102: How A 200 Download Per Episode Podcast Pulled Off A $300K Launch with Jeremy Enns

Written By Britany Felix
 
102 Podcasting for Coaches Britany Felix.png

What’s This Episode About?

Jeremy Enns is the CEO & Storyteller In Chief of Counterweight Creative a podcast production and marketing agency helping optimistic rebels create podcasts that market & grow themselves.

He loves all things outdoors, is borderline religious on walking 10,000 steps per day, and will always look back on the day he finally saved up enough money to buy the Millennium Falcon Lego set as one of his proudest achievements.

In this episode, he gives us a peek behind the curtain of a recent experience with a client of his who used her podcast to help sell-out a recent launch to the tune of $300,000!

Transcript

Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more.

 

00:48

Welcome to Episode 102 of podcasting for coaches. My guest today is Jeremy ends, and he is the CEO and storyteller and chief of counterweight creative podcast production and marketing agency helping optimistic rebels create podcasts that market and grow themselves. He loves all things Outdoors is borderline religious on walking 10,000 steps per day, and will always look back on the day he finally saved up enough money to buy the Millennium Falcon Lego set as one of his proudest achievements. I'm really excited to have Jeremy on the podcast today, because he's someone that I've kind of known about peripherally in the podcast space, we've seen each other's names, we've kind of hung out in the same online communities attended the same events, but never really had a chance to actually sit down and talk one on one until this episode. And what I'm even more excited about is the fact that this episode is different from any other one that I've ever done. Besides the difference being that he's a man and I don't have a lot of those on this podcast, Jeremy is offering us a kind of behind the scenes or behind the curtains peek at an experience he had with one of his own clients, which if you've gathered from the title of this episode, was how a 200 download per episode podcast ended up pulling off a $300,000 launch using the podcast within just a couple of days. This is not a quick hack, like do this one thing, and you'll pull off this $300,000 launch for your own business. But it's really interesting information for you. Because it was done using a podcast in a way that I have never heard used before in my five plus years in the podcasting industry. So with that in mind, I'm not gonna waste any more time. And we're just gonna go ahead and jump right on into this conversation with Jeremy because yeah, I'm just really excited for you to check it out. All right, here we go.

 

02:37

Jeremy, thank you so much for being on the show, I am really excited to finally actually connect with you in real time, as we said during the pre interview, chit chat, and I have a feeling we've got a lot to cover today. So I kind of don't want to waste a bunch of time the listener already knows about you. So why don't we just go straight into this. And you kind of catch us up on the deal with this case study in this amazing launch that your client had? Yeah, so I'm not going to use her name in this case studies. But I will I will say that she basically the background on her is she is a life coach who works with a very, very defined niche of women physicians. That is like, pretty, pretty nice. I'm sure there are a lot of female physicians in the world. But when you look at a lot of for most of us, myself included, have not niched that narrowly right. And so it is a small group of people that she works with. And this was we're recording this in 2021. This was back in the fall of 2020, I believe. And she had done a beta program of a long term, like six month coaching program. And she also had a membership group that was a paid membership group. That was I think it was like 50 or $100 a month, like it wasn't super high price, but it wasn't, you know, a $15 a month membership or anything like that, either. So it was, you know, committed people who were in there. And I think that was probably maybe 100 paying members, I think it was a bit larger community. But she had kind of seeded it with a bunch of people who were they kind of got free access or really low price access when it first started. So she had this kind of like very small, tight knit community of people who just like, absolutely loved her. And the interesting thing about that community for her this 100 150 people is like it was a really small community, but she had this disproportionate number of superfans for whatever reason. And I mean, well, not for whatever reason, because right, she did such an amazing job of engaging with them and just like understood her audience so well. And so she had come from a physician background as well. So she obviously knew a lot of the struggles and all the things that these women were going through and could speak to all of those things really, really well as well as having done her coaching, training and all of this, of course, and so basically her podcast she was getting, probably I think at the time, it was like 200 downloads an episode. Basically her whole podcast listener base was just the people who were already in her programs of some kind, whether that was one on one coaching or in general

 

