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Embark on a journey to success with the Startup Founder Roadmap, your go-to guide for navigating the challenging yet rewarding world of startups. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just launching your first venture, this podcast is your compass for building, growing, and leading a thriving startup company.
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The Startup Founder Roadmap Podcast is your weekly dose of practical advice, industry insights, and expert guidance. Hosted by Christopher Hines, a podcast specialist with a passion for empowering startup founders, each episode is crafted to equip you with the tools and knowledge needed to not only survive but thrive in the competitive world of startups.
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00:00 - Speaker 1
Every day, podcasting is becoming more and more popular, more and more mainstream. I remember years ago when I started podcasting in like 2015,. It was not this popular or mainstream thing. It wasn't something that everybody was doing or that most people even knew existed. Right, it was a very taboo and different thing. Now, podcasting is the easiest way to market any product or service.
00:24
I think the disconnect is a lot of SaaS and startup founders don't really connect their marketing plan with podcasting. A lot of founders are still trying to use the old school marketing strategies of SEO or spamming people on social media, cold outreach through emails and granted that stuff can work. But I can guarantee a podcast is going to get you better results a lot faster and it's going to take a lot less effort. So today I really want to get into how you, as a SaaS founder, can use podcasting to really take your business to the next level. So I want to give you kind of an overview of what this video will entail, what I'm breaking down here. So first I want to break down the why and how I know this can work. I know that's like the first question in your mind how do I know this can work? I want to get into that. Then I want to really explain the how right. Like, how can you, as a founder, benefit from having your own show right? How do you stand out from all the other podcasts and all the other companies, all the other agencies that have their own shows? Like, how do you create content? How do you build a platform that's completely different from everybody else? And I want to get into the real process, the ins and outs of what it takes. What are the tactical steps? Like from step one to step 10? What does that actually look like? I want to break it down and show you those methods.
01:45
Then I want to mention some of the top sass podcasts that are out there. There are a lot of founders who have shows, but they do it in such a great way that when you're listening to it, you don't realize this is just a founder with their own podcast and they're using it to build their company. Like it's so many people doing this. You don't realize it until you listen to it from a different point of view. Then you're like wow, this person is really good. It's a skill. Honestly, I will say it is a skill.
02:09
Then I want to get into some of the challenges that you're definitely going to face and how you can overcome those, whether it's planning your content, marketing, reaching new listeners, all of that stuff and I want to give you some tools as well, things that will just make hosting your podcast easier, because there are some really basic ways that everybody, there's some really basic challenges that a lot of podcasters run into, and it's the main reasons why podcasts fail, why people stop. So let's really get into these details of how to show. So let's get into the details of how you can start your show and really start generating more leads in your company. All right, so, first of all, I know that you can start your show and really start generating more leads in your company, all right. So, first of all, I know that you can generate leads podcasting, because I have done it myself Since 2015,. I've been hosting shows, producing shows, all kinds of stuff, so I know what works and what doesn't work. I can tell you that you can generate leads, and when I was doing it, I was selling my services. I sold courses, books, pretty much everything you can think of, and this was intentional for me, right? Like I wanted to prove that this could work.
03:09
I remember talking to one of my connections on Facebook. His name is Tyler Basu, I think he worked at Thinkific at the time and he said this comment to me and I will never forget it. I will never forget it because it changed my life, right? He said podcasting is one of those things that you can do, but it just won't actually impact your business. Like you, hosting a show isn't going to generate leads, it's not going to make you more money, it won't increase the bottom line, and I saw that as kind of a challenge, Like okay, since you think this can't be done, I'm going to go and do it again and again, and again. And it's funny because I believed it before. He said that. But him saying that really kind of put a battery in my back.
03:46
I'm not going to lie, because I think that hosting a show is one of those things. When it's done properly, it can get you the results that you want. But the bigger problem is, most shows kind of do the same thing. Everybody takes the same approach to having a podcast. Right, and again, I know this works because when I looked at starting a show, I wanted to do things completely different. Right, I look at what most podcasts are doing? They're doing a bunch of interviews. They put out one episode a week. They don't really market outside of their network, like they may post on social media and that's their marketing. That's it, right.
