Was one of the very few places in Europe there was maybe, like, two or three options that we had after our visas end in Croatia. And so we're here now, and it's been snowing the past few days, and I think it's supposed to warm up now in the next few. But it's been a little bit colder than it was in Croatia.
- [04:54]
Luis
That's amazing.
- [04:55]
Fonzie
We're happy to be here.
- [04:56]
Jeremy
Oh man. In the name of love.
- [04:58]
Luis
In the name of love.
- [04:59]
Jeremy
Yeah. You guys, I mean this is such a cool thing, right? Like, because I mean it's an incredible love story. Love story. And we need to write a book about this. Just saying, Jeremy. So I mean, for those who don't know you, do you want to share a little bit of your backstory, like how this, like this started? Obviously the amazing feats that you've done with just the physical challenge of the things that you've done, the company, the academy, like how did everything start? Like, how was your, like beginning?
- [05:25]
Fonzie
Yeah, it's actually kind of funny. I don't normally start my story with the travel stuff so much, but as we've been talking about it now, it actually does all tie back to that. And you mentioned in the intro there, I'd done the cycle tour across Europe with a friend of mine before I ever got into online business. I didn't know online business existed or any of that, but since was, you know, maybe 10 years old around that time, I had always wanted to travel and had this real, you know, thirst for, for exploration. And so that had always been something that I wanted to do but was never quite sure how that was going to work out. And so when this friend and I, we, he came to me, we had been talking about traveling for a number of years. He was a high school friend and a few years after graduating he sent me an email one morning and it was just like, hey, so you know, all these countries that we've always, we've had on our list that we always wanted to go to, don't laugh. But I, I, I think I thought of the perfect way to see them all cycle tour and immediately I was like, oh yeah, that's perfect. Cuz we were both big cyclists and, and just as commuters and just for fun. But when he proposed this, I was like, okay, we gotta do this. So we spent I think about a year saving up and then took a year off. Just quit our jobs. We didn't have, you know, any, any kind of real, real jobs at that point and did the cycle tour for three months and then I did a backpacking trip, Asia with my girlfriend at the time for another four or five months, something like that. So spent nine months traveling and definitely like I had always wanted to travel at that point already, but I got the bug even more. And so when I came Back I started getting curious about, you know, what the options were. And I stumbled onto both the worlds of podcasting and online business at pretty much the same time. When I'd heard about podcasts for a while, I was trained as a sound engineer. So obviously had that audio editing and mixing and mastering and all that kind of technical ability. Podcasting is pretty easy if you have that background and you're used to working in a big studio. And so I started listening to podcasts. I was working a job where I could listen to, you know, eight hours of podcasts a day. So I was listening at, you know, one and a half, two times speed pretty much for a year, learning everything about online business. And by the end of that year I had a handful of clients, podcast editing clients, and quit that that day job. I kind of scaled it back a little bit over time, went part time, then quit and went on a trip to Europe and spent the first kind of a year long trip through Europe working developing the podcast editing agency. At that point it was just me. And then that's been five years now and we've grown the team and have grown in level of client. I remember at the start was, was editing shows for $30 an episode. And that doesn't, it's hard to scale a team when you're, you're only editing for $30 an episode. So we've kind of moved on to helping much bigger clients and more ambitious clients with a lot more of the strategy aspect as well, and marketing and things like that in addition to the editing.
- [08:11]
Luis
Wow, that's amazing. You got the roaring right here, Jeremy.
- [08:16]
Jeremy
I know they're going crazy. Okay guys, come on a little bit. We gotta continue the interview. Jeremy, I, I just want to highlight, obviously everything's super awesome. Like we could potentially do like a full series of this interview, just just diving into your individual experiences. But I want to highlight something that comes to our conversations quite a bit, which is the pricing part of things. Right. You mentioned, hey, you started with a $30 for us. When we first started to quickly we realized that the service that we were offering four years ago was not scalable at the price that we were selling it. Right. So we had to kind of learn and evolve. Right. Go to different type of clients sometimes. Right. So before Fonse asks smart questions, Right. Because he's really good at this. How you know, how was that realization moment? And what are some of the steps that you took maybe to show some people. Right. Because the people that are listening to us are either starting their own businesses Right. They might be working in sales towards that frictionless sell. Like what are some of the steps that you took to be able to make that leap? Right. Believe in yourself that you guys obviously could do it. And how is that process for you?
- [09:18]
Fonzie
Yeah, I mean, I think for me the light bulb moment was reading Profit First. I don't know if you guys read that book. I know it's a popular one in the, well, business and online business.
- [09:27]
Jeremy
Not yet, but fun fact, Amazon just delivered it two days ago. So we'll be diving in. You're not the first person this week that says it. So the universe is telling us go there.
