Winning Clients with Podcasting with Adam Schaeuble

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

podcast, episode, people, alastair, interview, listening, downloads, listeners, instagram, solo, guests, business, talk, ads, audience, coaching, marketing, overcast, engagement, bit

SPEAKERS

Alastair McDermott, Voiceover, Adam Schaeuble

Adam Schaeuble  00:00

Being somebody that has their own media company via podcasting, there may be no better way to really own your authority.

Voiceover  00:09

Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. So you can increase your reach, have more impact and work with great clients. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.

Alastair McDermott  00:25

Hey, folks, welcome to episode 99 of The Recognized Authority podcast. So before I introduce today’s guest, I just want to briefly mention, you know, we’re coming up on episode 100. I’ve mentioned previously, Episode 100, will be the last episode of season one. And we’re going to take a short hiatus, I think of three or four weeks, haven’t decided exactly what the scheduling will be. We will be back either at the end of December or in the new year. And we will be making a couple of tweaks to the format of the show, nothing major. But I will be introducing some new episode types. And in today’s episode, you’ll find out why that is, because I’ll be talking to my podcasting coach, somebody who has helped me, particularly with the setup of this podcast.  So I’ll be talking to Adam Schaeuble, he was really helpful for me in planning out the format of this show originally. So we’ll talk about that a bit in this episode. I hope you find it interesting. And I’d love to get your feedback. In particular, because we’re coming to the end of season one, I’d love to get your feedback on the show on anything that you think could be changed, improved dropped, added anything at all, any kind of feedback, if you send me an email to podcast@therecognizedauthority.com. I’ll get that. And I’d love to get your feedback on the show. So thanks for listening to this and on with the show.  So today, my guest is Adam Schaeuble. Adam, I got your name, pronounced right?

Adam Schaeuble  01:51

Dude, you nailed it. Well done all the vowels combined. You did it, man.

Alastair McDermott  01:56

Yeah, with our vowels combined. That sounds cool. Well, Adam is a podcast coach extraordinaire. And I just want to say, you know, I looked in my calendar to see when I when I started working with you originally, because I had some coaching calls with you back quite a long time ago, was about four months before I launched this podcast. And so it was back in December 2020 was when we spoke, and I’m thank you for your help and your input. I just want to say, you know, I also want to take responsibility. So listener, if there is something about this podcast that you don’t like, I just want to take full responsibility. If there’s anything that about this, you don’t like it’s all Adam’s fault. So just so we’re clear about that. Sure.

Adam Schaeuble  02:40

Gold.

Alastair McDermott  02:41

Adam, you have had a lot of input back in the day into into making this podcast and and originally when I launched it was called Marketing for Consultants. So and now I even rebranded after 20 episodes to The Recognized Authority. Yeah, so thank you for your input into that. And I want to talk about podcasting because I’ve become a huge fan of podcasting. And in fact, I always have been one thing I know that you’re really into, and I’m, when I when I when I’m when I say this, and I look at this, it’s like I’m, it’s like I’m becoming a clone of you. And you’re thinking about podcasting because these are all things I’ve said to other people as well. I know it’s all coming from you. You’re a big fan of solo podcasts with no interviews. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Adam Schaeuble  03:26

Yeah. So it is a misconception out in the podcasting, either, that when you have a podcast, you do interviews, and you want to be just like Joe Rogan, or insert famous podcaster here. And that is not the case. But that’s something that you have to figure out along the way. So a lot of people start up, they’re like, I need to interview one person a week because that is what my favorite podcaster does. And I want to be just like them and they make a bunch of money and I’m gonna get sponsors and here come the underwear ads and all that stuff. Like I’m gonna make so much Mattress Company money, it’s gonna be amazing. Mushroom coffee sponsors, here we go.  And the problem is that this show is called The Recognized Authority if you want to be a recognized authority, aka an expert in your niche, if you only interview other people, you are interviewing the expert and you are not the expert and that is a problem. And so I consult with a lot of people that come to my in my world like Adam, bro, I am so good at what I do. And I do the call to action on my show for my course or my coaching or whatever, and nobody buys and I look at all the episodes interview interview interview interview. I go: Why would somebody buy from somebody that isn’t the expert like you aren’t expert positioned on your own freakin show. So that’s a huge problem. So I love solo episodes. I love coaching style episodes or like consulting style episodes. I want you to show up find your true expertise. And you can do this because the other issue why a lot of podcasters quit is like, I don’t have time to do all these interviews and I, I can’t do an hour every week or whatever. And I’ve got people I’ve consulted with that will sit down and block off one hour per month, record for separate 15 minutes, solo episodes, and done deal content creation done for the whole month. And that is very time efficient. And it’s all about that expert positioning.  So, yes, the solo episode for the service provider for the coach for the consultant if you sell your own stuff, or want to sell more of your own stuff you need to do in my opinion, like the magic formula for me, Alastair is if you want to do solo episodes, some coaching or consulting style episodes, and some interviews, I would say the pie chart would look like 33% interviews 33% coaching style episodes 33% solo episodes. So two thirds is expert positioning for you.

