The Power of Podcast Marketing with Bryan Barletta

The Power of Podcast Marketing with Bryan Barletta

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 46 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we have Bryan Barletta and he is going to teach us all about podcasting and podcast advertising. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners. CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by Capital Business Development, Capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to The Business Development Podcast and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 46 of the Business Development Podcast. And for today's expert guest interview, We have podcast advertising expert, Bryan Barletta. Bryanis the founder of Sounds Profitable and with over 13 years in the ad technology space, Bryan has made a significant contribution to renowned companies such as Megaphone and Claritas, notably.

Bryanwas instrumental in the development of the world's first shakable ad in 2009. Building upon his extensive knowledge, Bryan has been hosting the Sounds Profitable podcast since January 2021, where he imparts valuable insights and empowers podcasters globally. Bryan, it's great to have you on the show.

How are you today?

Bryan Barletta: I'm great. I'm great. Yeah. I'm coming to you from Winter Park, Colorado. We've escaped Texas for the summer. So I do apologize that my sound quality isn't as great as my studio, but I'm in this nice little box and a co working space at a elevation. That's about 30 or more degrees cooler than what home would be right now.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, I feel you, dude. I am also recording from a new location and I'm fighting a little bit of reverb here. We are, we've found ways to deal with this in post, but I can't wait to have just a soundproofed room again. That will make my life a lot better. I'm right there with you. Well, it's absolutely amazing having you on the show.

We've chatted before. I actually, I actually found out about you through Fatima Zaidi who has been a guest on the show and is an expert in the Canadian podcasting space. And you know, I, I started looking into sounds profitable and kind of learned a little bit more about you. And I got really interested because you have a really cool background and your platform is really great and your podcast is amazing for other podcasters.

And yeah, tell me a little bit about yourself. You know, how did you get into podcasting? What was your background before that?

Bryan Barletta: Yeah, absolutely. So I I was a five year college dropout. So I dropped out of my fifth year. I wanted to be a history teacher originally but had an absolute anxiety attack after doing some student teaching, the pay and just dealing with kids who didn't want to learn.

And I fell into the mobile advertising space because I started covering mobile apps when the Android G1 came out and all that. And it just transitioned into developer evangelism, product management, and, technical account management sales engineering. And the first area I really got into is mobile rich media.

So I was part of defining some of the standards for how rich media worked in the mobile advertising space and got to work through that air that whole section, mobile ads back when people you'd say, I work in mobile ads and they'd say like, Oh, like the ads on the taxi because yeah, I mean, it was like 13, 14 years ago.

And then about halfway through their career we were at, I was at a company called AdTheorent we had a. Tracking product called Barometric for attribution and progressive auto insurance in WNYC basically said, can we use this in podcasting? The salesperson hit said, yes, I hit mute. And I said, what did you disagree to?

And then the whole company pivoted. Barometric became the first attribution company in podcasting. I was one of the founding members. We were acquired by Clara toss. I went over through the acquisition for a bit, then I went over to megaphone, a senior product manager of data and monetization, where I helped lead the ad server and the data pipeline.

I was really brought in to rewrite a lot of that stuff and work on it. They couldn't tell me that they were trying to sell to Spotify. So you can't really sell a house to somebody when there's someone ripping up a carpet. So they let me go in August, 2020 and I took a look at the space and in the short time I had been in it already, it had grown massively, right?

Podcasting is now celebrating 20 years. But like dynamic ad insertion is, I don't know, almost nine years old in podcasting and really, you know, the IEB 2. 0 spec was 2018. So we're only five years deep into standards on that. The innovation is great. The, the, the space is still growing rapidly, but what I realized was not enough people understood it.

What's a download. Why aren't there listens? Why isn't it streaming? How does. targeting work. So I just started writing very thankful to the team at pod news. They gave us the opportunity to kick things off. We've since ended our relationship with them, but they did give us an amazing platform to be all about ad tech.

We grew past that and we now really covered the business of podcasting and we expanded massively by having Tom Webster was the face of research and podcasting. He developed and led some of the most amazing research at Edison research where he spent 20 years as an audio expert there. He came over as my partner last June.

And so now we kind of operate as this advocacy and research for, for focused on growing all of podcasting. Tom and I own the company outright. We don't hold equity advisory or board seats in any company. We don't manage our personal and family finances, and we definitely don't work on commission and we sign MNDAs with any of our partners who want it.

So we have about 135 partners that work with us for consulting, for community, for growth, for thought leadership. And our goal is to make this industry not go from just missing 2 billion in the U S for advertising, but hitting 20 billion, because there's absolutely the potential for this industry to massively grow if we can be unified.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Well, first off, let me just congratulate you on your success, Bryan. Sounds profitable is awesome. I think what you're doing is awesome. I think it's, you know, I mean, I've been a podcaster now for five months. It is literally our it's a day after my five month anniversary. So I'm so new to this. I'm a business development person first through and through, right?

I've had a business development firm for three years. I decided to get into podcasting kind of on a bit of a whim, just thinking like I love podcasts and I love business development. Why don't I mesh those things together and see what comes of it and The business development podcast was born and it's been amazing, but you know, it's, it's hard.

Podcasting is really hard and nobody talks about that. And one of the hardest things about podcasting is the lack of knowing what to do. You know what I mean? Like most people are like me. They just, they have, you know, expertise in something else. And they say, you know what, I think podcasting would be a great platform to showcase that expertise, to have some fun.

It was really hard to set up an initial podcast studio because I was doing it from Google, from just like winging it, doing the best I can. And thank God this show's come out really great, but it had a huge learning curve. I just think we never know what to do next. And this is something even in our first kind of conversation, me and you had this conversation.

I was on the road to Calgary, my very first time talking to Bryan. We had a great conversation. Love those road trip conversations. But we were chatting about the business development podcast and capital business development and sounds profitable. And one of the things that I'd said to Bryan during that trip was, You know, it's hard to tell what to do next.

You know, you, you, you make this great show. You have a bunch of people listening. Things are clipping along and you're like, okay, like now what? But there's not any good information. At least I, I know that you have good information, but I guess the point is, is that it doesn't seem easily accessible. That information is not wide.

And like, if there are companies looking to maybe potentially add advertising and things like that, it's not clear. It's like clear as mud.

Bryan Barletta: Well, but I want to challenge you on that. How's your book coming?

