as content creators, as podcasters, we get to do something that 99 point whatever percent of the humans on earth never get to do. And that is impact complete strangers. Why do we as podcasters willingly subject ourselves to hours of editing, awkward ad reads, and the existential dread of shouting? you've ever asked yourself that or if you're just here to revel in the weird wonderful world of podcasting then you're in the right place
Welcome to Sound Strategy with Lucas Dickey. Without a doubt, this is the most meta podcast about podcasts ever. All right, I'm your host, Lucas Dickey, founder of Deepcast. I'm your podcast producer and occasional co-host, Allison Melody. Today's guest is a podcasting entrepreneur who's helped literally hundreds of people. ditch the burn and turn their shows into threats.
He's a seven-figure funnel builder, a master of simplifying monetization. Please welcome Adam Shibley to the show. What's up, pod pals? I love it, the pod pals. Adam, for those who don't know your... from gym owner if they were on video. and show it off, but from Genome Gym Owner to Podcast Funnel King, can you give us a three-minute origin story? We're clearly going to go into a bunch of backstory, but for those who want the quick TLDR, what is the TLDR?
Fun fact, like less than a week ago, I figured out what TLDR actually meant. I had to Google it. I'm like, what is, I see this TLDR thing all the time. That's the type of person I am. Like, what is that? I just assumed I always knew what I meant. So for the TLDR, I launched my first show 2015 back when microphones were made of wood. I had a gem. I wanted more impact. a health-based show.
Eventually, I figured out how to get clients with my podcast. I started having people on my show like, hey, I heard that you have a membership. You're getting clients. And I started allowing them to pay me for consulting on their business. And I figured out that I could make a much higher income by charging people.
to make money, unfortunately, compared to teaching people how to save their lives by getting healthy. I'll invest in making money for sure. And a lot more. So I eventually transitioned into podcasting business school. Sold my entire, my gym, my health brand. I sold my gym in 2019, pre-pandemic, great timing. Sold my health brand online in 2021. And I've been full podcasting business school since then.
I teach podcasts for simple strategies to help them make more money with their online business. And that's what I focus on today. I love it. We had a guest who... pretty soon dave jackson who most folks in the industry have known dave in some form or another for the last 20 years and he was talking about why you create a show like you should have a purpose what is your purpose your purpose might not necessarily be am i going to be a show
top of the charts. I'm trying to sell courses. I'm trying to get guest bookings live. It sounded like you initially, when you were into this, your purpose wasn't. rock the world of wellness and how fun podcasting it was. How do I do this? And it kind of transitioned.
Yeah, I've always been impact-driven, but impact leads to income, which is always good, and that allows you to create more impact. So yeah, when I started my show... honestly like a lot of podcasters i kind of made those beginning mistakes of well i listened to tim ferris show and i listened to like i love marketing with joe polish and i just tried to duplicate all the things that they were doing i didn't realize that
I was starting as what I now refer to as a triple zero podcaster, zero subscribers, zero social media, zero email list. And what they can do, what I can do, it's like a totally different ballgame. So I had to learn that one.
I was going to say it's the trace comments, but not quite the same thing for folks who know the old Silicon Valley show. I got a new acronym I'm going to teach you that I'm trying to popularize. We're going to call it TLDL, which is too long, didn't listen. And that's for creating these like five.
shorts to cover minute thing which I've been dropping here and there it'll probably start picking up crossed i'll be the guy who lucas named that thing tldl i love it lmfao there we go you can get that one right all right if you had to launch a podcast not about podcasting or business or a gym operation. What would it be?
Okay, well, what's our goal? Is our goal to make money? You tell us. What's your goal? You're the one, you're the world's your oyster here. All right, so if I can't launch a show within any of the industries that I'm currently in or have been... for a totally brand new niche, then I would launch a show in the cryptocurrency. because it's a super hot topic, highly searched keywords, and there's monetization on the back.
and it's teaching people still how to make money. So I see a lot of coaching, consulting, memberships, strategy involved there. I see a clear path to modernization and it's going to be a high growth potential. Justin Walsh has this monetization difficulty thing that he's got this XY axis and I converted it over into podcasting because that's what I do. I borrowed his idea and I created the podcast monetization difficulty.
And it's like the Y axis is how niche down your topic is. So no niche, just super niche. And the X axis, it is how large your audience is. So small audience to large audience. So the top left quadrant is. Really broad niche and really small audience. That's where podcasts go to die. Like there's no monetization potential.
But if we just niche down, even if we still have a really small audience or smallish audience, all of a sudden we get into that third quadrant, which is where podcasting business school lives. And I've made over a million dollars. So there's potential there. So I'm looking to niche down immediately. I don't want to be the podcast about everything.
I don't want to be the love life podcast for, you know, thinkers, thought leaders and thinkers who thought they were leaders. I don't, I don't want to be that show. I want to be really, really specific because when you get specific, that's where mine is. You've been known to say, love your podcast like a hobby, build it like a business. What is that?