04:21
When I noticed all of those trends, I say, okay, well, how can I do the opposite? How can I create a show where people hear me more than some random guest, where I'm connecting with my audience on a more personal level Right, where I'm reaching new people outside of my network, where people that don't know me you know they get to know me through the podcast? Taking that approach drastically changed the results I got from having my own show. It was about more of getting leads and less about getting a bunch of downloads and having a massive audience. That just didn't matter as much, and changing that focus got me amazing results through different shows. Now, yes, I have gotten sponsors and all of that stuff. I've done that part. But what's been 10 times more profitable is generating leads and selling products and services. Like it's not even comparable, to be honest, because there's no ceiling on how much money I can make selling my own products and services. So once I learned that in like 2018, 2019, it was over Like I haven't even really looked at sponsorships that much. I mean I might for my newer show, just because it just it will fit as a lot of companies that fit for the startup founder roadmap. But overall that's not the goal, it's not the focus. I want to get leads so I can sell products and services to those people. That's just way more profitable.
05:36
Let's talk about how you can podcast differently than everyone else. I think this is one of the main points that the business podcasts forget and they don't really focus on. If you have a business show and your goal is to generate leads, you shouldn't be hosting your show like it's entertainment podcast, right? You look at things like the Joe Budden podcast, joe Rogan or Caller Daddy all the biggest podcasts in the world. A lot of those are entertainment shows, right? So for entertainment shows, they focus on numbers. You want to have the most listeners you can, the biggest audience, the most downloads. All of that stuff matters a lot because you go and then sell your audience's attention to advertisers. Perfect, it makes sense as a business podcast. Our job, our goal, our focus is not to get as many downloads as possible. We want to connect with our audience. That are ideal customers when people tune into the startup founder roadmap.
06:32
I don't want just anybody listening. I want specifically a startup founder or a venture capitalist right, those are my two ideal people. Startup founder, venture capitalist, and in a layer deeper you can say, a SaaS founder right, and then a layer deeper than that, a SaaS founder that is creating content, that believes in content marketing right. That kind of person is who I want listening to my show. So when I say podcast differently, I mean your focus of your show needs to be completely different from everybody else. It can't be about getting the most listeners, and I have to struggle. When I work with my clients, honestly, they always are like man, we aren't getting a lot of listeners. Then I have to break it down. So I'm like okay, you got 150 listeners on your last two episodes, right. Let's just say, let's just, for example purposes, 150 people listen. How many people do you need to buy for your business to be profitable, right? So out of those 150 people, if just two of them bought, you would make $50,000. I mean, do you really need a lot of people listening at that point? No, you need the right people listening, and the reason why so many business owners believe that they can't get results from podcasting is because they're focused on the wrong result.
07:43
Right, when we change our focus now we know what to measure differently. I don't go to the stats, like you see the hat here. Transistor FM shout out to them. It's my hosting platform. I'm not on Transistor FM refreshing my downloads every day watching the numbers. No, I want to look and see what leads I'm generating. Right, who is signing up to my newsletter? Who is signing up on a landing pages? Like, what numbers am I doing there? That matters. And then, from those people, how many are opening emails? How many are scheduling calls? Right, the whole process is different because we're measuring things different. We have different goals.
08:19
But if you come into podcasting as a founder and say, yeah, I wanna build a super popular podcast and go viral every day, I mean, yeah, you could try to be my first million. You can try, yeah, but I don't think that's going to get you the outcome you actually want. Right, those, those shows like that, are startup podcasts because they're giving you ideas and stuff. But really it's more so entertainment, and I don't think it's a bad thing, it's great. I think it's really really dope the way that they talk about ideas and give people ideas and information, and the guests they have on I mean, come on, it's incredible. But that's my point. It's entertainment, it's for fun. Right, you may learn stuff here and there, but the main focus for them is to be entertaining. Their focus is not to sell a product or a service. If your focus is sell a product or a service, your main focus should be transformation, not entertainment. For entertainment shows, music, movies, pop culture, all of that stuff they want to entertain For you. You want to deliver transformation.
09:18
Now, I want to get deeper on this a little later, but I just wanted to kind of lay the groundwork for you to understand what I'm saying. When you start your own show, your goal is not the same as most other podcasts. I would say 95% of podcasts out there want to get as many downloads as possible. But if you are a business owner with your own show, you want to focus on leads. Okay, since we're talking about focusing on leads and generating more leads and all that stuff in your podcast, I want to give you four steps to turn your podcast into a lead generation machine. Step number one is positioning. You want your podcast to be seen as the answer to people's problems, right?
09:57
Think about how Google was super. I mean, this was amazing. Years ago, I remember when I used to have a question, I would always go to Google and type it in and you would get a bunch of blog posts, a bunch of checklists, articles, all kinds of stuff that would pretty much answer your question and solve your problem. If you were willing to read through, you will find any answer that you wanted. People aren't doing that on Google anymore. They're doing it on YouTube and TikTok. Now, since people are searching different and, honestly, the blogs have gotten blown out of the water because it's just so much other content out there, you got to take a different approach to providing that solution. That's where podcasts come in, because when somebody goes to search at the top of Google, your podcast can now pop up. Your YouTube video can pop up Like this is a big deal.
