Making ersations about Podcast Growth Count with Travis Chappell
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You’ll hear:
Why fight with bigger podcasts for great guests?
Podcasters do all the work for none of the pay
How much money do podcasts make?
Travis’ conversation that counted – (and how he hates being comfortable!)
Why fight with bigger podcasts for great guests”?
So Travis, over 750 episodes.
Yes,
That's going some. So how long have you been doing build your network the show?
Four and a half years now.
Gosh
Yes, ma'am.
The things that you must have learnt.
Yes, ma'am. We have lots of good stuff over the years.
You head up Guestio?
Guestio is the solution for people that are looking to kind of shortcut the line. So a lot of these other ones that are out there... I know the founders of a lot of these different... podcast guests, podmatch... I'm good friends with them and they all solve different problems. And I would say Guestio is solving the problem for people that have a little bit of extra money but don't want to wait as long to be able to get the really high quality people that they want to interview on their show. Because super high quality people typically are looking for more established shows that have been around for a long time. They have a certain amount of downloads, traction et cetera, et cetera. And so with Guestio, you can go into the marketplace and you can book those guests that you really want to interview by just paying them for their time. Kind of like a podcast speaking fee, if you will, rather than full speaking rate to speak on a stage. It's kind of like a podcast speaking fee to speak on a podcast, but that way you can book really high level guests that you want to interview without having to wait two years to build enough credibility and downloads to be able to do it.
Yeah. There's been a few people that have been in my imagination for conversations and it's taken a year to kind of come off. So I can totally understand why you would want to kind of supercharge your podcast with certain types of guests. What do you find is the biggest challenge that people have when they come to you?
Right now, the biggest challenge is people wanting to get booked on other shows. It's a little bit less on the guest booking side and a little bit more on the show booking side, mainly because you can make money by getting booked on shows. It's a traffic source for people, it's a lead generation sales opportunity for people. And so getting booked on shows has become a little bit more of a pressing issue. Like, if I were to look at the show booking guests out of the marketplace, I would say that's more of like the supplement style solution, whereas the guest booking show side of the marketplace is more like the painkiller. It's solving an immediate problem that a lot of people have, which is not enough people know who I am, not enough people know what we do, not enough people know my business and how do I solve that problem? And so that's one of the things that we built kind of into guests here recently is the show side of the marketplace where you can go book yourself onto podcasts and those podcasters can get paid for it because that's kind of our thing is like the pay to play model. And any good quality podcast out there has no shortage of guests.
Tell me about it.
Podcasters do all the work for none of the pay
There's dozens of booking agencies. They're pitching all the time. There's no shortage of guests. The thing is, for a lot of different people in different shows is there is a shortage of money coming in on the show, even though it takes a ton of time, energy and money to keep the show going, keep an audience engaged and grow and build that audience over time. So what we started doing is instead of just starting an agency that takes all the money and doesn't pay the podcaster, we decided, well, why don't we go and put money into the podcaster's pocket? Because they're the ones that built the audience and they're the ones that deserve the money. You can upload your show into the marketplace and then based on, like, different stats and stuff, we recommend different pricing and you can set a price to a guest spot on your show. So instead of taking... obviously it's not a bribe to bring on bad guests, you still have ultimate control over who you want to bring on... but if somebody happens to be a good fit and they're willing to pay $50, $100, $200, $500, whatever it is, depending on the reach of the show, I mean, why wouldn't you take that guest over somebody else that isn't willing to pay? They're probably going to take your time more seriously. They're probably going to show up with a little bit more energy. They're probably more motivated to share the opportunity because when you pay, you pay attention. And people sometimes take podcasting opportunities for granted. They're looked at more like a PR campaign, like somebody's writing an article, and it's just not the same thing we're looking at it more like, hey, this is like a platform marketing campaign. This isn't just for, like, credibility. This is like credibility, awareness, traffic, trust, leads, sales. Like, there's so many other reasons to do this Besides just like, oh, let me go get an article or whatever.
