Voics Voices - Digging deep into the world of podcasting.

The Ingredients of a Top 1% Global Podcast

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 03:33:08 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

Combined Voics clients generate over 5 million views and 1 million downloads per month.

So, I’ve picked up a thing or two about what makes a good podcast great.

Once you have a podcast up and running, it’s not about making major changes.

It’s the small subtle nuances to go pro.

To give you an analogy, the difference between a pro bodybuilder and a regular dude going to the gym isn’t the exercises or diet.

It’s the level of intensity and precision.

It’s viewing your craft like an art and a science.

Instead of randomly walking into the gym, you carefully plan out your training, nutrition and recovery for weeks in advance.

It is the same with the top level podcast globally.

they’re tactical, analytical and sometimes even mathematical.

There’s a clear, logical path to growth and I’m going to show you exactly how you can join the top 1% today.

Clear Persona & Content

The riches are in the niches.

Unfortunately, the broader you are to the general population, the less valuable you become.

Aim for everyone and hit no one.

I’ve seen this time and time again in the sponsorship world.

Brands simply do not want to work with vague categories like ‘health’ and ‘business’.

They want to double down on podcasts that are hyper specific to one demographic only.

Example:

Don’t think ‘investing’.

Think stock investing of NYSE based stocks for beginner investors with an average portfolio size of less than $10,000 only.

Why?

There is a HUGE market to grow a big podcast.

There is huge PAIN for you to solve.

Get super specific, if you feel you are broader than you’d like, review your top 10 episodes and find the common thread.

Here’s how I did it for Kickoff Sessions:

- Persona: 23 - 29 predominately male

- Profile: First time entrepreneur / late stage leaving 9-5

- Average income: $0 - $60,000

Once you have your persona down, it’s time to flip this into your content pillars.

Everything from your positioning, messaging and marketing hits these core content pillars.

If it doesn’t, you’re moving in the wrong direction.

Community Building

The early YouTube days of people like Christian Guzman, Joe Delaney, Rob Lipsett thought me one vital lesson:

Community is everything.

People want to be part of the journey.

They want ‘in’ to the tribe.

This is an evolutionary trait that’s hard-wired into us.

We want to belong to something.

Even though I knew this, what did I do for years?

Neglect building a community.

I thought it was a lot of ‘work’ for something that should happen naturally.

Damn, was I wrong.

You need to work on it daily.

Get feedback from your audience, respond to DMs, send voice notes, run Q&As.

Make people heard and understood.

A community doesn’t have to be some Discord group where you spend 24 hours a day responding to DMs.

It’s working on your engagement, including the audience, and giving them an opportunity to speak through social media.

Here’s the power of community:

We ran our first ever Black Friday offer this weekend. It was a damn good offer. We sold out every single spot in a matter of hours. That’s the power of goodwill and trust.

Niche Famous Guests

If you run a podcast around baking cupcakes, you should have the best cupcake baker in the world on your show.

There is no excuse.

Notice I didn’t say ‘famous guests’.

Just because you have a podcast on baking cupcakes, doesn’t mean you should have Dave Ramsey on your show.

It’s the wrong alignment completely.

But getting the best guest in your niche is absolutely fundamental.

I unfortunately see hosts pull in a bit of everything and anything:

Some ecommerce dude that lives in Miami, a fitness guy from the sauna, relationship gurus, oh and an ‘entrepreneur’.

This shit just doesn’t scale.

Go deep, find the best within your niche and build a narrative around only that.

The Copyblogger Podcast nails this approach: same topic and niche each week, killer guests who are ‘famous’ in their space.

If I want to improve my content, writing and marketing, I’m listening to that podcast.

Content Flywheel

The work STARTS when the podcast is released.

It does not END.

It blows my mind that people think the work is over after release.

Side note: The work is never finished. There is always more to do.

The top shows view their podcast in a hub and spoke model.

The podcast is the centre point in the ecosystem of content.

Because they have killer content and niche famous guests, they can HAMMER repurposed content 24/7.

If you know everything is in alignment, there is nothing wrong with doubling or tripling your output.

Why?

Because the shit works. That’s why.

In the first 24 hours of release, hammer your newsletter, LinkedIn, IG, X with notifications.

In the next 48 hours, start releasing clips.

If it’s working well, keep going.

If it’s not working well, keep going.

There’s only one thing for certain: if you DON’T do it, nothing will work.

You need eyeballs and you don’t get that by sitting there saying:

“My podcast isn’t growing.”

Branding & Design

The harsh reality is if it looks shit, people won’t click on it.

You could have the best podcast with incredible content, but if your thumbnails, audio and video look like a 1960 film, no one will click on it.

Record on Streamyard, create a simple branding pack, follow clear design structures and research YouTube thumbnails.

This will set you apart from 99% of people making it up.

that’s all for today people, have a beautiful Sunday!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Podcast Accelerator : Remove the stress, pressure and countless hours of growing a podcast. This comprehensive course will teach you the system I used to grow Kickoff Sessions and record with the sharpest minds in the world.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

The Competitive Edge That Podcasts Give You

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 03:23:42 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

This week we’re going to break down how you can use your podcast as a competitive edge.

It’s important to understand what benefits a podcast will give you versus traditional marketing.

If you’re running an ad, you’re purely thinking of the return on investment.

“Put one dollar in. I want two dollars back.”

That’s kind of how advertising works.

This isn’t how you should view your podcast.

It’s the number one mistake I see people make or when they say:

“Well, it’s not making me any money.”

That is an amateur mindset.

Instead, as an entrepreneur, you want to view your podcast as a tool.

It is the central hub in the ecosystem of branding.

In other words, it’s how you build your authority.

Here’s the true benefits of podcasts and how you can capitalise on it in 2024.

1. Network

At all stages of your entrepreneurial journey, your network is vital.

When I was young, dumb and clueless, I was recording with $10M founders who were happy to chat with an ambitious kid.

I had no experience, no following and not even a proper podcast, yet I was slowly building a powerful network.

As I went to leave my boring finance job, the people I podcasted with became my mentors.

As I built my first business, my guests became my tutors.

As I scaled my business, my guests’ achievements became my new targets.

At all stages, from the start right until today, these people have become a huge part of my journey.

Some even became close friends.

The thing is, you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the shit that keeps me up at night as a founder.

A podcast is a way for you to find out what you don’t know, for free.

Now these people are just one WhatsApp message away.

What’s the ROI on that you may ask?

Invaluable.

2. Communication

Being a great communicator is one of the most overlooked skills.

Everyone assumes they’re a good communicator.

They talk a lot to people they meet. Whether it’s in the bar, sauna, or gym.

That’s good communication, right?

Completely wrong.

Communicating is listening. It’s understanding.

When you speak, it’s about persuasion and speaking in the interests of others.

It’s not about you in the slightest.

When you sit down to record a podcast, you should have spent hours researching the guests’ work and ideas.

The conversation is a listening competition. It’s about how much can you listen, understand, analyse and interpret their ideas.

This is a fundamental skill you can transfer into your writing, marketing and sales.

Side note: If you’re a good listener, you are likeable. Have you ever noticed when two people are speaking and one person dominates the conversation with 90% of the talking? That person leaves the conversation and says to himself - ”Damn, he was a great guy, wasn’t he?”

If you want to improve your speech, start recording podcasts.

It’s simple.

You don’t know how bad your speech is until you hear yourself again and again.

After 185 episodes, my speech has completely changed.

It’s clearer and sharper.

I’ve even been able to shake off the Irish accent a little.

3. Influence & Authority

If you want authority, you need influence.

If you want influence, you need leverage.

If you want leverage, you need media.

Traditional media is dying a slow death.

Personal media is growing exponentially.

Become your own media company with your podcast.

You run the show; you captain the ship and steer it in whatever direction you want.

This is how you become a key person of influence in your niche.

You don’t even need to be the best; you need to be better than the herd blindly following everyone else.

The best way to become a category of one is through your podcast.

You don’t need to be a celebrity.

As an entrepreneur, you need to have that edge over someone else, and that is your podcast.

4. Social Selling

This is everything combined: network, communication, influence and authority.

Social selling is not messaging someone on LinkedIn saying, “Hey Darren, let’s connect!”

(Those dudes are the worst)

It’s having a pull factor, a special magnet attracting prospects to your work.

Creating free flowing demand generation content is the answer.

Don’t be fooled, you might need to put in 1000 hours for the first sale.

But when the work is done, the leverage is built, the media machine is moving.

Once it’s built, it’s impossible to get off the conveyor built.

People want to work with you for the brand and distribution you’ve built.

Once again, that becomes invaluable.

That’s all for this week people, see you next week!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Play to Win, Play The Long Game

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 05:53:00 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

Most people don’t win because:

They quit
They play the victim
They tarnish their reputation
They never cared to start with
They move onto the next ‘big thing’

These are all the reasons people “fail” in today’s modern world.

If you’re reading this, you want to win and play the game as long as possible.

This newsletter is for all you creators and entrepreneurs who play to win.

Here’s the difference between winners and losers:

Time Horizon

You wouldn’t go to the gym for the first time and say,

“This isn’t working. I’m going to stop.”

So why would you record a handful of podcasts and say:

“This isn’t working. I’m going to stop.”

It’s completely nonsensical.

The work you do today will pay dividends weeks, months and maybe years later.

Here are some practical examples:

Chris Williamson’s podcast took 300+ interviews and over 4 years to blow up.

Mike Thurston created YouTube videos for almost a decade before launching his top 1% podcast.

What you don’t see here are the years of building the foundations and stacking goodwill with their audience.

Look at the best investors of all time.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have played the ultimate long game. They’ve bought into companies and ideas they believed in and, literally, did nothing until the companies compounded.

As a creator and entrepreneur, you feel time is against you, but sometimes you have to be patient and let your ideas play out.

(And do the work…)

For Kickoff Sessions, I recorded every single week for three years straight. Some episodes BOMBED while others smashed.

What did I do when it bombed? Recorded another podcast.

What did I do when it smashed? Recorded another podcast.

Sometimes, you just have to keep going.

Incremental & Ruthless Improvement

“Everyone’s boss is the CEO and the CEO’s boss is the market” - Balaji Srinivasan

If your content or business isn’t growing, it’s not anyone's fault.

It’s the market telling you to do better.

You can moan, complain, and even take a vacation, but it doesn’t change the fact you need to do better.

Markets change, algorithms change, detach from your ideas and focus on what’s working.

“You can be consistently shit for 7 years straight and not improve.” - HowToBeast

That’s a new podcast, each week, with 0 improvement.

Try something different.

Record a podcast from a tree hanging upside down.

If that’s not your vibe, tell a personal story and humanise your work.

I’ve got to where I can record, speak, write well (ish), but just because I can do it, doesn’t mean I can win.

It takes testing the model and pushing the boundaries daily to see what the market wants.

Avoid The Easy Wins

Something I’m truly passionate about is avoiding the cheap, controversial, wins to grow.

To me, it’s a sign of weakness and insecurity.

If your entire brand and identity is based on shitting on other people for exposure, you have nothing.

“If it enrages, it engages.” - Balaji Srinivasan

Mainstream media famously did this for decades.

Now personal media companies (Twitter accounts) do this on a daily basis.

It’s cheaper, faster, and easier to put others down in the pursuit of growth.

This will capture the attention of a large market and encourage divisive behaviour.

Here is the hidden cost of doing this strategy:

You look like an idiot.

Reputations take decades to build and a second to tarnish.

Forever…

So before saying something stupid, write it on a piece of paper, read it, then throw it in the bin.

Do you think guys like Chris Williamson, Mike Thurston, Warren Buffett use rage to incite engagement?

100% not.

It’s all built on solid foundations.

Example of Getting it Right

Here’s playing the long game in action.

I launched The Game Plan Clips channel from 0.

0 subscribers
0 views

I started releasing short highlight videos from the podcast that were 5-10 minutes long.

As expected, it was slow in the beginning since the channel literally went from 0.

However, I’ve been here multiple times before. It wasn’t my first rodeo.

I knew the content was super solid to grow. So I kept at it.

After 165 days of nothing, here’s what ‘magically’ happened:

1,900,000 impressions
163,700 unique views
8100 watch hours
616 subscribers
6.4% CTR

On day 10, you could have said, “This isn’t working. Let’s stop this.”

On day 100, you could have said, “This isn’t working. Let’s stop this.”

On day 150, you could have said, “This isn’t working. Let’s stop this.”

And the beautiful part, I didn’t have to sacrifice the reputation of the client to get there.

Right content, right platform, right results.

Now back to work. Time to do it all over again.

See you next week people!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Fix Your Positioning For Supernormal Growth

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 05:47:08 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

The primary reason people struggle to grow their content is positioning.

Positioning is simply the stuff you talk about.

When you start out, you talk about pretty much everything:

Some business advice, some relationship advice and lifestyle stuff.

Basically everything…

I review over 20 podcasts a week, and I see the same problem happen again and again.

The host has a vague idea for a podcast like ‘startups’.

The show isn’t growing, so the host talks about something entirely different, like ‘endurance running’.

The content blows up around ‘endurance running’ but it has no affiliation to the core subject of startups.

As a result, the host is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Does he scrap the startup stuff?

Does he go all in on endurance running?

For me, it all comes down to the business model on the backend.

If the host owns a startup accelerator programme, having a bunch of ultramarathon runners will not help, will it?

But if he’s still finding his tribe with no business on the backend, the host can swap entirely.

Over time, as you find your voice and writing style, this should refine to a handful of core topics.

These topics form the foundation of everything you do.

How you record podcasts
The guests you source
The copy you write
The clips you pull

Here’s a personal example:

Kickoff Sessions started as a careers podcast. My show helped young people move fast in their careers and get promoted.

I was working for a high growth scaleup at the time, hoping to become CEO of a big boring company one day.

Thankfully, I snapped out of it…

As my interests evolved into entrepreneurship and I built my first proper business, so did my podcast.

On top of that, it’s what the audience NEEDED.

My content grew 10X more by listening to my audience's needs, not only my wants.

Only after recording 75 episodes, looking at the data and feedback, it made sense to change.

Now Kickoff Sessions compliments Voics and Voics compliments Kickoff Sessions.

We’re going to do this for you right now so you don’t have to waste 75 episodes.

The Content Treemap

The Content Treemap is the blueprint of your podcast.

This is everything you need to stay aligned to the goal of your content.

As well as that, everything leads back into the products/services you provide.

That keeps you aligned to the topic. If it doesn’t fit the theme of your products/services, scrap it.

Under the mission of your podcast, identify 3 primary topics you’ll stay aligned to.

For example:

Kickoff Sessions’ category is ‘Online Business’.

The three primary topics are ‘Personal Stories’, ‘Tools & Techniques’ and ‘How To’ guides.

For each podcast, I can lean into pulling stories from the guest, getting actionable insights and simple steps that listeners can implement.

What’s important here is that all of my content should stand in isolation.

If you see a clip on Instagram or YouTube, it should relate back to these core topics.

Having this structured approach removes the guesswork and systematises the process.

You can take it one step further and add subtopics to each topic.

For example:

Under the ‘How To’ topic, this can be subdivided into:

How to make $10K/month
How to get your first client
How to get 10K subscribers
How to build a personal brand
How to automate your business

As Hormozi says, “you are only limited by your creativity.”

