Turning Passion into Profit in Business and Podcasting w/Roy Coughlan

Did you wash cars or delivered newspapers as a kid, while dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur?

Roy Coughlan certainly did, and his journey from those humble beginnings to creating over 17 companies across five continents is a testament to the sheer force of entrepreneurial spirit.

Listen closely as Roy and I explore the complexities of tax optimization, the intricacies of accountancy, and the often misunderstood passion that fuels business ventures. His narrative sheds light on the essential personal investment in your pursuit and reminds us that the drive to innovate and expand is a unique force that sets certain entrepreneurs apart.

Adding some of my own experience into the mix, I talked about my metamorphosis of podcasting from a hobby to a vital business strategy. The balancing act between crafting engaging content and managing financial sustainability can be a tricky walk that many content creators are familiar with.

Through his Toastmasters heritage, Roy evolved into a podcast coach, monetizing the very skills that once were just a passion. So if you are holding a microphone waiting to amplify your message, listen as Roy shares his wisdom on branding, valuing one's craft, and the profound satisfaction of influencing change, one listener at a time.

Don't miss this episode as we navigate these revelations, all while championing the idea that success isn't always in the numbers—it's in the impact we make.

Connect with Roy: Podcast | LinkedIn | YouTube







#Entrepreneurship #Podcasting #Businessstrategies #Podcasttips #Profitablehobby, #Podcastmonetization #RoyCoughlan #Personaldevelopment #Brandingandmarketing #PodcastCoaching #podcastingforbeginners

Transcript

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 0:00

Today's guest, Roy Coughlan , is a serial entrepreneur and the creator and host of 5 podcasts. I bring these guests to you to encourage you to understand that anything is possible. Let's hope this podcast helps you realize your dream of not only starting a podcast, but help you become better at delivering your message through podcasting by sharing tips, tools and strategies that you can use. If you find this podcast helpful, please subscribe to our YouTube channel at Tools of the Podcast Trade, follow us and also leave a five-star review. I really appreciate your support, thank you. This is Tools of the Podcast Trade, where you can learn about the tools and resources you can use to start and grow your podcast. Tune in this week as we talk about the help you need to remove the mystery from podcasting so you can become a successful podcast that can reach your audience where they are. I guess today is Roy Collin. Thank you for coming and speaking to us today, Roy. I appreciate you.

Roy Coughlan: 1:05

Thank you very much for having me on your show.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 1:07

Yes. So before we get into what you do, can you tell us who is Roy Collin? Who?

Roy Coughlan: 1:12

is Roy, I suppose, a serial entrepreneur. So I was kind of like from nine years of age going around washing cars and then doing newspapers at 11. With the money from the newspapers I bought a lawnmower at 14, cutting grass and just all my life, kind of being a serial entrepreneur. Originally from Cork in Ireland and 16 years ago moved to a place called Wucin, poland, which is right in the center of Poland, used to be the second biggest city. He's now moved to the third.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 1:41

Okay, All right, Thank you for sharing, All right. So what's your entrepreneurial spirit? I mean, most people are told you know, most kids are told do well in school, go to college, get a good job, marry. And so what got you into that?

Roy Coughlan: 1:59

I'm not sure. I mean it's like because I've only one brother and he's not going to like he wasn't like that. I mean he did the paper round for a few years but that wasn't his thing. I mean I went to college, so it's not as a. I didn't want to. I actually wanted to drop out of school when I was 15, but my mom said no, no, stay in school. And so I went to college, then construction, economics and management, then worked with a company for about nine years and so I did about 12 years working for two kind of big companies in Ireland construction companies and then kind of went to Poland and just being an entrepreneur since.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 2:36

Oh, okay. Now I'm going to ask you this because it happened to me. While you were working those nine years, with all that knowledge and you know all the stuff bubbling up in you, were you restless? Describe what that was like to you?

