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Justin Schenck is back to share powerful insights on growing your podcast by focusing on building a strong brand, instead of just marketing. He discusses the influence of personal interests in creating engaging content and the important role of persistence in podcast success.
Justin shares his journey from reaching out to big names to cultivating valuable connections, emphasizing the importance of offering value to both listeners and guests.
He encourages podcasters to overcome the fear of starting, take action, and focus on making impactful connections through their podcasting journey.
Watch the previous episode on YouTube ‘Behind the Scenes with a Top Rated Podcast Host & Speaker Featuring Justin Schenck‘
Please click here to give an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes! Thanks for your support!
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Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Art of Online Business podcast. I’m here with my co-host, Jamie Hi, Jamie Hello.
Speaker 2:
Hello.
Speaker 1:
And if you’re watching on YouTube, then you can see a guy across from us and his name is Justin Schenck, and let me tell you this episode. Well, you already saw the title, but if you’re part of the 80% of podcast hosts that are getting fewer than 100 downloads per episode, you’re going to want to listen in, because Justin has taught so many people how to grow their podcasts and he has had a heck of a time, a wonderful story growing his which you can listen to in the previous episode, by the way, that link is in the show notes below.
Speaker 1:
But when I first heard him say that growing is not about directly marketing your podcast, but it’s actually about building a brand and that’s what’s going to grow, I was like we got to talk about this on the episode. Who is he and why should you listen? Justin Shank is an entrepreneur, a speaker and the host of the top rated podcast, the Growth Now Movement. He’s been named a top eight podcaster to follow by Inc Magazine. He’s featured in Thrive Global and chosen as I should say. He has been featured in Thrive Global and he’s been chosen as an icon of influence in the new media space. His podcast has grown to become a podcast that is currently getting played in over 100 countries every single week and he’s gone on to help countless people grow their brands and business with his company, podbrandio. He’s also the host and creator of one of the go-to events for entrepreneurs and forward thinkers called Growth Now Summit Live. Justin, what did you say that event is for? That was so cool at the end of the last episode.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I call it a day-long rock concert for entrepreneurs and forward thinkers.
Speaker 1:
That right there made me almost want to buy a ticket.
Speaker 3:
You know what’s crazy about it? I’m really a kid at heart, like I literally have legos on my shelf behind me, like the the back to the future delorean cars behind me, and so I’m a. I’m a huge wrestling fan. I’ve been a wrestling fan my entire life, which is why I love shot now that kurt angle was on the podcast, but not only that. I’m a disney person like.
Speaker 3:
I love disney world and I realized that a couple things how you look at things differently as an adult versus a kid right, I still love wrestling. I think it’s wild that half the world makes fun of it, but it’s a multi, multi-billion dollar organization, right, and it’s because they entertain, and so I take some wrestling elements not the actual wrestling part, but the entertainment part of wrestling and I put it into my event. I also love Disney now because of how they create magic, how they can literally do all these things in their parks and how, like you know, for instance, the first time we took the kids to disney, we were walking from mexico into china, right, and we’re literally walking through and we really crossed okay in epcot, yeah, so we’re literally walking from mexico into china and the sounds and the smells and everything changes in an instant.
Speaker 3:
I was showing it to my stepson as we were doing it and like those little nuances, right. So how can I take those types of experiences and put it into an event for entrepreneurs so people aren’t bored, right? I’m super ADD. Like I do not want to sit there and listen to hour long keynotes. That is not my jam, and so I literally create an experience for people to show up and learn from individuals and have a great time doing it. So the whole day-long rock concert I don’t know where it started or where it came from. I started saying it back in 2019, and it stuck, and so here we are.
Speaker 1:
Here we are, here we are. So tell me the biggest. Let’s start off by just what is the biggest mistake that you see podcast hosts making? That’s keeping them small.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I would say they quit too soon. So obviously you shared the statistic. Podcast hosts making that’s keeping them small? Yeah, I would say they quit too soon, so the so obviously you shared the statistic, the statistic. 80% of shows do less than a hundred downloads an episode. I’ve been podcasting for almost nine years and that statistic has been true since I started. That has always been a stat in the podcast world.
