Podcast Flywheels For Real Business Growth

We share a simple system to turn a focused podcast into a self-sustaining flywheel for trust, leads, and reach. From choosing one core job to repurposing, micro CTAs, and meaningful metrics, we lay out a path that avoids burnout and builds momentum.

• choosing one clear purpose for the show
• structuring episodes around a single listener problem
• guiding action with light, helpful CTAs
• repurposing each episode into clips, posts and email
• using search-driven, benefit-led titles
• building an email + episode + offer loop
• showing up consistently on one or two channels
• growing community with questions and shout-outs
• tracking retention, CTA clicks and signups over downloads

MI Gardener:

MIgardener Grow Guides

Transcript

Turning Podcasts Into Leads And Trust

Pick One Core Job For Your Show

Seasons And Strategy Across The Brand

Solve One Problem Per Episode

CTAs Without Selling Hard

Repurpose To Fuel The Flywheel

Search-Driven Titles That Convert

Email + Episode + Offer System

The KC-10 Takeoff: Front-Loaded Effort

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Trading Post Podcast, where we unlock the secrets of business-to-business trade, dive into powerful networking strategies, and share my exciting journey of using a podcast to market my business instead of relying on SEO. I'm your host, Trader Stew. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Trading Post Podcast with your host, Trader Stew. And I wanted to touch on something real quick again that you you everyone seemed to really enjoy. It's gotta be one of the top downloaded podcasts that I have, except for the pitch, of course. And that's only because I send that out. That's in my email signature, like with the link. If you guys ever are curious, just send me an email and I'll reply to you and you can see what's going on. But basically, the whole point, like I mentioned before, the podcast started off as just an explanation of what trade is. I work for Metro Trading Association, of course. And as a sales and marketing manager, people always ask me, What is it? What do you do? And how does it work? And all you know, all the fun stuff, right? And I'm like, you know, the best way to do it is put it in a podcast. And that was uh over a year ago, and it just kind of keeps going. And now I just kind of hit a little bit more on several topics that turns it into an actual podcast. So let me adjust my mic here real quick. It seems distant, you know what I mean? Here, there, that's better. I always recommend too. I don't I didn't do it last week because just whatever, but have it your ear muffs on uh or your your headphones, and when you're recording, you can hear it. Anyway, let's get into it. So uh the podcast I was talking about, the episode was how to turn a podcast into leads, trust and real reach. And that was a number one download for me. And I'm gonna kind of touch on that again in a little bit of a different angle, and how to go more into a flywheel that grows itself for a podcast. Okay, so let's get into basically choosing one core job for your podcast. Now, one thing that's common with a lot of people, and me, myself included, you know, this is not my first rodeo. I I've done, I think, five or seven YouTube channels, and I've done, I think, a podcast or two before. So, you know, the it's not a one-and-done thing. People they see people that are successful and doing tons of uploads, and like, oh, that must be easy, I guess. So it doesn't. You just got a trial and error. It's just like I'm trying to be a gardener and grow food for the family, you know, just of course, just in case SHTF, right? And not to save money, because trust me, I'm not saving money. This is a hobby that I need to stop tracking how much I should spend on it because it's kind of that's not depressing, but like it's it's a hobby, okay? It's not like a way to save money, it's just a way to be secure. And you're just like anything in bulk, when you buy bulk, like at a grocery store, even energy, you know, gas, electricity, it's always gonna be cheaper, okay? If and then if you do it yourself in your own deal, it's gonna cost more. Maybe one day I'll start saving money, but right now my tomatoes cost about you know two thousand dollars a tomato or something like that. You know, it's crazy. So, anyway, narrow your podcast down to like doing one job, okay? Because podcast burnout, and that and with Jimmy, who is the beast from YouTube, he said, do a hundred episodes and then come talk to me. Like after you do a hundred episodes, I'm gonna go on your channel, make sure you did a hundred, and then maybe you can have a conversation on how to do things or do a different angle or concentrate on different thumbnails and how they look. Because you're most likely he just filtered out 99.99% of people. Yeah, you got to do a hundred episodes for it to kind of really set in. And I myself, what am I even on? I don't even know what how many episodes I'm on. I think I'm on uh 55, you know, and that's been a year, so it's average about a one a