Roy Coughlan: 2:48

I think I was so busy at one stage because once I was working with the company they threw me in the deep end and then, like at times, I was working in the morning till 12 at night and I think I kind of burnt myself out so I didn't have time of thinking of something else. I was doing very well, I was paid very well because I was kind of getting a good salary but also a bonus on profits and I was good at what I'd done. So I was making good profits for the company. But I near kind of, I suppose, the first one. I was like six or seven years and I set up a website company then with a guy and I was doing that and when they found out they didn't like that. So I was kind of pushed out the door because they could see that, yeah, I didn't want to be kind of staying there long term.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 3:29

Yeah, yeah, so even though you were too busy to think, you were still doing the entrepreneurial thing, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly Okay, all right. So why so many companies, though? What is the thought behind starting 15 companies? 15 companies in five different countries?

Roy Coughlan: 3:52

It's actually more. I was trying to write it down. I think it's over, it's over 17. I'm sure it could be 20, to be honest with you, because you'll forget these things and it's like once a company's tells you just kind of move on. You know it's like a relationship, it's done, it's no point looking back in the rearview mirror. We're moving forward. Like I was always kind of looking for kind of tax optimization and so one was in Barrett's for a company that I was doing, that I had a few companies in Ireland, company in England, a lot in Poland, and now I have Estonian as well as the E residency for that. And the reason that I think that's a very good model is there's no cooperation tax and it's basically like if you're leaving money there because in Poland you're paying it each month, if you have profits and it's better not to be doing that, and then there's a double taxation agreement with Poland with a lot of countries. So like a lot of times people think an accountant has your back. In my experience we're having a lot of accountants over the years in different parts of the world. They don't care. I think they're getting kickbacks, to be honest with you, from the actual revenue, because anytime like, for example, one time I was doing the properties in Poland, but I had a company in Ireland for it and a Polish company as well, just for different things I was doing and I got a tax bill. And when I was talking to the accountant I said can I do this, can I do this, can I? So I had bought a book called Tax Magic and it was written by a guy from the revenue and they said yes, yes, yes, I ended up getting a tax rebate. Why an accountant doesn't come to you and give you that information? And I've seen that in all the different countries. And it's like when I talk to other people as well. There's obviously a few accountants. Have your back, but I think nobody will actually respect your company as much as yourself.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 5:36

That's true, all right, so are you like a nomad capitalist then?

Roy Coughlan: 5:43

No, no, I'm like well, business wise, you business wise, you could say that Like, but like I'm in much in Poland for like 16 years. I kind of based where I'm, but what I'm doing is like I don't know a lot of real estate. So I built houses, I built apartments, turkey apartments and different things in Poland and done a lot of like, renovations and things like that. But what I found is I'm thinking long term that whatever happens because this world has gone a bit crazy if I need to move, so I've kind of stepped away from stuff that my businesses, I need to be here and everything, and I'm trying to get everything online. So if I feel like going to Spain or like I went last year with my son to Estonia for a month, I was able to do a few things and just kind of work from there, and I think that kind of gives you a bit of safety as well, so you're not stuck in the location if you need to move.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 6:39

Yeah, yeah, I've been listening to Andrew Henderson. He's an American that has a YouTube channel called Nomad Capitalists and he talked about buying real estate in different countries and, you know, establishing yourself, go where you're treated best, that kind of thing, and this sounds a lot like what he teaches. Now can you tell us and I understand this is not tax, legal or no kind of advice, just your opinion which would you consider the best European country to start a business?

Roy Coughlan: 7:15

It actually depends on the business.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 7:17

Okay.