10:41
Think about it like this when somebody has a question in your market, you want them to look at your show as a solution, right? This is why I tell people to get away from just the interviews, because then you can make a bunch of content answering questions from your ideal customers, like if I have a software tool, I know my audience is going to have a question about how to do this or why they should do that or why does that matter. You can create a whole series around very basic things to solve their problem. I'll give you a clear, clear example very basic things to solve their problem. I'll give you a clear, clear example. Email marketing platform like ConvertKit, or even a newsletter platform like Beehive. They could easily make a podcast series of 10 episodes of how to build your list to 10,000 people or whatever, and they can break down how to design your newsletter, how often you should send your newsletter, when you should set up a paywall, landing pages. It's so many questions that people have around building a newsletter. When you create all that content answering those questions, you're right there to solution all the time. That's what you want us to be the position as a solution in the market.
11:45
Now this used to be done with blogs, but I think now you can still honestly use blogs together in unison with this. Like, let's just say, you didn't want to still write your blogs and stuff because you like writing. Fine. Now when you write that blog out, you can put the YouTube video in the article on your website and the podcast episode. So now your page is so much more valuable, right? You got so much valuable content there. Some people may go there looking to read the blog and end up watching a 20-minute YouTube video. Now that tells Google that your website is more valuable because people are sticking around or staying tuned in. I mean, the possibilities are endless, right. So when you become a solution, that's what creates all of these opportunities.
12:27
Now the second part of this process is kind of what I alluded to already is to do less interviews. Now, this sounds crazy to say, because most people believe that podcasts are built on interviews. The truth is they are not. Most of the time, when you have somebody on your show, they're not going to promote it, and I know that as somebody who's done I've done hundreds of interviews, man, I've been doing, I would say, three to four interviews a week since 2015. And even when I'm not doing my interviews, I'm still producing for my clients, I'm still scheduling interviews for them and all of that stuff. So I know that when you have somebody on the show, they'll say they're going to promote it, they will gas you up and sometimes that's even a discussion before they book the interview. But the problem is when it's time to sit down and do that interview. They don't really put an effort to promote it to their audience. Now I can say it doesn't bother me as much now because I know how to market a show and to reach a new audience and all of that stuff. I know how to do that.
13:23
But if you don't know how and you don't understand that process, it'll be a big challenge for you and I don't think you should focus on interviews to grow your show or to build an audience, or definitely not to generate leads. It's not going to help you. Instead of doing a bunch of interviews, I think your show should be 50-50. It should be partial interviews, specifically with people that are valuable in your market, in your industry, right, people that have done something, and then you create solo content. When you create solo content, that makes your show stand out way more.
13:56
When you're doing a solo content, think of it as transformation, right? Why when I sit and record videos like this, I always picture myself talking to my ideal prospect at like a networking event or something. Right? It's something I've done a lot over the years and I realized it makes producing the content easier. Number one number two it makes you really focus on the transformation you're delivering in that content. You see, at the beginning I started off with the why. Now I'm teaching you to how. Like that's the process you can follow in your solo content, and I myself have made nine different episode types, like interviews is just one of my nine.
14:33
I do sales episodes, I do move the needle episodes and that's some of my specialty stuff storytelling, all kinds of stuff, testimonial interviews it's so much other content you can do outside of just sitting there and talking to some fake celebrity who scammed their way to the top of Amazon bestseller list. But you don't want that to be your entire podcast because, yes, then when you do that you're not going to get any leads. But if every time your listener turns on the podcast in their car or they listen while they're working out, they start getting results in some kind of transformation, like that aha moment, that's what makes your podcast valuable. That's what makes people go and market the show for you. When you can make it that good, I think that should be our focus as podcast hosts, versus trying to get as many listeners. No, let's just make the listeners we have listen closer.
15:25
Another thing you want to do with your content and wait, I want to do sales. Okay, now, one specific episode type that I had to lay into right here is a sales episode. This sounds absolutely insane if you're not making other types of content that I just explained. I sound crazy to you and I understand why, but I want you to understand that selling on your podcast is something that you have to do if you want to generate leads. That doesn't make you look crazy or sound crazy or anything, Because the people listening that want that transformation and want you to solve their problem. They have no problem with you selling. Now I will say you don't want to make the content where it's like a full-on infomercial for 45 minutes. Nobody wants to hear that A sales episode.
