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🎙️ Money Podcasts Success: How Joe and Paula Built Loyal Audiences and Turned Passion into Profits 💰
828 Plays1 month ago
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🪙 Joe Saul-Sehy (Stacking Benjamins) and Paula Pant (Afford Anything) reveal how they built their money podcasts into profitable passion projects, sharing the secrets behind their long-term success in podcasting.
🎨 This conversation explores the journey of building profitable podcasts, the logistics of guest management, and how hosts decide which trends to follow and which to avoid.
In this episode, we discuss:
1️⃣ How to Start a Money Podcast: Joe and Paula share how they began, and their strategies for building loyal audiences.
2️⃣ Monetizing Your Podcast: They reveal how money podcasts make money and how to create sustainable revenue streams.
3️⃣ Guest Selection and Vetting: How to choose engaging guests and avoid common mistakes.
4️⃣ Balancing Podcasting and Entrepreneurship: Insights on managing a podcast while pursuing other business ventures.
5️⃣ Podcast Growth Strategies: From viral episodes to organic growth, learn how to scale your podcast.
6️⃣ Challenges in Podcasting: Behind-the-scenes struggles, including interviews that never aired and topics they regret covering.
🔗 Joe Saul-Sehy's Links:
📚 Joe’s Stacking AdventuresTravel Podcast
📝 Joe Saul-Sehy's book: Stacked: Your Super-Serious Guide to Modern Money Management
🔗 Paula Pant's Links:
📚 Afford Anything Course: Your First Rental Property
🔗 David's Links:
🍏 Forget About Money on Apple Podcast
🎧 Forget About Money on Spotify
📜 Joe Saul-Sehy & Paula Pant Quotes:
💡 "Podcasting is all about relationships—you grow one download at a time by staying authentic." — Joe Saul-Sehy
🔗 "It's not just about making money from a podcast; it's about creating meaningful content that resonates." — Paula Pant
#podcast #podcasting #howtostartapodcast #podcastgrowth #podcastguests #podcastinglife #podcastingjourney #financialindependence
🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Hit subscribe for more strategies on building wealth and achieving financial independence. Tap the bell icon 🔔 to stay updated!
Disclaimer: This episode is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Always consult a professional for personalized financial or business advice.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast Hosts and Their Shows
00:00:00
Speaker
Two of your favorite Money Podcast hosts share how they built their shows and shoot profitable passion projects. Here we go.
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Forget About Money podcast, where we encourage you to take action today so that you can focus on what matters most to you. Today, we are joined by two podcasting legends, Paula Pant, host of Afford Anything since 2016 with more than 35 million downloads to date. And alongside her is Joe Saul-Sihai, the host of Stacking Benjamins since 2012 with more than 75 million downloads. Welcome. Hey, thanks, David. Thank you for having us.
00:00:40
Speaker
Thank you again for being here.
Secrets to Podcasting: Topics, Guests, and Motivation
00:00:42
Speaker
Paula and Joe, I'd like for you to share your secrets. When I say secrets, that could be like a catch phrase, like just to get people's ears to perk up. But we know there's a lot of work and thought that goes behind podcasts. So I would like to explore how you choose topics, how you select your guests, and how do you just manage the logistics of your podcasts. And on top of that, I'd like to get into at some point how you stay motivated.
00:01:06
Speaker
Just sounds good. So let's start with topics. You're both money topic people, but you branch out some. How do you select your
Paula's FIRE Framework for Podcast Topics
00:01:14
Speaker
topics? I cover five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. So the acronym is FIRE, the word FIRE, but with two I's. And when I look at topics, I try to make sure that each topic I'm considering fits under one of those five pillars. So sometimes there are topics that are considered money adjacent, such as how to form habits, for example. you know Habit formation is
00:01:43
Speaker
I think closely related enough to the pillar of financial psychology that even though it's not a money topic per se, it's behavioral and therefore fits under that money psychology pillar. Similarly, you know we've done a couple of episodes on crypto, not too many, maybe like two or three ever out of 550. So it's not a topic that we've covered a lot, but when I was weighing whether or not to cover it at all,
00:02:07
Speaker
It fit under the eye of investing. And so that the the fire, the double eye fire framework that I use is my litmus test for, you know, should we cover this or not?
Joe's Target Audience and Content Strategy
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, ours, ours started starts with an avatar. We have this woman in her early thirties who's juggling being a mom and her career and just all of life juggling all this stuff and she doesn't want to be yelled at by susie or or dave she wants and you know really and no offense to what they do because they obviously have huge audiences but we're just not going to be that person we're going to be the person that doesn't yell at her where the person that says
00:02:49
Speaker
you know what You can mess all this up and you're still gonna be okay. and still going to be You're still gonna be fine. So we want to talk about the way she earns money. So how are you great at work so you can increase your earning potential or side hustles or whatever it might be. How she spends money so that's budget, maybe making sure you don't get into debt. And if you did get into debt, how to get out of debt. And then third,
00:03:13
Speaker
how she saves and invests money. And that will also include then, of course, protecting it, right protecting your money and with your estate plan, with your insurances. So generally, it's we have this avatar woman and we have these three things we're thinking about, how she earns, saves, and spends.
00:03:31
Speaker
So I'm a very beginning podcaster with just over 40 episodes so far, but I've already started getting emails from people trying to shop people to be on my podcast. Does that happen? Really? It it appears to be like third parties who are... Hey, this person would be great on your podcast. And i I click a link and it's like, Hey, they're part of some kind of financial firm or they just wrote a book or whatever it is. But then their topic might be somewhat tangential, but I can only, so I'm saying no to all of them only because I want to talk about what I want to talk about, at least for now, but that can only be for so long. I mean, y'all y'all have been doing this for a very, very long time. So it's shifted from how to pick a topic based on what you want to talk about.
00:04:13
Speaker
to how do you, I would imagine how do you keep a podcast with momentum continuously being interesting to the yourselves as well as to the audience. And I like the F-I-I-R-E and then the avatar that you've got, Joe, because because it does give you that framework to like, okay, does it fit? That could be a yes or no, or at least a factor that you consider.
00:04:34
Speaker
whether or not to have that person or that topic on your podcast.
Challenges with Guests and Audience Engagement
00:04:38
Speaker
Looking back, can you think of an episode that you recorded and then you're like, that was a mistake or maybe I shouldn't have done that or maybe that was out of alignment or where was I going with that? So in, for me, in the early days of the Afford Anything podcast, back then we had a very different screening process for guests. So back then we were taking on people who would just tell us their story, which we don't do anymore. And I can get in, in a moment I can get into why we don't do that.
00:05:04
Speaker
But back in those early days, we brought on a particular person. but We never ended up airing the episode. But this particular this person pitched us on the you know the the standard rags to riches narrative that that you hear so often. and And I'm not talking about like ridiculous Lamborghini riches. I'm talking about normal middle class rags to normal middle class riches kind of a trajectory.
