← Travis Makes Money
Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money by Turning Podcast Skills Into a Profitable Agency, feat. Seth Silvers
00:25:20
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- [00:01]
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- [00:29]
Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on, everybody?
- [00:43]
Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money today on the show. I have a friend of mine on. His name is Seth Silvers. Seth is the founder and CEO of StoryOn, one of the premier podcast agencies helping businesses with podcasting. His team works with Alex and Leila Hermosi, Patrick Lencioni, Sunira Madani and other top 100 business podcasts, along with helping brands launch micro niche podcasts that serve their industry. Seth loves podcasting because it's one of the most authentic ways to tell stories and market companies doing great work. And that is something that Seth and I have in common, which is actually how we met a podcasting conference. So we've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. Seth, what's up dude? Welcome.
- [01:20]
Seth Silvers
Thanks. Happy to be here. And yeah, I think this is a fun topic because we both know it pretty through and through and pretty well.
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Travis
Yeah, man, it's been cool watching, watching you get better and better at this. I remember having a first. Was that a PodFest or podcast?
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Seth Silvers
It was, yeah. I think, I mean I think we'd like crossed crossed paths a little bit, but I think the first time we like really sat down and talked more was that Pod Fest in Orlando at that little like Irish dive bar.
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Travis
Yeah, whole like karaoke bar. There's all if, if, if it's a, if it's a podcasting conference with a bunch of indie podcasters. For some reason we always end up at a karaoke bar.
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Seth Silvers
For sure. Yeah. At some point and think like a ton of people. I think like half the conference got covet that night at that karaoke bar, which was great.
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Travis
Probably.
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Seth Silvers
Probably.
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Travis
Yeah. I said been, been following the journey. I remember we had a conversation you were first kind of like getting started, trying to figure out how to sort of turn this into a full time thing. And then now being able to work with our Moses and Patrick Concioni and so many others, these other people, you know, dream, dream type clients for, for anybody that's working in agency space. So let's talk a little bit about the beginning stages of this. Why the podcast industry? Why podcast production? What brought you into this to begin with?
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Seth Silvers
Yeah, so StoryOn is actually, we've actually been in business for 10 years, but I've only been focusing on podcasting for about 5ish of those. And the business started really as a. The vision was to help businesses market through storytelling. So I kind of looked at the market and I. The businesses that I loved, I knew more about their stories and I felt like they weren't really marketing through their stories. And so I start, I didn't really know what I didn't know. I wasn't even thinking about podcasting. And so then I just started doing like, social media content. We're doing, you know, videos and blog posts and short, you know, short videos, which weren't called shorts at the time, kind of any. Pretty much. Honestly, I've kind of told people, like, I felt like I was kind of prostituting myself in some ways. Probably not totally, probably insensitive to say to people that might actually be in that field, but I felt like I was kind of like the first few years in business, I was doing almost anything that somebody would ask me related even tangentially to like storytelling and marketing for money.
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Travis
Right.
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Seth Silvers
And I had no idea how to price things. I had no idea really how to run a business. And then I started a podcast, not even thinking about, like the business development side of it and thinking about its impact. I just wanted to like, tell good stories of businesses in Fort Collins, where I live. And it started to help my business a lot. And that was super surprising. And so as soon as I did that, I kind of realized, like, this is the tool that I've kind of been looking for as far as like, how I want to help businesses market. And so it's just been getting more and more specific on who we help and how we help them ever since then. But at that point I was like, I kind of want to. It took about two years to actually have the discipline to stop doing other things.
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Travis
Sure.
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Seth Silvers
But that was the point where I was like, man, I want to get more into this podcasting stuff.
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Travis
How did it, how did it immediately impact the business? Like, what were you looking at that made you realize that this was what you should be doing? More of.
