How to Unlock Podcasting as a Business Asset

Jeffro (00:01.102)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. Did you know that 90 % of podcasts never make it past their third episode? If you’ve ever wondered how to turn your business podcasts into a revenue generating machine or how to leverage podcasting as more than just a content platform, today’s episode is for you. I’m joined by Ryan Sullivan, founder of Podcast Principles, a boutique marketing company dedicated to helping B2B businesses create profitable podcasts. Ryan has built his business around the idea that podcasts aren’t just a content medium.

They’re a powerful business tool. So we’re going to explore how to make podcasting work for your brand, generate revenue, and even pair it with LinkedIn for maximum impact. So Brian, thanks for joining us today.

Ryan R. Sullivan (00:42.747)
Dude, that was fire, man. As a podcast connoisseur, have to say, appreciate the intro.

Jeffro (00:47.693)
Definitely. Well, you’ve earned it. So glad you liked it. But I’m excited for our conversation because I think our listeners will get a lot out of this, especially those who’ve ever considered doing a podcast or have started it and had been struggling with it. Now you and I first connected on LinkedIn and I enjoyed seeing your posts and comments about podcasting and all that. And when you launched your podcasting community, I joined and I’ve taken a ton of the things I’ve learned, applied them to my own podcast. And I personally know other business owners who started podcasts but then they didn’t keep up with them. They didn’t have someone like you, or really didn’t have the full plan. I think a lot of people underestimate what goes into creating a podcast, and they definitely don’t realize what is required to leverage it as a business asset. So I think the first question that we can start with is, who should actually start a business podcast?

Ryan R. Sullivan (01:37.115)
Yeah, great question. Obviously, I’ve experienced the same things. Hundreds to thousands of, I’ve seen these dead podcasts and they’re very depressing and we want to make sure for everybody listening and watching that that doesn’t become your podcast. And there’s a lot of ways to do it right, right? So that’s what I’m focusing on. So if the question is, okay, like who is this for? Or like who works best for, where does a podcast work best in this when it comes to a business?

Well, we have to look at number one, do you have the resources to do this? This is going to cost thousands of dollars. This is going to take hours. This is going to take time. Anything worth building is going to take money, time. It’s going to be more money than you expect, more time than you expect, more resources than you expect. And that’s not a bad thing, folks. That’s what good things take. Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s why we’re here doing business, because we didn’t take the easy route. We took the hard route, and now we get to reap the benefits.

It’s the same thing for podcasts, right? So what I say now, it’s different from what I said years ago, right? Which is, anybody can start a podcast, you know, like you just gotta get it up and running. That’s really not what it is. You wanna have clients, you wanna have a prior recurring revenue or at least recurring business or some kind of revenue model where you know where your next check is coming from. And then also you wanna have the angle, right? So you wanna have the need. A lot of business owners create podcasts on the back of their success, not to fill a gap in the market.

Those are two different types of podcasts, right? So if you say, well, hey, I’ve helped the companies acquire or get over $100 million in investment. Okay, great. Now you go, well, now I’m an expert. So now I’m gonna be the guy on the top of the mountain and I’m gonna interview other experts. That’s great, but you didn’t look at the landscape of podcasts. There’s probably somebody who’s better than you, faster than you, has more better results than you, and probably already has that podcast, right? They already have 300 episodes and you’re going to go out and make yours, but that market’s already saturated, right? So how I look at this to kind of round out this thought is, yes, you got to have the resources to do it. Number two, you have to know what you want from it. That’s important. And then number three is lifestyle, right? Sometimes I even ask this question first, which is what type of life do you want to live, right? Like, Jeff Rowe on his Friday wants to record podcasts, right? Not every CEO, founder, marketer wants to do that. So if you would rather text, type, and post text posts, then maybe a podcast isn’t right for you.

Ryan R. Sullivan (04:02.245)
But videos the wave, videos the present and the future, it sells better than anything. That’s why we have TVs on our walls, not books. And that’s really it. So I can go in any one direction, but I would say like, make sure you have these few things dialed in before you go ahead and decide if you want to make that podcast.

Jeffro (04:18.859)
Yeah, no, and that’s a great overview because I agree. think a lot of people rush into it just because it’s kind of the cool trendy thing. But yeah, if you spend some time thinking about it and make a plan, you have a much better chance of it actually being helpful to your business and actually getting past those first three episodes, even past 20 episodes. Like the fraction of podcasts that ever get past that is so small that if you make a plan and just stick to it, you’re going to be way past most people that ever get started on this.

