Monetize Your Podcast Like a Business Not a Hobby! (Guest Adam Schaeuble from Podcasting Business School): Ep. 117

Heather is joined by her wonderful friend, Adam Schaeuble (podcasting coach and host), the man behind the highly acclaimed Podcast Business School. Adam has been instrumental in connecting countless podcasters, and his passion for helping others shines through in his work. 

In this episode, the focus is on turning a podcast from a hobby into a thriving business. Heather and Adam dive into the strategies and insights needed to monetize a podcast effectively. They share their experiences and offer valuable tips for both aspiring podcasters and seasoned professionals. Whether you're starting out or continuing on your podcasting journey, you'll discover a treasure trove of gems to up-level your endeavors.

Podcasting can be an enjoyable hobby, but it also demands dedication and hard work. Heather and Adam discuss the two different lanes for podcasters – those who use podcasting to promote their existing businesses and those who embark on the challenging path of building a podcast business from scratch. They shed light on the opportunities and hurdles associated with each route, providing valuable guidance for all podcasting enthusiasts.

Tune in and get ready to get radical with your business as Heather and Adam share their expertise, insights, and enthusiasm for podcasting as a business venture. 

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Transcript

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 0:00

Hey there. This is Heather's Zeitzwolfe and you are listening to get radical with your business. If you are a content creator. I am here to help you with all things business, especially on the financial side of business. I am here to help you make sense of all those numbers. what you track and look at, you can impact. If you are somebody who is interested in podcasting or podcast, curious, you are really going to enjoy the show today, no matter if you are just starting off. Or really, really experienced in podcasting. You are going to find a lot of awesome gems in this podcast episode. All right here is my wonderful friend, Adam Schaeuble who is the man behind the podcast business school. Adam Schaeuble, You've hooked me up with so many podcasters, I'm thankful to the ends of the earth and back. A big shout out to you.

Adam Schaeuble: 1:05

Well, I, I love connecting people. When I first started podcasting, I didn't know any other podcasters, so I'm kinda on this mission, if I know somebody that you probably need to know, I'm gonna go ahead and make that intro, and I love to do it.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 1:15

Podcasters are the best people. I've met so many wonderful people in the podcasting space it's such a great community of people that are collaborative they've got your back supportive and it's not vindictive or any of that kind of stuff, which is really awesome.

Adam Schaeuble: 1:30

Yeah, and we kinda get each other like we're all really hyper creative people and also understand that we want to. Feel like we're being heard. And that's one of our big driving forces. And it's crazy. You go to a podcast conference, you don't have shallow conversations with, you're surrounded by podcasters. You're going like, we're peeling back the layers of the onion in every conversation that you have. Cause we're all, professional conversationalists.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 1:54

On your show, you talk about making your podcast from a hobby to a business. And so we're gonna concentrate on that part of it today, the business part of it, because we want people to make some money.

Adam Schaeuble: 2:05

That's right. Money sound effect, Ching. Yes.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 2:08

ching.

Adam Schaeuble: 2:09

yes, indeed. That's the big part of who I am and what I like to do.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 2:12

Podcasting, it can be a fun hobby, and it is a lot of work. It is like having another job I feel like there's two. Lanes for people with podcasting. There's the ones that are already an entrepreneur and they're starting a podcast to either promote their business or, have another revenue stream or something. And then there's the people that start a podcast, they think that they're gonna make money from it, and maybe they do eventually, but that's a tougher road.

