Starting and Growing Your Own Podcast Like a Business With Gary Arndt | TNE086

How exactly does one start a podcast and turn it into a business? Find out this week as I sit down for the second time travel extraordinaire turned podcast host Gary Arndt. In our last conversation here at The Nomadic Executive, Gary talked about his travel and life after a multi-million dollar business exit. This time around, however, a lot of things have changed. One of these changes is the fact that Gary now hosts his own incredibly successful and profitable daily podcast, Everything Everywhere, that shot from zero to over 10, 000 downloads per episode in its first 333 episodes.

In this episode, Gary talks about the things aspirant podcast hosts should take into consideration before launching and why episode length is crucial to your podcast’s profitability. He also shares how he chose his winning niche. Most importantly, Gary graciously shares his podcast framework to further guide aspiring podcasters. 

Timestamps

[3:30]Things Gary learned before starting his own podcast

[8:23]Gary’s podcast framework

[14:40]Launching a podcast is easy, it’s the follow-through that’s hard

[19:05]Why you should determine the value of your subscribers

[27:15]Daily shows versus weekly shows 

[34:01]Can audio quality have an effect on your podcast’s success

Gary’s Links

Everything Everywhere Travel Blog

Everything Everywhere Podcast

LinkedIn

Omar's (Host) Social Media:

Instagram - @nomadables

TikTok - @nomadables

Facebook Group - NOMADABLES - Accountability & Growth Community for Remote Workers- Perfect to meet fellow online entrepreneurs, remote workers, and digital nomads.

YouTube - Omar Mo

LinkedIn - Omar Mo Nomads Cast

Twitter - @nomadables

Pintrest - @nomadables

Clubhouse - @pods

WEBSITE: https://www.nomadables.com

Transcript

Starting and Growing Your Own Podcast Like a Business With Gary Arndt | TNE086

Omar  

Time magazine's Top 25 Blogs and Top 100 Photographers in the world, Gary Arndt joins us again today for another episode. Last time we saw Gary was back in Episode 44, where we dove into his story and his life as a full time traveler and after a multimillion dollar exit. 

This time, he's back and we discuss something a little bit different: podcasting. Since we last spoke, Gary created and grew a podcast from zero to 10,000 downloads per episode in just over a year. Be sure to go check it out. It's called Everything Everywhere Daily, and it's incredibly entertaining. 

Be sure to tune into today's episode where you can learn how to start your own podcast and treat it like a business to be able to turn it into a cash cow later on down the road. The way Gary and many others have as well. 

Remember, nomad fam, we've got some incredibly value filled episodes planned out for you. So please hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Your review helps this podcast become more visible and ultimately inspire more people just like you. My name is Omar Mo and this is The Nomadic Executive.

Intro  

You're listening to The Nomadic Executive hosted by Omar from nomadables.com. Join Omar as he sits down and speaks with leading online entrepreneurs, remote workers and digital nomads about everything from business strategy to travel and lifestyle design. Together, we're here to help you achieve a life of happiness, health and freedom. And now here's your host, Omar Mo.

Omar  

All right, Gary Arndt back for round two on The Nomadic Executive. Always a pleasure speaking to you, Gary. So glad to have you back on today. How are you today?

Gary  

Good. Thanks for having me again.

Omar  

Absolutely, man. So since we last spoke, I really believe the show I think from the last episode that I had with you this new show that you have as a podcast, Everything Everywhere came after that conversation. And since that moment, it's exploded in growth. 

So today, I want to sit down and I want to talk to you about how your podcast is going, how you got the idea, how you got it to where it was. But not only that, I want to talk about audio tech as a whole. And what you where you think the world of audio is really going in the future. 

So for my audience here for who don't know what your show is, Everything Everywhere, could you give like a small snippet of what it really is?

Gary  

You learn something new every day. So I tell stories of... it's completely random. It's very eclectic. And one of the problems we have now is that we're fed information via algorithm. So Facebook, and a lot of these platforms will only feed us what it thinks we want to see. 

And on a search engine like Google, you can only search for what you know. You cannot, if it's an unknown, it's impossible for you to search for it. So my show is just about the end of every show, I want people say I didn't know that. And just something different. And I've had really positive feedback, I get things all the time and say I just found your show and I binge listened to all 300 episodes. 

And I get that pretty frequently, which means that I think I'm doing something right. And when you look at my numbers, I get a lot of back catalogue things, or a lot of back catalogue listening. So it isn't just people listening to the most recent shows. They're going back and listening to everything.

Omar  

How do you come up with the ideas for these episodes in the first place? It really reminds me of like, late night 3am going down the Google rabbit hole for me. What does it do for you?

Gary  

That's pretty much my life. Yeah. And that's what it is. So when I started like, so let me go back. Before I had this and why I ended up doing this. I had the idea for a podcast where I would basically it was basically this idea but a longer form. I was thinking like an hour long show. 

And I began doing research. I came up with some ideas for initial shows. I began doing research, and I started really going down rabbit holes. 

My first episode is going to be why is the Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world? And because the guy who actually is the executive director of The Louvre, has said that 80% of the people who visit The Louvre, go to see the Mona Lisa. And it's to the point where if you're playing a video game, and there's an icon that represents like culture, they'll use the Mona Lisa as that thing, because it's so famous at this point. So why is it famous? 

It's a painting of a relatively unknown woman who if she wasn't on that painting, nobody would know who she is. So I went down the rabbit hole, and then I got into Da Vinci and his whole life. And just to give you an idea, I have some friends that have a history podcast, The Renaissance times. They spent 15 episodes under Vinci. And it's an hour long show, so they spent 15 hours talking about it. 

And after a while I was like 'Oh man, this is gonna be a really long show.' And the economics of doing a really long show like that. Don't work very well unless you have a crazy big audience. 