Alastair McDermott  06:05

I love it. And thanks for breaking down that way as well. That’s that’s interesting. And so would you then Aspies that as as a format, if somebody is starting a new podcast, would you say you know, plot plan this in from the start?

Adam Schaeuble  06:17

100%. And you don’t have to do any interviews at all. But I that’s somebody that’s like, I really want to use this to meet some cool people and network and you know, lean on other people’s knowledge. Yes. So but it’s two to one rate, you know, that’s that’s not a correct it’s whatever the percentage is. Two episodes to one episode is going to be expert positioning, expert positioning, then have a guest on. So coaching, solo expert. Coaching, solo expert, one episode a week doing that, you know, you’re gonna build up your Rolodex, and it’ll be heavy towards positioning you as the true expert. So yeah, that’s if you’re just getting started. I think that that would be a recipe for success.

Alastair McDermott  06:56

Yeah, I love it. And so what about people who are already have they went down the kind of the default route of doing the interview? Like, one thing people talk about is consistency, both in scheduling as well in format, can you think it’s okay to you know, change up your format?

Adam Schaeuble  07:11

Oh, yeah. And the good news is, most people’s podcasts aren’t doing a whole lot of downloads, you don’t have a giant million person audience. The complaint box isn’t going to be like overwhelmed when you rebrand or change. Like when Alastair rebranded his show this show after 20 episodes, I’m sure it wasn’t like people banging down the door. Oh, I love that name so much. Why did you why did you change it? I already had the tattoo on my left butt cheek like why? Why did you know? That doesn’t happen.  So what we that’s a good thing. And we have to kind of stay out of our own head with that. The font, in my opinion, the first year of you podcasting is all about experimentation, there’s going to be rebranding, there’s going to be a lot of pivots and shifts. And you have to allow yourself to do that. Because really, you’re getting dialed in on what you want to talk about and say how to expertly position yourself, how to find the right person you’re trying to impact and what they need from you. And that’s going to take some time. So we have to allow ourselves some time to actually explore that. But yes, what I would do, if you’ve been doing only interviews is to go okay, we need kind of a benchmark episode where we explain a little bit of a pivot, and maybe you allude to that in your last interview style episode at the end, okay, I got something new coming next week, you’re gonna love it. It’s a solo episode. And that solo episode, you just kind of kick off, you know, it’s kind of like, almost episode one over again, where you kind of tell your story, how your story relates to the niche. And then moving forward, how you’re gonna start mixing in a little bit more of your own knowledge and expertise. So some solo episodes or coaching style episodes, or both. So you kind of have a transition to explain things. That usually helps with a content pivot like that.

Alastair McDermott  09:00

Yeah, well, that gives me the perfect segue to just tell the audience that the format of this show is going to change a little bit. As we record this, I’ve just published episode 98. I have 99 already recorded and 100 will be slightly different episode, it’s going to be like, kind of compilation. And then so from episode one-o-ne, that’s going to be season two. So the first 100 episodes that season one, season two, I’m going to change things up a little bit. I’m going to be doing some more solo episodes. And I’m also going to be doing interviews, live stream so we’re going to be recording live as opposed to this. We’re going to be we’re recording this with we’re the only people who who are here right now, but in the future for season two, I’m gonna go that way. That’s the plan at least and I’m going to also have a little break gonna have three or four week break I think between the seasons, because I think after 100 episodes, that’s okay.

Adam Schaeuble  09:58

I know I applaud you going with more solo and showing off what you got, because I know you’ve got a lot to share most of us, if I challenge every single listener, if you are a service provider, and I go, Okay, I need 52 topics, individual topics that you could talk about for at least 10 minutes, I guarantee you could knock it out, probably within an hour. And that’s one episode a week for a year 52 episodes, that’s one year of content that can be also episodes that are 10 or 15 minutes long. And you’re going to know that that’s something that’s going to allow you to keep consistent, and you’re going to really crush the content and expertly position yourself, like I said before.

Alastair McDermott  10:41

Yeah, so now I want to argue against what we’ve just said, arguing the case for interviews. So I think that there is a place for interviews. One is that where you just want to talk to people. So you, there’s some specific person you want to talk to you, for example, Alan Weiss. He’s written like 60-70 books in the consulting space, I would never get to chat with him, you know, normally, unless it was where I have a platform, and I’m able to invite him onto my platform, like a podcast. And I think that’s a great thing about podcasts allows you to talk to people who you normally wouldn’t have access to. And then the other thing is the network effect of having your guests sharing, and that is something that you won’t get with solo episodes. So if you don’t already have an audience, and you release solo episodes, you’re releasing them out into the void will how much of an audience you’re not going to get many downloads. So I think that’s kind of that’s the that’s the cons of the solo episodes. Yeah.