Roy Coughlan: 7:18

So, yeah, because, like, whether it's crypto or whatever, yeah, so you have to kind of know which is the best, and it's just a case of, like there's companies that do this. You can always go away and talk to different companies, get a kind of discovery call with them and find out. But there's a lot of kind of like Facebook groups and everything where you can write or even on LinkedIn and say, look, I'm thinking of doing this. I'm just ask people. There's plenty of business people who have experienced that they're happy to share and go do this. Don't do it Because I mean, like I've heard in the market, like Delaware and I've heard of different things because it acts optimization reasons. You know people are leaving California because they're paying so much to there. So it's just the case of pay attention to it. Don't just say I must pay X amount of tax. You know just like the money is better in your pocket, so don't be given another way to them because they don't use it for the best things.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 8:06

Okay, all right, thank you. You're also a podcast coach as well as an entrepreneur. What has been your? You obviously know about podcasting and you have quite a few. We're going to talk about those in a bit. What has been your biggest challenge in podcasting, about podcasting and doing podcasting, and how did you overcome those challenges?

Roy Coughlan: 8:32

So at the start it was more kind of it was never to be a business, it was kind of more to make change to humanity, to help people and do the right thing. And but then I thought, okay, you have to pay for Zoom, you have to pay for CalB, you have to pay for this, you have to pay for the platform. So I was like this is adding up. So like that was one of the things that I was like okay, this isn't right. You're giving plenty of information, you're spending a lot of time researching a guest and then you're editing it and posting it and it's costing you money. So I'd like I kind of made a conscious decision I need to change this. And then, like with regarding to the coaching, how I started the coaching is I was doing a lot of toastmasters and I was teaching people in that. I was doing workshops and just lots of stuff that loads of people started from it. So that was, that was good, I was happy. I was actually helping a lot of people get there. But then I found those people reaching out to me that kind of knew me yeah, I wouldn't call them friends, I'd say acquaintance. Yeah, oh, you're doing a part sometimes helping people like and they wouldn't even buy a cup of tea, kind of thing, like and you, it's a lot of time to take a portion from the start, like you can learn it online in an hour if need be, but it's not going to be good. If you want to do this right, you need to understand the whole steps and because I mean, I've released over 1200 episodes with all my podcasts at this day, so I kind of know what I'm doing, learned the mistakes. I make sure that people don't do it. But it was like people weren't respecting my time. So that's why I actually said I'm going to start coaching for this. And straight away, people reached and I said, yeah, I've got a free webinar if you want to go to that, but if you're interested. And it started working and I said, okay, this is good.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 10:10

Yes, yes, that is funny. Yeah, I was. I've been a mentoring podcastist for like three years and I've never asked for a dime, and the moment I kind of pull away, I get yelled at. So I understand that.

Roy Coughlan: 10:28

No, they don't. They don't appreciate the skill set because it takes like it takes. You've learned a lot of things that in the years that you're doing you realize that you do this. The marketing there's so much to it. It's not hard but it's just a case of like. What I've learned is a lot of times a few, of our friend, the doctor. Everybody goes to the doctor to get free advice from the doctor. If they have a carpenter, they expect them to do the work for the carpenter and it's something I don't do. If I get someone to do, I want to pay them and if they want me to pay them, I make sure I buy them a drink or I buy them, take them for a meet or I do something. I respect their actually and the reason that I use them is I know they're good but unfortunately there's a lot of people don't respect. So you have to just kind of, I think, respect ourselves that we don't get used for the skill set that we've got.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 11:12

Yeah, yeah, it's a good. It's a good thing when I, when I started my first podcast, john Lee Dumas referred me to a podcast coach and I was, like you know, I'm fulfilling my purpose. I want solo moms to, you know, tell their stories. And this coach asked me so how much money do you want to make from this podcast of yours? I'm like money who want to make money from a podcast? This is my purpose. I told him and he refused to work with me because of that. And I discovered in the six years in sewing that you need money to run a podcast, no matter what your reason for starting it. Right.

Roy Coughlan: 11:53

Exactly.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 11:54

Yeah, okay, all right. So given aspiring podcasters some tips and strategies they could use to start and grow their podcast I suppose I kind of take you to a little journey from the start.