So I don't know if you're familiar with Dan Carlin and hardcore history, he has one of the biggest podcasts in the world. He gets millions of downloads every show, but he only releases two or three shows a year. And each shows five hours long. And then he does one post roll ad and that's it. So I bet he's completely leaving so much money on the table. It's not funny. 

But I was looking at this, I'm like, I got the artwork done. I got the intro music, I bought that I had everything set to go. And then I just abandoned it because I didn't think that it was going to work.

Omar  

Is it because you thought it was going to be too long and not hold people's interest the same way that for example, that three times a year episode does?t

Gary  

It's not that I couldn't do an episode like that. But unless you had it just yeah, just an economically work. Sure. So fast forward to last year, pandemic hits to fan. And my business just goes to hell because it's in the travel industry, and everything falls apart. And it's not like, I have a network of people I can fall back on because everybody I knew was in the travel industry. And they were in the same boat I was in. 

They, their businesses went to hell. And they were doing whatever they could to survive. So nobody was buying advertising. Nobody was doing marketing. Travelers weren't buying trips, nobody was doing research, everything just fell apart. So I wanted to think of something else to do. 

And I should say, people may be listening to this now we're recording this in June 2021. So people are getting vaccinated and travel starting. Yeah, but the travel industry is still not in full swing here. And it's gonna be another year or two before that happens. Look what's happening right now, in India, in Taiwan, places that everyone thought Oh, they avoided the biggest problems. 

Taiwan and Japan are now seeing huge spikes in cases that eventually caught up with them. international travel is still gonna have tons of restrictions for a long time. On one of my other podcasts, This Week In Travel, we just had a woman who went to South Africa with her family. And her trip that she spent a lot of money on almost got canceled because of the problems getting testing. And the fact that they were vaccinated didn't matter to the South African government. Now a lot of places at this point, they just want the test and you got to get that within 72 hours. And so it's a pain. 

So I needed to do something to diversify from travel. And so I revisited this idea of the show I had, except and then I remembered a conversation that I had a couple years earlier with Chris Guillebeau, who's... he was... he's written several books. And he had a very successful podcast that he launched his he was behind the World Domination Summit. And he does Side Hustle School. And it's a daily podcast, and I was talking to him in the green room in the speaker's room of this event we were at. 

And he's telling me this is he's done a lot of things. He's written books, he's held big conferences, the podcast is the best thing he's ever done. And having a daily podcast was the best thing he's ever done. 

So I thought about it. And I just started looking at the numbers. I said, Okay, well, if I can get what's the average CPM for podcast, all right, how many downloads per year? If a person were to subscribe, what is the circle? And I was like, I was like, that's not shabby. So July of last year, I launched the show. And I developed a framework for the show from day one. And I've never deviated from it. I -

Omar  

What's the framework, exactly? I'm thinking something that can be replicated as well, if someone else wanted to do it. 

Gary  

Sure I have, there are different ways to do it. I'm not saying mine is the right way to do it. I just picked a framework. So a lot of times you listen to a podcast, and they get some professional person to do an intro and I... for a daily show, that just doesn't work. 

So I just do a cold open, where I said, here's the topic, here's the questions that I'm raising, learn more about it on the show. 

Omar  

Sure.

Gary  

So that's about 20 to 30 seconds. Nine seconds, intro music, advertisement, I use some sound transitions go to the body of the show, which can be anywhere from five to 10 minutes. Other sound effect transmission transition, and the outro. 

I have that same technique for every single show. I record the intro the advertisement, and sometimes the outro separately and then the body separately. I just assemble it like Lego blocks, boom, the recording and editing is super easy to do, which I need it to be because it's a daily show. I can't spend too much time worrying about production. 

Omar  

Yeah. 

Gary  

Yeah. So that's what I did. And - what?

Omar  

Do you batch the recording and the editing?

Gary  

No, because the biggest time is the research and the writing. So at some point, I am when I have enough revenue coming in, I'm going to hire writers to write for the show, and then I'll edit, put it in my own voice and try to batch them all so I can do a weekend in one day or something. 

Omar  

Sure.

Gary  

But as of right now I'm literally doing it every day. 

Omar  

Okay.

Gary  

Tomorrow's show, I have not written yet. I don't even know what it's gonna be. Like I'll figure that out. I just have templates set up then for image artwork that I use for like Facebook and Twitter. And I do a separate thing for Instagram, tik tok and Pinterest. That's vertical image. And so I just have this down to a science at this point where I can just, you know, knock them out.

Omar  

How are you still getting the ideas? Are they just coming through organically, like , where are you..? 

Gary  

I come across stuff every day. And then I have a Google Doc. And every time I come across something, I just write it down. And so I'm almost at 400. So I've done 333 shows as of today, and I have close to 400 ideas for new shows. 

So the one I just put down a few minutes before talking to you was a Russian cosmonaut Sergei, and he was in orbit in the in the Russian Space Station, when the Soviet Union fell apart. And the space station stopped working. So literally, he was launched up by the Soviets came back down to Russia, his city had changed and everything the world had changed while he was in space. And it's a real fascinating story about how he got stuck there. And then his country didn't exist. And they had no plans for getting him back. And he was stuck. 

So I heard about that. I'm like, okay, that's an episode yesterday, I came across one about... are you familiar with the book The Lord of the Flies? 

Omar  

Yeah.

Gary  

These kids get stuck on an island, and they revert to barbarism. There was actually a case where this happened. There were some rules, no, completely the opposite. They had structure, they never fought with each other, they develop conflict resolution, they developed a system of who had what jobs, they started a fire, and it was always someone's job to tend to fire so it never went out. And it was the exact opposite of the Lord of the Flies. 

Omar  

Wow, that's interesting. 

Gary  

Exactly. And that's the show,

Omar  

I get it. That's a really cool way of coming up with these ideas. So something that just captures your curiosity, you're like, Oh, you know what, I'm gonna write this down and explore it a little bit more when it's time to come to it. 