00:05:31
Speaker
So it's it was it's a very believable and I believe the story, you know, it's a very believable story. But when this person came on and did the interview, they had absolutely no takeaways for the audience. There was no real wisdom to share. There were no insights. There were no thoughts. They just the whole interview was platitudes, platitudes and cliches. And there there was no there there. There was nothing meaty about it. And I felt like, you know what, if you think about your audience,
00:06:01
Speaker
right let's Let's say that you have an audience. Heck, let's say you're a beginner podcaster and you have a hundred people listening to each episode and that episode is one hour long. That means that those hundred people, you are collectively consuming 100 hours human time. right I'm not going to waste that. And then and then you know if if your show has a thousand listeners,
00:06:25
Speaker
ah You definitely don't want to waste a thousand hours of human time. And so there was no way that you know just because I had devoted an hour to interviewing this person, I'm not going to waste, we'll we'll say, a hundred hours of humanity. yeah what's What is frustrating is the number one thing I see that the audience really wants is they want interviews with regular normal people and how they did it. Like they want to see the heartbeat of somebody who is like me, how they got where they're going. And the frustrating thing that I have as a creator, and that I won't speak for you, Paula, but i when I've had, quote, normal people,
00:07:05
Speaker
on the show to tell their story. They're horrible at telling their story. They're just absolutely rotten to tell you. So there's a story I want to hear too, but back earlier on when I had more time, I would do a warm-up call with some of these people to help them hit the beats on their story so they would be able to tell it at least in an entertaining manner so that we didn't, to Paula's point, waste people's time.
00:07:29
Speaker
So that was that that part was was difficult. We you know, the big problem that we have had in the past and we do a better job now of vetting this out ahead of time, but it still rears its ugly head. I know the person has a new book. They know they have a new book. My audience member knows they have a new book. I'm not Barnes and Noble. My my audience does not want to be marketed to. they did They're not there for that reason. They want insights.
00:07:57
Speaker
So very rarely now, but a lot when I didn't know as much about what I was doing. I remember this one guy, he was an accountant. This was the worst interview. I actually aired it. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I cut it to like the best 15 minutes and it was one of the shortest episodes we've ever done because it was about, we talked for maybe 40 minutes and there was 15 minutes worth of usable stuff. But this guy, every single answer was, well, as I say in my book, such and such,
00:08:25
Speaker
Oh, there are a lot of tech strategies that you should use. And I think it's important to have a tech strategy. And so I obviously followed that up with, so give me one, what's a really important tech strategy that our stackers should use? Well, you know, in my book tech strategies, I give you 50 of them and I got to tell you they're amazing and they will save you thousands of dollars. Okay, great. Give me one of them.
00:08:50
Speaker
Well, you know, I wish I could do it. And it was just talking around it because they think that if they don't tell my audience anything, we're going to buy the book, which you and I know is exactly the opposite. The more that you give it away and don't talk about your book, the more I'm going to trust you and the more I might want to want want to take part. So the sad news about what what we do is the only time we can get some of these great, great guests is when they're on a tour. It's like the only time they're available.
00:09:20
Speaker
So it has to include some stuff from their book, but but I make sure and Paula does this differently than I do, which is why I think our shows are so ah we share ah a lot of our audience. Like we can see the audience members and we share a fair number of audience members because we'll interview the same person on some of these big tours.
00:09:38
Speaker
Mine is usually from the first three chapters of the book and I go as deep as I can in in one or two big ideas and we talk to them for maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes. So I've shortened the interview and I go deep on one or two concepts. I consider myself to be for the Avatar woman in airport.
00:09:59
Speaker
And all of my guests are these curated planes. And when a guest comes on, I want to make sure that you know what the issue is. We get into depth with it. And you know, if you want to go further, you know, she has a book. If you don't want to go further, though, we've given you enough that you don't need to buy crap and you're still going to get a bunch out of the time that you spent listening to the show.
00:10:20
Speaker
And that helps you too because you don't have to read more than three chapters of their book. Well, I just don't have time. seriously I've heard the first three chapters due to so many books. That's a great way to put your processes in to support your efficiency. Love it.
Selecting Genuine Guests and Using Trending Topics
00:10:34
Speaker
we We also, David, to your point about being pitched and you're going to find that as this show continues to do awesome, you're going to find that you get noticed more and more often and PR people, really bad PR people, by the way, give you the slimiest, most horrible pitches.
00:10:50
Speaker
So at SB, we get about 70 pitches a week from PR people to who want to be on the show, who want who are representing somebody to be on the show. We have one guest a week. What I used to do when I got a little bit lazy, and this this made it hard to stay motivated,
00:11:08
Speaker
was I would just pick the best one and I would interview that person. But then I found that I wasn't that interested because it was just being run by PR agencies. My show was being run by PR, even though I was picking the best ones, it was still run by them. So we are committed to about half of our interviews are the best of the best. So you have about a one in 140 chance if you pitch me of getting on stacking measurements. Other than that, though, the other half of our guests are us going out and getting guests. So I'm very happy that we got David Gergen, who served five different US presidents. We went and got him and it was amazing. It was a great podcast about leadership.
00:11:49
Speaker
We got the the the CEO and chairman of Cirque du Soleil talking about creativity in in the office and and how we negotiated deals with like the Beatles to do their stuff. And so we'll go out and get people that I find interesting. And that for me, that half of the show really keeps me really excited because when I can bring some historian on talking about the wild, wild west,
00:12:16
Speaker
and the history of the Wild West. And I can fuse that into money, which, by the way, there's no way that could do was going to pitch me because why would a Wild West podcast or a Wild West historian pitch a financial show? So I'm looking for these quirky topics that I can turn into money topics and that that makes it fun.
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, and the delivery, that that person probably, you weren't their first rodeo, so to speak. So yeah they'll they'll be able to tell their story to your audience in an entertaining fashion. So that's a win-win. It's so fun. yeah With trending topics, I know you're both at the established point of your podcasts where you may not have to rely on that for views or hope that search engine optimization works for you and you're shaking your head no. So you've already passed that. I never started it. Okay. so yeah I want to do it more. Do you want to jump on the trends more? Well, and not for the trend for SEO. I really still don't care about SEO, but I do like that our headline is what's going on right now. So I liked it when we covered the bank failures. We actually did a special episode where
00:13:20
Speaker
OG and Doug and I just jumped on as that stuff was happening and we did like a just in time, like special episode coming out that day. I just find that stuff fun. When there's a big thing, I find it really fun to jump on and and and help people get through it. But it also makes us feel a little bit, you know, maybe once or twice a year, a little bit like a newsroom. We're like, I got to get this thing out. It's got to go out right now. It's super creative, fun and and intra interesting. addressful Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
But I want to distinguish between feeling like a newsroom versus just like chasing trends or chasing SEO because I think these are really three different things. So being a newsroom I think is very important. And I say this as a former journalist and someone who's training is in journalism, being a newsroom is responding to the events of of the day. He had covering the the events of the day. So for example, as of the time that we're recording this interview right now, the Fed ah about, I guess it was a month ago at this point, about a month ago, the Fed lowered interest rates. And so the Fed lowering interest rates, it was the first interest rate reduction since March of 2022. That's huge news. And a lot of people have questions like, what does this mean? What does it mean for me? What does it mean for, should I buy a house? Should I refi my mortgage? Should I, you know,
00:14:38
Speaker
but how do I think differently about taking out a car loan or a student loan? And so that type of ah current event, you know, news hook, I think is really pivotal. But when it comes to SEO, you know, like, oh, what keywords are trending? Even in the beginning, even back when it was really popular, I always thought that that was, you know, optimizing for the algorithm rather than optimizing for your audience.
00:15:05
Speaker
is just not, in my view, a winning strategy.
Audience Focus vs. Algorithm Optimization
00:15:07
Speaker
And I see that happening in various ways so much. People optimize for the ah for the algorithm rather than the audience over and over again. And I think it's important to have a North Star and the North Star always has to be the audience and not, you know, some algorithmic trend. And I love that. This is interesting, Paula, because I love the idea of a North Star so much that there's something else I see podcasters and video creators where I think they really mess up and they make it harder for themselves. And I don't think their audience is going to like it as much as they think that they will. I cannot stand it when I see creators online go, what do you guys think I should talk about next? What do you think we should do next?
