Profitable Podcasting: Grow Your Business, Expand Your Platform, and Build a Nation of True Fans

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Christine and Caitlyn—I appreciate your love and support in every challenge I tackle. You make me want to strive to be a better husband, father, and person. I love you to the moon and back—and always will.

To my grandfather, Peter Maronitis—you spent your life in service of others. It was you who taught me the value of mentorship, hard work, and commitment to family. You lived a life worthy of following. I look forward to our conversations again. I love you, Pop.

To Don Yaeger and Drew McLellan—thank you for being great friends and trusted mentors. You know how to get the best out of me. I appreciate you more than you will ever know.

To Wendy Keller—this book would not have been possible without you. You planted the seed and then you gave me the road map to follow. Thank you so much for being my wonderful agent, mentor, and friend.

To our Predictive ROI clients and our Onward Nation guests—you have helped my team and me grow in new ways, you pushed us to be better, and you generously shared your expertise with our listeners—and with me directly—so we could all move onward to that next level. Thank you so very much, my friends!

To Ellen Kadin and the team at AMACOM—thank you for this opportunity, and I greatly appreciate all your support, encouragement, and pushing to make sure the ideas and thoughts in our book were the best possible. Exceptional teamwork! Thank you!

Thank you for picking up our book. Congratulations on taking the first step toward growing your revenue, expanding your platform, and building your nation of true fans. Herein lies everything you need to make your vision a reality. Time to get to work!

FOREWORD

Why are some teams capable of being great and sustaining their high performance over a long period of time—while others can’t? We see it happen not just in sports. We also see it happen in business teams with companies like Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, members of the Inc. 500 list, and so on.

How are they able to consistently outperform their competition time and time again?

I have studied the best-of-the-best team builders in sports and in business over the last twenty-five years and uncovered what makes the great teams great. I have witnessed how great teams are in constant study of other great teams to learn what they need to come together, to manage adversity as a group, to find a common purpose, to protect their inner circle, and more.

If you believe as I do that success leaves clues—then our job as business leaders is to go find the clues and apply them within our teams. But . . . are we as leaders willing to invest the time and energy to study what it takes to move our businesses onward to that next level?

In my opinion, one of the best ways to learn from the experiences of others, and to uncover the clues to their success, is to invite them to participate in a platform like a YouTube channel, blog, or a top-rated podcast so you can interview them and allow them to share their knowledge and expertise with your audience. By doing so, you will learn directly from the experts—and—you will expand your inner circle in the process. Your personal network and your sphere of influence will grow, and it is likely that new business development opportunities will find their way to you.

You are holding in your hands a precise blueprint to make the above a reality. Profitable Podcasting does not include marketing hyperbole. You must be willing to do the work. Stephen Woessner and his Predictive ROI team have shared in full transparency all the practical knowledge you need to create, launch, and monetize a top-rated podcast that can accelerate your business. The success clues have been distilled into specific strategies and step-by-step instructions that you and your team can immediately apply.

You will learn how your podcast can become an all access pass to the knowledge of others if you are courageous enough to knock on the doors and ask the questions. Stephen will also teach you how your podcast can become a distinctive business development strategy to grow your revenue. He calls it the Trojan Horse of Sales, and I have seen him do it for Predictive ROI and repeat the same success for its clients.

I am a firm believer that greatness is available to all of us if we are willing to do the common things uncommonly well. But, there is no such thing as an overnight success. So I also want to share some behind-the-scenes context with you.

In addition to being close friends, Stephen and I are weekly accountability partners; we talk every Friday morning and share our wins and losses for the week and how we expect to get better as a result of what we learned. We have rinsed and repeated this weekly process since August of 2012. I remember our Friday call back in May 2015 when he shared his inspiration behind Onward Nation and what he and his team had decided to do. He explained their goal to launch a daily show for business owners. I thought their plan was ambitious but was excited to hear the enthusiasm in Stephen’s voice. I know what can happen when business owners are intentional about surrounding themselves with winners.