Adam Schaeuble  11:40

Yeah. So I think I’ve got some counterpoints to your counterpoints as well. So let’s continue the debate. So yes, I 100% agree that you’re gonna get to gain access to some very cool people via podcasting. And for me, for Podcasting Business School, it’s got to be a hell yes, big time excitement to have somebody on the show, where I’m like, Alright, this is somebody, I’ve read all their books, I’m very excited to have them on, I want to learn more from them. And I want to get this special access. So that is have guessed I will have on 100% of the time, where we need to be very careful with guess is we get in this pattern. And we feel beholden to it. We’re like, every other episode, I’ve always done an interview. So even if I do solo episodes every other week, it’s got to be an interview. And I was in that pattern up until this year. And I felt this pressure of like, I have to find somebody to interview because it’s the other week. And that isn’t good. That’s not my best content. I think it’s not good content. But it wasn’t my best when I’m scrambling, I’m like, I have to keep the pattern that I somehow feel like I have to keep. And I was like, You know what, I mean, I did a full episode about this, where I was just like, I’m not going to hold myself to do that anymore. Like, I’m going to do interviews, but it’s going to be on my terms. And I’m really excited about it. So I can bring my best. And they’re bringing their best. And I’m excited. And that comes through in the content. It’s not like I have to go find somebody to do an interview with that’s, that’s never me at my best just to fill a slot.  So yes, and the other thing we have to be very, very careful with in this space is those sneaky, sneaky sneaky PR companies that have these, quote unquote, amazing guests for us. And they’re like, and they pitch us and pitch us and pitch us in our emails. And if you podcast, if you’ve got like 12 to 15 episodes, you’re probably starting to get the emails of these PR companies going. I’ve got the ultimate guests for you, Bobby Joe and Bobby Joe wrote the book on your niche topic and blah, blah, blah. And a lot of times, they are not a good fit. And these people will pressure you and make it seem like you’re an idiot for not accepting their guest. We’ve got to be very wary of those situations where they will email you and follow up again and again, again, like we can’t just give in to get them off our back. So just be aware of that. Because that is that’s kind of a that’s probably my least favorite part of the entire podcasting ecosystem is the pushy PR agents that are trying to get us to accept their guests. Would you, how do you feel about that, Alastair?

Alastair McDermott  14:25

Yeah, I mean, I was I was just thinking about how many people have I had on who, who have actually been pitched to me. And I’m wondering, because I’ve had, so I’ve got 100, let’s say 100 episodes. Now, I think five or six of those are solos, which is not a great ratio, based on what we just talked about. So I’ve had about I think 92 or 93 guests on something around that number. And of that, I think maybe I accepted one person. So one out of nearly 100 That was pitched to me, I thought that the person was interesting enough. Apart from that, all the people I found are either authors of books that I like, or are people who I see on LinkedIn. Because I’m browsing LinkedIn and looking at LinkedIn, oh, I really liked what that person is just written there. It looks interesting. And I also admit, I’m slightly biased towards people who don’t do a lot of podcast interviews. And because I like to find people who people haven’t heard from before, and I kind of liked that idea. Now, it’s also great to get people like Chris Do, who has, you know, 2 million people following him on YouTube and Instagram and places like that. I’m like, he has a huge audience already. It’s great to talk to, you know, celebs like him. And I do like that part, because I can, I know, I wouldn’t get to chat to him. Normally, it’s only the fact that I have a platform that I can can use. But yeah, finding people who don’t go on podcast very often, and giving them a platform and chatting to them. Because like, there are people whose whose insights and voices is very interesting as well, and you don’t hear from them as often.

Adam Schaeuble  16:05

I agree with that man. And that’s the being able to showcase a new voice, like, you’ve got a purpose behind your interview, that’s, that’s the real key thing. There’s an interest, there’s a purpose, there’s a why. And it’s organic and natural, that’s very important. Now, you mentioned the guest sharing out and missing out with solo episodes, if you don’t have a guest, this is something I like to add a little dose of clarity in there for for newer podcasters with this, because a lot of us have our hearts broken, when that big person doesn’t share it out. Like they it’s just, they did the interview, they said they’re gonna share it out, and then they don’t and then we cry on our ATR 2100, you know, tears of pain, because they didn’t share it out.  So we have to keep in mind, if somebody comes on our show, the real motivation for that, as they came on our show to scoop up our audience into their audience like that’s they came on to promote and market to you so that you can potentially get into their world, they did not come on our show to be our marketing agent to promote our brand, our brand. So we have to keep that in mind.  Now, there are techniques you can use to get more shareability. Like I’m a big fan of doing a follow up Instagram live interview, that way, they don’t have to do any promotion whatsoever, the algorithm takes care of it all. So doing something like that does to kind of leverage their audience or like LinkedIn live or, you know, something like that. But yeah, and honestly, to me, like the podcast itself is like theirs. If we do our SEO correctly, you’re going new people will find you if the show is named correctly, if you have the correct host description, with keywords, and then individual episode titles, you can still do so episodes if like I used to word podcasting tips a lot. And if you go on Apple podcast, Spotify, and just type in the term podcasting tips, I will be one of the top 10 shows that pops up. And I’ve got a shot at getting new listeners and now that individual episodes can pull up in Google searches and things like that, that will really work with the sole episodes strategy. So that’s that’s something to keep in mind as well. Like, it’s you’re not totally screwed if you don’t do interviews and vice versa.

Alastair McDermott  18:26

Yeah. And then the other thing is, most of your guests may not share your episodes. That’s that’s my experience, I’d say, I don’t know, probably, probably about 30% of guests, actively share the episodes. And I probably should follow up more to get them to to request that they share a bit more. But again, I don’t want to bug people either. They weren’t good enough to give me an hour of their time. So you know, I do appreciate that.