week. Okay, maybe a bit more, but no, less than that, because I started in October. But either way, I'm like just slightly less than one a week right now, not every on that on average. So you got to do 100 and and figure it out what you're doing, what your angle is, what you like, and you gotta choose just one job for your YouTube channel or podcast. Because people, if they want to tune in and listen to how to assemble something or whatever, and then you're talking about something else, you know, you got to have a core theme for your thing, otherwise, people are just gonna click off of it and you just wasted your time. You're not getting the right people with the right audience. So when you do a burnout, it comes from trying to make your show do everything all at once. So the one primary job is either is it to attract clients, is it to build trust with your community, or is it to support an offer that you're already selling? So shows with a single purpose outperform the ones that try and serve 10 or more. The clarity is the first piece of your flywheel. And that's that reciprocating idea that I have about the flywheel and itself replicating. Okay. So narrow it down. The podcast you're listening to as we speak, the trading post started off because I like I said, I'm trying to just explain what trade is. If you've never been in a trading association before, don't know what bar business a barter is, and you're like, oh yeah, trading, you know, chickens for lettuce. I don't know. And you're like, yeah, kind of, but we take it one more step, you know, further, and you put it into a credit-based system, and then that way you can use it with anybody else that's in the group, and they're like, I don't get it. And you're like, okay, oh, yeah, well. So we'll start from the top, you know, and after so many times, you're just like, okay, look, I'm just gonna give you this link to episode one, season one, and there you go. It's called The Pitch, it explains everything, and that's how the show kind of took off. And I'm instead of like, I might say, I forgot how I did it, but I was like, well, I'll just uh publish it, you know. And then I got people in Australia and Great Britain and Texas and people everywhere all over the world starting to listen to it in China, and I'm like, okay, well, maybe we got something here. So I did another episode, and then I got more listeners, and I mean it just kind of like kind of grew itself like that. So, you know, now I do it kind of unconventionally. My I'm kind of like, am I practicing what I preach right now? I don't know, because so I have four seasons. I figured, you know, I got spring, summer, fall, winter, right? So I figured season one is trade education and member spotlights. So one day, maybe if I do interviews, I left that open to maybe interview people who are in trade and how it's helped them. And then season two was sales, marketing, and networking. Season three is experiencing podcasting for business promotions. So this is what you're listening to right now. This is season three. And then season four is prepping to cover your tail. So, and that season four spawned off because I got I'm a if I'm an NPC in a video game that's getting released, and it's about prepping, and they're using my characteristics to run the trading post in the video game called Get Prepped. So that I figure I'm I needed I'm a prepper a little bit too, kind of not great. I wish I had a bunker, I wish I had a windmill. I mean, I would I'm I'm in a suburb. I'm not really much of a prepper as much as I am, just kind of like I would just rather not stand on a FEMA line, you know, level of prepping. I have a couple extra gallons of water and some you know, cans of soup and a bag of rice, you know, just so like, hey, FEMA's here. You're like, yeah, you know what? I'd rather not. I got my own water and food. Thank you, though. That's kind of like where I'm at. I aspire to be moor, but uh, as of right now, I'm limited. My neighbors keep calling the authorities on me for every time I try and do something in my backyard. You need a permit for everything. I might as well live in an HOA. I digress. Okay, I'll stop. I'll stop right there. Anyway, so experience podcasting for business promotion is what you're listening to. And it just it's it all ties together. It's all business, it's all kind of like trading, it's all the business mindset, I guess, is what I'm trying at, but in different angles, you know. Not many people talk about trade, not many people talk about how to use your actual podcast for promoting it because your your business, because they're trying to just be the promoter instead of educating on it, right? So, anyway, uh the other one you can do is deliver value by solving one specific problem. So each of your episodes should revolve around one problem your listener can't ignore. When you do that, three important things happen. One, your content becomes easier to consume, two, listeners stay longer and retention increases. And three, you build trust without send uh sounding salesy. So the last thing you want, you don't need to sound