As an award-winning keynote speaker, business leadership coach, and longtime associate editor for Sports Illustrated, I have experienced firsthand how spending time with thought leaders and learning from the best can dramatically impact the trajectory of one’s business and life. I knew Stephen would be successful if he and his team could be consistent with their strategy and had the discipline to remain consistent in their pursuit of greatness.

The results are now clear.

Onward Nation has generated over $2 million in revenue for Predictive ROI—and—I have watched Stephen’s personal network expand to include some of today’s top business owners, thought leaders, and authors. Onward Nation is now listened to in more than one hundred countries, it has received exceptional ratings and reviews, and there is a three-month waiting list to appear as a guest.

There are no secrets to being successful at podcasting and using it as a business development strategy to move onward to that next level. It is all here for you in this book. You simply need to be willing to do the common things uncommonly well.

As Coach John Wooden said, Make each day your masterpiece.

—DON YAEGER

Nine-time New York Times bestselling author

INTRODUCTION

HOW A PODCAST CAN BE YOUR

TROJAN HORSE OF SELLING

We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don’t you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

—DALE CARNEGIE, How to Win Friends and Influence People

My name is Stephen Woessner. I am the CEO of Predictive ROI (a content marketing and lead agency) and the host of Onward Nation , a daily podcast for business owners. Our mission at Onward Nation is to be America’s number one podcast for learning how today’s top business owners think, act, and achieve. We immediately struck a powerful chord with listeners: Onward Nation became a top-ranked podcast within iTunes’ New and Noteworthy in multiple categories just three weeks after airing Episode 1 with author Scott McKain on June 15, 2015.

Onward Nation is now listened to in more than 200 countries, has received 100,000+ downloads of its episodes, and will generate $2 million in revenue for Predictive ROI over the next twelve months.

But how did we do all of that? We learned Onward Nation could become our Trojan horse.

Your Trojan Horse of Selling

The legend of the Trojan horse comes from the story of the Trojan War between the Greeks and Troy chronicled in the Odyssey , written by Homer near the end of the 8th century BC. The story—which could be fact or fiction—is a great illustration of strategy and subterfuge.

According to the legend, the Trojan War ended in a stalemate because Greece was unable to devise a strategy to circumvent the city walls of Troy. The ten-year battle ended and the Greek army made what looked to be a retreat to their homeland.

The Trojan army investigated and found the beach abandoned. The Greek armada was gone and a large wooden horse was all that remained on the desolate shore. The Trojans believed the Greeks had left the horse as a peace offering. They gleefully accepted the offering and pulled the horse from the beach, past their impenetrable city gates, into the city square, and began to celebrate their victory over the Greeks.

However, a little due diligence by the Trojans would have been prudent. Perhaps they would have found the Greek strike force tucked inside the horse. The Greeks seized their opportunity late that night when they sneaked quietly out of the horse and opened the city gates so the balance of their army could enter unencumbered.

The Greeks proceeded to sack the city. The story gave birth to the expression Beware a Greek bearing gifts.

The monetization strategy behind your podcast, if executed properly, will work in a similar way. For example, a typical salesperson may have access to a decision-maker within a dream prospect’s company blocked by a gatekeeper. Any sort of sales opportunity is thwarted, and the salesperson may be forced to move on to her next prospect.

However, what if you happen to be the host of a top-rated podcast and you are getting in touch with the decision-maker because you would like to interview him about his journey, his secrets to success, and the wisdom he could share with others in his industry or the broader business community? Well, now, you just changed the entire dynamic of the situation, didn’t you? Your podcast increased the probability of a one-on-one, private, sixty-minute conversation with your ideal prospect.

But how did your podcast give you this all-access pass? Your podcast changed the game because you are no longer perceived as a business owner looking for a new account. You are now perceived as a journalist and your show is a media channel—a conduit—to an audience the guests on your show want to reach and influence.

