Behind the Scenes of Podcast Success: What Works for Launching and Growing Your Show with CEO, Anne Claessen
Anne Claessen, CEO of Cashflow Podcasting and an expert podcast launch coach, has helped over 100 business owners elevate their podcasts. In this episode, Anne explains why podcasts aren’t just a passing trend but a powerful, enduring way to build meaningful connections with your audience.
How can your podcast attract clients, strengthen relationships, and fuel your business growth? It’s not about chasing viral fame or millions of downloads—it’s about connecting with the right people, delivering value, and growing your business in a way that feels authentic, impactful, and sustainable.
Listen To The Full Episode Here:
What You’ll Learn:
Why podcasts are great for building trust with your audience.
How to make sure your podcast works well with your business.
The importance of sticking to a regular schedule.
Mistakes to avoid when creating a podcast.
How podcasts can help you find new clients.
Tips to turn your podcast into a powerful business tool.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“Podcasting is quite a unique marketing tool for business owners because it’s your voice… People can hear you. If you have video, they can see you. It’s long-form content. And all of that together is just a great trust builder.”
“Even if 10 people listen, if one or two of those people are interested to work with them, cool, it’s worth it. So they also don’t need those millions of listeners. It’s just they need the right people to listen and then the correct type of content to serve those people.”
“None of our clients are true crime or comedy, and most of them have way smaller audiences than the top names that folks have heard of in podcasting, and yet they’re still plenty profitable with investing in doing the podcast.”
Resources:
Anne Claessen: Book A Call | LinkedIn
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Welcome to Cashflow Podcasting, where business owners reveal how their podcasts have supercharged their success. My podcast completely transformed my training business, so I've seen firsthand the magic that podcasts can work. And here's the best part. You don't need millions of downloads to boost your business's revenue and impact. Let our guests show you how.
Pete Mockaitis: Anne, welcome.
Anne Claessen: Thanks, Pete.
Pete Mockaitis: I'm super excited to hear your wisdom on Cashflow Podcasting. We tend to chat with individual business owners and hear their perspective with podcasting and how that's worked for them. And you've got a cool perspective because you have spoken to many business owners about their podcasts.
Could you maybe share with us—do you have any idea if we had to take a stab at guesstimating, how many total business podcasts have you coached and or audited during your reign?
Anne Claessen: Ooh, that's a few—quite a few.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah. Well, I think we're in the dozens.
Anne Claessen: Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm probably over a hundred.
Pete Mockaitis: Okay, more than a dozen.
Anne Claessen: Yeah.
Pete Mockaitis: That's amazing. Well, that's so fun. It's like you have a wealth of knowledge and expertise and experience here. So I'd love to start broad, if we could, in terms of you and I are believers that podcasts can be a helpful long-term asset for businesses. Maybe we'll just start super broad and say, why is that?
How does that work in practice?
Anne Claessen: I think podcasting is quite a unique marketing tool for business owners because it's your voice, right? So people can hear you. If you have video, they can see you. It's long-form content, and all of that together is just a great trust builder. I think in that way, podcasting is so unique over social media, short-form content, written content.
There's so many different ways to express your thoughts and experience and your expertise. But I think podcasting is just, it's really cool because people can actually listen to you, and they can feel—because they're listening to you and maybe even see your face. They feel like they got to know you a little bit better with every episode, and that's what's really cool.
Pete Mockaitis: It is. I'm thinking about, I think the first podcaster that I had listened to at length and then met in person was Pat Flynn. And I've enjoyed his show for quite a long time. And then I saw him and I was like, “Whoa.” And it's like, I don't know.
It's sort of nervous. This is a celebrity. What do I say? What do I not say? It was like, “You're Pat Flynn.” Oh, he knows that he's Pat Flynn. And yet it was super cool. And he said it well, he said that people will say to him all the time. “I feel like I know you.” I think it was Pat who said this, and he said, “You do, but I don't know you.”
And so, and that's the honest reality of, I guess, this parasocial situation. And then getting to chat with him and to know him better. It was super cool, and it speaks volumes that, “Hey, it was a trust builder for me. I've bought plenty of stuff from him.”