Adam Schaeuble  18:57

I have a joke that I play on my friends that come on my show. And like I do, I’ll do a follow up. And I’ll go hey, just so your episode will be out here a few assets. And just so you know, if you don’t share it out, here are the alternate assets that I will share. And it’ll be like their face on some like weird looking body or something like I make him look terrible. And if obviously, it’s a joke, I would never do that. But I’m like, you never know, you know, just so that’s it with all like the rephase images and stuff you can do now the magic of that. It’s it’s pretty fun. And my friends get a little little chuckle out of it.

Alastair McDermott  19:35

Yeah, one and so you talked about creating assets so so what kind of assets would you recommend? So we’re talking about the graphics, the promotional graphics, a great random episode and creating those and giving those to the guests when the episode goes live to share. What kind of what kind of assets would you create?

Adam Schaeuble  19:51

Okay, I’m gonna pull a tip from my my pod pals Luis and Fonzie from the Content is Profit podcast, they are they are like the best at creating assets that like Okay, so here’s what happens. You go on their show Aleister and they dig into your brand, and they find out your brand colors, your brand fonts, everything about your brand. And every they do video assets. So it’d be like little video assets of like what we’re doing right now and but what they’ll do is use your font, your brand colors, everything. And it looks like it’s your brand, it looks like it’s on your show, not their show. And everybody shares out and they’ll create 20 video assets of all these different clips and everything looks so good. And they’re fit for Instagram reels, Instagram Stories, LinkedIn, wherever you want to share it. They create all these assets with your colors. Like I’m, I remember when I shared one of their video, the very first video when I was on their show, I got so many compliments of people going Wow, your new branding looks great. I was like, it’s not mine. It was I was on this other show. It looks like my brand. And he’d be like, well, you really stepped up your game. This looks a lot better. I’m like, Oh, God. So but that’s also what they do as a business. They they help people create those assets for themselves. It’s brilliant marketing.

Alastair McDermott  21:21

Yeah.

Adam Schaeuble  21:22

But that

Alastair McDermott  21:23

it’s everybody shares. Marketing. That’s, that’s fantastic for them. Yeah.

Adam Schaeuble  21:27

Yes, yeah. So if you can make it really vibe with their brand and make it look good, video always wins. Funny, always wins something different if you could get them telling a story that they don’t normally tell if you know something that they love to kind of nerd out on. Like I interviewed Gretchen Rubin, who’s one of my favorite authors. And she you know, my talks about the normal things she talks about on our podcast and this and that, I got her to go nuts about Game of Thrones. And she went on and on and on for like 15 minutes about Game of Thrones, I’ve got all these clips and all this stuff. And she loved it. And she was like doing her little like, mental assessment of each character of what what they are on her little system and like Jon Snow is, is this and you know Tywin Lannister is this. So like it’s it was really fun.  I did same thing with Michael Hyatt. I got him talking about his Native American flute that he likes to play. And I asked him if he did drugs while he played his name. Like Michael Hyatt is like one of the most straight laced dudes you’ve ever met in your life. About that? And yeah, I was like, Michael, do you do drugs and dance around your underwear when you play? Your Native American flute is like not yet I might try it. I was like, Oh, that’s awesome. So if you can just get them to kind of take a hard left turn into something that they normally don’t talk about, and then make a clip of that where it’s a little bit funny and different. They’ll share that. Also, it’s different side, as long as it doesn’t make them look bad. But you know, that’s usually not a good marketing idea.

Alastair McDermott  23:01

No, no, no, that’s not. Okay. So let me ask you the question that every podcaster has for you. How do I get more downloads?