So this might ruffle some feathers now, Lucas. So this is the show for ruffling feathers. We'll take it. Don't look at me when you say that. So they're ruffling feathers every week. All right. So there's a lot of people that get into podcast. content creation, but podcasting specifically, I see it where they have big business goals and they put in hobby level. They launch it and they're like, I'm going to make X amount of money and I'm going to.
by a Lambo with the license plate podcaster, you know, and all these things. But then they're like, they never have time to work on their business and they can't put out weekly content. I'm like, at a minimum, if you want to make money, if you eventually want to get to full time, give me weekly content, one episode a week. I feel like people can't do that.
either aren't experts in what they're trying to do because they can't think of something to say i'm like oh that's that's a little spicy hot take if you can't produce a weekly episode i would say you're not an expert at what at the topic that you're trying And then you just don't want it bad enough. Like you're not making time to create weekly content to attract ideal followers, listeners, and potential clients to your show. So yeah, you got to have the mindset of...
Every time you flip on the microphone, it's fun. Like I'm doing this. This is recess to me. Yeah, exactly. A nine to five job. That's principal's office. This is recess. So I'm loving this. This is my hobby, but I put in real business effort. I'm not screwing around. Like I've got real goals.
I treat it like a business. And before I was a full-time podcaster in 2019, I basically had two full-time, at least mindset and effort-wise, I had two full-time jobs where I was doing both. And that was rough, but there was an end goal. So firstly, I agree with you, but to play potential counterfactual, do you think there's room for experimentation before you net out? to do or do you think you really should have a lot more clarity?
Rather than, you know, shit or get off the pot, it's more like don't even sit on the pot if you don't anticipate doing the latter. I'm curious as to how you think about sort of experimentation early before you potentially maybe find... This might surprise you, but I think there's plenty of room for that. That's the natural part of the process.
Most people launch a podcast. They have no freaking idea what they're doing. You know? Like, me and Allie both launched. When did you launch Food Heels? What year? 24. Yeah. So you launched in 2014. I launched in 2015. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know how to be an online marketer. I didn't know how to do anything online business. I don't even know how to make my... Recordings go on to Apple Podcasts. I had to fake hire an insurance agent from my hometown.
I set up a, legitimately, I set up a consultation with an insurance agent that I heard had a podcast. And I faked wanting to buy insurance. I'm like, wait, how do you make it go into Apple? And he showed me. I'm like, I don't need your insurance. I'm out of here. So we don't know what we're doing. So that first year of podcasting, you have to figure out.
podcaster, what your niche is going to be, what your voice is, who you want to serve, because you're going to go on thinking one thing and it's going to be something different, usually.
That's the journey that most of us are on. But as independent podcasters, we can make those little... five percent nimble pivots and rebrands and micro rebrands and that's a part of the journey so i think to answer your question we can kind of do both we can it's just right it's ready fire aim not ready aim fire because you get stuck aiming and you never launch and i call that podcast
And I love all the portmanteaus. It's interesting because I think the idea of potentially experimenting, it's a lot like starting any business where like if you have a loose idea of what you're going to do or maybe a vision for what it is. that out on where you're going. It still gets to your point of you started with a hobby, but you're treating it like a business. So you have to have the consistency to continue knocking out. You have to take the feedback from your listeners.
factor that into your show as well. So it seems to work like depending regardless of which way you approach it, your end is kind of the same. Exactly. Given like you and Allison have both been around for a decade plus now on your shows, do you think there are things that are, you know, this has happened with social... or numbers because Michelle Pham was in doing makeup videos.
we're now 2025 do the sort of like early experimentation or the affordance for experimentation has that changed do you think like ah you can get away with a good five episodes but historically you could have gotten away with 15 like how is things between now and then, or not at all, because we're still in constant nascency mode in the world of... I think Allison would probably agree. Things are different now than they were then. There's a lot more people podcasting, which is good. But it also...
I feel like it kind of skews the numbers. You hear like six million podcasts have been launched getting saturated. And then like, I just talked to Rob wall. the other week and he's like my stat person i always go to to get the inside stats and he's like yeah he's like 10 of those almost 6 million have 10 episodes of launch produced an episode in the last 90 days. 10 plus episodes in anything in 90 days. So we're talking about half a million active podcasters. Less than that.
Yeah. According to Rob, so the stat he gave me before I went and did my last talk, because I always check with him first to see if the slide is accurate, was 385. So less than half a million right there. Yeah. So I think knowing information like that, our job as people influencing other podcasters, we got to get information like that out there because a lot of people are intimidated to start.
My aunt has a podcast and my friend down the street has a podcast. They have a podcast. It's a joke now. If SNL is making fun of it, you know it's part of this lesson. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there aren't that many people podcasting with the ING.