Gary  

Yeah, and I, that's something... So I also wanted to do a show that wasn't like every other show. Like, usually, it's even in podcasting circles. It's assumed you're doing an interview show, I got nothing wrong with interview shows, I do an interview show. But my favorite shows are always not interview shows. 

And if you look at some of the most popular podcasts, they're not interview shows, it shows like serial and things like that. And I really believe to do an interview show, right? Like the people that really do a well, they got to put in a lot of work, to doing research on people. And I just, I didn't want to do that. 

And with the other show I have, it's an interview show, it's always a pain to find guests, and you got to schedule everything. Whereas if I'm just doing it myself, it solves a lot of problems. editing and production is super easy. The hard part really is what I have to do beforehand. Like I said, the writing and research, that's the difficult part.

Omar  

I had a solo show idea with a friend was gonna be like both of us who did it. But essentially what it would be is just do a single 10 minutes episode on each country in the world and just talk about some fun facts from that country, what the culture is, the people are like, maybe speak a few lines in their language. And just thought it was an interesting idea. But we haven't gone through it yet. So if someone does end up making, that, that'll be cool. 

Gary  

There's a guy with a YouTube channel that does that. Geography Now. And he has a really huge following.

Omar  

Interesting. Yeah, I haven't seen that come to podcast format yet. But I don't see one yet, yeah. 

Gary  

Actually I've, what I've, I'm probably going to launch another show. And what I'm going to do at this show, it's going to be a travel show. But it's going to be another solo scripted show. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to write a book. 

And each chapter of the book is going to be a different episode of the podcast. So when I'm done, I'll have a book. And not only will I have a book, but I will have an audience that would potentially buy the book. I will and I will have proof, I can then go to a publisher and say, "Look at the podcast audience, there's clearly interest in the subject idea."

And so it's a way to write the book over time. And then also a way to, to do promotion and to get a publisher.

Omar  

That's a fantastic idea. I want to segue this into promotion, then you built your podcasts up to quite big numbers in I think that you said 300 episodes, like that's about 300 something days, that you really shows now with that. And actually, before I even go to that I'm really curious, how long do you spend every day on each episode?

Gary  

A couple hours.

Omar  

So a couple hours every single day consistently? Yeah, exactly. You treat it like a business which is great. So how did you when you started getting that initial traction and everyone starts off the podcast you hear the whole launch strategy of launch with four episodes. And do this do that.

Gary  

What you do at launch is meaningless because no one's listening. The, you're  - the smallest audience you will have is the first day and everyone's so worried about that. It really what they're trying to do is just game the iTunes algorithm to get on the charts and you can get an initial spike, but it's all it this is a long game that you have to play with podcasts. And one of the things I found, I extensively research whatever I get into. So I've built six figure audiences on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, close to doing it on Pinterest, I went from never knowing photography to becoming one of the best travel photographers in North America. I do it by researching this stuff before I start. 

So with podcasting, there's so much information available about how to start a podcast, you go to clubhouse, every room of a podcasting is how to start a podcast. And there is nothing available damn near nothing For what happens once you've already launched the podcast, okay, then what? 

Launching a podcast is the easy part. It really is, the vast majority of podcasts are abandoned after only a few episodes. Because people, they don't know the time commitment that's involved, they don't see success immediately. And so they quit. 

So all this stuff about, "Oh have these episodes, when you launch..." Whatever, fine doesn't matter, does not matter. Because you're playing a long game. And it's not gonna happen your first week out the door, unless you're a celebrity, or you are in a big Podcast Network. And if you're in a big Podcast Network, the reason it's going to be successful is not because you had three shows at launch, but because you're promoting it across all the other shows in your network.

Omar  

Explain that to me a little bit more. So that's one of your growth strategies there right? 

Gary  

Yeah. All right. So then I had to figure out okay, so how the first month of the show I basically was spent, making sure that the show is listed everywhere. I found every place you can put a podcast put my URL, my my RSS feed, I claimed my podcast on every single site, I did the social media stuff, sent it out to my email list and all the other standard stuff you're supposed to do. So I did that that was the first month. 

But then what do you do? Build it and they will come simply doesn't work anymore. This is a robust medium now. There's professionals, there's people making many millions of dollars. And you can't just rely on the fact of "Oh, I have a good show, maybe it'll pay off in five, eight years." 

But if you want to see immediate growth, that doesn't work, when a big blockbuster, blockbuster motion picture is released. And they say all this cost $200 million dollars to make. If you look at the breakdown of where the costs go, a huge part, probably the biggest single part goes to marketing and promoting that movie, they don't just rely on the fact that we're coming out with the Aven- 

Although to be honest, if they did come out with a new Avengers movie, they could probably get away with not promoting it and still be successful. But they do it's on you see movie things on, you know, the sides of buses, billboards all over, it shows the same way. Why would podcast be any different? I see so many people in these podcasting groups that are so afraid to spend $5 a month to host their podcast. And so they go to Anchor where Oh, I can begin monetizing it doesn't cost me anything. Seriously? 

Omar  

Right. 

Gary  

Like you, you expect to make this a business and you won't spend $5? You've already priced your show you're a $0 show, that's how much it's worth if you're not even willing to invest your own money of $5 into it. And I saw this for years with blogging as well, where people would not invest anything in their website. And surprise, you don't get results. Now I'm not saying you should throw money at stuff willy nilly. But if you're going to treat it like a business, can you Is there any other business over where you invest $0 and expect a return on anything?

Omar  

Not a single one. 

Gary  

Now you open a restaurant, you're going to spend money new, so I don't think this is really any different. That was something I began doing in like November spending the show was, yeah, and that was just basically buying advertising to promote the show. And here's the real secret, and I never again, I never hear anyone talk about this because nobody talks about anything beyond when you launch your show. 