Roy Coughlan: 12:08

One is try to get the domain name that's people will remember, cuz sometimes people try to be quirky with what they've got and it's like will people remember it? So my ones are speaking podcast, meditation podcast, learn polish podcast, the crypto. They're easy to do and I've got the domain names for that. So that's the first thing. I would say that when you're doing something, have it, that people will remember it and that you've got the domain for. The next thing is the graphic. A lot of people like when they're creating the graphic, looking at on a big screen and they're going to this looks actually very good and they forget that when it's in the itunes doors of the spot of a, it's a tiny little box and it's like Look at, see what it looks like, and then go through all the different ones and see what's, what's sticking out to what colors, what not too much wording, because a lot of people do that. And I give an example of mistakes that I made, for example, with the polish one. I never thought that would be popular. I thought I was doing it more for me because I was trying to find the polish podcast to learn from myself, but they were only scripted. Are they running polish? And that's not how I learned. So I said, okay, I'm gonna create this. So I'm doing it with my ex wife and because we've got a good relationship together and I just took a picture From a tripod and a crappy graphic and it was like number one and a lot of things. It was a hit of julingo, was a hit of bbc languages and a lot of different things and that's the screen shot that I've got with them. So then eventually I went to a professional pictures taking. I'm gonna get graphics. So I would say from people at the start do a decent logo, don't wing it, and you can get people that will do it on five or not parking things like that. Not a massive prices. Are there's 99 designs and things like that, this, plenty of people that will do that, reasonable prices. But you know, treat it like a business. It's not. It's a slow burn. It's not something that you just kind of go okay, I'm doing this and money will flowing. But it is possible because if, if you're doing your own coaching or your own products or stuff like that, make sure you let people know because they're listening to your podcast and a lot of people trying to do that the end. Try to do it midway or at the start, so that People will be listening to and always, always ask people to give you advice. There is a review and I come in, I mean I look high, I can ask, I can see, because it depends where you're looking at from. You see some countries, but I know that it was like over fifteen hundred five star reviews and a lot of the ones that I've got and it makes a difference, like is all the money, have been in the top one percent and I've got four to the top half percent. So I think the reviews help as well. And asking people and just the equipment as well, like, like I use an audio techniques twenty twenty usb mic. It goes into the computer, lot of people use the mixer, but unless you I'm not technical unless you understand that stuff, a lot of times people have crickling. There's an extra kind of connection to go wrong. So it's like, why have that? If the quality is good, you don't need it. But if you understand that, by all means go ahead and get a better quality thing. Same with the camera, same with the lighting. I mean I've got a ring light there, I've got a LED light there, so when you've got the good light and people see you better, same kind of like what you see there now is a green screen, because I usually use mine with Zoom and I've got I use a QR code so people can find me easy with a QR code. Before people would actually need a special app for QR codes. Now you just point the phone, press the button and it brings you straight to all the links, to all my. But if I'm on another call, I have like I do live calls for two hours and it's on stream. I have a trove where it looks like a wall and I still have my books there to the side. So just kind of making sure that you try to have the quality as good as possible. I use Audacity for editing and I just tell people it's easy. It's like Audacity is free and it's like a cut and pasting, so you can do that and I encourage people as well. Then, like some people say they just want to do the audio, I said that's grand, but you're missing out on a big audience. So I put it on Bitchute, I put it on Rumble. I know there's 50 other platforms. I don't want to overwhelm myself, so I kind of stick to the ones that I see are working. I tried about 20 others and I could see it wasn't worth my while for the number of views that it was getting. So I kind of just look at OK, this makes sense, and the same with, like, your RSS feed. There's a lot of platforms out there that you have to go in and manually do it. A lot of the ones will kind of send it to Apple, spotify and things like that, but there's a lot more out there and you have to manually do that. So it's a case of having the list of that and sending them to the different ones and it's like it's easy to do, but it's strange. But most people don't do it. So is that the reason that minor up the top charts? Because I do all these little things and one thing I would say is most people don't do it like they all want the magic sauce or marketing and if they all think it's going to be a special thing, just do this and you get a gazillion downloads. What I say is have a fantastic interview. That's the most important thing, because if you've got a decent interview with good content, at least you have a chance that people will come back and they'll share it, and you have to. That has to be the priority, basically serve those, serve your listeners right. Exactly. No, it's like what I would say is I'm not technical, I can do it, anyone can do it. And like when I'm going through it with clients, everybody has their kind of own speed. Some people they're like a level OK, let's get the logo, let's do this and they'll want to compress it into two weeks. There's others that want to take their time and do it over two months and I kind of I work with all of them because I don't want anybody to not feel comfortable. You have to kind of go. This is the pace that I want, and once they do that, then they'll enjoy the process more and then you can look at different monetizations as well. You can reach out to people and you know even a few books and stuff like that. There's a lot of different things to be looking and if you spend the time kind of researching or just following groups and pages and listening to podcasts like yours, you pick up tips from guests that come on and that's how you actually just keep improving. So if you put the effort in to learn, you will keep getting better. But a lot of people they just start it, they put their legs up and they just think, ok, it'll grow eventually, and unfortunately, that's not. That's not how it works.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 18:12