Gosh. So many points that you made there, Travis, resonate with me because as I've grown as a show, my production schedule is way out in advance. I've had to be really sort of ruthless in terms of who I want on the show. Now, it costs me "X" to do the show and you want to see it grow organically. But there's also this kind of nag that you've got Joe Rogan and people like that making money. In the UK, it's Steven Bartlett. It's the blood, sweat and tears that goes into starting the project and keeping it going. And I think at the time that we're recording this, we're up to sort of 80 episodes for my show, and I've learnt so much along the way. And the whole point of the show is to introduce the listeners to people from different fields of expertise and to share how conversations have played out for them in their success. How do you go about... talking if you like.... communicating with the guests and the shows? Do you pick up the phone like I would? Or do you have other kinds of methods?
Yeah. So at first it was mostly organic. It was just kind of people in my network telling other people about it and good user base kind of organically that way. But in the last 30 days or so, we've started to turn on the advertising budget. Now at this point, that's kind of like our primary driver of new users and new customers is paid advertising campaigns, which have been running now for the last month or so.
Wow. So I'm guessing that the organic traffic is kind of just being reinvested into that to perpetuate and grow.
We have a high ticket back end offer, so we do agency services as well. And so we basically just take any profit that we make from that and dump it directly back into spending more money to acquire more customers and users.
That's the pain, isn't it, of growing, knowing that you're growing, but really not taking anything out of it?
Totally. Yeah. It depends on the goals, right? It depends on your goals. If your goal is simply to build a seven figure business, then once you hit the seven figure mark, then you can start taking some money out if you want to. Our goal is a lot bigger than seven figures.
I was going to say that's my next question.
So when we hit the seven figure mark, it's more like, okay, how much can we spend to go acquire more customers, build more momentum, get more employees? How can we continue to scale this thing out without losing all of our money? So that's kind of top of mind at the moment. It's like, how can we out spend everybody else and get more people to be aware of what we've created here? Because we think it's pretty cool.
What kind of walls do you think you're going to have to knock down to stay relevant with podcasting? It's quite an established platform in America, and it's growing everywhere else, like in Europe here we're kind of about five years behind, I think, in terms of marketplace. What sort of walls do you still see that need knocking down to open up the marketplace?
Yeah. So far it's been kind of a reprogramming in the pay to play strategy because there's kind of this almost like taboo attitude about it from a lot of people where it's like, "well, I would never pay for a guest" or "I would never pay to go on a show". And I'm just always curious as to why? It's not anybody's fault. It's not like they're just small minded. It has nothing to do with that. It's just like that's how the industry was portrayed for the last few years. Like I said, it's treated as a form of PR. The difference is if you go get an article in NBC or Forbes or whatever, they're still going to make all their money this quarter. They're not dependent... like, they don't also have a nine to five that they're working on the side.
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It's built already, isn't it?
Yeah, right. The independent podcaster is not the same as having an article in Forbes, because the independent podcaster isn't going to make money no matter what. It's one thing if you're doing organic outreach, right? Like if you're like, here's ten people I want on my show, let me go get them on my show. They shouldn't have to pay because you're asking them to come on your show. But if you have 40 requests every month to come on your show and you only have four spots available, why not charge those people to come on your show? Because the reason they're pitching you to come on the show, it's not just to add value to your audience, quote, unquote! It's to make money! They have an offer, they have a coaching program, they have a book, they have a course, they have something that they want to sell to the audience. And yes, they're going to add value or else you wouldn't bring them on the show. But ultimately their goal is to capture audience and pour it into some sort of a marketing funnel that makes them money, which is totally fine. I'm all for it. Let's all go make some money together. But the issue that I had before was that nobody was willing to pay the podcaster. You have dozens of these podcast booking agencies, and I'm friends with a lot of them. Again, they stepped into a problem and they built the solution for the problem. But by doing that, I think there was another problem that was generated, which was the fact that the podcaster wasn't getting paid.
It moves the problem along, doesn't it?
How much money do podcasts make?