Adam Schaeuble: 2:38

Yeah, I've experienced both. I launched my first show back in 2015. It was a health and weight loss loss show. It was called The Million Pound Mission. I had a bunch of followers in the UK who thought it was a money show cause he's called the Million Pound Mission. all these people this guy's not talking about money unsubscribe. For the American audience, it worked well, but I owned a gym that would be a situation where I was looking to expand my brick and mortar brand into the online space and offer online coaching and courses and programs and boot camps and all that stuff. And it worked really well. That was the primary goal there was take what I've got. Add some online momentum to it. Grow the brand overall via nurturing and creating community via podcasting. And the podcast served my brick and mortar clients as well, so it's a win-win. So that's definitely a possibility now with my brand. Now, podcasting Business school, I created something where there was nothing for me. I had no existing following, no existing email list, no existing offers. No social media, no nothing made$0. The way I evolved from a health podcaster into podcasting business school is specifically, it took me three years to make$37 as a podcaster. So I was averaging a little over$10 a year income from my podcast. Mainly from like mushroom tea coffee, tea from four Sigmatic affiliate fees. I was like, man, I made 50 cents this month. Sweet online entrepreneur.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 4:08

You always say the mushroom tea, but you actually did try that.

Adam Schaeuble: 4:11

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Four Sigmatic. That's great products. And that was my very first, 50 cents I made as a podcaster was four Sigmatic affiliate fees. It took me a while to figure it out, but then I did figure it out and I was like, oh, I can do these, like online challenges and I would do. A five day free challenge that would lead into a 28 day paid challenge. And so I'd get'em all fired up with the freebie and a certain percentage would convert over into the paid challenge. And the first one I did it, I made$3,000. I was like, whoa. That was awesome. I just did five days of work for 3000 bucks. I've never done that before. With all these people that I don't know that I can't physically reach out and touch. So then I kinda reversed engineered that and I started doing these$97 challenges. The first time I did that, I sold 140 of'em. So I made about$14,000. The second challenge I did, I was like, okay, now I'm starting to figure this out. Then my other health entrepreneur friends started going, okay, I see what you're doing. You're making good money. How can you show me how to do this also? So then I was like, all I became a consultant for health podcasters on how to monetize through challenges and memberships and things like that. Cause everybody wants to do sponsors. I'm like, man, sponsors are a big old pain I'm a service provider. I'd much rather sell my own programs, products, and services. I was showing them how to do that. Then that led to me discovering that I'm really good at this and. I love it. And it's, I talk about it on the show all the time. E l f, easy, lucrative, fun. You wanna have an elf business. And my gym had become a half business, H A L F. Hard, annoying, lame, frustrating. I was like 2019. At the end of 2019, I just smelled the pandemic coming and, no, I'm just kidding. I sold my gym at the end of 2019, which is just tremendously good luck right everything went down. I was due for some good luck. I admit it, that the mojo was upon me and I went full-time and I really just was like, I'm doing this podcasting business school thing. And a couple years later I ended up selling my health podcast, which is a cool little business adventure to be able to do that. With podcasting business school, I had to figure out, based off of my initial consult thing my. Consultations and things I was doing with health podcasters, like how do I make this more robust? So I tried a few different membership models that didn't really work. I'm the king of terrible ideas, but I'll just try it anyway. So my very first membership for podcasters, I called the cult for podcasters. I'm like, it's not a membership, it's a cult. And I it was I was like, everybody's gonna join cause we're weird. And I was, had, I was gonna have like custom robes made and everything and no, nobody joined. That was a terrible idea. But you can hear some of my old episodes what I talk about, join the cult for podcasters. Like I left all that on there. Cause I want all my people to hear all the dumb stuff I tried that didn't work so that they have hope and go, oh, this guy screwed it up a whole bunch of times too before he figured it out. Fast forward a couple more years, I had a lot of experience where I was like, all right. I think I can create courses, I think I can create coaching programs. I know what I can really focus in on. So my first successful membership was Download Growth Club. That really took off. We do really well with that. And then I do a lot of just hybrid coaching and consulting where I have courses and things like that. It took me, I. Three years to figure out how to make money as a podcaster with Lane one that you talked about, expanding my current brand and business, and then a couple more years to figure out how to create something where there was nothing and it explode a brand new brand with offers and things like that. So I think the moral of the beginning of this story is it's gonna take some time and you gotta have the chops to stick with it.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 7:42

In the beginning it was easier having this other business that the podcast was actually like a marketing tool. And For the people that are out there that are like, okay, I'm starting a podcast. I don't have this other business, maybe they have some experience, they have passion around what they talk about. The easiest route may be like coaching, consulting having courses, that sort of thing. You work with people who wanna take their podcast and turn it into a business. Where do you feel that people, what's the easiest route to do that