Speaker 3:
Another crazy statistic in podcasting is 78% of shows do not make it past their first seven episodes seven which seven, 78, because because here’s the thing people and I I love setting expectations correctly for anybody who wants to start a podcast the 80 rule doing less than 100 downloads. People think they’re going to release a show and thousands of people are just going to find it automatically and start listening and they’re going to be the biggest podcast in the world. You are now competing, compared to nine years ago. You’re now competing with celebrities, the world’s biggest comedians, everybody’s got a podcast, right, and so now you’re competing with these people that they’ve consumed their whole entire life and love. Now they gotta not only listen to them, but then also just randomly find your podcast and start listening. So the real statistic in podcasting is can you stick it out long enough in order to enjoy the human connection that you’re making? Right? So to think about a podcast as a part of your brand, right? You’re building a platform because you’re taking those clips. You’re posting it on social media. Now I don’t have to think about what I’m posting on social media. My podcast already takes care of that for me, right? That helps you get seen by more people. There’s a lot more people on Instagram than people that listen to podcasts. I think this may be a dated statistic. There might be more now, but I think it’s like 25% of Americans listen to podcasts on a monthly basis, which means only 25% of Americans are listening to at least one episode a month. Right, like so. So again, keep that in mind as you then put this content on social media. Now, all of a sudden, you’re reaching a lot more people on social media. People go, oh, like, there’s a ton of people who’ve never listened to an episode of my show, but they know who I’ve interviewed, they know the types of conversations I have, they know who I am, they know what I do because I post on social media and so that reaches so much bigger at times, right, I just posted a clip with Kurt Angle and it has like 75,000 views or something. Right, so your reach can be so much bigger.
Speaker 3:
And then the next piece is you could also look at your podcast, and I know I’m saying a lot. We can break it down a ton if you want the second way to look at a podcast. It is the greatest networking tool of all time. You can literally sit down with anybody you want to. With enough persistence and asking the right way to get people on your show, you can literally sit down with anybody you want to and you get to pick their brain. I’ve had people on my show who charged no joke $10,000 an hour to get coached by them. I sat down with them for free and picked their brain for an hour. Right, it is literally the greatest networking tool in the world and that also helps you continue to build your platform.
Speaker 3:
Right, like the fact that I’ve had people like Burt Kreischer and Gabby Bernstein and JP Sears and Ed Milet and all these people on my show. That raises my profile. That means I can now charge more to speak. I can now have connections where people come into a mastermind and I have a lot of the guests on my show teach my mastermind every month and so utilizing all of that and building strong relationships that in itself has changed my life. My show does well. I’m over 3 million downloads over the life of my show, but if I were to say what was has been the game changer for me, it’s the. It’s the relationships I’ve built with the people that I’ve interviewed. That’s the thing that really has moved the needle for me more than anything else.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
So I wanted to ask on the last show, but this seems like a good spot how did you start finding kind of these big name people and being able to get access to them, because a lot of people might feel intimidated possibly to reach out to some of these people and just like, who am I? You know, I’m like this little no-name podcaster just starting out. How did you start out, or how did you even, I guess, have the courage to go after some of these people that you wanted to interview?
Speaker 1:
that’s a good question, jamie, because we I have okay, I’ve shot down my VA we have a podcast pitching document and my VA looks for podcasts and she’s put some huge names on there, you know, and I’m like look, we’re not going to even waste a time pitching them. They’re not going to look at us, so okay, yeah, so, yeah.
Speaker 3:
So I think I said it twice in the last interview we did. I’ll say it once here Ignorance is bliss. I had I literally had, you know, no concept of like. I think my whole thing was like oh yeah, I mean, they did this other podcast, why, why wouldn’t they do mine? And so I would just ask, and I’ve reached out through it’s literally every single social media platform that you that’s out there other than these new ones like Lemonade and all these other things. I’ve reached out on different platforms to every single person, like the comedian drew lynch, who you may know he was on america’s got talent. He’s the, the comedian with a stutter. Um, hey, I reached out to him on facebook and he got back to me. He goes yeah, email my assistant, we’ll, we’ll get it scheduled. Yeah, it’s, it’s. It’s just like that, right, instagram’s big. You just message people, follow up is huge, because a lot of times you get slotted in and you’re going to get hidden in a lot of things, and so I usually wait two to three days and I just say, hey, just wanted to follow up on this message. And so once you get there right, and you start to get in that world, people will start to introduce you to other people, as long as you’re a good interviewer, as long as you build rapport, as long as you build that relationship. And I think the greatest example is I had a guy on. So backtrack.
