Strategies Content Creators Use to Earn $250,000 from Podcasting

Robin Waite, a renowned author and dynamic keynote speaker, unveils his transformative journey from leading a successful web design agency to establishing the empowering Fearless Business coaching program. Imagine making business not only successful but enjoyable and supportive—Robin has done just that. Get inspired as he shares his unique approach to group coaching, emphasizing the importance of community and lifelong support for solo entrepreneurs. Robin’s successes don't stop there; with best-selling books under his belt, he also reveals the joy of connecting with readers and the inspiration behind his writing achievements.

Curious about the power of authentic engagement and strategic networking? Learn how Robin harnessed podcast partnerships and strategic content marketing to create unparalleled growth opportunities. We talk about his game-changing appearance on Ali Abdaal's podcast, which brought a flood of new business, and how the use of platforms like Podmatch can enhance SEO and visibility. Discover the art of building genuine connections and the impact of giving value to audiences without self-promotion. Listen in to uncover how these strategies can shape a sustainable and fulfilling business model for everyone involved.

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Transcript

Eric Eden 0:02

Welcome to today's episode. Today we are talking about the power of podcasting and content, and we have an awesome guest to help us talk through that, robin Waite. Welcome to the show.

Robin Waite 0:15

Thank you for having me, Eric. It's a pleasure to be here.

Eric Eden 0:19

And you are an author and a keynote speaker who creates tons of content. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Robin Waite 0:28

Yeah, absolutely so. I'm actually an introvert by nature. I started off my career in 2004 doing web design and branding, ran that company until 2016. And then, through various life choices, I've got two daughters now and I was between daughters at the time and life was just getting a little bit too hectic so I decided I was going to close the agency down, ultimately ended up selling it, which was quite exciting as a process to go through, and then from there went into informally mentoring people because they heard that I'd sold my agency, wanted to understand how they could do it for their own agency and essentially, eric, anything for like coffee and cake. You know that's all you've got to do to get my attention these days.

Robin Waite 1:09

So I did a bit of informal mentoring for free and then eventually it got to a point where there was so much demand because I was getting invited to speak at events and go to networking events and things like that that I set up Fearless Business, which is the business coaching program which I run now and primarily we help sort of small one person businesses, because that's where my heart is. So the grassroots businesses looking to grow up to six figures and beyond. Mostly they are in the service client space. So coaches, consultants, freelancers, those sorts of businesses and my greatest passion as well is I think there's a lot of people out there who either take business like far too seriously or ultimately make it really dull. My job is to make it as fun as I possibly can do and to help people get the freedom back which I've managed to create for myself.

Eric Eden 1:57

That's awesome and you've helped over 1000 people with coaching something like that right.

Robin Waite 2:02

Yeah, absolutely. We've had to shift into doing more of a group coaching thing now, which people have different views on and we probably won't go into, but what it has allowed us to do is to essentially help more people at scale. I'm only one person and doing one-to-one coaching was quite a lot, but yeah, since we shifted into the group format and it's gone from strength to strength, we just seem to be helping more and more people every year, which is fantastic.

Eric Eden 2:24

Is a group coaching kind of like a mastermind sort of structure.

Robin Waite 2:28

Yeah, yeah, it's exactly that, and I try and again try and make it sort of differentiated to other group coaching programs. So we actually do like a lifetime access program, so you pay for it once, you get access to it ad infinitum, and what it's really allowed us to do is kind of build that community of different, you know, fearless business owners, because otherwise what you end up with in a lot of traditional coaching programs is kind of, you know, like a revolving door of clients constantly coming and going and my, my whole thing about when I remember when I first started growing my first business, was you end up it can be quite insular, very lonely, like trying to grow a business, and especially now we're in this online space. So for me it was like super important to build this community where people always had a safe space to go to to talk about their business and sometimes personal woes and challenges and things like that.

Eric Eden 3:19

That's great. I love it. And you've written a couple of books, right. Tell us just a little bit about that broadly.