Anne Claessen: Yeah.
Pete Mockaitis: Over the years.
Anne Claessen: Exactly. And it's also, it's not just you who feels like, who thinks he knows, or like who does know Pat Flynn, but it's like building trust at scale, right?
Everyone who's listening to your podcast, especially when it's several episodes and when they listen throughout the whole episode, that really builds a relationship without you even knowing it. Like you just create one episode, well, ideally a few episodes, but then hundreds, thousands of people can listen to that, and you're building trust with all of those people all at once.
Pete Mockaitis: So I think that's well said. So the trust building is huge and many, dare I say most, businesses benefit from lots of additional people trusting them, that fair to say?
Anne Claessen: For sure. Yeah. Even if it's just brand awareness, like every business wants brand awareness, and everyone, especially every business, wants to be liked.
Pete Mockaitis: Certainly. And so I was thinking then which businesses then, given this, are most poised to benefit from having podcasts and which ones might see minimal benefit from having podcasts?
Anne Claessen: The biggest impact will be when you have a high-ticket offer. If you sell coaching services, or we have a lot of financial advisors that we work with, one client—one new client—is worth a lot for these businesses. And in that case, it's relatively easy to make a podcast profitable.
If you sell a $10 ebook, on the other hand, you need to sell a lot of $10 ebooks to make your podcast profitable and kind of like worth the energy, time, monetary investment.
But if you sell a service that is, I don't know, a higher ticket, then even one client can have that effect on your business. So then, in that case, if you then build trust at scale, that's just a really good win. It's a great marketing tool for those businesses.
And it's also more important, of course, before someone's going to pay a few thousand dollars, they probably want to know who you are and what you do. And when it's a lower ticket item, it's just less important.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah, that tracks really well. In fact, we even had Caleb on the show say exactly that. We get one business client a year, pays for the service, so, and we're getting way more than that. And then there's lots of sort of intangibles on top of that. So certainly, trust building, high ticket, and those things tend to go together in terms of you're less likely to want to spend a lot of money with somebody that you don't trust.
And I would say, as well, it was that coaches, financial advisors, something in the zone of expertise seems to really shine for businesses having podcasts. As well as I would say some differentiated. If someone had a strictly commodity offer in which folks are just going to get the lowest price thing there is, and there's not much room for differentiation.
I'm thinking about if you have just sort of like a very basic agricultural product, like you are farming soybeans or corn. And we got Brian with Farmland Stocks, who is doing agricultural-related podcast. But if you have something, maybe it's a government contracting situation where it doesn't matter how much the buyer likes or trusts you, it's just sort of like, this is the rigid procurement process by which we follow to buy stuff.
Then that's probably not going to do a whole lot for you. Or am I thinking about it wrong? What are your thoughts, Anne?
Anne Claessen: No, I think you're absolutely right. I think in that case it is less important, but even then I think a podcast could be worth it, but it would be more maybe a personal brand that someone could start a podcast for, because that's still really important for people who are very career-oriented.
So there's a lot of different ways that podcasts can work for businesses, for your career as a professional. But we mostly work with coaches and financial advisors because it's just that huge impact. Like I said, if you have to sell a $10 ebook a million times, then you need a huge audience, which is not impossible at all, but it just takes a lot longer.
So it takes a lot of upfront investment in time, money, energy before you get there, before it's really worth it. Or if you want to start more of an influencer brand where the podcast is the thing that you want to sell. Also absolutely not impossible, but it's usually not who we work with because it just takes a while and our clients, they want that quicker win maybe also, but also that positive return on investment is so important because they are business owners in the end.
Pete Mockaitis: Certainly. And it's a hard game if your show is more entertainment-y, which is sort of tricky for, because from a consumer perspective, I think a lot of consumers assume, Oh, a podcast, like I tell people, “Oh, you're a podcaster.” And they think that podcasters make money via advertisements. And that is true of the largest podcasts because that becomes economically pretty easy in terms of they don't need to think of an offer that people just show up and they want to sell a better helper, athletic greens or kind of whatever the thing may be.