Adam Schaeuble: 8:10

I like the$1,000 number cause that's like actual money, that's more than a tank of gas right now, which, hopefully never gets past that. Let's say we make a first way to make a thousand bucks as a podcaster, we want coaching, consulting offers, I challenge my clients to create something that's gonna be in that 1000 to$1,500 range as an offer. And a lot of'em freak out. They're like, Oh my God, that's a lot of money. I was charging$3 an hour before, or what, like people don't charge enough. It's crazy. But I've got my friend Ashley who's in, she's got a budget based show and she's I can't charge that much. I was like, we're not asking for a one hour consultation. This could be a six month program. This could be a year long program. We have all these variables. It could be a course plus coaching, it could be all these things. But I like the idea to be in that thousand to$1,500 price point, because now we're not nickel and diamond chasing. I gotta get, pay my bills and replace my income. I have to get 500 people to buy this thing, this$5 thing. It's no, let's just have a really high impact offer. So I like ending up in that 1000 to$1,500 zone then we reverse engineer that and go, what do I have experience in that? I may be. Four or five steps ahead on the path that my listeners are on, and I can kinda be the people's champion. I can be on this hero's journey and how can I mentor them? How can I consult? How can I coach and show them how to get to where I am? Those five steps further, faster? How can I teach them to get five steps to where I am in one step or two steps and not make all the mistakes? That's one of the huge advantages that I have in podcasting is, I've screwed it up every possible way that you can, the evidence is in my backlog. You can go listen to my first episodes. The audio's terrible. The offers are terrible. Nobody's buying anything, but I just kept going. I'm like 800 episodes deep at this point. The first 500 are a lot of practice and screw ups, but the last 300, I'm like, all right, we got this puppy dialed in and now I can mentor other people and show them. How to not screw it up like I did basically. That's my tagline. Don't screw it up. I already did that.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 10:15

What about the people out there that, have like imposter syndrome or maybe they have this mindset of I'm not worth it, or no one's gonna pay me that kind of money. Right Out of the gate. When you were first starting out, you went through and made a lot of mistakes. Were you offering things at a lower price? And then how did you find that sweet spot of 1000, 1,500?

Adam Schaeuble: 10:36

Here's the test that we could do. If the thousand dollars,$1,500 package offer makes your stomach turn, start at 200 bucks, create a thing that you're gonna charge$200 for. So maybe that's three 30 minute sessions, coaching sessions with you, or consulting or whatever. Here's a little package that I like that I'll put out there. A lot of consultations are one one hour session, and I used to do these, and I kept on getting emails from people the following week and the week after that. Where they're asking questions after they actually tried to implement what I dished out in the 60 minutes. So now I do 60 minutes of consulting, but I break it up into 45 minutes and 15 minutes. So we do a 45 minute session, and then one to two weeks later, we book the 15 minute follow up so that they have some, I'm trying to do this time in between. I use an app called Voxer where they can get unlimited access to me. They can vox me as many times as they want in that two week period. That way it's built in. I can charge 700 bucks for this. Because I'm helping people rebrand, I'm helping people how to make money. I'm teaching people how to grow their downloads or whatever I'm consulting on. What could you do and split up like that where you're adding that value like something like Vox, where they can ask you questions on the fly. anyway, We can start at a$200 price point and I want you To sell that, and if you get a yes every time you get an immediate yes. Go up by 50 bucks next time you offer it. All right, it's 250 bucks. Get an immediate yes, okay, next time it's 300 bucks. And you'll just keep getting yeses until you start getting nos. Then we go, okay, now we're in the market zone of what they're willing to pay for, what it is that you offer. And then as we get better, and maybe you create an online course now that's a part of the offer, and now the offer just went up to$500 because. Now it's a course and coaching and a nice little hybrid model. Maybe instead of doing one-on-ones, you can offer some monthly group coaching as well. Boom. Now our value went up again and we can charge more. That's where I would start off with I would ladder it up. That way you can build your own confidence as you test things out. And also marketing it as a beta group or a test group, cuz that's truly what it is. Let's say you have a social media following, or an email list or a little bit of something that you could work with there. You can go, Hey, I am starting this consulting program. It's gonna be based off of X, Y, z result. I need four people that would help me test this. I'm going to charge a thousand dollars for this eventually. But right now it's gonna be 200 bucks and then you can make your first thousand bucks by just having a five person test group. some of that, all those things are valid things that I have tried and have absolutely worked. And the key is focus on building relationships. If you're not a super salesy person and you feel weird about it, just build relationships, keep adding value. And if you keep hitting your audience over the head with value, value, value, eventually when they are ready to buy you're the top of mind person. And that's kinda the strategy I tend to take.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 13:22