You know, that's the key. So there's a lot more podcasts out there. I think the thing that is more important now than when I first started, like when we first started back in 2015, it was a little bit more of a land grab. And before that, it was just like... You know, some of these, I won't name any names, but like there are certain like business type shows.
that just cranked out content early and they built a huge audience because they were one of the few shows in town yeah it's not really that great stuff you know it's like not like that great it's not like mind-blowing strategy is happening here yeah they were just early and then that The cohort that Allie and I are kind of in, those mid-2012 to 2015, 16 type people.
It was a little bit thicker, but we still had some of that land grab. And now the land grab is done. Like you got to nail keyword optimization. You got to nail your branding. You got to nail your organic discovery. paid strategies, social media strategies. You've got to be more on point with that if you want to have your content kind of navigate the waters and have your ideal listeners potentially find you. It's a lot harder to do that now than it was.
And you gotta be good. And you must be good. I think that's sort of like the pod fade, sort of like the constant churn of a certain... does represent opportunity for new participants like you're getting at. And it doesn't have to be a zero sum that we're stuck at this 385,000. But they got to do all the things you're talking about. Identify who your audience is, know how you're going to...
like all those other things in order for it to be successful, which the bar has raised to your point. But if you do more of those, you're more like... Yeah, I agree. Honestly, Lucas, one of the things I get the most flack for online is when I say things like... talk about weekly episodes i'm like i have produced a weekly episode of at least one show every week since 2015 i've never met and sometimes it's like multiple shows I had
my health show and my business show at the same time. And at that point I had two episodes per week of each show and never missed. And I'm like, if you keep showing up for your audience, they will keep showing up for you.
With audio podcasts especially, we insert our content into the life routines of our listeners. Audio podcasts are unique because people, you know, they are doing other things they're mowing their lawn they're they're working out they don't do that while they're checking you know well at certain gyms they're checking their social media while they're they're working out but they're not reading newsletters and things like that usually
So if we give up, we take a break for three weeks, that routine has been built. They're going to insert someone else's content in that routine. You may not get it back. So I tell podcasters all the time, I preach online. I'm like, just because I release weekly episodes does not mean that I record every single year. Because I'll burn out. People are going to burn out if they release episodes every week. No, no, no. You burn out from recording every week.
Not releasing every week. Two different things. Be smart with your recording routine. Batch record. I don't record every week. I just took three weeks off. But I release episodes every single week. Big difference. It's about being... having that professional mindset, that business, again, level mindset versus a hobbyist mindset of like in between seasons I'm going to take. eight weeks off and they're like how many podcasts do you see with season one and no season two yeah exactly you know
And I agree with you there. I mean, we're batching six episodes this week. I'm recording three today and three on Thursday. Much to my chagrin. Just kidding. As producer. On the other hand, like, we get to focus and I'm in the zone. back to back to back between these, which actually kind of, you know, you're an athlete and you're in the zone. It's kind of a similar sort of mindset.
I want to talk about your business and some of the sort of tactics or things you've advocated for things you've leveraged. So for those who need to be reminded. podcastingbusiness.school. You got one of the really cool topics. and we'll put it in the show notes. But you're big on this idea of a 14-day... What is that that you offer and what makes it so effective in terms of why you...
It's a part of my offer platform, but I love it as a starting offer for a lot of podcasters. Again, looking at the pain point, looking at the mistake. People see, you know, they're a big fan of like Amy Porterfield. Like, oh my God, Amy. And that's the show they listen to. She inspires them to launch their show and they think, oh, Amy sells these giant. digital courses. She does these big launches and she sells them directly from her show. So that's what I'm going to do.
And guess what? If you have four people listening to your show, they're not going to buy your $2,000 course that they never get to talk to you ever. So again, brand levels, we're starting at a different brand level. So I love what I call a start anytime offer. And one of the ways... A personal brand can win against all the big brands with the big marketing budgets and the teams and all this stuff.
like solo podcasters, independent podcasters, we can give people fall in love with our content and then we can give them direct access to us. You can't get direct access to Amy Porterfield unless you're paying mega dollars. Right. And then it's going to be a sliver. So for us, I love promoting a 14 day start anytime offer and I make it super, super simple. where We don't even name...
a specific pain point. What I like to do is go, hey, if you're struggling with X, Y, and Z, hop on my discovery call calendar so we can figure out what the best fit is for you. And they sign up on my discovery call calendar. I ask them two very important questions. What are your pain points? Check all that apply. What is your budget to solve these pain points? So now I know the pain points, I know the price.
If my 14-day package falls into their price point, I can customize that to fit whatever pain point they want to focus on, whether it's launch, growth, rebranding, modernization, organic discovery, whatever. So I don't have to pre-build out a course. I don't have to do this big sales page of anything. It's just like, hey, we're going to spend 14 days together to produce this result. And along the way, it's all simple stuff. We meet on Zoom. I track all my notes on Google Docs.
And I give them access to a free app called Voxer where we walkie-talkie ideas back and forth. And I have people hit me up all the time for, can I book an hour? Can I pay you for an hour? I say, no, we're going to do 14 days. I'm going to take that same hour and we're going to break it up over 14 days because what?