And that's hard because you have to have a huge audience. But if what you're trafficking in is, say, true crime or comedy, then that tends to work, but none of our clients are true crime or comedy, and most of them have way smaller audiences than the top names that folks have heard of in podcasting, and yet they're still plenty profitable with investing in doing the podcast.
Anne Claessen: Absolutely. I mean, for our clients, even if 10 people listen, if one or two of those people are interested to work with them, cool, it's worth it. So they also don't need those millions of listeners. It's just they need the right people to listen and then the correct type of content to serve those people.
“Okay. This is what we offer. This is why you should work with us.” And then also the next step.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah. Well, I think about our client Kayse Gehret with ‘Microdosing for Healing.’ And as we talk about what makes an ideal setup for a podcast and business to be successful, it really tracks that. Oh, it makes sense that she said about half of her clients have come through the podcast because that's an environment where, wow, trust is quite important.
You don't want the wrong person giving you the wrong microdosing advice. That could be a very serious problem. Yes. You absolutely want to have tremendous trust in that person. And then when you hear Kayse talk to all of the luminaries in the field and then share her own smart thoughts along the way, I mean, if you have any interest in that domain whatsoever, I think you walk away thinking, “Okay, wow, Kayse really knows her stuff.”
She has offers, programs for people who want to know this stuff. It seems like if I want to know the stuff, this would be a fine thing to just go ahead and purchase.
Anne Claessen: Yeah, absolutely. And what we did with Kayse, which I think worked really well for her, is that we made sure that the podcast is everywhere in her business and her business is everywhere in her podcast.
So we made sure it's really connected, and we built one ecosystem of podcast and business and her offers. So that it's not, okay, podcast on one side, business on the other side, and then sometimes we mention the business. No, it's all about the same thing. It's all about her microdosing offers. And like you said, she interviews guests.
But she makes sure to also add her own experience and her own thoughts on the subject matter. So that she is also seen as the expert, even though it's an interview podcast. So she's been really strategic about that and we talked about that a lot before starting a podcast. Like as an, especially an interview podcast, you want to make sure that you're not just a reporter asking the questions and then that's it.
Because then, I mean, you want also the guests to be the star of the show, but you also want to make sure if it is a business podcast that you're seen as the expert as well on your own expertise. So I think it is super important to be very strategic in that way. And that's what we did with Casey and it worked really well for her.
Pete Mockaitis: Mm-hmm. I like that a lot. And with regard to the offers, I think it's fair to say in my own experience and that of the many podcasts that have come and gone, if your goal is financially oriented or business-related with the podcast, because some people just want to make art. They just want to talk to people about stuff they think is cool and hey, more power to them.
I think that's a beautiful thing in the world that is now possible. But if folks do have an eye towards the financial angle of the podcast, my impression is you're vastly more likely to see a financial return if you already have successful offers. People buy it, and they like it, and they tell their friends about it currently in your business life, and then adding a podcast onto it as opposed to the opposite.
I'm going to try to build up an audience and then figure out what they want and make it and sell it to them. I think the first path is vastly more probable to results in financial success. What are your thoughts there?
Anne Claessen: You'll definitely see faster results. We've had some clients in the past who used the podcast as more of a market research tool, which it's a great tool for it because you can literally see the numbers.
Okay. This is what my audience is interested in. This is what they listen to. This is how long they listen. You've got a lot of data actually that you can use for market research. And it also gives you an opportunity to talk to people who would maybe otherwise not talk to you because you have that podcast, right?
You can ask people on as a guest. So that's a really powerful tool for that as well. But in terms of monetary results, I mean, yes, the financial results are much, much quicker if you have an offer, if you already know it works, and if you do know it works, and like you already have clients, you can also ask maybe some previous clients on the podcast, share some case studies that way, that content is It's so powerful.
It confirms really well, and it shows people, okay, well, this person worked with the host of the podcast. They had amazing results. Okay, cool. And they also, for the guests who they have on then, they hear their voice, see their face, really hear their story in long-form content. So maybe in 30 minutes, maybe 60 minutes of, okay, how was it to work with this person?