Adam Schaeuble  23:13

Yes. So the first thing we have to realize is like, where do we stand with our downloads currently? And then we have to kind of safeguard our download measurement a little bit. So the first thing we need to realize is like, what is a decent download number? Because we hear everybody talking about millions of downloads for Joe Rogan. And he’s making all this money and all these giant shows. But what’s what are real numbers? So the first real number that I have my listeners to my clients shoot for is 125 downloads per episode. So that’s like, if Alastair and I record this episode and release it today, how many downloads is it have 30 days from today, the 30-day mark is the is the measurement stick? If that episode has 125 downloads, we are a top 50% Five-zero top 50% podcast. Alright, and that’s mind blowing for a lot of podcasters. Because like, wow, that’s not that many. Actually, I’m kind of close to that. Maybe they’re at 67 downloads per episode, like wow, I’m almost halfway this is great. Because before that same person was beating themselves up because they weren’t doing 1000s or hundreds of 1000s or millions of downloads is like everybody seems to be doing millions of downloads, how come I only have 67? Not the case, and you’re close to top 50%.  The next mark that I have people shoot for is 1000. That’ll put you in the top 20%. If you do 1000 downloads per episode, at the 30 day mark post release, you’re going to be in the top 20% of all podcasts. So those are two benchmarks that you can shoot for. Because if we get in our head and beat ourselves up about not being at whatever huge number yet, you’ll probably quit podcasting and that I’m not going to help you grow your show at all if you quit. So that’s that’s kind of setting your expectations up.  Now when we talk about growing more, the we have to look at two buckets. All right, one bucket is new listener acquisition. The second bucket is keeping our current listeners listening, like current listener maintenance is just like having customers. You don’t want to just put all your attention on getting new customers and then ignore the people that are already paying you. That’s bad business. Same thing with podcasting. How do you keep How do you give your current listeners a compelling reason to keep listening? So we look at those two buckets and we go, okay, what’s the easier one with growth? It’s like keeping the current listeners listening. How do we create more binge worthy content? How you know, actually talking to these people and going What do you want more of what are your pain points? Who do you want me to interview? What topics do you want me to cover? Making those people a part of your show people listen to podcasts in business school, I have a new podcast or introduce my show at the beginning, every single episode. At the end, I’ve been doing episode recommendations from listeners. So I’ll kick it over, and suddenly be like, I’ve been listening for three years. And my favorite episode is 187 because of blah, blah, blah, and you should listen to it too. So I make them a part of my show that helps elevate them into that that superfan status and they’re more likely to keep listening because that’s a pretty cool thing.  So how do we keep them listening a lot of my marketing strategies with like social media, and my newsletter strategies, that’s meant to keep my current listeners listening. I’m not like, on Instagram going, I’m gonna have a whole bunch of new people discover me on Instagram today. It’s more of like, whoever is currently following me. They know they found my show somehow. And they know I’m on Instagram and they want to connect on Instagram. That keeps my current podcast listeners listening now. When it comes to new listener acquisition, I’m really really big on marketing with podcast player app ads. Alastair, if I’m not mistaken, I believe you found me on an overcast banner ad that I remember when we first talked. I think that’s what happened is, is that true, or is that not true?

Alastair McDermott  27:17

I think so. And I also know because that because the memory of that may get may get clouded, because I was also talking to you later by purchasing overcast ads.

Adam Schaeuble  27:28

Yeah. So.

Alastair McDermott  27:29

Yeah, I think I think originally, I saw you on there because yeah,

Adam Schaeuble  27:32

You listen on overcast, right, like you. Okay, okay. I’m almost positive. Because, yeah. So on overcast FM, that’s an app just like Spotify or Apple podcasts, and people can listen, but we can also run banner ads, and target. Like if Alastair was listening to a business podcast, I can target business podcast category, and run an ad and he can see that banner ad pop up, he clicks on it, and he hits that subscribe button and all of a sudden, new subscribers. So when it comes to new listener acquisition, that’s one of my main strategies. I do zero ads on Instagram or Facebook. I like to advertise to podcast listeners that are currently listening to a podcast that is way more efficient to me. And they tend to be way less expensive. As far as like a cost per acquisition. Then we got to look at other people’s podcasts. How do we leverage that? So me being on this show with Alastair, like, maybe a few of you are like, Hey, I’m gonna check out podcasting business school, and I’ll scoop up and acquire a few new listeners.  So doing strategies like that. I’m big on, like I mentioned earlier, podcast, promo intro swap. So if somebody has a business podcast, they introduce my show, and then I introduce their show. But we each get to shout out our individual shows on the other person’s that’s like a little ad inside of someone else’s podcast. And those work really well also. So I think, to kind of summarize that that lengthy soliloquy there, we got to separate into the two the two buckets, current listener, compelling reasons to keep listening, and then new listener acquisition, and then get out of our own head with the actual numbers we need to be shooting for.

Alastair McDermott  29:18

Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s true as well. And I guess another thing we can talk about is you don’t actually need all that many subscribers or downloads, listeners to actually make money. And that’s it, because that’s a whole different story as well. But I just want to share some real numbers because because I have my spreadsheet, my podcast ads spreadsheet open front of me. And so I launched this show in April 2021. And in July, I ran some ads. And in July, August, sorry June, July, August, and September, I ran some ads on overcast. On a another app called Podcast Addict. So overcast is a player which is on iOS. So it’s on iPhone. And it’s my favorite player for podcasts. It does some nice stuff to do with speed and sound. And it’s just a nice player to use. Podcast addicts, I think is a good player on on Android. So I spent in total $1,980, I got 5700 clicks, and I got 174 subscribers. So the average cost per subscriber was $14.70. So that’s, that’s how much I spent. And that’s, um, I decided to do that towards the start. So I created the budget. And I, because what I wanted to do was I wanted once I had a kind of a critical mass of episodes. So I had enough episodes on there, they weren’t they weren’t looking at an empty feed. I wanted to have something there for them to actually binge listen to.

Adam Schaeuble  30:53

That’s Important. Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  30:54

Yeah. And so then I started and I also in overcast, because you can select the category that you want to, to appear in. And it’s quite expensive to the way overcast was that you advertised for a month in one of the categories. And so I didn’t pick the business category. So I picked education, fiction, history and arts. So it’s interesting to see and I’ve got the numbers. So I can see like how much per subscriber it was. And actually education was the best one for me, it was only $6 per subscriber for me in education. So

Adam Schaeuble  31:25

That is consistent with my experience. Also, that’s very interesting. I’ve done very well in that education category compared to business even.

