Hi, I'm Bringey Saunders and welcome to Big Business, the place where business is far from boring. And today I'm recording on gaddigall Land. Now I somehow manage to build an empire from the garage underneath my house, and I'm here to share it all with you, from the wins, the mistakes, the challenging times and the funny moments in between. So, whether you're in business yourself already, perhaps you're not in the game at all, Maybe you're just looking for some inspo, or you simply.
Just want to hear the tea, this is a podcast for you.
Coming up on today's episode, we are actually talking about podcasting.
In a podcast, we are talking about the art and the business of podcasting. Why does everyone have a podcast?
Why is it so easy for some people to start a podcast when they absolutely shouldn't. Have you seen those kinds of videos online where they say podcasting equipment is way too affordable?
Yeah, all the bloody podcast bros at the moment, get off.
I'm sick of it.
I'm not going to say the one I'm thinking of, but we've all seen everyone going off online.
Stop it enough.
We are talking all things podcasting. Why podcasting is good? Why podcasting can be bad? Should business owners have a podcast? If you want to start one, what should you do first? Should it be the first thing that you do. I'm going to speak to it from my experience with building a personal brand on social media.
We've got a lot to say.
So without further ado, let's just get straight down to business. So let's talk about podcasting now. Fun fact for you all which you may or may not know, but Big Business isn't My will wasn't my first ever podcast.
So I have this Big Business podcast that you're listening to right now.
I also have another podcast with Nova, so the same network that this podcast is produced.
By, which is called High Scrollers.
If you don't listen to that, it's myself and my friend Matt and we're just absolute idiots and have a blast.
It's really really fun.
And then prior to working with Nova and having Big Business and High Scrollers, I actually had my own podcast in COVID Lockdown Times, which I feel like is when a lot of people started doing podcasting. Podcasting has obviously been around for a really long time, but I feel like in COVID Times and Lockdown, we saw like the rise of the popularity of podcasting and it's kind of like super popular again, even though it's like being around for a really long time. Now, there's a lot of
ways that you can do a podcast. There's a lot of benefits to doing a podcast. But I also think when it comes to podcasting, whether it's for your personal brand or your business, you've got to do it at the right time, and it's got to line up with everything else that you're doing in terms of social media. Now, when I started my podcast in Lockdown, it was called a whole Lot of BS, which means a whole lot of Britney's owners and a whole lot of bs like name, yeah, bullshit.
And I was just doing that podcast on my own, which you can absolutely do on your own at home. I just had a little setup and then I signed up to a website which I don't know if I can say what it's called, I'll just say what it's called.
It's called Transistor.
And that was like a platform which would allow me to upload my episodes into which would then push my episodes out to all the feeds on like Apple and Spotify.
There's lots of those kinds of websites.
Yeah, I can say, here a nov We use a website called Omni and so we upload all the big business episodes and that gets sent out to every platform.
Yeah, so there's heaps of those kinds of websites.
So the one that I used back in COVID times was called Transistor. You sign up, you pay like a monthly fee I think, or a yearly fee if you want it cheaper, and then that allows you to upload your audio file and then it will automatically do all the work for you and then your podcast will be available to view on Spotify, Apple, blah blah blah.
There was also like, I think it's Spotify for podcas casters or.
Something like that, because I used to use for my podcast, and that's for free. So you interpay any money and you can send it out to Spotify, to Apple wherever you want.
So there's free platforms as well.
There's also lots of free software that you can use to record your podcast into just this is if you're doing at home by yourself. When I was doing mine in lockdown times, I was just recording on my Mac Into garage band and then exporting it as an MP three And because I had a lot of experience with editing my YouTube videos for years. I found just editing my episodes myself really easy, but that's because I had so much experience using iMovie. So garage Band is exactly
essentially the same thing. There's just no video element. It was just the audio. And I did that for fun during Lockdown just and I didn't have an upload schedule, like I was just uploading here, there and everywhere. And I didn't make any money out of that. I was just purely uploading into putting my podcasts out there into the universe. It was just for anyone that wanted to have a listen if they were bored in lockdown times. And then I kind of gave up on that when
I got busier again. It was never like a priority of mine. And then obviously I connected with the team at Nova two ish years ago now and started High Scrollers, which is my other podcast, and then fun fact for you all, I pitched Big Business to Nova. So I'd already had High Scrollers with Matt for about a year ish and I really wanted to talk more about business on a pod, and they basically own this podcast. And
there's two ways that you can do a podcast. You can do it on your own, or you can have it through a network. I have done both, and when I did it myself it was very DIY.
It was very beginnery.
But now I'm here with Nova and I come in every single week. I have producer Xander here with me and we record these episodes together. So I pitched having my own post to Nova. I made up like a PDF document with multiple pages. I had episode ideas, and I presented it to Xander's boss.