00:15:48
Speaker
and it's And don't get me wrong, if if I'm having discussions with some of our stackers and they want to hear about something and I want to make that thing, I'm very happy to make it. But I'm not like a DJ taking requests on the radio. My job is to be a master chef.
00:16:05
Speaker
and to be cooking for this particular person, this avatar, and to surprise and delight you within the structure that I've created. but and it's hard I can't surprise you or delight you or actually, frankly, have fun creating if I'm just whipping up whatever the hell you guys want. You know what I mean? I think my job is, I heard Tim Ferriss say once,
00:16:27
Speaker
talking about his podcast, he said, my job is if if I'm interested in Stradivarius violins, which has nothing to do with productivity, so to speak, you know, the stuff that Tim Ferriss's shows about, he's like, if I want to talk about that, I love the fact that I can surprise my my audience by talking about Stradivarius violins, by tying it into productivity in a way that they didn't see coming. And what that does is that makes your audience trust your cooking even more.
00:16:55
Speaker
You know, when they see these things like, you know, we're we're told all the time, like our Wild West episode I was talking about earlier, you know, a brand new person do our show, we'll go, what the hell's a Wild West have to do with money? I'm going to skip that one. But if they don't skip it one time, they learn to trust my cooking. And that's what we hear about our show over time is I love the fact that Joe will take this person that has nothing to do with money and we craft this episode.
00:17:19
Speaker
that might be more poignant than the straightforward money expert, you know, that they ah expect a good money tip from. Right. Yeah. You know, I gave a talk about exactly the same concept about don't follow your followers. Your job is to lead. Your job is to is not to follow. And so and that doesn't of course, that doesn't mean ignore feedback. Like part of leadership is soliciting and digesting that feedback.
00:17:44
Speaker
But doing so in a way in which that is one of many inputs that goes into this broader ah kaleidoscope of decision making. You know, it's funny you say that, Paula, because in the early days, David is stacking measurements. And there's still people to think this.
00:18:00
Speaker
The big negative review we always got was these guys think they're funnier than they are. And I wish they'd stopped screwing around but because they liked it when we didn't screw around.
Humor, Feedback, and Content Improvement
00:18:10
Speaker
So what's funny about that is that person wanted us to be more like Dave Ramsey, right? They have a Dave Ramsey take or a Susie Orman take. We were not that. They didn't know what to do with us. What I had to do, Paula, to your point was take that feedback and say, okay, what's going on here? What I realized was,
00:18:28
Speaker
Number one, comedy for us is part of teaching. I believe that you are more likely to retain knowledge if you don't even think that you're learning. if If you're just having fun, you're listening to our show and we can teach you five new concepts that you didn't even think about, you'll get over the bumps in the road because the comedy keeps you there.
00:18:45
Speaker
But the thing that they that that review really told me was, at that point in my career, I'd spent over 25 years in and around personal finance, either as a personal finance professional or on the media side. I had never studied comedy. And there are people on the road all day long honing their craft doing comedy. And I just thought, hey, we'll turn on the mic and we'll crack some yuck yucks. you know well Shame on me. So what this person what this person wanted me to do with that was to stop clowning around. I realized we had to do it better. And so we've gotten over the last 10 years much, much better at comedy because we studied we've studied it for so long. I know the different forms of comedy. I know going into a joke, like how to twist the joke and make it make it make it better. So I had to spend more time learning that part of the craft. Right.
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah and that's the other to to piggyback off of that oftentimes people people don't know what they want and part of reading feedback is not listening to what they say at the surface level but rather kind of unpacking what they say and and kind of breaking it down into its constituent elements and figuring out what to do with that. So I'll give you an example from, we created this course, our first course that we ever built. This was several years ago. ah We had a beta test group that went through it. And but part of the feedback that they gave us, you know we had we had organized all of the modules by topic.
00:20:17
Speaker
So topic A, topic B, topic C, topic D. And they wanted us to completely tear it apart and just reorganize everything into a step-by-step mechanism. Now we had custom, we had hired a a developer to like and a design team to custom build the website that the course lives on. So if we had ripped apart, if we had done literally what they had asked us to do, which is rip apart all all of the modules and restructure it,
00:20:43
Speaker
we would have had to completely redesign the entire underlying platform in addition to redesigning and reshooting and reediting all of the video content. And it would have been at least a $30,000 project and it would have taken another six months.
00:21:00
Speaker
And the efficacy of that probably wasn't very good, wasn't very high. Right. And so what what we realized was that what they were actually, you know, what they were saying was we want you to rip apart the structure and and restructure this into step one, step two, step three.
00:21:15
Speaker
that was That was on the surface. Those were their words on the surface. But what they were actually communicating underneath that is, hey, I feel like I have an in-depth understanding of each constituent topic, but I don't know how to pull all of these topics together into an actionable flow, an actionable framework.
00:21:37
Speaker
And so what we did was we created literally a flowchart. We just we built a huge flowchart and said, all right, this is where you got a you start here, and then if this, then that, and then, you know, and then we just, and it was literally the solution was as simple as a PDF flowchart.
00:21:56
Speaker
Right? And what did you do? you just had to hyper Did you just hyperlink that? You didn't have to rebuild it because you just built a flowchart and then you hyperlink from that to the original lesson? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So it was it was a one day solution that costs nothing. A couple hours of time. That's it.
00:22:12
Speaker
So I knew I was on to something good with my podcast when I started getting the the, the not so great comments in the, in the, and they didn't like, yes, I got one. Yes. Because then people are emotionally attached. Yeah. So ah one of them is because of the, this poster right here behind me was one of them, one of the pictures behind me. Somebody had a problem with that. And then, since it and that was just, I love how people complain about the relevant stuff.
00:22:37
Speaker
yeah I don't like that picture. And yeah, so it's fine, but it's it's kind of like I'm old enough and like I get it and it's not like my, this is not my livelihood. So I maybe i don't have a ah as much burden or weight on my shoulders for this to be successful and for me to please everyone. and Ironically, as you probably get more success when you go through the attitude of you don't have to please every single person with doing what you're doing. So now I look at it as just kind of entertaining at this point. But now if there are more than there are more similar comments or more other comments, I would definitely look for the deeper truth or deeper understanding of whatever feedback I was getting, like
Impact of Feedback on Podcast Evolution
00:23:11
Speaker
Paula was saying.
00:23:11
Speaker
So, Paula, you said one of your issues was that ah guests who don't provide any ah actionable takeaways, but already so far, and just me talking with you today, I've already got a few actionable takeaways. One, ah you said something, was that we should start a podcast, apparently, called Normal Reggs to Normal Riches. So look forward to that. How's it going? TM. You should have said TM.
00:23:35
Speaker
That's a good one. Yeah. So no, this has been great. the Who have you not had on, like say if it's not in one of your pillars, but you're like, if I can get that person in, they're on. Who would that person be? Oprah. Oprah. oprah who Who would not want Oprah as a guest on the show? In fact, so, you know, Joe talked earlier about the distinction between inbound and outbound, right? Inbound being all of the pitches that you get, outbound being yeah him and his team going and approaching people who they want to have on the show.
00:24:05
Speaker
And so that one of the things that we think about often is is our mix of inbound and outbound as well, because we want to make sure that we're being proactive and and not just reactive. And when we discuss outbound, so we recently started, we imposed a new rule in which we only interview people in person. So, you know, Joe and I, when when he and I will answer a reader mailbag of questions, or technically a reader voicemail bag of questions,
00:24:32
Speaker
You know joe and i are doing q and&a episodes will do those virtually but if i'm sitting down with it you know because my audience knows joe they know me they like the episodes. But if i'm sitting down with a new guest and i'm interviewing them and introducing them to my audience i will only do those face to face.