I think a lot of people think if I give out all my best stuff online on my podcast, no one's gonna pay me money. But really the difference is they wanna be able to interact with you and ask questions. And it's one thing to hear advice, but it's another to actually have guidance and support from a coach or a consultant face to face. What should people talk about on their podcast? And if they are trying to build this business, this consulting business, should they be talking about all the things that are in their offers? Should they be building up to the offer? From all the things that you've done, what do you think is the best route?

Adam Schaeuble: 13:56

There are different routes. I don't know if there's a best route, but there, there'll probably be a best fit for each person out there. But one kind of very specific example that I can pull outta my own little cash of podcasts that I've got here I had a limited series show called Podcast Launch Tips. And notice the branding, you know exactly what it is when you hear it. Like that's important as well. But I didn't plan on doing this forever and ever. Like I, like with podcasting business school, I'm like, this is a long haul deal. I'm gonna keep doing it. But podcast launch tips, I'm like, I'm gonna do 75 to a hundred episodes. I'm gonna give everybody everything I know about launching a show. I ended up at 70 and it was kinda like Forrest Gump, and he is I'm done running. And I was like I'm done running 70 is good. I've got course and services and all that stuff my launch services ranged from$800 to$4,000 I recorded 70 episodes of my course. I basically took out every video, every module, every step that I teach in my course that people are paying for. I had an episode on it, and so people might be like you just gave away the farm, but here's the thing. I will give you everything I know for free. You will pay me to help you implement it correctly. And because nobody has what's in my crazy space up my head now, extra little herbs and spices, that special recipe, and when I sprinkle that on top of what's in the course, That's when something special happens. That's when I help you skip steps and level up and shorten your learning curve. I put that podcast out. I haven't recorded any episodes of that for several months. And it's like a funnel. People find it cause it's got a really good search engine optimization. They start binge listening. The call to action is to go check out my course, check out my online offers and I'm selling. Those 800 to$4,000 offers on the regular from a show that I haven't put anything out, I don't market it at all. Like I've got an email funnel that deals with it on a little freebie. That's potentially a route then you could take as far as content creation. If you are a service provider and you're like, I wanna do more of a long-term thing one warning I would put out there is if you. I wanna sell your own programs, products, and services. Like what I do, like what Heather does. I would highly recommend avoiding an interview only show. Because if you only interview people, then they're the expert and you're the person that interviews experts and then you try to sell your thing. They're like, why would I buy this thing? You're not the expert that other person is. I don't wanna buy that other person's thing. So solo episodes and what I would consider to be coaching or consulting style episodes. When people pay me money, I go two-thirds of your content. I need you to be positioned as the expert cuz that's really important when it comes to, and now I've got a course, now I've got a free challenge. Now I need you to do this. That's gonna get you on my email list. And if you don't position yourself in that way, it's gonna be a real slog like it's going to be because that's what I did for the first three years when I made$37. So if you'd like to make$10 a year as a podcaster, follow that route. Or option B, then we go down this other road. But it's really important to understand there's so much more out there in content creation other than just interviews. And I'm not saying don't do interviews at all interviews are a great part of it because you can pull somebody in that adds that extra flavor to your brand through their knowledge and you have complimentary services and there's some synergy there that's awesome. But just don't get locked in, into, I only do interviews cuz That's not gonna help you get to where you wanna be from a business perspective. Does that make sense?