Kelly Kennedy: My book? Yeah. Oh good. Do you have a book? I don't have a book.

Bryan Barletta: How's your YouTube channel? How's your live events?

How's, you know, it's podcasting is, is accessible, but it's not simple. And I think what's really interesting to think about on a B2B side, like, let's break this down a little bit. So you do business development. So consulting work. Right.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right.

Bryan Barletta: Yeah. All right. You have people, we talked about this a little bit before that are asking you about podcasting.

Yes. This conversation right here becomes material for you to work with your clients, to show them your expertise and your ability to engage with experts to really connect the dots on it. So if let's say that your podcast is not listened to anybody, but your clients. And it is simply material, then what we're building here today becomes resources and education for them.

And it's just like building an ebook, a course or something like that, that that's like the worst case. Now let's look at the second start. Me and you are both B2B people. There's potential for both of us to be clients for each other. Right. There's, you could be a partner. It sounds proper. I could be a client of yours.

That's fantastic. Or simply by knowing each other and interacting here, the, the conversation and the ability for us to lean on each other's expertise gets us to show that and say like, Hey, you know what? One of my partners asked for something. They're looking for business development. They're specifically with a Canadian slant to it or whatever the case may be.

Something of your expertise. I can now say, Oh, I did this podcast with this guy, get a feel for him. And I'd love to make an introduction. We're creating. Collateral, we're creating assets at the end of the day for a B2B podcast. I don't know if it's a failure, if nobody listens to it and what this becomes is what you post on LinkedIn and YouTube and social media as little clips and assets, or literally just a back way to get a sales conversation with someone or get them to think about you and you to provide them marketing material.

So that's, what's really fun about the space. I don't think there is any plan forward. I don't think getting. 10,000 to 100,000 downloads an episode is actually a win? Because I think that that's something that is incredibly difficult. Like B2B podcasts generating that much interest there. What are you doing that's net new?

That's, that's a big challenge. And why do you have to do something that's net new when you can figure out so many other ways to do it?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, you hit the nail on the head. And I think like, You know, I think that the expectation people were looking at podcasting, I think, I think I have a lot of people starting podcasts and they feel they feel disappointed and it's really too bad because you hit the nail on the head.

The reality is podcasting is not YouTube, right? Like, yeah, there are podcasts on YouTube and you hit to it. But the reality is. Most YouTube videos are what, 7 minutes, 15 minutes, right? Like, the engagement time people are just not listening is long, right? And so even if they have, whatever, 50, 000 downloads, it's just, it's a short clip.

It's not typically something long. If people are listening to your podcast, they're listening to you for 45 minutes, an hour. So, heck, if you only have a couple hundred downloads an episode, there's nothing wrong with that. And I think... Once again, it's something that you really have to dig into to see what is good for podcasting versus what is good for everything else.

But you're right, like the podcast space is a different, it's a different beast.

Bryan Barletta: And, and I want to challenge something like YouTube. So we built a bunch of like five minute videos that Tom Webster did where my partner and so he would basically, we called it data decoded. He would take a piece of data or a report and he would explain why it's valuable and how you can use it.

And like something really insightful from it. It was It was him presenting it. It's like like graphically designed Gavin our head of content crushed it with it. Didn't get a ton of engagement, right? We, we focused on the SEO, we focused on the search and all that. Like YouTube is not easier. I think people, I think people thought that it was earlier in podcasting than it is now. And I think they look at it. I don't know. Rose tinted glasses. I think they're willing. They're, they're not willing to admit how difficult it is in every other industry. And they were told that it's easy in podcasting. Well, Joe Rogan only got where he is because he's just been at it for 10 plus years.

Like there's a little more to it than that, but. Yeah. But at the end of the day, I mean like, sure, it's the same mindset of building a or planting a tree, right? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. There's, you just gotta understand what it's, but I can understand the disappointment, but I think it's, I think to me, in the B2B space, a podcast is marketing.

And for me, my goal with a podcast in the B2B space should always be to ideally reduce my marketing budget as much as possible. And zeroing out should be the home run, not. Making money off of it, making money off of it is the other things, right? Like you listen to my podcast, you found out about it.

Now you subscribe to sounds profitable. And now there are people that are interested in getting in touch with you through my content. And there's so many different avenues there, but the podcast itself, like. When we think about CPMs, when we think about advertising, even at sponsorship rates, I mean, you get a thousand downloads an episode, right?

Let's say that you are killing it and you sell direct sales for four ad spots at $25 each. That's a hundred dollars per episode, right? You do four episodes a month, that's $400. It probably costs you more than $400 worth of effort to sell that. What is the value of just not having advertising and being in full control over it?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And so that's actually been a question that I've struggled with at the business development podcast, because the reality is I pay for the, I pay for the business development podcast through capital, right? Like you said, advertising expense. It's an advertising expense for my company. Yeah. And, and a training expense.

You're right. You hit on the other side of it that I use my podcast for. And you know what I mean? It's not just to train you, my lovely listeners on how to do great business development, but. I also use it to work with my employees. I use it to educate clients. You hit the nail on the head. It's got so many uses.

And at some point you do kind of got to ask, is it even worth it for the ad space in the way, in the, in the typical way that we think of advertising?

Bryan Barletta: Oh, I think advertising kills it in podcasting. I think the average return is through the roof. I think that. There are a substantial amount of people who were burned by the changes in Facebook and whatnot that used to be able to do a thousand iterations and really quickly get three to five times return and love the data of Facebook that are starting to see that while it's a little bit more opaque and podcasting, it's not that different than these walled gardens have and that you can really drive 1. 5 to Three X performance. If you put effort into it, if you, you're hands on with it, I think advertising and podcasting is primarily been like direct direct to consumer. I think brand advertising has not really stuck in podcasting yet, but you have to think about it, like. I don't have cable. I don't pay for a magazine subscription on anything.

I use ad blocker on the web because I'm a terrible person. But I do subscribe to a substantial amount of news sites. And I pay for all ad free video content. Yeah. If there's a podcast that I really love, I'm paying for the feed for it. They keep throwing in ad free. I'm not paying for it for the ad free.

I'm paying for it for the exclusive content or early access. But yeah, I am incredibly difficult to get ads in front of. So when I listened to a podcast and there's advertising in it, even if it's bad advertising, it's one of very few times that I listened to it and I respect. That this is how this person pays their bills.