05:00

membership or had been through her longer term, six month program. And she was looking to scale this up. And part of the reason that she had started the podcast initially was to grow her audience over time. But the strategy that we had kind of settled on together, was really prioritizing the existing people in her niche. Sorry, not in her niche, but in her existing audience, actually, and this is something that I think is so valuable to understand as a podcaster. And that I think we just continually don't actually honor. It's often by actually paying the most attention to the people who are already closest to us that things actually grow the quickest in terms of audience numbers, but also in terms of monetization, like that is absolutely important, is in like nurturing those people who are already in our existing environment, who already like know who we are, who already love us. And we can kind of take them up to a level that's even higher than, you know, maybe they've already spent money with us, maybe they're on that membership program. But then when you come up with a super high ticket offer, because you've been nurturing them for six months, or a year or two years, or three years, or whatever they're like, immediately ready to buy, right. And I think we all do this is we all want to bring more new people in from like the outside. And so I kind of think of this as almost like a solar system, where you've got like the people the furthest orbit away, we spent all of our time and effort trying to get like messages out to them, whether that's through social media, or whatever it is that we're doing with our marketing, and we're trying to bring them closer to the center, because we're like, oh, all these people who are already really tight around me, like I've already got them like, I don't need to spend more effort on getting them, they know who I am. But there's a difference between like, I'm being aware of you, and then actually getting up to that level of trust, where when you come out with a, you know, 1000 2000 3000 5000 $10,000 package that they're like, immediately, like, yep, take my money. And so I think that a lot of times, like that's the gap there where we need to be able to actually, like, realize that these are the most important people and that if we can even continue to build that relationship further. Those are the people who are going to spread the word about us to those people further out there in the solar system much more quickly than we're able to ourselves. Like we're only one person, we can only spread the word so far. But if you've got even like five or 10 superfans, they can tell way more people about your show than you can. Absolutely, I completely agree. I mean, the vast majority of my new clients come from my existing clients. I mean, I and I have social media people, I have the podcast and things come in those ways. But it's a disproportionate number of my new people come from my existing for sure. I mean, like, that's the way that podcasting, almost every podcast grows. For everyone listening, I know, I've done this a couple of times where I've just kind of trained myself, like when I find a new show, or any anything that I love, I'll like actually think about like, Where did I first hear about this. And almost all of the time, it's from a friend or like a newsletter that I really love or a podcast recommendation from a host of a podcast that I listened to. It's like always word of mouth. And it's always from someone who I really highly value their opinion. You know, I will occasionally search for a podcast in a podcasting app or on Google or something like that. And almost always, when I'm doing that, I'm just looking for quick information. They never end up being shows that I subscribed to for years at a time. And so owning that and being like, okay, My show is going to grow by word of mouth. So I better like nurture those people into superfans so they can spread the word. And so we've kind of been talking about the growth side of things here. And I do want to get back to the case study, because back to this client here, this was her approach here, she was fully committed to really tailoring every single episode to those people who were already in the know, who were aware of her who had been following her for months at a time. And so she was looking to both grow the audience, but also grow the revenue in a big way. And so she was taking this beta program she done of the six month launch, or the six month in depth program, small group coaching program, and she was looking to do her first official launch. And so she had planned out this challenge leading up to it and she had all these Facebook ads lined up ready to go, and was gearing up for this huge launch. And before sending it out before pushing play on all of that kind of stuff. Before starting to send out the launch emails, she put the offer to her existing community. And almost immediately within like a day or two, she had sold out all 50 spots in the program. Wow. And it ended up being like a $300,000 launch. she emailed me the next day and she was kind of like in shock. And she was like, so I cancelled my challenge. I cancelled all the Facebook ads, I took all the autoresponder emails off, I filled the program without even like having to launch it. And it was basically all the people who were already just podcast listeners and within my existing community. And it's really interesting to me how this approach like I was a little bit skeptical at first, I was like, well, don't you want to go after more new people like, Is this like somebody who listens to your show might be a little out of the loop if they're just finding this for the first time because it all feels more like supplemental content to the people who are already in our program. And she was like, Yeah, I know. But I keep doing it for them because they keep asking me for the stuff and it's just practical like everything on the podcast is stuff I don't have time to cover inside the app.