Speaker 3:
I went to an event years ago and one of the speakers was a guy named Fabio Viviani. I’m not a reality TV person, but he was he was on the show top chef. I was like who cares about a chef Like I? Why should I care about the speaker? And one thing that I do that I stole from this event is this event did not tell you what speaker was speaking when, and so, like I don’t tell, like if you get the schedule to my event, it doesn’t say what speaker is speaking when, because you don’t know what you’re going to miss if you, if you go, oh, I don’t want to see that speaker. And this is this is why, because I saw him speak, I was blown away. I loved, I loved his approach on stage, I loved his authenticity. And I remember at this event I turned to my friend who was with me and I said I need to be friends with that guy. So fast forward.
Speaker 3:
I had a guy on my show named PJ, and I realized that his book, the Forward, was written by Fabio. And so, after the interview with PJ, I go hey man, I don’t normally do this, but I noticed Fabio wrote the Forward to your book. I saw him speak at an event. I would love to interview him. And he goes oh, he’s my best friend, I’ll do whatever I tell him to do. It’s like great. So Fabio comes on the show and I can say that he came on the show. He was amazing. He spoke at my event in 2019 as one of the keynotes. He’s one of my good friends now because of this connection.
Speaker 3:
But what Fabio did changed the game for me. He goes who do you want to interview? I go, I was so caught off guard I couldn’t even name anybody. He goes, I’ll introduce you to people. So he ended up introducing me to 50 people, including the guys from Impractical Jokers. He introduced me to Andy Frisella. He introduced me to people from Real Housewives of New Jersey who have become friends of mine. He introduced me to 50 people in 50 individual emails and that changed the game for me. And the reason why is because he knew I was also already pretty well connected, because I was already getting big names on the show and he was launching an app that ultimately failed, unfortunately named Doppel, and he wanted more people to sign up, more influencers to sign up for Doppel, and so I, in turn, introduced him to probably 40 or 50 people that I knew, and so that really changed the game.
Speaker 3:
And then one thing led to another, led to another. Like what? For instance, like people, people love the fact that the comedian Bert Kreischer has been on my show because you know he’s now. He’s huge. How I got Bert was Fabio introduced me to a comedian named Zane Lamprey, who used to host a show called three sheets.
Speaker 3:
Zane goes hey, do you want to interview Bert Kreischer? After I interviewed him, he’s like you. Zane goes hey, do you want to interview burke kreischer? After I interviewed him, he’s like you’re really good at this. Do you want to interview burke kreischer? I was like I would love to. So then burke came on the show, and so what happens is, once you get into that network, as long as you handle that relationship with respect, it becomes so much more like I could probably reach out to fabio today and be like hey, man, I’m trying to get some more bigger names on the show. Can you introduce me to more people? And he would, because we’ve built that relationship, but I still cold outreach. I’m trying to get the medium, tyler Henry, on the show, which I’ve cold outreach multiple times and I still haven’t heard back. But I’ll continue to try because I think it’ll be a fascinating conversation. And so, yeah, I think it’s all about the ask and the ignorance of thinking that you can interview anybody you want.
Speaker 1:
Okay, all right.
Speaker 3:
Oh, all right. Oh, and one more tip. So I not about me trying to build my platform or connect with them. It’s about the people listening and I find that most people at least the people I’d won on my show that really resonates with them because they’re there to make an impact. They’ve already done, they’ve already have their success Right. So how can I give back? I can give back by sharing my journey on this guy’s podcast, and I think that line has really helped me land bigger names on the show.
Speaker 2:
Right, because people want to give back.
Speaker 1:
People want to contribute, right A lot of success.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, kind of that fear and that legacy time right when it’s like I’ve already done some of the stuff. What am I leaving behind? Who am I going to be able to help? And I think what you said in the last episode, too, was really powerful.
Speaker 1:
At any given time, 75,000 people need to hear your story from you, like that’s, that’s really powerful Cause you never know who you can connect with, so I’m going to you can tell me after we finished recording. Um, but Justin Moore was on my podcast recently and, as talking to you, I think of him and maybe that could be a good connection. He’s a sponsorship coach, just came out with a book called Sponsored Magnet.
Speaker 1:
Has tons of experience teaching folks how to build their dream brand partnerships like, highly recommend you listen to that episode and if you want the, I can give that one to you.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so I’m asking this question. You said brand is what builds podcasts, but you also have demonstrated that connections build podcasts, which is more important for the person who’s stuck under a hundred downloads.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that’s a really good question, I mean so. So, first of all, right, as we’re talking about building your brand or your platform, right, you have to show up professionally. I’ve been on shows where the content they create is absolutely terrible. I would never share it out. Their logo is terrible. It looks like they made it like in MS paint, like that thing, back in the day. It’s just, it’s just true right.