So I'm not dismissive. I'm not shitty about it. I might give them feedback if it's really a miss, but you know, at the end of the day, I think, I think advertising and podcasting, I think it's underrepresented. I think that there for the, the amount of listenership podcasting has in audio, it's probably about at least 50% under filled with demand.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, you know, I mean, I don't mind podcast advertising, actually. Especially when it's relevant to me. I think that's, you kind of hit the nail on the head, right? It's like, you would give them feedback if you're like, Hey, this, this podcast ad has really nothing to do with your show or nothing to do with me, your listener.

Like, because that happens. Sometimes there's a total mismatch of ad versus the show, right? But like, if I'm listening to a podcast that I love. And it's a relevant ad that I feel like my family could utilize or I like it or it's something that I would maybe buy. I got no, I got no problem listening to that.

I got no problem whatsoever.

Bryan Barletta: But I think an interesting thing there is that like, what's an example of a product then that you feel was too wide that you got a podcast ad for? Not to put you on the spot or anything.

Kelly Kennedy: You know what? Yeah. Oh, that is a really good question. Honestly, I can't give you a good definition right now, Bryan.

But one that I could tell that did fit with our family was HelloFresh, right? So you're listening to a podcast not that long ago, HelloFresh came on. I'm like, hey, that's great. That sounds very much in line with what I'm listening to on this podcast episode. Like, it had very great synergy with the show that I was listening to.

I think what I'm, what I'm suggesting is, and I don't, I don't know enough about the ad space. Do podcasters get to choose what ads they run in, in some of these newer style digital ad insertions?

Bryan Barletta: I mean, in the same way they get to choose how much they spend at the grocery store. To feed their family that week.

So, I mean, at the end of the day, when an ad comes to you, like you can push back depending if you're independent, but if you're part of a network, you probably agreed to certain terms, you may be able to block by categories. You may be able to say like, I'm just not interested in an oil advertisement on on my podcast.

But, you know, here's a great example. The, the guys from scrubs did you know was a fake doctors, real friends. And during the pandemic, I listened to it a lot. I heart is notorious for putting a lot of ads in their podcasts, but they did host red ads for a few things. They didn't want for like a board game or a card game called exploding burrito, exploding burrito and an exploding burrito, like the.

The, the ad read was fun because it was content. Was it too long? Yeah. Did they recycle the same thing over and over again and get boring after a while? Yeah. Was it relevant? I don't know if it's a game that makes people laugh. This is a podcast about laughing. I do buy board games. I don't want this, so it's not terrible, but I, you know, I get ads for contact lenses.

I wear glasses. Not a terrible thing. I get, if I got ads for HelloFresh, me and my wife really prioritize cooking at home. It's not appealing to me, but it makes sense that it fits there. I think that it's easy to have a knee jerk reaction about what like does and doesn't fit in podcasting. Because we are allowing these sounds into our head with unfettered access.

You're washing your hands. You're washing the dishes. You can't quickly skip that ad. It can be overwhelming and it can be upsetting. And that's, that's incredibly fair to say, but it's only that way because we've all become so out of our, so we avoid them elsewhere. There are a substantial number of websites.

I will not visit anymore because the ads are not relevant to me. Plastered all over the place. And I can't even consume the content without scrolling a thousand times because of how filled it is. We tolerate that podcasting. I feel the listenership has a little bit more, I don't know, believe entitlement I think is, is fair to say, but it's also true.

I mean, the listeners make this medium.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. Well, that's it. You don't have a show if nobody's listening, right? Like, you kind of mentioned it before, but we don't put out content for nobody to listen. Correct. So at the end of the day, you do want to make sure that it's at least in line, I think, with what you're doing.

You know, I mean, I don't, I don't understand the space yet. I've honestly struggled with the advertising space for podcasting. You know, I mean, the reality is we're, we're five months in and we just hit 52, 000 downloads.

Bryan Barletta: 52, 000 downloads. Yeah. I'm just going to put this out there. That's better than I did.

No way. Really? Look, I'm a newsletter about the business of podcasting. We have about 8, 000 subscribers and we've been pretty static since January on that. Because let's, let's ask an honest question while people are getting laid off in the business of podcasting. How many new people are there to read that, right?

How many people had the goal of entering more into the professional space of podcasting who've unsubscribed? It didn't work out their pandemic dreams. Didn't work for them or have lost their job. Right? So we've stayed around level with that. My show gets about 300 downloads an episode. One of the reasons we actually stopped the interview show was because we've advocated to our partners so much that they should be doing that, that they are thought leaders.

And I took a look around and I said, we're all interviewing the same people. I'd rather highlight my partners interviewing each other than us continue to. We've created a stage. I don't need to be the smartest person on that stage anymore. I don't need to be the only voice on that stage. I'd like to elevate other people.

So that's a lot of what we're doing, but you're doing great with downloads. But here's the question for you. Let's assume that a sponsor came to you and wanted to give you 25 sponsorship for every thousand downloads, right? That's not that much money.

Kelly Kennedy: No, that's the thing. That's the thing. It's it's not.

And so that's, that's kind of the question that's came to my mind is that. If, is there a point at which, like, there's got to be a number? What is that number? You know, and you're, you're an ad expert. What is that number where a podcast should even start to consider it? Because the reality is, it's like, I don't want to put ads in.

It's not that I don't want to put ads in. It's that my show is ultimately... a business development show. It's sponsored by my company, Capital Business Development. That is kind of the ad, right? If that makes sense. The flip side is, is that sure, I'm not opposed to bringing in relevant ads to, to the podcast, but once again, is it worth it for a hundred bucks?

Probably not. At what point in your experience would you even suggest for a podcast to start thinking about advertising, and then maybe are there different avenues they should look at?

Bryan Barletta: I think for B2B podcasts you shouldn't, it shouldn't be on your agenda necessarily for like traditional, but I think The mindset lately has been, there are plenty of programmatic partners that you can start out with.

You can, you can start with Spreaker, Podbean, Red Circle. There's got to be a few others that that that you can immediately go live and immediately get ads, right? Like, so even as you're small, but again, smaller, like the more hands involved in it, the less net revenue to you when that is. Per thousand downloads.