The key to doing this is to determine the value of a subscriber. You need to figure out if someone subscribes to your show, what is the annual value of that person. And if you're doing advertising, it's a very simple calculation. You add up all of your cpms for all your ads. Let's say you have a $25 CPM, you run two ads, that means you have a $50 RPM for that episode or for any episode. 

Okay, so when one person subscribes based on that, what are they worth? Well, for every 1000 downloads, you get $50 so how many downloads would one person be worth if you have a weekly show? You're going to have roughly 50 episodes a year we'll use that to make the math easy, which is approximately then 5%. 

So that would be $2.50 is the value per subscriber per year assuming they list they listen to every episode, it may be a little less than that. So that's a start, that's a number. I have a daily show. So using that same thing, it's roughly seven times greater. So I calculated to to, for my value per subscriber, to be around $14. 

And this is the other thing people don't realize, if you look at some of the really successful shows, and I'm talking success monetarily like Jordan Harbinger Show, Joe Rogan's, some other ones, they don't publish weekly. They're publishing two to three times a week. And why is that? Because you double or triple your revenue, if you're publishing two or three times a week instead of just one time a week. And that changes the value of a subscriber, if they're going to be listening to because it doubles or triples the number of shows.

Omar  

And it makes a ton of sense.

Gary  

Yeah, so why does that matter? And so I haven't even factored in, if you have your own product. If you have your own service, you need to factor that in as well. Eventually, I'll be selling tours to my listeners, I can't do that now pandemic stuff. But maybe next year. There's Patreon, things like that. So you can factor that in. But I'm just using advertising right now to make the math simple. 

Omar  

Sure.

Gary  

You need to figure out what that number is. Because that number will then determine how you're able to finance a show. And there's a really good YouTube video that just came out a few days ago from the guy that does dark net diaries. And he basically bought $4500 worth of podcast ads on various platforms. 

Omar  

As a test? 

Gary  

But then afterwards, he said this isn't a really good deal. And then he talked to some of the people he know with successful podcasts and he basically asked them what do you think of this and Jordan Harbinger is my my average subscriber is $20 a year. This is a great deal. So he would he was finding as well this cost $2 a subscriber, this is horrible. 

And if your subscriber value is $20, in you can get a subscriber for $2. That's crazy arbitrage. You can do that forever. At some point you'll hit a limit probably but Jordan Harbinger, to give you an idea, is spending a half million dollars a year in podcast promotion. 

Omar  

Yeah, I heard.

Gary  

 And the question is why? Because it works.

Omar  

So then where are you allocating your money exactly? When it comes to podcast promotion? Podcast? Platform?

Gary  

Okay so, the, the the first rule that when people think this, the first thing their mind goes to is, oh, I'll buy ads on Facebook. No, do not. Maybe do that down the road. But that is not where your first money should be spent. You always grow a platform from within the platform. 

When I grew any social media platform, people find you on Instagram, they're gonna do it through Instagram, Twitter, through Twitter, and podcast, you want to go where the podcast listeners are. So the easiest place is podcast apps. They all do it differently.

There's Castbox, Podcast Republic, Podcast Addict, Overcast Pocket Cast, a host of different ones. They all have different ways of doing it. They have different prices. It can be confusing, sometimes. Some of them I don't think do it very well, some don't do it at all. But you have to experiment. One of the things I found -

Omar  

In terms of ROI, I'm guessing those would do better than something like running Spotify. It's because everyone on Spotify doesn't necessarily listen to podcasts.

Gary  

I have not tried Spotify, and I have not heard of anyone in my circles, who has found any success on Spotify. I see. So what they're offering right now is literally just audio ads. And I think if they actually had like a banner ad or something you could buy in the app, that would probably convert better. But as of right now, I don't think there's anything good to do with Spotify. 

Omar  

Okay.

Gary  

So podcast apps are going to be one of your best choices. Now. The problem with this is, there's no way to dip your foot in the water. A lot of these require an investment of several hundred dollars. That's and there's really not you can't like I'm gonna do it for one day, you're buying it for a month. 

If you do Podcast Addict or Overcast or Podcast Republic, you're buying a whole month  in one shot. So you're gonna have to be willing to invest in that. But you can at least... there's information out there about what the return is. 

So like Overcast will say here's what we expect based on other people that have run ads in this category of how many subscribers you'll get. And what I found is that their numbers are extremely conservative, because I have tripled and quadrupled what they have estimated when I've run ads there. That may have to do with my show the more because I have a very broad based show...

Omar  

You're able to get cost about that way.

Gary  

it appeals to more people. If you have a very niche show about real estate brokers in San Diego, I this may not be the approach you want to take, because you're casting a very wide net for something that there's no reason to cast a wide net for. 

My show is a very wide net. So it works very well for me. 

Omar  

Makes a lot of sense, yeah. 

Gary  

And yeah, so I'm, I've gotten the worst I've gotten was, I think $3 the best I've gotten was 50 cents a subscriber. And I'm also now trying Reddit advertising, Reddit and Quora, because they are very topics focused platforms.

Omar  

Right. It makes sense, you can be answering a question there.So

Gary  

So for my show, I'm gonna -  I'm just focusing on the Today I learned community, it's like today cuz Yeah, that's kind of what my show is. And it's a very big community, they have 25 people that subscribed to that subreddit. So I can it's so big, that I can say I just want people in the United States who listen to podcasts who, you know, like this show, and do that. 

And right now, I'm just still trying to zero in on what's the lowest cost per click I can get away with, because the trick with these other platforms that are not that are not podcast platforms, is you're paying for clicks. But clicks are not necessarily conversions. And there's no way to track that that's literally no way to track how if someone clicks, if someone subscribes,

Omar  

Do you think it's because you have such a wide net of a show that you're creating, and now I'm not discrediting, like you said real estate in New Jersey podcasts because they have their own merit, and they're probably going to have a very niche audience that they can monetize quite easily. But then I can be able to monetize your podcast as a whole with advertising as easily as you are. 