I mean, that content is just gold for business owners.
Pete Mockaitis: Absolutely. And I think you and I have both had the experience where we are being sold something and we think, “Oh, this is kind of interesting. Could I chat with some of your previous clients just to kind of hear what their experience is?” And I don't know about you, but my experience of that is with like, “Oh yeah, I think I could probably maybe find someone for you. Let me reach out to them and make sure that's okay with them and then get their info.”
And then maybe you successfully connect with that person and maybe you don't. But then if you have it just ready to go, it's like, “Oh yeah, I could find someone for you to talk to, or you could just listen to these three audios or watch these three videos right away and get a feel for that.”
It's like, “Oh, well, that's actually much easier.” And I could do that on my own time without having to schedule anything or having anybody down. And that's pretty cool.
Anne Claessen: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Pete Mockaitis: All right. So trust building at scale. That's really cool. Market research. That's nifty. I'm also interested in how folks sometimes use podcasts with a view that it might not necessarily be about the listener becoming a customer, but rather the guest becomes a customer or partner or referral affiliate, some kind of other relationship building goodness.
Can you tell us how this unfolds in practice?
Anne Claessen: Yes, for sure. So the cool thing about a podcast is you have this great reason to talk to people. So you can just reach out to really smart people in your industry and say like, “Hey, I have this podcast. I would love to have you on as a guest and share your knowledge with my audience.”
Also, just know that the cool thing about podcasts is that no one really can see how big that audience is, unless they ask and you tell them. But there's not, it's not like YouTube where you can see, oh, this many views, like for podcasts, people don't know. So even if you have a small audience, you still have the credibility of having a podcast.
So you can just reach out to really smart people and say, “Hey, I would love to have you on.” They come on a podcast, you have a longer conversation with them. It's such a good way in to have that conversation in the first place and then keep in touch. You obviously share it with your audience. You can ask, “Hey, would you share this with your audience as well?”
So you grow your audience that way. I mean, that's just so cool. I mean, what other way would you have to be able to have a longer conversation with someone who's just really a thought leader in your space? That's usually quite difficult to get them on the phone and have maybe even a one-hour conversation with them.
But when you have a podcast, you can just ask, and usually it's a win for them. When it looks really professional, your podcast, then why would they say no? So yeah, that's just a really cool thing. A really cool win. And then after that longer conversation, they know you, they know what you do.
Usually you also chat a little bit before and after the interview that you have. So it's a great relationship builder.
Pete Mockaitis: It is. And I've been amazed as have many other podcasters at—they ask people to be guests, and maybe they have the thought, Oh, there's no way that person will say yes. And then, “Oh my gosh, wow, they did it!”
And it's sort of like they're minor celebrities. And I remember this in my early days of podcasting. I'd tell my wife, I was like, “Oh my gosh, David Allen's gonna be on the show!” And she's like, “I'm glad you're excited, honey, but who's David Allen?” I was like, “He wrote the book, ‘Getting Things Done’! This is like the guy!”
And so, we're all jazzed. We're all super excited about this get. And yet for us, it's, I hope the magic never leaves, Anne, but it's just commonplace and to be expected that when you invite folks onto your podcast, even if it's tiny, the response rates are phenomenally good. And this was my own case, even in the earliest days of my podcast.
I think David Allen was Episode 15-ish. I did not have a big name, a big brand, a big following. And so that still happened. And then it's been the case with all sorts of things. Because I think sometimes, even if folks wonder about the PR value, it's still—I think relatively few people do a rigorous calculation associated with it.
Almost nobody asked, “How big is your audience?” But occasionally they did. And even when I told him, “Hey, it's kind of small right now. Here it is.” They would still do it. And there's all sorts of benefits associated with, one, that creates content that they can repurpose any number of places, which is just handy.
Two, it helps them sharpen their own thoughts about a topic, or it could be practice. It's like, Okay, well, I'm gonna practice with you before I get into the big show is the big media pieces, or it's just fun and interesting for them because it's relatively rare that anybody cares about what they're doing to talk about that in this level of depth.