Sometimes that's not buying you a cheeseburger once a month. So you got to ask yourself, is it worth it for that ad load on there? But, but here's a great example for you, right? How many clients do you have? I love putting people on the spot. I love turning into the host. This is my show now.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. So right now we're working with two major clients here in Edmonton.

Bryan Barletta: Would any of them be valuable for your listeners to hear about?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, absolutely.

Bryan Barletta: Yeah. So what happens if included in your consulting package was you just have decided that all of your active clients, you're going to rotate through host red as Part of that, that becomes a value proposition that allows you to either extend your contact with them, charge them more, so many different things.

You're making them look good. You're giving them social assets. You're giving them an ad rate that with audio and video that you can put on every social channel that they have. You can highlight them everywhere. It's added value to you, but it extends a contract somewhere else. It brings in revenue. Your next client might hear that and say like, Oh, awesome.

If I sign up for three months, I can be the sponsor for three months, as well as get his services. It's really powerful.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, totally. Totally. And we have highlighted some of the clients on this, on the show because they have awesome stories. They're, they're large companies here in the city and they have great stories.

Yeah, I think my problem. The big problem that I have is that the way that I handle my business development service, especially my direct services, they are very labor and time intensive, right? So I'm limited, unfortunately, to the amount of people that we can bring on at Capital. We're pretty much limited to about four to five clients at a time at the moment.

We're growing all the time. I'm hiring new people, but at this time we would be limited to probably about four, potentially five clients in the area. for direct business development service. So once again, it's a limited kind of thing. I totally get where you're saying value add, definitely get that.

Definitely look at any business is always looking for how do we, how do we differentiate ourselves from the pack? How do we add more value? And I think you hit the nail on the head. That's a great option. Yeah. It's still limiting because I'm limited by the capabilities of my business.

Bryan Barletta: Yeah. But I, and I, but I think then your number should be like, we've never done paid app acquisition.

That sounds profitable. It's all been word of mouth and all on that. And it's something that we're considering and it's very interesting to me, but my marketing budget, I consider my content creation marketing budget, right? Like what is my time worth to write an article? What is my time to record? What is the time of Gavin to edit it and create the assets and to share it on there?

That's my marketing budget, content creation. And my goal is to generate enough revenue from that as, or either as, you know, people find out about us and start working with us because of that, or they find out about us and share us. And then we get more followers on there. So many ways to get that number to zero or even to a positive.

And so for you, like in your sample right here, do you edit the podcast yourself? I do. So I would figure out like your goal really should be whatever your dollar amount is for your time put into this podcast. How do you hit zero on that? And like you said, with your clients, four or five clients is awesome.

That's very, in a world where everybody says more and more and more very hats off to you there to realizing where the limits are for that. But you have a podcast and if I'm attracted to you working with your business because you have a podcast, maybe part of the upsell is. You build a podcast or maybe you're building a podcast network.

Then maybe there's, there's so many different ways to go about it that like, if you're batch editing, is it more efficient, right? If you're editing multiple shows at the same time, and some of them are paid for, does your time kind of get for, for editing your show, get distributed between the costs of editing everybody else's show is your time for recording different than taking a sales pitch.

There's. There's so many ways to look at it, but for B2B, my biggest suggestion is that this is the way to create content and media. If we recorded for two hours, audio and video, let's say we live streamed it, right? Put it on every channel that you're going on. We get super active people there. Then we take it and we clip it down into a video on demand.

We clip it down into audio on demand. We make social assets and video clips. If you, after this podcast provide me with visuals of any sort that make me look smart and enough notice, my team is going to go promote that on my. Social media as well with the links and everything you provide, because my job is to continue to talk about this space.

You just gave me free content. You, you gave me the opportunity. This, this podcast gives me the opportunity to not produce something net new myself for one, maybe two days.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, fair enough. Fair enough. I, I think one of the challenges that I face and I think a lot of podcasters face because, you know, like I said, we're typically not experts in the space you've had, you've had the opportunity to be around really for an incredibly long time.

13 years in the space is a long time. You've seen it become from nothing to something pretty, pretty bloody impressive. And I would say over the past two years, like you said, since the pandemic, it's really, really got to kick up in the right direction. It doesn't necessarily mean that yeah. It means that a lot of people started podcasts.

That doesn't necessarily mean they continue doing them. I think there's always the realization. It's, it's kind of a shocking realization. I think it was for me. How much effort actually goes into a podcast? It's not just two people sitting up here. We're having this conversation. That's great. But there's, there's, there's post work to be done.

There's editing to be done. You know, I had a blooper right in the beginning of this episode that I got to go back and fix. There's, there's stuff that has to be done, right? To make this show sound amazing. And we do it and it's great. But like, like Bryan said, it takes time. And people realize pretty quickly.

I would say, what is, do you know what the statistic is, Bryan? For people to drop off from a podcast?

Bryan Barletta: It really, it really depends. I mean, like my focus is really on the mid to enterprise companies in the space. So like, you know, we're seeing numbers reported and listen notes and pod news that I don't find completely accurate.

They're not telling the whole story. They're saying that we're down like five to 10% of new podcasts released. It's the summer. There are plenty of episodic podcasts. There have been massive layoffs on larger production companies and shows that have saw. And also at the end of the day, some people just did this to stay sane during the pandemic.

I, I am not particularly here to support the people who want to have a beer and talk about movies with their friends. I can't help you make this your career, but if that is how you stay in touch with your friend, if that makes you happy, if you've created something and that's your expectation. Awesome.

Awesome. I pay someone to run dungeons and dragons online for me and my friends because I don't have the time to run it anymore. I want to spend time with my friends and I want to create it. We've recorded it before. We don't do anything with it. Who cares? I wouldn't want, I don't think it was entertaining enough for anybody to listen to, but like, I, we had fun.

We, it was just, you know, there's, there is nothing wrong with just having fun. And so that's, that's kind of where we are. We don't know these people that are dropping off. Like there are podcasts that go dormant for a year because there's a feed you, we can't determine what that is. We don't know what their flow or their changes.

We just stopped our interview show. Like I said, that flow looks different. Now, our podcast release schedule looks different and there's no way to account for that as a third party and really understand what happened.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I, I agree. It's like all, all good things must come to an end eventually and I think all podcasts will as well.