So for example, if someone really wants to make a business out of their podcast, and cast a wide net the way that you did, do you really think it's worth starting a new podcast for them and doing something that is different appeals to audiences is a daily show and can cast a wide net?

Gary  

A daily show has a lot of, there's a lot of benefits to it, but it's a lot of work. 

Omar  

Right. 

Gary  

So like the Side Hustle School podcast that I mentioned, is a daily show. And  it's an entrepreneurship show, but he has a really big audience. What's another one was just on the tip of my tongue, that's a daily show.

Omar  

There's Neil Patel, Eric Sue marketing school.

Gary  

I'm not familiar with that. But my belief is there's a certain amount of time in a week, you can ask someone to pay attention to you.

Omar  

Right. 

Gary  

So if you have a daily show, it can't be an hour long daily Show. It's got to be seven hours a week is too much. So you need to shorten it up. 

But one of my friends is going to launch a Bitcoin podcast and I was telling her I was just explaining the economics of it. She's I could do a daily show just a five minute. Here's your daily Bitcoin news or Bitcoin tip. There's enough stuff stuff happening in that space where you could easily do it every day. I think there are daily podcast news type things was that Erica Mandy hasn't a daily news show. She's a former TV news person. And she's doing really well she has I think, several hundred thousand subscribers. So it's a great way to monetize. But it is a lot of work.

Omar  

Of course, nothing more. Do you think there's many merit to like the internal stuff that you do, like, for example, that we speak on the podcast that maybe put sound effects in there, music...

Gary  

I'm not doing anything fancy right now, the only thing I have is that I have a really long experience. I was one of the top collegiate debaters in the United States. And I was one of the top competitive kids in speech in high school, I was like one of the top 10 in the country, the national tournament. 

So I have a big history in public speaking. And I'm pretty good at adding voice inflection, which is the biggest thing I think people need to do. Especially if you're reading from a script, you need to make it intersting.

Omar  

That makes a lot of sense. I can resonate with that as a podcast. 

Gary  

In fact, yesterday, I just had a comment, someone left a review. So I don't know who's better Gary or Roman Mars. Like, okay,

Omar  

I'll take it. 

Gary  

That's good company to be in at least. So I got that going for me? 

Omar  

Definitely, definitely. That's really cool. So what direction are you trying to take your podcasts now? I mean, you've seen it -

Gary  

Grow it, right? 

Omar  

Yeah.

Gary  

I just want to have it. What I don't want to do is i'm not going to offer any courses. I'm not gonna offer any coaching. I just want to grow it and make it a successful podcast.

And once you can get in here's the other thing. I don't know if advertising. Focusing on advertising is the best thing for most podcasts to do. Because to be completely honest, it's very hard. You need to get to within the five to 10,000 level, preferably the 10,000 downloads per episode, and preferably downloads from the United States per episode to get these big networks interested in you. 

Because the advertisers are so used to the to mass media, where they can reach millions of people that they're not interested in dealing with people who can only reach a few 100 people at a time. So once you get to that level, it's not that your revenue is increasing one to one with your audience growth, it goes up, once you hit the audience marks because the number of people who are more interested in your show is going to increase. And there are so few podcasts that get 10,000 subscribers per episode, that it's a supply and demand thing. And so it's a lot of those big shows can get cpms over $50.

Omar  

There's also Insider they're not as targeted, I would expect, like the shows that get on those networks are more wide net shows, as you've described, which means it becomes less profitable, or it becomes harder to choose what show to advertise on for an advertiser per se, or a business that wants to advertise with one of these networks.

Gary  

Yeah, I think you can have a niche, but it can't everyone in podcasting, all the podcasting gurus I hear, they always say the riches in the niches. That can be true. 

I think if you have a very big niche, then podcasting is probably going to be one part of what you're doing. Maybe other things you're doing as well, a website and email list and a whole bunch of other stuff. So it's not going to be just that what I'm doing with this show is I'm going balls out. And I'm just going to try to make it as big as possible and do the advertising approach because that is the way that you can really hit it big. 

And I just I don't want to get into the whole meta thing about courses and stuff I've never, that's never appealed to me. I never did a course on travel blogging or social media or stuff like that, because I don't want to do that,

Omar  

Would you ever sell the show? 

Gary  

It's possible.

Omar  

 I think you enjoy.

Gary  

The... it's my like when I was traveling and had my website that never really could sell the domain. But it was so tied to me, this show, we could just get another host and keep the format exactly the same. Once I get writers it could run like that. 

And but it would have to no one would be interested until the audience gets really big. And by that point, I may have I... in the process of doing the business planning for this. There are things like I'm going to hire writers, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that at different phases. 

And at some point, I may even launch other shows and put it under a network, because ideally, I would love to bring a lot of the advertising in house and work directly with advertisers. So you don't lose the percentage that you give to a network. But that's years from now I don't and a lot has to go right between now and then.

Omar  

I think you're really good for fit for podcasts. But then again, you're very good photographer as well. So the complete opposite ends of the spectrum of creativity to some.

Gary  

But there's no money in, in photography right now. Right? The problem. I just got an offer to do photography for a book this morning. And it's early, you know, low five figure thing, but then it's okay, we'll give you half up front half a year, and then you got to go to these parks. And it was really vague as to what they want it so I've been to most of the national parks. But are you gonna come back and say, Oh, well, we want a better photo from Guadalupe Mountains National Park. 

Okay, so I got to run all the way out to West Texas. To get some more photos, I want to know beforehand how this is going to work. And once I have to pay for the travel. So you may end up such that...

Omar  

You break even on that.

Gary  

It may appear like a good deal. But maybe it's not. 