16:10
Is you giving people reasons why they should buy? For example, if I wanted people to buy my email marketing software, I would simply break down. Here are three reasons why you need to use this tool to market your business Simple, right, like that's a very basic way to sell. Now you could have more intense sales episodes where it's like you're going deep on the intricate parts of how your software works and how your product is great and all of that stuff. You could do that as well. I think you should do these sales episodes like once a month. If you're doing one episode a week, one episode out of the four, it's fine if you're focused on selling, because in the other ones, if you're delivering that transformation, you're doing interviews, you're doing high quality content content. You selling once is not that bad. Now again, if you're doing this every other episode, you're gonna completely wear your audience out and they won't be tuned into that.
17:01
I think the key to selling on your show with a specific episode is also focusing on the value that your product is going to deliver, right, you want to really understand and focus and hone in on the problems and the biggest pain points your market is facing and how your product can solve those. Like, I wouldn't even do multiple episodes, I wouldn't even do one episode. I would do multiple episodes right, like if the pain point is having to pay $90 a month for this other tool that only does landing pages. Well, with us, here are the the. Again, the problem is the landing pages right, and spending that much money and all that stuff. So, on our tool, we have multiple landing page templates. We use some AI tool to help you write the copy, like simple, you can go point by point and make an episode about all of them. That's what's great. So then sometimes, when you talk to prospects, you can use your podcast. Wait, I don't want to put that in there, I'm going to delete that Cut. That, like you got to understand.
18:04
A strategy behind selling on your show is about thinking like you're talking to one of the prospects that you have and it's just in person. Right, when I'm making content like this, the content has gotten me the most leads over the years that converted the most people. It's just me literally looking into the camera and talking like this basic stuff, right. So think about the pain point that people are facing, the problem they have, and then your solution for it, and then do that 20 times. I know it sounds insane, but it's that easy. And then that makes your podcast so valuable.
18:39
Because think about the new person that's entering the industry, right, that new person is starting their first online business. If they find your show about email marketing, for example, and you're breaking down how to make a landing page, or the five things that you want to avoid when making a landing page, or three things your landing page must have, all of that content is very, very valuable to the marketplace. That new person might not know any of this stuff. To you, you've known it for decades. They don't know that right, like, like and think about it this way too. Man, this blows my mind. I am the only person in my family that does online anything right, like. I'm the only person that knows how to build a landing page or definitely make software. That's done. Courses and agency stuff, like. I've been doing it for over 10 years now. Nobody in my family does this, and I think that's how most of us are as entrepreneurs. Most people we know don't know any of the things that we know, like out of all of this that we know, the people around us know like this much.
19:48
So when you are thinking about the pain points, don't think, oh man, this is too big. No, break it all the way down, because that's going to be the sales point. Right, that content might not sound like sales content, but it is because you're talking about their specific pain and giving them a specific solution. They look at you as the authority on the subject. Now, it's that simple. Break it all the way down to the fourth grade level and then you'll be able to draw in more of your ideal prospects.
20:17
Okay, after you're doing sales content and stuff like that, I kind of want to give you some other strategies you can use to still get results from other content. I think you should have multiple call to actions that you use. I watch Shannon Sharp, colin Cowher and these sports podcasts and one thing that they do that is genius they have call to actions to subscribe or to do this or that, and they play it at the beginning of their episode, in the middle and at the end, right, what they also do when they take the full one hour episode and they clip it up 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes, whatever it is, they put call to actions in the front of the clips as well. I think what you should be doing is, literally and I have old template for this record seven, eight different call to action videos, right, telling one um, one should be telling people to subscribe to the show, follow the show. Another one is to tell people to go and watch this webinar. Another one is to tell people to download this checklist. Like have multiple versions available and you can just keep adding them into your content, right? That way you never have to worry about recording it. You don't have to oh man, I forgot and you gotta go back and no record that have it in a folder and then, when you're in post-production, throw it in there. Boom, boom, boom.
21:31
Now you always have content ready to go. You're always promoting your products and services and I think they should be simple. It shouldn't be some two minute, three minute call to action. It's very basic, like hey, I'm hosting this podcast, thank you for tuning into podcast name. If you want more leads in your business, go and download this thing here. Simple, it could be that easy. It could be that easy. It doesn't have to be intense.