- [09:38]
Fonzie
Yeah, And I think that that to that up to that point I had been basing all of my pricing off of nothing basically. And so, you know, when new clients were coming in, I would, you know, raise the prices every client or two. And luckily for, for us we have what is essentially a subscription model where clients are with us for the long term and it's a monthly packages that we're selling so there's not a lot of turnover. And so that kind of gives. With that type of business model you have some flexibility to just continually raise prices. It's because you still have the old people, you can kind of grandfather them up. And so I was rating a little bit every so often when we got new clients, but we weren't getting new clients in the door every week or anything like that. So it was pretty slow. And I was looking again, you know, what everyone does, where you go look at all the other production agencies out there and see what other people are charging and kind of say, well, okay, like how do I fit into this? Are we offering the same thing? Are we offering more, are we offering less? And what types of clients are they working with? And so, you know, that's never a good strategy. But of course when you're starting out, it's. It's hard to know what else to do because we all want to charge, you know, 10 times what we're worth. But it's often limiting beliefs that we have ourselves that are keeping us from that. And it's hard to overcome those without any kind of other outside validation of seeing that, oh, other people are successfully doing this or you know, that clients are willing to pay this or whatever. Yeah, when I read Profit first, there was part of the book, he talks about basically what your margins should be based on business. And he's got a whole formula that you go and plug in your numbers and see what their at and based on that, then you make these allocations to these different bank accounts. And it can get a little bit technical, so we won't go into that. But basically I looked up like, okay, my profit margin should be this. And I looked at it and it was like, just so. It was laughable how far off it was. And he, he says in the book, he's like, you know, probably most people, like, this is going to be way out of whack when you, when you're reading this, when you're going to put this into effect. And I really like, he talks about that in the book. He does a great job of not making you feel bad for like messing all this stuff up because nobody teaches you this. And you know, we're all just making it up on the fly and charging when, especially if we start from like a side hustle or something like that, we're taking whatever we can get. And so that was kind of the moment where I was like, oh, this is what my profit margin should be. Okay. And from there then I built a Google sheet that had basically programmed in, okay, if editing costs, if I'm paying my editor this much, my show notes writer this much, my admin person this much, all these plugging in all these things, and then, um, for these different packages, then this is what, you know, 50%, the 50% profit margin should be. And then I know, okay, well, I can just plug in what everybody's rates are, how much I'm charging per episode, how many episodes, whatever, and then this is the amount I should charge per month. And so based on that, then I was like, okay, actually now I feel solid. It was so much easier to quote people because I knew, okay, this is the work we're doing and this is what I should charge. And because of that, I think it was like easy to. It made it so much easier to write up proposals. But it also gave me a lot of confidence in knowing, like, like I have to charge this much. Like if I don't charge this much, the business is going to go under. Like, I can't afford to keep running it. And so it wasn't even about like, I think sometimes when you are thinking about, especially when you're starting out, like doubling your rates or something like that, it feels almost greedy sometimes. Like, well, I don't need that much or like, you know, how could I mark it up by, you know, 100 over what the costs are? Like, that's, that's so much nobody's going to pay that they can get away cheaper. But when you start, look at this Looking at this over the long term of like, all this other overhead that goes into it, and I mean, paying yourself a salary, then you kind of realize like, oh, yeah, I won't be viable in, you know, one year, two year, five years, whatever it is, if I am not actually building this. This profit margin into it. And that's especially true, like, when you think about it. What I recently had another realization just in the past few months that I wasn't building in enough profit margin to expand the team to add on roles that aren't actually part of the client deliverables. So like a operations person and a marketing person for myself, not for our clients. And all these things, like, there's no. If you don't have additional profit margin, like, you need to build those in before you actually want to hire those people so that you have that budget when you do. And so that was kind of. I realized that and have now built that into my. My spreadsheet again to. Or my calculator, so that that is all accounted for as well. But I mean, each. Each time you add those new things in, it's just like, oh, man, this is. This is getting expensive. But you also kind of understand why a lot of services cost so much is just because there's a lot that goes into them.
- [14:05]
Jeremy
Yeah. So good. We're going to celebrate this. Obviously, crowd going wild here in the studio.
- [14:11]
Luis
This is what we call, Jeremy, a golden boulder, right? It's like a golden nugget, just way, way bigger. This is like this segment right here. We're definitely going to chop it up and share it with the world because hopefully a lot of people will watch this and tell us themselves, am I charging enough? Right. And you're doing a favor because when you don' Charge enough. Right. You are. You might even resent the client that you're working with because now you're like, oh, I'm not getting paid enough to do all this work. Instead, when you have your margins that you have it all figured out, like you, Jeremy, right? Then you can go and say, I can fully support and service this client right here with all of my ability and attention that they deserve. Right? So it is such an important point that the people need to accept and it is difficult to come by through, you know, to that confidence, build up that confidence of when you quote, someone said, telling them, hey, it's not, you know, the price used to be this. But yeah, now we're gonna charge you, you know, maybe 50 more or, who knows, way, way more than it was before. And it, it is ultimately because of them you are building your business to serve clients in a better way. So thank you so much for sharing that. And, and Jeremy, you know, like, I keep thinking, going back to the beginning of your story too, and you say you listen for a podcast for like about 8 hours a day for like a year. Right. And I feel a lot of people in this game, especially in the online business, online marketing world, they get caught up in the consumption aspect. You said throughout the year you started your business and then you started to, you know, slowly grow it, but what led you to go from consumption to action? Was there a challenge in there for you mentally? Right. Your mindset, how did your mindset change? And how do you go about acquiring those first few clients for yourself?