Omar  

Yeah, I see what you're saying. And the problem is everyone has a camera in their pocket. And most of the places that pay for photography have gone out of business. So it's not a lucrative business anymore. And I feel so much. It's always been the case to have an audience. That's how you make money online. The number one thing is attention. And if you have attention, then you can monetize that.

A lot of sense. Here's a left field question for you. How much do you think audio quality matters when it comes to a podcast?

Gary  

Matters to a point? And beyond that point? It doesn't. 

Omar  

Okay.

Gary  

You're familiar with the concept of a minimum viable product? 

Omar  

MVP, right.

Gary  

Yeah, it needs to be it needs to be good enough that it doesn't suck. But you don't want to throw too much time and effort into perfecting it. And for example, no one's ever complained about the audio quality on my show. So it's good enough, and I've had several people compliment me on it. 

And literally all I'm doing is I have a USB microphone plugged into my computer. And then I use a noise gate in GarageBand when I record so if there's any background hums or anything that'll get filtered out, but that's all I do. So it's good enough. And the question is at some point in the future, may I improve it may I put more effort in to make it sound more NPR like with background noise and things like that. Maybe. 

But that money I could spend doing that is better spent on promoting the podcast and growing it very true. In fact, I'm doing all the work for my podcast right now 100% of everything, there are no virtual assistants, it's all me. And the reason is, because I've certainly looked into having a virtual assistant and wouldn't be nice, but then I'm like, okay, but I could take that money. And I could promote the show and just grow it. 

And I'm at a point right now, where every decision is basically just grow the show, just grow the show, because that's all that matters, the faster I can get to the 10,000 downloads per episode mark, that's what I'm calling escape velocity, then then the game changes, then maybe I can afford to do some of that. 

But I want to get there as fast as I can. Because if it takes me, if I can get there within another six months, that's a huge difference. And if it takes me another 18 months, in terms of the revenue I'm going to bring in that year, that's going to be a difference.

Omar  

That makes sense. And then during that time, you can think about taking back some of your time and hiring outsourcing that way. It's just like any business really, right at the end of the day, like you're not going to do your first hires right off the bat, just to save you some time. You have to put in the work.

Gary  

If people talk about monetizing a podcast, and in the very early days, they talk about it like it's binary, and it's not, your first monetizing is gonna be crap. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get $100 you might not even get that and I think you're the best thing is to just bootstrap it, take whatever your first money is, and feed that right back into audience to show promotion. 

And there's things you can do that don't cost much money or any money at all. adri.io is a great site for finding other websites to swap trailers with you do a trailer swap. And that's another great thing is because I have a daily show, I have more ad inventory than almost every anyone else. So I could do trailer swaps with seven different podcasts, where as they're doing it with just one, they're doing it with me, I'm doing it with them and six other people, because I have more inventory than they do to run those trailers. Which means I could grow all things being equal seven times faster than all those other shows.

Omar  

I didn't even know that was the thing, a trailer slump. I found you on Audrey, I think ages ago. But I don't remember, it's really just about being a thing. There's I'm gonna have to check that out. I've

Gary  

done some calls with the people at Audrey as like consulting calls, right? And one of the things I said is, look, I can't find people. So I have a trailer that I uploaded. It's a 32nd trailer, and I look for those people. And it's okay, let's do this. You run my I'll run yours. Let me know when it's happening. 

And very few people are set up to do this or even thinking about it. And that's the other problem. It's very hard to promote your show when all the other podcasters are not sophisticated enough to be thinking about show promotion

Omar  

Right, damn. Oh, it's that's cool. Yeah, it makes sense. I like the way that these different methods are starting to come out. They do help get past the hole. Let's do a podcast swap you come on Mike, come on yours. And let's spend an hour talking to each other, which is like pretty much the standard way a lot of these interview shows run.

Gary  

That's fine. But there are other ways to do it as well. And sometimes it's asymmetrical. I've actually given this some thought, I don't know if I could do it or if I would do it. But let's say I could buy an ad on Dan Carlin's, that's a history podcast, it's going to go to millions of people, how much would I spend to get an add on there? 

So let's say that converts at say, 1/10 of 1%. So one out of every 1000. And this is the great part once you have value of your subscriber. 

Omar  

Right. 

Gary  

Yeah, so let's say he has a million listeners, he has more than that. It's probably in the low, maybe 2 to 4 million. 

Omar  

Right. 

Gary  

And so that would gain me 1000 brand new subscribers. For a million if I could access a million people listening to the show 1000 subscribers would be worth approximately to me $14,000 in the first year. So that would be then that's assuming I get 1000 because it's targeted towards a history audience. Let's say it's two to 3 million people. It could be more than that doing 10 a $10,000 ad buying a show like that is not insane. 

When you really look at it in terms of the return now I don't know if I could get a one one person and 1000 maybe it's more maybe it's less Yeah, I wouldn't he wouldn't be the first show I would do it with I would definitely try this on other shows. And one other problem. 

One other problem is you can't really... the bigger your show gets, the harder it is to determine if these things work. Because I have natural fluctuations every day in my show that can go up and down by 1500. So my biggest day ever was about over 5000 downloads. a bad day for me now is about 3500 so that's a sizable swing I can get on a daily basis.

So it's very hard for me to I know there is no way to tell are those new subscribers. Are these people downloading my back catalogue. I don't know how to do that. So it's a very, I assume that if I was to do something really big like that, I would probably see a spike. But

Omar  

What hosting site are you using? 

Gary  

Libsyn. 

Omar  

Libsyn? Okay, cool. Yeah, I use Buzzsprout. But I hear good things about Libsyn, too, when I've seen the platform there looks a little bit confusing.

Gary  

It's fine. They're on, they're coming out with a brand new user interface interface. It's already out, you can use it now. They're gonna be phasing out the old one soon. So at the end of the day, I think they're mostly all the same.