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 17:22

Yes, I agree. And when I first started my podcast, I was only doing interviews and some of the feedback I got was, When are you gonna do a solo show? I wanna hear you. then I started doing more intros cuz that was my. Putting my foot in the water kind of Oh, okay. do a longer intro. And then I was like, okay, I got up the nerve and I started doing some solo shows. Those are the ones that people always comment more to me. we think okay, we're gonna have this guest and they're gonna share it to the world, and we're gonna get all these followers from a big guest. Usually is like the ones that are like wa wa, wa cuz they've shared out their stuff a million times. people don't care. That's not a way to drive followers. Okay. I wanna talk to you about, One of your important things that you do is pod pals. And this allows people to give time, you call it eyeball to eyeball. With your. Followers or listeners because they're out there, we don't see them. It's like we're not communicating with them unless we get them to DM us on Instagram, which is a lot of times like pulling teeth.

Adam Schaeuble: 18:20

Yeah.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 18:20

into this thing where you give value and then they get to spend time with you. That's brilliant. Could you talk about how people can implement this strategy in their. Podcast and bring their business skills into it so that they're building their business.

Adam Schaeuble: 18:34

One of the things I figured out is that you have to initiate engagement. We're all sitting on our butts waiting for the engagement to happen to us. Oh, I put about this great show, and I hear this so often and it's hilarious, and I laugh. I can't help but laugh every time. I know these people are frustrated and pissed, but they're like, Adam, like we're in this like heartfelt consultation and they're starting to get emotional. Like I put so much work into this and I even asked people to email me on the show their questions and they'd never email me their questions. very rarely will a podcast listener. Be like, and now I will hop him out the old email and zip Heather a question. cuz they're doing other stuff. That's the gift and the curse of podcasting is they're mowing their lawn or they're taking their kid to school and they forget, they're working out and they're not gonna be like, oh yeah, mental note, gotta go email Heather, my question about our show or whatever. It's really hard to do. you have to initiate engagement. That's like mental note number one. The second mental note is we have to ask ourselves if we're truly community builders, when are we giving our community a chance to be a community? Because me talking to them through a microphone where they can't respond is not really community building. That's why I did the Pod Pals thing I had a tough go at the beginning is I didn't know any other podcasters. So I was like, I can be a hub of connection, Where I can help other people meet other podcasters. And we see so many cool connections and people starting shows together, doing interviews, starting businesses together, all this stuff. I was like, I wanna be that hub. I wanna help facilitate all that and I'm gonna do it for free and just make a bunch of friends. I was like my pod pals, that's why I called the pod pal zoom party, Even from the get go on this. It wasn't like I announced it on the show and now I'm doing this thing. I want you to be a part of the show and it's gonna be this awesome panel discussion. Cricket. I had to go out and chase down people, my true pod pals that I was already connected with. I'm like, listen, I'm doing this thing. I didn't need you to show your butt up. I need you to be there cuz I have to prove my audience. We're gonna put it out as an episode. It'll be a great promo for you. Everybody in my audience hears it. You shout out your brand, the whole thing. So I got five or 10 of my people that. I actually know that aren't listeners in my show. I'm like, just come on, let's do this thing. And they loved it. I put it out this episode and the call to action was, here's the link, the sign up for the next one. Then the next one I had about half the people that I had to strong arm in and the other half were people that actually listen and click to link. And then I released that one. And then they started to just pick up to where now they fill up to the point I have to send threatening emails on the Thursday before. I'm like, listen, it's full if you're not coming. You gotta move your butt so I can get somebody else in there. So it's like totally switched. The dynamic is switched where now it's an in demand thing and it's hard to get a little seat,

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 21:11

Now you release it as a podcast episode, and our buddy Janet Fish, she's been doing the same thing. I have a monthly meetup and I don't release it as a podcast, but now you've got me thinking that maybe I should be releasing it as a podcast to drive people to come to this. Do you think that you get better success in doing that then?