So get creative and go deep into your topics and subtopics.

The last part is the products and services.

You can look at your podcast like a funnel. Everything you talk about can wrap back around to your products.

When there’s a clear alignment, you build authority in your niche.

Authority builds influence, and it’s inevitable as you grow, people will be attracted to your offer.

Highlight how you can help people through short 15 second ads and a brief description in the show notes.

Don’t overdo it.

As people become a tribe member, they will quickly discover how you can help them.

See you next week internet friends!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Increase Your Views by 500% With Storytelling

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 05:41:39 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up people,

Have you noticed all the best creators and entrepreneurs have the ‘perfect’ story?

It’s almost as if they created it.

Well, it’s true.

Your favourite creator has broken down their journey so clearly, they can wrap it up and give it to you like a gift.

You fall in love with their journey and follow them for years.

(Oh and you spend a shit tonne of money on their products too…)

Why?

People buy the story, not the product.

In a sea of sameness, your story is the differentiator.

This is what BLOWS up creators’ content by 500% or more.

I made this change, and it’s had a +500% increase in views, downloads, and engagement.

It works.

I’m going to break down exactly how to structure your story and a format you can follow clearly.

Everyone has a story. You just need to pull it out of you.

With this story, you can build your tribe of loyal followers and continuously increase your engagement.

I recently recorded a podcast with Eric Siu. He’s released over 3000 podcast episodes and scaled several companies to the +$1M/year club.

As we discussed his journey, he even admitted he hadn’t documented some events that happened along the way. This needs to be in front of mind as you develop your content and business.

Structure of Storytelling

The structure provides you with pillars to return to in your content. You can have multiple stories, but it’s important to make this relevant and relatable in your content.

Your story must be real and not fabricated. It’s pretty clear when something is BS and gone past the threshold of original.

“I left my 9-5 in McDonalds and now I’m a 21-year-old crypto millionaire living in Miami. Oh, and you can do it too if you buy my course” sounds pretty familiar…

I like to move viewers through a timeline:

1. Personal Experiences:

These are events relating to your content or business that have had major significance.

Why you started, how you started, early wins, feelings and emotions.

Example: I started with a $60 microphone and a 30-day-money-back guarantee because I genuinely believed I was going to return my microphone. I wanted to record three episodes and if I completely sucked, I would return the mic and not tell anyone about it. 31,528,924 views and 181 episodes later, I’m happy I didn’t turn back.

2. Share Transformations:

Show a sharp contrast between point A and point B.

This can be your total journey from the beginning to right now, or updates you’ve made on the journey.

You don’t need to win every day. It can be minor changes you’ve made along the way.

Example: I used to record podcasts in a small, dark, flat in rainy Dublin during lockdown. Now I record podcasts in world class, beautiful studios in spectacular locations like Bali, Singapore and Dubai.

Create a visual image in the viewer’s mind.

3. Share Challenges:

These are relevant and relatable to your viewer as it’s genuine pain you and the viewer have shared. The journey comprises a handful of problems we all face.

The wisdom comes from the pain.

Example: For years I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I’d record each week not knowing was I was even doing it right. When most people were out having fun, partying, enjoying life, I would stay up until 2AM at weekends, testing different aspects of podcasting. It was only by making these sacrifices I could break through.

4. Share Solutions:

This is how you solved the issue with your time and effort. It positions you as an authority because you did the work. Something people aren’t willing to do anymore.

Example: I spent 1000 straight days doing one thing - podcasting. I solved some pretty rough problems doing the same thing every single day.

Next is the format.

I recently watched Jenny Hoyos on Jay Clouse’s podcast. She’s 18 years old and generated over 600,000.000 views in one year…

So, there’s a lot to learn from her work.

She referenced a simple format that we can combine with our story:

The And-But-Therefore Format

This format adds a twist to your story. It creates tension and suspense in the viewers’ mind, and forces them to close the loop by viewing more.

Traditional stories are events one after another.

This happened AND this happened AND this happened.

Boring…

You want to hook users, build tension and then deliver on that expectation with a twist.

Here’s an example:

I was offered a job in Dubai AND

I was going to make $250,000 a year BUT

I recorded over 100 podcasts with top entrepreneurs AND

I wanted to build my own dream, not someone else THEREFORE

I turned down the job and went all in on my podcast.

(This is a real example, by the way)

Go back to the structure section, walk through this example clearly, and follow the storytelling format.

This works perfectly to build your tribe and drive more engagement.

See you next week internet friends!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Why You’re NOT Where You Want To Be

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 05:35:46 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

Most people are not where they want to be because they don’t take the actions to get there.

I was the same for years with my podcast.

I was moving sideways (or backwards) almost afraid to make a change.

I would wake up, do the same shit and expect different results.

That is the definition of insanity.

It’s also inertia, a tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged.

The reality is there was nothing wrong with me.

I lacked two fundamentals traits:

I lacked clarity.

I lacked direction.

Without a simple strategy, I wasn’t happy with what I was doing and I was getting 0 results with it.

To give you a comparison, when I’m training, I need a goal to work towards.

Whether it’s putting on 20 pounds in 6 months or losing 20 pounds in 6 months, I need that goal.

It’s undeniable what that does for me:

I’m more engaged in my training. I’m tracking every detail, analysing the numbers and approaching my craft like a professional athlete.

That is the same for content and podcasting.

When I speak to struggling podcast hosts, they all have one universal characteristic:

Undefined goals.

What is ‘growth’ or ‘improvement’ if you do not know what your goal is?

It sounds obvious, but that’s the case for 99% of podcasts moving sideways.

It’s time you build a strategy and we’re going to do it right now.

There’s three main metrics that all podcasts need to define:

Content Growth

All content should run off a baseline and benchmark metric.

It’s important to understand the baseline of where you are right now, right down to every detail of views and downloads.

If you get 10 downloads, say it out loud. At least you’re aware of your situation.

Next step is to understand the benchmark in your industry.

B2B enterprise podcasts will not have a benchmark of 10,000 downloads, but more like 500.

It’s niche, it’s specific, the goal is beyond the content. It could be revenue generating or brand building.

For a fruity personal development podcast on relationships, your benchmark is much, much higher for downloads and views.

When you look at where you are and where you need to get to, this makes it 10X easier to devise a timeline to get there.

Even with the most niche podcasts, your content should grow on a month by month basis:

Average monthly downloads
Average episode downloads
YouTube episode views
YouTube Shorts views
Instagram Reels views
LinkedIn impressions

Audience Growth

Audience growth tells you is your content working.

As you’re releasing content, build your audience side by side:

Content growth > audience growth = Low retention
Content growth < audience growth = High retention
Content growth = audience growth = Building your tribe

This looks different for every podcast and every business.

Once you return to the baseline and benchmark principle, you can see exactly what is realistic for your niche.

The goal here isn’t pure irrational optimism, it’s looking at the data and crafting a logical strategy to get there.

I’m currently working backwards from 100,000 subscribers.

What is it I NEED to do to get there? Here’s my strategy:

Record 5+ studio podcast in 2023
Release 6+ podcasts every month
Release 7+ Shorts & Reels a week
Release 2 - 4 Highlight clips a week
Redirect traffic from IG / LinkedIn
Review data & adjust 3X week

I can compare content growth versus audience growth clearly once I literally give it my all.

Revenue Growth

When people say “you can’t make money from a podcast” what they actually mean is “I can’t make money from my podcast.”

It’s like when people say “exercise doesn’t work” and they’ve never exercised…

Revenue from your podcast is more about the business and less about the content.

Harsh truth: if you’re a shit entrepreneur, you’re going to struggle to make money regardless of what you do.

It’s not the podcast or the algorithm’s fault, it’s probably you.

The good news is, like everything in life, you can get better.

The first step is setting up your products properly. Everything must serve the audience or provide an adjacent service to your show.

Kickoff Sessions doesn’t sell anything. At all.

However, it provides visibility and exposure for Voics.

The goal is to help and serve others. Once you accomplish that, you’ll generate traffic to your core offer.

It is absolutely fundamental you define your revenue goals. I track this on a monthly and quarterly basis.

In the online space, the lights are on 24/7, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be growing every month.

Every month, the goal is something like this:

Content growing by 15 - 25%
Audience growing by 10 - 20%
Revenue growing by 20%

Sometimes it will dip up and down, but the general trajectory is upwards.

That’s all for today people, see you next week internet friends!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Make More Money Than You Thought Was Humanly Possible

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 05:29:49 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up people,

Today, like every other day, I will not waste your time.

Instead, I’m going to give you everything you need to make more money than you thought was humanly possible.

This is through the power of sponsorships.

To show you I’m not full of shit. This year alone I’ve CLOSED over $250,000 in sponsorships.

If you’re thinking “that’s not possible” stop reading here.

If you want to break all the rules that the old world created, keep reading.

Here’s the exact model:

Sponsor your Brand instead of Sponsoring your Podcast

If you aren’t a celebrity, you need to think brand. This is why most podcasts fight over the scraps for less than $500.

Instead, bring sponsors into your brand. They sponsor YOU versus a basic podcast.

Create an interesting media kit of everything you have. Tell your story, showcasing your audience and reach.

Who do you think writes a bigger cheque at the end of the month?

I think I know the answer.

This is the difference between $100 and $10,000 a month.

Here’s why this breaks all the rules:

The game used to be run on a pure CPM basis. It’s the cost per 1000 downloads. So if the CPM was $20, and you got 5000 downloads (which is a lot of downloads, by the way) you make $100.

How sad….

However, since we do not live in the stone ages anymore and this doesn’t capture total exposure of your brand, I do not follow this rule.

I like to bind EVERYTHING together.

Total downloads
Episode downloads
Followers on Twitter
Followers on Spotify
Followers on LinkedIn
Followers on Instagram
Growth rate (historic)
Growth rate (projected)
Subscribers on YouTube
Influence on social platforms
YouTube episode total impressions
Short from episode reach (YouTube)
Short from episode reach (Instagram)

Yeah.. There’s a lot…

The perceived value increases because you get more stuff for your money.

Podcasting is no longer a single channel, it’s omni-channel and literally everywhere.

Therefore, get paid for your omni-channel presence.

Once you have pulled in every date point you can find, it’s time for pricing.

Bundles, Bundles, Bundles.

My favourite way to package everything is a tiered approach.

The fear of missing out will transition people from the first bundle to the second and ultimately to the third.

As every stage you’re offering crazy value, but it’s not as good as the next bundle is it…

I call this the ‘graduation phase’.

I start with a high ticket one episode sponsorship at $5000.

($5000 per episode)

The next tier is an entire month of four episodes for $10,000.

($2500 per episode)

The final tier is an entire quarter of twelve episodes for $15,000.

($1250 per episode)

You just saved yourself $3,750 per episode by sponsoring a quarter instead of a single episode.

Bargain! Right?

The unit economics gets pretty wild with this as you scale.

Soo… Who do we chase after?

Not everyone, to my knowledge, has the money to pay $5000 per episode.

But there are a select few people and that’s all that matters.

Here’s a list of companies you should focus on closing:

Venture backed startups (Series A and beyond)
DTC ecommerce brands ($5M-$9M in revenue)
Large enterprises (10,000+ headcount)
High growth scale-ups ($50M+ in ARR)

These companies got money to burn and their ears to the ground.

Spend less time chasing dead money and go after the right candidates.

Now back to work��

That’s all for today people, see you next week internet friends!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

5 Growth Secrets to Supercharge Your Content

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 01:00:00 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

We’re back with another newsletter on this beautiful Sunday morning.

This week I’m going to break down exactly how you can get your content to more users faster than before.

It falls under one principle.

The 1-To-Many Model

Until now, when you create content, it’s one to one with the social platform.

For example, you post content on Instagram, and hope Instagram pushes your content.

Not a bad strategy, it’s worked for many people, but I like to put it on steroids.

This completely flips the script in terms of growth.

Instead of doing all the work yourself, you partner with people for supernormal growth.

You grow through network effects.

Instead of 1+1 = 2, it’s more like 1+2 = 10.

It’s a spider web. You start small and as your content is pushed by other people; you grow at an exponential rate.

You grow faster.

They grow faster.

Everyone wins.

This is exactly how the biggest creators and entrepreneurs in the world grow.

They do not sit on their phone all day pumping out clips. They join forces with others and the internet does the work.

Now, you’re probably asking, how do I do this?

Here’s 5 secrets to blow up your content through the 1-to-Many Model:

1. Clip Channels

As some of my content popped off, I would see more and more of these clip channels ‘steal’ my content.

They would take my episodes and create clips to grow their Instagram, TikTok or YouTube channels.

Some people get annoyed by this. I’m the exact opposite.

When this happened, I did two things:

Messaged the account owner and told him he’s free to take whatever clips he wants from the podcast. All he has to do is mention my podcast in the description.
Comment in the post that the clip was from Kickoff Sessions and to check out the full episode.

The results from this were absolutely wild.

Some of these clips were doing 1,000,000 views a day.

More eyeballs, more downloads, everyone wins.

These accounts are engineered to pick the best clips on the internet to go viral, so when your content is side by side with Alex Hormozi and Chris Williamson, you don’t complain; you double down.

Side note: if you’re starting out, you can message these accounts and give them the raw files of your best episodes.

Make sure they have the type of audience you wish to attract. It goes without saying, don’t pay $1 for this.

2. Build a Tribe

Find other weirdos on a similar mission to you.

Team up and create content together. Preferably through podcasts.

If both of you are quite similar, chances are your audience will be quite similar.

As content is repurposed from episodes, your core values and beliefs are being shared across the internet.

This gives you leverage since it’s your best content being pushed. You tap into their audience and adjacent audiences.

(That’s why it’s important to have core content pillars so you limit the stupid shit you say)

3. Create Guest Content

One of the most powerful tools is to create content for your guests.

Often, guests don’t even know what to do with your episode.

Where should they share it?

How should they share it?

Why should they share it?

Make it stupid simple.

Create content around their brand and business, give it to them directly and tell them exactly which platform this will perform best on.

“Here is a custom clip for you that you can use on Instagram for your audience” is much better than “Can you please post our episode?”

If you’re wondering why guests don’t share your work, this is exactly why.

4. Record with Creators

Some people just get “it”.

It’s hard to explain, but they understand the power of media and leverage.

One of the best things a guest can say is “can you send me the raw files?”

Often it’s creators with experience in content that will do this.

Lean into that.

Record with people who want to get the message out there.

Some old managing director from Goldman Sachs is less interested in growing on social media than a first time founder of a SaaS platform that’s all about Twitter growth.

Play smart. Play to win.

5. Revisit Old Topics

If it’s worked in the past, chances are it will work again.

For some reason, people think they can’t repurpose old episodes.

Some of the best content comes from resurfacing clips from episodes 12 months ago.

When you see a clip from Alex Hormozi on a podcast, you don’t ask “what date was this recorded?” you think “huh, that was pretty useful”.

If some top performing episodes resonate with your core values, drive more content around them in clips. These will perform well and you’ll grow faster.

That’s all for today people, see you next week internet friends!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How Content Helped Me Build a Top 1% Global Network

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 08:00:00 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

We’re back once again with another Sunday newsletter.

This week I’m going to show you exactly how content helped me build a killer network and how you can do the same.

For context, when I first got into the content game in 2020, I had no network, no money, no experience, nothing.