Omar  

Yeah, I mean, that you can't really I know, there's this one, that company called Sweet fish media that I follow. They have a podcast called b2b growth. They have an agency style hosting site that they use, it's a fairly new one, but apparently gives you analytics deeper than anything else on any other site there. I forget the name. They have it, but it's right on their website on sweet fish media, if you want to check that out. 

But going to the audio tech as a whole now, towards the end of the podcast here, what do you think? Where do you think audio is going?

Gary  

The biggest thing you're seeing is more centralization of big companies that are trying to get involved and to make money off of it. Spotify and Apple in particular, I think their their recent announcements about offering paid shows are really overblown. I don't think it's actually as big of a deal as you're making it out to be. 

Omar  

It's just like Pateron but on Apple, really.

Gary  

Yeah, and it's worse than Patreon in some ways, in that you don't have access to the emails, or the list of your users, Apple and Spotify will control the they control the relationship you don't. So Spotify and other things like supercast are better than that. And it's also limited to just that, with Patreon, you at least get a feed that you can listen on anything, so you can listen to it on Apple podcast or any player. 

But with Apple, you have to listen to it on Apple. And in fact, it's not even going to be an mp3, it's going to be their AIF format, or whatever that they use for Apple Music. And the same as Spotify, you can only listen to it on Spotify. 

And also, you have to upload a separate file. So if you're on a third party host, you aren't a third party host because Apple doesn't host anything, you then have to upload special all your files specially to Apple. And then if you want to do it on Spotify, you have to get an account on anchor, and then do it through anchor. 

So it just seems like a massive pain in the ass to have to do, I'm hoping in the future that they offer some sort of automation so you can work with your host. And then they can just upload stuff to these, you know, platforms if they want to do it. But as of right now, it's not compelling. I think the biggest news that came out recently was Facebook, integrating podcasts, that is going to be a far bigger game changer as far as I'm concerned, because it's been very difficult to promote podcasts on it. 

Omar  

I agree even with ads, you can only run them back to your site to maybe fire off a pixel that you can track on later. But it's...

Gary  

Actually, I don't refer people to my website. For the podcast, what I did is I set up a URL on PodFollow.com.  And what it does is, if someone is going to that URL from iOS, it will refer them to Apple podcast. If they're coming to it on Android, it will refer them to Google. 

And if they're coming through a desktop, then it will just come to their web page, right or their landing page where it has links for all the major podcast platforms where they can subscribe. That's another big problem. It's like where do you direct people for a podcast, and I understand why people send them to, you know, their own website. 

But I would rather every step in the chain that requires an extra action, you're going to lose people. So I would rather so if you're doing something on Facebook, either use a redirecting URL like pod follow. And I think Chartable does it too. 

Or you just target people who are using iOS, or you just target people who are using Android. And then the link you use takes them directly to Apple podcast or Google podcast where they can begin listening and subscribing.

Omar  

Makes a lot of sense. The way that we were running ads in the past for a client of ours, we had a course they were selling through the podcast and they already had a decent listenership, I think maybe somewhere around 3000 downloads per episode somewhere around there. 

So what they did is they set up the course on their site, they had like intro lead magnet on their website where the podcast was as well. And they'd run an ad on the podcast on Facebook, enough... enticing enough for somebody to click through and want to listen to it. But they take it to their website, so they could get the pixel data, and then run retargeting ads of some other clients just because it showed some initial interest. I wanted to listen to that podcast. So...

Gary  

I think if you're if you're actually promoting something like a course, where you're looking to actually make a transaction, you sign up for the course and pay money. Something like that makes a lot more sense. 

Omar  

Right.

Gary  

 A trick with podcasting is that it's not a transaction. And there are so many different ways someone can listen to a podcast because there's so many different players on so many different platforms. And that's what makes it so difficult to do. 

And then there's I should mention, there's also we're just you want to promote on the platform, that is true. But that doesn't mean that's the only place you promote, I think that's where you start. And that's where you're going to find at most cost effective. 

Omar  

Right.

Gary  

So with my show, because it's like an educational show, I'm looking at buying an ad in like the national magazine for Mensa. Because I'm a member, I can get 50% off the ad. So it makes it affordable. 

It's people that I want to target. I'm also looking at, like homeschooling groups, things like that. And the other thing, and I've not looked into this that much, but it's something I have my eye on, I watch, I don't have cable TV or anything. 

So everything I watch is streaming. And I noticed that the ads that are on streaming content are very different than the ads that are on terrestrial television or on cable. It's for a lot of products that are like web based products that are all mail like the CASPER mattresses or the Harry's razors and things like that. 

Omar  

Are you talking about the Disney and stuff? 

Like not those platforms, but like Peacock, or some of the things Amazon does, they'll run an ad and they run those ads. And it's, it's really interesting, and I'm curious as what their rates are. And I don't I'm not saying it would work. I'm not even sure it would. But it's something to at least think about. 

And I think that's that'll probably be far down the road. But, and you also just doing stuff like this, when you said you wanted to talk my general rule is I never say no to an interview. Since a good rule, because you always you never know who's gonna listen, you never know who's gonna tune in. And you never know, you know, who's gonna discover you. And you have to basically just grind it out and get yourself out there, wherever you can as much as possible. Right?

You heard it here, folks, go check out Gary at everything everywhere. I think what I want to do now is I want to ask you this one final question on the podcast. And I believe asking some variation of this all those months ago, it must have been March or really early pandemic last year, but I think you were actually one of my first 15 or 20 guests, Gary, which is super cool. 

And I remember being super excited having you on to when he first came on. But now I'm curious what your answer for this question is going to be after all these months, perhaps it's different. Perhaps you didn't delve into new things. 

But if you had to put one thing on a billboard in space, and everyone on planet Earth would see that billboard every time the sun rose, every time the sun went away, the billboard went away, it's in some universal language, what would you write?

Gary  

Oh, Lord. Yeah, I don't know, how many words do you get?