- [16:08]
Fonzie
Yeah, that's interesting. I, I think I was always experimenting. I actually, when I first started listening to podcasts and getting into the world of online business, I was pursuing a photography business. So I, I'm still into photography. I don't have as much time for it anymore. But that used to be a really big part of my life and especially related to traveling. And so I was looking to build a photography blog and wanted to do courses and all that kind of stuff under that. So I was writing maybe two articles or something like that on this blog and it was kind of getting a bit of traction. But I knew that it was going to be a long haul to actually build up an audience big enough to then create courses and sell them. And that was going to be, you know, one or two years maybe to, to bring that into fruition. And somewhere along the line there I realized that, you know, starting a service based business was such a faster way to being able to actually go start traveling. Like, I realized like, okay, I could keep pursuing this thing, this photography goal. Like that's the thing I'm maybe most passionate about, most interested in. But then I realized, like, my actual goal is to be able to travel to work and travel, and there's a much faster route to getting there. Rather than, you know, staying at home for the next two years building this audience, I could, you know, within six months have enough clients to start traveling. If I took my existing skills that I, you know, went to school for the audio engineering and applied that. So from from the moment that I was like listening to, to podcasts and things like that, I, I was always experimen that photography blog at first and, and then applying it. It's one of the things that I found is it's, it's hard to waste any of that knowledge. Like, there were so many things that as I was building then, you know, six months later, I worked on the photography business for six months or so, or maybe nine months overlapping with the podcast stuff and like building websites and things like that. Once I switched to podcasting, I was like, oh, I know how to build a website because I did it for the photography blog. And I know how to do all these other kind of technical things and maybe even even some, you know, basic marketing things because I'd done those somewhere else. So you kind of build up those building blocks through, you know, just applying it to all these different things, even if they're not, you know, the final business that you're running. And yeah, in relation to the like, content consumption and overwhelm, I definitely, I noticed a point where, like, I was. That's a lot of podcasts I was listening to. And there was definitely a point where everything, everything started to sound redundant. I was like, okay, I've heard this before, I've heard this before. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, this is all starting to sound the same. And so at that point I kind of realized a couple, couple things. And so the first was that this is probably true if this many different people are saying it, who have all. Are all quite successful. They have big podcast, big businesses. Like, this is probably true. And so that's, that's good. I know I'm on the right track and probably like, I, I actually need to get to applying that stuff. And the other thing was that I started to get kind of, I don't know if I'll say burnt out, but just like tired of that content online business stuff. So I would paired it back to like maybe one or two shows that I really love that I kept listening to in the business space. But then I started actually listening to a lot of other content that was just like storytelling stuff like this American Life and, and things that were just general, generally interesting to me. Freakonomics, 99, invisible. What were some of the hardcore history were some of the shows I listened to. And so I would like, listen to this other stuff that wasn't business related and just let all that stuff kind of like, you know, in my mind. Yeah, yeah. In along with the business stuff. And so, so I think that that that's happened multiple times. Earlier last year, I went on a huge binge of this one agency show. I think it's called Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swank. And I just binged through tons, like dozens of those episodes. I think they're like 30 minute episodes and I'd listen to probably like three or four a day. And I never listened to like an agency specific show before and I never even thought to look. And so I learned a lot from that. They weren't, they were much different or a lot of them were very different types of agencies than I'm running with some, some like dozens or hundreds of employees. Goal is like to, to build up and sell the agency into a, you know, massive like national marketing agency or something like that. So that's, you know, that's not my goals, but I did learn a lot about running an agency from them. And after, you know, I listened through however many 50 episodes or, or more, I was like, okay, I'm done with this and just like let that go and moved on to something else.
- [20:22]
Luis
So good.
- [20:22]
Fonzie
I've kind of. You reach a point and I've come to like recognize that where it's, it's, you're, it's not helpful to keep consuming anymore and you just need to like turn it off and like focus on implementation. And so now with my education, it's very much like focused of like, I want to learn a specific thing and I'll really deep on that and then I'm going to only listen to other stuff in the off time that's just like, it's not business related. You know, probably for people like us, all the, everything that you consume always comes back to business, always gets funneled back in. Which is, I think one of the great reasons to listen to broad content that isn't business related. Because you come up with these like, new ideas and new perspectives, new ways of looking at the things that are happening in your business that you're not going to get from listening to, you know, yet another other business podcast that's like, do these five things to like increase your traffic or whatever?
- [21:08]
Luis
Yeah, that, that, that is. You know, we, we had a previous conversation on Monday with George Bryant, I don't know if you're familiar with him. And we kind of landed a little bit in, in a similar topic and you know, we started thinking about principles, right? Under any topic there is a certain amount of principles, right, that if you master and you know, you can actually go ahead and then master that topic, right? Or at least be the 1% of the people that mastered that topic. And what you're telling me is that, right, like you got to a point where everything that you were listening to was redundant and it's because you already heard those principles so many times that they were ingrained in your Brain that you're like, I already know this.