I used to do the one hour consultation thing and people would hit me up anyway with more questions. I'm like, your hour's up, bro. So the 14 day thing works beautifully. We meet for 45 minutes day one. They've got 14 days of Voxer access. Blast me all day, every day, as many questions as you got. Day eight, we meet for 15 minutes to follow up. We get it all buttoned up. We're good to go. And they can still ask questions for another.
days or whatever off the back edge of that. And that's something that when I'm teaching this concept to my clients, I'm like, let's price this depending on what niche you're in. $500 to $1,000 range for a 14-day consultation package instead of, and then just the branding of it going. oh, here's my one hour rate versus here's my 14 day consultation package. And you're still spending an hour with them, by the way, you know, spoiler alert. It's just, it's just.
a different... Yeah, psychology associated with the value and the way that it's presented. Yep. But if we have a different niche, then you would have us customize it as your clients to our different things. So what are some examples of a 14-day challenge or something that someone in a different niche has done? Yeah, so let's take the health space. I have somebody, I mean, it could be 14 days of weight loss coaching. It could be simple, like, hey, send me your...
We're going to meet for 45 minutes, set goals. I'm going to give you some resources, maybe a PDF with some nutrition, whatever. And then vox me every day with your nutrition report. And I'll walk you, talk you back with feedback. 14 days. Boom. Real estate. Somebody, first 45 minutes, set up their investment goal of what we're looking for, what type of investing we're going to do. All right, we're going to help you find your first.
house that you want to bid on. And then that's the next 14 days, pinging ideas back and forth. Oh, that one, this one, those are our two candidates. All right, let's put an offer on that one. Let's meet for a 15 minute to kind of tie that up at the end. So, I mean, it's just solving a problem, taking one problem where people really screw this up, Ali, is where they're like, we will take you through this entire transformation in 14 days. Like, no, one freaking problem because what happens next?
People go, this was great. We knocked over a big domino. That was blocking a lot of my growth. What's next? What do you got next for me, coach? And guess what my budget is? Now you've proven to me that you can deliver on this budget. What can we do for instead of $800 for $5K or $2,500 or $10K or whatever? And now they're looking to ascend up the offer.
So I gave them access to me. I called a start anytime offer because we can start any Monday. You know, the first time I spoke at PodFest, Ali was there. I spoke about Instagram strategies and I had a line of people afterwards that were like, hey, how do I hire you? And I go, guess what? I don't have. that you could pay me for like I struck out completely I was like I didn't expect anybody to want to they just asked me to you know I had the health podcast I didn't
happen. And so I was like, I'll never have that happen again. And this is just a simple, like you can have a start anytime off or 14 day consultation package up and running in like the next couple of hours. It's ready to go and you can start making money. I love the simplicity of that. Yeah, for sure. The messaging.
very clear is it just you doing this or do you have team at this point in terms of thinking about scalability of atom well i don't do a lot of these now that's you know and starting off like when somebody is just getting their frame myself as a coach and I'm going to accept clients and they're wanting to build that online course really, really bad. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's, let's do this first because then maybe there's a pain point.
that keeps coming up and you keep solving it and solving it and solving it. And now you're like, I know what, I'm answering a lot of the same questions over and over and over again. That's your online course. Now we add the online course to the consultation and maybe it's not 14 days. 28 days or it's six or eight weeks. Now we've got a signature offer, course plus coaching. Now we're up leveling up our price point of that $2,500 to $5,000 range. So that's the way I like to evolve.
where i'm at now so i've evolved up into that course plus coaching signature offer type of things and then i've got higher ticket customized consulting that's 90 days and they get in that same principle they get a block of minutes My client's like, there's not a lot of people who do this. So with my 90-day consultation packages, I don't go, we're going to meet every week for X amount of time. I go, you've got 360 minutes.
It's like the old school, like singular Verizon cell phone plan. Use your minutes. Yeah, there we go. I'm like, you can block, you know, break it up however you want. 15 minutes one week, 45 the next. I can meet with your team. They can use some minutes. I just signed somebody on before we hopped on here for a 90 day consultation package and they wanted the larger minute package. I'm like, you can always upgrade your minutes. There's no rollover.
explain that for the people that grew up with the early 2000s cell phone plans um but that so that it all kind of ascends up into that so there's always an ascension opportunity What's the biggest mistake podcasters make when trying to monetize? Is it that they are, it seemed like you were alluding to this in some cases, like they're not going towards the problem they're trying to solve. And so they come up with.
closely tied with that? Is there something to be said for, like, what is that problem, whether it's the earlier guys or folks further along? Yeah, you're hitting the nail on the head there. So we get really excited and we try a more complex solution where a simple solution would work better. When I first got into health podcasting, I was like, I'm going to create an online course Because that makes sense. I built out like six months worth of videos pre-launch, paid for all this lighting stuff.
and no one bought it. My mom didn't even buy it. And I was trying to sell this thing for $7, and nobody bought it. I'm like, there will be thousands of people that buy this for $7. I'm going to be making so many thousands of dollars. And I didn't realize I had four people listening to my show. that numbers didn't add up. I'm from Indiana. Math isn't strong suit. And so that was an issue, like starting too complex too soon. And honestly,
Trying to sell direct from my show is really hard. Even to this day, it's really hard to sell direct from a show.