salesy no more. We have the internet. If people want something, you're gonna Google it and they're gonna find it and they're gonna buy it, most likely on Amazon. However, this is not like a thing against Amazon, but we got we canceled our prime. Did you notice it got kind of cheap? It's kind of got like like Teemu got into it anyway. Most creators try to lecture instead of solve uh something small but meaningful. And today's listeners reward shows that respect their time. So don't be salesy and give something before you get something. You what the other thing you can do is uh use call to actions or CTAs with not a sales pitch. So instead of shouting, buy now, your offer small, helpful next steps, such as download the checklist, join the email list for episode recaps, or answer this week's question. These micro call to actions guide listeners without pressure and they convert better. So, one of the ones I was super impressed with, actually, I found it this week because I'm getting my garden ready. I'm thinking about gardening, is go to my gardener. I think it's mi gardener.com. You know what? I'll just I'll give them a little a promo here because I like this. This is a good thing for you guys to check out as an example. Let me just click through here. Michigan Gardener. It's just Michigan Gardener.com or MI Gardener is what it is. He's in St. Clair, Michigan. He's got a huge YouTube channel, it's been on for a while. He's got, I don't know how many fans he's got. I'll actually tell you. Let me go go in here real quick. MI Gardener. I'll save you the time from having to look yourself. Gardener, here we go. How many subscribers do you have? Luke, Luke has 1.38 million subscribers. That's awesome. I met I used to work at Ray Wigan's nursery and I met Luke in there and got to talking. He actually followed my old YouTube channel. Pretty cool. He's a big YouTuber and he's got his own store in St. Clair. I gotta go there actually. But what I want to get into is go to mygardener.com, go into uh where'd I find this? He's got free downloads. I think it was shop. And then let me see here. Maybe it's merch. Merchandise. He's got free downloads and free guides on here. Let me go in here again here. Anyway, go in there and he's got uh free like add to cart, and then you download the PDF of you know things for gardening. And it's in his shopping cart, but it's free. I think it's cool because now you're gonna go there, you're gonna use his stuff, and you're like, oh, you know what? I need a pack of seeds or whatever, right? So boom. You know, you you maybe you signed up for something, you're gonna get an email 10% off. I don't know. And then boom, you got he's gonna get your your sale, and that's what it's all about. Give something first, don't pitch. And I thought that wasn't, I was impressed by that. Anyway, there you go, Luke. So repurpose every episode into a mini content machine. One of the biggest mistakes podcasters make is the letting an episode die after its release. And I am guilty of that because I'm not really trying to grow the channel as much as I am, just trying to educate people on trade and how to use a podcast. But each episode becomes three to five short clips, two social posts, one email newsletter, and one searchable title optimized for discovery. And repurposing that fuels the flywheel multiplies your reach without multiplying your workload. I don't know about that. I it does, I mean, your workload. I don't do pod, I don't do video. I might do video one day, but it's just a lot more editing. And maybe I should just not care about editing, and I just record and then don't care. I don't know. But I do do the social posts. If you don't, if you're like I'm in the business realm of uh uh podcasting, I every episode goes on LinkedIn and alignable. I don't do the Facebook thing, maybe I should, but I don't, and it I am on YouTube, but on the podcast only, not the uh video. I think video is kind of dying anyways. AI's slop is getting is taking over, people are getting burned out. I'm letting my YouTube premium subscription run out, so I just have left less of a you know want to be on there, I guess you want to say, because it's just a waste of time, man. Uh oh, here I found it. MI Gardener Growing Guides. So go to shop on his Michigan Gardener and then go to Growing Guides, and then you can download you know several things for gardening. Anyway, I couldn't let it go. I had to find it for Luke. He did me a solid, he followed me. I figured I'd give him a solid and direct you to his idea of you know free download. Anyway, use search-driven episode titles. Now I do do that only because I'm on Buzzsprout, and Buzzsprout has an AI system in there that helps you all with SEO titles, descriptions, things of that nature, tags. I guess the tags don't work the way they used to, but anyway. So don't name episodes like art pieces, name them like solutions. So instead of the power of connection, try how to build audience loyalty in 10 minutes a week. You know, it's searchable, benefit-driven, and click-friendly. Because you're gonna search for