It turns out they said, okay, let's give.
It a go. Actually, should we get my boss on here?
Yeah? But aren't I your boss?
Do you know?
It's funny you said that.
Someone in our big business DMS asked about the process of us making this podcast and asked if I was employed by you. So their answer is, I'm actually not employed by Britney Saunders. I'm employed by Nova Entertainment, and Brittany doesn't pay me as much as I would like her too.
So Rach Corbett is the head of podcasts here. Want me to text Rach and get her on.
She's like the big boss here.
Let's get a big boss on.
So we have Rachel Corbett in the studio. What is you? What do you do? Here at Nova.
Well, my role now is called Network Director at Nova Podcasts, but essentially I look after all of the podcast content for Nova, so stuff we make originally in house, stuff that other people make that we are the commercial partner for all of the podcasts.
We look after content wise in my bucket.
One great question for you that like a lot of people who aren't in the podcasting world would be interested to know, and it's a really simple one.
How do podcasts make money?
It depends they make money in a bunch of different ways. If you are partnered with a network or you're selling advertising, you are usually selling on a cost per meal basis, So that means what a cost per thousand downloads? So when you're selling like that, you have to have a
lot of downloads to make money. Yeah, because if you think about it cost per thousand downloads, it might be twenty five dollars for one AD, and if you've only got a thousand downloads, you're only getting twenty five dollars for that ad. And I would argue, I mean a no advertiser is going to pay for an audience that's small. But ultimately you want to be thinking about what impact is this going to have on my content, and I
don't think twenty five dollars is worth it. So you want to as a creator, make sure that you are earning enough money that makes sense for your podcasts, and clients in return also want enough downloads. So if you have got decent downloads, you'll usually be selling advertising. But there are a bunch of different ways to monetize. You could, you know, set up a Patreon account if you're an independent creator. You could monetize via the platforms like Spotify
and Apple, you know, and use their subscription services. You can create private podcasts that you might want to pay for if you've got a business. Often, I think the best option if you are a business owner and you have a podcast is that that is a source of traffic to your business.
It's about lead generation talking about your business in general.
Yeah, but even you know, even outside of just advertising your business, it's about giving people the chance to work with you before they actually spend any money. And you can bring them into your funnel by you know, sharing with them and opt in or something that gets them on your email list. And a lot of people come through the podcast and find that stuff that way, And a podcast is a great way. You know, I think so many businesses and people spend so much time I'm
pouring over the copy of their website. How can I get my tone and personality into this copy? How can I make sure that I leap off the page? And in a podcast, you're leaping off the page because it's you you're talking. You don't have to worry about that tone that you know, because you can put all of that into who you are in the microphone. I think it is so much easier to do that in a
mic than it is to do in copy. Yes, you can get to the point where you get that copy firing, but it's never going to be as good as sitting down with you. And a podcast is like sitting down with somebody and them being able to tell you why you should work with them.
What would be your advice to let's say, established business owners out there that are wanting to step into launching a podcast kind of for their personal brand but also for their business, Like, what should be their focus in those early days of starting their podcast and those first few episodes, and should they just be worrying about, you know, building a community before looking into trying to get sponsors on board.
Like what would be your tips.
I think it's a long game.
It's always a long game, like with anything, right, Yes, everybody wants a quick fix on every single thing in life, doesn't matter how many times we tell people there are no quick fixes for anything. You cannot become an Instagram influencer overnight. You cannot become this overnight. Everybody still wants to know, how's the way I do this overnight?
It doesn't happen. You don't do it over night.
I think there's so much misunderstanding even with business around that. Like we live in a world of instant gratification where we click and somethings at outdoor the next day. So when people want to start a business or they want to start making content on TikTok, like they think that it's going to happen really quickly for them. But I would say even more so for podcasting, like it is kind of like that slow burn and it's going to take you a really long time.