Because our greatest superpower becomes our kryptonite. People are doing other things, right? And we can leverage that for audience retention and getting involved in their life routine. But somebody's mowing their lawn and you're pitching your... your course that you're launching, they're probably not going to pull over to the side of the road or stop mowing their lawn or stop doing deadlifts to go buy your thing. So that is a little bit harder, but.
If I keep preaching, hey, discovery call, discovery call, discovery call, my favorite 80% of the time, my singular call to action, I only have one per episode. I don't even ask for ratings and reviews. I don't ask for... Tell a friend, I have one, I allow myself one single call to action 80% of the time that is.
discovery call. Okay, let's hop on for a podcast, Profitential Discovery Call. We can talk about X, Y, and Z. Links in the show notes. Go grab it. The note is in your lunchbox. Go get it. And so that is something that I see a lot of podcasters going, hey, I'm going to sell directly for my show and it doesn't work out so well. But that's why I love the combination of a podcast plus a weekly newsletter.
Because it is much easier to sell via email. So now they're consuming both of these things. And just like podcasting, I've put out a newsletter every week since 2018, never missed. That two-pronged effect has worked extremely well for me, where I can send one email. you know, and make 25 grand. And like, that is crazy. I couldn't do one podcast episode and do that, but I could send an email and do that. But the people are coming to the email list from the podcast calls.
Yes. So there's the funnel. Yep. And super clarity is kind of the... the jack of all trades, king of none might not help you here or mixed messaging or trying to do too many things. a singular focus on the most important thing to you, I think is probably the takeaway for listeners is like, if you only had one CTA, what would it be? Because many of the rest of it's just going to get lost in the shuffle or they won't remember a single one of your calls to act.
three yeah i mean how many podcasts that are your favorite podcasts they listen to that in the beginning like just count how many calls to action they have if you like this episode make sure you give us five-star rating review and also follow me on the gram and also on Pinterest and also on blah, blah, blah. And also write me a letter and also like all these things. If you have questions, I get this all the time. People are like, Adam.
I'm not getting any engagement on my show from my audience. Every episode, I ask them to send me questions, and they never send me questions. I go, well, what do you ask them to send you questions about? They go, oh, no. I just ask them to send me questions. They're not going to do that. On top of the other 12 things you told them to do, that's not going to happen. So yeah, Lucas, I love that challenge of
If you were only going to have one call to action, what would it be? And let's experiment with that. And I like doing that in the intro. I'll maybe mention a little bit mid-roll-ish, like casual call to action. And then in the outro, same thing. Boom, boom, boom. Let's do that for a few weeks in a row.
let's see what happens. And, you know, maybe that's your newsletter. Maybe that's your discovery call. Maybe that is, I'm not against talking about a brand new offer that you're launching because we want to raise awareness, but just don't expect. a ton off of the show unless you're doing the ping pong from the show to the newsletter. Yeah. It seems like the other thing you're a takeaway here is like folks as creators.
podcasters are creators influencers are creators like they're all creators um and it seems like more and more there is a need for a pseudo So you're not just doing the podcast. You're generally doing a podcast with a newsletter or a podcast with a blog. or some other collateral that you're using in parallel or study guides or courses or whatever happens to be. You have to be prepared almost like if you really want this to succeed, you have to think like a multilateral.
OMNICHANNEL APPROP and you're definitely doing it now and have been not. i said before you're on the show i'm subscribing to your newsletter right and we have you on as a guest so yeah that was awesome that was that made my day when you're like yeah i've been on your newsletter for i didn't realize that's what i was on the show Ali knows who to book. Ali books the best guy. There we go. High five to the producer. That's funny.
Video. We're going to talk about video for a few minutes. Love it. You recently, as far as I understand, quit video content entirely. No reels, no YouTube. shorts, all the things. Why? Partly was to inspire and prove a point where I keep getting these freaking emails that are like... not video podcasting your podcast will die and like video platforms that killed audio podcasts and like all this stuff and i see So many podcasters that get in, and again, they duplicate what they are used to.
And they don't realize these people have teams and like VAs and they have experience and they're trying to figure it all out. So they're like, Trying to have a YouTube channel and a podcast and go viral on TikTok and Instagram and video content is so time consuming. And if you don't do it well, it is obvious because it's really bad.