00:24:49
Speaker
And that was, that's a recent thing that started less than a year ago. Where was I going with this? Oh, you were saying that now you got to figure out a way to get Oprah face to face. I think that's what you were going with. Oh, so yes. So when, when we talk about outbound in internally, when the team and I have those discussions, there are actually two categories of outbound that we have, you know, that we like file away. We've got outbound of, it would be cool to have them on the show.
00:25:14
Speaker
if they happen to be in New York at some point, or if we happen to be at the same conference together at the same time. right So if we happen to be in the same space, I would love to have them on the show. That's one category of Outbound. And then we have a separate category of Outbound that I refer to as the Oprah category. And that is the, I would stand barefoot in Alaska in the middle of winter. yeah That's what it took.
00:25:43
Speaker
you know i will If we reached out to them and they said, yes, I would ah be happy to be interviewed by you, but you're going to have to fly to Antarctica and eat nothing but beef jerky for the next 42 days, I'd be like, all right, sign me up. Like I love the carnivore diet. Let's do it. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So Oprah in Alaska is on your next. yeah Like this is Paula and you've got your journalistic background and you're like, this is is Paula, live from. From Juneau, Alaska.
00:26:16
Speaker
Barefoot. Yes. Joe, is it Oprah or do you have somebody else in mind? No, you know what's funny? I can't give you a person specifically. I really, I guess I would like to have more, you know, we get a lot of Wall Street-ish people on the show or academia people on the show. but So great penetration with professors, big thinkers, great money managers, or great thinkers in the personal finance space. We don't get a lot of Hollywood and fashion people. And when we have had Hollywood or fashion people on, I've had a lot of fun with those interviews. We had the
00:27:00
Speaker
director of the movie. yeah It was the one with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler where they realized when their kid was going to college that they hadn't saved any money. So they had the illegal casino in their basement. And it was that, you know, everybody might've seen the the promo for this movie where Will Ferrell is telling the financial planner, he goes, no, we have $401,000. And the financial planner says, no, you have a 401k with like $85 in it. So When we had him on, I don't know, when we can kind of have these quirky guests that people don't expect, like they know the project, they know they know the movie, they know they know that it's coming into theaters and we can do kind of a Jimmy Fallon style, hear some clips from the movie and then have them talk about how it was made and then talk about the money aspects of it. I would love more of that, I think.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, that that is. Similarly, I kind of think of, I guess, a podcast producer standpoint, just like you were talking about, how can you bring something that's tangential, kind of out of the norm, something that you find also interesting? How do you bring it in and shape it towards finances?
00:28:08
Speaker
to add a little spice to the conversations. And one of the things I was thinking about is like the, uh, the college NIL. Oh yeah. All the the value and how that works really, but you starting to hear more and more trickles about it. And maybe you've already had guests talking about the NIL, but yeah, one one idea I was like trying to get a lawyer on as well as a, an athlete to just try to talk about that. But cause that's a new world for people who didn't grow up with the NIL. Oh, and I'm most interested in David, even the head coaches you hear now.
00:28:34
Speaker
talking about, you know, my third string running back who's never going to play is demanding a hundred thousand dollars. Like what the what hell is that all about? That's that free market capitalism making its way to academia. Yeah. Yeah. And there are definitely pros and cons, but that's something, that's an example, sort of kind of like what you're talking about, going out saying something that's interesting you or that would be interesting to explore and try to somehow overlap it with that Venn diagram of finances in an entertaining way. Those those are fun.
00:29:01
Speaker
What is your most popular podcast? And did you see that one coming? We we might have the same answer for
Popular Episodes and Viral Attention
00:29:10
Speaker
this. Ooh, okay. Which one is yours? Well, I think I know what yours is, but the same guest came on mine moments before and I thought I got a great interview with this person. Is that your biggest? Yeah, that's my biggest. That's my most downloaded episode.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's mine, too. Really? Wow. You haven't stated the name. so of is it Can we just... Is this the name one? I can't say it. I know. It's Susie Orman. Yeah. yeah Susie's number one. Ramit's been on my show, I think, four or five times. But one of Ramit's appearances, I think, is number two. David Bach did really well. Those those names, some of the big names in personal finance, always are in the top spots.
00:29:52
Speaker
Like Paula, can I take some of your shine, Joe, for this question? Meaning you said you thought you had a great episode and then her episodes dropped and hers blew out of the water and maybe I'll shine yours a bit. Not sure with the Susie Orman. Well, hers did. I don't know if you know, David, about the controversy that happened on Paula's show with Susie Orman. I know of the episode. I know. Was there a controversy that wasn't public? Oh, no, no, it was public. It was very public. It went extremely viral.
00:30:20
Speaker
on Yeah, that that was that was my my brush with virality and seeing you know seeing what happens when an episode goes just mega, mega viral. I went for Joe to make the cut the joke about his brush with virality. vitalityality I took a blue pill and my virality was fine.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah, I know that definitely blew up. I mean, I was familiar with you, of course, before that, but man, after that, yeah I can only imagine that that helped your own notoriety as well as did you see an ability to get bigger names on your podcast after that? ah you know Honestly, the thing about things going viral is that there's a huge spike and then everything returns to baseline. So there's a big reversion to the mean shortly after shortly after a viral pop.
00:31:05
Speaker
And so you know it was fortunately at the time that it went viral, you know that there are a lot of content creators who something will go viral right out of the gate. And because they don't have an existing body of work, they the people who are paying attention to them don't have any way of forming a relationship with them. you know There's a distinction between attention versus relationship.
00:31:26
Speaker
And so they get a ton of attention, but if it's early in their careers or early in their content creation, therere they don't have enough of an archive that people would be able to form that relationship. And so for those content creators, unless you're very lucky, it usually that attention dissipates and then they go back to being anonymous. There are, so however, some examples of content creators where something has gone viral. And because they have an existing body of work, they now have a new elevated baseline.
00:31:55
Speaker
So they have now gained a long-term audience, a a sustainable audience that has transitioned from attention to relationship. And so I was lucky in that by the time suse orrm that Susie Orman episode went viral, I had already been podcasting for two years and I had been a blogger for five years prior to that. So I was well established, you know, even then. And so I read normalized at a marginally more elevated baseline. It wasn't even really that much higher. But then it was it's still the hard, slow, you know, day by day, step by step, you know, one download at a time, upward slog of growth. And that that, by the way, for me, that one download at a time for me truly is the fun. And sometimes I forget that. But when I interface with real people that are on the other end of our show, that's when I have the most fun.
00:32:50
Speaker
when when i'm which is why when I go places increasingly, I try to make sure that I have meetups. I want to be in the community online, although sometimes you know you feel like ripping your eyes out from being online too much. But i I really, for the most part, enjoy the back and forth of how people respond to what we do.
00:33:11
Speaker
And by the way, also another thing that that I think will might surprise people is Susie came to us, came to both of our shows. Like I got this email one day out of the blue. I thought it was a joke. Somebody's like, hey, I represent Susie Orman. who would would you Would you mind having her on your show? Would I mind?
00:33:29
Speaker
Come on, we've had 1600 episodes of Stacking Vegemans. Every episode has a title but one. I could not figure out what to call Susie Orman's episode. I don't remember what what episode number it was, but it's like episode 865, Susie Orman. like yeah let's come on like I don't know what to call this. There's no name that will beat Susie. It's almost like if Paula gets Oprah on. What are you going to say besides Oprah Winfrey? Just say Oprah Winfrey. You're done. Steven Spielberg. Yeah. Yeah. So David, same question for you though. Sure. So besides this episode, which is going to be huge and viral because you had us on. Of course. yeah What's your biggest spin so far?