It’s as simple as letting the decision-maker at your dream prospect wheel the horse past the company’s gatekeeper—and park it right in the center of the C-suite. You now have an opportunity to dazzle your dream prospect with your brilliance and intimate industry and company knowledge during the interview.

Your podcast has done its job. It’s time for you to do yours. Sell!

Our Story and Why You Need This Book

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in the middle of May 2015. I was sitting at my dining room table looking out the front window at my daughter and her friends having fun at our neighborhood playground. All was well outside—but not inside. I was under a great deal of stress.

We had just lost a client. And although every company experiences this from time to time, what made this particular loss so painful was that we were overstaffed. The loss in revenue made our reality even more excruciating.

I had purchased the domain name OnwardNation.com about twelve months earlier but had no idea why. No strategy; I just felt compelled to make the purchase. Funny how God whispers the seeds of inspiration into your ear sometimes and then just lets them sit until He is ready for them to germinate into something remarkable.

That Sunday must have been germination day. As I sat there at my dining room table, I remembered the OnwardNation.com purchase and made the decision that we would create and launch a daily podcast using that name. Next, I crafted an enthusiastic, optimistic email explaining that Onward Nation was the solution we’d been seeking to turn Predictive ROI lead generation and sales activity around (mind you, I had zero strategy, only unbridled optimism). In the email I set an aggressive launch date of June 15. I closed the lid to my MacBook, and somehow felt good about the decision (or chaos) that I had just initiated.

Why chaos, you ask? Well, I should probably share that the decision to create and launch a podcast in thirty days was made in complete and utter ignorance. I knew nothing about creating or launching a podcast.

Sure, I had been a guest on a couple of podcasts such as EOFire with John Lee Dumas and ReLaunch with Joel Boggess and Dr. Pei Kang. So I knew how to put on a headset and open Skype, which constituted my entire body of knowledge in the podcast world up to that point.

Let’s fast-forward to launch day, Monday, June 15. Remarkably, we launched on schedule and the first day of Onward Nation ran smoothly. We aired three episodes on launch day: Episode 1 with Scott McKain, Episode 2 with sports journalist and author Don Yaeger, and Episode 3 with leadership coach Stacey Alcorn. All three guests are rock stars, and Onward Nation was off and running.

Several weeks later, I attended my Agency Management Institute mastermind group. By then, Onward Nation had aired forty-seven episodes, daily downloads were steadily increasing, and we had scored top rankings in iTunes. I was feeling proud about our accomplishments. We had gone from zero to sixty in about 3.5 seconds. Not bad. But we were missing a vital outcome: revenue!

My mastermind group—all exceptional agency owners from across the country—asked me how I was going to make money from Onward Nation. Excellent question, but I had no idea of the answer. I don’t know, I said. But we will figure it out.

Then providence set in. Two of our Onward Nation guests got in touch with me and asked, Hey, could you do that for me?

Do what for you? I asked.

Build me a podcast! they said.

Like any enthusiastic entrepreneur in need of revenue, I said, Yes, I think we can!

So my team and I stripped out the branding and content from the Onward Nation system and replaced everything with our client’s branding, episodes, content—and voila! We launched two more podcasts and earned $26,000 for our effort. Rock-solid awesome!

Now, a smart businessperson would have said, Hey, we might be onto something here. This could be worth pursuing. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I returned to thinking about how we were overstaffed and needed to grow revenue. Ironic, isn’t it? I often say that if God wants me to get the message, He needs to take out a billboard or hit me over the head with a brick. Subtlety is lost on me.

In late October, one of those clients (Drew McLellan, host of the Build a Better Agency podcast) said to me, "The podcast you built for me is awesome. And Onward Nation is awesome. Why in the world are you not building more of these? In my brilliance, I said, For who? Drew rolled his eyes and said, There have to be more Onward Nation guests who would love to have a podcast of their own!"