On top of that, at 24 years old, I was largely unskilled. I worked in consulting, a vague, esoteric term for “you know nothin.”

To this day, I’m still unskilled to a degree. I’m not a writer, sales bro or an engineer. So it’s not like I can give someone a skill I have.

I’m not a serial entrepreneur with a decade of experience that everyone wants to leach off. Also, I don’t have a CMO that can pay a magazine $30,000 to “get the name out there!”

(Please don’t ever do that by the way…)

I can honestly say my approach to content networking is from the ground up and highly effective.

If I can do it from 0, you definitely can and better than me.

Why is this valuable?

Because the network I’ve built has enabled me to create businesses, establish joint ventures and grow faster than ever.

With that out of the way, let’s get into the details.

1. Build Leverage

For me, the golden source of truth has been my podcast, Kickoff Sessions.

For you, it doesn’t have to be a podcast.

It can be a newsletter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn or Twitter account.

But ideally it’s something you own.

A podcast has the highest leverage as a guest podcast forces you to contact people every single day.

As your episodes stack up and compound, your podcast builds up velocity.

Imagine a football rolling down a hill. First it rolls slowly, then all at once.

At a certain point, the velocity becomes so strong it’s unstoppable.

During this period, the breath of guests you’re exposed to is wild. Instead of being a lone wolf building in solitude, it forces you to connect and collaborate with others.

Remember earlier when I said I had nothing to give someone?

That changes as your podcast grows. You now have a platform that can provide guests with reach and engagement. Your platform is a valuable resource for others to grow from.

This is distribution.

Why do you think Chris Williamson, Steven Bartlett, Lewis Howes consistently have the best guests in the world?

They have leverage.

2. Genuinely Help People

Sounds obvious, right?

It’s massively overlooked by podcast hosts and creators online.

Do intros for people and send them helpful information.

I like to create content for guests specifically that will help their brand and business.

It doesn’t take much effort on my side and it’s a minor gesture that makes a big impact.

I’m less concerned about keeping my master plans to myself (I have none) and instead I want to share these ideas with people.

If a guest or someone you’ve interacted with is struggling with something that you can solve, give it to them without hesitation.

Remember, we are thinking in multiple decades.

Not in short-term dopamine hits.

3. Publish & Find Your Tribe

I was on a podcast the other day with a dude that was 16.

He said he struggles to find other 16-year-olds that are interested in podcasting and online business.

No shit.

He won’t find his tribe in high school.

This can only be found in the online world.

When you publish content, you will naturally attract a crowd.

Some will be bots.

Some will be weirdos.

Some will be the RIGHT weirdos.

That’s who you’re targeting.

You want to find the right weirdos on a similar mission to you.

These people keep you accountable in the building phase.

They should call you out on your shit to your face and speak highly of you behind your back.

I believe everyone should have a mentor, someone ahead of you.

Everyone should have someone on their level, someone to keep you focused.

Everyone should have a mentee, someone to distill your teachings.

Over time, your tribe builds and converts into a high-quality network.

4. Team Up & Dominate

The result of this is beautiful.

You can team up to create great content.

You can team up to form joint ventures or strategic partnerships.

You can also just have someone that understands the struggles you’re going through as an entrepreneur.

(Probably the most important)

I like to create win-win scenario.

Everyone brings either leverage, distribution, skill, knowledge, experience or capital to the table.

No one is doing anyone a favour.

It’s just a win-win scenario for everyone.

Entrepreneurship is rough at the best of times.

Your network provides you with clarity, direction, and support when you need it most.

Now go build your network.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How YouTube Will Change Podcasting Forever

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 00:25:53 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

We’re back with another newsletter on this beautiful Sunday morning.

This week I’m going to be breaking down why YouTube is the future of podcasting and how it’s changing the podcast industry.

When I first got into this industry in 2020, I almost couldn’t believe how fragmented audio podcasts were.

You have this hosting platform thing, directories, and more confusing stuff.

It’s a giant mess.

No one solved the problem of aggregating everything together.

Until, YouTube walked in.

You see, YouTube had a close eye on podcasting for many years. They watched from the sidelines as the user base grew and matured. They had two flagship podcasts:

- The Joe Rogan Experience

- Call Her Daddy

Both podcasts boomed.

Both podcasts LEFT to Spotify.

This really pissed off YouTube, and that’s when the podcast wars kicked off.

You don’t need to know the details. All you need to know is that this is GREAT for you.

More competition amongst platforms means these companies compete for YOU and your attention.

Now what does this mean in practice?

YouTube is flooding money into podcasts to improve their platform, features, and monetisation for users.

This means you can take advantage of their platform to grow as fast as possible.

Here’s exactly how YouTube will change podcasts and how you can capitalise on it:

1. Features

YouTube moves faster with new products than any other platform.

6 months ago they released ‘podcasts’ which completely reshuffled their algorithm.

Anything tagged with a ‘podcast’ playlist was shown to new users. More users seeing your stuff, the more you grow.

You might think “well podcasting is audio, so maybe they won’t watch the episode?”

Enter YouTube Music - the platform which now stores all podcasts for you to listen on the go.

See the trend here.

The most powerful feature by far is the most recent link between short form content and long form content.

You can literally link your podcast episodes to YouTube shorts.

Let’s say you get a 1% click-through-rate and your clip gets 100,000 views. That’s 1000 people viewing your full length podcast.

Most people I know would be pretty happy to get an extra 1000 views on their episodes.

Oh, and it’s free.

Lastly, YouTube is the second biggest search engine (after Google, its daddy). As a result, videos are continuously pushed to new users months and years later.

Contrast that to the boring and static discoverability of Apple podcasts.

They say the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google. I think it’s on Apple podcasts.

2. User Experience & User Interface

As mentioned earlier, podcast hosting platforms suck.

It’s difficult for a podcast host and even for listeners to find your content.

YouTube solves this problem with a simple frontend for users to find your content:

Clean channel, highlight videos, long form, short form and podcasts.

In the backend, you have every metric in the world to measure.

Audio metrics are literally impossible to track effectively.

Why?

Because the hosting platforms don’t even have clear visibility into Spotify & Apple podcasts.

Content is mathematics and without knowing the numbers behind it, you’re kind of just making it up.

Well, not on YouTube. There’s no hiding.

3. Monetisation

YouTube pays you to publish.

If there isn’t more of an incentive, I don’t know what is.

If you’re thinking “Well, it’s not a lot of money.” so is everything in the beginning.

That’s life.

My first client paid me $0, my last client paid me $60,000.

It sure didn’t start out like that.

My YouTube channel started with $0 and now averages $1500/month.

I’m going to post the videos anyway. It’s cool to get paid for it.

YouTube pays you across long form and short form. As your videos keep growing, theirs an opportunity for you to keep earning.

4. Content Funnel

If you’re the type, that’s like “I need leads NOW” YouTube is your answer.

You can redirect users from long form content to lead magnets, discovery calls and paid products.

As you grow, your products/services will generate more traffic and you can effectively move users through a content funnel.

Side note : Creating content only to get leads isn’t a good strategy long term. If you’re not trying to help people and resolve their challenges genuinely, you can see it straight away. Funnels are cool, but helping people is better.

That’s all for today everyone, see you next week!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Why People Buy Your Story, Not Your Products

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:20:45 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

We’re back with another newsletter on this beautiful Sunday morning.

This week I’m going to show you exactly why people buy your story and how to create your own story.

Whether you record podcasts, write newsletters or create content on social media, people are buying your story over your products.

Let me explain.

In a world where almost everything can be a commodity or automated, the differentiator is your story.

Leaning into your experiences, challenges and solutions separates you from 99% of people selling the same product or service.

For your content, prospects come directly to see what you’re about: your values, beliefs and, ultimately, your expertise.

Long form content is your best friend for this.

Before people even consider buying from you, they build a relationship by following your content. The more you show up and deliver, the better the relationship you're developing.

The sale is a byproduct of the trust and credibility you’ve built for YEARS.

The goal is to think in decades. That’s how this becomes valuable.

To put things into reality, it took me three months to get to $30,000 MRR.

What you don’t see is it took me THREE years to get to $1.

All the seeds are planted and grown over time in the background.

Side note: you can turn up the monetisation dial much earlier than I did. My goal was to stack skills and experience so I could actually deliver.

Want to build an asset that will pay you 100X in the future?

Cool, let’s get into it.

My good friend Tim Stoddart once told me, “no one can argue with your experiences” and I love that.

When everyone is trying to cut you down, your experiences stand in isolation.

I like to move viewers through a timeline:

1. Personal Stories:

These are events relating to your product or niche that have had major significance.

Why you started, how you started, early wins, feelings and emotions.

Example : I started with a $60 microphone and a 30-day-money-back guarantee because I genuinely believed I was going to return my microphone.

2. Share Transformations:

Show a sharp contrast between point A and point B.

This can be your total journey from the beginning to right now, or updates you’ve made on the journey.

Example : I used to record in a flat with two other dudes in Dublin. Now I record podcasts in world class studios in Bali, Singapore and Dubai.

3. Share Challenges:

These are relevant and relatable to your viewer as it’s genuine pain you and the viewer have shared. The journey comprises a handful of problems we all face.

Example : I could not crack video for a very long time. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it right. I spent hours each week adjusting lighting, angles, etc. until I got a working model in place.

4. Share Solutions:

This is how you solved the issue with your time and effort. It positions you as an authority because you did the work. Something people aren’t willing to do these days.

Example : I spent 1000 straight days doing one thing - podcasting. I solved some pretty rough problems doing the same thing every single day.

Now let’s put all of this together.

I’ve taken the following piece from Daniel Priestley. He has interviewed thousands of entrepreneurs and boils their story down to three major components.

1. Origin:

Origin is all about your early triggers in life that led you down this path.

An event around the age of 10-12 years of old that influenced your behaviour to think differently and act independently.

For me, I trained at a high level as a 100 metre sprinter from an early age. I spend most of my time either on my own or with a high performance coach, training and analysing performance when most kids didn’t.

I was literally looking at data and metrics at 12 years old. In some ways, I do the same thing right now.

2. Mission:

Mission is the highest leverage activity you can do to realise your goal.

For me, it’s recording as many high-quality podcasts as possible to help younger people live a richer and more fulfilling life.

3. Vision:

This is what you want to see, a change in the world and how you’re going to get there.

For me, I believe the art of conversation is dying and podcasting is the best way to create deep and insightful conversations again.

Try this approach out for yourself.

That’s all for today everyone. See you next week!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Why You Need To Do MORE

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 07:11:40 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

In this week’s newsletter I’m going to break down why more is better and why you probably aren’t doing enough reps.

You often hear “quality over quantity” but I think that can be a copout for not putting in the work. Especially in the beginning.

Let me explain.

If you haven’t put in thousands of reps, how can you know what ‘quality’ even is?

If you’ve only created 10, 30 or 50 episodes, how do you know which episodes are high quality?

If you’ve only written 20 posts or created 20 clips, how do you know what’s working and WHY it’s working?

If you spend all week perfecting the perfect clip and it gets 200 views, it’s not enough information to say what’s worked and what’s happened.

So ‘quality’ in the beginning can be interpreted as ‘not putting out enough content to discover what quality even is’.

Here’s my approach:

The Volume + Data Model

If you combine volume of content with deep analytics, it’s literally impossible to lose.

You need to have a big enough dataset to measure and the right strategy to analyse the content.

Here’s how:

Instead of comparing 10 podcast episodes, I compare 100.
Instead of comparing 30 written posts, I compare 365.
Instead of comparing 50 clips, I compared 500.

In the beginning, I put out so much content that I get a ‘feel’ of what’s working and what isn’t.

Each episode you can adjust a variable every so slightly:

Guests, topics, titles, descriptions, clips, CTAs, etc.

You get better by sheer volume because the feedback looper is tighter.

Instead of waiting another two weeks to release another episode, release an episode every 5 days.

You’ll improve without even realising.

Then it’s time for the analysis.

The three major metrics to measure include:

1. Retention Rate

Retention rate will tell you exactly how good your content is.

It’s the percentage of the episode watched by the viewer and starts at 100% and tethers to 0%.

It can increase above 100% if the viewer watches the content multiple times (bonus points).

At Voics, we aim to stay above 50% on all long form content and 80% on all short form content.

This is significantly higher than the industry average.

As mentioned, when you compare 600 pieces of content compared to 60, you get a pretty good idea how good you really are.

2. Watch Time

Watch time is calculated based on views multiplied by duration watched.

This is 10X more significant than ‘views’ on its own.

Uncomfortable truth is that views mean very little if every viewer’s duration is one second before moving on with their life.

We want to hook, retain, and delight, i.e. they stick around and watch more.

3. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

CTR tells you exactly how good you are at designing thumbnails and writing titles.

This is the very first thing a new user will see.

One decent episode is not enough to tell you this.

However, 100 episodes may be enough.

For example, a 5% CTR means if 100 people saw your episode (on your channel, home feed, recommendations) 5 people clicked on your episode.

Doesn’t sound like much.

However, if you multiply the sample size by 1000, you now have 100,000 seeing your podcast and 5000 people clicking on the episode.

This is the wonderful world of internet content.

Doesn’t mean much with small numbers, but when you scale it becomes insanely powerful.

If you see your CTR declining, it’s time to mix up designs, try new titles and research what’s working best.

TL:DR

You can’t create quality without quantity initially
Create so much content you have a large dataset
Analyse content for retention, watch hours and CTR
Repeat the process for as long as it takes

That’s all for today everyone, see you next week internet friends!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How I Maintain a +50% Retention Rate

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 06:22:41 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

What’s up everyone,

This week I’m back with another newsletter helping you build, grow and monetise your podcast.

Content is the backbone of your podcast.

All the other stuff simply doesn’t matter if your content sucks.

Or as Alex Hormozi calls it, “sucky fluff”.

So I’m going to break down 5 key elements to improve your episodes flow, engagement and conversation.

On my show Kickoff Sessions , I average a 50% retention rate on all episodes released.

That means, for everyone who listens to an episode, 50% of them listen to the FULL episode all at once.

My episodes are frequently 90 minutes long, and 50% of listeners consume the full length of the episode.

Wild.

They don’t listen because of flashy marketing; they listen because of the content.

Here’s 5 ways you can improve your episodes retention:

1. High Impact Clips

I start every podcast with 3 high impact moments of the podcast. I select different segments that are 15 seconds at a maximum.

This spikes curiosity and interest in the content.

Users are bought in instantly and get a flavour for the episode.

We create an open loop in the viewers’ mind that needs to be satisfied by viewing more.

To spice it up, I like to add b-roll footage from the guest’s content to add more context.

2. Question Styles

I was guilty of double-barrelled questions for far too long.

These are questions with two, or even three, questions loaded on them. Example:

“How did that feel and what did you do next and what would you have done differently?”

Sounds silly.

But every podcast falls into this trap from time to time.

It completely derails the attention of guests and guess who else?

Yup, the listeners.

Instead, keep things short concise and on point. Example:

“How did you feel?”

In the book Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini, he mentions ‘What’s Focal is Causal’. Whatever is put in the center for an audience to view is going to be believed to be more important and casual to whatever is being discussed.

Therefore, to keep viewers, we want to focus our attention on one simple question at a time.

3. Bridge Topics

Every podcast, me included, does a complete handbrake turn between topics from time to time.