Ryan R. Sullivan (04:48.601)
Yeah, and it’s not even about that too, right? It’s like it doesn’t matter how many podcasts other people make. It has nothing to do with your podcast. That’s the good part. But if we double click on that for a second, really what it is, it’s no plan, no strategy, generic. If you have me on your podcast, there is a small group community of people on LinkedIn who want to watch that, who know me, right? I’m not a celebrity.

I’m not famous. I’m just a random guy. Right. So it’s like the results will reflect that. Right. So it’s like most likely this episode, same with my podcast, my podcast don’t get tens of thousands. They get hundreds or thousands. Right. It’s niche. So I think there’s a disconnect there where it’s like, why are there 10 dead podcasts? Well, they thought those 10 episodes, it might take a thousand episodes. Right. The way we do it, it doesn’t have to take that many episodes, obviously, because we have a strategy in a way that we do it. That’s different. that guarantees results. Right. But yeah, for the most part, why there’s all those, why the podcast graveyard is so big is because there’s no plan. There’s no strategy and there was no expectation set.

Jeffro (05:56.331)
So what about the companies that kind of did decide intentionally, all right, we’re going to do this, but they’ve been posting episodes and they’re struggling to actually turn it into revenue in one form or another. Do you have practical strategies to help those people kind of right the ship and get it going in a better direction?

Ryan R. Sullivan (06:08.458)
Mm

Ryan R. Sullivan (06:14.471)
I do. And the first thing you have to know is which game you’re in. So there’s two types of podcasts. There’s a business podcast. There’s a business brand, two types of brands. There’s a business brand and there’s an influencer brand. And the branding people are going to come after me and like, nah, it’s not where they have it. Let’s make it simple, y ‘all. We’re talking about podcasts here. So the business brand means the podcast is your marketing. It’s a part of the marketing. It could be 90 % of it. It could be 20 % of it, but it’s a piece of your marketing. So your success metrics are literally looking at year over year revenue. When we before we had a podcast and after. If you just want the quick ROI, that’s just how it works. Right. Nobody is keeping on event an employee or a vendor who where they look on a five year span and after they hired that employer or vendor, their revenue went down or stagnated. They’re not going to keep you on because you’re not delivering results. The podcast is treated like a person go. OK, that’s what happened.

the revenue went up or it stayed the same, et cetera. So obviously there’s nuance here or sales cycles, et cetera. But we have the business brand. That is your podcast is a figment of your marketing, right? It’s a piece of the marketing. Then we have the influencer brand, which is, okay, the podcast is the product. Steven Bartlett, Chris Williamson, Joe Rogan, et cetera. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I’m talking about. So just if that’s what you want to do,

I know people who run those podcasts. Every episode has to go viral for it to be successful. Trust me, you don’t want that weight on your back. And I know because I’m friends with them. This is, not making this up.

Jeffro (07:53.129)
And they have full teams working behind that to make sure that that stuff happens, right? They’re editing, they are ruthless about cutting stuff out and planning, and the marketing push on every episode is huge.

Ryan R. Sullivan (08:03.303)
Yes, you can. That’s it, man. We’ve talked about it before. Watch the Stephen Bartlett episode. mean, 55 employees, eight figures, nine figures, et cetera. That’s not what we’re talking about here. So back to the question. So you first differentiate that. go, okay, we don’t have to go viral. Nice. Okay, we actually don’t need like sponsors. Nice. Okay, number three, we just need a strategy where the podcast just has to do something that our other content’s not doing. Right?

So in that case, now it makes it easy, right? So the first one is the easiest podcast strategy for B2B still to this day is account -based podcasting. So it’s like Jeff has me on, he does like five to 10 interviews a month, right? And he just has people on, I need marketing help, but maybe I don’t know it, maybe Jeff knows it, maybe he doesn’t know it. And so he gets me on and after this conversation, he goes, hey, so like, have you done your, what’s the SEO strategy looking like? I’m like, well, you know, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

And then out of those interviews that Jeff does, certain amount of them become clients because Jeff’s a cool guy. He’s got a nice funnel. He knows what he’s doing. He’s not pushy. He’s not salesy. And that’s account -based podcasting. So that’s the easiest way to make money. But what that’s not going to do is not going to get you views. It’s not going to get you downloads. You’re going to interview random people for the most part. Right. So then what we do is we kind of come up with a combination strategy. So the combination strategy is you sure you might be able to interview some people, but for the most part, you’re going to be interviewing your clients because your clients, they’re going to watch your prospects, for example, if they’re going to watch a random person, they automatically don’t want to watch a random person. But if they are, they want it to be somebody that you’ve done business with because they’re trying to figure out is Jeff a real guy? No, is Ryan a real dude? Does he really have the case studies? He says, well, he’s interviewing his clients for like 45 minutes and they’re talking about how successful their podcast is. Well, all right. Well, at least I know he knows what he’s doing.