00:34:09
Speaker
by the numbers. Yeah, it is. So mine is a YouTube first. And then so the YouTube video goes out, we're videotaping this. ah So if you're listening to this, there's a YouTube channel, if you can go see a Joe's pretty face, and Paul's pretty face as well. So I measure my success or metric of, you know, whatever that keeps me going right now at this stage of the game on views, watch hours, and that's on the YouTube side. And then just My podcast audio, my audio podcast metrics are kind of more cryptic. I'm not really sure exactly. Maybe, maybe y'all. Yeah. I don't know how y'all get your actual like credible numbers. So my largest, my biggest, most views on YouTube has been jail Collins, uh, sub up at the wealth. And I'm sure you've had them on your shows plenty of times too. And that was great, but I think it was great. I do want to say like, I didn't just start a podcast. I'm very fortunate that I'm already in some circles with.
00:35:03
Speaker
people like you who I can text and say, would you like to come on a podcast? And because you know me, I have some kind of credibility and I have likely to get guests with names that other people recognize.
Hosting Notable Finance Figures
00:35:13
Speaker
So so that video I believe has been viewed 23,000 times. And this fabulous. Yeah. And this podcast started in February of this year. So Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and then the next few, I had Jill Collins and Paul Merriman on, on the same episode they had never met in person, so. Wow. Invited them on. Wow. So I think that created a lot of discussion, because two people that, at least in my mind, are kind of in the same circle of like mentorship and experience and reach, but they had never really even spoken to each other before. So that was a cool experience. And that also got some because some' good traction as well.
00:35:52
Speaker
I feel like those two guys are like the one-two punch. yeah yeah you know They totally are just yin and yang, just fantastic. Two great men. So we talked about trends and trajectory. And right now with Joe, with your 75 bajillion downloads and Paula's with your way more than 35 million downloads.
00:36:13
Speaker
you might You might not remember what metrics were important to you when you first started and how you kind of kept that motivation, how you gazed whether what you were doing was working, whether to keep going with it. How did your growth line look and what were your thoughts as that shifted either up or down or up and down? Clearly the trend line went up and to the right.
00:36:33
Speaker
I have two stories. I'll share a short one that because it's about Paula and then I'll share mine later after Paula goes but but the the longer answer. But, you know, early on I got really obsessed with the numbers and it was just always the numbers, the numbers, the numbers. And I remember I wrote a an email to all of our contributors to Paula and Len Penzo and OG And, and I think that might've been before Greg, but anyway, I sent out a thing going, Hey, the numbers are down a little bit. You know, we only have like, you know, 1200 people and I'm not sure what's going on with the numbers, but here's what I'm thinking. da-dadada dah
00:37:16
Speaker
And Paula sent me, sent all of us back an email I sent to her and everyone from like the first week. and paul and And Paul, I don't remember exactly what you said, but it was something like, this is the Joe I like. And it was, we had gone from like 68 downloads to 74. And I was so effing over the moon excited that 74 people were listening to our show.
00:37:41
Speaker
And Paula just brought me back to that and goes, you know, when you've got 69 people, 70 people listening to you, I mean, think about those people in one room. That's pretty badass. The 70 people will spend an hour with you. And to Paula's point, that's the, you know, the contract is that we're not going to waste their time. yeah So that that fun slap in the face that Paula gave me was was a great one because it truly is about the individual people.
00:38:09
Speaker
not about and And when I stopped focusing on the numbers and started thinking about the relationships, the numbers started going up again. Whenever I think about the numbers and, oh my God, the show's not growing, the show doesn't grow. When I think about actually getting in there and making this woman's life easier, more making her laugh, making her think, making her have a great hour with us, the show does really well.
00:38:32
Speaker
And Paul, your past use that I remember seeing some of your, even if you Google your name now, I think some pop up you were writing for medium or for some, I see some articles still in and your web, not your web history, but the history of the internet.
00:38:47
Speaker
and some of the articles that you authored. And this was a while back. So you've also had a significant upward trend of your own, I guess, fame, for lack of a better word, notoriety, as well as ah your podcast itself. And you're also doing other things so in the same space. How did your trend line look this first few years?
00:39:09
Speaker
So from 2011 to 2016, I was in doing two things. I was a personal finance freelance writer, and that was how I made my day-to-day income. So my my day job, so to speak, was freelance writing about personal finance. So I wrote for AOL Daily Finance. I wrote for Business Insider, which is now just called Insider. I wrote for About dot.com. I was their budgeting and personal finance guide. My most lucrative contracts were contracts that I had working for private companies, typically smaller companies like a CPA firm that has 5 to 10 people working there. So they don't have enough money to have an in-house content creator, but they want to have an internet presence.
00:39:56
Speaker
So, you know, a contract, an ongoing repeated contract running the blog for that CPA firm based out of Kansas City. Those were those were my that that those were the real moneymakers. And anyway, so I spent five years doing that, 2011 to 2016. And in parallel, I was growing the blog and I was growing the audience, growing the newsletter. And in late 2015, early 2016, I realized, you know what?
Paula's Transition to Full-time Podcasting
00:40:21
Speaker
I could drop these freelance writing clients and I have enough traction now with AffordAnything that if I were to spend all of my time doing this, I could do this full time. And so I started gradually tapering down the freelance writing clients and that was so early 2016 was when I started the podcast.
00:40:41
Speaker
right at the time that I was tapering down the freelancing and going full time into afford anything as a brand. And so then to your question about like, how do I view growth? I mean, for the those first five years, it was, what's the growth? I wasn't so much looking at the, you know,
00:40:59
Speaker
Growth of the traffic to the website, yes, but really what I cared about, I cared about relationships and relationships. If there's any metric tied to that, it's the newsletter, the email list. That's the one that I can always tell you right off the top of my head, even when that's in the times when it's not doing well, i I'm always very aware of it.
00:41:18
Speaker
you know So that's the salient number, whereas the rest of them are sort of fuzzy or can be at times. But ah in terms of motivation, my motivation, particularly with the podcast, didn't come from looking at the numbers. it sort of just I think it's just that the day-to-day of like just publish, publish the next one, publish the next one, publish the next one. I used to be a a newspaper reporter. And, you know, how do you get motivated? I was a daily newspaper reporter. So I wrote five articles a week, five days a week. Right. How do you get motivated? You you don't you just publish the next article. you You have an article due the next day, every single day. So you just deadline, deliver, deadline, deliver, deadline, deliver. And you just you don't really think about it. You just
00:42:07
Speaker
Keep delivering on deadline and then move on. It was it was funny, Paula. There's a there's a podcast called the Q and&A with Jeff Goldsmith and he interviews people that make movies and they write movies. And I remember this one guy he interviewed was one of the writers behind shows like Breaking Bad.
Podcast Improvements and Popularity Growth
00:42:25
Speaker
And he asked him, he asked this whole panel what they do when they get writer's block. And some of the people that just make movies said that they, that they, they, you know, how they did it, what they do. And this guy said, because he's on this serial that happened every week and they had so many more deadlines in television versus what the movie guys had. He's like, I don't have time for writer's block. Yeah. yeah I just do the thing. And I would say that too. We got three episodes a week, which is a cadence that we like. I don't have time for writer's books. Like like we we just go. are Our growth, David, was not up into the up and to the right, like you're talking about. It was very much hockey stick.
00:43:05
Speaker
we We didn't grow very much the first few years and the show was a little bit all over the place and we were we were tweaking a lot of different things, but truly didn't know what we were doing. And this is why I like going to industry conferences.