Adam Schaeuble: 21:30

Yeah. Yes, especially in a space like ours where. Like podcasters, one of their favorite things to do is be on other people's podcasts. O p P, you know me. That's how the song goes. I'm like, you can come on my show and guess what? You can shout out your show and help me create content. And we do a little thing called podcaster speed dating, where that's that little carrot I dangle out there. And that's why people wanna attend all the time because they're getting. Booked on other people's shows. It's I know you've gotten booked on several shows from coming to pod pals. You've found some guests good things are happening out there. And I had really tried to facilitate that as much as possible. Heck yeah, especially this year, I've really put in a ton of effort just brainstorming, how do I get more of my listeners to be a part of my brand? How do I pull them in? How do we create content? How can I release more episodes with more of my listeners' actual voices? I'm doing podcast pals. I do my podcast audits where people come on every Friday and I audit their show. I started doing this Speak Pipe thing where I put a link in the show notes. I go, tell me what your favorite episode is. And I'll put it at the end of the show because I started getting real creative with this. Heather, you're gonna enjoy this. Where I'm like, what are the two most skippable parts of a podcast? The intro and the outro. Everybody's heard that. Skip skip. And then the main thing's done, they're like heard at the end. Skip skip. Who cares? Just cut it off. Not gonna listen. now, And a few episodes that are coming up. I bring the plane in for a landing. I can go and here's a pod pal just like you with an episode recommendation. So they get to shout out their show on my show that's the incentive to come on and shout their brand out. It's not me pimping out my own show. It's somebody that listens to my show, social proof, expert positioning, and now they'll probably go and listen to that episode because a listener recommended it. And I'm very confident if I can get somebody to listen to four or five, six of my episodes, I've got'em. They're gonna start binging. And people that binge become super fans become clients. And I that's how I do my business. Just thinking about, and even if you're not a podcaster, how can you create and collaborate and make your audience and make your ideal customers a part of your brand? Is that an Instagram live where you do face-to-face q and a, you're pulling'em up on the screen with you? Is it a pod pal sort of a thing like I'm doing? I would challenge all the entrepreneurs out there, Because if you give your listener, your ideal customer a voice in your brand, now they're a part of it and it's our brand. You know what I'm saying? It's not Adam's brand. We're all a part of this. The pod pals are a thing. And like when I got up on stage and spoke at pod Fest this past year, when I say the word pod pals, They go crazy. They're like, I'm, that's me. Yeah. I'm one of those that's it's pretty damn cool. That's my strategy around that.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 24:05

Yeah, I had people coming up to me at podcast movement saying, I met you on Pod pals, and I was like, oh yeah, that's right.

Adam Schaeuble: 24:10

that.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 24:11

Yeah. That's very cool. Okay, before we wrap up, I do wanna ask you about, you mentioned brainstorming. The word planning has come in there and I am a real advocate for planning things out. As creative entrepreneurs, we like to fly by the seat of our pants, try things we got shiny object syndrome. But planning is important. And if we wanna have a podcast where we actually generate money from it, we have to have a plan. And granted in the beginning experimenting is important too, but having some idea where we wanna take this thing. So just quickly, how do you do your planning for are you looking a year out, a couple months out? Like how do you do your planning for your show?