So you can have these, what I call client interviews. Then you could have co -hosted episodes. That’s where, say, Jeff and I will hop on and it won’t just be him interviewing me. We will go in with targeted, very specific topics and we will use clips from that episode to post on LinkedIn. And that’s, for example, part of our LinkedIn strategy. And then the third would be solo episodes. And this is what a lot of founders, CEOs, and marketers do not do. If they went in…

Ryan R. Sullivan (10:29.251)
and did solo podcast episodes or YouTube videos, their content would be so much more relevant because people relate to people, they don’t relate to texts. So when they see you talking about the stuff, that’s very different than a world where you just interview random people and hope it becomes a famous podcast, which it’s not.

Jeffro (10:52.678)
Yeah, well, and then I’ll point out too, you talked about the influencer podcast. Someone will listen to that episode because of who the guest is, right? It’s some celebrity, it’s Simone Biles. I want to listen to that, right? But like you said, if I’m interviewing a random business owner, they’re not going to know who that is, but they will look at the title of their content of the episode. And if it’s specific enough to them and the need that they have, that’s what’s going to make them want to watch it, right? So that’s kind of a different way to approach doing that.

Ryan R. Sullivan (11:20.463)
Yeah, and you could do this too. there are, which this is hard by the way, like if you want to do the industry interviews podcast where you just interview like very like well -known people, that’s okay. But you’re still in that influencer category where you’re kind of trying to rely on like downloads and views, right? To like take these people and put them into a funnel at the end of the day. But so that’s okay.

Jeffro (11:47.495)
And that’s gonna take a lot longer. Yeah.

Ryan R. Sullivan (11:49.287)
Yeah, for sure. Like if you’re on a five to 10 year mission, great. But if you’re like, hey, we want to do a podcast. We just want to differentiate our content. Let’s just make this simple. Let’s just talk about what we’re really talking about here, which is you being a CEO, founder, marketer, service based business owner, whatever it is, SaaS company, I don’t care what it is. You need your face out there and you’re not that excited, number one, about writing posts and number two, about making TikToks, right? Because that’s what the junior marketing manager is telling you to do.

Then like the mid manager is telling you like, well, we got to write blog. Instead you have, you hire a vendor to come in a podcast specialist vendor. They train your people on how to do this. You don’t have to do it. And then they bring you in and say, Hey, this is what we need you for. We need you for four episodes. It’s to take us three hours and then you’re good for a whole month. Right? So that’s where the lifestyle component of this comes in. It’s not as much about, Hey, how do we make a podcast? It’s going to generate a ton of money. Instead it’s like, how do we get the founder?

or the subject matter expert out there every single day, selling literally like in video format, thousands of views a day, so they don’t have to actually be out there posting. And the podcast is a really good way to do that without making TikTok.

Jeffro (13:05.254)
So can you break that down a little more and give, and kind of walk through what it looks like to actually repurpose that podcast content across different platforms to kind of maximize the visibility of this time and effort that you’re putting in.

Ryan R. Sullivan (13:18.833)
Sure, here’s what most companies do. They start a podcast, nobody understands what it is, nobody really cares, it’s very ambiguous. It’s like the company name podcast. Worst thing you could do. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What the hell is that? Right, so that’s what they do. Then they have on random people that nobody knows as guests. Then they pull a clip and then they make it, if they’re lucky, this is actually, some people don’t even do this, but then they make it about the guest. I don’t care. Like I…

Jeffro (13:28.411)
Ha

Ryan R. Sullivan (13:46.021)
want to watch Netflix. Like I don’t want to watch for some random interview, right? So that’s automatically what they do, right? So what was the question? So I know I’m answering it.

Jeffro (13:56.358)
Yeah, we’ll just walk through the process of repurposing the podcast content everywhere else

Ryan R. Sullivan (13:59.193)
Sure, yeah, that’s the, don’t do it that, don’t repurpose that way. When you have, right, if you have a boring podcast, the clips are more boring than that podcast, right? So it only gets more boring from there. It only gets more ineffective as you go. So if you want to repurpose your podcast content, meaning in English, if you wanna take your podcast and then put it in other places and people actually,

Jeffro (14:12.185)
You

Ryan R. Sullivan (14:26.407)
Engage with it and comment and like and share it then the source content has to be really good So that’s why we go in and develop a podcast strategy. Like that’s why this is my last my next video is I’ll tell you right now. It’s 99 % of founders Get this wrong when it comes to monetizing their podcast, right? so the fact that’s yeah, right so

Jeffro (14:50.213)
That’s a hook. I’m in.