Thank you. Thank you, Roy, for sharing so generously with us today. So what is Roy grateful for today?

Roy Coughlan: 18:20

I'm just, I'm just kind of grateful. I live true life, always enjoying what I do, always making sure I'm present in the moment. So, like I love my coffee you know I make a coffee with lemon in the morning. I enjoy that. I enjoy preparing for podcasts, I enjoy, like, when I'm with my son. I'm with my son and when I'm talking to my friends, and so I kind of live in the present moment. I never worry about kind of what's happening next week or whatever, not that I don't plan or have goals for the year, but I'm always present in what I'm doing. I'm not living, I'm not living on the phone, I'm not distracted, I don't have notifications all the time. So when I'm there, I'm there.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 18:55

Awesome, so tell our listeners how we can get in touch with you.

Roy Coughlan: 18:59

So I've made it easy, as everything that I have is on biolink, slash podcaster and basically, even if there's like the course, there's like the webinar that you just you've given the details, you get a 30 minute webinar. So you'll see my style on that anyway, and you get it. So there's there's no pushy sale or anything like that, and then people can book a discovery call. Everything is in that, and my five podcasts as well. They'll find all the links up biolink forward slash podcaster.

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 19:26

Thank you, and we'll put that link in the show notes.

Roy Coughlan: 19:30

Any parting shots If you're going to do podcasting, do it from the heart, that it means something to you. Because if you do it from the heart and you know, you're changing someone's life. So, for example, a lot of people trying to tell because they go, I'm going to get in five donors and getting 10 downloads, or whatever I say if you're in a room and say, say it's 20 donors and 20 people turn up, you would be delighted, a lot of speakers would be happy for 20 people to be in a room. And if you come back next week and there's 18 of them but there's two new people, so you've 20 again, it's all good and you would speak. But for some reason, people look at the analytics and the numbers and they get kind of disheartened. But if, with your conversation that you're having with people, if you change one person's life or you just help them and the message gets to them when they need it. And so, for example, when I was doing my numbers, the very first time I was doing it, the very first speaking podcast was the first one and I was about three weeks in before I hit a hundred. I was going around everyone. Did you listen to it yet? Did you listen to it, yet Then I got to like a thousand. That was a milestone. I remember when I got to a million with the different things I went. I know like the Polish one is over two million with the audio and the video and it's like it's good. I track everything and I'm watching it. But it's not about the numbers, it's all about just kind of OK, this is growing, but I know I'm helping people and you just get message back people kind of grateful, and when you're knowing that you're helping mankind. So I suggest to people that if you can do something that's going to help people, or if you have something that's annoying in the world, why not create something that makes change? Instead of expecting some politician or somebody to do it, why not be you that makes the change?

J. Rosemarie (Jenn): 21:06

Well, fred. Thank you, roy Collin, for coming and speaking to us today. I really appreciate you.

Roy Coughlan: 21:11

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on the show.