Yeah, because the whole entire transaction relies on one thing.... audience. If there's no audience, then there's no audience to sell to the client. If there's no audience, then there's no client that wants to get booked on the show. So the only thing that drives it is the audience of the podcaster. So you have these booking agencies that are selling other podcasters audiences to their clients. They make money because they're selling the audience to the client. The client makes money because they're selling their offer to the audience. And the podcaster who did all of the work, who has the majority of the burden of creating the episodes, making sure that they're good quality, building an audience, maintaining the audience, building a community, all of those things that are the hard work, the big energy, all the things that are difficult to do about growing an audience these days, like the podcaster is doing all that and they get paid $0 in the entire transaction. So I think that's going to be kind of the bigger thing that we need to overcome is just trying to normalise it a little bit more to be like, look, this makes sense. If you want to advertise on a platform like Facebook, you have to pay them money to get in front of the audience that they've built. It's called Facebook advertising. If you want to get in front of Google's audience, you have to pay for it. It's Google ads, YouTube ads. All these platforms have ads and you have to pay to get in front of those people. A podcast guest spot is no different. And just some people have this kind of, like weird aversion to it just because they're like, well, I don't want to sell out my audience. It's like, don't then don't. Like I said, it's not a bribe to take a bad guest. It's look at the guests and be like, would I bring this person on my show? If the answer is yes, then do it. But now you bring on a great guest and you get paid to interview them. That's the best of both worlds, and they're happy to pay. It's not like you're scamming them or anything like that. They want to pay because they want the audience, because they have an offer to sell. They're used to marketing, they're used to advertising. They just haven't done it to be a guest on a podcast before. And so that's what we're trying to normalise a little bit more.
It's like a lot of things, isn't it, Travis? It depends on your motives and the other motives. For me as a show host, anybody that comes through that's kind of "I've got this great guest for you", I really ought to have the Guestio profile and go, "That's fine. You can go and book them here".
Travis’ conversation that counted – (and how he hates being comfortable!)
Well, it leads me on quite nicely, Travis, to the part of the show where I ask every guest about one conversation that they can think of that had it not have happened, something wouldn't have changed. Can you think of one conversation that had it not happened? Your life wouldn't have changed.
There are several of them throughout the last few years. But I'll give you one example. That's a friend of mine, Joel Marion. Actually, I was going to say he has one. He just exited December, his supplement company called BioTrust. It was a nine figure acquisition, and he exited that company a couple of years ago was the first time I met him. And we had a conversation. I went to his house in Tampa, which is one of the most beautiful homes that I've been in. Just like 180 degree view of the Bay. If it were humanly possible, you could jump from his swimming pool into the Bay in the backyard. It was just gorgeous. And we sat down for 5 hours in his house. He interviewed me for his show for a couple of hours. I interviewed him for my show for a couple of hours. We talked for an hour or two, like, in between and around the interviews. And at the time, he was launching this mastermind group called the 100 Million Mastermind Experience with a partner of his, Dan Fleyshman. At the time, I was not very suited to jump into this group because it was $100,000 to join the group. And at the time, my business was not at the seven figure mark yet, and it was a large number to me, and I immediately wrote it off. Like, there's no way that's impossible. I can't do that yet. But he stuck with me over the next two months, three months, like, four months later, I decided I'm going to go ahead and jump in. I don't know even how I'm going to make all the payments or what's going to happen to be able to make it happen, but I feel like this is where I really need to be to level up my mindset, level up my business, my revenue, my income, my network, all those things. So paid the money, and now you fast forward a couple of years. I actually renewed my membership this past year, so now I invested 200K just with this one group in the last couple of years. But the people that I've not just met, but built real friendships and relationships with the mentors that I can call on, the coaching that I've received from different people in those groups, the connections that I've gotten from the organizers of the group, from Dan and Joel themselves, are willing to make text intros to people, refer clients to me. When I was building my software company, I raised $3 million pre-seed round to build the software, and a portion of that came from members that were angel investors in that group. So it's more than paid for itself multiple times over. It did that in a way at the time where I didn't know how it was exactly going to happen, but I just kind of trusted that it would work out. It was kind of a big leap of faith, but that was kind of what that was one of those life changing conversations where, like I said, I think I would still be like a year behind, maybe a year and a half behind on what I was trying to accomplish. If I didn't jump into one of those kind of accelerating type groups like that.
Nothing really exciting happens in your comfort zone, does it?