It's like, my wife and kids don't want to hear me yammer about this for an hour, but you do? Oh, that sounds like a fun opportunity for me. These don't really come up. So I think there are all kinds of reasons why people say yes. And then once they do, I mean, it's pretty awesome for that relationship, because you've been chatting for an extended period of time about a subject they care about, and then away you go.
And then often some—there's interesting conversations that happen after the record buttons turned off. So what's your deal? What are you up to? How'd you get started? What's your goal? Why do you like this industry? And then I'll be emailing back and forth with these big deal authors like, Oh my gosh, it's like we're just pals now.
Wow. That's amazing.
Anne Claessen: Yeah, absolutely. And also, even though like maybe this was Episode 15, but look at your podcast now, right? You're getting millions of downloads. So that podcast episode is probably still out there, right? I mean, it is evergreen content. So this person went on your show when it was not huge, but now, I mean, and people listen to previous episodes.
So years later, maybe thousands of new listeners still come into that episode. It's absolutely possible. So for this person, it takes maybe an hour of their time to come on your show, record an episode, and it's out there forever, usually. So it's still, even if your audience is small now, it's still a pretty good deal for them.
Pete Mockaitis: Oh, absolutely. Well, so we're all saying podcasts are so great. They're so great. They're so great. So, and tell me if they're so wonderful, why doesn't every business just have one?
Anne Claessen: It takes time and commitment and energy to do it. As with many things, consistency is key. It's a bit of a cliche, but I think for podcasting, it is true.
When you start a podcast and you already have your offer, you already have some previous clients. It's been proven that in that ideal situation, you start a podcast and you might see some new people coming into your business, but then at some point you get busy, you have a few new clients, but you feel like, okay, we're kind of stagnating now.
That's when a lot of podcasters stop because it's not the new thing anymore. It's kind of the same starting to record new episodes every week or every month or however you do it. And then there's this shiny new thing that comes along, whatever it is, is it YouTube, is it TikTok, it doesn't matter. If you keep going then, if you can actually keep a consistent release schedule, that's when the true magic happens.
That's when you see that audience growth. And audience growth is not, it's not linear, right? You can do the thing for years and not see a huge audience growth. And then at some point something changes, whatever that something is, and then it just takes off. Happens all the time.
The really, really difficult part is to commit to the podcast and to keep going and keep tweaking it. Keep listening to your audience. Keep looking for ways to improve it. And serve that audience better and better, and also make sure that it works really well with your offers so that you can then also help your audience even more after they listen to the podcast by working with them.
Pete Mockaitis: Mm-hmm. Understood. Okay. So it takes effort and that's a thing. And then consistency. Yeah, it's interesting. I've seen it that it's really fun in terms of like the finer points of podcasting for business that it seems like if your goal is, in fact, yes, to grow an ever larger audience, then more episodes over more time is a fundamental just requirement of making that happen.
And that just sort of seems to be the nature of most platforms in general, like to grow an audience on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or anywhere, that's kind of the name of the game. On the flip side though, I'm thinking about Scott Barlow of ‘Happen to Your Career.’ He's got his main podcast, but he also has lots of little sub-podcasts, which are kind of fun, in that it was designed from day one, not to go forever, but to be sort of an arc, a season to get us from point A to point B.
And so for a particular segment of prospect, they say, “Hey, go listen to these eight things.” And then they come out the other side thinking, “Oh, that's really cool. I'd like to buy your services.” So I think that's pretty handy there is that it might be if that's the goal is to build a great long-term audience, then, yes, the consistency is key.
And on the flip side, if the goal is to have more of a take me from point A to point B in my education, customer-nurturing journey, then that could be accomplished with a sort of a short defined set of episodes or content along the way. And I think where people get into trouble is when they kind of cross those wires or get mixed up.
“We say we're going to have new episodes every Thursday morning,” and then they don't. It's like, okay, well. Maybe underpromise at first, if you're not sure about that.
Anne Claessen: There goes your trust, right? If you say you're going to do something and you don't, then your audience is like, “Oh, okay, well, that's kind of a disappointment, right?”