- [21:49]
Fonzie
Right?
- [21:49]
Luis
And now all you got to do is take action. And a lot of people say knowledge is power and in reality is action on that. Knowledge is power. Just knowledge by itself. It won't do anything for you.
- [22:01]
Fonzie
Right.
- [22:01]
Luis
We need to take action on that. So it's so important. Thank you for bringing that up. And I love the fact that you actually talk about going and listening to other things and reframe it back to business. We have that issue every single time we read something or we watch a movie. We're like, oh, look at that. That connects to like something that you would have no idea that we could connect to the business. We're like, look at that. We got a business lesson from watching, you know, a movie, the Mandalorian. Right? And you're like, wait, how do you even do that?
- [22:30]
Jeremy
Yeah.
- [22:31]
Fonzie
And.
- [22:31]
Luis
And that is the basis of creating ideas. One of our favorite books is a technique for producing ideas is like a 20 page book is super short by a copywriter. And he talks about the importance of consuming other things that are not just business related in your vertical. Like go and you know, study the things that cause you curiosity. Right? Like history.
- [22:55]
Fonzie
Right.
- [22:55]
Luis
You just said about you listen to hardcore history. So when you listen to all these things, then when you write and when you talk and when you speak all these things, you can match all these ideas together, creating your own new ideas, which is absolutely amazing. And that's what is going to differentiate you and any other marketer from the rest.
- [23:15]
Jeremy
Yeah, I remember going to an event and they were saying, hey, you guys should go to a totally different conference, right? Like something that is like, you know, plant based or nature based and just go sit and listen and consume that different. And you know, right now we have the advantage of the technology or podcast, those listening to podcasts. Right. Like for, for me, same thing. Like I listen to a lot of wandery shows, right? The way that and I, we take some tips of like how they produce the show. I think Planet Money is one of my favorite ones. And episode 1000, I think what they did was they broke down how they do their episode, like their faces and their framework. And I was like, wow, this is a masterclass on its own. It's like they're just living like putting it out there. Somebody else can grab that framework and apply it to yourself. And not only that, but on different topics, different kind of conversation. And I think that's such an important thing. And I want to highlight something too that you mentioned for people like, we as listeners, we go in and we kind of grab content from others. But on the point of view of the content creator that most people are like, I just need more listening, more listeners, more people in my show, more stuff, more downloads, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. For us, our mission is to hopefully provide the tools and inspiration and for them to take action. So I'm going to be okay when having this amazing conversation with you, Jeremy, that somebody's going to take that and they're going to go out and execute, and then they might not listen to 10 of my episodes, but then they might come back and they grab another piece of information. So that is more rewarding to me. So detaching myself from that metric or the people that might be coming in, or it comes organically and, you know, if you're truly having fun and adding value, more people are going to come in. But I'm truly okay with people coming in, taking this lesson that you just like, drop this golden boulder and go execute. And then they might come back three months down the road or two months down the road, and that's okay. So I just want it for. For people that are listening and they're content creators know that that's okay. That's why we create the content to go help people so they can go execute.
- [25:14]
Luis
Yeah. Jeremy, I'm extremely curious. When in your journey, was it that you realize that podcasting could be an incredible tool to grow your business? Right. And to grow other people's business?
- [25:27]
Fonzie
Yeah. So, I mean, I think it was. I think that was my entry point to the world of online business. So it was. I was always aware of that. And all the people, all my early role models were all podcasters. And, you know, they might have also had blogs or maybe at that point. Not a lot of them had YouTube channels at that point, but definitely, like, podcasting was their main content creation channel. So I think that was my introduction online business. So that was always kind of like, okay, this is a great way to grow your business. And I think it wasn't. I think it's more been in the past couple years that I've actually seen, had a kind of shifting perspective. And I think that things have changed in the world of podcasting here, where five years ago you could start a show and there probably wasn't that much competition. So if you had a great sounding show and your content was okay, you're probably going to grow a pretty big audience. Whereas today you can have a great sounding show and great content, and you can still remain entirely obscure. And so, yeah, kind of what I realized is that like a lot of our clients were signing up to work with us, starting shows, paying us quite a bit of money, and they weren't getting that results. And some of them really were, and some of them weren't. And so I started getting curious about like, well, okay, both, like, let's take client A and client B. One's growing, one's not. They're both, they both have great shows, they both have great content, great big name guests, like, what's the difference here? And what I realized is that today in, in like 2021, podcasting I think plays a much different role in a marketing system than