We all know that person that spends hours on a reel and it ain't that good. And like their mom likes it and that's about it. And they just wasted a lot of time. And those people quit podcasting when, what if. I just talked to somebody about this today. I'm like, what if you just start as an audio only podcast? We start simple, less but better, create really good content. And then if it makes sense, we expand to YouTube and we expand.
have a large TikTok audience, you need to do some video. I give platforms like a year, two years, 18 months, whatever. TikTok, I didn't get any traction. I started doing YouTube shorts. The only thing I got were angry teenagers that were making fun of me on YouTube. Writing the meanest comments. I'm like, you're 12. Shut up. Go get your mommy. I'm going to talk to her. Yeah. So I was like, I see so many podcasters quitting because of the time and they don't see the ROI and they're burning out.
do audio and just start there. So I kind of planned my flag. I said in November of last year and 2024, I was like, I'm going to quit doing. video stuff i could and it's easy to repurpose and like record on stream yard and live stream and the youtube and all that but i kind of wanted to make a point i want to be like i can be a full-time podcaster and i can
run a successful business. I can get lots of clients from my show and make plenty of money. I can do it audio only just to prove that it can be done in case that's saved. more people. We talked about that, that attrition rate earlier. Like if we can start winning that battle a little bit more, keep more podcasters podcasting, that's a good thing for the industry. So what if, and oh my God, I, you know.
I really lit it up on, I'm big on the Threads app because it's text only. So that's like my main podcast. So much easier than making videos. My same platform. I can create. I can post eight times a day on threads. That intimidates people. I'm like, wait, wait, wait. I'm spending, that's like half of the time I would spend on one Instagram reel to post eight times on threads. And I'm getting hundreds of followers a day. Like I'm, my threads following threads is like the. Twitter.
rival that meta created and i'm like i'm posting eight times a day on on threads I've been doing that for five months and it's getting ready to pass my Instagram following, which I've been building since 2018. Wow. Like that's insane. Yeah. I'm getting clients. I'm getting clients every day from Thread.
People are like, oh, you should be on LinkedIn. I don't know. All I get on LinkedIn are these people that are like professional podcast promoter guys that sound like the character Borat are pitching me. Like, I'm number five podcast guy promoter, sir, from Kazakhstan. I'm like, I don't know. here. Like, why are you going to help me? Why would I hire you? It's just spam. Yeah. Like, dear sir, sir, why are you not responding to my pitch email? So that's all I get on LinkedIn. So I quit doing that.
and every once in a while I'll throw some video stuff up but I'm pretty much just screwing around on Instagram at this point and yeah so that's I wanted to prove a point I want to keep more podcasters podcasting I wanted to just let people know that it's okay. Like you can do that. I did go on threads while I was getting too early. I went on threads and I go, hey, I really wish all these YouTube people would stop calling their shows podcasts. And I'm like...
If you have a YouTube channel, that is a YouTube channel. If you don't have an audio component, you don't have a podcast. And oh my God, people got so mad. I had somebody that called me an audio elite. oh what a word i had to unfollow this person because they were posting on every single one of my threads post audio elitist i'm like
Like I said, if you don't have an audio component, you don't have a podcast. It's a YouTube channel and that's okay too. It's like a movie and a book are two different things and they can be about the same story. One's called a book and one's called a movie. That's just the deal. So anyway. I digress. I really stir it up on threat.
I love it though because there's an element again of sort of like single CTA. You had experimentations with platforms and found that one of them is perhaps outperforming the other at a much faster velocity. that that one works, you invest into that one. So you're experimenting, you find, you invest. Seems to be a common theme across how you're approaching all of your own stuff. of advocating to for your clients. Yeah. Yeah. Less but better. Get rid of the stuff that's not working.
I hate- having to like give adults permission to do stuff i'm like i give you permission to just focus on one platform it is okay you know The feeling that you got to be everywhere and all the places, the FOMO is real. And everybody else tells you, I stop you all the time. You're an idiot for not being on LinkedIn. You're an idiot for not being on YouTube. I'm like, my RSS feed is connected to YouTube. All my audio goes out on YouTube. So I still get that.
google googleiciousness pull or whatever but you know what am i getting out of spending an hour creating video content when i can do that same hours and invest in discovery calls or how how about i spend that you know interacting with my children or, you know, picking them up from school or going for a walk outside or exercising. Like that's a better ROI than me getting mean comments on YouTube from teenagers.
Fair enough. This question may have basically already answered itself, but what happened to your downloads, leads, business once you made this switch? Did your download numbers go up? Were they relatively stable? It sounds like your leads are crushing it on threads when you're taking that strategy. Yeah, income went up. My downloads, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison because I simplified even more. So I went audio only, and then I went from two episodes a week to just one episode per week.
So I halved my episodes. And by comparison, my downloads are holding steady, you know, based off of the per episode. But yeah, my client conversion. It's really last but bad. And I started taking that extra time that I was spending. I created a tool called the less but better simplification filter. I create tools for my clients all the time. I customize stuff. And this is my favorite one. But the end result is you find three things that you put on pause for night.
You take that same amount of time and reinvest it into one to two things that are already working. I simplified my episode release cadence from two to one, stopped doing all the video assets. And I took all that extra time and invested into threads, more time on threads because that was working. And I invested in my news.