00:43:21
Speaker
As we record this, I'm about to go to FinCon, but there's a conference called Podcast Movement that I started going to. And I remember that this particular year, we had Aisha Taylor, the comedian on, and she was talking about at its heart, this is your, and it truly is for me, your crappy third grade art project. I'm like a kid and this is my art project and I love it so much.
00:43:43
Speaker
And there's this period when I'm uploading it to the universe for you to hear it the next day and I'm the only one that's heard it and I can't wait for you to hear it. It's like, you're my mom and I can't wait for you to see my my cool thing that I'd made. She talked about that, but a guy named Roman Mars came on the stage. He has a wonderful NPR show called 99% Invisible.
00:44:03
Speaker
and i would I used to get snarky about ratings. I would look at the Apple ratings of how the podcasts were, and I was like, I'm better than that one. I'm better than that one. Looking at the ones that are ahead of me, I'm better than that. I'm better than them, better than them, and get a little weird about it. And I remember Roman Mars was on stage and showed his five-week production schedule. the the He opened up and he showed all the tools they used to make their show and how they make their show. The people that sign off on it, the severe editing they did versus the editing we were doing at the time. And I remember I'm sitting in the front row and I wrote on my iPad, I have the rating I deserve.
00:44:44
Speaker
because I thought I was professional and I was nowhere near as professional as Roman Mars was on that stage. And so we went back to the drawing board. We blew up everything about the show. We made it snappier. We made it more Tonight Show.
00:44:59
Speaker
We gave Doug a bigger role, talked about being a mom's basement more, made the show the topics more accessible for a wider audience, which is really what I was trying to do in the first place. Everything shorter, snappier, moving more fun, right? And that's also around the time we really got serious about the comedy.
00:45:17
Speaker
on the show. And what was funny was at that time, we were at about 3000 downloads an episode, I remember. And we roll out this new thing that I'm super excited about. And within three weeks, half of my audience had gone bye-bye. And I got so much hate mail from people who absolutely hated it. They hate it. I get this one note from this woman who is who was like, I thought she wanted to talk about the show and what we were doing. so she So she writes me, I hate your show. I hate this. I hate the new theme music. I hate Doug. I can't stand the the increasing clowning around. ah You wrecked my favorite show. She's like, you've completely wrecked. And I thought she wanted to talk about the making the show like we are here today. So I write her back literally like this 3000 word email that I thought was really, really cool.
00:46:07
Speaker
And she writes back very simply, she goes, you are the most egotistical bastard I've ever talked to. You just think you're so right. And what was funny was, was that often I'm way wrong, but I but i was not trying to be defensive. I was just trying to tell her what we were doing. And I was also telling her, I'm like, listen, we're not good at this yet.
00:46:25
Speaker
right? We are not good. I'm putting this together and I can see it in my head. And this art project is not what I thought about in my head yet. I'll say it was within a month that we figured it out. And like three months later, it was just this incredible hockey stick, like through the roof. All of a sudden, we were on all these best podcasts lists, like list after list would come out. I remember there would be two or three a week.
00:46:52
Speaker
that we're on best podcast list. That was when Art of Manliness, our avatar is a woman. Art of Manliness put us on the list of the top like 12 podcasts men need to listen to. That that increased our listenership among young men by a lot.
00:47:07
Speaker
ah Which made it more important, by the way, if we're gonna be wide audience to keep that woman as the avatar, because it would have been easy for us to just lean into young men and make the show maybe more bro, I don't know, but to stay true to what we were doing. But so it it wasn't up and to the left, it was like, yeah and then boom.
00:47:24
Speaker
And then we got another big, we got another big, big bump when Serial came out. If you remember the podcast Serial. So Serial was the first podcast that had millions and millions of listeners. And when season one of Serial ended, we saw this gigantic bump as everybody who listened to Serial, which was the first podcast they'd ever listened to, all of a sudden they're out looking for new stuff to do.
Growth Patterns in Podcasting
00:47:47
Speaker
and And I still find that today. It's, it's much more like stair steps than up into the, up and into the right. Yeah. And my very, uh, very short history of this podcast, I look at, I use then caster and you go to analytics and it has this graph and it looks like this.
00:48:06
Speaker
You know, and every Friday, whenever an episode is released, it gets a pop. I think the most I've had on a Friday was like 1.2000. So 1200. And it still averages like around 700 right now. Every Friday it gets a pop and then it comes out for like maybe around a hundred average every day. I don't know where I was going with that. Oh, the step.
00:48:23
Speaker
So for like the first four or five months, it was just like a drizzle right at that bottom line. I was like, and then I get one guest on and it jumps up and then it's like stays right there. And then it jumps up and stays right there. yeah So so far I've seen about three or four of those jumps. It's it's good to see. I'm sure I'm waiting for the next jump. hopefully You're always waiting for the next jump. If you think about it, who are who are the early adopters who will listen to a brand new podcast? They're the people often who are the most interested in the subject matter right of of of any podcast, whether it's personal finance or fashion or horse training. right Board games, yeah, whatever. Board games, exactly. you know the The people with a casual interest in it,
00:49:08
Speaker
might listen to only the biggest ones and only from time to time. If you're an avid enthusiast, then you're more likely to be the person, that early adopter, who's listening to all of the new Upstart shows. So when you're a a new show, those first few listeners that you get are the people, you know they're the raving fans. They're the people who were really, really into this stuff in a big way.
00:49:34
Speaker
I know Libsyn produces some stats, I believe, David, that the top, you're in the top 50% of all podcasts. Steve Stewart knows this number better than I do, but I think it's if you have 120 downloads. If you have 120 downloads, you're in the top 50%. Wow. That's, that's good. But then you said, but I don't know how those are computed. Cause you, you mentioned earlier that the average podcast only exists for seven episodes. For seven episodes. Without getting average Dan then. like No, I don't think so. I mean, I mean, when you produce a new episode, But you're right. Yeah. Those people that have seven episodes. Yeah. Yeah. um So, but yeah, that my trend line is up and to the right, very gradual and step ladder more than just a straight line. Yeah. right and And I would guess that that's how most what happens. You get like a break. Maybe, maybe yours jumped up to the right when Susie Orman was on your podcast. It was already successful, but you probably saw another big jump right then. Like you mentioned, how do you have a sustainable baseline? How did, how did Netflix affect your downloads, Paula? Good question.
00:50:32
Speaker
The downloads, not so much. The two big effects that Netflix had, one was my Instagram following, and the other was the the growth of my email list. So those two jumped significantly when when the Netflix movie came out. And for ah listeners who were wondering what we're talking about, so there was a documentary on Netflix called Get Smart with Money that that I my myself, along with three other financial coaches, the four of us were the four financial coaches within that movie. So that came out in 2022. And yeah, big Instagram boost, big newsletter subscriber boost. So yeah I know you both have newsletters.
00:51:08
Speaker
Paula, you started out, you're an established writer and you had a successful blog and then you branched into podcasting. And then, you know, balance that as you went forward. I don't know exactly how, what you were doing when you started, Joe. do you Did you have a nine to five and jump right into podcasting?
00:51:24
Speaker
No, mine was mine was an interesting transition. So I was a financial planner. I was turning 40 when I got this email from a guy who is a real mentor of mine saying, I really like, this is totally by the way, like a fire email.
00:51:40
Speaker
He said, I really like what I'm doing, but I don't love it. I like financial planning. I don't love it. And I just, I think I might have other mountains to climb. I've been very lucky that I've put some savings away. I don't think I can not work forever, but I think I can go figure it out. And he said, so I think I'm going to go climb some other mountains. And we thought he was being metaphorical and he went and climbed Mount Everest twice.
