From First $5,000, to 3 Million Blog Views & Success In Tech World with Colin Gray

[00:00:00] It really changes your motivation, it really changes the ideas you have, it really changes your feeling of satisfaction when you get a piece of content out into the world.

[00:00:10] When you have this really clear detailed image in your mind of the person you're serving and the problem that that person has.

[00:00:18] Because from then on, your whole job is just to solve that problem for them.

[00:00:22] I really want to show a path for people to be like, okay how do I actually connect the content to the profit of my business and different things?

[00:00:27] So you've been creating for so long.

[00:00:29] The show we run these days is called Podcraft, which is about how to run a podcast. That's been going, what's that 16 years? That's a bit mental.

[00:00:36] But anyway that...

[00:00:37] What process do you have in place to stay consistent for so long?

[00:00:41] Every three, six, 12 months, you can redefine your audience, you can change it a bit, you'll carry along a good proportion of the people that have been listening already.

[00:00:48] You might lose a few but that's fine because you're changing, you're iterating, you're going.

[00:00:52] But the worst thing is not to do it at all. You need to actually just do it and then kind of iterate from there.

[00:00:57] Hey I'm Luis!

[00:00:59] And this is Luis.

[00:01:00] Welcome to the Content is Profit Podcast.

[00:01:03] In here you're gonna get the insights, accountability and drive to create consistently and increase revenue.

[00:01:09] You'll hear from top entrepreneurs, creators and everything you need to know about content all day while having a good time.

[00:01:20] The goal of this podcast is simple, entertain, educate and turn your content into profit. Let's go!

[00:01:27] Let's pretend that didn't happen.

[00:01:29] Leave vets! We leave by example. Guys it's okay we fell forward here.

[00:01:34] That is right.

[00:01:35] Guys we are very excited to bring this person today. We actually met him in the halls of this incredible event.

[00:01:42] Fonsi is like, do you know who that is? And I'm like, I don't know who that is but you know who that is?

[00:01:45] And he's like, yes I know who that is, of course that's why I'm asking you.

[00:01:48] So anyways we chatted for a little bit and I'm like, we need to have this conversation on the show.

[00:01:53] And finally we got to get him in here and he was kind enough to come.

[00:01:57] But this person has hit nearly 3 million yearly views on their blog.

[00:02:04] They are building and launching Alitu as a software product which we'll talk a little bit more about it.

[00:02:10] He has been creating content for 14 years straight. We talk about consistency.

[00:02:14] Every single episode over here we'll dive into it and obviously build a million dollar business and many more amazing things.

[00:02:21] And I know Fonsi has some questions that he hasn't told me yet.

[00:02:24] But guys, he's also located in a unique part of the world that we hope to visit at some point.

[00:02:30] So we'll talk about that.

[00:02:32] But guys please welcome the one and only...

[00:02:37] Colin Grave!

[00:02:40] What's up Colin?

[00:02:42] Hey guys, thanks for having me. What an intro, best intro ever I have to say.

[00:02:47] I appreciate that, mistakes and everything.

[00:02:50] Energy trumps mistakes, that's the lesson that we can learn.

[00:02:54] Colin, I'm so excited. I want to lead with a fun story.

[00:02:58] I want to start this episode and I hope it's not embarrassing you know.

[00:03:03] But I thought it was a fun story.

[00:03:05] The day we met, I don't know if you remember this, the day we met we were at a podfest.

[00:03:10] And we were actually doing like a little, I don't know how to call it, like a little round table, round circle thing.

[00:03:18] We were standing up so there were no tables so I don't know if you call it a round table.

[00:03:23] But you know we're introducing ourselves and we're like yeah we're Luis & Luis, the Biz bros.

[00:03:28] And a few minutes later you come to us and you're like hey man what's up? How are you doing?

[00:03:33] It's like dude, I knew Biz bros sounds familiar.

[00:03:37] I was like I've been on your podcast and I went into crisis mode.

[00:03:42] I was like oh my gosh, have you? I don't remember you. I'm so sorry.

[00:03:48] Colin I was so so embarrassed.

[00:03:51] And you're like oh it's okay, you know you guys have done a lot of episodes.

[00:03:54] I was like there's no way, there's no way I can remember.

[00:03:57] So I started looking into our database, you know people that we've interviewed.

[00:04:02] I was like Colin, no there's no Colin here. Gray maybe, no.

[00:04:06] And then all of a sudden something sparked in my head.