So then it's better to not overpromise. Like you said, I think it's better to underpromise than overdeliver, and do like bonus episodes, right? If you’re not sure if weekly episodes are possible, do an episode every other week, and then once there is something exciting, you do a bonus episode.
Cool. But then if you don't make it, also fine, because you still hit that release schedule that you actually promised people.
Pete Mockaitis: Certainly. Or you tell them, “Hey, this is our first season.” And we're going to have this many episodes, and that's the game plan. And so they understand. And so I think it really requires some of the strategic thought, which is what you do so wonderfully with your coaching sessions with clients and prospects, is what really is the goal that we're trying to achieve here, and then what really are we able to bite off and handle and commit to, and then to sort of act accordingly in terms of what we're building out.
Because if the goal is a regular listener habit to be built. Well, yeah, that requires some of that. And I think we see it with television, too, is like we can enjoy and appreciate a season of something dropping, and then we'll binge it. And then we are hopefully enriched or entertained in some way.
And then when the next season comes around, it's like, well, you may or may not engage with it. But if it's a regularly recurring program, I think like the news, like I always watch the evening news or kind of whatever, then indeed you're more likely to have a regular habit that gets built into the fabric of people's normal recurring days and weeks.
Anne Claessen: Exactly. Yeah. It all depends on the goals. A hundred percent. And it just requires planning, right? Because if you have a new episode drop every week, doesn't mean that you have to record a new episode every week. You can record once a month, you record all those episodes, and that's it. Or even once per quarter.
We have clients who record once per quarter, upload all those episodes, and then our team just goes ahead, produces them, schedules them out, and that's that. So that's absolutely possible, it just requires planning.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah, well, I think it might have been Michael Hyatt or someone blew my mind. I think he had a schedule where it's like, “Oh, well, in one week I do all my interviews for the year.”
The year! And so I don't know if he's monthly or twice a month, but you imagine like 24 episodes. Okay, well, hey, I got one week where I'm going to schedule 24 interviews and then I'm set. That's the year. And then you don't even need to think about it because you've got good teams and processes and systems just going from there.
And I think that's very cool.
Anne Claessen: Yeah, you can make it easy on yourself for sure.
Pete Mockaitis: So Anne, you've done many, many audits and podcasts. Tell us, what are some recurring mistakes you see people make that we'd best avoid?
Anne Claessen: It's really difficult to be specific, especially when you know who you're talking to. It's really difficult to make that super, super clear for someone who's never seen a podcast before.
So in many of the audits that I do, many of the new clients that I speak to, the first things we talk through is who's the target audience as specific as you can be, and then what's the central message to that target audience? And that's actually a really difficult question very often because they know what they do, they know then sometimes also who they speak to, but then what do you want that person to walk away with after listening to any episode?
Shouldn't matter what the episode is, but what's the thing that you want them to know after listening to your podcast. And ideally that ties into your offer. So it's very strategic. It's a difficult question. So there are usually a lot of brainstorming goes into that, but I think that is what can make or break a podcast for businesses.
Because if you don't do that, then it's not clear enough. And then it won't work because maybe not the right people will listen, maybe people won't listen because they don't know it's for them, or they're not getting the correct message after listening to your episodes, and then nothing happens after that.
So maybe then you have listeners but not new clients.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah, I think that's perfect. And I talked to a number of prospective podcasters, and if their concept for the show is, “I talk to awesome people about awesome stuff that I'm interested in. Like food and fashion and fitness and interior design and spirituality.”
It's like, Ooh, like that, that only works if you're already a celebrity and people already love you. In terms of like, I just want to know everything and thinks about everything. All right. Why? Welcome. Welcome to the end show. Yeah. I'm going to give you exactly that. If you're trying to build from zero or little, that's probably not going to work out unless your personality is just amazingly hilarious.
Or you have some, some tremendous asset working for you there because the people who are interested in food will probably listen to food podcasts. Those are in fitness will find their fitness podcasts.