Omar  

You get as many as you want. But you can't do like a whole paragraph, you can do like a few sentences at most.

Gary  

I probably have some sort of URL. And then I'd send them to a phishing site that will steal Bitcoin!

Omar  

Right. That's, that sounds like something you would do. But what if we picked like just some sort of motivational, inspiring message from something that you've learned in life?

Gary  

Oh, just something like live and let live. I think people get too worked up about stuff. And they're far too... It seems like the world is running on outrage constantly. And the internet. There's a lot I've been on the I've been doing stuff on the internet for a very long time, since the days of dial up modems, and a lot of the promise of the Internet has been actualized. 

If you're -  if I go back to the 90s, and we talk about all we're gonna be able to buy things online, and we're gonna be able to watch movies and talk to people and yeah, all that happened. But then there was a whole bunch of stuff that happened that I don't think anybody predicted, and it has permeated our culture, and our politics and everything. And it's not good. 

And I think that people need to lighten up a little bit. I've certainly gotten off social media a lot. I've not deleted my accounts or anything, but I really don't pay any attention to Twitter or a lot of these things. On Facebook, I've basically muted every single person, I'm friends with. Nothing personal. 

But I just I see some groups that I'm in and that's my newsfeed. I don't worry about their baby pictures or where they went on vacation or any of that crap, I don't worry about it. And even then I'm consuming less in the way of light news. I prefer to occasionally read a long form article and just the constant barrage of everyone fighting about everything. It doesn't get you anywhere.

And there's even like on I've had somebody here so many people saw our social media strategy, you got to be pinning this times a day and then you got to be doing that now i don't i every time I come back to announce like what could I be doing to move the ball forward, it's always just work on your next show. 

Omar  

Hmm. 

Gary  

To just focus on that. And yeah, all in, you're seeing the same problems all over the world, you're seeing extremism in every country of every different type start to rise up. And it primarily is due to a lot of ways social media. 

And I'm almost to a point now where I think it's been a negative in the world, not a positive. And if they were to, if Thanos was to come and snap and get rid of Facebook and Twitter and everything tomorrow, I'm not sure I would say snap away.

Omar  

I feel you on that one. Man, I'm telling you. I think in some ways, it's beautiful. Some of the things that have happened, like I certainly wouldn't have had all the friendships that I've had or even honestly been here in Mexico right now, if it wasn't for some of the people that I met through socials.

But then again, there's so much negativity that I've seen throughout my times on there as well, I think it comes to the point of, don't become a consumer just create. And onthat side, I think it's much better to be on that side than it is to be on the consumer side. And that way, at least you can create something that if anyone sees it, even one person, at least you can make a good difference that way instead of a negative one.

Gary  

There's nothing wrong with consuming. I listen to podcasts, I make a podcast. And I listen to more podcasts than I so I don't have a problem with that. The great thing about podcasting is there's no comment section. And there's no way for non person to say "you should go do a video". 

And which is what if you look at Facebook comment or YouTube comments, for most videos, it is a cesspool. Like it really is horrible. And I think that the the anonymous element of it if you had to put your a picture of you and your address behind everything you commented on Facebook, not that I'm advocating that, but it would radically change things. 

And I think that's one of the good things about like Clubhouse. One of the things I noticed on Clubhouse is I've never come across anyone who's a complete jerk on Clubhouse,

Omar  

There are so many polite people. It's crazy. 

Gary  

Yeah, because you're talking to another person, a human, and you hear their voice and you see their picture. And it's not anonymous, and you can't just leave that. And if you did that they would just kick you out of the room immediately. And I don't know if Clubhouses long for this world. I don't think it's a $4 billion company. 

But I think that this notion of being able to communicate with people, actual humans, and we were talking before we started recording about club Allison Yeah, I've actually met some people and I've been able to network with some people. It's been very valuable and clubhouse, but it's been that kind of serendipity one to one connection that you might otherwise get at like a conference. 

Omar  

That's right.

Gary  

Where you meet people that everyone knows the most valuable part of a conference is not sitting in a session. It's sitting in the hallway, talking to people. In fact, a lot of the conference's I go to I never go to sessions. I like to go to one or two. 

And I spend the rest of my time just being out in the hallway with other people, because that's the most valuable part of a conference and Clubhouse is like that. And I think it'd be great if there were other platforms that were that way. 

Omar  

Incorporating that aspect...

Gary  

But podcasting is like that. It's a one way thing in some ways. I do wish there was more interactivity. But the lack of it also has its charms as well.

Omar  

they're coming out with things like fireside chats, or God knows what else, they're starting to try to incorporate community in the podcast into a certain degree. So I'm curious to see how that's going to work out there already. 

People are already doing things like stream yard on five different platforms or live streaming while I talk to my community and answer their question. I'm sure we're working as a community or as a whole, just working towards something that brings in more community to live audio, but I'd be curious to see what direction it goes.

Gary  

Yeah, I don't know. I do know, like, I have a pretty popular Facebook group. And I tried to do something on Clubhouse and no one showed up. Because at the time, it was only on iOS and you had to be invited. So the vast majority of people couldn't join if they wanted to. So Facebook launches something that's similar to Clubhouse, and I can do that with my group. I'll probably use the Facebook tool.

Omar  

Yeah, that's a great idea. It'd be awesome if you can do that actually directly with groups.

Gary  

I've tried doing it on Twitter with whatever their new thing is. And that was... Yeah, it was there.

Omar  

Really? I'm surprised I would think a lot of people follow you and they want to get in touch with you. But no one came to the room...

Gary  

I didn't announce it or anything I just started did it randomly. But I don't think people are on Twitter to talk to people via voice. They're on Twitter to tweet and that's why they do it.

Omar  

Make sense. Super insightful conversation. Gary. As always love speaking to you. Thank you so much for coming on today man.

Gary  

Thanks for having me.

Omar

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Outro  

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