This is switching between two topics that have a low correlation.

Leaving the guest and the viewer confused and leading to lower retention. Example:

- Discussing scaling a business

- Switching to relationship advice

- There’s no link between the two topics.

Instead, you need to bridge the two topics together. Example:

- Discussing scaling a business

- BRIDGE : Affect of business on family members

- Switching to relationship advice

With the bridge, this is a natural conversation flow that makes sense.

Without it, it’s just a little strange, right?

4. Switch From Q&A to Conversation

The best podcasts don’t create a Q&A session, they guide conversations.

The goal is to turn the episode into a healthy conversation. This relaxes the guest as they feel the conversation is more balanced, rather than an interrogation.

Viewers feel like they’re at the table with you.

Guests even ask you questions from time to time.

That pattern interrupt is refreshing when the same style conversations are recorded again and again.

5. Opinions & Perspective

For a long time, I never added my opinion to podcasts.

It was clear - the engagement was low, and no one got to know me.

However, through experience, you form your own opinions, which add value to a conversation.

Every now and again, sprinkle in some ideas and opinions, even if it’s only a sentence or two.

Wrapping this together creates a powerful podcast that listeners want to sit down and listen to.

That’s all for today everyone, see you next week internet friends!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Your Podcast Growth Roadmap

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 06:51:47 GMT

Watch time: 14 minutes

What’s up everyone,

We’re back with another newsletter on this beautiful Sunday.

This week, things are a little different.

I’m sharing with you a video of my Podcast Growth Roadmap.

I’ve recorded a short video of my EXACT strategy to go from 0 to 20+ million views and go from 0 to 40,000+ subscribers .

The best part? After watching this video, you can do it right now.

Completely free.

Here is the link to the video:

Podcast Growth Roadmap (CLICK HERE)

If you have feedback on the video, please let me know.

Your feedback improves my content and makes us all better podcast hosts.

Enjoy the video!

See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Harsh Lessons From Closing $100,000+ in Sponsorships

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 06:40:19 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

We’re back with another newsletter on this beautiful Sunday once again.

This week I’m going to be sharing something that will help you make more money and sign better sponsors.

In the past 50 days (a fancy way of saying Q3) I’ve closed over $100,000 in sponsorship revenue for clients.

Which is an average of $2000 a day. Every single day.

Pretty cool.

What that means is that I partner with top quality brands and high-quality podcasts for sponsorships.

During this time, I’ve learned some harsh lessons.

These lessons apply to both the podcast getting sponsored and the brand we’re matching the podcast with.

I’ve broken it down into the ten most important lessons learned.

Let’s dig in.

1. No Niche, No One Cares

If you have a vague podcast like ‘entrepreneurship’, literally no one cares to sponsor the show.

The reason is that the podcast is creating some type of platitude content.

As well as trying to appeal to everyone.

If you aim for everyone, you catch no one.

A HUGE red flag for brands.

Think super specific like a ghostwriting podcast that ONLY works with series B and beyond founders.

2. Brand Alignment is Everything

Your interest must align with the brand’s values.

You must have an interest in what they are selling.

They must have an interest in what you are discussing.

If there’s a misunderstanding in alignment, it’s not a good deal and you should walk in the other direction.

You DON’T want to be the dude shilling teeth whitening products or skinny tea formula.

Not cool.

3. Someone Always Holds The Power

You either want what they have OR they want what you have.

It’s as simple as that.

Since brands and podcasts come from different angles, the position of power often weighs in someone’s favour.

You’re either a podcast with a huge audience or a brand with a tonne of options.

It’s not a negative thing.

It’s life.

4. The Podcast isn’t Enough on its Own

A brand doesn’t sponsor an audio channel, they sponsor you.

Your podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

These platforms give you leverage and negotiation power.

Use it to your advantage.

Instead of saying “please sponsor my podcast!” your personal brand is an entire suite of social channels with vast distribution.

5. Sponsorships are About Relationships

The actual work starts when the deal is signed.

It’s not about grabbing the cash and running off to a tropical island. You want to build a relationship with the brand, understand their goals and offer your help to realise those dreams.

Check in frequently with them, see what you can do better and execute on the changes.

Always play the long game.

6. Reputation > Sponsorships Every Time

A shitty deal is not worth the reputational damage if it’s not in alignment with who you are.

People literally throw money at anything, but don’t fall for the cash if:

You can’t deliver the expectations

The brand doesn’t align with you

The brand doesn’t serve your audience

There is better and easier ways to make money in the world.

7. Every Piece of Content Adds to the Deal

You can significantly increase your monthly sponsorship value, including posts to other channels.

If you crush it in short form, that adds to the deal.

If you crush it on LinkedIn, that adds to the deal.

Every little nuance is an opportunity to increase the deal size.

8. Revenue Performance is the Only Metric

At the end of the day, sponsorships are ads.

If you can show a positive ROI for their investment, thumbs up. The model works.

Yes, brands can sponsor podcasts for exposure reasons, but nothing quite beats the feeling of generating revenue for someone who took a chance on you.

9. Future Sponsors Depend on Current Sponsors

There’s no better way to build or tarnish your future than with a sponsor.

If you KILL it once with a brand, it gives you fantastic data to leverage for larger deals.

If you bomb with a sponsor, no traffic, no sales, it’s difficult to land a big sponsor afterwards.

Especially if they come looking for metrics (which they will, by the way).

10. Your Story is More Important Than Your Podcast

The story you tell the world is how you will ultimately stand out.

People remember your story more than a random podcast on the internet.

Your story binds your podcast together.

That’s all for today everyone.

I’m excited to see what I’ll learn from my first $1 million in sponsorships

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

My World Domination Plan of Social Media

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 06:50:34 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

We’re back with another newsletter on this fine Sunday morning. As always, I don’t plan on wasting your time for the next three minutes.

Instead, I’m going to share with you my exact strategy for world domination of social media.

(evil laugh)

Na I’m joking.

However, I passed 50,000 followers across all platforms this week, so I said it’s time to stop messing around and create a concrete strategy for the next 24 months.

Why?

Without a logical strategy, you are literally making it up.

Every day, you and your podcast go into the world hoping for the best.

This was me for a long time.

However, over time, you know what to do. I’ve been creating podcast content for over three years. It gets easier, but without the right approach, you move sideways.

To scale and grow to crazy numbers, you need a razor sharp strategy.

Each platform is different, it requires a different flavour and touch. Content that smashes on LinkedIn doesn’t work as well on Instagram. The concepts remain the same, but the alignment is different.

What’s the goal of all this?

The goal is to crack global distribution.

The larger the distribution network, the more eyeballs on your content, the more people you can help. It’s that simple.

Without distribution, you may as well be screaming out of your bedroom window.

Literally.

I’ve broken my strategy down for each platform into the core components of the content. The content has to be different on each platform, to a degree.

Let’s break down the different components of content:

1. Authority Content

Authority style content is when you showcase your competency and exhibit your expertise. This builds trust with your audience through your podcast and writing. This should be your top priority to become an authority figure, i.e. someone people like, know, and trust.

For me, this takes up over 50% of content on all social platforms. You need to prove your competency. This can be done by showing exactly what you’ve achieved, sharing personal stories and transformation. You can share the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Your podcast is a great platform to go super deep on your experiences, and bring this right across all platforms.

2. Community Content

Community builds the audience. It makes people feel part of the journey. They’re not sitting on the sidelines, they’re in it. This builds your 1000 super-fans. You build community differently on all platforms, but it’s a crucial component of your brand.

Go the extra mile, respond to messages, comments and emails. Ask people for their opinion and implement their feedback.

Some dude on Twitter said to me my lighting was distorted at night because of my recording platform. I fixed it, recorded a new podcast and sent it to him 24 hours later.

3. Entertainment Content

Entertainment grabs attention. You need attention before you can keep attention. Once you grab attention, you need authority style content to convert users into a community.

Be careful though, entertainment content on its own is meaningless. It gives the wrong impression and builds the wrong audience. I like to add entertainment style content through personal stories and mistake I made along the way.

4. Podcast Content

Your podcast plays a vital role in these three components. However, sharing the physical episodes is a vital role of the equation which I niche down into on Instagram. Your podcast can lean more into authority or entertainment style content. For me, it’s all about authority and providing education.

You can’t have it all. For each platform, you need to lean more into authority, community, entertainment or educational style content.

You need a mixture of all four components to dominate.

How I transform theory into execution is very simple:

- Podcast : Long form episodes and short form content

- YouTube : Long form episodes, personal videos and short form content

- LinkedIn : Written text, images and short form clips

- Instagram : Short form clips, high-quality headshots and story engagements

- Twitter : Written text, images and short form clips

You're saying the same thing, 1000 different ways, to appeal to different components.

That’s it.

That’s my grand plan for world domination.

See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Do More with Less From Your Podcast

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 06:45:41 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

As the sun rises across Asia once again on this beautiful Sunday, I’m going to be breaking down how you can get more out of your podcast.

Believe it or not, I’m not a big fan of blindly doing more.

- More work

- More episodes

- More stuff to do

The process can be exhausting IF your approach is ineffective.

Instead, I like to look at EVERYTHING I have and think, how can I get more out of these resources?

This stops you chasing the next hit with your podcast.

Instead, you can keep momentum high and results higher.

So my approach is simple: get more out of your current episodes so you don’t feel you're falling behind.

Everything stems from the long form episode. It’s important you throw EVERYTHING at creating a niche specific and on brand episode. From here, this is when we get creative.

1. High Quality Video

If your podcast looks like Minecraft, we’re screwed.

It’s crucial you record in the highest quality camera and, if possible, record in person. This gives you leverage to repurpose and grow. The lower the quality, sadly the lower the retention.

The episode will continue to generate views and engagement for months if the quality is high. The audio is smoother, and the video is crisp. Everyone wins.

2. Professional Photo Post

Take a series of professional photos to repurpose. You can drive engagement across YouTube Community, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram with a high-quality photo over basic text.

It’s a pattern disrupt which can build demand in the run up to an episode.

This adds personality and character into a world of dry and boring content.

3. Thumbnail Post

For YouTube, your thumbnail is almost as important as the video.

Sounds harsh, but it’s true.

To recap, a high-quality thumbnail has:

- Headshot

- Hook title

- Headline text

- Podcast branding

Once you’ve completed a design, guess what you’re going to do with it?

Bang this to LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram stories.

This is the perfect way to release an episode, high impact and relevant.

4. YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels Clips

From this core episode, you can create at least 3 to 5 high quality clips from each episode.

I like to game the algorithm a small bit here. Focusing on shorter clips under 15 seconds and longer authority style clips up to 35 seconds.

When we hit one clip on YouTube, we bring it right back to Instagram concurrently.

5. Twitter & LinkedIn Clips

I approach Twitter and LinkedIn slightly differently than YouTube and Instagram.

First, you can change the dimensions of the video from vertical to square. It fits better on the feed.

Second, I only focus on authority style content to support a text post, not replace.

This allows you to go deep on the topic and have a supporting video with the content.

6. Newsletter

Once an episode is released, push a newsletter post with 24 hours.

Why?

The first 24 hours are crucial on YouTube. Let’s drive as much traffic as possible.

Keep it simple. Share the episode, simple copy, with a clear CTA.

Basically, tell the world you and your podcast exists.

7. Transcript

To give myself the best possible chance, I run a transcript in the backend which appears on audio and YouTube.

This improves the discoverability of your podcast and episodes on Google with some basic SEO.

You don’t need to be a genius, you just have to do it.

I use Buzzsprout to generate transcripts in literally 3 minutes.

8. Podcast Website

Finally, for SEO, I’ve had a website from the beginning of my podcast.

I copy my exact titles, descriptions and links into a basic webpage which drives traffic from Google.

Nothing is new, everything is repurposed from the core episode.

And that’s it. That is everything you need to extend your episodes long into the future.

See you next week people.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How I Grew a Podcast by 999% in 90 days

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 06:37:37 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

On this lovely Sunday morning, with the sun rising across beautiful Asia, I’m going to break down a case study of how we (all of Voics) grew a podcast by 999% in 90 days.

Since I don’t make shit up, here’s the podcast right now:

Eye on AI: Click to view

Here are the results:

- Views - Increase of 999%

- Subscribers - Increase of 999%

- Watch hours - Increase of 999%

And the best part? This is compared to all of 2022’s performance.

So, let’s dive into how you can do it NOW.

1. Reposition Content

Instead of going after a large TAM (total addressable market), I aim for several layers deeper to avoid the noise.

We don’t want EVERYONE to listen; we want to OWN a tiny slice of the internet.

I’m being serious.

Dominating a subsection of the internet allows you to:

- Grow rapidly

- Be remarkable

- Become ‘niche famous’

In this example, we targeted software engineers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and deep tech founders.

As a result, the content can be more technical and advanced, yet still achieving the scalability factor.

Side note: once you achieve escape velocity in a tiny vertical, you can branch out to more general topics to gain a larger market share in the industry.

2. Revamp Branding

Branding is the first thing a new user will see in your podcast.

If it sucks, it could be the LAST thing they see and never return.

Sounds extreme, but it’s the reality.

I’m a big design guy, but I’m also a simple guy.

To increase the likelihood of someone clicking on your show, your branding needs to be:

- Clear

- Engaging

- Repeatable

I achieve this is by:

- Creating a consistent colour pallet

- Including high quality headshots

- Writing open-loop titles

- Adding 3D effects

Keep it stupid simple.

Historically, the brighter the image, the better the click-through-rate.

But, I’m not a fan of bright red and blue, so I find a brand kit that works and go all in.

3. Titles & Descriptions

Titles are so crucial. Never underestimate them.

I scope anywhere between 3 to 10 titles for every show.

The component of a title is:

- Short (less than 8 words)

- Open loop (creates intrigue)

- Keyword packed (niche specific)

- Bonus: Opinionated (creates discussion)

For descriptions, I focus on jam packing the first line to be keyword specific.

I go deeper into the show notes and timestamps to explain:

- What is happening?

- Who does it apply to?

- Why should anyone care?

If I do this correctly, it will drive organic traffic long into the future.

YouTube has the core variables it needs to bring your content to broader audiences.

4. Increase Volume

My content flywheel is simple:

- Create a niche specific long form episode

- Run short form daily driving users back to long form

Sounds easy, but this only works if the content is in perfect alignment.

Once that model is mastered, you can increase your long form episodes from bi-weekly to weekly.

In my example, we’ve moved from two episodes a month to four.

Why?

Because it’s not any additional effort with the systems built.

5. Prioritise Video

I remember when I used to write on LinkedIn that video was the future of podcasting.

All these audio dudes would write 20 line hate mail comments on my posts and in direct message.

“But audio has always worked!”

“It’s not meant to be this way!”

“I like it the way it is!”

Like it or not, it’s already happened.

You can be Blockbuster and watch life pass you by.

Or you can be sexy Netflix and swim with the tide.

I know which one I’m picking.

Think of it this way. Imagine your favourite podcast host in the world. Did you SEE them or HEAR them in the beginning?

You more than likely saw them before you dedicated two hours to listen to their work.

Video gives you distribution.

Audio gives you retention.

Use video to cast the widest net. Use audio to convert them into super-fans.

Simple.