And I decided, you know, a lot of podcasters, it's very common, like, here's my episode of the week. My newsletter is kind of a promotion for that. And it's kind of on the same topic. And I'm like, I'm going to create an independently valuable piece of content that is not the same as mine. episode of the week it'll be two different topics i want people to want to consume both um not just skip my newsletter because again it's easier to sell from that medium
I want them to skip that thing and I've already listened to the episode this week. I don't need to consume that or threads content. It's all just the same topic all the time. Like I'm really, I've got my operating system in place where I promote my new episode, but. It's not just that. And it's all independently valuable content. So the flywheel is podcast, episode, newsletter, thread.
I'm invested, double down and all that. And that bottom line income is way up. And I'm spending less time. I'm doing more of the stuff that I love doing. More is oftentimes not more. Less is more here. And it's just focus, focus, focus, focus, which I really appreciate. There's another element of what you are a big... You've got a lot of these models, which I love. You should read the Great Mental Models books from Shane Parrish, by the way.
project podcast and he's like heavily influenced by Charlie Munger. You would love his books. You also have a sort of formula and model for naming the perfect podcast. Let's talk about podcast names. And by the way, when we were going to name this show, I did my, like, is there a sound strategy at all? And the answer was there wasn't. But how do I make sure? supported a little bit if they're that territory. So some strategy with Lucas Dickey. And so we're like unique on the one.
me as a brand equity building on the other end of the company and myself. but I'd love to hear your strategy. with a little bit of help from like Allison and Faye, but I'm also very stubborn. So I kind of just did my own thing, but would love to hear like, you know, your advice, you know, podcast naming and keywords, both are very particularly important in podcast search.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, organic discovery is awesome. And that's what I call podcast SEO because my ideal listeners find me while I... and those ideal listeners become ideal fit clients and that's awesome that they start to turn like podcasting tips on apple on the search bar and here comes my show and guess what 566 episodes you can binge listen on and sign up for discovery call next week and let's do business
So the name of your show will be the number one reason why or why not your ideal list. The number one mistake I see podcasters making is they get too creative and cute with the name of their show. We are creative people. That's the problem. And we're like... it's gotta be catchy. And that's where like people try to use words. I see the word her for a female-based podcast infused into their words, and they make this word that doesn't exist.
I can't, her element, it becomes her element, and you're like, I don't even know how to type that. entrepreneur. I'm like, what is this? That doesn't even make sense. So he's like invented words. The word love, light, life, and living show up in a lot of podcast names.
So it's very creative and cute, but we need to be strategic. So I'm like, let's be strategic with the name of our show so that people can actually find our show and we're not putting up a big roadblock. And then when we hit the record button for episodes like this, that's when all the creativity... out. That's kind of what I'm looking for. So the perfect podcast naming formula, three key check boxes. The first check box is when I read the name of your show, I want to know exactly.
You're not there to explain it if it is unclear. So take the name of your show, put it in front of 10 people. If they can't guess what it's about, we got problems. Right. Number two, when I read the name of your show, I want to know who it's for, exactly who it's for. All right. So. Even if you have like a wellness show, you don't want to call it like the wellness show. You want wellness for stay-at-home moms, wellness for investment professionals. real estate investing for...
small business owners. We want to have that who it's for. Then the third thing is I want to know, I want to see two keywords. I want to see two highly searched keywords and the name. And I want the first word of the name to be a keyword. This is Rob Walsh, 101. the first word in the name of your show has the most SEO power.
Make sure that the isn't the first word or a number. So the fact that the first word in my show is podcasting, guess what the number one search term for my ideal listener is podcasting tips. They put that in Spotify. They put that now. That's why I'm always pulling up. And there are a lot of podcasts about podcasting where they use the word.
podcasts in the name and they think they're good. That's the worst thing you could do because how many podcasts have the word blah, blah, blah podcast. Yeah. So pro tip, like I'll, I've got a certification. I use on like name your show door podcasting, not podcast, because then you're going to pull up in the right way. So little nuances like that. If you can check those three boxes. It will strategically make your show more discoverable.
And that way your ideal listeners can actually find you and you don't have to just rely on effort-based marketing because that's where people burn out. It's like, Oh, I got to post all the social media things. Like let's do the easy stuff and set that up. And let's get keywords, not only the podcast title, but also in our host description and in our episode titles.
Spoiler alert, AI is terrible at keywords for episode titles. AI cues into all the keywords, the creative naming and stuff like that. I want key freaking words. of what people are searching. So there's room. I'm sure we'll get there. There's room. But that's something that you've got to be careful with.
like, oh, I got these really creatively named shows and episodes and there's no keywords in there. So that's the final human element. You got to read it and go, I've got a business show. Is there a word? Business, entrepreneurship, online business, marketing, are those words in there or not? If they're not, let's throw them in there. Allison, it sounds like we need to revisit...