it did five years ago. And so today I think that podcast, actually I'll start with what, where most people are still kind of coming at podcasting from an outdated perspective, where they're starting a podcast. And this applies to any kind of content creation as a tool for audience growth and exposure. And it like definitely can do that. But of course, as anybody who has a podcast is likely aware specifically podcasting, discoverability is still a major kind of hurdle or, or problem for podcasters, that there's been no great solution yet for just getting organic listeners, whether that's through SEO. Like there are, you know, you can structure your podcast episodes and show in a way to encourage getting found, but none of the platforms are really great at that yet. And I think that's going to be changing, but at this point it's not. And so people start podcasts as a way to grow their audience, but what they don't realize is that you actually have to like market your marketing, which is the podcast, and that no, no show is really going to grow that much. And there are exceptions. Most shows, though I should say are not going to grow without you actually doing outside marketing, pulling people to the show. And so that's kind of like disheartening when you, you think about, you're like, well, okay, then why am I even starting the podcast if I have to market that to get people into the podcast, which is to get people into my business. So why don't I just do whatever the other thing is to get people into my business? But the point of the podcast is actually, and this is where podcasting is just the best platform out of any out there is for building trust with people. And of course, as, as we all know, the, the whole no like and trust factor, people aren't going to buy from you if they don't have that trust with you. And I can't Think of a better platform out there than podcast listing for building trust where people are, you know, binging through episodes, potentially spending, you know, 30 to 60 minutes with you in their ears. I, I listen, you know, any of my favorite shows. Like I have listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of them. I've not come close to that on any YouTube channel. You know, there might be a few blogs that I've read almost back to front, but not that many. And so podcasting is just such a versatile way to be able to, you know, take our favorite people around with us and listen to their thoughts and really get that kind of get inside their mind. I think that, you know, good YouTube is, is fairly highly edited and even you have to be a really great writer to get a lot of the nuance and emotion across in your writing. Whereas podcasting, it's, it's not highly edited in the same way that YouTube might be. It's doesn't feel as much of a performance sometimes. I think it's much more intimate and people are used to, you know, just listening to more at length conversations that are just free flowing. And you know, we know that a lot of times as podcast producers they are quite highly edited, but they're still, they still feel more natural and they're, they're not quite as like snappy and to the point as YouTube content might be to keep people engaged. And so I think like with that over time, like podcast listeners, like anybody who's listening to this, think of your favorite shows like you feel like you know the host and you know, when they come out with a new product or offer, if it's, if it's a good fit for you, it's like the decision's already been made like you're going to buy it. And so I think that's where podcasting like really shines. And I think that that's a bit of a reframe that people.
- [30:01]
Luis
Oh, do we lose you, Jeremy?
- [30:03]
Jeremy
That was to, to the golden border. We just like went through them.
- [30:07]
Luis
The Internet, the Internet crashing us. It's all good.
- [30:10]
Jeremy
It's all good. Where.
- [30:11]
Luis
But there we go. We got your back, Jeremy.
- [30:13]
Jeremy
We got you back. Yeah, I mean, you just broke the Internet with that comment.
- [30:18]
Fonzie
I was just.
- [30:21]
Jeremy
So good.
- [30:22]
Fonzie
Yeah, just to finish that, that off. I think it's just a reframe there that people need to say. Well, the podcast plays one role, which is the trust building tool and then we need something else which is the exposure tool in order to get people into the podcast and just, just exposure alone. Is not going to turn into sales. It needs that exposure, then the trust, and then that you're going to convert people into. Into clients and customers.
- [30:44]
Luis
That's amazing. So we, we already discarded that. You know, the outdated perspective of podcasting is just like going there for disc exposure. Like, you cannot just create a podcast, put it out into the world and say, people come to me. Right. I mean, that. That saying of will build it and they'll come. That. That doesn't exist in this marketing world. Now we got a market or marketing, right. How do we go about doing that? Or at least what are like some of your one, two, or maybe top three, you know, tips for somebody that is, you know, maybe they have 5, 10 episodes out already and they're like, okay, how, how. How do I market now my marketing? Because I, I am not getting traction. I'm not getting, you know, to connect with the people that I, that I want to. How do I go about doing that?
- [31:35]
Fonzie
Yeah, so I think the first thing here is you talked about at the start how the title to create a podcast that grows itself, which is kind of converse to what I was just talking about here. And so I think that we still do want to address, like, good shows do grow by word of mouth, and good. Anything grows by word of mouth. Of mouth. That's almost the only way that. That anything ever really grows. It's. It's really hard to market yourself to success on. On just marketing alone.
- [31:58]
Jeremy
Yeah.