Exactly. You can't grow if there's no pain. In order to build bigger muscle, you have to tear down the muscle that exists. It's the same thing with your mindset, with your mentality. If you're not doing stuff, if you're not constantly putting yourself in situations where you're uncomfortable, just accept that you're not going to grow you're not going to level up. You're not going to get a different result by doing the same thing is the point. If you want a different result, if you want a mega result and you're playing down here, you have to take mega type actions in order to get that type of result. It's not going to come by doing all the same stuff that you've always done. So you have to put yourself in situations where it's like, oh, man, this is a big risk, and I hope this works out, but I'm not sure it's going to. You have to make yourself uncomfortable. You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. If you're feeling comfortable, that's a sign that you're not doing enough or that you're not pushing enough. If that's the goal that you have, right? I'm never the person to tell everybody that they need to have the same goals that I have in life. But if you do, then don't whine to me and complain to me when you're not reaching them, when you're just doing the same stuff you've done for the last five years, do something different. Invest at a big level. Do something scary, risky. Do something that holds your feet to the fire. That's the thing about investing 100 grand in yourself. Like, you're going to show up, you're going to make the most of it. You're going to sit there, learn, be attentive, meet as many people as you can, and you're invested in that. And you're putting like a future accountability partner on the calendar. Money is the best accountability partner is what I always say. If you invest the money, you're going to show up. And if you don't, and then you sit there and complain about it, that's on you. That's not on the organisers. That's not on the mastermind, the events. That's on you because you didn't show up, you didn't do the work, and you sat in this sulking, scarcity mindset for too long and allowed yourself to become the victim again. And so if you're the type of person that is the action taker and the person is going to make the most of the situation, you got to keep yourself accountable by continuing to put yourself in these uncomfortable situations where there's a lot of risk, because that's where all the growth happens.
Those calculated risks and the belief in yourself is a really powerful combination, isn't it?
Oh, yeah, totally. Your belief in yourself, your confidence in yourself is where all success stems back to. If you don't believe in you, how do you expect anybody else to? How do you sell something that you don't believe in? I don't know how to do that.
Now, and you can't train that either. Believe me, I've tried.
If you don't believe in yourself, then how do you sell yourself to other people? Like, how do you sell the idea of doing business with you? How do you sell your products, your services? If you don't even believe in your ability to do the things that you set out to do. If you don't believe in you, how do you convince other people to believe in you? You have to have that confidence moving forward and sometimes investing in those big things, doing something really risky and then watching it pay off after you put in the work, that's a big booster in confidence that allows you to go tackle the next risk because it's like, look, I dropped 100K on that one thing and I didn't know how I was going to pay that off and I did it. So this other thing that's going to cost me 300K, like, whatever hiring an executive in my company or bringing on four more employees, like, oh, that's going to add another 30 grand a month in my payroll or 20 grand a month in my payroll. How am I going to do that? It's like, well, I've done it before at this level, and if I could figure it out at that level, I could probably figure it out at this level. So let's do it. The only way to grow and scale and continue to push the boundaries is you have to live in a state of discomfort or you're not growing.
That nervication that I so often refer to. It becomes quite familiar.
Yes.
Well, I'm so pleased that you had that conversation Because that's ultimately led to the journey that you're on, isn't it, Travis, for what you're doing as well is also helping. That's the thing, isn't it? You've identified a way of monetizing something that also helps others, and I think that's kind of the secret sauce for me.
Yes, ma'am. That's the goal. Trying to put more money in the pockets of the people Building the audiences. So that's what we're trying to do.
Well, we'll make sure that we put all of the details in the show notes and on the website, and we always encourage our listeners to reach out to our guests. So Where's the best place for them to carry on the conversation with you, Travis?
You can just go to my personal website, travischapel.com. C-H-A-P-P-E-L-L. Travis chappell.com. It's kind of like a hub, so all my social links are there. Guestio is there. Basically, if you want to do anything with me, Travischapple.com is the place to go.
Fantastic. Well, I've learned something. I'm sure the listeners will, too. They'll be thinking about podcasting in a totally new light. Thank you, you for sharing with me today.
Yes, ma'am. Looking forward to getting you some paid bookings on, Guestio.
Yay!
Next Time: We will be Making Conversations about client acquisition Count with Michal Bohanes and his lovely wife Ana Bohanes
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