Robin Waite 3:26

Yeah. So the first one was kind of more linked to my web design days. So the first one was the one with the red cover. It's called Online Business Startup and it was literally the three things, the trinity of like building a business, starting a business, going online and then marketing it. And that did really well. I think it sold about 15 or 20,000 copies in its heyday. It was at number one on Amazon for about two and a half years and it was great fun because I had several friends who'd also written books and we were always sort of vying at the top of the charts for like small business and entrepreneurship, you know, constantly having sort of conversations and taking the mickey out of one another about whose book was number one or two and things like that, and.

Robin Waite 4:01

But the trouble is that book was very much about and he said I don't run an agency, I'm a golf pro. So Russ actually ended up being my first official coaching client and I used to tell a story about Russ's journey, about how we sort of transformed his golf pro business. We packaged up his offer and we raised his prices and at some point somebody said, hey, you should put that into a book. So that ultimately ended up being Take your Shot and again Take your Shot sold thousands of copies. Now I think it's approaching like 900 five-star reviews on Amazon, which is like beyond my wildest imagination when I actually wrote the book. But it's told as an actual parable, like a story, so that people can get really immersed into it. They can feel like get a sense of Russ's character and like the nicest thing is when people sort of write to me and they say, oh, I really empathize with the character. It felt like you were writing the book about me because I wanted people to really get into the story of it.

Eric Eden 4:58

I love it and congratulations on that. It's hard for people to get even more than 50 reviews on Amazon, so that's that's great. So congratulations on that. It's hard for people to get even more than 50 reviews on Amazon, so that's great.

Robin Waite 5:06

So congratulations on that. It's hard work, Eric, which has gone into that. So yeah, just a little bit.

Eric Eden 5:12

The life of an author. So tell us a story about some of the best marketing that you've done that you're the most proud of in building your business.

Maximizing Podcast Partnerships for Growth

Robin Waite 5:23

Yeah, I mean, as you know, marketing's a journey and I think a lot of people, when they get into business, they they really want to do more of the thing which they got into business doing the first, in the first place, whether that's building websites, coaching as an accountant, a graphic designer, whatever it is, and I very much was in that sort of I wanted to spend more time coaching. And so the end of I think it was 2022, I basically got to a point where I was just really fed up with grinding out sort of repurposing content and doing all the things a lot of the gurus and experts tell you to do. You know, I was doing all of the usual sort of stuff podcasts, youtube channels, doing videos, short and long form content, the rest of it but I was just a bit burnt out by the end of 2022. So I went anti-social and decided just to cut everything like social media wise. Not really. I didn't have much of a plan at that point, but I figured that what I was doing was just churning out content. But I wasn't being terribly intentional about it. But what slowly became apparent was that I was kind of stuck here in my little studio in the Cotswolds in England and not really getting out much. And and I realized that there were some amazing business owners out there doing like great things, having a lot of fun doing what they're doing, and I wasn't really hanging out with them. So I wrote down a list of 10 entrepreneurs that I absolutely love, like. I follow all of their content, their videos and stuff, and I thought, right, I'm gonna put myself in the room with these people, I'm just gonna show up with no agenda, just hang out with them, have fun doing it, like add value to their businesses if I can, um, but with no real expectation of like getting anything back in return. It was really just have a bit of fun. So this concept of like partnerships came about and what it led to blew my mind.

Robin Waite 6:59

One of the guys who I helped was this youtuber. He's sort of expert anyway. One day one of his team said Robin, listen, I have to pay you some money. You've been so helpful. What can we do do? And I said, well, ali Abdaal. His first guest was, I think, his name's Ben Francis from Gymshark, so worth multi-billions of dollars. And I thought who am I to go on deep dive with Ali Abdaal? But I said to the guy look, put me on the subs bench. I know he's recording a couple of seasons. Anyway, long story short, I get a call like on a Thursday hey, rob, can you come down to London? We want you to record Like you're doing deep dive with Ali Abdaal. I was like, yeah, absolutely no problem.