 

10:00

coaching program. And it's maybe like answering listener questions or attendee member questions, those types of things that come up, you know, somewhat regularly, but I'm not going to do a whole like live video session on it or q&a in the, in the membership program. And so it's kind of just creating this extra content that is going to be useful to people, it's supplementary, and it's really made for them. And you know, people can find that, and they can kind of just, you know, maybe there'll be a little bit confused at first. But as they get into that ecosystem, it all becomes more and more helpful. And so I think like, personally, that's not typically how I would approach podcasting. Right, I have been so amazed by her success, and it's given me like so much more, I guess, confidence in recommending that to other people, as well as saying, like, it's not always about going for more and more and more people. And a lot of times like, can be about doubling down on the people who are already, really, you know, in love with you, and just doing more and more and more for them. And, you know, allow them to spread the word about you and the podcast and your offerings and all this stuff, but just keep making amazing content for them. Well, what I think is interesting about that is the approach of her podcast is really supplemental for her paid community, correct? Yep. Well, and I know I've had a lot of my clients, or just people in my audience who have been interested in these paid RSS feeds so that they can do that, like, well, I, I want to disseminate information to my course members, or, you know, my mastermind members. But I don't want it to go out to the public necessarily, because they've paid for this information. So like, we have this whole ecosystem. Now, these paid RSS feeds that are starting to become a thing and a little bit more accessible. And I think it's interesting that she puts it out there in a public way, you might not be able to answer this. But maybe you have the same question and asked her, do her people in her membership ever complain that the information that they're paying for is available publicly to other people? No. So like, she's done a really good job of that, because it still is like, so what she actually does is she takes all of her calls and all of the content from the actual membership and from her like, paid trainings, and she does put those on a private RSS feed, so they do have access to those as well. And that's a kind of higher level content. But the podcast is still all, it is like a podcast, you would listen to it. And you'd be like, okay, like, maybe I don't quite know, the reference. And she does reference, you know, the program quite a bit. And she features a lot of her clients and people in the membership community and things like that very regularly. And we'll take questions. So as a listener, you wouldn't maybe be completely, you know, out of the loop, but it would be a little bit, it is a little inside more than a typical podcast. I mean, one of the things that I recommend to people is that with every show, you want to make sure that at least in that, you know, first 10 or 15 seconds in the intro, you are making new people feel welcome, and that they understand, like, what this show is about if this is their first time listening, like, you know, getting them up to speed. And she doesn't really do that so much he gets like right into it, which I think that's where sometimes if you were a brand new listener of the show, you might be like, Oh, wait, what's going on here? Right? did this start in the middle of the episode or?

 

13:00

And then it's kind of like, I think of it almost as an ongoing conversation that is happening both on the podcast and inside the membership community. I mean, like, for me, as a producer, and editor, I'm obviously very aware of all of our episodes, and right kind of like in the know. And so maybe it's harder for me to be impartial about that. But I feel like it still is very welcoming to outside people. And like the delineation is, it makes sense. And so I think there is like, if you're going to pursue this strategy, maybe you do want to think about that of like, how much are you catering specifically to people who only have who have like all this special access to information? And is that going to turn off people from the outside. And so I think that that's the balance to find there that it can be really helpful to create the podcast has kind of supplemental content, but also if you have goals of bringing in new listeners and making them feel not alienated when they first listen to the show, but also aware that there's this whole other part of the conversation that they're missing out on. I think like, that's the great balance to find, because they're gonna be like, Oh, man, like, I'm only getting part of this. And there's all this other great stuff that's happening that I'm not currently getting, like if this is this good. Like, what is the page stop, like? And so I think like finding the balance, there is the real sweet spot. Yeah, I completely agree. What comes to mind is actually this whole like clubhouse craze right now. Because I have one client who she's a business coach, and she has doubled down on clubhouse. And she mentioned clubhouse in every single episode of her podcast. And it's always like, what we're continuing this conversation over on clubhouse if you have questions like happen to this chat that we're doing, I'm like, Yeah, but you have so many of your listeners who are feeling so left out right now and they're probably getting very angry with you, because they have no way to access that. And I mean, with a paid membership is different because anybody who wants access can have it, you know, they just need to pay for it. So it's it's accessible to everyone in terms of, you know, obviously if they can afford it and those sorts of things. So I do think that there is definitely some benefit you