You know, I mean, I, I don't have any numbers in here. I'm, I'm still enjoying doing this. You hit kind of hit the nail on the head. I, I don't mind sitting in front of the mic and having my conversations with myself and the wall or my conversations with experts like you. Cause it's just a great time. And like you said, it it's opened up doors that you just wouldn't typically get right.

Like I have amazing CEOs and entrepreneurs on this podcast. I'm so fortunate. to have such great guests on the show. And it's fun. I truly enjoy what I'm doing. I think if it got to the point where I didn't enjoy it, I don't think I would continue. You kind of hit the nail on the head. It's like there's got to be some benefit to you to doing your podcast.

And I think potentially because I think the statistic is Bryan. that most podcasts, something like 80% never get past the 15th episode.

Bryan Barletta: And so, but I mean, like, what about blogs? I'd love to learn from WordPress, how much the drop off is for that. You know, what about my Instagram? I kind of two photos on it, you know, like what's the drop off on other things that are content creation, Tik TOK creators, how many people are just consumers versus creators.

How many people stop after the 15th video? Like these are, these are not unique stats to podcasting. It's just incredibly easy because I don't have to shower. We didn't really have to turn the camera on here at the end of the day. I could have taken this call from my AirPods on my phone, which I'm not doing too much better here with the Mac microphone, but there's like me and you could sit together and use anchor or Spotify for podcasters on my phone face to face and record it.

Right now, if we were in the same place and that's a podcast. So the barrier to entry is so low that 15 sounds phenomenal.

Kelly Kennedy: Like yeah, killer.

Yeah, no, totally yeah, totally totally. It was so funny. I think it was my 21st episode. I think it was my 21st episode. I got a message from somebody and they were saying, Congratulations, Kelly, you've just hit the top 1% of podcasts.

I'm like, what? But yeah, when I dug into it, they're only 1% of podcasts make it past 21 episodes, which totally blew my mind. Like, You know, if you're listening to the show today, because like the goal, obviously, Bryan is to always inspire my listeners. If you're listening to the show today, and I know I have a lot of you on the fence about starting your own show, understand that that's the barrier.

21 episodes puts you in the top 1%. Yeah. There's some back work. But you know what, Bryan, you've been doing a show now for three years. You know, what's kept you motivated to do this for three straight years of podcasting. Congratulations. That is a gigantic milestone by any means. I am, I am a little in awe, especially at, at I'm hitting five months and I recognize the effort required to do this.

And it's not just the effort to, to produce the content, come up with the content, host these interviews, do the post production. But like you said, it's the promotion of the show. Which is an absolute, it's a lot of work and no one talked about that side of it. How have you been able to, well, first off, you started three years ago.

What is, what was that like and what has changed in that three years? And then how have you been able to continue that cadence without? Without, you know, without stopping, without, without having, or did you have moments where you're like, I don't know if I want to keep doing this anymore?

Bryan Barletta: Well, The first version of the podcast was an interview show and we've just recently retired it, right?

Like, because, like I said. All of those people that are being interviewed are our partners and our partners are starting to start their own show and I would rather elevate them and their, their guest appearances on these shows, then be the only voice that are talking to these people. I'm so proud of all of them.

And I said, let's take a step back. There's a lot of work for us. It feels redundant at this point. And even. If, if I am stealing the first listen for this expert and then they're on three other shows and they don't listen to my partner's other shows because of it, well, I failed because I want to be a good partner.

I want to grow the community. I don't need. I don't need them to listen to me first. So we stopped that two years, right? We just stopped it. There are times where we did it every other week. There are times where we did it every week. There are times where we didn't have a guest and it was me and Arielle just kind of talking about what we wrote that week or what was important and Arielle Nissenblatt helped.

So much as my cohost driving it along and really running the podcast, but it you know, it was a lot of work and now the podcast primarily today is Wednesday, we do a narrated version of whatever the article is. And on Friday we do the download, which is 10 minutes or less of what happened in the business of podcasting this week and why it matters to you.

And that is done. So the narrated article is done by either me or Tom, whoever wrote that week. And then the, the download is done by Shreya and Manuela and written by Gavin, but we helped source the content. Like I helped decide what goes in there. That process has been really good and refined because we, we were committed to specific content creation, but when you have to come up with a unique idea and interview someone and get them guests on there, I fell behind constantly.

So. It's been a lot. I mean, I edited my first podcast. It was a terrible mistake. I'm glad I got the experience to, but Gavin came on as head of content. I go into a recording. I send it to Gavin and not even send it to Gavin. Gavin gets a notification that the recording is done. Gavin knows what to do with it.

Gavin got trained up in audio editing and video editing is really impressed me immensely. And it was absolutely worth hiring someone to do that. In house as we grew because we have so much content, written video audio. We needed someone to own that. And Gavin's been a home run there, but in the same way that we, you know, this wasn't supposed to be a company.

It was a blog while I figured out what I do next. And it became a massive organization. I'm very, very thankful for that. I don't take it for granted. That's why we brought on someone like Manuela Bedoya, our head of operations to kind of run things. I'm the one bringing stuff in and she's the one defined in the box and these things are really valuable, but it's we had to make that decision, right?

Our content is marketing. The production of that content is an expense that we need. And therefore we need someone to do that. Our relevancy, our value only. Exists if we're consistently out there, we have a social media schedule that we're on top of. We have assets that we create and promote every single day.

We have the strategy of, does it come through my account through Tom's account to the sounds profitable account? Is it better on Twitter? Is it better on YouTube? Where are the, where's the engagement? And it's not easy, but what I can say is that we've definitely looked at things and said, that's not providing a return or other things.

Our partners are still on Twitter. I like their posts. I share their posts, sounds profitable, shares their posts. We tag them and things. They enjoy that. And our content on Twitter seems to get more engagement than their content on Twitter. So we are helping them there. Do I want to be on Twitter longterm right now?

Definitely not. So that's what we choose to be there because we see how we're helping others. And then we choose to exit places when we see that at the end of the day, we were just stale. It's like we were competing with our partners for that interview.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I made a conscious choice when I started this podcast that we were going to, all of our stuff was going to be on LinkedIn, right?

That's where, that's where I decided that our listeners would likely be. Most of the people we're looking at are, you know, entrepreneurs, executives. Business owners, people, you know, high level professionals. That's where they are. You know, they're not necessarily, they're on Facebook too, but they're not thinking business when they're on Facebook.