And even if someone happens to be interested in all of these things, they're probably going to find multiple individual podcasts to fit them and almost no one is going to be interested in all of those things and say, “Oh, Jackpot! This is exactly the show I've been looking for, which happens to cover each of these topics that I'm into and just the way I want them covered.”
It seems a recipe that is likely to fail in my view there.
Anne Claessen: Yeah, and even if you have that hilarious personality, you know? I think we're both are hilarious, Pete. But I still think we should probably not make the ‘Pete Show’ and the ‘Anne Show’ because, in the end, the cold harsh truth is: no one cares about you as the host. Even when you're a business owner, no one really cares about you.
They care about what they walk away with after listening to the podcast. And ideally, that is something that takes them from A to B or that gives them an insight, a new idea.
That's what you want to focus on because they don't know you yet, right? When it's a new audience, when you're growing an audience, they don't know you. They don't care about you. Everyone just cares about themselves. That's just how it is.
Pete Mockaitis: And I think that's, oh, you're dropping truth bombs here, and I think that's very well said.
In a business context, I think that's 100% accurate, and the podcast we work with in terms of, I've come here for some sort of wisdom, knowledge, value, and I've not come here for companionship, at least at first.
And other podcasts, they do have that vibe, and so that can go down that route. But, yes, in terms of we're thinking about businesses and business results, I think what you're saying is absolutely resonant.
And could you maybe give us an example, then, of podcast audience, central message, offer that just are beautifully aligned? Versus, and we could be a little bit anonymous if you don't want to embarrass anybody, but some mismatches that you've heard.
Like, you might think you've thought through this sufficiently, but here's an example of something that's not quite aligned and how some coaching can really help get it into that better place.
Anne Claessen: Absolutely. Okay. I'll start with the non-aligned one and then I'll talk about how that could be more aligned. We've worked with a client who had a podcast for a different target audience than her offers were for.
So the audience for her podcast was a lot younger and they wouldn't be able to afford or benefit from her services. So we had multiple conversations with this client to try to figure out how can we bridge that gap: should she create new services or new offers for that younger audience? Should she maybe change the podcast topic slightly, or at least the target audience slightly, so that it aligns better with her offers?
And second option was my advice to her. You get the best results when your offers, your podcast, your whole marketing machine, when it all has the same message to the same people and it might feel a little bit boring for you as a business owner, but not everyone in your audience, but most people in your audience will probably not listen to the podcast, read all your emails, see all your LinkedIn posts, see all your Instagram posts.
Usually, they see snippets of it. They see, even if they do follow you on several channels, they usually don't open all the emails. They don't listen to all the podcast episodes. So it's really important to have that consistency. So that's what we work on with our clients to see that the whole picture makes sense.
Pete Mockaitis: Oh, I think that is such a fabulous insight right there in terms of what you see as the business owner versus what the consumer sees. It can feel totally different. I'm thinking about Kwame Christian, American Negotiation Institute. He is a LinkedIn top voice, which is cool. Great job, Kwame. And he has also got a podcast, ‘Negotiate Anything,’ which is great.
He's been on my show and vice versa. And he had a survey on his LinkedIn about, “Hey, what content would you like to see for the podcast?” And he had what he thought was like a joke option on the poll, which was, “I didn't know you had a podcast.” Cause he thought like, “Ha ha ha, you know, I talk about it nonstop.” So I don't know how you could not know I have a podcast.
And he was shocked, startled to see. I don't remember the exact number, but a very substantial segment of his late dead audience who he's talking about his podcast all the time was unaware that he had a podcast and he was dumbfounded. And so I think that is so true. And likewise, if sometimes I think, “Oh, do I need another show about public speaking and how to be also a podcast?”
We've covered that several times over a thousand episodes, and yet when it's distributed over months of time and people have their busy days, their busy lives, they are consuming much more content than your one thing. By far, it feels more fresh and new to them than it does to me, and I see it in the stats in the figures, and so I've had that thought a number of times like, Oh, I don't know if there's anything new or fresh or worthwhile, and then I'm seeing high engagement numbers and people are digging it like, Oh, okay, then I will just continue doing what the people want.