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Seth Silvers
I think it was weird because it wasn't direct. Like, it wasn't like, like it wasn't as simple as like, people we had on the podcast would hire us, but it's like people would listen and they would see that we did the podcast well. And then I like, remember somebody that was hiring us for like an email marketing campaign and email management and they're like, well, you did a good job on the podcast, so I'm sure you'll do a good job on this. So it was this weird, like, transfer of trust where it was like, those things actually aren't even connected. Like, me being a good podcaster has nothing to do with us doing your email. But I think when people see you show up in a quality way, they transfer that trust. They assume, okay, how you, it's kind of the, like, how you do anything is how you do everything. I think people also assume that when you put a, you know, kind of a public facing front with quality, they're going to assume that you probably do. You probably put the same level of quality into other things.
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Travis
It's the lagging effect that podcasting has that's wildly underrated. It's, it's. Regardless of the size of your audience, it still boosts your credibility just to have it there.
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Be honest with you.
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Seth Silvers
Yeah, yeah, that was really what we begin to see. So I mean, I think the first, like the first when I did that, then I like had somebody else that I knew it was in podcasting. So I was like, hey, I'm figuring this out. If you need me help, let me know. I think the first episodes that I started editing it was like, well, like this will probably take me like an hour or less, so I guess I'll do like $30 an episode or something. And then it just has grown a lot from there.
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Travis
Yeah, I this, this to me is one of those paths that I think is wildly underrated for people who are trying their Best to get into the creator space, or they're trying their best to get into the podcasting space, but they're, you know, they got a comedy podcast or they got a sports podcast, or they, they have something that isn't necessarily, like, directly related to this business that they already have, that's running, that's profitable, that's already paying their bills. They're trying, they're using podcasting as the vehicle to, like, move out of this, you know, toxic work culture or just a job that they hate and they can't fit. Figure out how to monetize the podcast because turns out it's not that easy to monetize the podcast from the pure, like, audience facing monetization through sponsorships perspective. It takes a lot of time, takes a lot of work. Audience has to be at a certain threshold. And even then, you know, the, the top, the top 0.1% of podcasts are making the 95 of total revenue going into the podcasting space in terms of sponsors anyway. So for sure, the, the path of, hey, you know how to edit your podcast, right? You know how to produce your own podcast. That by itself is a value add to a bunch of people where that is the main barrier that's preventing them from entering the space. You know what I mean? So what, what would you say to somebody who's in a position like that, you know, in terms of building out an offer structure? How do you get started with your first few clients? What are the things that people are looking for from a client agency facing perspective that would allow dial in messaging and get a couple clients and start making a bit of side cash doing this thing.
- [10:26]
Seth Silvers
Yeah. I mean, I think how I got into this, You've heard this story, you and I both have heard this story a ton of times where I think it's, you know, I develop a skill. I figured out how to do our podcast, and then I reached out to other people that were wanting to, you know, that I knew that were podcasting. And over the next, like, year, I probably got like a handful of clients, but it was like, pretty minimal. You know, we were charging a couple hundred dollars an episode maybe because I didn't really understand, like, the pricing and the economics of it. The thing that was really interesting as far as like, kind of scaling that offer. And I think this applies to a lot of different ways that we can make money. It actually came down to this moment where I had probably $30,000 in debt with the business that I was all on credit cards. I hadn't told literally A soul. Like, nobody knew about it except for the person who was doing my books. And I pretty much, like, made them agree because they, like, knew they knew my wife. Like, they were friends of ours. And so I, like, pretty much made her agree, like, you're not telling anybody about this.
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Travis
Yeah.