The main thing with podcasting, the main thing that will impact your success as a podcaster is consistency. That is the single biggest factor. It doesn't matter if you have a massive audience somewhere else that isn't the single biggest factor in podcasting success. It's about delivering episodes consistently over a long period of time. So I would say, if you were thinking about starting a you need to know that you can commit to it, because you don't want
to start out gung ho. I've seen so many people jump in. They're like, oh my god, I've got ideas coming out of my eyeballs. I can't I've got this. I'm never going to have a moment where I'm not going to have something to say on this podcast. And six weeks later they're like, I have no idea what to say next week, and then they never release an episode again. Yeah, the vast majority of podcasts do not
survive seven to ten episodes. There are like over four million podcasts out there, and so a lot of people are like, oh, this is just too overly saturated. Less than five hundred thousand released episodes in the last ninety days, so the vast majority do not continue to release episodes. It's something that a lot of people jump in because they think this is easy. I can set up a microphone,
I can talk to an audience. They underestimate what you need to do to actually get an audience to listen, and the first thing on that list is think about your audience. I see so many people coming up with an idea that's based entirely off the ego. It's got nothing to do with an audience. It's got everything to do with what they want to say, what they want to talk about, and particularly when it comes to business. Yes, I think this is a mistake a lot of people make,
and it happens in branded content as well. You know, we have to work a lot with brands to kind of get their message back from what they want to say to what an audience actually wants to listen to. Is that brands have things they want to tell people. So as a business, you're like, these are all the things I want somebody to know about my business. If you just give them valuable content that helps them in some way that is associated with what you do, you benefit.
You don't need to talk about your business all the time. If you can provide value that relates to what you do, you've won. You've done it, you know. So, I think that is where I see people go wrong. It's that underestimation of the amount of commitment that they are going to require and that's not just from a show perspective, that's also from a promotion perspective and everything around it.
You have to talk about your podcast if you want to grow audience, if that's your primary goal, you have to talk about a lot like a lot.
I was getting my haircut recently and the barber was talking to me about how he wanted to start a podcast. I said, well, I'm actually a podcast producer, and he says, oh, let me run my ideas why. I was like, here we go, and he did. He ran everything you wanted to do by me, and I listened to it all and I said, why is anyone going to want to listen to that?
And he was shocked that I said it.
What was it about barbering?
He was just just stuff that he wanted to talk about. I said, why is anyone going to want to press play and listen to you talk about that? I said, give me your reasons, and he could give me none. I said, well, that's your first issue. I said, you're thinking about what you want to talk about. You're not thinking about what an audience is going to want to take from this.
Saying when people want to start a business of any kind like I'll get people dming me all the time, like I love everything that you do and I want to start my own business.
Who is your manufacturer? I'm like, first of all, who are you going to sell to?
Like, before you even get to the idea of building a shop or making a product, who are your customers? Like, that's the first thing that you need to worry about. And I guess same goes for podcasting. Is it's great that you want to do a podcast, but who's going to listen to it?
Yeah, but that's the boring bit, right, that's a bit nice.
I want to do that.
Yeah, yeah, I really want to sit down and like write on a piece of paper who I'm making this for, Like what these people?
You know?
And it can also be a bit.
Of a weird exercise for people to do because these people don't exist, So it's like, how do I think about these people?
Who are these people? Do they?
It's just just a bit too hard sometimes for people to get their head around. But it's like, you're not going to make up you know, Jen who has snakes on her head and lives on outer space, Like you're going to make up a person who exists, and then ultimately it's if other people turn up, that's fine, but it's really about thinking about like, does Jan have three kids and two jobs. She doesn't want your hour and a half long episodes. She wants something that's ten minutes
that she can consume quickly. Maybe you want to drop two of those a week for her. That's fine, but that's an important thing to be thinking about and to be always considering in every decision that you make somebody else that is not yourself.
But I think, I.
Think business, particularly for business owners, a podcast is an excellent way to introduce people to your business, to bring people through your funnel. Like I think, it's a really effective way to communicate. And honestly, it's so much easier.
Than writing content.
Yeah, one percent.
And with all of the AI tools and tech and everything you taught, you prep your content. That's really important. A lot of people don't do that. Prep your content so it's really solid. You talk that into a microphone, come up with something really great, You shove it into a transcription software, You ask chat GPT to pump you out all your LinkedIn content out of that or your social media content. Everything from that one thirty minutes of content that you've sat down in.
Front of a microphone.
There's a heck of a lot easier than staring at a blank page and coming out with something.
You know. It's actually as a base level.
Of content, and business is about content, right. You have to get people consuming your content to get people through the door. As a sort of breeding ground for content, it's a great thing that can generate.
Heaps of stuff that you can use in your business.
That is a lot easier than trying to start things from scratch.
Wow, isn't she great? Yeah, that's my boss.
You'll have to send us an invoice today.
I love talking about this stuff.
I think it's a really great space and I think a lot of people are intimidated by it. But a lot of people are obsessed by it, and they jump in and they make a lot of mistakes. Yeah, and they do it wrong.
Well, they do it. They don't understand what they're getting into.
And there's nothing worse than wanting to do something, jumping into it, feeling like you've failed, and then walking away from it, Because that's a really crappy feeling to have. If you want to do something, you're passionate about, something you're interested in, it you can do it, and there's nothing better than crossing that off you to do list and feeling like you achieved something.
But you have to get some knowledge. You've got to get some knowledge. It's like anything in this life.