00:52:02
Speaker
He climbed most of the tall peaks around the world. He now runs an adventure travel company in in boulder and is just living his best life. He's just he has so much fun and not just me but og on my show i'll also work for the same organization. So he was He was influenced by that. I was influenced by that. I had i had definitely gotten my financial act together. I had accumulated some good wealth and I had this business. So at 40 years old, I sold my business and I went back to become a high school teacher and a track coach because I wasn't worried about money. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. And my wife and I met each other coaching middle school track and it was a blast. So I just wanted to go back and teach kids.
00:52:46
Speaker
And so i I started taking post bachelor's teaching programs to get my to get my certificate, to become a teacher. And these teachers were so great, they taught me that I'd be battling administrators and it was going to be very difficult. And during that time, I had done public relations for American Express and Ameriprise for a long time. I'd been on television twice a week.
00:53:08
Speaker
And my friends that were financial planners asked me if I would write their newsletters. So I would charge them to write their newsletters. they Friends of mine that were on television, I wrote their TV scripts for the TV segments they were doing. So I was doing all of this writing stuff. I'm in shorts and a t-shirt and I'm having a blast. And then I did the math and I'm like, I'm making as much doing this freelance writing per hour as a first year teacher is, and I'm teaching people about money and I'm not battling any administration. The big battle is me just staying motivated. So then I started freelancing much like Paula, that turned into a blog. And then my partner, OG and I, who he was doing the blog with me,
00:53:53
Speaker
We said, you know what, we should, we should start a podcast. We thought we were really late, by the way. It's pretty funny. We thought we were so late. Same. Same. If you're late, then I know, I know. We thought we were way late to the game 2012. Yeah. 2012. And we delayed a year. We had the idea for the podcast in 2011 and we let a year go by before we started it. If I could do anything, I would, I would start it earlier, but yeah. So it was kind of a meandering road, David, to the podcast.
Overcoming Fear of Late Start in Podcasting
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah, I thought I thought I was late too. I started in 2016 and at the time I was like, I am so late to the game. Should I even bother? Like, you know, how can, because everyone I knew had started a podcast in 2010, 2011, 2012. And I'm like, man, if 2010 to 12 was the time to start,
00:54:43
Speaker
If you haven't started by at least 2014, what's the point? So, like, yeah, 2016, I really believed that I was late to the game. and And I think that the takeaway that I want the listeners to have is no matter what it is you're thinking about doing and no matter when it is, you're always going to think that you're too late. And if you let that stop you, then eight years in the future, you're going to look back and be like, wow, what a moron, you know? Every time.
00:55:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I hear this in so many domains. Like, you know, I hear people, there are people in 2018 who are like, I really want to buy a rental property, but like should have bought it in 2012. Now it's 2018. It's way too late. And, you know, fast forward to 2024. All these people are like, whoa, you bought in 2018. You're so lucky you got in early. Right. yeah The market's been going up now since 2008. I shouldn't start investing now.
00:55:38
Speaker
for Right. Yeah, exactly. Look at VTSAX now compared to 2008. Forget it. So each of you, so you're basically started your, Joe, you're you're started from scratch, your podcast, basically, right? Yeah. If you're a newsletter and then into your podcast, I think. And then, but you had a brand, Paula, so you didn't necessarily start from scratch.
00:55:59
Speaker
But you're saying if somebody's out there listening to this and they aren't thinking about starting a podcast, just start it anyway. And the next step would be for that person is, great, they figured out how to record, edit, or hire out editing, or however it is, to get a, they figured out how to upload it to the Lib Center, whoever their hosting platform is. It's out there. Now what? Do they do a YouTube ah beside it? I know that's a big thing now. I do it. I'm sure you do it.
00:56:23
Speaker
And then the next thing would be, you mentioned ah your Instagram got a big boost. and so But not everybody has all the time and the day to do it, not saying you do. But if I'm still trying to figure out how to get a podcast off the ground, what's that next step I can do to try to get a jolt other than just publish the podcast?
00:56:39
Speaker
So the best framework that I have learned for this comes from a investing ah content creator who covers the the topic of investing.
Platform Loyalty and Discoverability
00:56:48
Speaker
His name is Brian Feroldi. He's a the author of a book. but His book is called why The Stock Market Goes always goes Up. yeah Great guy, amazing guy, check out his stuff. Brian has this amazing framework where he says, look, imagine imagine X, Y axis, right? And on the X axis, you have loyalty, right? and And then on the Y axis, you have discoverability. So as you move further down the X axis, which is that horizontal axis,
00:57:21
Speaker
You've got certain certain platforms that are high loyalty, far along the x-axis, and certain platforms that are low loyalty. So TikTok, for example, along that that horizontal spectrum, TikTok is low loyalty. you know People generally are not super loyal to, with a few exceptions, people are generally not very loyal to TikTok creators.
00:57:43
Speaker
by contrast, podcasters, newsletter writers, authors of books. People are very, very loyal. you know My favorite author, Yuval Noah Harari, I don't care what he what next book he publishes. He just published a new book about a month ago. I didn't even read the description of the book. I pre-ordered it immediately. I didn't even- It's like your favorite band comes out with a new album. You're like, I'm buying it. Exactly. Yeah, I didn't even care what it was ah what it was about. He could have written about shoelaces and I would have read it, you know, because that's how much loyalty people have to authors to podcasters to newsletter writers. So that's the that's the x axis. That's a horizontal axis. That's where loyalty low to high.
00:58:24
Speaker
Then you've got the y-axis, ah the vertical axis, that's discoverability. Now, platforms like TikTok are high discoverability but low loyalty because they're scrolling behavior on TikTok, right? Easy to discover new things, hard to stay loyal to them. Instagram, slightly higher loyalty and slightly lower discoverability, although it's starting to trend in the direction of TikTok. YouTube, I think, is right there in the center. It's sort of midpoint loyalty, midpoint discoverability.
00:58:54
Speaker
So you've got, if you imagine that that line, that graph, you want to frame each platform, LinkedIn, Twitter, now X, WhatsApp. You can follow people on WhatsApp. you You can follow creators on WhatsApp. You want to frame every single one of these platforms in terms of where they sit in the ah loyalty discoverability. You know, where would you plot them on those X, Y axes?
00:59:17
Speaker
And then if you have one or two platforms that are very high loyalty, low discoverability like podcasting is, then I think it's important to counterbalance it with something that is greater in discoverability and at a minimum midpoint in loyalty, if not better. It's the difference to to tag onto that.
00:59:38
Speaker
Tactically, I think it's important because to your point, David, a lot of people don't have all day. they they don't do and When you start out, you don't know how it's going to do. So even spending all day on it could be a colossal waste of time. So putting your time in the right place There are so many tools now that weren't available when, when we started. And it's funny, we just started a ah new side show called stacking adventures about, it's a travel show. And the way I make that is made the, what the construction is the answer to the time problem. Cause I don't want to spend a lot of time. I really enjoy travel probably shouldn't even have this podcast. I just do it cause it's a hell of a lot of fun and you're not going to stop me from goofing around with it.
01:00:23
Speaker
but we we perform it live on YouTube so people can hang out with us live. That gives us YouTube content immediately with the live show. The show is produced live, so it's minimal editing. I spend maybe 10 minutes cutting off the front, cutting off the back, adding a bed of music in just a couple of places at the beginning at the end, and uploading it. It takes almost no work, and I do it on a platform called Riverside,
01:00:51
Speaker
which allows me to hit a button that creates what they call magic clips, these little one minute clips of the show that I can put on social media. So I can spend 40 minutes recording the show, spend an hour of prep ahead of time, and in an hour and 40 minutes, a total of probably two hours, to maybe two and a half hours a week.