Alastair McDermott  31:33

Yeah, I think we need to delete this bit out of the episode, because I don’t do many people to know that. And just to give a contrast, my most expensive category was on Podcast Addict, and the business category. It was $36 per subscriber for me. Yeah, so that was using pretty much exactly the same advertising texts. So I’d say it’s comparing like for like,

Adam Schaeuble  31:56

Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  31:57

So so that’s, I mean, that’s what it’s like to to pay for, for subscribers on? Well, not paying directly for subscribers, you’re not, you know, it’s not, you know, you’re not guaranteed when you run those ads, but, you know, with the numbers. Yeah, I find it was about $15 per subscriber.

Adam Schaeuble  32:15

Yep. And there are little things that help or hurt in there too. Like if you’re, if you have keywords, and are hot button terms, and the name of your show like this is where the name of the show is really important with the banner ads, because if it’s kind of an obscure title, people aren’t curious about it, and they won’t click on it. Where I’ve got a very direct title of my show, podcasting business school, you have a pretty good idea about what that shows about. I’ve got another show called podcast launch tips. It’s like, okay, I know what that’s about. And that helps a ton when it comes to especially when it comes to banner ads, if you have The Awesome Alastair show and be like, Oh, no, that’s about like, that’s, they’re probably not going to click on it. But if you have SEO Marketing, for our SEO optimization for podcasters, or how to create courses for coaches and consultants, or something like a name like that the right person is gonna get curious, and they’ll click on it. So that will help with the cost per acquisition as well.

Alastair McDermott  33:15

Yeah, and that is the one area where my rebrand actually probably hurts me a little bit, because it was Marketing for Consultants, which is very straightforward. And changing that over to The Recognized Authority that’s a little bit more ambiguous. It’s about authority, but somebody looking at that might think that, you know, it’s about a recognized authority in a particular field. So, but overall, I’m still much happier with the branding. So notchback. Okay, so what about coaching episodes? Can we talk about that a little bit? Because I think there’s a lot to dig into there. When you when you’re talking to people about doing coaching episodes can like, what do you advise them to do?

Adam Schaeuble  33:51

Yeah, so I do what I refer to as a podcast audit episode every Friday on my feed. So I release usually solo content on Tuesdays, sometimes in an interview, and then Fridays, always a podcast audit. So I invite one of my listening, one of my listeners from my audience, onto the show for a 30 minute, free coaching session. All right, and I don’t mark it as a free coaching session, because I did that with my health podcast, which I launched back in 2015. And I was so excited because I had eight people sign up, I’m like, Oh, wow, they’re all gonna become clients. I just know it. And none of them showed up. I got no showed eight straight times, all day long. And it was just very depressing. So that was my first lesson learned and this little sub niche of the space is don’t call it a free coaching. Don’t call it a free q&a. Don’t call it a free anything, label it as something that has perceived value. So at least in the States, the word audit has some like fear factor. Like there’s like your thing of a tax audit, like oh, man, but it It kind of infers like a deep dive like we’re getting into the nitty gritty, which we do.  So I call that a podcast audit. And I started inviting people on because I wanted to show off my expert positioning, and I’m doing that in solo. But I can do that even better. When I’m recording, live coaching, or consulting and going, this is what I do it when people pay me, and one of the pro tips that I have with this is you need to make it as specific as possible. So the podcast audit, I let people choose if they want to focus on Download growth, monetization or audience engagement. And we pick one of those lanes, and we go and we go deep on that it’s not just open asked me anything sort of questions, because that gets too watered down. And I’d rather go deep instead of wide when it comes to coaching style episode. And it also kind of, I know some of you that have that do coaching, you’re like, Well, I don’t want to give this away for free, then they won’t pay me for anything. So if you niche it down into one micro sub topic, they’re gonna have all the questions on all the other things, and that’s what they pay you for. So this is kind of an appetizer to actual paid coaching or consulting.

Alastair McDermott  36:13

Yeah, I love I love that angle. That’s, that’s really smart. Because the other thing that it saves you from is having all your episodes sounding the same.

