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Your podcast is a money pit, and.

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It may be worse than you think. If you're a business owner who has a podcast that isn't growing a ton, you might think that your show isn't costing you that much. But with what I'm about to show you, what you're going to see, the amount of money your podcast is secretly costing you is shocking. And my hope for you is that after this, you're going to be able to see the truth, the real data behind what your podcast costs your business. And hopefully, with that data, you'll be able to make better decisions for your podcast and your business. This is Grow the Show, the podcast that grows your podcast. My name is Kev Michael. I am your podcast growth coach. And I've spent the last six years helping more than 500 business owners grow and monetize their shows. And in this episode, I'm going to walk you through a simple exercise that's going to help you figure out exactly how much your podcast is really costing you. Once we know what the monthly bleed is, we're going to talk about how to fix it, and we'll talk about what to do if you want your podcast to actually be making you money. Instead, let's dive in. So I was at a Mastermind recently, and I was speaking to this entrepreneur, and this entrepreneur sounds like a lot of entrepreneurs that I speak with who don't have podcast growth. And so if you are an entrepreneur and your podcast isn't growing, you might sound like this. So this guy came up to me and he said, oh, what do you do? And I said, oh, I help entrepreneurs grow their podcast, turn it into a client generating machine, and help them, you know, monetize. And he said, oh, cool, that's cool. I have a podcast. And I said, oh, awesome. When did you launch it? And he said, oh, I've been doing it for about a year. And I said, cool, how's it doing? And he's like, well, you know, I don't know. We get like 50 to 100 downloads or views per episode. It's fine. And I'm like, really? That's a shame. And tongue in cheek. I was like, ah, you know what? I call that the friends and family zone. He was like, what do you mean? I'm like, when you're at those numbers, that usually means that it's just friends and family and people who know you personally who are listening to the show. Because people don't get stuck at 300, 400, 500. Once they get past 200, they start to grow. But the problem is they don't know how to get strangers to tune into their show and keep tuning in and stick around. And he said, oh, that's really interesting. He said, I have to figure that out sometime. And I'm like, why not figure it out now? I mean, you're spending all this time and money and energy on it. And I think he, like, kind of detected I was about to pitch him, which I never do that at Masterminds. It's actually a bit of a no no to, like, just hard pitch people at Masterminds. So I wasn't gonna do that, but he started, like, posturing, and he was like, yeah, I don't know. I just. I don't think that investing in the podcast is really a priority right now. And I was like, well, you're already investing in the podcast. And he said, no, no, not really. And I said, let me ask you this. Humor me for a second. How much is your business doing per month? And he said, we're doing 100k, so he's doing 100k in revenue per month. I said, okay, now, how much do you think your podcast is losing you? He's like, oh, my podcast isn't losing me anything. I said, okay, is your podcast making you money? He said, oh, definitely not. He said, occasionally, sometimes someone joins my program who says they listen to the show, but other than that, it's really not doing much. I'm like, okay, so your podcast is definitely not generating any revenue, but do you understand that your podcast is losing you potentially $20,000 a month? And he, like, was like, whoa, what are you talking about? No, it's not. He's like, I only spend a couple thousand per month. I said, ah, not true. And I said, do I have permission to walk you through an exercise real quick that's gonna show you how much your podcast is costing you? You don't have to buy from me afterwards, but I just want you to realize this so that you can make good decisions for your business, which is why you're here in the Mastermind. Are you down? And he softened, and he was like, ah, totally, man. Yeah. All right, what do you got? I said, okay. Most entrepreneurs think that growing their podcast is not a priority because the podcast is not making money. So they should focus their time on growing the things that are already making them money. But what they forget to consider is that they are already spending time, money, and energy on the podcast. And until you actually add all of that up and assign a dollar amount to it, you really don't realize how much you're losing by spending time on a podcast that's not growing. So this is how you step through this. This is how you understand how much your podcast is costing you. You need a couple of things. So first of all, the obvious one is you need to add up all of the software that you're paying for. So if you are like most entrepreneurs and podcasters, you pay for stuff like maybe Riverside. So Riverside's like 25 bucks a month. You might be paying for hosting, so it might be Libsyn, buzzsprout, Megaphone, something like that. And so you're paying for your host, which is usually going to be about $25 a month. Many of you are paying for one or more AI tools to help you with promo, whether it's Opus or CapShow or even ChatGPT. So. So a lot of people are spending around $50 a month or more on AI tools. And to save you time, I recently surveyed my audience and found that most podcasters are spending about 200 to $400 a month on just software alone. So that's the start, and that's the obvious one. And he said, yeah, that's what I'm saying, A couple hundred bucks a month. So my next question was, do you pay any editors or VAs or agencies or contractors to work on the show? A lot of entrepreneurs do this. For many entrepreneurs, it is a $5 per hour VA overseas, who they're expecting to just be able to do everything