They're thinking business when they're on LinkedIn. So I tried to kind of, I tried to just narrow it down. And I know when I chatted with Fatima, she mentioned that was a really good idea because you really have to pick, you really have to pick where you're going to go, because like you said, you know what I mean, especially when you're a small podcast like ours or you're in, you're just starting a podcast and you're doing it on your time.

You need to be very deliberate about the time that you're spending advertising and where you're going to advertise because, like you said, if it's not going to have any return to you, why the heck are you on Instagram? 100%. So, like, what would you recommend then for, for, like, newer podcasts? Like, let's say, let's say we're talking right now to people who are going to launch a podcast next week, Bryan.

What would you recommend them to do?

Bryan Barletta: I would identify what is the least beneficial thing that can come out of it. So is it the people that you're talking to are people that you probably couldn't have had a sales pitch with? And this is your way to get in touch with them. Is it material that you're going to use for your clients down the line?

Or is it a business you're going to vent, like invest in to be a content production hub? And, and that in either one of those are valid. So if I was going to kick something off, let's say I just had to start something next week, I would find the podcasts I want to emulate and I'd figure out what I think that they don't do as well.

I would try and do it. I would do it as lean and thin as possible because it's always easier to add more content than reduce content. And I would focus on making other people look smart. Praising the incredible things out there and every opportunity I could to promote it would be tagging two, three, four people or companies that I'm talking about so that either they listen to it and they want to talk to me about it, or they just retweeted or reshare it because I made them look good.

That's, that's what I would do if I was just like, you have seven days, make it happen.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. No, you hit the nail on the head. 100%. It's you need to know kind of what you want to do with the show before you even jump into it. I think, although I'm a bit of a hypocrite on this because I started the business development podcast just thinking, let's just try it.

I didn't know, I didn't really have any purpose to it. Bryan, when I first started my, when I started the business development podcast, I actually just needed some new mic setups because I was doing a lot of business. I was doing a lot more, a lot more interviews and stuff. I started digging into it and yeah, I started looking into XLR mics and stuff.

I had no like experience in anything. Audio. I was very much, like I said, I'm a business development guy through and through. It's, it's what I do. It's. It's my expertise. Podcasting is not my expertise by any means. And so I think that that's the case for a lot of B2B branded podcasts. That tends to be what happens is that we're experts in something else and we come to podcasting, but we're dumb to it, right?

Bryan Barletta: That's for like the chat shows, you know, and that's not a bad thing, but I think you just need to accept what it is like. Look, I'm really into buying board games and I don't play that many. That's a hobby that I know that it's going to cost me more than I'm going to get value out of. But I still do it.

Right. Well, yeah, the fun of having young children. And so I think that it's, it's really important just to assess what it is. I don't think there's anything wrong with you starting and not knowing what this is going to become. I think there's anything wrong with you canceling it or, or pouring money into it.

I think the only thing that's wrong is entitlement and you do not deserve. Anyone to listen to your content, you do not deserve to make enough money to to, to have this be your full time job. Those are not things that happen anymore. You are not going to be discovered and become some poster child somewhere, earn it, hustle and make that happen or just enjoy it.

It is okay to just enjoy it. But. But I will say that there is a substantial amount of incredibly well produced narrative or more more than just chat show, branded podcasts out there that are astounding. And I think that those we forget about because we're like, this is a great example. B2B podcasts or branded podcasts, they're very, I think they're two different things.

This is a B2B podcast. I don't know if this is a branded podcast. I mean, it is covering your brand. It is about your reputation on that end. I think that's great. But like, there's a, the rocket mortgage podcast. There's the trader Joe's podcast. Like there's all these interesting podcasts that bring back Bronco from Pacific content that got a ton of awards, like a branded podcast.

We've seen some amazing things for B2B podcasts are kind of where we make fun of podcasts right now because it's just a chat show.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you said, you kind of hit, you kind of hit it on the head. Like, even though the show is like sponsored by Capital Business Development, I don't sit here and all I talk about is Capital Business Development, right?

We talk about all things, business, all things, business, growth oriented. We have expert entrepreneurial interviews where we kind of. We get to tell great stories, right? Like that's the, I think that's really the goal with these, with these interviews is I really want to hear people's stories because you talk to people like yourself, founders, you guys all have such amazing stories.

And I feel like they just get overlooked. You hear experts show up on shows and yeah, they'll get asked a bunch of questions, but nobody asks, how did you get there? What was that like? Like, what is it like being the CEO or the founder of this amazing company? There's just not enough people who are genuinely interested.

And I saw that and I'm like, well, that's a super interesting story. Why aren't we, why aren't we showcasing that? And so that was something that I wanted to do with the show pretty much right off the bat. And I've managed to do it with every interview. But

Bryan Barletta: okay, so let's just look at it this way. So what you just said is that you're expanding your network and you're gaining knowledge about these people.

I mean Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people, right? Like these books, these topics about building a network and remembering people's birthdays and, and keeping in touch with their. There's different, this conversation is different than what me and you had when you were driving you know, on the road and, and it will like a podcast conversation is going to be different because there's a little bit of performance, but it's less performance than on a stage at a conference, right?

Because it's different there because there's like, I gave you an hour and a half of my time today. That's it. Right. I had a coffee. I had calls before it. I have calls after it. I gave you an hour and a half of my time. I didn't fly anywhere. I didn't pay for a ticket and then pay for a panel to talk about it.

The ROI on this is me and you now have a stronger relationship here. The ROI on this is maybe you will introduce me or my content to a new audience of people that I can help. That could be partners that could just read from it, that smarter people in my industry. There's no negative for me to do that.

So I think that if you just look at it as. Network development, business development for you, increasing your contacts and relationships on LinkedIn and the people that you can call on that you can send emails to, I, I bet you that you have interviewed people that would not have taken a phone call with you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, no question. No question.

Bryan Barletta: Cool. And now, and now does some of them like your LinkedIn posts about other stuff you're doing?

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely.

Bryan Barletta: Cool. Well, you know, we're in a, we're in a world where everything's spread out. The amount of people that I stumble into through LinkedIn that I met 10 years ago at a different company that get to see this and like, we're doing podcast stuff.