 

15:00

That whole kind of like, give them enough to leave them like wanting more. And then just making sure that everyone can have access to that. So how long had her podcast been going before this? Like, how many episodes Has she released? I think we launched this would have been last in the fall last year sometime. And I think she would have only been producing this show for six months or so. Which I mean, that is fairly fast. I would say, probably most people aren't monetizing, especially in that way. For years, I would say, Yeah, I tell all of my clients like planned a podcast for at least a full year before you start seeing any sort of significant ROI. Yeah. So in her case, she had a previous podcast, which was very unstructured, let's say. And so it was just not focused, it was with her husband. And it was more on relationships and that kind of thing, which she does talk about in her coaching programs. But it's not really the core thing. And so that was kind of a fun thing that they were doing that was seeing results. But we actually had a lot of people who listen to that though, who were like begging her like, you need to start your own show around all this other stuff that you talk about, because you don't talk about that on there. But it's so good. And so she kind of had a built up an audience around that. And she was very active in her niche or industry before launching the show. like she'd already been running the membership as well. So I mean, those initial 200 people, those were already in her network. And so I think the podcast, it didn't bring in any or not many new people. But it's interesting, because she says that even though most of the people who bought up into her long term high ticket offer, were already in her paid membership community or in and worked with her one on one or something like that. They all still cited or maybe not all of them, but many of them still cited the podcast as being one of the things that they absolutely loved and took a ton of value from. So just I think that the podcasts still did kind of like bring them closer to her and give them more content more time with her. And, you know, get to know her a little better in a more intimate way. Yeah, I completely agree. That's what I was gonna say the word intimate is what I like to use for a podcast because that is exactly what it is. I mean, you were there with these people in their ear directly into their brain, throughout their daily life. Like I'm not watching YouTube. But while I'm doing dishes, while I'm cooking dinner, I'm not doing any of those things like I'm listening to podcasts, and I'm doing all of these daily activities. So podcast hosts can just get so engrained into their listeners lives in such an easy and intimate way. So if you could share just kind of briefly, some of the strategies for getting her current audience to actually listen and tune in and subscribe to the podcast, because I know some of the people listening to this right now are having issues like getting their current audience to actually start tuning in to the podcast. Yeah, so this is interesting. And I mean, this isn't helpful for everyone. But she was having people like begging her to create, like I mentioned before this show, that was just her. And so I think that that's a testament to how much she poured into that community. And I think that so often, I mean, I have been on both sides of this with the same community that I've have created in the past, where when I am really attentive, like it is amazing. And people, there's this outpouring of support, and people just want to help you and want to like gobble up anything you put out there. And when I take my foot off the gas and am more disengaged, that barely quickly evaporates. And I think that people vastly underestimate how much work it is to actually build a really strong community, and how much like constant work, you just can't stop putting in the effort. And so I think that this is something that she had spent, you know, over a year, putting in a lot of time into these people and like really going above and beyond. And so I think that that's the thing, where, of course, we've all heard this before the overnight success years in the making, where like she had been laboring at this for a long time, and like really doing more than people would expect for a 50 or $100 membership community where people were like, I can't believe like we're getting this value for what we're paying for this. And so I think that's the biggest thing. And I think that that's not like it's not a tactic. It's not like a strategy, a hack or anything like that. It's the truth. It's like that's how it works. This The more you put in, the more you're going to get out in the long run. Right well I mean, you listening you know that like you're all coaches, consultants, you know, that there isn't this one like Facebook ad hack that as soon as you like nail this Facebook ads strategy, you're going to have all of these like leads and these new clients and these new course purchases, like it has to be organic, and it has to be genuine. And I love that you're talking about how much she nurtures his relationship because one thing I think that gets missed a lot. There's so much focus put on the growth, and like bringing in those new people and almost nothing on nurturing, which I think is far more work and far more important. Yeah. The way that I always like to think about it is when I think about my own work with my audience, the question I always come back to is like, how can I care more than anyone else about these people? And I feel like it's hard to lose when you care more than anyone else is willing to ask.