Robin Waite 7:38

Realized that I had like two podcast interviews, a coaching session. I had to the school pick up and drop off to do. That day it's had to like cancel everything. But that one podcast interview ended up producing 3000 leads for my business and I think last count it was somewhere approaching $250,000 worth of new business from clients that we enrolled into the programs.

Robin Waite 7:55

But a lot of the time people like it's two questions I get asked is first, one is like how did you get it? How did you get that interview? Well, one, it was just paying a pound into the meter every single day into Ali's brand. I love what he was doing and I just showed up and was helpful and that eventually got recognized. But you can never predict when or you know what you're going to get back from a partnership like that. But I was just willing just to keep paying in because it was just fun to do it? And the second question I get asked is well, how did you do so well, how did you manage to get your 3 000 leads just from one interview? Um, ali's audience for those who know him is like incredibly, like six million people, but they're really engaged, they absolutely love his brand.

Robin Waite 8:37

So, you know, getting an endorsement from ali on his podcast was, you know, there was so much trust which was elicited from that and what we did on on the actual interview, we didn't, we didn't just do a, a sort of a you know, the typical sort of interview format which you, you know very, you know. You know well, eric, about five minutes before we sat down to record, ali said oh, you know, that coaching thing which you did with Joe on my team and Safwan, do you think we could probably do? Do you think we could do that on the podcast? And I was like, yeah, of course. So what?

Robin Waite 9:10

What we ended up doing for the first two hours of the interview, ali came up with two kind of role play businesses which he thought, oh, let's, let's talk about it. How would you coach me through starting this business up? And that's all we did for the first couple of hours. I just coached him around these two ideas and then after two hours he said oh, it's deep dive. We're supposed to be deep diving into the guest background. I should probably ask you some questions about yourself. And then we did the usual sort of structure for the for the interview. But and and really what it was really fascinating was we.

Robin Waite 9:39

We got to the end of the interview and ali and I just planned because he's like, oh, we should probably do a giveaway or do something at the end for people to sort of sign up to or whatever. You know, I want to want to promote your business. So I said well, let's, I'll bring 15 copies of the book, let's sign the books and you know both of us and then we'll give them away. I kid you not, within five minutes of the episode going live on YouTube, those 15 episodes, those 15 books were gone. And then they just kept rolling in. I think in the first two months, three months I think I shipped seven or 800 physical signed copies of the book to all four corners of the globe, and like Mongolia, south America, like all the countries across Europe Australia, new Zealand, north America, like everywhere, and it's carried on. So we're now what, 18 months on from when that episode went live and I literally I still get inquiries dropping into my inbox daily requesting a copy of the book.

Robin Waite 10:31

So a combination like that really high value content on the episode I think massively helped, but also having a high value giveaway at the end of it. It was like the double whammy of, you know, having the impact. And what's been really interesting is, you know, I have quite a regimented sort of qualification process when we sort of interview and enroll clients and every single client that has come through Ali has just been like, so wonderful to work with. It's just like the just really good people to work with, very, I mean, his thing is productivity, so they're all very engaged and very, you know, hyper productive. So it's been quite fascinating as a journey. But podcasts with people who've already got your audience there are by far and away, as a campaign, one of the things which everybody should be doing this year.

Eric Eden 11:16

Wow, that's an incredible story. It really shows the power of podcasting, that you can win hundreds of thousands of dollars by guesting, but I think you know some of the additional themes you mentioned. On top of that is, you know, producing great content, and you had the awesome book that you were able to use as the high value offer, like you were saying, and you know broadly, just being a creator who creates hundreds of hours of content, I think it probably allowed you to create a really great episode with him that really resonated with people, right.