Now let's talk about it. Never underestimate the value of your network. I don't know if there's a price you can put on it because what happens is somewhere down the line, one of these people becomes a connection that you genuinely showed interest in that you highlighted and made look good could become your next biggest client.

They could become your. Boss, they could become your partner and founding something. They could become someone who says I was talking to somebody and it reminded me of our podcast conversation and they would be the perfect guest and client for you. Yeah, these things pay off in spades. So on the B2B side, I think the biggest thing that I can say is if you stopped, if I was a client of yours and you stopped servicing me, like you just canceled the contract, I'd be pretty upset, right?

Sure. If I choose to consume your podcast and you just stop, you burnt your trust. So I would say like, start once a month, start every two weeks, figure out what happens if you can't get guests on there, figure out if it's worth you monologuing on there, figure out if it's worth highlighting other people, like, like really decide what that is.

And honestly, always go short over long.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, you hit the nail on the head. It's you have to pick a cadence or a consistency and you have to stick to it. I I've been doing that since they go. I actually haven't missed a single episode. Have there been times I've wanted to 100% but I totally understand that just like I can't wait for my favorite podcasts.

There are people waiting for this podcast. There are people waiting for Sounds Profitable. And on some level, we do owe it Even when it's hard to show up and show up when we say we're going to show up.

Bryan Barletta: One of my favorite stories is you know there's an amazing person at Paramount who I'd met for the first time at podcast movement.

We got in the elevator and she said, Are you Bryanfrom sounds proper? I listen to your podcast all the time. And I said. Awesome. I thought it was my mom listening to it 300 times per episode. And like, literally when we decided to stop putting out the chat show, I like emailed her and I was like, Hey, like, here's why I want to do it.

And why I want to pivot it. Like, is that bummed me out? And she's like, kinda. And I was like, damn, like, what do I do? The, these, there are people who look at it. Like I have a, I have a top three, top five favorite podcasts that I won't miss, but there's also six through 10. There's nothing embarrassing being with someone's 10th favorite podcast, right?

Like, they've made time for you. What does it say about the 100 people or 300 people that listen to a specific show? They're incredibly involved in it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, they are. Yes. You know what's funny? You talk about 10 podcasts. My gosh, dude. I listen to like 5. Like, I, I think that, and I don't think I'm off, I think that most people have between three and five podcasts that they listen to on a regular basis because I don't know, but I don't know whether like, I just struggle with like discovering new podcasts or what, but I just got my favorites that I like to listen to and those are what I listen to.

And I think that that is the case. And if you are fortunate enough to be that somebody's. One to five podcasts. You are incredibly fortunate. You are incredibly fortunate because they love your show and you know, I'm sure you get it all the time. One of the greatest things about being a podcaster. One of the is I get I get emails and messages every single week.

Bryan of people telling me how my podcast is helping them and how it's improved their life and they're going to go off and start a business or they're going to go off and try and do a podcast. And it's like, yeah. It's so amazing to be able to inspire people in this way. And you don't necessarily know what you're going to do with it.

When you start a podcast, you know, you just put it out there and hope for the best. And, you know, you don't know what to expect, especially if you don't have that background, I get so. I, you know what I mean? I'm so humbled. I'm so humbled by some of the messages that I get from other, from other, not just podcasters, but listeners of the show and people just, just saying how we help them.

I think, I think that's one of the greatest things that we get from podcasts.

Bryan Barletta: And how many other places do you, you get to hear that from, right? You don't. Yeah. It's, but it's, it's neat on that end. I think that you can go too far down the guru route or the B2B influencer route and it's gross, but you know, it's no different than other forms of influencer and, and areas like that.

But I don't know. I think I'm, I'm constantly excited and happy about opportunities in podcasting and what it opens up for people. But I just think people need to respect. The time you're asking people to commit to you.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure, sure. What is that? What does that mean? Exactly. Can you define what you mean by that respect?

Bryan Barletta: Well, like we said, dropping off on like going from weekly to bi weekly and not explaining it, stopping for three months and expecting them to stick around on there, creating an engaged community and not continuing to engage them and, and, and, and simulate them there. Like you are being paid in their time and their attention, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. Yes. So, okay. So I have a question for you because we're all, we're all human, right? What, what do we do when our lifestyle is getting in the way or when our life gets in the way or when just life gets in the way, man, you, you know, you know, the same as me. We have good days. We have bad days. We have days that we just can't.

Okay. I've been fortunate enough so far to have not had that day stop this show. But what do you do when life gets in the way? Did you ever have to take a break from Sounds Profitable?

Bryan Barletta: Not in three years. We haven't had to take a break, but we take time off all the time. I mean, we decided not to release an article last week because it was a Tuesday, 4th of July for us.

Or is it this week? It's this week. It is. Wow. It feels like forever ago. It is this week that we're recording it on July 7th. But we didn't release an article on Wednesday. And so, you know, we took that week off. We tend to take two to four weeks off at the end of December into January. Give people a little bit of breathing room there.

You know, Tom, I'm, we're spreading the load. So Tom does a lot more writing now. I used to write four articles a month. Tom now probably writes three two to three out of each of them. And. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't think I don't know, like, at the end of the day, I think that I am Bryan Barletta first and a podcaster second, and that if I have to be a podcaster before I'm a dad or a husband or a human, then, I'm I make great money, but I don't make that much to, to sacrifice those things. So I think it's it's just being, it's about being real. And I think that what you need to decide then is can you pay somebody to help make sure that those gaps aren't there? Yes. You know, like there are things I can do in 15 minutes that people will pay five hours worth for.

There are things that take me five hours that I can pay people 15 minutes worth for. Gavin can do a ton of editing in a day. And it's worth every penny we pay them. And it would take me four times as long to do that. It takes me 10 to 12 hours to write an article. It takes Tom two and a half hours.

Knowing your strength working with people, what you need to determine, and this is the hardest part about growing a business, is as you start to gain revenue or benefit from it, when does it all become profit? And when do you need to reinvest some of it? And that's a really hard decision. So I think I don't know, be a human first.

Life's too short. Like I'm on a, I'm on a trajectory to figure out how I keep doing this, how sounds probable continues to grow, how I get to Dread Pirate Roberts this. And someday some young, diverse individual gets to be Bryan Barletta. And I can ride off into the sunset and pass this off to somebody else.