22:00
And then when you have those kind of call to actions ready to go, you can consistently throw them in your videos, in your episodes, and you're always promoting yourself in a non-sleazy, non-pushy way, because you're pushing the solution right, like that's the value there is. You're not pushing them to go and buy and give you money. No, when you're promoting the courses and stuff nonstop buy this course, buy this course, buy this course people don't want to hear that. That's the turnoff. But when you say, hey, if you want more of this, just go and get. This thing is completely free, nobody's going to get mad at that because you're giving away something that's free Right now. Later on you obviously might have emails or phone call schedule and all of that stuff to talk to the leads and stuff as you should, but that's how you break this process up. It's that simple, really, right? When you think about it, it's pretty easy.
22:49
I just did a breakdown of what I want people to do when they listen to the show. It's either follow the show on YouTube Definitely Top five, definitely do that. Follow it wherever you listen to podcasts. Or download something so you can get on my email list One of those threes. If you do one of those three, I'm a happy camper. Now some people will do all three and I appreciate those people Shout out to y'all. You have to be ready to kind of tell people to do that stuff, though, right, that's the process.
23:16
Now the last step to turning your podcast into a lead generation machine is to deliver episodes directly to your prospects. This is one of those marketing tactics that is so underused. I think when people do code outreach specifically on like Twitter or some social platform, they always do it wrong. Right, like when I do code outreach, I like to reach out with content, right, because I'm not going to just reach out to somebody randomly even if I guess it's not cold outreach Like, if I'm reaching out to you, I'm going to send you some type of content to solve a problem I saw you tweeting about right. I see some people like I had automation set up at one time where when people talked about marketing their show or getting monetized, I would then get a notification for that. So then I will send an automatic DM like hey, you said you needed help marketing your show. I record this video on YouTube for you to you know, help you market your show. Blah, blah, blah. Check it out. That is so much better than just hey, I'm helping people do this.
24:13
Do you want to buy something? Like it's very off putting at this point. Like we get so much cold outreach DMs and stuff. As online entrepreneurs I'm pretty sure you do as well it's like hard to pay attention to, right, but when you have content attached to it, that's like okay, this is harmless, right. Like, especially if I get it at like 10, 11 o'clock at night, I'm at the house. I done gotten a shower. I worked all day. I can go ahead and watch a little 10 minute video. You know that's so much better for me at least and I find that using that strategy works really well for growing your audience, building more connections, because some people will go and watch that content. They'll listen to the podcast and come back to you and say, wow, man, that was super helpful. Now you've already kind of start cultivating the relationship versus the cold outreach and, hey, you want to buy something. That's just not as impactful.
25:06
But when you take those episodes we talked about where you're transforming, you're giving people solutions to very specific problems. Right see, that's part of why I think having the content that's so specific to your market is so valuable, right Like? Imagine if I record a podcast episode about helping bootstrap SaaS founders that haven't reached a thousand, a thousand dollars MRR. Use podcasting to reach a thousand dollars MRR. Like, think about how specific that is. I'm talking to SaaS founders. Saas founders bootstrapped, not at a thousand dollars MRR. No marketing strategy Like that's a very, very specific market. Now, if I can send that content to a hundred people that have that problem, think about how many are just going to join my newsletter, right Like? Think about that because that's super specific to them. And then in the content I can then be specific with my solution to them, right, in certain terms, like churn and stuff that they're going to get and they're going to understand and is going to be impactful to them, versus me trying to send this content to everybody, right. So that specificity in the content is very important and delivering the episodes to your specific ideal customer is it's just a game changer. I think it's one of the best things you can do if you want to build a profitable podcast.
26:28
So some of my favorite startup podcasts specifically sass podcasts out there is, I think, the sass academy show startups with the rest of us. I think my first million is good. They don't really focus on sass just as much. Um, obviously, you got saster, you got a lot of different companies that have shows, but what I want to see is more founders that have shows for their companies. Right, like, right now it's a lot of podcasts about how to market your sass company, sass sales and all of that stuff. Um, you even got founder-led stuff like that's great.
27:00
I think more founders should have their own shows because you just build, like we talk about how important personal branding is. How much more personal can it get than having your own show. Like, really, how much more personal can it get? I think that's really, really personal and the benefits you can get from having your own show is just game changing, right. So I have a free checklist that can help you with the equipment and stuff. You see, I got a bunch of microphones. Here's another one right here. These are the same exact microphones, by the way. Just the best in my opinion Sure, mv7. I'll put a link to that down in the description. If you have any questions about getting your show started, obviously you can reach out to me. Join the newsletter that's linked down below as well. If you're a SaaS founder, reach out to me on Twitter at Chris Podcasting and we can chop it up about what podcasting can do for you. Thank you for tuning in. I'll see you next time you.