Adam Schaeuble  36:21

Yeah, yeah, you’re exactly right. And, and even, you know, I’ve got three different niches that are not need to but subtopics to dive into download growth, monetization audits, engagement. I’ve been doing these for almost two years in a row every Friday. So I’m talking about those topics a lot. But the unique thing is that everybody’s angle and everybody’s story, and everybody’s experience level is just a little bit different. So even if we’re talking about download growth, download growth of the health podcast versus a daily news show completely different. And so we can approach those angles from unique perspectives. And the cool thing is, one of the other reasons I went away from interviews is that when you look at my numbers, my solo episodes are king, they get by far the most downloads, my podcast audit episodes, almost always do double the amount of downloads as an interview. And that said something to me, I was like, wow, because it kind of is still an interview. But I mean, there’s another person on there with me. So it’s not just my voice.  So it kind of takes the place of an interview in the space, I guess. But that really spoke to me, I was like, wow, these people are asking questions that my other listeners have, and they can’t get enough of this stuff. So yeah, so when you start doing these, you want to roll them out. And the more you can get out, the better because what will happen is that some of those people that sit in that seat and that coaching Hot Seat, they’ll be like, Yeah, I need to hire you, like you gave me the appetizer here. I need, how do I pay you like those conversations will happen and turns into a sales situation afterwards. But that’s not necessarily the expectation. But that’s a nice little bonus, what will happen is, let’s say, you start releasing these once a week, and you’re three to six months down the road, you’re going to start having a situation where people sign up for these, but they listened to 10 of them already before they come and sit in that seat. Those people convert in my own experience at an 80% level, if they’ve listened to 10 podcast audits, and they come on for a podcast audit. Eight out of 10 of those people are paying me for coaching, because they’ve already kind of been marketed to like they know what I can do. Now I show them I can do specifically for them to like, okay, it only makes sense to just accelerate this thing. And it’s funny. It gets kind of weird for me, because at the beginning, before I hit the record button, a lot of times people go, Hey, let’s save some time at the end because I need to hire you. I’m like, okay, cool. That was a great sales call. Or even worse, it gets even weirder. If they start asking me about hiring me as I’m recording the episode. I’m like, I gotta have like a safe word. I’m like, no, no, no, no, let’s not talk about that right now. I don’t want people to think that that’s this is a sales call. It’s not what it is. So you know, good problems to have people begging you to, to give you their credit card in the middle of an episode recording. But that’s how powerful these are. It’s pretty it’s pretty darn cool.

Alastair McDermott  39:30

Yeah. And so there’s, there’s lots of things I love about that. So first of all, there’s the meta point of it’s great that I have this podcast so I can come on and get this free coaching for you from you. Now, then there’s the like that as a as a as a tactic. It just sounds sounds very good or as a strategy. I think that that’s a great, great way that’s something I need to incorporate more. You also mentioned something in there and I know we’re we got about 10 minutes left. You mentioned audience engagement and I just want to ask you about that and and get your get your thoughts on overall like, how do we get more audience engagement, why it’s important?

Adam Schaeuble  40:08

Okay, audience engagement, one of the three sectors of like the podcasting Holy Grail, we got the downloads, we got the monetization, we’ve got the engagement. And I’ll just give you something very simple. The number one mistake that almost every single podcast or makes around audience engagement is that we know we want more of it. But we, we put content out there, and then we sit back and we wait for the engagement to happen. And that’s a huge mistake. I am a big believer in what I call initiating engagement. Let me give you an example. And this is a little test that anybody can do right now.  So I want you to go to your social media platform of choice. Maybe it’s LinkedIn, maybe it’s Instagram, mine’s Instagram. So if you guys follow me at podcasting, business school, on Instagram, what will happen is I go in, and I’ll check, I’ll go Okay, so for this challenge, you’re gonna go in and check. Let’s say it’s Instagram, and you find the last 10 people that followed you. And I want you to hit the little voice recorder button and send a voice message that says, if so, if I was doing this right now, like, what’s up Alastair to buddy Adam from podcasting, business school, I just want to say thank you for following my account here on Instagram. I’m super excited to connect with you. I am here to engage, I want to just let you know I’m not a bot. I’m a real person. If you have podcasting, questions about launch growth, monetization, hit me up, I’m here to connect. If you’ve never listened to my show, I recommend starting with episode 281. I’ll send a separate message with that link. That’s where you should start. If you have any questions, tag me in, have a great Tuesday. Talk to you soon.  So boom, that took less than 60 seconds. You do 10 of those. You are out there actively marketing your show. And these people will be blown away. Because you’re out there initiating engagement where they may already listen to your show. They may have just found you in the Instagram search engine. Who knows but now what you’ll notice is now there’s a conversation back and forth. Oh, I listened to it. That was awesome. And oh, we should come on for a podcast on it episode should come on the show. Here’s the link, boom, now they’re on the show. So they went from casual Instagram follower into listen to the show into on the show and like two, three steps. And maybe they convert over to a customer or maybe they become a superfan, which is also good. But that all stemmed from me just reaching out and not sitting back and waiting for them to come to me. I went to them and initiated a conversation. And these people start showing up in your DMS they’ll start showing up. These are people that will comment on your posts, just because you started up. So we have to look at opportunities to do that. Instead of sitting back and going I’m not getting engagement. I wonder why. Because it just for people just getting started or people with smaller followings. We’ve got to get out there and start the fire, not sit back and wait for the fire to come to us. So that’s that’s a simple little hack or a challenge that we can do to get some engagement stirred up.

Alastair McDermott  43:06

Yeah. And I think this is something that I find a bit harder because I’m a bit more of an introvert. I find the outreach stuff doesn’t come naturally to me. And it’s something I’m trying to try to beat into my own head. I got to do a bit more.