Anne Claessen: Exactly. And I think it's really smart to also look at those numbers and see what do people want and then give them more of that.
Pete Mockaitis: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And there could be, you mentioned market research, that can be a, it can be rather surprising because I think, for example, I love creativity and problem solving as I think that's just so cool and fun and a great topic that could be so transformational for people's careers.
And yet, when I look at the numbers of the ‘How to be Awesome at Your Job,’ those episodes do not as well as like speaking, public confidence, gravitas, those kinds of things. And so it's like, all right then. So there we have it. And so then I'm selective. I still can't completely divorce the creativity problem solving stuff.
Cause like we must have a little bit, but we'll just be more selective and have them more rarely. And it's eyeopening the disconnects that can pop up. It could ultimately help redirect you and your business in really great ways.
Anne Claessen: Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. That's also why we have those meetings with clients to look at their metrics and see, okay, what does this tell us?
Because a lot of business owners, they're busy running their business. They don't have time or they don't think about, okay, let's look into these podcast numbers. So we often have a call with clients maybe once a month, maybe once a quarter, every now and then just to check in, okay, what's working for the podcast?
What's not working? What should we do more of? What should we do less of?
Pete Mockaitis: Mm-hmm. That's super. Well, so then can we hear an example of what great alignment sounds like? This is the podcast. This is the audience. This is the message. This is the offer.
Anne Claessen: Andrew Youderian came on the podcast previously. He's been a client for, I don't even know how long, way before I came to work for Cashflow Podcasting, but I think it must be eight years, nine years, maybe 10 years even.
So that's wild.
Pete Mockaitis: So our show is called ‘eCommerceFuel’. And so then we've got that clarity right there in terms of, okay, this is what we're talking about. E-commerce is the thing. And then the audience are mostly e-commerce business owners. Like, okay, so you've got a brand that's you're selling stuff on the internet.
You got the host of issues that that ensues with the fulfillment and the pricing and the marketing and amazon.com. And do we like them? Do we not like them? How do we play with them or not? So we've got those sorts of issues the audience is facing. And then the offer is, he's got a few better. I mean, his community seems like dead on in terms of, “Hey, fellow e-commerce owners. Here, we can get together and share best practices, war stories, insider info to flourish in this industry.”
And so, and it seems like just a killer offer in terms of like all these tools, people would have no idea about existing missteps avoided. I think he promises like a 10 times return on your investment within the year or like, okay, it's hard to beat.
And so then what's the message then, how that fits in with the other three pieces?
Anne Claessen: I would say his message is probably it is possible to have a profitable e-commerce business that inside of, okay, it is possible. Like all these people are doing it in so many different ways. There is this whole community, like you don't have to do it alone.
So it must be possible for me too, I think that like inspirational piece, that's, I think, the insight that he provides with his podcast.
Pete Mockaitis: And you're good at this. What's my message? Help me out, Anne. Cool. All right. Well, tell me any other things you want to make sure to mention, or we forgot to say when it comes to businesses and podcasts and how they go together.
Anne Claessen: Well, if you're listening to this, you're thinking about, okay, should I start a podcast or maybe you already just started it, and you're trying to figure out what works. I think it's also really good to keep in mind that you can make all the changes to this podcast. So even if you started it and it doesn't look exactly how you want it to look or doesn't sound exactly how you want it to sound.
You can make all the changes, like you can delete episodes, you can create new episodes, you can really uplevel your production quality. It's never too late to make those changes, and there's a lot of what I like about podcasting, but it's also one of the things that can be really difficult, is there's a lot of things that you could change, there's a lot of different aspects to podcasting, so there's a lot of different buttons that you can play with and see what works and what doesn't work.
And yeah, if you're interested to see what we think would work for your podcast, or if you have any questions, then schedule a call with us and we'll talk it through.
Pete Mockaitis: Awesome. Thank you. And what was that link?
Anne Claessen: Cashflowpodcasting.com/chat.
Pete Mockaitis: Perfect. And this is fun. Thank you. And thanks for all the wonderful goodness you bring to our clients.
Anne Claessen: Thanks, Pete.