- [31:58]
Fonzie
And so I think where most people, if you're not getting traction, it's probably because you're not aiming narrow enough. And of course, you know, if this is something I've struggled with, this is something that everybody struggles with, with content marketing, with your business, with like, anything where you're trying to reach an audience. We don't narrow ourselves down enough with our niche. And so how I like to usually think about it is, is thinking about, like, which group of people. And this could be, you know, demographics, psychographics, hopefully a mix of both of those. But which group of people can you realistically become the very best in the world for? And so start like, narrowing that down and think like, at some point you can add in so many filters and variables that you might actually already be that best option in the world. And so at that point, maybe you actually want to widen it out a little bit so it's a little bit more aspirational. You have to do some work to get there, but you have a chance at actually becoming that. That top person for that very, very specific group. And once you're able to do that, like, that's when word spreads, when you are, can be known for one singular thing that you do better than anyone else. And I think a lot of people, when they're thinking about this, it. When you think about being the best in the world at anything, that feels like, well, you need to like, give up everything else in your life and just dedicate yourself to that. And I don't think that that's necessarily the approach you need to take. It's more on the narrowing your, your line of sight of who you're actually looking to appeal to. Um, and so once you do that, that's when people start to market the show for you and when you can be that, like, just absolute best. If somebody says, like, okay, well, what is the best show out there on, you know, let's say we work with a lot of wellness people, so let's say Paleo diet for women in their 50s or something like that. Like, that's a pretty narrow niche there. And if you could be the go to person for that, I, I think that's achievable for almost anyone who, who already has a background in, you know, paleo diet and fitness. They could probably, you know, dominate that small niche. And once you do that, then it starts to spread outwards. Because I think the place where people get it wrong is they think, well, if I say that this is my niche, that's, those are the only people who are going to listen to me. But really it's about those are the people you're marketing to. And actually a whole bunch of other people are still going to be interested, even though they're not quite your core target audience. There's going to be, you know, maybe 70% overlap and it still might be the best content content for them because they like your personality or whatever that is. And so it's not excluding people. You're still going to get a lot of those people. It's just your marketing specifically to one group of people.
- [34:19]
Luis
Yeah.
- [34:19]
Fonzie
So I think that that's the first thing to address when it comes to like growing a show in terms of, like, actually getting that exposure. My favorite way is to do podcast guesting on, on other shows. And this is something like you can be so targeted with who you get in front of by the shows that you reach out to, because you can look at the show and you can say, okay, well, clearly this show is appeal. Let's take your show, for example. It's appealing to people who are, you know, into content marketing. Entrepreneurship, online business. And so if I'm looking to get in front of those people, I can look at your show and be like, okay, well that's, that's my audience right there. And of course you can get even narrower depending on the vibe, even within like those shows, like maybe there's, there's some shows that have a super like aggressive vibe versus like a heart centered vibe or something like that. So you can look at the shows, you can listen to one episode and you can be like, oh, this appeals to the people on, I'm looking to get in front of. And so you can go out and pitch those people. And if you are an expert in, in any kind of subject matter and that overlaps with that audience, that would be beneficial to that audience, then, you know, chances are you, you have a good shot at being features as a guest there. And you know, it's not about getting on shows with millions of followers, but Even, you know, 500, 500 people who weren't aware of you before, but who are perfect fit for, for what you do. Like that's, that's a really, absolutely significant kind of addition to your audience potentially.
- [35:36]
Luis
Yeah. And you know that also the people that listen to those podcasts, they already trust that person. And by them having you on their platform that, you know, kind of like signifies to the other people like, hey, we trust this person as well. And it gives you like this level of not authority, right. But like trustworthiness, if you want to put it that way. And other audience, you're leverage, leveraging that trust, which is huge. Right. And also something that comes to mind when you were talking about niching down into your market. Market is one word, equity. Right. And it's kind of like, okay, what is that one word that as soon as people say they know is you or in this sense we can do one sentence equity, for example, like, like you said, right? Paleo market for moms over 50 years old. That is very niche. Right. So who, when I say this, who is the person I'm thinking about? Right. And the easiest example of all is search.
- [36:32]
Fonzie
Right.
- [36:32]
Luis
When we say search, we all think about Google. Right, of course. And when you al. When people say content is profit, people think about bizro. Hopefully. That's, that's the, that's a goal.
- [36:43]
Jeremy
That's a goal.
- [36:43]
Luis
That's the one sentence equity we're going for, right?
- [36:45]
Jeremy
Come on guys, go, go spread the word.
- [36:47]
Luis
And when they go for podcast producing, they're thinking about Jeremy right here.
- [36:51]
Jeremy
Right?
- [36:51]
Luis
So those are the things that, that we want to. To work in with our podcast and our messaging. So I love that. Thank you for bringing that on. And the guest inside side of things is just so interesting and important that I think is so overlooked as well.
- [37:04]
Jeremy
I mean, I'm pretty sure we're labeling this, this episode like a podcasting masterclass because you're just giving everything, right? Like, and it's not secret, formal, it's a consistency. Plus the things that you just mentioned and also have somebody we want to add to, you know, the benefits of publishing, right? Like as whatever, podcasting or whatever medium, right? We're talking about podcasting today. But for us, it changed everything, right? The second second we dove into our show, that's when everything changed. We were able to grow, we were able to scale. We were able to find those amazing people that now we call clients and partners right? Now also, there's a change that happens inside of us, right. We were chatting yesterday with Shelly and also Monday with George about this effect that publishing does inside of you. Like, you. You communicate better. You now have the confidence to have amazing conversations. You might have really cool relationships that before you were not able to access. Right.
- [37:56]
Luis
I mean, I'm just going to throw this out there, there. Like, we would have never thought about, you know, meeting Jeremy that was in Croatia if it wasn't for podcasting.