The show Sound Strategy with Lucas Dickey should be Sound Strategy with Lucas Dickey, the most meta podcast about podcasters for podcasters. Something like that becomes the name. Absolutely. Experimentation, baby. Yeah, we're learning as we go along. So thank you for your tips, Adam. And speaking of, you know, earlier when we were talking about how Adam and I, our journey started 10 years ago and what did we know about podcasting?
Well, Allie over here named her show in iTunes at the time before Apple Podcasts, The Food Heals Podcast. Okay? No. Somehow, I still hit some pretty big charts, but it was a Rob Walsh talk to convince me way back in the day at one of my early, early podcast movements or something where... You know, it was the whole conversation about the first word is the most important word.
Then we were talking about that at one of the conferences and someone said, what is the name of your show? And I said, Food Heals. Then why are you telling people it's the Food Heals Podcast? I was like, I don't know. so little things like that obviously now 10 years later we're season we know but a beginner right now could absolutely start their show with
because there are so many shows in history that have started with V, so it just makes sense in our brain. So that's really important information for anyone who's listening now to start a podcast. Make sure your titles are exactly by Adam's formula. that's how you're going to get a great title. Yeah, Lucas, maybe we'll have to make some changes here.
Well, one other just important nuance is that verbally, you can still call your show the whatever. Just as it's listed, when you list in your host, make sure the is in the first word. Like, I can... verbally call my show the podcasting business school, but I list it as podcasting business school. That's the important nuance there is how it's listed in your host on the title line. That's the important thing. Yeah. It's stuffing the appropriate keywords into the title.
podcast search engine purposes. What excites you most about podcasting right now? Why do you continue to be excited about it? your adult life into great question though because i think for me now it's a little bit more about legacy like I can see that I can impact a certain amount of people. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm doing this podcast growth coach certification program where...
A lot of people are really hesitant to kind of give up their secret sauce and tell other people that could be viewed as competitors what they're doing. But I know that I've certified 20 coaches. I'm having a ball doing it. It's a great offer. It's an income generator. A lot of them hire me for business consulting and other things too. But now...
They're out teaching that formula I just taught you. That's one of the things that I teach them how to do and find keywords and do all this. Now they're out there doing it. launching their own shows about podcasting so i'm kind of becoming this like podcast grandpa status of like my children and dave jackson's a hell of a lot older than i am i'll just say that so
He's like great-grandpa. He gets called OG. You should be grandpa. It doesn't happen with the same sex. Podcast papa. I'm from the Midwest, so we call podcast papa. So I'm seeing impact, and they're coming back. helping these people and like my knowledge is transferred down i mean let's just take a step back and think about that as content creators as pod
we get to do something that 99 point whatever percent of the humans on earth never get to do. And that is impact complete strangers with just recording. Someone might listen to this episode today. that none of us will ever meet, ever. But they take a thing, they change a word. they get a bunch of downloads and maybe they've got
Maybe they got a mental health show and the right person finds them and decides to not commit suicide or something like that. That's the trickle effect of what we do. And only like less than 1% of people get the opportunity to do that. And that's pretty special. So I get excited about things like that, just kind of thinking.
legacy these days how do i stand in the podcasting space i've had so much fun i see people are crossing that bridge from hobby to full-time stuff and they're making money and i love helping people do that because i really went about the long and hard way and i was just stubborn enough to stick with it um but you know
I like seeing people hit that end result, and now they're able to provide for their families or go full-time or spend a little bit more time with their kids because they've got income coming in this other generation model. So that's what I'm really psyched about. I love it. That's probably a good place to wrap up as you are excited. excite you. So thanks Adam Scheibel for coming on Sound Strategy. Adam, you have one CTA. Let's hear what your one CTA is for folks to remember about.
All right. If you want to dive into more of what we talked about today, check out Podcasting Business School wherever you listen to your podcast audio. Start with episode number 560 where I dive a little bit deeper on doubling your downloads with SEO. podcast keywords to get organic discovery. Do you just have all the numbers memorized?
Okay. Pro tip. Whenever I'm on somebody else's show, I've got three or four episodes. I'm like, if we go here, we go there. That's what I'm going to, I'm going to shout out at least one episode every single time. on somebody else's show. So that's a podcasting pro tip. That is a great pro tip. I'm going to take that one for my own. Yep, give them a foothold to start.
I'll just say we thought we were done, and then he just kept on dropping knowledge on us. For knowledge. Final second. I mean, we could go another hour. That's very true. We'll have him back for the next season. All right, Adam, thanks for joining us. Totally appreciate it. All right, thanks everybody. Thanks Adam. Thanks for tuning into Sound Strategy with me, Lucas Dickey. Find everything from today's episode.
transcripts takeaways key quotes and links to all of your favorite podcast players i hope you enjoyed our deep dive into the wild world of podcasting today check our show notes for all guest details and contact info Huge thanks to everyone who shared their wisdom with us. And most importantly, thank you, my podcast obsessed friends for listening. Come back next week for another edition of sound strategy with Lucas Dickey.