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Seth Silvers
And so we were trying to buy a house, and I was ignorant enough that I didn't know that business debt impacted personal credit. So we got a letter in the mail that pretty much said, like, my credit was, like, low 500s or something. And I was like, oh, man, I didn't know that. So my wife saw it, and she was like, what the heck is this? Like, what's going on? And so we, like, I remember vividly, we, like, went on a walk and. And it was like, yeah, like, I have this dad. And, you know, I had reason. Like, I had reasons. They weren't good reasons, but it was like, okay, yeah, like, I'm stuck. And so we kind of had this moment where we realized, like, at this point, I just have a job that is not. Like, I'm not making that much money. I'm working more hours and I'm working harder, but, like, that I might as well just go work for somebody. Yeah, like, I might as well just go work for somebody else. Like, I could make more money and work less just doing it for somebody else. So at that moment, like, we pretty much decided I need to totally focus on nothing else other than helping businesses with podcasts. I need to say no to everything else. And we're gonna do that for four months, and if we hit these numbers, then we'll keep going. And if we don't in four months, then I'll, like, go get a job. So we had that level of clarity. We let go of a few clients that were not in podcasting, and I spent the next 30 days having as many conversations as I could with everybody in my network where I reached out to. Like, I probably reached out to over a hundred people, and I said, hey, we're repositioning our offer. I'm wanting to help. At the time, it was, I'm wanting to help coaches and consultants launch podcasts. Do you know. Do you either know anybody that you could introduce me to, or would you be willing to jump on a call where I can just get a good idea of how you're thinking about podcasting? So I jumped on probably, like, 40 or 50 calls over that next month just to learn, like, okay, now that I know what problem I'm trying to solve, how are people thinking about this problem. And that probably led to like, an additional, like, 12 clients in those, like, four months. And that was like, kind of no looking back. There's still obviously other pivotal moments. But I think looking at that and being like, this is the skill that I want to offer from monetization standpoint, like, I can provide this service for other people, and just being willing to have those conversations, I think was a game changer when it comes.
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Travis
When it came to structuring your offer, pricing, all that kind of stuff, is there any helpful tools or exercises that you can share with people?
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Seth Silvers
Yeah, I think the number one reason that I don't have more money in my bank account and pocket that I want to right now, which we're in a fortunate place. But it's like the number one thing that's probably held that back and delayed that for us has been pricing and either being insecure around pricing or ignorant around pricing. So I think the first bit of advice I would say is anybody building any type of service business or offering a service, I would read the book Profit First. I think reading that book and actually implementing it and being able to reverse engineer, if I want to make this amount of money, here's what I need to charge. And that being a baseline for how I'm like, pricing things, that was huge. And, like, immediately, like, implementing that book got me out of debt and making more money within, like, six months of, like, that transition point that I mentioned. Wow. And it was just because I had a system to follow from, like, a finance perspective. So I think that's one side of things is like, I really think that resource can change the game for so many service providers. And then I think the other thing for pricing is I'm like, not a fan of pricing. Just like, okay, just raise your prices. Like, I kind of hate it when people are like, well, you should just double your prices because you can. And yeah, you'll lose half your clients, but, you know, you'll be making the same amount of money. Because I've always wanted to really be accessible. So I think for me, it's been helpful to either create content that helps more people that is, like, really low cost or free, or have some, like, low ticket offerings that are super scalable that, like, you don't have to do much so that you feel more comfortable charging a premium amount. Because for me, like, if I'm charging a premium amount, which now, like, we are, like, we're in kind of the upper echelon in the industry of, like, pricing per episode, it's definitely not $30 an episode anymore. Yeah, I feel like we can do that one because I know we're doing the value, but also because we can say if that's not the right fit for you, like, here's some other content and resources to like, help you out. And that kind of for me is like a, I want to help everybody. That is really helpful for me because I'm like, okay, good. I'm like, still helping them. I'm not just like a total jerk who says, like, either pay us or nothing. So I think I've like, for me and how I like want to help everybody, I've needed that, like lower tier stuff that people can say yes to, so that then I feel more justified and more comfortable being like, if you, if you want us to actually do it for you, it's going to be like a premium amount. Yeah.
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Travis
Well, having having a menu of options on the pricing allows you to be able to, like, the word that you use there was justify. And a lot of times that's all people need.
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Seth Silvers
Yeah.
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Travis
You know, if you just like throw out a number that's just a number because you came up with a number, it feels less. It. It feels, it feels more just subjective and abstract. But if you can be like, we price it like this because of this thing. Like, if you can just give the reason, give the justification, then a lot of times people will be like, okay, sure, that makes sense. All right, let's do it. You know, and if it doesn't work for them, then they go to this other thing and it allows you to still monetize across the spectrum of people who can't afford and not afford to work with you. But it also makes like a, it draws a clear line in the sand to say that, like, look, if we're going to do all this additional work, then this is what we charge and we don't do it for less than that. We just can't. However, we'd still love to help you on the journey. So we have these other things that are available if that's the direction that you want to go to.