Speaker 3:
And it’s just the reality.
Speaker 3:
So you have to show up professionally. If your show looks like crap, you’re not going to have bigger names on your show. So branding is probably the most important part to building your platform, because if you don’t have the right branding, you’re never going to get the guests that you’d want. Right, and it’s really about when you get those guests right. You build a platform through your brand. You position yourself with the right guests on your show. That will lead to opportunity of partnership, and I look at partnership in a number of different ways. Right, it could be ads on your. It could be ad revenue on your show. It could be partnerships in businesses. It could be partnerships in whatever right, but I look at everything that I do as like really building.
Speaker 3:
What I’m doing is building community. Right, when I look at my mastermind or look at my live events, it’s really about bringing people together and building community. The amount of downloads on my show don’t matter. It doesn’t. Right, like I could have three people listen to every single show and I’d still have all these businesses because I was able to build a platform that people respect, even if they don’t listen. I built a platform that people respect and I was able to build, you know, partnerships with people that have given me an opportunity. People worry too much about the amount of people that listen. Right, I say 80% do less than 100 downloads. I go, okay, great. Say you’re close to 100. Say it’s 90 downloads an episode. If you had a room full of 90 people every single week to talk to, would you show up? Thank you, without a doubt.
Speaker 3:
Like people are so caught up in these fake numbers, I actually saw a post recently, uh, and it was talking to podcasters and it was literally different photos of, like, what a hundred people look like standing together, what a thousand. And I was, like, people get so because of all the, by the way, the biggest influencers in the world I won’t call anybody out because this is being recorded. We could talk afterwards. They buy their followers. They don’t really true, yeah, they don’t even really have that many followers, right, like? And the funny thing is you’ll notice, like, if let’s take instagram for an example, the first, the first marker of your, your big on on instagram it’s 10 000 people. I don’t even have that many, you know, 10 000 people and all of a sudden, every influencer hit 10,000. I’m like what? What’s going on here. And then it was a hundred and they all hit a hundred. And then it was a million and they all hit a million. And I was like what, what is going on here? Follow? I don’t care if there’s three people listening or a hundred people listening or a thousand people listening.
Speaker 3:
You can literally build a business off of the back of the branding of a podcast if you do it the right way. And most people miss the mark on that and they give up too soon. 78% don’t make it past their first seven episodes. Well, if you did it for a year and you were able to continuously show up with that brand in people’s faces and it’s your face, a talking head on social media people are going to pay attention, even if they don’t click download, because not everybody listens to podcasts. That’s just the reality. But everybody’s on instagram, like. I just watched mark zuckerberg on rogan’s podcast the other day. He said something like every single day, something like 3.3 billion people use facebook every day. Like okay, great, you should be putting content on there and you can build a brand. It doesn’t matter if they listen to your podcast or not right.
Speaker 1:
So be professional first and then work hard on building good relationships as you attempt to make more connections. And then also a bit of naivety.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and, honestly, consistency is key. I did not miss a Tuesday episode for the first five years of my podcast and then I decided that I was going to randomly take off the month of December. And I was so worried because I would always preach consistency is the most important part, because my whole I would tell a joke of like you know, say I was you. You know, my show releases every tuesday and I was like, okay, great, that means somebody’s going to the gym every tuesday and they’re choosing to listen to my podcast over somebody else. If I don’t show up, they’re going to find another podcast chances are it’s better than my show and they’re not coming back. So I’m going to show up every tuesday, all right, and I was, and I was so I was so worried that that that’s what would happen that I was like, okay, I’m showing up every Tuesday, no matter what I’m putting out a show. And then I decided I was just burnt out and I was like I need a break, I need to reset the excitement to the show. And I was like I’m taking off the month of December, I’m enjoying my family, the holidays, all the things.
Speaker 3:
And what I noticed was that month I did the same amount of downloads that I did the previous month without releasing a new episode. And essentially what I did, I said hey, hey guys, I’m taking off the month of December. This will be the last episode for the year. This will be a great time for you to go back and catch up on episodes you miss, because I know when I release content every single week, it’s a lot. So I did. I did the same amount of downloads in December and took a huge leap forward in January because I was releasing new content. People were also getting hooked into listening to old episodes and I was like, oh cool, there’s a different thought process. But I couldn’t have done that if I wasn’t consistent for five plus years of showing up every single Tuesday.