Ryan R. Sullivan (14:53.167)
That’s why, and for people listening, can’t see this, but I’m putting my notes on the screen. That’s why I’m going to write this down in my notebook. Then I’m going to put it into a format that I’ve created. Then I’m going to put it in the chat GBT for it to write the script. I’m going to cross reference that my script with a successful YouTube video script. So chat GBT knows what to include and what to not. And then I’m going to take that script and then I’m going to go record the video.

Now, since I’ve built in three steps, since I’ve built in, here’s the three ways that founders go wrong when monetizing their podcast, I now have three separate video clips. Now, those three separate video clips, I write really good copy on top of that, meaning stuff that people actually want to read, right? So then the clip is just in a, it just accompanies the post. And then for anybody who really likes any of those three clips, then the call to action will be, hey, if you want the full version of this, go to the YouTube video or go to the podcast episode. So you see how that repurposing is wildly different from going, hey man, here’s a clip here. Jeff Rowe is the CEO of FRO -BRO Technology. right? And like, I love you, man, but nobody’s going to care, right? Like even my audience. it’s like, unless we make them care, unless we take the time to give them that. And what I call this is reverse repurposing. So it’s When you know you’re gonna repurpose, it’s all about the beginning. The repurposing is the thing that is the bacon and cheese sandwich. But you have to have a chicken. And then you have to have a farm. And then the farm needs to breed the chicken. So it’s all about what happens before that. That’s how repurposing really works. And if you actually want what’s being spoken but

But I’m not saying repurposing is based on ideas. It’s not based on like here I got 12 clips from this podcast, right? So it’s based on that 99 % of founders get this wrong when monetizing their podcast. That’s repurposing, right? Like that idea is what fuels repurposing. And then I’ll go into all of this, Jeff. And now I’ve done it a lot of times. So I kind of have an idea of what’s going to work and what’s going to not work. But then the audience will go,

Ryan R. Sullivan (17:16.057)
Either that was good or they’ll go, yeah. And then you try it again next week. It doesn’t end, right? But yeah, that’s how I look at it.

Jeffro (17:24.921)
Well, so yeah, I mean, I like, you’re reverse engineering the outcome that you want and then intentionally building the content of that podcast episode. So you can’t just show up and be like, like you said, like, Hey, tell us about how you got into this industry and just let it wander and meander. Like, really? You had like, that’s not going to help. Right. Cause it’s going to end up, even if it’s an interesting conversation for you too, nobody’s going to think that it’s worth listening to from the outside. And so

Ryan R. Sullivan (17:45.585)
Mm -hmm.

Jeffro (17:54.178)
That’s why it’s so important to kind of have this intentional approach. And it is extra work. Ryan said it upfront at the beginning. Realize that if you’re going to do this, it’s going to take work for it to be meaningful and helpful. And whether your team does it, or you hire someone to do it, or you do it, this is kind of what it’s going to take to have a good podcast that’s going to get people to watch it and listen to it and be worth doing.

Ryan R. Sullivan (18:18.437)
Yes, and to that point, if it was easy, then everybody would do it. So if you, this is a great strategy to immediately differentiate yourself. It’s automatic. Like if you just go and do what I just said, and by the way, not just because I said it, it’s because, listen, we have many, I know many people who never don’t even know who I am who do it, right?

and those companies are winning. It’s obvious. I don’t have to tell you. For sure, do I run the strategy that I sell? Yes, I try to run it better than anybody, but my clients are all more successful than me. Go just look at what they’re doing. Just look at what successful companies in your niche are doing. They’re not writing books. They’re not.

Maybe once they get to seven years old maybe, like most of them are doing, they’re not doing e -books anymore, y ‘all. Even if you’re a local ice cream shop and you hire, it’s Gary Vee’s man. Like he wasn’t kidding. It works. You hire the guy with 10 ,000 followers and you make a video with them because they have local followers. That’s going to sell you more ice cream than taking pictures of ice cream. So whatever people aren’t doing, there’s your opportunity. It’s right there.

It’s very obvious. Other podcast companies don’t even have a podcast. How insane is that? It like makes my job pretty easy.

Jeffro (19:53.528)
So let’s talk about for a second, what’s the best way to approach potential guests who might be a good fit either for future partnerships or collaborations or kind of the stuff you’re talking about, right? If you want to get in front of their audience or if you think they’re a good prospect for you and you’re kind of going through this B2B account -based approach, right? Where you want to sell them.