- [38:05]
Jeremy
Absolutely. Right. And. And yeah, now you have two Venezuelan brothers. I'm sorry about that. But, you know, it's is what happens. But. And then after that is. Is whatever comes after that is just a winning, right? Like whatever comes after the marketing, the. The market or, you know, marketing. Your marketing, right, is just a play plus for that internal change that starts to happen with you and the relationships that you're able to build. I'm sure you've lived that on your end, right? So I've had this question since we started because I think, like, internally, we know we might have an answer for this question. But for you, when people ask you, right, you have these conversations on, well, what is going to be my return on investment when we start a show, for example, right? For us, that's a question that comes often when we present the opportunity to do the M2M or the content momentum program, right? They're like, oh, comment, like all this content, all this stuff, the show xyz, right? There's. There's a input that we need from them, right? That's an investment in time. We're helping them with it all the after. But why do you say to those people, or do you even have those conversations because you have your audience so dialed down that they don't even ask that question. What's the scenario there?
- [39:10]
Fonzie
Yeah, so I think a lot of the people who come to us, they are already sold on podcasting itself. And so I think, you know, there have been people who, you know, I do have sales calls with every so often who are just exploring. They're on the fence. And those, you know, if rarely they turn into clients. Sometime down the line, they might. It might take six months or a year. But I'm, you know, really upfront with people kind of like. Like we've been talking about here that, you know, podcasting is probably not going to be a quick win. It's not going to grow your audience overnight. It's probably going to take a year. One of the things that I like to say is this. I always say it regarding podcasting, but this applies to any kind of content marketing. But you can do it for a year, and it probably won't feel like it's worth it. It might feel like maybe you've kind of broken in, broken even on the time you've put in, probably not even that. But if you do it for five years, it could entirely change your life. And so it's. It's where. What you're talking about there with the consistency, and it's all built on compounding returns, where it, you know, as we've all become very familiar with exponential growth curves this past year with COVID you. You do it for a long time and it looks like nothing, and then all of a sudden it just starts rapidly going up, and that's that. That power of compounding returns of like, you can do it for that first year and even the second year, it feels like a big struggle. And then all of a sudden, for no reason at all, you don't change anything. And all of a sudden it just starts compounding and building up and you get all this momentum going, and pretty soon you become unstoppable. And so I tell people that and I say, like, you know, this is. This is thing. It's. It's. Podcasting is a long game, and it's not about quick audience growth there. You should probably go look at Facebook ads if you want that. But this is about building trust. And like, think about investing five years and building trust with people who are going to be with you for the next 20 or 30 or 40 or whatever it is. Like, that's a pretty powerful, powerful thing there. That is well worth the investment. Investment, in my opinion.
- [40:51]
Luis
Yeah, no Definitely. And I love the, the honesty up front, right? It's like, hey, it's a long, it's a long term game and you need that commitment, right? If you're gonna go into this, you need to understand it's not like you're not gonna see results in just a week. You could, you know, if something happens, who knows? But the, the normal is that long term. So being honest again with your clients. And I think that goes back to the pricing part of things, right? Because when we are, you know, giving a proposal to somebody and they're like, why is it so much more than these other companies say, well, because, you know, I'm building this company and I want to serve you in the best possible way. Again, being honest. And it ties to what you just said.
- [41:35]
Jeremy
Oh, man. Dude. Jeremy, today has been an incredible masterclass. I mean, at some point I'm gonna throw it out there. We need to bring you against part two and continue to dive deep because it has been incredible, not just for us, but for the people listening, obviously. So we're going to re. Listen to this and just I think we sync very well in how we think because, you know, the content game is also long term, right. Like for us, podcast has been the main pillar. And then from there, everything else that we do afterwards is just enhances that experience and the quality of people that we've been able to communicate with and build the relationships and eventually, you know, work with has been incredible. And I'm sure you see it on your end as well. So with that, we have a couple of questions here for you to wrap up the show.
- [42:20]
Luis
I'll take the action point.
- [42:21]
Jeremy
You take the action point. Okay.
- [42:23]
Luis
So, Jeremy, we usually ask, right, what is one action point that we can leave the audience with to take their, their business or their podcast in this, in this conversation to the next level. And I would love. We talked about guesting, right? Is one of the best ways now to get those other eyeballs from, from other communities, other podcasts. What would be an action point that could lead somebody to be a guest in one new podcast?
- [42:52]
Fonzie
Yeah, so, I mean, I have a free mini course on this if people are interested. It's @CounterweightCreative Co podcast guesting. And so there are more than one action point. You can get all the information on how to get booked on shows there. But I would say that the first, first step, and this ties back into something else that we talked to before, is just getting super, super clear on who that audience is, who that person is that you can be the best option in the world for. And I think that kind of just to reframe it another way, like, if you can't be the best person in the world for just one person, you're probably not going to grow an audience. Like, you just need to start with that one person who you're like, I can serve this person better than anyone else in the world. I know for a fact that I can do. Do that. And if you can do that, they're going to tell one other person like them. And that's how things grow. And you're going to need that for guesting on other shows. You need to know who you are actually wanting to get in front of. You need that for building your own audience, for creating content for them, for building your products and services. All these different things stem from, like, who that person is that you better equipped than anyone else to serve. And so, yeah, I think that if there's one action item, it's like getting super clear on that person or that narrow group of people who you can be that best in the world for.