Adam Schaeuble  43:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  43:20

But when I hear you, you know, I’m clearly like, you rhymed off that that script so, so easily. You’ve said that so many times, you’ve recorded it so many times. You know, so so,

Adam Schaeuble  43:31

Thousands of times, you’re like, Yeah, I’ve done that probably 20 times a day already. Like, it’s it’s,

Alastair McDermott  43:36

Yeah, you see, that’s, that’s the thing I think that is important for for people who are listening to this to take away is that is that, you know, people who are out there and getting big download numbers and getting engaged in things like that, like they’re putting the work in, like you are putting the work in there. You know, it’s not, you know, you’re not sitting back and just waiting for it to happen. So I think that’s, that’s really good point. I think that we should gloss over the monetization thing. I think, basically, for both of us the philosophy is sell our own services, rather than try to monetize through sponsorship, things like that. It’s far more profitable. Yeah.

Adam Schaeuble  44:13

Yes. I concur, Doctor?

Alastair McDermott  44:15

Yeah. And this is why, you know, I knew that when I had you on that, that, you know, we would be agreeing about a lot of things because I think a lot of my ideas around podcasting is comes from listening to you and speaking to you. So thank you. So, okay, I’ve got four questions. You know, I’ve got four questions. I always ask, what is the number one tip that you would give to somebody who wants to build their authority?

Adam Schaeuble  44:36

Get that podcast idea out of your brain and stop podcasts and eating and start and launch that sucker? Like, I think, you know, being somebody that has their own media company via podcasting, there may be no better way to really own your authority. So that’d be my tip.

Alastair McDermott  44:53

Yeah. And the media company concept. I think that’s, you know, it’s a show we can choose what we do with it and it’s applied. form that we can use for for ourselves.

Adam Schaeuble  45:02

Exactly.

Alastair McDermott  45:04

Can you tell us briefly about a business mistake or failure that you’ve experienced what you learned from it?

Adam Schaeuble  45:09

Well, for me, it was the original name of I’ve launched three podcasts. I’ve had to rebrand three podcasts actually, I’ve rebranded four times and one of them I rebranded twice like that’s with podcasting. We get so creative with our names and it becomes an inside joke that’s only funny to us and then all of a sudden, like, oh my god, I’m a Marketing I’m not even marketing the right people can’t don’t even have a chance of finding me so like my original name of my podcasting Business School brand was casting the pod which was in it a play on words haha, funny me. Nobody found it. Nobody got the joke. So that was a major mistake in the podcasting space. And now funny thing is, I screwed this up so bad, but I learned how to fix it really well, and people pay me to help them rebrand. It turned into a plus.

Alastair McDermott  45:56

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Is there a business book or resource that’s been important for you? Or that you’d recommend?

Adam Schaeuble  46:02

Yes, I love “Profit First” by Mike Michalowicz wits. If you have your own business, and you suck at like, where, you know, $1,000 came in? How much can I pay myself? How much needs to be saved away for taxes? How much goes to operating expense? How much should I save for retirement or this or that, like that. Book is amazing. And it’s like the Bible of business for me.

Alastair McDermott  46:27

Awesome. I love it. And on the lighter side of things, do you read fiction at all?

Adam Schaeuble  46:31

Yes, it’s important to me man. Like I can’t just be if I read before I go to bed and it’s it’s like a book on business or something. It gets the Idea Factory going and I don’t sleep. That’s a problem. I love the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. I love them. I’m going through all of them in chronological order. It’s that just is it just lets my brain kind of cool down at the end of the day. And I sleep well. And I dream about like solving crimes and beating people up so…

Alastair McDermott  47:04

And I love the series on on Amazon Prime Amazon Prime the video says,

Adam Schaeuble  47:09

Oh, yeah.

Alastair McDermott  47:09

And it’s way better than the movies.

Adam Schaeuble  47:12

Yeah, with Tom Cruise. That was terrible. Yeah.

Alastair McDermott  47:15

The worst casting ever.

Adam Schaeuble  47:17

Yeah. Jack Reacher is supposed to be like a six foot five 250 pound badass and Tom Cruise. He’s like four foot 11?

Alastair McDermott  47:26

Yes, we could rant about that all day. Yeah, I also love reading fiction at night for the same reasons he was I kind of find it like meditative. It stops, it stops the Marines. It focuses down the brain and helps you to kind of slow down. I’m the same if I read if I read business books at night. I just stay awake all night. So cool. Well, Adam, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a pleasure to chat. Where can people find out more if they want to check you out?

Adam Schaeuble  47:52

Yeah, my main hub is my website, which is www.podcastingbusiness.school, podcasting, business, dot school, all the things all my free resources, my podcast, Instagram, all that kind of makes out from there. So yeah, come check me out. Come hang out. And I’d love to connect.

Alastair McDermott  48:10

Cool. And check out the podcast podcasting business school in your podcast player. And links to everything will be in the show notes. Adam Schaeuble, thank you so much for coming on.

Adam Schaeuble  48:19

Alistair. Two for two in the name. Well done. Super, thank you very much.

Alastair McDermott  48:22

Cheers.  Thanks for listening. If you gained any insights or tips from this episode, please leave a review. It would really help us out. And it’s very easy to do. Just click on the review link in the show notes on your device and it will bring you straight to a page with options for the device that you’re listening on. Thanks. It really helps. It’s much appreciated.

Voiceover  48:48

Thanks for listening to The Recognized Authority with Alastair McDermott. Subscribe today, and don’t miss an episode. Find out more at TheRecognizedAuthority.com