Leveraging Podcasting for Growth

Robin Waite 11:51

Yeah, that's it. I mean I was. I've been trying to tot up, I think. Since we launched the group coaching program, we've done over 500 calls and they're typically about two hours each. So there's there's at least a thousand hours of coaching in there and content, goodness knows. I think I've done probably 200 podcast interviews. We have the YouTube channel. We have quite an extensive blog now with over 4,000 articles in it, and it's for me. It's always about, I think.

Robin Waite 12:18

I think a lot of people get content marketing wrong, so there's always this undercurrent of like self-promotion, which I get it right. We've got to. We've got to put our name out there and leverage it in order to get leads and things like that. But one of the I think, one of the biggest learnings I've had since especially since that interview with Ali went live it's okay just to give everything away like you can. I don't need to be like doing seven figures and be a scaling coach. I have a very nice lifestyle business doing two to three hundred thousand pounds a year, you know, um, and that I have a comfortable life with that as well, not just financially, but it means I get to hang out with my kids. I don't have to work ridiculously long hours in order to sustain that. It's quite a nice steady business, but that's just over and one of the one thing which might be helpful. So, um, on the podcast side of things, I went a bit old school in September so I decided I was going to like double down on the podcast side of things in on the first of September, just going to see how many podcasts I could guest on as you know, humanly possible to guest on in amongst my, my day job and um, initially I set a goal to do to book 30 podcasts and then, um, see how many of those I could record. So last count, count, I actually ended up. I've had to go into the back of it because I stretched the goal, basically. So I booked now 51 podcasts and I think I've recorded about 35 episodes.

Robin Waite 13:42

And one of the nice things is like we're taught about using tools like Todoist and various online tools and stuff like that. But every time I come and sit down at my desk with this little postcard in front of me, I'm reminded about what my purpose is, my mission is for the next week, the next quarter, the next, whatever it is. So gradually I'm just working my way through here and just kind of ticking them off as I go, and it's just a nice visual way to see what we do here. And the other thing as well is like, when we produce a high value piece of content, like a podcast interview like this, this one, um, I like to repay the favor to the host, for example. So and again, this is what I think a lot of people, when they're guesting, really forget about um, a lot of best possible chances got of helping not just me, help listen to the episode, but also find some extra listeners for Eric as well. So we I go to like part of the reason we do this is so that when a new episode gets released I've guessed it on we'll create a medium article, a blog article from it.

Robin Waite 14:40

We'll we'll write it up, we'll share it on LinkedIn. So there's a few things that we'll do that will hopefully add value to the podcast, raise its awareness, and it also helps with SEO, which is my background for like 20 plus years as well, you know, getting good quality backlinks to your podcast, because if we help your podcast grow well, by virtue of that, it benefits me as well. So those and again, it's that whole notion of treating this not as like a marketing campaign, not as me saying, hey, look at me, look how amazing I am. It's more about how can I leverage this partnership to benefit both eric, mostly, and also myself in the same process, because it can be a a win-win situation that's great.

Eric Eden 15:22

I think doing the marketing after you do the podcast is where a lot of people trip at the finish line and don't get the full value out of the time that they've invested. So that's pretty awesome. I like the concept of how you pick the right audience with Allie, and it was the right fit for you because a lot of podcasts are very niche and they have very specific audiences, and if you just go guest on any podcast, you probably won't get those sorts of great results, right. So I think what podcasts you're on and and are they really your your tribe is, it's a big piece of it. Did you work on booking these podcasts directly for your goal? Did you use agencies? Did you? Did you use some of the sites like Podmatch, like, like? How have you done it?