- [43:59]
Luis
I love it. I love it.
- [44:00]
Jeremy
Sounds good. Well, I wanted to ask you because I'm sure we have listeners here. Like, I want to meet Jeremy. I want to, like, work with him 100%. Who's your. Who's your best? Who's your person?
- [44:11]
Fonzie
Yeah, so I'm actually currently going through a brand strategy process which is kind of redefining this. So we, for the past, I mentioned before that we worked with a lot of health and wellness entrepreneurs. And so for the past few years, we've been kind of 70% in the wellness space. Now, that was all just through referrals. And so we kind of had niched down to being, you know, the. The only really podcast production agency who was targeting specifically health and wellness businesses. That's kind of shifting now as I'm thinking, like, well, who do I want to be working with over the next, you know, 10 years or 20 years? And what's really in line with. With the content that I just naturally create, because that was something that I just kind of fell into. And so it's not quite fully defined yet, but it's becoming more people in, like, the business for good space, people who believe in using their. Their platforms and the businesses that they've created to actually influence social change, not like through their products themselves, but in addition to that. And I've been meeting so many business owners who, like, they offer one product or service, but they also have this larger view of how, you know, Responsible businesses contribute to the world around them and their communities and the people that their teams and. Yeah, and really everyone on the world. So that's really where I want to, I want to work with people who are, are of that mindset and who are kind of like breaking away from some of the, the old school, maybe like sleazier online marketing tactics and are looking to really infuse their, their work and their marketing with generosity and empathy and, and really like just care that comes through and that kind of honesty. So that's who, who I want to work with. If you know anyone, send them my way.
- [45:40]
Jeremy
Absolutely, absolutely. If you're listening, please go ahead, scroll down. The links are going to be right there. Communicate with Jeremy, obviously. And I just want to, There's a hidden lesson there, right? Like that process never ends, right. We got to revisit, we got to redo it. We got to revisit, we got to redo it. So for those like, you know, you start with them but then revise it, right? See what happens. Like, am I, am I a good fit for this relationship? Right. Let's, let's reassess and let's evolve and you know, internally we've lived that too. You know, we started with a type of client. Our first ever client five years ago was a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant. Right. We don't work with restaurants anymore. It has evolved from there obviously. So super awesome. Thank you, Jeremy. All right, you got the last question.
- [46:19]
Fonzie
Yeah.
- [46:19]
Jeremy
Favorite question.
- [46:20]
Luis
Favorite question. Jeremy, where would you be if you didn't publish?
- [46:27]
Fonzie
Oh man, that. Wow. So you mentioned at the start that I wrote something like 250 blog posts in the past year. I did started up a daily writing habit and publishing habit at the start of 2020 and then, then mid in the year I started going for longer multi day posts and so kind of got away from that, that elusive target of the daily publishing. But what I realized through writing a blog post every day was that just like it unlocked all my ideas. So I have a course come out of that, actually multiple courses now. I have had product or like service offerings for our clients. I've had like future business ideas. Like just everything has come from that. Publishing, writing and publishing and creating that content for me over the past year. And that that single habit has just like transformed everything for me in terms of my like confidence and like feeling like, you know, I think the biggest thing is having written it all down and published that content. It's like now when somebody asks me a question, I'm like, oh yeah, it's easy for my brain to go, yeah, I have an answer for that because I wrote it down and published it. And so I feel like so much sharper on consulting calls and things like that. I don't have to think through things. I'm like, no, I already know the answer to this because I already thought about that question and creative content around it.
- [47:37]
Luis
That's amazing guys. Go unlock your ideas. Go publish, publish, publish. And Jeremy, I want to give you here because I know we're coming up to towards the end of this episode, but I want to give you a space for you to, you know, share a little bit about the Podcast Marketing Academy. I checked it out. I know it is a cohort style where you get a group of people and you're actively, you know, in there helping them. So I'm curious to when is the next one going to be open, how people can find it.
- [48:06]
Fonzie
Yeah, so I'll have a link with all the the information about me, a bunch of like recommended podcasts, books, stuff I'm into as well as Podcast Marketing Academy and other resources like that. That'll be at Counterweight Creative Co. Content is profit all one word there. But the next Podcast Marketing Academy is going to be going live end of March, early April and there is is going to be when it is is available and you can go to to Counterweight Creative Co Marketing and sign up for the waitlist there if that's something that you're interested in and and check out the information on that.
- [48:38]
Jeremy
Awesome.
- [48:39]
Luis
Awesome. Thank you, Jeremy. Yeah, so good. I encourage people to go and check it out. If you got any value out of today's conversation with Jeremy, please, please, please go check it out. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
- [48:51]
Jeremy
Yeah, go connect, engage. Go have those content conversations guys. And with that being said, thank you so much for tuning in to the Content Profit podcast. Go ahead and subscribe. Hit smash that subscribe subscribe button and follow us on social media at bizbrosco.
- [49:03]
Luis
That is right. And if you find this episode impactful, which I am sure you did because Jeremy was incredible, please don't forget to share it and and leave a five star review. Thank you.
- [49:14]
Jeremy
Bye guys.