- [17:26]
Seth Silvers
Yeah, for sure. And I think also including other people in the process as well. Like as our team has grown and now we, now I like, really know a better idea of like, what it costs to deliver services at scale, which, like, you know, there's like these, like podcast production companies. Like, there's like these weird invisible glass ceilings in the podcast industry where it's like, it's really hard for production companies to like, scale past certain revenue numbers. Yep. But including as our team has grown and including them in the process of, like, how much work not just do I think this takes, but, like, how much work do you guys think it takes to crush it on this job? And then being able to reverse engineer that, like, if the pricing stays in my head alone and the workload stays in my head, I'm usually going to be off somewhere. And so actually having other people help me understand what the workload is, is, has always, always leading to, like, a more accurate pricing. And I'm usually the one who's undercutting it. I'm usually like, oh, we could do it for like, this price.
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Travis
Yeah.
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Seth Silvers
And in reality, when you break it down, it's like, oh, no, this is actually worth double the amount when we bring a team of professionals to it and they say, here's what we want to do on the project. But I just got to get out of my head with that. Yeah, yeah.
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Travis
And then, and then to realize, especially in a space like this where it's sort of race to the bottom, you know, there's, there's unlimited number of podcast production companies that are out there, and it's mostly a race to the bottom. Like, everybody's just trying to undercut everybody else and like, oh, your current editor does it for this. Well, we'll do it for this. And nobody wins the race to the bottom except for the person who's on the very, very, very, very bottom of that. They, they might be able to do crazy volume and, and get a bunch of customers. But, like, I think it was actually Alex Ramosi's book that he says he got advice from a mentor one time, that it was like, there's no, there's no advantage to being the second cheapest.
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Seth Silvers
Yeah.
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Travis
You know, so you may as well be the most expensive type of a thing. And you want more money. Solve rich people problems because they pay better. It's like, it's the same problem that you're solving for this indie podcaster that makes no money on their podcast who's going to nickel and dime you and question everything that you do, and they're going to pay you 400 bucks a month versus going to somebody who's got a multi eight figure company. You're going to charge them 5,000 bucks a month for the same exact service, but they just want to know they're handing off to somebody who really knows what they're doing and who's actually providing a quality service. And regardless of if it costs them 500 or 5,000, they're not, they're not thinking about that at all. Like, they're not, they're not thinking about, well, we got to negotiate this guy down from 5,000 to 3,800. You know, like, they're doing like 7 million in profit. They don't, they don't care. They just, they want the results that they're paying for and they don't want interruption in the service and they don't want a degradation of quality. So it's like, if you can just provide high level customer service, good quality customer experience, then you can charge significantly more if you just go find people who have more money to throw at the problem, and then you can actually be the person who can step into that from an expertise level and actually be good at what you do. Right. Because that's the other variable. It's like you might be able to charge that, but then if you suck, they're just going to cancel three months down the road because you screwed up too many episodes.
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Seth Silvers
Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of where now, like, we, we really don't have an interest in like, trying to, trying to play the, like, race to the bottom game. It's just like, we're not like, I think we just got a deal with a pretty big company and like, I'm almost positive we are the most expensive option out of the three that they pitched. Yeah. But like, that wasn't from like, our team just picking a number. That was from our team being like, what do we want to do for them? What, what's the value that we want to give? How much value do we put on this? And so I think we're kind of switching, we're tweaking our model to where it's like, as far as us implementing things, it's at a premium rate for premium companies for us to actually do the work. Then we have consulting where we're kind of like working with smaller companies, where we're teaching them, hey, here's what we're doing for the big companies and here's how to implement it yourself. And then below that there's like, even lower ticket or just like free content where it's like, hey, here's how to do it yourself. And so I think again, like, having that, like, product ladder, I think makes it a whole lot easier to be able to say, yeah, if you're, if you want us to actually do it. Because you mentioned Hermosi. It's the same with Brunson. It's the same with a lot of the, like, business education experts or big Names. All of their stuff is public. Like, I remember going to the first like, Click Funnel Live. Click Funnels Live that I went to and it was like literally everything they're talking about is in the book.com secrets. Right. That is $9 technically free plus shipping. Right. But like, I'm paying $30,000. If you wanted to, to like have them help you do it, and then if you want to pay $150,000, like, they'll do it for you.