You can't just you can wing it for long enough maybe get there, but like understand what you're doing and going there with some smarts so you can make the right decisions and have it work for you in a good way.
Look at you go. I love it. IM like, just keep talking.
You just want to like take over the rest of the episode, that'd be great.
You ask me some more questions.
Is it a podcast course that you've got at the moment I've been literally getting you?
Or is it your ads? Do you have paid ads running for it? I've been getting somewhere actually.
And every time I look at your content about how you shouldn't pay someoney to get your ads, I'm.
Like, hey, I have no time not to do this by yourself.
And then every time you do a tutorial on your socials and you're like, oh, you just do this, and then I'm like, Facebook ads never work like that for me.
I find it the most clunking difficulty to use.
Platforms with Facebook Ads.
I remember, before I knew how to do it myself, I would log into the meta ad library, like into the back end and ads manager, and I'd be like, what the fuck is all this?
Like hell?
But then once I understood how to do it, now it's like easy. This is taking that time to learn what I'm doing and not just.
Thats why I pay someone to do it.
Well, for anyone interested in podcasting, plug yourself away.
Oh I do have a podcasting course. Yes, it's called pod School. I've run it for a lot of years. It's always been I mean my I literally started it in twenty sixteen, and that was still when a lot of people were at home podcasters.
I'd worked in radio for a long time.
I was like, oh, there's so much that I know that you just would have no idea about if you've never worked in radio. And so I built the course, and then about a year later, podcasting really took off here in terms of like being a professional space, and so I got asked to start running networks and I've been doing that since twenty seventeen.
So it's been a side hustle for me.
I had one glorious for you to work on it by myself and then it's been a side hustle for me forever. But it's it's just a sort of go to woe start to finish if you don't have an idea, or even if you do have an idea and you want to stress test it all the way through to how could you monetize it? You know, all the editing, prepping, putting things together or with this like best practice lens, right, So it's like not just about here's the nuts and
bolts of how to do it. But if you were going to give this the very best possible go you could give it, you can do ninety percent of that, you can do seventy percent. It's your choice, but you've got all the information that you need that if I'm going to try and do this to the best of my ability, I'm going to have to do XYZ and then you kind of choose what you can actually manage
out of that. But it's honestly, I mean, I do keep it alive in the outside hours of my life, and I'm a solo mum, and it does sometimes I think to myself, am I absolutely insane? But I just I honestly I love it so much because people come through the course and.
They make something and they're proud of themselves. So great.
Well, Xander will be sure to leave it in the show notes please or Xander future Xander editing this, make sure you put the link in the show notes. And thank you so much again for spontaneously coming on the poet Pleasure on the pod about pods.
So matter.
In a nutshell, Podcasting can be an amazing tool for your business in a multitude of different ways. But like Rachel said, I think it's really important, Like with anything, it's important to understand what you're doing. And I love everything that she said. I feel like I could have just spoke to her for an hour.
She's amazing, Like I'm like.
Just keep talking please.
We live in this like instant gratification world and people want to be a TikToker and a podcaster and whatever. All people want to be an entrepreneur, they want to be a business owner. But it's really important to do the research and the work before jumping into anything, before jumping into a business, before jumping into a podcast, before
jumping into making TikTok content. It's one thing to want it, but it's another thing to sit down and do the work and figure out a plan of how you're actually going to successfully execute it. Any final words from u Zander on podcasting, just don't.
Start one because you think you can talk and a mic. You can't. I'm telling you, Okay.
Yeah, There's so much more that goes into it, and most likely what you have to say no one cares about.
I think that's really a really important fact. Don't make a podcast just because you want to talk about shit. Make a podcast because you know other people want to.
Want to hear it.
The biggest thing is to not go into a cocky thinking you're going to get hundreds of thousands of listeners straight away.
It is not like that, and so just be.
Prepared, be prepared, And that's all. I'm going to leave you with a tip of the week as all. I think we've given so many tips in this and mine, I'm just going to go off the back of what we've just been saying. Now, before committing to something, like know what you're signing up for and also be prepared for it. Like Rachel said, with podcasting, so many people that was so interesting that she said, people don't make it past seven episodes and then they give up, like
because they're not prepared for it. So with anything business, a podcast, starting on social media, writing a book, anything, be prepared to be in it for the long haul, I would say, and especially for business. I don't remember exactly what Rachel said, but it's like long and slow.
I need to listen back.
Slow and steady wins the race.
It does, it does, So that is my tip of the week. Be prepared to be in it for the.
Long haul, no matter what it is that you are doing, because slow and steady does win the race.
Anyway. That's all from me.
I'll be back later in the week with my bonus, and remember to chase after your dreams as if they owe you money.