Speaker 1:
Sure, you know, when you said that, it made me think that when I was, I’ve been throwing around this idea. This is the first time it’s been mentioned on the podcast, but I’ve been throwing around this idea. This is the first time it’s been mentioned on the podcast.
Speaker 1:
I’ve been throwing around this idea of taking the number of shows that we do weekly, which is now three, and reducing it to one. One lady said you know what, kwejo, that could be a good thing, because I feel like I’m falling so behind in all the podcasts that I want to listen to and then I feel bad because I’m behind. I’m like I had never thought that like someone as a listener would feel bad because they can’t keep up with the pace, and so I think what you’re saying there it’s kind of verifying some things I’ve been thinking on. You’re at one a week one.
Speaker 3:
I do one a week. I used to do one a week like an interview, and then I would do what I would call my weekly moments of growth, and that was on Fridays. That’s how I’m on 550 episodes with not that many weeks in that time frame that. I’ve been doing it.
Speaker 3:
Oh, that’s the math, yeah. And so they were like five to 15 minutes long and it was like a lesson I learned or whatever. And honestly I’ll say this I did that probably for longer than a year. I would do every Friday I would release these short little things. They did really really well. I should bring it back. They did really really well and that’s actually what positioned me more as a thought leader another word thrown around, putting in quotes.
Speaker 3:
Thought leader, because before I was just a really good interviewer and then when I started to share my own antidotes, my own lessons and my own thought processes, that’s when people started to follow me more. I realized what what was happening was. My guests would be like, dude, your audience is great, they’re reaching. I’m like nobody’s reaching out to me, like I’m glad they’re reaching out to you because you were a guest on my show, but who are you talking about? Right? And so when I started to do those solo episodes, that’s when I started to hear from my audience. So I was giving them more of myself. So what I do solo episode and it’s just me, just to mix it up and and let people know that I still have thoughts of my own and so yeah, but I would say that you will absolutely see. You won’t see a spike in monthly downloads because you’re you’re still dropping your episodes, but you will see an uptick in the amount of listeners per episode if you dial it back to one a week yeah, you know it.
Speaker 1:
Just I love meeting people and thus because it’s so cool to meet somebody who wasn’t raised like you, who might not even have the same worldview as you, and so I enjoy interviews. But I, over the Christmas break, I was just really thinking, you know, this is the art of online business. What if I had each episode be a topic and then invited two to three extra experts on that topic and we just had a talk, like I’ve done? I just like people. It plays to my strength of like finding people and we’ve done it separately, and those episodes have just been gold. I was like let me do some quick research on my previous, you know, downloads on those episodes and just I’m pretty sure I’m going to go with it.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great format. I think it’s something unique that a ton of people aren’t doing. A lot of people are doing the talking head interviews, like you and I, right, and so it’s something unique. I would say we’ll have a little coaching session here. I would say, just to not alienate the audience that you already have, I would stick to this format, but every other episode, do the. So that way you know, and I would say, like, who do you really want to get to know deeper and do them on the solo episodes. And then people that you’ve already kind of you know a little bit more about them and you know they could work together, well, do the groups with them. That’s just my two cents on that.
Speaker 1:
I like that two cents that we have into our question right Two times a month, it’d be like not panel. It’d be like not panel, but just super cool conversation around a topic with multiple guests all together One time a month.
Speaker 1:
It’d be me and you on a solo episode because we do have thoughts to share Another time. The folks we really want to get to know Listen. I know that both of us are busy in a matter of moments, so I want to give us time to take a break. What is the one thing? And we’ll end here the one thing that if somebody was listening to this episode with you casually- what’s the one thing you want them to walk away with.
Speaker 3:
So I’ll leave the thought that I kind of leave all the time, which is it doesn’t matter where you come from. What matters are the choices you make today to create a better tomorrow for yourself and people around you. Which means, if you are the person since we’ve been talking about podcasting, which means if you’re the person who have said for years I want to start a podcast, think about how far you would have came if you just took the action years ago, versus still sitting there going oh, I should start the podcast. So start, just start, Just start. Don’t allow judgment or the fear of failure to stop you from taking that action. It can be scary to put yourself out there on the Internet and share your journey and all the things, but I welcome people to embrace that fear and start today instead of five years from now. Going man, I really wish I started five years ago.