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Travis
Right.
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Seth Silvers
All the information is out there. It just depends on are you helping people do it or are you actually like doing it yourself? And I think just knowing the difference in those is huge with how to actually effectively grow the service company.
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Travis
So on the, on the podcasting side of things, really quickly, I know we're running up on time here.
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Seth Silvers
Yeah, you're good. I'm good on time.
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Travis
Okay. On the podcasting side of things, where do you. Where's the puck headed? Where can we be skating? From what you're seeing, obviously you see a lot of data from huge podcasts that are. We work directly with Spotify and things like that. What are you seeing from video and YouTube and, and ad channels? Like, what. What are some of the things that you are maybe excited for that are coming out of the podcast?
- [22:51]
Seth Silvers
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the video stuff is huge. I think I need to be convinced by a show. Like, you need to have a reason to not do video as opposed to a reason to do video. So I think now, like, video is an audio only podcast, which means you still have some. Like, those are the exception, not the rule. I think one thing is it's really important in podcasting to know what type of podcast you have. So from our perspective, we look at it like you're either your podcast is a hobby, your podcast is a business, which, if your podcast is a business, that's where like you're monetizing through ads and sponsorships, you're trying to get a big audience and sell that audience, or your podcast supports the business. I think a lot of people get confused about which one theirs is. I think we have a lot of people that have hobby podcasts that are treating, you know, their expectations are that their podcast is a business when it's not and it shouldn't be. It should just be a hobby and you should just own it and maybe one day it grows into it or, you know, vice versa. And so I think for us, I'm really excited because I think that most of the shows we work with, their podcast supports the business. So, like we do 2 to 3 million downloads a month across our shows. Almost none of that is monetized traditionally through ads. And that's because we're positioning the podcast as a middle of funnel, like audience development tool.
- [24:08]
Travis
Sure.
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Seth Silvers
I think businesses are beginning to realize that podcasting, it's a multi channel brand. It's a way to create content that benefits your business in the long run. In the same way that the beginning of this call, I talked about the people, the people that hired us do email marketing just because they saw like, oh, you're doing quality work. We're beginning to see businesses that understand that piece of it more rather than like launching a podcast and wanting customers, like right now. So that's, that's one thing that's been really unique for us and has helped us positioning wise is we are not positioning podcasting as a tool as a way to get more customers. That's a byproduct of it. But we're positioning a podcast as like a multi channel brand that builds reputation and trust around your business over the next two to three years. And people are starting to get that more.
- [24:57]
Travis
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I couldn't agree with you more on that. It is a branding play above all else. And everything else is just the cherry on top. It's like, could the audience potentially grow to a massive audience that you can make money on?
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Ads?
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Sure. But that's not why you should be doing it. You know, that's just the long tail potential side effect that gets me excited, you know, but there's plenty of reasons to do it in the meantime. And that's, that's really. You hit the nail on the head there, Seth. Appreciate you coming on, man. I appreciate the time that you take and the effort that you put into the podcasting space. I know we're really aligning a lot of those things. Where do people go to get more from you, what you're working on?
- [25:29]
Seth Silvers
Yeah. Most active on LinkedIn. You can find me and connect me and message me there. And then our website is just story on co. That's where we're publishing blogs and articles and different things like that. And happy to chat with anybody.
- [25:43]
Travis
Sweet. Go connect with seth over on LinkedIn, seth silvers over on LinkedIn and then story on co if you want to learn more about what they're doing with the podcasting space in particular. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you have money in the bank. So let's start there. Here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.