01:01:15
Speaker
We have this weekly show and all the social media and the stuff that goes with it. it just By making your construction multi-platform, which is easier than it used to be, I think it solves a lot of problems and letting your audience know that this is created live. So it's going to have some bumps and bruises. It's much easier to produce than the stacking Benjamin show. Sadly with stacking Benjamin's, it's a very highly produced show.
01:01:39
Speaker
with four or five segments every show and lots of lots of surprises. It's a technological nightmare to to produce. It's funny how it's stacking a adventures. I'm like solving all the problems that I created with my real brand.
01:01:55
Speaker
yeah but that i think that's You created your new show, knowing what you know now. And you're thinking, you're you're excited and you're interested in doing something additional, but you don't want the same heavy potential burdenistical burden of your, yeah, all
Embracing Failure and Monetization Strategies
01:02:09
Speaker
that stuff. yeah So how do you do it? So maybe that's like where somebody would start. I mean, it's kind of scary to start a live podcast, I would imagine, but if you were just, if you didn't have high expectations and you're doing it to get the, you know, get the repetitions in and then who knows what could happen. Well, basically, that would be a lighter way to start, right? Well, yeah, David, you guys both know this. What's the thing when somebody starting out there I was afraid of? They're going to look stupid and they're going to suck at it. The answer is yes. Yes. You will look stupid and you will suck at it. I looked stupid and I sucked at it. Go listen to my first episodes. We're horrible. We're just absolutely rotten. So the key isn't to not suck. The key is to get the suck out of the way.
01:02:50
Speaker
that, you know, that that great phrase, the only way is through the only way is through the suck. And the only way to get through it is the experience of actually doing it. So go out there, do your best, have fun making it, realize you're not going to be perfect. Give yourself some grace and just go through it. That is the advice I would give anybody. How much money did you expect to make podcasting and has it met or exceeded that expectation? My answer is really quick. I expected to make none.
01:03:17
Speaker
My expectation was we were going to have fun. We're going to mess around. If we can cover our costs, that would be great. So yes, every every paycheck that Stacking Benjamin's creates now is wonderful. So in your case, if you both have successful shows and that warrants... it revenue of of a sort, but you also have overhead. You said, second Benjamin's is highly produced. You have to pay for that unless you're doing it yourself, which I doubt you are. Sure. If you're comfortable saying like, is it in a 50K? Is it 100K? Did they replace your previous income? Is it something now you look at as not just a passion project, but so is it classified now in your mind as a job? And what are the pros and cons of that kind of psychology of it? It is a job, but But it's a job that I feel a lot of purpose around and is the guy that owns it and creates it. It's all I want to do. You know, Paula's Herbie joke before about the best thing for me would be that I die like in the middle of a podcast because the ratings on that episode be huge. Like you hear the dude who died in the middle of his show. I hate that joke. like Everybody hates that joke.
01:04:23
Speaker
i just think I just really want to do do this all the time. it's like it's it's in In fact, it's funny, Cheryl and I have talked about, because she loves what she does too, but she she has maybe 10 years maximum doing the stuff that that she does. And when she's done, we've talked about moving and spending the summer. It's harder than Helen Texarkana in the summer months and moving to Portugal.
01:04:48
Speaker
But I'll take this stuff with me and still do it from Portugal or from Bali or from wherever I go. So so I really like that. But it's you know, we're a mid six figure number for stacking vegemans on the on the on the revenue side. The amount that I bring home personally from it is a lower six figure number. We haven't done a great job of monetizing outside of the ads in the show. I'm finally creating some products.
01:05:18
Speaker
As we record this on Friday, we'll create our first guide. We're also taking people through my book stacked. I take people through my book stacked and we're going ah I'm gonna do that once a year. And then we're creating a signature course. So we'll have five guides, a signature course, and this this white glove kind of thing where you go through it with me personally. And those are all the products we're gonna have. But the fact that I've gone this long with none,
01:05:45
Speaker
is a testament to stupidity. like If I was truly building a business instead of doing just what I love, I would have created all this stuff people could do beyond the show long, long, long ago. Well, speaking of stuff that people can create, I know that Paula, you released a course a few years ago. I believe it's buying your first rental property, if that's something close to that. Is that correct? Yeah, it's called your first rental property.
01:06:09
Speaker
And I remember when it first released. By the way, I'm creating a course called Your Second Rental Property. And then I'll create one called Your Third. And they'll all we'll all owe Paula iid you answer your rental property.
01:06:29
Speaker
but that But that is something, you it's a way creators who have built a platform can continuously go that one step up and make it more lucrative while using their knowledge, while helping other people, while still doing something rewarding for themselves. Why did you, Paula, start a course? Of course, finance you know financial there is something there to gain, no doubt about it. But with your history, it did seem like a logical next step.
01:06:55
Speaker
Well, honestly, I was getting so many questions about rental property investing that I just needed to package everything together because, you know, when a person asks the question, oftentimes the answer begets follow up information.
01:07:11
Speaker
yeah so for and it's it Okay, for example, how do you know if a rental property is good or not? like Wow, it sounds like a simple question on the surface, but there is so much to unpack here. What is the definition of good? Mathematically, how is that calculated in terms of formulas? What are all of the different formulas that we use, like cap rate and cash on cash return? and what What is cap rate and how is it theoretically similar to or different from a dividend on a stock? and you know okay that's the That's the mathematical function of the answer, but then there's also the life goals function of the answer. and then there's how do you find What about the risk-reward spectrum in terms of class A versus class C? like right You could spend a solid 12 hours. if If somebody just asked the one question, how do I know if parental property is good or not?
01:07:59
Speaker
I mean, you could spend a solid 12 answers, 12 hours answering that question, right? Because there are so many, there's so much to unpack inside of that. And so for me, a big part of why I created that course is because I was just getting the same questions over and over and over and I needed to be like, did here Here is 50 hours of video with transcripts and worksheets and spreadsheets and just go through that and that should answer most of your questions. And if you have any more follow-up questions after that, then let me know.
01:08:31
Speaker
And again, I believe it was like instantly successful from basically what I hear from some of our peers. And so congratulations. Thank you. And and congratulations to all the people who have bettered themselves through your course. And I know that there are many. What's next for both of you? I know, Joe, you just mentioned you've got a course coming out and some additional guides. So we look forward to seeing that. And if you can give me the links to it at some point, I'll i'll put them in the description. Sure, great. Paula, what's next for you?
01:08:58
Speaker
So we are ah currently in beta on our on our next course. It's the second course that we've ever built, and it's called Your Next Raise. And this is a response to a hearing ah ah time and time again from our audience. Hey, inflation has gone up. you know every Groceries are expensive. Everything is expensive. Rent is expensive. Clothing is expensive. Everything costs a lot more. I feel like my wages haven't gone up to keep up with inflation.
01:09:26
Speaker
You know, that's a huge problem that we've been hearing about. And so we created a course, it's really about negotiating in general, so you can use it to negotiate for a car or negotiate with your spouse about who unloads the dishwasher. But the focus of it is negotiating for a raise. Yeah, I say, I already see the like the comments, it's gonna be like nine out of 10 people who are gonna be like, I'm here for the dishwasher negotiation techniques, please.
01:09:52
Speaker
Thank you, Joe. and Thank you, Paula, for taking the time. I know you are very busy and doing what you do to help so many people. And I look forward to our next conversation. ah Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, David. Ton of fun. And thank you all for watching and listening.