But God, a few million dollars and I'd be, I'd be retired. Yeah. You gotta be a person first. I would rather be spending all this time with my kids. Like we're, we're literally in Colorado so that I can work an earlier day, get out earlier, go hiking with them and not be in the warm area. You gotta be a human first.

Life's too short.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I think it's so funny. I've had the opportunity to interview some very wealthy people on this show, and it's so funny, you know, I talked to one who, who retired, bought a, bought a boat and sailed around the world for a couple of years, got bored of it, went back to work. Like, it's so funny.

You, you, you, you always think that people just like retire, but I can't even see myself retiring. I really can't. I genuinely love business development. Like, I feel like even if I was retired. I would still be doing some type of business development consulting because it's just what I love to do.

Bryan Barletta: But that's what that is, right?

That's the growth of that. That's the determining that you don't actually need this money that you can say no to it. You can set your parameters. And if the client says it doesn't work for them, it doesn't. And that's that is to me what for a lot of A lot of B2B people, a lot of people in the Gen X, Millennial, and even Zennial age, like retirement for us is not going to be not working.

It is simply going to be not having to say yes to all work.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. That's awesome. What an amazing quote. I think you totally hit the nail on the head there, Bryan.

Bryan Barletta: Now, this is a perfect example. You should take this and do a video asset with a cool border and post it on LinkedIn. Include this part in here about me telling you what to do, right?

Right. And then we just put that up there and then you made me look smart. And then we get to say that this is a good quote and now we both look great and I'm promoting it and you're promoting it.

Kelly Kennedy: You don't, you don't have to look smart. You are smart.

Bryan Barletta: I truly am fortunate for where I am. My experience is what's gotten me here.

I should have been fired a thousand times for different things. And I got fired a handful of times for things I've caused millions of dollars in damages. And some of it is. Being a white male has gotten me privileged into certain things and access to things. And so I don't take a single piece of it for granted.

And so, you know, I appreciate that you find what I do smart. It is simply because I have failed a bunch of times and I get to talk to smart people. And I, I am focused on building them up to be smart and just sharing the stage. We've now built instead of being the only voice on it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, you hit the nail on the head.

I totally agree. You need to be thankful for every opportunity that comes to your life that they don't just fall on everyone's lap all the time. And I mean, as well, you know, I wouldn't be where I'm at without a lot of good luck without a lot of people batting for me. You know, I'm very, I'm very fortunate and very thankful for where I am in my life.

And, yeah, it's like, could we be multimillionaires? Sure. But you know what? I'm pretty damn happy to be where I'm at today.

Bryan Barletta: We could also be working retail.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, true. Bryan. Okay. We got a lot of podcasters listening. I'm sure. How can Sounds Profitable help our podcasting groups?

Bryan Barletta: So we are focused on being a research and advocacy firm for the entire industry.

All of our content out there is going to be talking about the industry as it relates to business development advertising, research, all of these things that are valuable for business, regardless of what you do. If you do subscriptions, if it's ad free, if it's branded ad full, it doesn't matter. Our content's all free.

We have a newsletter comes out Wednesday and Friday. We'd love for you to subscribe. We've quarterly research. We do not gate it in any way. You do not have to give us any of your personal information, download our reports. We'd love for you to read it and share it. Everything we build is meant to be sales collateral for you.

We are primarily focused on supporting the sell side of podcasting. We'll be at the publishers, the ad tech companies, the hosting platforms, all of the infrastructure there, but we do work a lot with brands and we do talk a lot about the struggle that the advertisers and the buyers. have to experience in this space.

And so it's free information. I, I would appreciate your subscription to it. I appreciate your participation and you know, coming to our webinars where we present the research and just sharing it because we are not interested right now, spending on marketing. We are interested on educating everyone. We don't sell ads in our stuff.

So I'm not accountable to how many people opened or subscribe to things. Well, my goal is to hear people understand the difference between dynamic ad insertion and programmatic advertising and not be the only person explaining those differences. My goal is to explain or to hear somebody explain publicly why downloads focus or why podcasting is focused on downloads and not listens.

So we're that resource and we're always available. Bryan@soundsprofitable.com. If you have listened this far into this podcast and you have a question, email me. I respond to everything.

Kelly Kennedy: Bryan, you'd also mentioned partners. Can you talk a little bit about your partnership program at sounds profitable?

Bryan Barletta: Yeah, I, I think the podcasting is so small that some of the trade associations out there have I don't know, they can't service us that well. They really can't and they don't charge us at like a discounted rate either for it. You know, we pay to be part of the IAB US UK soon to be Australia. We pay to be part of ANA.

We're evaluating some other organizations. It's a lot of money and it's a lot then that you show up and you do the work there. And and then the events and stuff for even more money. Partnership for us is a flat thing. I'm always comfortable with talking about it. It's 500 a month. We ask for partners to participate for three months minimum.

Anybody in the business of podcasts can benefit from it. It comes with 30 minutes of consulting. It comes with access to our Slack channel and to our monthly webinar events for all employees of all partner companies. We have about 1500 people in our Slack channel right now, and it's. Pretty active for a podcast business Slack channel.

We do live quarterly events that are only, only partners are invited to. We do invite by side people in there to help educate them and, and help with networking there too. And we got so many more things on the way, like podcast movement. We have a, I think a 90 by 30 space. That's the sounds proper business leaders lounge.

We're working with a company called arts AI. They're helping sponsor it. Hopefully we'll have some food to drink in there. And these are all just benefits. We set the price when we started at 500 a month, we set it at three month minimum and not a year commitment. Because my goal is through that 30 minutes of consulting is through those live events, through all these things is allowing a company to say, I'm the salesperson that consulting helps me get that money because Bryan can make introductions.

I'm the marketing person. So the logo on the website and the ability to, to share thought leadership content with all of his partners is incredibly valuable for me. I want, I want sounds profitable to be palatable. From any one narrow angle. And it's worked out really well. Again, 135 partners. We've doubled since this time last year.

I do have my heart set on 150 by August, that podcast movement. So if you are interested, I would love, love to talk to you more about it.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Thank you so much, Bryan, for coming on our show today and educating my fellow podcast listeners and people aspiring to become podcasters. It's been absolutely amazing having you on the show.

And if you are looking for consulting help with regards to growing your podcast, monetizing your podcast, give Bryan a shout.

Until next time, we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization.

Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.