He took the lesson he was teaching me deeper, adding, Look, here’s what you do. You create a Silver, Gold, and Platinum Elite package . . . you charge this much, this much, and this much, and get out there and sell them to guests.

Brilliant. My team and I immediately got to work creating the packages Drew had recommended.

And then providence struck a second time. On November 17, 2015, I interviewed Wendy Keller, literary agent extraordinaire, for Episode 106 of Onward Nation. The conversation started out lovely—just what I had envisioned. Then, suddenly, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach and the air knocked right out of me. Wendy told her emotional and devastating story about the tragic car accident that she and her husband, along with their two children, were in while on vacation in Europe. Her children were killed, she was critically injured, and her life was changed in an instant. My legs felt weak. In shock, I didn’t know what to say. Wendy had to be the strongest person I’d ever met. After continuing for a few minutes, she paused and gave me a moment to catch my breath. Then we continued the interview. I was captivated by Wendy’s courage, her commitment, and her resolve. What could stop this woman?

When we finished the interview, she turned the tables on me, asking about Onward Nation. Why was I doing it? What was the endgame? I told her I was planning to write a book that distilled all the wisdom collected during the episodes of the podcast. I could practically feel her smile on the other end of our Skype connection. And then she asked me a life-altering question: Hmm . . . Why don’t you write a book about how business owners can use podcasting to grow revenue and their business? That’s where the real opportunity is for a book. Bam. Providence!

Following the interview with Wendy, my Predictive ROI team made it a vital priority to accelerate the sales of our newly minted Silver, Gold, and Platinum Elite packages. We were on a mission to create a bona fide monetization strategy. Our goal was to grow revenue, and at the same time, create a compelling proof of concept for the system that would eventually become this book.

We grew podcast-related revenue to $223,000 between November 17 and December 31, 2015, and built a sales pipeline of $380,000 during Q1 2016. We scaled our production and sales teams and created step-by-step documentation of our system. Currently, we predict $2 million in podcast-related revenue during the next twelve months.

We accomplished this thanks in part to several amazing mentors who stepped into our path. We listened to them, and we did exactly what they recommended. We are now building a network of B2B-focused podcasts—the Onward Nation Network. By the end of 2017, we expect Predictive ROI to be the company behind approximately a hundred top-ranked business podcasts with millions of listeners worldwide.

It has been an amazing adventure. But your story of growing your business, expanding your platform, and building a nation of true fans can be just as amazing. This book will serve as your comprehensive guide to making your dream a reality—and in the process you will learn how to avoid all of the mistakes we made along the way.

This comprehensive, research-based book will share our full blueprint or recipe for podcast success with you. Each and every step we took along the way is presented in complete transparency. Not a single step has been hidden from you. It’s all here, in plain sight.

Within these pages, you will walk behind the green curtains of Onward Nation and Predictive ROI so you can learn our proven system. You will also have access to in-depth insights from ten business owners just like you. Each of them decided to create a podcast to change the game—and then did it. Their impressive stories will be shared in full transparency, too.

But why write such a comprehensive book? Because you deserve a resource that eliminates the guesswork, demystifies the process, and gives you a clear and concise strategy for going from zero to launch in about thirty days.

Only limited resources were available when my Predictive ROI team and I decided to create Onward Nation. Sure, there were plenty of e-books and webinars that led me into the sales funnels of information marketers, but those resources lacked depth, and, candidly, they lacked business acumen. We quickly consumed the resources and were left with more questions than answers.

Plus, the resources lacked full transparency. They typically provided just enough to get you interested in learning more and then pitched a $997 online training or mastermind program.

All of which drove me crazy and didn’t solve our problem. Not awesome.

But there is another reason I decided to go as deep as possible with this book. In my opinion, podcasting—as a medium—deserves a long-form guide, an encyclopedia of how to do it right. When I interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk before the release of his social media book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, we discussed how it wasn’t just a