That’s it for today's internet friends, see you next week!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Stand Out in a ‘Saturated’ Market

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 06:28:30 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

This week I’m going to break down how you can stand out in a ‘saturated’ podcast industry.

If you stop anyone on the street, most people would say podcasting is saturated.

Probably because they see three or four of the same podcasts as everyone and think this must be a saturated industry.

Well, quite the opposite.

In under three years, I’ve been able to establish my podcast and many others, but sticking to 5 core fundamental principles.

This has allowed me to reach millions of people, make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and help thousands of people.

If this worked for me, it can work for you too.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Branding & Design

Your branding is your podcast.

When you think of Kickoff Sessions, you immediately think of black and gold.

It’s literally everywhere, and that’s intentional.

In a crowded space, I’ve stuck my head above the masses by hitting the same colour pattern, tonality, and theme through my branding and design.

This is step one of standing out.

The thing is, most people won’t listen to your work, and that’s fine. However, they will associate you with your work. That’s why it needs to be spot on.

Your design needs to follow your own personality. I love a clean, minimal design that’s dark. I ONLY wear black clothes and I pull that through my brand.

It’s a clear association.

Pick two to three colours, review colour pallets and stick to it.

Everything from cover art, thumbnails, Instagram stories and clips needs to hit the same pattern.

2. Unique Angle

You can be in the most generic industry possible, like ‘entrepreneurship’ , but it’s the angle you take that’s important.

Kickoff Sessions has produced 160+ episodes on one core principle: help young people live a richer and more fulfilling life.

Each week it pulls in the perfect ideal listener, based on one core principle with guests that can smash it from multiple angles.

That stands out from everyone else.

This can’t be all fluff either. It needs to be real and genuine.

For me, I went through a rough period in my career where I had zero interest, fulfillment, and joy in what I was doing. I hope I’ve achieved my goal by helping people not have to go through what I did.

3. Own an Industry

It’s easy to get caught up in big number theory:

The bigger the number of downloads, the better.

But most times, it’s the opposite. You want to dominate a tiny slice of the internet.

Some of Voics clients are so niche that 1000 downloads a week, is more than enough to own a particular vertical. Example:

Don’t think business, think real estate

Don’t think real estate, think house flipping

Don’t think house flipping, think house flipping in Santa Monica, California

How many podcasts are there about housing flipping in Santa Monica? Not many, I bet.

The riches are in the niches.

4. Personal Experiences

My friend Tim Stoddart says: “I’m not here to give advice. All I have are my own personal experiences.”

Your experiences separate you from everyone else.

Your experiences make your podcast unique.

You can share the good, the bad and the ugly. If you’ve had some crazy wins, share it. You can help those who need the help.

The perfect example of this is Matt Kelly from The Midnight Pod. After his previous business failing, he’s able to convey the lessons incredibly well, which is super valuable for other founders. His audience is super engaged, and each episode pops off right after release. Pretty cool.

5. Production Quality

If everyone is doing the same stuff, do the exact opposite.

Coming out of lockdowns, I felt the whole remote recording game was dying. Listener retention was lower, watch time was down and overall views were substantially lower than in person podcasts.

Instead of complaining about it, I found the best possible studio I could.

That’s what made my content stand out. Since I started recording in ultra high quality, I’ve generated over 30 million views on my content across YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Why?

Because it stands out.

Sounds obvious, right?

Then I highly recommend you try it.

6. Bolt On Businesses (Bonus)

I find it strange when a podcast talks about a topic that they don’t have a business wrapped around, or at least work in that industry.

It’s like an unhealthy personal trainer or a chef that uses a microwave all the time.

Something just doesn’t add up…

Instead, a great way to stand out is to walk the talk. Actually, have something tangible to offer listeners besides your podcast.

Because when listeners like, know and trust you, they want to support you and you have clearly shown you’re an authority.

So build fast and combine your interests with products that will help your audience.

That’s all for today people!

See you next Sunday.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How I Generated 20+ Million Views in 90 Days

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 08:05:32 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

On this lovely Sunday morning, I’m going to be breaking down my EXACT strategy to crack YouTube wide open again and again.

In the past three months, I’ve generated over 20 million views for my clients.

Now, imagine if you had your products centred around these videos.

It becomes a pretty powerful tool to convert eye balls to $$$.

Today’s newsletter is all about the anatomy of a viral video. In particular, short form content.

It’s a delicate dance between understanding human psychology and creating high-quality content. Here we go:

1. Content Structure

All content needs a purpose. Short form content generates interest and curiosity. There’s three components to a viral post:

Questioning conventional wisdom + direct opinion + data & personal experience = virality

Questioning conventional wisdom = this is your opening hook. You question a statement that is known to the public as common knowledge. Example:

“Cold email is DEAD in 2023.”

Lots of people (me included) spend a lot of time sending cold email. Since the success rate of responses is low, most people have had a negative experience with the task. Therefore, this generates interest.

Direct Opinion = Instead of saying things like “this might help you” or “you could change to”, you want to come in with a clear and direct opinion.

Back yourself, few people do these days. Example:

“You need to swap to personalised LinkedIn outreach.”

This increases the chances of the desired outcome, such as better leads, more clients, increased revenue. But all of this is theoretical without the third component.

Data & Personal Experience = You need to reinforce your points with deep personal experience or data from the industry. Example:

“I increased my open rate to 75% and doubled my revenue from $15,000/month to $30,000/month.”

This positions you as an authority and questions public opinion.

2. Hook Titles

The best performing clips have the best titles.

Why?

The title compliments the video and provides greater context.

The title is the question, and the video is the meat of the answer.

The longer the clip, the more difficult it is to keep users. Therefore, we use the title to hook users and increase watch time

How do you write titles you ask?

Write open loop titles
Use words like You/Your
Spike curiosity & interest
Have a low implied effort
Speak in hard-hitting numbers
Solve a user’s problem upfront

Don’t say: “The 10 Tactics to Boost a Sales Team Performance in 2023”

This sounds like a tonne of work and intangible results.

Say: “INCREASE Your REVENUE by 3X Using This System”

Get users to click
Entice users to stick around
Show them you know your sh*t

3. Video Quality

Sounds simple, but you need to crack video quality.

You literally can’t beat high quality video. The difference in retention rate (the percentage of a video watched) is night and day between a studio podcast and a remote setup.

My suggestion is once a month, you pay a basic studio $75 to record your biggest episode of the month. Get so much content you can repurpose literally 25 clips if you need to.

If the studio requires you to re-mortgage your house for post-production, it’s that expensive. Get the raw files and do it yourself.

4. Duration

The length of your video will determine a lot.

Too long = boring

Too short = no value

The sweet spot is between the 20-30 second range.

Just enough to entice a user to either subscribe or click through to other content on your channel.

Therefore, I rarely add a question to the beginning of the video, especially if it’s a long-winded question.

Keep everything short, concise and to the point.

I would take this a step further and chop out any delays or issues with the speech. The cleaner the content, the easy it is to take off.

That’s all for today, people.

See you next week!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Chess or Checkers: The Choice is Yours

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 23:10:32 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

This week I’m going to be breaking down how you should approach your podcast.

The question we need to ask ourselves is, are we playing chess or checkers here?

Do we actually take this podcast thing seriously?

Is it a means to generate revenue and build authority?

Because, if you don’t believe it is, then it definitely isn’t. This feeds into the strategy behind your podcast.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO of $50M company or trying to make your first course sale, professionals act differently.

I like to think of it like playing chess or checkers.

Chess is a complex game requiring strategy and thought, while checkers is more straightforward and simpler.

Which game do you want to play? The thing is, you need to choose.

The Checkers Approach:

- ‘It will do’ attitude

- Hire a VA for $5/hour

- Record anything & everything

- Bang the episodes on ‘The YouTube thing’

- Blame ‘the algorithm’ for your poor results

The Chess Approach:

- Build a brand strategy

- Create a content strategy

- Hit your ideal listener daily

- Send listeners through a content loop

- Grow your audience, revenue and brand

The choice is yours.

Which game do you think people like Steven Bartlett, Andrew Huberman and Chris Williamson play?

To give you another analogy, it’s like running.

Instinctively, we all know how to run, but the principles to run a 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon are vastly different.

Sure, you can give it a go, but chances are you’re going to crumble if you don’t learn the mechanics.

So everyone can run, but not everyone can run well.

That’s the exact framing you need to consider for your podcast.

The thing is, you’ll end up paying either way with time or money.

Take the cheap option, you’ll pay with your time.

Take the professional option, you’ll pay with your money.

BUT can you get there faster, easier and with less pain?

Absolutely.

That’s why you must take a step back:

- Build a brand around you.

- Build an offer around you.

- Build an audience around you.

In some regards, I wasted a shit tonne of time with Kickoff Sessions.

Hitting random buttons on the internet, hoping something would work. Almost three years in, the content machine is on autopilot.

I still trip up, make mistakes and do dumb shit BUT the content is built for purpose.

You wake up every day, tackling your podcast like a professional, not like an amateur.

So the question is, are we playing chess or checkers with our podcasts?

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Drive MORE Revenue From Your Podcast

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 23:04:33 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

This week, I’m going to be breaking down how you can drive more revenue from your podcast.

Recently, I was chilling in the sauna with another agency bro.

He said one of his clients has 250K followers and is making $600/month.

That’s $0.0024 per follower.

Shocking, but not surprising.

How could that be?

Well, as your followers grow, unfortunately, your bank account doesn’t follow the same trajectory.

Or does it?

With all our clients, I view them as businesses instead of podcasts.

Why?

It’s 10X easier to integrate products and services.

Here’s how we do it:

The podcast is tailored to its audience.

Every word resonates with the listener.

Every episode solves their problems.

You don’t need 250K followers to be ‘successful’.

You need to solve MASSIVE pain for a specific audience.

So let’s dig right into the method:

1. Experience Reinforcement Strategy

If you position your podcast as an authority figure, you have the experience to back up what you’re discussing.

For instance, if you’ve built a startup to $10M in annual recurring revenue, you may offer consulting to early stage founders to help them scale. By discussing your experiences, transformation, and problems, you become an authority figure.

By sharing your journey, you’re reinforcing your belief systems with others who are looking for the same desired results.

From there, you can add a simple call-to-action in your descriptions to allow people to book a call or check out your info products.

2. Ruthlessly Refine Your Ideal Listener Profile (ILP)

Your ideal listener profile is your ideal customer profile.

Your podcast doesn’t serve everyone, it serves one archetype. In fact, you want some people to be completely turned off by your podcast.

Why?

It’s not for them - it’s for your ideal listener profile.

So instead of saying “I help busy professionals who want to make more money online.”

Say “I help men from 25 to 30 years old who are single and make between $50K-$75K salary with $2500 of disposable income a month.”

This cuts all the BS and guess work out.

Now, every piece of content hits ONE profile.

Remember, the goal is to help.

When you provide so much free information, they will be more than happy to pay for community pages, courses, coaching, consulting.

As your audience grows, it grows with the EXACT listener profile you want to isolate and sell into.

Brilliant.

3. Sharing Transformations & Results

No one cares about how much you work.

People only care about the outcome.

Potential customers hang out at the finish line.

Seeing who’s the winner. Sometimes they don’t even care how they won, they just want to win.

Quite symbolic of life really.

Anyway, it’s important to convey these transformations of clients, customers, and users.

How they felt in the beginning.

The pain they experienced.

How YOU solved the pain and the results YOU generated.

This doesn’t have to be ego driven. You can casually share some wins and the significance throughout the podcast.

When they’re ready, they know where to find your products and services.

And that, my friends, is how to drive more revenue from your podcast.

See you next week!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

My Million Dollar Outreach Strategy

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 22:59:02 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up people,

In this week’s newsletter I’m going to walk through the most unique, abstract guest outreach strategy.

A strategy that works and doesn’t waste your time.

Most people HATE guest outreach.

Why?

They fear rejection.

If they message their teenage idol and that person rejects them, it hurts their ego.

Well, it might not be because of you.

When you’re contacting someone, there’s two components:

The offer (invitation to podcast)
The method (the way you communicate)

This is a basic concept of sales.

Assuming your offer is of value to the potential guest, the method in which you communicate is vital.

Here are the generic options:

- Email

- Instagram

- Voicenotes

- LinkedIn / Twitter

All pretty decent, but incredibly competitive amongst other podcasters.

You want a method that ensures a high success rate and makes you stand out from everyone else.

Personalised Video Invites (PVIs)

The best way to catch anyone’s attention is to make them a personalised video.

Why?

Emails are boring, static, and dry. When you send someone a video, they immediately see YOU speaking and breaking down their own work.

You build a parasocial relationship immediately, and it’s super sincere.

In a world of AI girlfriends, it’s nice to receive something personalised.

It’s kind of like a gift.

Using Loom, you can share your screen easily and explain clearly why you want them on your show.

The hit rate from this approach is so high I think you can contact ANYONE with this strategy.

Now let’s break down EXACTLY how I do it.

Full example: https://rb.gy/r523c

Please watch this video while following through the process.

1. Share a Personalised Compliment

Tell the guest what about their work interests you and how it’s benefited your life.

2. Social Proof & Validation

Walk through your podcast on Spotify / Apple and show them other guests that are in a similar niche.

Prove you’re not an AI generated bot, basically.

3. Share Your Values & Opinions

Explain the purpose, vision and mission of your podcast.

Kickoff Sessions: Help young people live a richer and more fulfilling life.

4. Share Real Data (MOST IMPORTANT)

I call this the bullshit test.

Everyone talks a big game these days, but until you show them exactly the numbers under the hood, it’s just talk.

I walk through EXACTLY each piece of data. From podcast views and downloads, to social engagement.

5. Sell Outcomes, Show Outputs

I walk through my backend of how I schedule content and can share files with guests for them to use themselves.

Therefore, they're getting all this exposure, tangible content and outcomes for free.

The best part of all this, Loom gives you notifications when videos have been watched.

So if someone opens but doesn’t respond, guess what you can do? Follow back up with another email.

Beautiful.

Remember, this is exactly what you're trying to convey in email, but it gets lost in the jungle of emails a high-profile guest receives each day.

It’s a matter of positioning and framing.

That’s all for this week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How To Read Podcast Data Like a Pro

Sat, 17 Jun 2023 22:52:41 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

This week I’m going to be breaking down the most important aspect of podcast data to track.

I’m going to be using YouTube over a hosting platform, since the data on hosting platforms differs from each other.

YouTube provides a layer of granularity that lets you understand WHY something is working or NOT working.

If a piece of content is working, it’s not the time to pat yourself on the back. It’s time to get to work and understand WHY it’s working and DOUBLE DOWN.

When you have momentum or an edge, you need to go all in.

Here’s four metrics you NEED to track:

1. Traffic Source

Traffic source tells you EXACTLY where a viewer comes from.

There is no guesswork.

You want this heavily weighted towards ‘Browse Feature’ and ‘Suggested Videos’.

This is what the podcast bros call ‘hitting the algos’.

If you drive users from LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, this will appear as ‘external source’. Overall, this isn’t a good thing.

You don’t want to rely on you to drive 100% of the traffic. YouTube is a machine. Let the cogs in the background drive your content.

Interpretation: For videos that have a traffic source of ‘Browse Feature’ and ‘Suggested Videos’, follow a similar layout, format, titles, descriptions until you hit again.

2. Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click through rate means the amount of users who SEE your content AND click on the video.