Robin Waite 16:15

Yeah, mostly actually it's through through Podmatch. So, alex Sanfilippo, you know he's built such an amazing platform on there and fortunate for us to have a conversation and he was like you've got to get onto Podmatch. I mean obviously you would cause it's his own platform, right, but he was like it's, it's such a great way. It's like basically a marketplace between podcast hosts, podcast guests and it. It's relatively inexpensive but it's just a really simple way to kind of meet podcasters. And and the nice thing is as well, you know, I've I've purposefully gone out of my way to select podcasts where the host has gone through. They've added, added all their social media links on there. They put a description of the type of guest which they're looking for in topics. They've got a breakdown of kind of their audience and the also the like, the backstory behind the podcast. So where they essentially filled out their profile and put lots of info on there, they tend to be the podcast we select because, like you said, it means then we can make sure there's a good crossover between sorts of content which I would talk about and hopefully giving their audience some value. Um, you're always going to get we have time but podcasts have. I've kind of created this tier system for the podcast which we, we, we guest on. So tier one is kind of like your, your top tier, your diary of a ceo, your colin and samir, your Ali Abdaal deep dive. They're like almost celebrity status sort of podcasts where they've got millions of followers. Tier two tends to be sort of maybe they've got a hundred people, but ultimately it's about looking for leads within their business and growing their business. And then you've got the tier fours, which I cast as more of like the hobbyists 're kind of like interested in podcasting, just looking to do something, to start producing content, but haven't really quite established that purpose yet. So we, we typically I break it down into like maybe every then this is yearly one or two tier ones. If we can achieve that, that's great. Probably five to ten tier twos and then obviously the numbers you know, scale as you go further down. But the really interesting thing is it some podcast. I think a lot of people look at podcasts. Oh, they've only got like 10 subscribers. Why should I go on that? Well, that you only need one person listening to that podcast who is like either a host of a tier three or tier two, or maybe an author or runs an event, or you know as a, as looking for a consultant in your niche, or something like that. You only need one opportunity from a podcast for it to really, you know, pay off, um, and it's the wonderful thing about podcasting. So, um, one final anecdote and then I'll, I'll, I'll shut up, but on my own. Enough for this is to we. We massively overproduced it, so we were spending a lot of money on producing loads of content, repurposing this any other, and I hadn hadn't necessarily got the ROI I'd hoped financially from it. So I was like questioning, do I carry on with it? And then, the week I was contemplating this, I got a call from Google and call from Microsoft, and then a third call from a company called Takeda, who are an international pharmaceutical company. All three of them booked me to speak at their events or various events within, booked me to speak at their events, um, or various events within, you know, um, parts of their organization. Episode 67 took me to get there. They'd all listened to episode two that week, which was about I don't know why itunes had surfaced it, but they'd all listened to episode two, which was about, like, growth mindset, which is something I don't ordinarily talk about, but at the time I found it interesting. So again, again, like with content, like you can never, you never know when the payoff is going to come, and this is why, if you keep, stay focused and produce high value content, something will happen eventually. It's just, it's not a matter of if it's when.

Eric Eden 19:42

I love it and being consistent, sticking with it. I think those are themes I hear from a lot of people and I'm a big believer that podcasting is an amazing channel for businesses that want to grow. I'm headed to the biggest podcast conference in the US next week PodFest in Orlando.

Robin Waite 20:02

And so.

Eric Eden 20:03

I'm going to get to spend a lot of time with fellow podcasters there and I'm going to keep working my way up your tier system and hopefully get to tier one. That's the dream, so I really appreciate you being with us today and sharing all this great stuff. I think people on the podcast journey, whether they're hosting or guesting need this kind of inspiration, so I really appreciate you joining and sharing this with us today. I'm going to link to your website and your book so people can get in touch if they'd like to learn more.

Robin Waite 20:33

Yeah, amazing, absolutely, and I always say it'd be unfair of me to talk about how many books I gave away on Ali Abdaal's podcast and then not do the same for your audience as well. So if you want to share the link, I'm happy to send free signed copies anywhere in the globe to anybody who's listening to the podcast as well, eric. So I think the website address is just fearlessbiz forward slash TYS for take your shot, but hopefully you will share it somewhere around this as well for people to get hold of it.

Eric Eden 20:59

Absolutely. Thank you for making that offer. I encourage everyone to take their shot and get the book and really appreciate it. Thanks for being with us today, my pleasure. Thank you, eric.