with their show and be a marketing pro and grow them an audience, which, if that's you, that person does not know how to do that. If they did, they would not be doing your dirty work for five bucks an hour. But nonetheless, it's very, very common. So this entrepreneur was working with a production agency who's charging them $3,000 a month for audio editing, video editing, thumbnails, publishing, and a few other things. And by the way, if you're paying three grand a month or more, talk to us. We've gotta link you up with Podcast Boutique. They'll get you way better stuff at a way better price. I digress. So he's paying an agency, and so now we're at about. Let's go with the lower end. Now we're at $3200 a month. So that entrepreneur's like, yeah, okay, all right. Yeah, you're right. I'm paying $3200 a month for the podcast, and it's not generating any revenue. I can see where you're coming From I'm like, ah, ah, ah, not so much. I said, okay, you're at 100k a month. That usually means that you've got other employees. So tell me, do you have any in house full time employees who are working on the show? And he said, yes, I actually have an executive assistant who helps me with booking and with some of the social media stuff. And I said, okay, how much do you pay your executive assistant? And he said, my executive assistant is $30 an hour. Okay. And I said, all right, how much time does your EA spend per week on the podcast? And he said, ah, yeah, probably like, you know, four hours. So we're talking $120 a week that you're paying your EA to work on the show. Which translates to do some quick math here on my trusty calculator, 480 additional dollars per month. Now, this one is super hidden because you just pay your EA salary. You're not really tracking their time. But they are spending time, money and energy. But they are spending their limited attention on your podcast instead of doing other things that can grow your business. Now this gets even more expensive if you're one of those entrepreneurs who has like junior marketing employees helping you with the show. You know that person that's a copywriter that you say, oh, podcasting is marketing here. Junior marketing employee who has no experience growing or monetizing a podcast. Grow and monetize my podcast. And if that person makes 60 grand a year, they're making $30 an hour. So now the cost is up to 36.80amonth, which I'll admit is a nominal increase, but this number's going up. And he said, okay, I see you. I'm losing four grand a month on the podcast. I understand. I get what you're saying. I'm like, we're not done, pal. Because now we get to the real big part. And this is the part where the eyes get real big and you're like, holy crap, I need to either quit this podcast or get it growing right now. And, and that's my point. And it is this. This entrepreneur was not counting the value of his time. Now, like I said before, this entrepreneur is doing 100k per month. If that is true, and let's say that this entrepreneur is working 40 hours a week, which I know every entrepreneur says they're working 80 hours a week, but really, if you tally up how much work they're actually doing and don't count the time that they're scrolling and making, messing around and blabbing to ChatGPT, it really comes out to like eight hours a day. It's actually kind of hard to truly work for more than that. So we're gonna say 40 hours of true work per week. That translates to about 160 hours of work per month. Now, if your business is doing 100k per month, that means that as the entrepreneur, your time is worth 100,000 divided by 160. Pretty simple. The amount of revenue that your business does divided by the number of hours that you work every single month. And that comes to a grand total. And this is the number that gets everyone of $625 per hour. Crazy. Now, actually, before I made this calculation, I said, all right, let me ask you this. How much of your time are you spending on the show? Interviewing, thinking about the show, Preparing, researching, all in. And he said, yeah, I probably spend about five hours a week on the podcast. I said, okay, five hours a week times four weeks in a month is 20 hours a month. Now, we just determined that your time is worth $625 an hour. Do you know how much of your time in terms of dollars you are spending on the podcast? 625 times 20 is 12,500. $500. So now we're really getting up into the stratosphere. 3,680 plus 12,500 is 16,180. Now this is conservative. You might be spending more on a production agency. If you are reach out to podcast boutique, you might be spending more on internal employees who are helping you with the show. And you definitely might be spending more on software and tools and studios. I see that all the time. An entrepreneur rents out a studio every time they for 500 bucks or even $1,000. So the number in terms of sure hard cost plus employee time plus your time adds up to, usually for an entrepreneur who's doing 100k a month, that adds up to usually 15k to 20k a month in cost. That also does not account for opportunity cost. So if you took those 20 hours that you're spending on your podcast, that's not growing, and Instead you spent 20 hours a month on Facebook ads or taking sales calls or something that generates tons of cash, whatever that cash amount is, who knows? Do you think if you had 20 hours a month back, you could double your business? That means your opportunity cost might be a hundred thousand dollars a month. But I don't want to get too crazy and too ridiculous here. So if you are doing 100k per month in revenue, you are losing 15 to $20,000 a month by spending all of your time, money and energy on your podcast. All right, we'll get back to the show in one second. But real quick. If you're a business owner who launched a podcast, but you're not getting the downloads, views, subscribers, or sales that you hoped for, I want you to picture this. What if instead of publishing into the void every week and seeing the same flat audience numbers with no growth and no roi, you got expert feedback on every single episode that you published? Feedback that broke down exactly what you did, right?