This has two components:

- Thumbnail (75%)

- Title (25%)

It doesn’t matter if your title was written by Shakespeare, if your thumbnail looks like it was made on Microsoft Paint, no one will click on it.

Mr. Beast averages a 7% CTR on 1 billion impressions. An acceptable range is +4% on +100000 impressions.

Interpretation: Always refine and improve your thumbnails. Keep researching the best in your niche and constantly iterate. My first full-time hire was a graphic designer because even though I can download Canva, it doesn’t mean I should use it.

3. Subscriber Per Video

Looking at purely subscribers isn’t an accurate representation of an engaged audience.

I’ve worked with clients with 10K subscribers getting 50,000 views per episode and clients with 200K subscribers getting 1000 views per episode.

A good metric for a GROWING audience is the amount of subscribers for each episode. It shows:

- Engaged listeners

- Quality of content

- Relevant / relatable content

Interpretation: Aim for an increase in subscribers for each episode. Depending on your current subscribers, aim for 1-5% increase per episode.

4. Retention Rate

Retention is the amount of a video watched by a user.

This will widely differ on audio versus video, purely because people listen to podcasts doing an activity, and watch podcasts at home.

The longer the video, the harder to keep listeners for the full duration.

A good base line metric is 40% on video and 60% on audio.

This shows a highly engaged audience that listens to the end.

That’s everything for today, see you next week people!

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Go The Distance With Your Podcast

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 09:11:50 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

In this newsletter, I’m going to break down how you can go the distance with your podcast and record long into the future.

People say podcasting is like a marathon.

I would describe it as more like an ultra-marathon.

Your episodes are your oxygen. You need enough oxygen to survive and thrive.

If you don’t plan correctly, you’re going to cut it close with your episodes, lose momentum and fall behind.

In contrast, you can jump out of the starting blocks, blast for ten episodes, burn out and join the podcast graveyard with 99% of other shows.

I hope you enjoyed this little analogy. I thought it was quite clever not going to lie.

Anyway, after recording over 150 episodes in under 3 years, here’s my approach to going the distance:

1. Relentless Scheduling

I always think in terms of oxygen, and how many weeks I have left.

Sometimes it’s 3 weeks of content, sometimes it’s as little as a week.

You need to plan for cancellations, events and real life things to disrupt your schedule.

Right now, I’m going through another intense move to a new country. I’ll probably have shitty Wi-Fi and something will definitely go wrong.

Therefore, I’ve doubled up and recorded twice a week for the past month. I can stop today, and have content for over a month.

Find a way, not an excuse.

2. Batch Outbound Messages

Outbound sucks.

You can disguise it anyway you want, but messaging people all the time is not enjoyable. Therefore, I want to do as much as possible in the shortest period.

Sit down on Sunday morning, turn off your phone, and write 10 genuine, tailored emails to potential guests.

If you don’t sound like an automated robot and write your emails with Chat-GPT, your success rate should be 40%. Which is exactly one month’s content.

So instead of building it up in your mind, do it all in 90 minutes and plan exactly one month in advance.

3. Keep Things Interesting

If you’ve been at the game for a while, and you’re not enjoying where you’re headed, it’s totally ok to pivot.

Kickoff Sessions started as a vanilla careers podcast. I wanted to meet executive level people and hustle through the traditional path. At the time I had aspirations to get to a COO level of a big, boring company.

My interests changed and so did my podcast. When I wanted to leave that world to go all in on podcasting, it made little sense to keep talking about how 25-year-olds can get promoted.

After 1.5 years, I pivoted into the online business space and have seen a 10X return from the change.

Personal interests + audience demands = podcast growth

Everyone is happy.

4. Lean into Data

All podcasts start with a hypothesis. You think someone wants to listen to a specific topic.

When in reality, the data will tell you what people want.

For example, if you run a copywriting podcast, and you think people want to hear about Twitter ghostwriting. However, a bunch of episodes you recorded on email copywriting have popped off. There’s a trend that must be explored.

All else being equal (guest size, episode length, in person or online), it’s safe to say email copywriting is what your audience wants.

Content can be complicated, but data is black and white, it’s good or bad. Don’t take it too personally.

That’s all for today, I’ll see you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Transform Your Podcast Into a Business

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 09:04:29 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

In this week’s newsletter, I’m going to break down practical steps to turn your podcast into an actual business.

Whenever I speak to people, they say the same thing:

“But I’m not making money from my podcast!”

The funny thing is, more often than not, most people have turned their little podcast into a business!

Let me explain, if you provide any type of service or product next to your podcast, it’s now a business.

The thing is, you probably suck at positioning your products/services or expertise and therefore, generate $0 a month.

But do you really though?

Again, if you have a service-based business or digital products, your podcast is a method to drive endless traffic. It’s a self marketing tool.

So the very first thing that needs to happen is a legitimate mindset shift that your podcast is a business.

You just need to make it better.

I’m going to walk through exactly how you can generate consistent revenue from your podcast logically.

1. Lead Generation

The goal isn’t to sell; the goal is to help.

If people are listening to your podcast, they are interested in what you have to say.

Not everyone is going to buy from you and that’s totally ok. The idea is to build relationships so that you can help people.

No matter if you’re a big, boring B2B SaaS company or small podcaster, drive listeners to an email list.

This way, you build a better relationship with people and you can go deep into what you offer.

Your podcast is a traffic source that can direct people to email lists, landing pages, or just to your social pages so that they can learn more from you.

At the top of the description of your episodes, include links that direct people to important pages.

2. Coaching & Consulting

Coaching and consulting are the ultimate online business starter packs.

It costs $0 to start and anyone can do it. Which is one reason the space is super crowded.

What separates you from all the other 21-year-old life coaches is credibility and trust. There is no hiding in a podcast. Your show acts as a bridge between you and the listeners which you can build genuine trust.

Over time, you will become an authority figure that can help people.

In the early days, when Kickoff Sessions was a vanilla careers podcast, people would reach out to help them get a job in fintech and product.

That was my first proper introduction to internet money and since I had done the ‘thing’ myself, I could help others through my experiences.

Add a link to your descriptions for a Calendly invite so people can book time with you. If you want to get sophisticated and disqualify 90% of time wasters, you can add a $15 introduction call cost.

That should do it.

3. Digital Products

As your audience and podcast grows, there comes a time when digital products are great.

Products like courses, digital downloads, Patreon subscriptions, and mobile apps become valuable when you reach a certain size.

The biggest challenge is finding alignment between your podcast and the products you offer. I like to keep this quite organic and natural.

No need to go down the teeth whitening route yet.

Provide a product that solves an actual problem. Example:

A writing podcast creates a copywriting course for its 20,000 monthly active listeners.

A language podcast creates a language app for its 100,000 monthly active listeners.

These products genuinely help other people, what it’s all about remember?

I like to insert a little ad for these products into episodes with a short, 30 seconds pre-recorded video that outlines the benefits and outcomes.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is how I made my first $1 from my podcast.

It’s zero risk for you and the brand, but it allows you to experiment with product placement.

If you find a product or service that you genuinely love and that helps other people, then talk about it. Most brands have a direct affiliate programme, or Amazon affiliate programme is open to anyone.

The process is more important than the outcome. I could generate over 10,000 clicks a month on certain products. This is incredibly scalable when you understand the mechanics of WHY something is happening.

Well-written descriptions, focusing on outcomes instead of features, are some basic principles.

5. Sponsorships

I’ve discussed how you can go from $0 to $5000 in sponsorship revenue in this article here. My suggestion is to get your podcast right first, build the audience and reputation, experiment with a few affiliate products.

When you have sufficient information to take to a sponsor, you will have a big bag of data that brands will be excited about.

My goal for sponsorships is to aim for longer contract durations between 3 and 6 months, typically. The benefit is net negative for everyone if you operate on a short-term basis.

Just like your podcast, it takes time to see the full effect.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Automate Your Podcast with AI

Sun, 28 May 2023 08:28:14 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

For today’s newsletter, I’m going to be breaking down how you can integrate automation and AI into your podcast workflow.

Now, before I say anything, there's some important consideration to keep in mind.

If you work with clients, do not jeopardise the brand’s strategy and design by using generic AI. I do not recommend using basic AI platforms for clients who are paying you.
Keep in mind the quality of the content. Yes, you can produce more, faster than ever, but if it reduces the quality, it’s simply not worth it.
Some AI platforms are great for going from 0 to 1, but horrible at customisation, bespoke content that makes you stand out.

Having said that, AI and automation can significantly increase the output you produce.

Here’s all the ways you can speed up your workflow and increase your output.

Video Production

Battling with multiple cameras and audio is nasty.

AutoPod can automate your entire episode workflow in a matter of seconds. I always recommend having more camera angles as one camera is super static.

Even if you have an iPhone, you can set it up, record, and let AutoPod take care of the rest.

Again, this is a quick fix solution. I don’t use it or recommend using it for bespoke content. You cannot add customisation to the same effect, but for a solo creator, it’s as good as you’ll get.

2. Audio Enhancements

Terrible podcast audio can be a nightmare.

Fixing the audio can be harder than listening to it, trust me.

Adobe Podcast is solving this problem by introducing their audio podcast editor. It turns your audio into a warmer sound so it feels like you’re in a studio.

3. Titles

Buzzsprout recently announced their AI titles, descriptions and timestamps.

This is a great starting point in your workflow and brings you from 0 to 1. It will give you title suggestions and detailed show notes.

I like to take sample titles like “#150 Justin Waller – Behind The $35M Per Year Empire” and prompt GPT4 to generate ten alternative titles that are similar but more engaging.

Prompt: Write me ten alternative titles, that are open loop, engaging titles that follow the same episode number, guest name and structure as “#150 Justin Waller – Behind The $35M Per Year Empire” tailor it towards online business and entrepreneurship. Keep the titles short so they are readable in one line.

4. Shownotes

Show notes are free advertising.

It’s a method to grow organically and get to new audiences on YouTube and Google.

However, most people run out of energy before a release and slap anything down on the screen.

Instead, you can use the auto generated show notes from Buzzsprout as your starting point, combine it with a bio of your guest and tailor it to the episode.

When you generate a response, you need to edit to your own tonality.

Prompt: Write a SEO and keyword driven podcast description around the title ‘Behind The $35M Per Year Empire’ for Kickoff Sessions podcast, then write tags and separate them by commas, tailor it towards a podcast with Justin Waller on online business and entrepreneurship.

5. Newsletters

Building a newsletter reduces any platform risk.

If you are too over-leveraged on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, you NEED to start an email list.

To reduce your workload, you can transform your show notes in a newsletter. You can even reference previous newsletters you wrote like this.

Prompt: Write a newsletter for Kickoff Sessions podcast using the following show notes [insert show notes]. Write the newsletter in the same tonality and style as my previous newsletter here: [insert old newsletter]

6. Short Form Clips

I’ve invested way too much money and time in testing short form content platforms.

The funny thing is, a lot of the generic content that comes out is very basic. The engagement and retention is LOWER than bespoke content and it makes sense.

However, some platforms like Choppity.com allow you to create brand kits for your podcast. It’s an awesome way to add scale into your workflow.

The next layer is adding b-roll content scraped from YouTube for more personalised videos.

7. Copywriting

Between show notes and posts, you will end up writing a tonne for your podcast.

ProWritingAid is a great tool to clean up your writing style and improve your writing.

The goal is to get better, and using these tools does exactly that.

That’s everything for today, see you next week internet friends.

P.S. I released my final podcast from our Dubai series this week. The feedback has been crazy once again. Check out the podcast here and don’t forget to leave a 5 star rating⭐

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

0 to 100,000 Podcast Views in 28 Days

Sun, 21 May 2023 08:19:29 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

What’s up everyone,

In this week’s newsletter, I’m going to take you through a case study for The Game Plan podcast with Rob Lipsett.

We went from 0 to 100,000 podcast views in under one month.

This is a no BS strategy that will significantly increase the reach of your own show.

Here’s how we did it.

In the podcast world, the lights are always on.

24/7. 365 days a year.

I plan to use all of this time wisely.

Episode Design

The goal was to design a high-quality podcast from the beginning.

Well edited episodes, multi-camera and clean branding.

I wanted to build repeatability into people's minds when they saw the logo and thumbnails.

In terms of the episodes, each episode lead with a high impact moment which builds suspense and generates curiosity.

This becomes a valuable asset for the content workflow throughout the week.

2. Content Workflow

After we released an episode on Sunday, the high-impact moments are scheduled as clips throughout the week.

These clips drive subscribers and increase exposure.

People won’t listen immediately to the full episode, but you stay on top of mind for when that time comes.

Starting from Monday, clips are released and analysed closely.

I’m looking for a couple of indicators:

- Are clips driving subscribers?

- Is the retention rate above 80%?

- Is the average view duration above 15 seconds?

If it’s a resounding yes to all, we’re moving in the right direction.

Everything drives back to the overall episode and prevents any major swings in views.

3. Clips Channel

Not to make things more complicated, but to supplement the growth, we started a clips channel for short form content called The Game Plan Clips .

At first, it doesn’t look like much, but over 12 to 18 months, this is an insanely powerful tool.

Funnily enough, within one month, we drove an additional 100K view and 2K subscribers from completely zero.

If the lights are always on with one channel, having two channels operating on overdrive means your content is ALWAYS meeting fresh eyes.

4. Preview Clips

It’s one thing hitting with one episode, but you have to do it again and again to build a podcast.

We created preview clips on the Thursday before a release. This is to generate more interest and drive more subscribers.

To be honest, they weren’t a key driver in traffic compared to everything else. Preview clips still have a place, but the shelf life is pretty limited and production time can take quite a long time.

5. Consistency

Even with this structured workflow, it goes down to following through on the plan every day and every week.

Doing it for a week, then stopping, does more harm than good.

So from the beginning, this was the plan and strategy. Then it’s time to execute.

The results?

- 100,000+ podcast views

- 100,000+ clip views

- 2,000+ subscribers

See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Break Through a Podcast Plateau

Sun, 14 May 2023 03:37:14 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

In this week’s newsletter I’m going to be breaking down how to break through a podcast plateau.

A plateau is when everything feels and looks the same, no matter what you do each week.

Podcasting can be ROUGH sometimes.

The hours are long, the downloads are low and you have a shit tonne of work to do.

On the other end of all the BS is the benefit of podcasting:

- Creating a super network

- Building trust with listeners

- Designing a business around you

Sometimes it can feel like whatever you do doesn’t quite get measurable results.

Well, in this newsletter I’m going to walk through how you can break through a plateau mentally and physically.

DON’T Take a Break

Yes, you heard me correctly.

There’s nothing more damaging to your momentum and podcast than taking a 3 month holiday. It leads to a big drop off in audience and your progress.

Instead, reduce your workload in areas you HATE.

If you don’t like scheduling, hire a VA.

If you don’t enjoy editing, stop editing so much.

If you don’t like marketing, schedule posts or outsource.

If you feel you’re producing a lot of content, scale it back.

Go from 4 episodes per month to 2.

Go from 6 clips per week to 2.

Go from 3 posts per week to 1.

When you slow down, you can become more focused.

2. Ruthlessly Analyse Your Content

You may have hit a plateau because you don’t know what direction to take.

When you look around you, it looks like everyone else is doing better than you.

I assure you they’re not, by the way.