Ryan R. Sullivan (20:13.787)
Yeah, so you’re saying what would I, like if I were the company and I was going to book to guess what would I be looking for criteria? Okay, so first let’s start there, which is first I’m looking at, for me it’s easy because I can just tell if the company doesn’t have a podcast or not. But you have to have signals, like right? So when you create a customer persona or an ideal client profile, you should have also signals that verify to you. Like I can look at somebody’s LinkedIn profile and go ideal or not. Takes me about nine seconds, right?

Jeffro (20:19.275)
Yeah, how do you approach them?

Ryan R. Sullivan (20:43.813)
So you should have that for your industry, so for whatever it is for anybody listening, right? So you have that, great. You’ve determined through my criteria that number one, they don’t have an SEO strategy. Number two, they’re releasing inconsistent blogs. And number three, you know, I can already tell that it’s not optimized, right? Or whatever. Okay, great. So they’re a good fit for this podcast. Then when you go approach them, right? Almost everybody wants to talk. When Jeff asked me to do this interview, wasn’t even a question. Put it on the calendar, let’s roll.

you’re not gonna have to sell them on being on your show. And if they ask you about the numbers, or they ask you about like, whoa, whoa, what am I getting out of it? Go to the next one. Trust me, it’s not worth it, right? Because there are people, you could get Seth Godin on the show. You can get anybody on the show. Because people, because they’re thinking, they’re playing 3D chess, right? So those are my kind of initial, because those are just the little roadblocks people hit.

Once you have enough guests, if you do this for a year and you’re releasing content and the artwork is good and the intro is good and the outro is good and the content is half decent, doesn’t even need to be that good, then people will be approaching you. If they’re not approaching you, then something’s wrong. So unless you have this hyper -targeted thing, your guests are probably going to be in not only in your LinkedIn network, but in your DMs, right? They’re probably asking you to be on the show.

And so also if you put your email on podcast platforms, when you sign up for my clients, typically if they’re on retainer, I have my email there. Right. And so I can field, cause there’s a lot of people just trying to get on. I get like three to five emails a day. People trying to be on my show and my guest shows. I don’t even take guests. Right. So it’s going to reach escape velocity. I would just say like, yes, there are ways to do it. When I was in the celebrity realm, it’s much, much more of a process that you need when you’re sending that cold email to a booker or an agent or a manager. I could go into that, but it’s not relevant here, in my opinion. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

Jeffro (22:47.072)
Yeah. And that makes sense. and I can say from my experience, it didn’t take long for people to start reaching out to me to pitch themselves or even booking agents to reach out on behalf of their clients and say, Hey, can we get so -and on your show? And I’m like, yeah, I still review them to make sure they’re a good fit. have turned people away and like, you don’t actually serve my audience at all. So I don’t think you’re a good fit for the podcast, but, but the nice thing there is then that booking agent understands that and they come back with somebody else who is a good fit. So.

Ryan R. Sullivan (23:15.449)
If they’re a good agent, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Shout out to Spencer Carpenter. He’s my go -to and he’s an agent and more so in the real estate field specifically, but you know, he’s somebody that does it right. That’s the thing, right? It’s like, he’s the type of person you send a cold email and you’re like, damn dude, you really did write this to me. Right? So, you know, if you want another caveat there, just, just, just make it personal. Be a human. People will respond to that.

Jeffro (23:16.617)
If they’re a good agent, yeah.

Jeffro (23:43.125)
Yeah. All right. Well, we’re coming up on our time, Ryan. This has been really insightful, and I appreciate you joining me today. I love how much personality you bring to your podcast and to your LinkedIn posts and everything. It’s a great example for others to follow. So if you guys are thinking about doing a podcast or you have one, follow Ryan. Go look in the show notes. We’ll have his LinkedIn profile. You can check out his podcast. And yeah, if you’re a podcaster, join his podcast principles group, and he’ll go through a lot of detail to help you kind of fix. These little areas and get you moving a little bit faster. Last question for you, Ryan. What’s your favorite thing about B2B podcasting?

Ryan R. Sullivan (24:19.239)
The opportunity. I’ve started in B2B podcasting in 2019, no joke. And it’s still wide open, man. It’s kind of incredible.

Jeffro (24:31.21)
Nice. Well, thanks again for being here. And once again, thanks to all of you guys for listening. Please make sure to leave a review for the show. And I’ll see you back here for the next episode of Digital Dominance. Take care.

Ryan R. Sullivan (24:42.299)
Peace.