Adam Schaeuble: 24:47

If you're just getting started, my advice for brand new people when they're mapping up their content is we gotta get you to a year. If we can get you to a year of episodes every week, you're probably gonna stick with it. If you only think three episodes ahead, and then I'll figure it out from there, you probably won't. The current stat is there have been 4 million podcasts launch. There are only 155,000 that have more than 10 episodes and have released anything in the last 10 days. I should tell you something, if you're just getting started, I want you to make brainstorm list. With 52 items. Let's say you're gonna do interviews and solo episodes, 26 and 26, I want you to write down 26 topics that you can talk about dealing with your niche. Then I want you to write down 26 people that you would like to interview on your show. Maybe some of these are people you already have connections with some of it might be like your dream top 10 list. Now we have a year of content mapped out where you can go every other week. Solo interview, putting the puzzle together. That's something you can do. But just, I did this, I got this tip from Brennan Burchard, who's a major coach in the coaching space. I did this and it saved my first show. Cause it was so hard I wouldn't to quit every single month, every single week. I was like, I just gotta do that next rep. I just gotta do the next episode. I've already got it lined up. I can talk about that. I could spend 15 minutes doing a solo episode or talking to this person. I'm good to go. So I have all my clients do that that are just getting started at 26 and 26. Let's map that out first. And then if you're gonna do coaching style episodes that can take away from a category, maybe you're like, I don't know, so many people. All right. 13 people you can interview, 13 people you can do a consulting style episode with, and then 26 solos, and now the math starts to work. And I know that Heather math, so that would be a good newbie beginning space. Now let's go to the other end. Where am I at right now with my content? Now it's based around the next offer that I want to put out there. But the interesting thing is 99% of the time I don't sell anything from my show, but what I talk about sells into what I'm selling. You know what I'm saying? It creates interest. For example, I've got a campaign to promote my Download Growth Club, which is a membership for podcasters that are getting less than a thousand downloads per episode. So that's a paid membership. I'm gonna do a three week audience engagement challenge that leads up to the promo push. This weeks before that I'm trying to get people to sign up for the challenge. So I go, okay. Audience engagement and download growth. So all my content for that six weeks audience engagement and download growth, and I'm driving people. I'm basically fishing with the right lure for the people that would be attracted as if they love these episodes. They're gonna love my challenges, they love my free challenge. They're a great candidate for my membership. I've reversed engineer it from what I would like to put out there as an offer. And I've got a shout out. My friend Jan Ditchfield she helped me concoct this whole formula and it's really amazing. That's how I map up my content. Now, on that, I could do that once per quarter and be like, what's my main thing I wanna sell this quarter? The main thing I wanna put out there from an offer perspective, reverse engineer the content to attract the right person, get them interested, and really engage. Cuz sometimes podcast listeners, they skip around, they'll go away for a couple weeks that topic isn't necessarily my jam. And maybe it's a couple weeks of that. But now we start pulling back in week after week. That gets the momentum going in the right direction. Maybe they pop in for a pod pal zoom party. I get some FaceTime with them. Maybe they start following me a little closer on the ig. That's my content map out strategy now. And if you're just getting started, don't start there. Start at the other end. And if you're somewhere in, in between maybe you look at an offer and just aren't quite like in as intense about it as with the topics as I am right now. But you can get there.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 28:18

It's key to really understand what your offer is and what it entails, because if you are unclear on your offer, then it's gonna be unclear what you're gonna be talking about.

Adam Schaeuble: 28:27

Oh yeah.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 28:28

Adam, where can people find you? You do like IG lives, you do the pod pals. Tell us of where people could find you and hang out with

Adam Schaeuble: 28:36

the main hub that you can find everything. I've got a very simple website. I had a very simple website and I simplified the simplest website in the world. So if you just go to podcasting business.school, it's a do school url. I'm still questioning that decision. Podcasting business.school. The other one wasn't available. They wanted$5,000 for it. I'm like, Nope. I'm a cheapo. So podcasting business.school, there is one video and three buttons. The buttons will guide you. I have a button for free things. I have a button that helps me feed my family, and I have a button for my podcast. And then you can hang out with me on Instagram at podcasting Business School. And I'm live all the time. I love doing the DM thing. Doing the DM thing is my jam as well. Those are the two main places. Check out my show wherever you listen to audio and yeah. If you enjoyed this episode go, leave it a five star review and be like that guy with that big old voice. That was my favorite episode.

Heather Zeitzwolfe: 29:28

And You have an adorable daughter that has been helping you with social media has been so fun to see those posts. Please follow Adam. He's hilarious. Thank you so much Adam. wishing you Tell me your,

Adam Schaeuble: 29:39

Health, happiness, and many downloads.