Focus on your own content and trajectory.

Open up your episodes, clips and posts and sort by most viewed. Find the topics and guests that are doing well and lean into it.

If the data shows a slight pivot is needed, then pivot.

If things aren’t working right now, what do you have to lose if you need to change?

3. Build a Podcast Network

I recommend everyone to build a network with people on a similar mission.

They understand the vision and can unblock you when needed. You can bounce ideas off one another and help with introductions to guests.

It also keeps you accountable to double down on good momentum.

I’ve been lucky to work closely with Colin Campbell and David McIntosh over the past couple of years. These dudes have smashed it.

4. Understand The Bigger Picture

At the beginning of every call with a prospect, I ask one question:

“What’s the goal of your podcast?”

For everyone, it’s different:

- Become an industry leader

- Time away from work

- Network with others

- Sell info products

- Drive more leads

Whatever your ‘thing’ is, check are you moving towards or away from that goal.

If you’re moving towards the goal, keep going.

If you’re moving away, a few minor tweaks with your content and you’ll be on your way.

That’s all for this week's internet friends.

See you next week.

P.S. I released my first podcast from my Dubai series this week, check out the episode here and please leave a 5 star review if you like the episode⭐

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

The Future of The Podcast Industry

Sun, 07 May 2023 03:30:14 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

This week, I’m going to be breaking down what the future of the podcast industry looks like.

I spent the past week in Dubai, meeting with great minds in the industry, from studio owners to agencies and guests.

As I fly back to sunny Singapore, I’ve had time to think about where the industry is going and what that means for you.

The industry has become hypercompetitive and professional in the last two years. Like everything in life, if you don’t adjust and adapt, you’ll be left behind.

I’m not saying that I’m in favour of where the industry is moving towards, but it’s the reality. It’s better to swim with the tide than to fight it.

So here’s exactly where the industry is going in the next 12 months and how you can prepare for it.

In-Person Podcasts

Recording online gives you width, recording in person gives you depth. There are pros and cons to both.

Conversations are stronger in person and it’s simple to understand why. You can build a connection with the guest beforehand, exchange thoughts and ideas even before recording a great episode.

From a listener's perspective, they feel they’re in the room, and don’t struggle through poor audio quality online. Since production costs are getting lower and lower, recording in person is becoming accessible to every podcast host.

2. Larger Productions

The baseline standard is becoming incredibly high. Once a listener hears the sweet sound of a Shure SM7B or Shure MV7, their ears never go back.

When you see that multi-camera angle with smooth, warm lighting, it becomes the norm. The production quality is moving towards movie style, which brings listeners closer to the content.

Can you grow without it? Sure.

Can you grow FASTER with it? Absolutely.

Now, do you need to drop $50K and build a studio in your mom’s basement? Obviously not.

But you can hire a studio every once in a while. A one hour podcast will cost you approximately $75. Once a month it’s a fun activity and gives you content for 2+ months.

Once you see what’s possible in person, you never go back.

3. ‘Bigger’ Guests

By ‘bigger’ guests, I don't mean celebrities. While it would be cool to get Chris Brown on your podcast, that’s not what I mean.

Within your niche, look for the genuine expert or leading voices in that subcategory. Think about who are the key players in your niche that can find the balance between entertainment and education.

For instance, if you have a baking podcast, find the best baker in your local town and interview them. After that, find the best baker in your country, interview them. That is the ultimate form of digital leverage.

4. More Episodes

More episodes = more downloads.

It’s that simple.

BUT to produce more episodes, you need sharper systems.

You can create sharper systems with AI.

AI is booming right now and platforms are popping up each day that handle clips, transcripts, distribution. This is great, but you have to ensure everything is staying aligned with your brand.

Once you found a repeatable strategy to pump out episodes, you can move from 4 to 6 or even 8 episodes a month.

5. Repurposed Content

As podcasting is becoming more professional, the content can play a huge part in a creator or a company’s marketing strategy.

The content from a podcast can be repurposed to LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram. However, only when the messaging aligns to your ideal listener profile.

Alternatively, you can add clips from your podcast to your website. Build a connection with your ideal customer and guide them through the sales cycle.

6. Self-Funded Podcasts

Sponsorships have been a large part of the monetisation strategy for podcasts. However, podcast hosts are becoming more like entrepreneurs, they can self fund their own episodes through products and services. Let’s do some mathematics:

Option A:

- 1 sponsorship at $2000 p/m = $2000

Option B:

- 4 course sales at $250 p/m = $1000

- 1 new client at $2500 p/m = $2500

- 2 client consultations at $250 p/m = $500

Total = $4000

That’s a 2X return by NOT taking the sponsorship and self promoting your own products and services.

It’s important to think ahead with your podcast. Changes happen slowly than all at once if you’re not ready.

See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

From $0 to $5000 Podcast Sponsorship

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 04:30:35 GMT

Read time: 5 minutes

In this edition of Voics Voices , I’m going to be giving away a step-by-step guide to make thousands of dollars from your podcast.

Listen up.

Every podcast wants to be sponsored, but most shows lack the actual strategy to get there.

This is a real case study with The Copyblogger Podcast, an outstanding content marketing podcast.

Here’s the backstory:

Tim Stoddart saw one of my posts on LinkedIn around sponsorships. He had recently appeared on Kickoff Sessions and asked could I could help him get his show sponsored.

Until that point, they had been recording for four years and generating $0 from their podcast in sponsorship revenue.

It wasn’t for a lack of ability; the show is in the top 0.5% globally with over 800,000 downloads and 25,000+ downloads per month.

I took on the project, of course, and returned to my little cave in the middle of Asia. My goal was to create a repeatable strategy that would consistently produce $$$ each month.

Here are the exact strategy:

Aggregation of Data

First, we need to see what we’re working with. If you’re getting 10 downloads per week, focus on growth, not monetisation.

The data points you need to gather include:

- Total episodes

- Global ranking

- Total downloads

- Monthly downloads

- Quarterly growth rate

The goal is to show progression, so you can say “your brand will be at the front of our podcast as the show scales”. Don’t cap yourself on what you’ve done. It’s always the next milestone.

2. Create a Pitch Deck

Think of your podcast like a startup. Getting sponsored is kind of like raising capital.

You need to dig deep into the mind of the sponsor and give them exactly what they want to see. They do not care “how hard you’ve worked” or how “passionate” you are. They only care about one thing:

Return on investment.

Knowing this, you want to create a deck that describes exactly the benefits/outcomes the brand can expect. Here’s an outline of the deck:

- Podcast bio & niche

- Data insights

- Follower & subscriber count

- Previous guests

- Audience insights & demographics

- Pricing

Previous guests and audience insights should tap into the EXACT ideal customer profile of the brand.

For The Copyblogger Podcast, I pulled out big content marketing founders like ConvertKit and Smart Passive Income as brands want to be associated with these platforms.

For the audience, it’s important to break out elements of demographic, job titles and approximate salaries.

3. Shortlist Brands for Sponsorship

Alright now that the fun bit is over, it’s time for the actual work.

The next step is to create a spreadsheet of all the brands that match your podcasts audience. This must be an almost identical match. For the Copyblogger Podcast, I found a list of content marketing tools and SaaS companies.

The goal is to go directly to their founder via LinkedIn and email to pitch to them.

Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about them. This is an opportunity for them to increase exposure and drive revenue to their platform. Not you. Do you understand?

If the company has more than 100 employees, I also target roles like:

- Chief marketing officer

- Senior growth marketing

- Brand partnership manager

- Paid influencer marketer

Anything that screams ‘I can sign this’.

4. Create a Pitch Video

My general approach to life is, if other people aren’t doing it, it’s a good idea to do it.

So, for outbound messages, I record a personalised Loom video providing a detailed overview of the pitch deck and the outcomes for the sponsor.

This video has several benefits:

- Sells the outcomes

- Creates a relationship

- Shows you’re not a robot

Remember, when others don’t, you do.

5. Hammer Outbound Reach

We have the deck, brands and video, now all that’s left is to smash some outbound messages. Here’s a nice, chill sequence that works well:

Hey X! I’ve been using Y for the last couple of months and it’s great.

Have you given any considering to sponsoring podcasts to grow the brand further?

Our largest client would be a good fit for Y and is in the top 0.5% of global podcasts for writing & content marketing!

Follow-up message:

Hey X, have you considered growing the Y brand through podcast advertising?

Our client, The Copyblogger Podcast, is ranked in the top 0.5% of all podcasts globally, with over 800,000 downloads 150,000 subscribers.

If this is a priority for you, I’d love to share their sponsorship deck.

Thank you.

Once people give a signal to see the deck, you’re 60% there. Final step, get them on a call.

6. Listen Closely & Close Hard

When you finally get a brand on a call, it’s important to listen to major triggers like their ideal customer, problems they’ve had with other paid channels and brand growth challenges.

You provide the solution to these challenges.

My recommendation is to focus on three and six-month deals. As no one will really see the benefit for one month, and of course, it’s not exactly that financially rewarding.

If you face some rejection, keep the relationship and return to the conversation in six to twelve months.

That’s basically how you can go from $0 to over $10,000 in sponsorship revenue. It’s difficult, but it’s possible.

It worked for The Copyblogger Podcast. It can work for you.

I’ll be opening up three slots to bring podcasts from $0 to full sponsorship soon. If you’re interested in working together, let’s chat.

See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 145+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Cross-Pollinate Audiences

Sun, 23 Apr 2023 04:13:59 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

In this edition of Voics Voices , I’ll be walking through how you can cross-pollinate audiences with your podcast.

Podcasting is a relationships game.

Fail to build relationships, fail to build a podcast.

But if you shake the right hand, your life (and business) might change forever.

Beyond the network opportunities, there’s the network effect between audiences.

When you’re looking at audience size and retention, this is the difference between “making it” and being a starving artist.

The reason being is that as you build your podcast, you should be able to tap into the guests audience.

I refer to this as “cross-pollinating” between audiences. You’re stacking more leverage from other audiences. It’s a crucial element of virality as you’re teaming up for supernormal growth.

Why?

A clear, strong alignment between your podcast and the guests.

Yet, this all breaks down if the alignment is wrong. Something doesn’t quite add up…

Once the alignment is correct, it’s crucial you set your podcast up for takeoff.

The following steps can help you tap into new audiences and leave the dark days of 10 downloads per week behind:

Design

Like it or not, if your episodes look like shit, guests will not be interested to engage with your work.

Take this as a simple case study by myself: I spent one year using Zoom with $5 thumbnails from Fiverr.

Not pretty.

Think about it, If you consider yourself a professional, your episode should be designed professionally.

Clear colour scheme, font style, consistent layout of thumbnails, covers and videos. It sounds basic (because it is). Yet, we overlook this in the hunt for ‘better’ guests.

Take a step back and ask yourself, “If I wasn’t me, would I share this?”

If the answer is a resounding no, then it’s time for a little upgrade.

Give people a reason to engage.

2. Show Notes

Show notes are incredibly underrated.

You have a FREE opportunity to drive continuous traffic to your episodes years from now. Yet, 99% of podcast hosts get it horribly wrong. I created the “who, what, why” strategy to keep it simple:

- Who is the guest?

- What is discussed?

- Why should I hit play?

Well-designed show notes will drive traffic organically when someone searches for the guest’s name in Google. This works beautifully for authors. When people search for their book, your podcast pops right to the top.

3. Repurposed Content

People get frustrated when guests don’t share their content.

Why don’t they share it?

It doesn’t add value to their business or life.

It’s that simple.

When you’re repurposing content, focus on tangible benefits and outcomes the guest is solving.

Everything doesn’t have to be ROI driven, but at the very least, it must evoke an emotional reaction that people will enjoy.

4. Google Drive Sharing

After you publish an episode and create a bunch of thumbnails, clips etc, put everything together in a Google Drive to send to the guest.

The guest has FREE content to publish on their own. This is the ultimate form of network effects.

Once the content looks pretty and it helps viewers, it becomes a sweet deal to tap into new audiences.

You can sit back and chill, knowing your content is meeting fresh eyes.

That’s all for today’s newsletter. See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 135+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Systematise Your Podcast Workflow

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 00:54:29 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

In this edition of Voics Voices , I’ll be walking through how you can create an efficient podcast by systematising your workflow.

Time is your greatest commodity.

You have a finite amount of time, but a long list of shit you need to get done.

On top of that, you need to run a podcast. Great.

Fumbling around with your show isn’t a good use of your time.

You either want to be working on things that drive revenue for your business or things you enjoy. I guess you could live life as well…

Regardless, for your podcast, it’s all about systematising your workflow.

Each episode shouldn’t be completely unique. It’s neither efficient nor effective.

Instead, you want to create scalable, repeatable processes throughout the entire podcast lifecycle.

The lifecycle acts like a flywheel. Every time you go around, the process gets better and better. Rep by rep. You’re looking for a simpler approach that is more efficient.

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Guest Research

How are you going to find new guests week after week? Document the exact process on how you’re going to discover them.

It can be as simple as taking a screenshot of people as they appear on Instagram (legit my strategy for 2 years).

You can make it a little more sophisticated by trawling through podcasts each week for new guests (my new strategy).

Whatever your process is, look at its effectiveness and how you can improve the outcome each time.

When research time comes up, you know you’re going to platform X, Y, Z to find guests.

2. Outbound Messages

I wrote an article before on how to craft the perfect outbound messages.

I save every template I create, whether that’s an email, short form or long form message.

When it’s working, you can reuse it.

When it’s not working, you can analyse why.

Don’t do something once and say it’s not working. Test a strategy 100 times check the results:

How many opens did you get?

How many responses did you get?

Are responses positive or negative?

What is your booked to sent ratio?

Without accurate data, you are directionless.

3. Interview Prep

Over time, you will develop a habit on how you research guests. While that’s a good thing, you can develop bad habits. For instance, watching a recent podcast of the guest and asking the same questions as another podcast.

A friend confessed to me over dinner recently that out of the 10 podcasts he’s been on, 8 of them have asked the same questions. Alarming.

It’s important to add systems into how you approach interview prep:

- Reviewing newsletter articles

- Scanning social media posts

- Researching industry events

- Reading book summaries

You need to find your edge and make it repeatable over the long run.

4. Episode Recording

No more fumbling over invites. Whip open a Calendly account and set specific times a guest can book from.

Removing the 20 minutes it takes to get everything set up frees you up to work on more important tasks.

5. Post Production

Production is one of those things that can range from 1 hour to 10 hours depending on how nuanced you want to become.

Regardless of what you want to do, you need a framework that scales:

- Similar introduction

- Brand kit strategy

- Episode layout

- Video filters

- Music library

Have each of them ready for deployment.

The benefit of this isn’t time saved. You’re building a brand and a brand NEEDS to be recognisable.

6. Marketing & Distribution

If you can crack getting your content to new audiences daily, it’s impossible to lose over a long enough time horizon.

Start simple: once you release an episode, share the thumbnail and covers as posts.

Have an interesting intro? Cut it into a clip.

Now you can repurpose this to YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

An important topic related to your business? Cut it into a clip.

An important topic related to your industry? Cut it into a clip.

See the pattern here?

If you want to go deeper, check out this article to learn how to repurpose your content.

That’s all for today’s edition of Voics Voices.