 

20:00

You'd like access to that. And that's not easy to be consistent about. And obviously, all of us, that's like a day to day thing, you have to, like make that decision to show up. It's you can't just put it on autopilot. But that's something that I like to remind myself, like, Okay, if I can care more for this group of people over the course of, you know, one year, two years, or three years, or five years, or however long it is like, that's going to come back to me at some point not to say that, like, that's the only reason why I'm doing it. Because you know, I actually like these people as well. And I genuinely want to help them. But I think that that's like, the ultimate hack is just caring more than anyone else does. Yeah, well, and caring takes a lot of effort and energy, and you can't sustain it. If it's not if you don't really care, right? Oh, yeah, just will not be able to keep it up. So for our last question here, I do want to ask you, because you do a lot of this type of strategy, you help people market grow, all of those sorts of things, you obviously have a very authentic and genuine approach to everything. So I would love for you to share with the people listening, your current offering you've got coming up. Yeah, so I run a program called podcast marketing Academy, it goes live twice a year. And the current cohort, which is cohort number three is going to be going live at the end of March, early April 2021. And so basically, this is the summation of all my knowledge around marketing, and specifically podcast marketing. But I tend to lean towards the the philosophical side of things, and less on the hacks. And maybe we've talked about this a little bit in this episode, less on hacks and tactics, and more on the like, what's at the core of things that are marketable, like things that grow things that people talk about? Like, how can we create something that is going to grow by word of mouth, that we don't need to put all this work into marketing. And we certainly cover a lot of those ways to get more visibility and more exposure for our podcasts. But it's basically a four module course. And the first three are all focused on actually building the foundation and creating something that we don't actually like once we kick started and get it going, like people are going to talk about it themselves. And so that's, to me is the only type of sustainable marketing. And so that's what I teach. And yeah, I am so excited to be offering this for a third time now. It's going to be going live again in the fall of 2021. But yeah, if anybody's interested in learning more about podcast, marketing and marketing as a whole, I would love to have you reach out. And leading up to that we're all actually going to be doing a free five day training on podcast sponsorships, which I know Britany and I were talking about before the show that you know, your methodology or philosophy around sponsorships is that you should self sponsor, which is what I believe as well. It's, that's I think the most lucrative way to make money from your podcast and your ad ad slots is by pushing people to your own products and services. But if you are looking at bringing outside sponsors, then this might be a good option as well. And I know that we've had clients who with you know, 1000, or 1500 downloads per episode shows have been able to make, you know, $6,000 a month over long term sponsorship deals with like, super, super highly aligned, other niche sponsors kind of where it's just a win win win situation for audience sponsor and host. So that's kind of what we're going to be teaching in that. And that's just a 30 minute training every day for five days, and then 30 minutes of q&a after that. So fairly short and sweet. And hopefully, you'll get a lot of value out of that if you decide to sign up for that. Awesome. Well, what I love about all of that, and one of the reasons that I am thrilled to have had you on the show, because I don't typically have a lot of men. But I think that you know, for you listening, you can really understand like why I think Jeremy is a great resource for you. Because he has this very genuine approach because you can pour all the money you want into advertising for your podcast into getting it out in front of people. But if the content is just terrible, nobody's going to continue listening. They might check it out, but they're not going to keep checking it out. So I love Jeremy that you take this approach, and I love that you talk about the self sponsorships and you offer some of these methods where it's like a win win. You're working with small niche sponsors. You're not going out there and getting Blue Apron to sponsor the show or anything.

 

24:04

No. So definitely check out Jeremy's offering the training. Everything that has been mentioned today will be in the show notes on my website, which you can find by going to podcasting for coaches. com click on the episodes tab in the main menu and you'll see Jeremy's picture right there. He is the only man that I've had on here for months and months and months so it will not be hard to find him. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Britany This has been a lot of fun.

 

24:32

And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches comm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcasts that you create and put out into the world.

 
Britany Felix
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