that. You're not gonna like search for the power of connection. Like what that doesn't make any sense. If you're trying to find loyalty, you want to figure out how you can build an audience or how to build loyalty, and then the extras in 10 minutes a week. Build your simple podcast email offer ecosystem. So when you connect, you got an episode, an email, then offer. You build a flywheel that grows without posting 40 times a day or chasing trends. This system turns casual listeners into long-term supporters, and it works even when you're sleeping. And that's kind of like a stock, right? It's gonna work for you all the time. When I was a kid, I just loved that idea. Like you invest, you put your money in a stock, and your money works for you 24-7, 365. I was like, oh, that's cool. The problem is you got to get the money to put it in there and blah blah blah, right? So, but anyway, it takes work up front. It's like I used to fly jets, right? And when I had a set takeoff power in the KC 10, it was near or almost like, or maybe it was even full throttle. Like you the throttles went all the way forward to get this big beast rolling, right? 593,000 pounds of metal had to get rolling and off the ground. And then, you know, once you level off after 15, 20 minutes, whatever it took to get into airspace where we could level off, you know, the throttles came back to half or a quarter, right? You're just kind of sipping fuel at that time, right? And you're at 42,000 feet and just kind of hanging out, and you got the center of gravity just right, you got your fuel tweaked, you got everything, you know, you're kind of swaying, and it's just like, ah, all right, you know, we're up here now. And the radios get kind of quiet because you're high enough out of the out of the way. All the chaos, all the noise, all the full effort is kind of behind you. And it's kind of like what this is, you know, you got to like put a bunch of effort into it in the beginning. You're gonna not get a traction, you're not gonna get anywhere fast, you're still rolling on the ground, you know, you're still below the air tower, you know, the control tower, and and maybe you got a wheel kind of getting light in the front there, and the nose wheels getting light, and you're almost there, and you're almost off the ground. The most effort is getting off the ground, okay? So you gotta get consistent and try not to burn out before you get off the ground. And then you can throttle back a little bit. So you don't need to be on every platform, you don't need to be posting consistent or constantly either. You know, I try and post and I don't, but I try once a week or once a day, I think it is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I they say most people are on LinkedIn, so I'll post a you know, something or a like or a comment. And I tried using AI for a minute there and having it post five or ten or twenty times on each platform for me automatically through perplexity. It was just so fake and so chintzy, and it got me nowhere. And I just found it, I just felt like a not exposed, but like a charlatan, like a like I don't know. I just it just wasn't authentic. So I quit doing it. So you need a repeatable cadence, a repurpose content, and one or two channels you show up on consistently. So that's my alignable and LinkedIn because I'm in business. So, and maybe you're something else, so you do something else. But this is sustainable growth, and it's the kind that lasts, okay? So listener engagement that actually works is the other one. So asking for ratings doesn't build community, but conversations do. So don't say, hey, give me a like and give me a subscribe. I don't know. Try weekly uh listener questions, polls, shout-outs by name, maybe stories from your audience. Make listeners part of the show and they'll stay for the long haul. Another one you can do is track what actually matters. So you don't need vanity metrics, downloads feel good, but retention, call to action, clicks, email signups, those are what build momentum. And I don't know, I I try not to look at the the metrics like a buzz sprout. It gives you a chart and like a bar graph and how each episode's doing, how many listeners have you know downloaded it and things of that nature. But I'll check it once in a while because it does email, it gives you a text, but you don't don't, it's kind of like watching water boil. Just don't look at it in the beginning, maybe later. Like today, I did. I looked at it, and that gave me the idea for this episode. And because y'all liked it, so you know, like like the topic, right? So I'm like, well, if that's what you guys are into right now, why would I not give you more of that, you know, and more ideas? So anyway, your podcast hasn't got to be everywhere, it just needs to be intentional. Pick one purpose, deliver one solution at a time, guide listeners with small steps, repurpose everything, and then let the flywheel spin. So thanks for listening to the Trading Post podcast. All the links and uh sponsors and community and bonus content in the description. Be good or be good at it.