See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 135+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

6 Steps to 20X Your Short Form Content

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 04:13:47 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

In this edition of Voics Voices , I’ll be breaking down how to 20X your views on short form content.

Short form content is becoming more important to expand the reach and engagement of your podcast. When a listener doesn’t have 90 minutes to consume an episode, you can generate interest from short form content.

Then, when the user has the chance to listen to a podcast, you stay on top of mind to listen to the full episode.

In this edition, I’m going to break down 6 steps to 20X your clip content, which has increased my views from 500 on average to 10,000+ views per clip.

Remember, the goal of short form content is to increase subscriber count and generate interest in your show.

Transformation

Transformations pop off as it’s relatable to your audience. You are moving away from the person you were and moving towards the person you want to become.

The transformation doesn’t have to be complete. It only needs to show a user you’ve moved from point A to B during a specific period.

One clip I shared illustrated how I quit alcohol. In a 6-month period, I transformed my health, happiness, podcast and business. It resonated with people because it’s time blocked and relatable to people wanting to quit alcohol.

A transformation is the “hero journey” in your content.

2. Emotional Reaction

Content which evokes an emotional reaction drive users to take action. There are positive emotions like joy, happiness, inspiration and negative emotions like anger, frustration and jealousy.

I keep my content as far away from negative emotions as possible. It’s not my thing. Instead, all content should aim to educate, inform, motivate, or inspire someone to take action. You can do this through sharing personal experiences.

I was previously told that no one would buy from me since I was young. As I’m ignorant af, I launched my business anyway, and I told this story on a podcast which took off. When I analysed the clip, I realised many others felt the same, which is why it resonated with people.

3. Expectation Delivery

It’s important to set a clear expectation with the title of the video and deliver on that expectation. If the title reads “How to go from $0 to $10K in 90 days” it sets a very clear expectation of what the user will see. If you cannot deliver, the user will drop off immediately.

Keep things short, simple and don’t make the user think too much about the title.

4. Hook

The battle is won and lost in the first 3 seconds. Start every piece of content with a strong opening line, no soft introduction of BS backstory.

Go straight into the deep end and address the viewer with words like “You” and “Your” . The beginning should start with a high impact moment that hooks the user.

Your hook ties in elements of delivering on the expectation and emotional reaction.

5. Duration

I’ve split tested a ridiculous amount of clip durations. From 3 seconds to 60 seconds. What’s worked for me the most is between 10-15 seconds or 15-20 second clips.

The longer the duration, the more difficult it is to increase audience retention. Your content is often rated based on the retention rate.

If users watch 50% of 20 seconds (10 seconds) it’s more valuable than 33% of 60 seconds (20 seconds) even though it’s longer.

The below example is the retention curve of a 11 second clip with 70% retention. Meaning of the 14,000 users that watched the clip, 9800 watched the full clip start to finish.

6. Video Quality

This point is more on the technical side of things, which is as important.

As the rise of in-person podcasts is increasing, the video quality of short form content is getting better and better. Viewers prefer a clear and crisp video quality over a crusty laptop camera from 2015.

If you have the financial means to record in a studio, please do and create as much content as possible from the episode.

If you don’t, not to worry, check out Amazon for some high-quality webcams and use platforms like Streamyard to maximise the quality.

That is all from Voics Voices today. Have a good Sunday internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 135+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Asking The Perfect Podcast Question

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 06:14:53 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

In this edition of Voics Voices , I’m going to break down exactly how to ask clear and intentional podcast questions.

Why is this important?

The biggest mistake I made for years, and I see many other podcast hosts make, is asking double or TRIPLE barrel questions.

For example:

“How was that experience AND what did you change AND how did that impact your business?”

This is a super common issue and if I was to trace it back to my own experiences, it’s down to impatience or nervousness.

I’ve struggled with asking long and pointless questions for YEARS and it’s still something I’m battling with.

Picture this: you’ve been waiting several months to record this one episode. You have a long list of topics to burn through and you only have 60 minutes. It leads to doubling up with questions.

As a result, guests feel overwhelmed when they’re bombarded with questions. They lose focus and it disrupts the rhythm of the conversation. No one can comprehend getting blasted by many questions.

The conversation feels more like an interrogation and less like a podcast.

Your episodes should flow like two synchronised figure skaters on ice. Everything is clean and crisp.

For listeners, the problem is even worse. If you lose the attention of your listener, it leads to a higher drop off rate and lower retention for future episodes.

What can you do about it?

The first step is to focus on one topic at a time. In your notes, create 3-5 high-level topics depending on the duration of your episode. For example:

- Health

- Wealth

- Status

- Building

- Happiness

These are your anchor points. Of course, you can go off on a tangent, but this is the purpose of the episode.

Within each anchor, you want to add a maximum of 5 questions that relate to the central theme:

Health

- How has your health affected your career?

- Why did you have to make a change?

- How difficult was the process?

These questions are detailed enough to keep the conversation going, while still being connected to the greater idea.

What’s important here is the length. You’re not asking long-winded questions, but making everything short and intentional. Keeping the guests’ focus locked in on the topic.

The goal isn’t to limit you to a question sheet, but to guide you in a new direction.

The value will always be deep down beneath surface level conversations. If a guest responds to the first question with a deep personal experience, keep digging, ask “why” to get to the very core of the event.

You don’t need to add your personal experience to every response, by the way. You can respond with a question, keeping the tempo high and moving in the right direction. Instead of saying:

“Wow, that’s great. Something similar happened to me 4 years ago.”

Get straight into the next question.

The outcome?

Your guest will share a new perspective they didn’t even realise before. You will take a traditional interview style podcast and transform it into a journey for the listener.

Try it and let me know if it works for you.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 135+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Land Any Podcast Guest

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 05:29:40 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

In this edition of Voics Voices , I’ll be walking through my exact process to land some of the biggest creators in the world.

Regardless of your level of experience, the fundamentals remain constant.

It’s difficult looking at an empty calendar, poor pipeline and not knowing what direction to take your podcast.

You can even sound desperate, trying to fill weekly slots. Which actually makes the problem even worse.

If you can’t fill up your calendar with meaningful guests, you’ll either waste a bunch of time or drive your podcast into the floor.

The following strategy has landed guests like Justin Welsh, Johann Hari, Joe Delaney, Robert Breedlove and 135+ more great guests on my podcast.

Introducing “Why You, Why Me and Why Now”

This approach extends the “Why You, Why Now” concept by Jeff Hoffman’s connecting and creating urgency in the sales cycle.

This strategy gets to the core of human intensions and how to create irresistible offers. We’re not selling a complex B2B software here, but we can use this approach to land big guests.

Let’s break it down.

Why You

In your email or message, the opening paragraph must be all about the guest. It should explain something genuine that you appreciate or love about their work. Break down a project, post, or podcast that resonated with you on a personal level.

No bullshit here.

This is the actual reason you think they would make a great guest. Think about this:

What made you follow them for so long?
How have they transformed your outlook?
How do they inspire/motivate/educate/entertain you?

If you can’t answer these questions, I’m sorry but don’t reach out to them. It will be obvious you don’t actually care.

2. Why Me

The next paragraph is all about you, but not from an egotistical perspective. You write to add social proof of what you’ve achieved and if you have achieved little, what you’re hoping too.

I like to add hard statistics and previous guests. If you can show the guest you’ve recorded 50+ episodes, hit your first 10K downloads and take this shit seriously, you will prove your worth.

If you have little background, you can showcase other aspects like businesses you’re building, or that you have a desire to grow.

The hard numbers are undeniable:

Episodes produced
Number of downloads
Number of views
Total subscribers
Social following

Don’t tell me, show me.

Always focus on the outcome.

3. Why Now

If you say to someone “we should meet soon” you never meet that person.

But if you say “lets meet on Monday the 27th March at 2pm when I’m in town” you will get the meeting. People need direction.

It’s the same with podcasts. Use an event like your launch, 50th or 100th episode as a trigger and display a sense of urgency.

The outcome will always be positive.

Here’s a real life example of how these tie together:

Hey [name]!

Your content on LinkedIn and Twitter and has been great to follow. I first started following your work when you kicked off [example]. Since then I’ve loved keeping up with your latest [event] especially with [name]!

I would love to invite you to my podcast called [podcast] in two weeks. To date, I’ve recorded over X episodes with Y views and Z downloads.

My podcast ranks amongst the top X% in the world, with weekly episodes listened by people from the X to Y, Z and ABC.

I’d like to get into the details of [activity] amongst many more topics. There’s a large crossover in audiences and I know many people will love it.

I would love to record in person but I live in ABC, so it would be online until we find time for in person!

Previous guests include [social proof] and [number] great people.

Thank you!

It isn’t perfect, but this strategy has created over 140 episodes and helps many other hosts speed up their podcasts.

See you next week internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 135+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

How to Get Listeners to Hit Play

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 05:56:55 GMT

Read time: 4 minutes

Welcome to another edition of Voics Voices . This newsletter helps you launch, grow and monetise your podcast. In this edition, I’ll break down exactly how you can get listeners to hit play on your podcast.

Getting users to hit play can be the biggest hurdle to overcome for podcast hosts. Before you learn how to get a user to hit play, you need to understand why.

Introducing triggers .

Trigger are an event that drives a user to take action. For a trigger to be effective, the cost of inaction must be greater than taking action. The factors that contribute to triggers include:

Relevancy
Relatability
Curiosity
Emotion

Your episodes need to hit at least two triggers.

Hit three triggers, you’re onto a winner.

Hit all four . It’s going to be special.

Triggers are important because they draw fresh eyes to your episodes and make episodes irresistible.

For example, a podcast about an ordinary guy who went from nothing to millions and retired his parents triggers these factors.

Why?

YOU want the thing he has
YOU can relate to the struggle
YOU are curious to learn more
YOU find it relevant to your journey
YOU feel an emotional reaction to his story

With that out of the way, let’s break down the components of getting users to hit play:

Title

There are many ways to write titles for sure. I’ve found that the most effective titles are simple actions that are short and concise. The longer the title, the more room there is for confusion.

If your title is too long, it overruns and you can’t even see it on the screen. That doesn’t trigger me to click on it, it makes me want to drop off.

On audio, I like to lead titles with an episode increment followed by the guest. The episode number establishes trust and the guest name shows relevancy. If listeners don’t know the guest, the title comes into play.

Here are some examples that really popped off:

From Addiction to $1.5 Million Per Year
Sacrifice Now For Decades of Freedom
How To Thrive in Any Job Market
The Psychology of High Performers

2. Design

The first podcast I ever listened to was Tim Ferriss. It was 6AM; I was sitting in a rundown university apartment waiting for the gym to open and all I could think about was,

“What does the guest look like?”

It used to piss me off. I’m quite a visual learner and needed to see what was going on.

I wanted to change that with podcasts. Each episode has a unique image that draws in the user and connects with them because they even hit play.

3. Descriptions & Timestamps

I have to admit; I used to be terrible at descriptions. After editing a podcast, I got super lazy and scribbled anything down in the descriptions.

I’ve learned that descriptions act as an important SEO element to drive your content to broader audiences on Google and YouTube.

Also, it allows users to understand who the guest is and what they will get from this episode.

Yet, the most important element here are timestamps.

Timestamps allow users to jump around your episodes to the section they enjoy most. Triggering them to hit play and improving the retention of episodes. I like to keep my timestamps short and actionable.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Voics Voices. See you next week, internet friends.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

→ Schedule an Introduction Call: Voics is the straightforward podcast agency that creates, markets, and scales your podcast in a “done-for-you” model.

→ Listen to Kickoff Sessions: Learn from 135+ entrepreneurs who have scaled businesses to millions in profit that will help you on your journey.

Why Video Podcasts Are King

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 15:08:51 GMT

Read time: 3 minutes

In this edition of Voics Voices, I will break down exactly why video podcasts are the future of the industry.

Have you ever looked at a basic audiogram and thought to yourself:

“Wow, this looks great.”

Of course you haven’t.

Because they don’t.

They’re boring af and should stay in 2012.

Video podcasts provide a powerful anchor for your content strategy. You are always trying to hit the following criteria with your content:

Increase views
Increase downloads
Decrease drop-off rate
Increase engagement rate

With that in mind, here are three benefits of video podcasts:

1. Like, Know & Trust Factors

People need to see you before they hear you. Getting users to hit play on a video is 10X easier than a random audio file.

The reason being is users get an insight from the thumbnail who is speaking and why it’s important to me now.

When your face is everywhere, people associate you as an authority figure.

2. Organic Reach

It is almost impossible to discover an audio podcast on Spotify or Apple podcasts. YouTube constantly pushes worthwhile content to users. This can expand your reach significantly on the platform.

Instead of complaining about the algorithm, play with it. If you know YouTube can help you, use it to your advantage.

3. Repurposed Clips

YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are hopelessly competing with one another for YOUR attention. As the creator, you can take advantage of this edge.

Your goal is to generate interest and increase subscriber count. YouTube has a beautiful call-to-action for users to subscribe to your channel. This brings them closer to your content for new episodes.

With a lot of things in life, this window of opportunity won’t be there forever.

I hope you found this newsletter useful.

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Voics Voices - Digging deep into the world of podcasting.

The Ingredients of a Top 1% Global Podcast

Read time: 3 minutes

Clear Persona & Content

Community Building

Niche Famous Guests

Content Flywheel

Branding & Design

The Competitive Edge That Podcasts Give You

Read time: 3 minutes

1. Network

2. Communication

3. Influence & Authority

4. Social Selling

Play to Win, Play The Long Game

Read time: 3 minutes

Time Horizon

Incremental & Ruthless Improvement

Avoid The Easy Wins

Example of Getting it Right

How to Fix Your Positioning For Supernormal Growth

Read time: 3 minutes

The Content Treemap

How to Increase Your Views by 500% With Storytelling

Read time: 3 minutes

Structure of Storytelling

1. Personal Experiences:

2. Share Transformations:

3. Share Challenges:

4. Share Solutions:

The And-But-Therefore Format

Why You’re NOT Where You Want To Be

Read time: 3 minutes

Content Growth

Audience Growth

Revenue Growth

How to Make More Money Than You Thought Was Humanly Possible

Read time: 3 minutes

​Sponsor your Brand instead of Sponsoring your Podcast

5 Growth Secrets to Supercharge Your Content

Read time: 3 minutes

The 1-To-Many Model

1. Clip Channels

2. Build a Tribe

3. Create Guest Content

4. Record with Creators

5. Revisit Old Topics

How Content Helped Me Build a Top 1% Global Network

Read time: 3 minutes

1. Build Leverage

2. Genuinely Help People

3. Publish & Find Your Tribe

4. Team Up & Dominate

How YouTube Will Change Podcasting Forever

Read time: 4 minutes

1. Features

2. User Experience & User Interface

3. Monetisation

4. Content Funnel

Why People Buy Your Story, Not Your Products

Read time: 3 minutes

1. Personal Stories:

2. Share Transformations:

3. Share Challenges:

4. Share Solutions:

1. Origin:

2. Mission:

3. Vision:

Why You Need To Do MORE

Read time: 3 minutes

The Volume + Data Model

1. Retention Rate

2. Watch Time

3. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

TL:DR

How I Maintain a +50% Retention Rate

Read time: 3 minutes

1. High Impact Clips

2. Question Styles

3. Bridge Topics

Sponsor your Brand instead of Sponsoring your Podcast