[00:04:10] A while back I had, you know when we were looking for the domains

[00:04:14] we discovered that there's actually some other Biz bros out there right?

[00:04:19] First of all, fake Biz bros.

[00:04:22] Nah I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But there are other Biz bros out there right?

[00:04:25] And turns out you had actually been on their podcast and you're like oh dude.

[00:04:32] Obviously I wouldn't make the same, I would have probably said the same thing.

[00:04:36] I was like dude I've been on their podcast with Biz bros.

[00:04:39] So after that I took that personally as a mission.

[00:04:42] I'm like you know what we're going to show Colin who the real Biz bros are.

[00:04:46] Colin you're invited to their show.

[00:04:49] And you know it was absolutely amazing.

[00:04:51] So sorry if it was a little embarrassing of a story. I just thought it was funny.

[00:04:54] No no it's all, I even remember.

[00:04:57] I was like why don't they remember me? This is terrible.

[00:05:01] I was looking at my email, I was on my email like searching Biz bros

[00:05:05] and I was like oh yeah there it is, here's the invite.

[00:05:08] Here's the conversation. I think I brought my phone over to you and said here it is.

[00:05:11] Here's the invite. And he was like that's not me.

[00:05:14] That's probably like the worst fear that we had you know

[00:05:18] and like not remembering anybody that came into the show where like there's no way.

[00:05:22] Yeah there's no way.

[00:05:24] It was funny because I remember you showing me the email and it was like an assistant.

[00:05:27] And I was like we don't have an assistant.

[00:05:30] I was like maybe you know. But yeah man it was awesome.

[00:05:34] It was honestly a good kind of like, I don't know how to call it

[00:05:38] because I don't think it was a mistake you know but it was like a good thing to happen

[00:05:43] because I feel like we bonded over that and then throughout the event.

[00:05:46] Yeah a good icebreaker.

[00:05:48] Throughout the event we kept seeing each other. We're like hey Colin what's up?

[00:05:52] Yeah totally.

[00:05:54] Do you actually, do you think that you guys remember everyone you've had in the show?

[00:05:57] Because you've done hundreds of episodes haven't you?

[00:05:59] Yeah.

[00:06:00] Like I often meet, this is bad for me, like I'm just really bad for remembering faces and names.

[00:06:06] And it's a real, it does embarrass me sometimes because I do exactly what you thought you'd done

[00:06:11] but hadn't obviously.

[00:06:13] And get people come up to me and say oh hi how are you getting on?

[00:06:16] And I'm like yeah good.

[00:06:18] Try to like glance down at the name tag.

[00:06:20] Yeah.

[00:06:21] And it's terrible. I really need to figure out how to get better at it but I've done that.

[00:06:24] Yeah well you've also been doing it for 14 years you know so that is way longer than,

[00:06:29] you know if I meet somebody from year one and I don't see them in 10 years

[00:06:33] and then they come up like there's a big chance I'm not going to recognize who that person is right?

[00:06:38] That's definitely a big fear and like something that we actually talk in the community a lot

[00:06:43] is like especially when we want to develop relationships right?

[00:06:46] We were just talking about this incredible event that we were in the last couple of days

[00:06:50] which is like based on relationships and referrals and it's like well what if I forget right?

[00:06:54] And I think it's like part of it is the uniqueness of the conversations that we have

[00:06:58] or the process right? We met you at the event, now we're talking here.

[00:07:01] There's probably going to be some more talks later right?

[00:07:03] And we associate you know Europe and Scotland right?

[00:07:06] It's like oh we talked about this a lot and we're like you know we're going to go watch some football over there

[00:07:11] when we go visit you.

[00:07:13] So there's like all these things that kind of link up to that.

[00:07:15] I think top of mind obviously I don't think I can list like all 500 people.

[00:07:19] But you know if we go to an event I'm sure like we're going to recognize

[00:07:23] because you know it is really a meaningful interaction that we have

[00:07:26] and that's something that you know we encourage everybody to do.

[00:07:29] It's not just a transactional conversation.

[00:07:31] Like this is actually hopefully if you accept us into your life

[00:07:35] we're going to be some kind of you know partners or referrals

[00:07:39] or different things and not only business but also friends right?

[00:07:42] That eventually you know if we go there to Scotland we'll give you a call and be like hey we're here.

[00:07:46] Surprise!

[00:07:48] I think that's it.

[00:07:50] But I'm going you know Collin I'm going here through some of your background right?

[00:07:53] You obviously you know founded the podcast host in 2011.

[00:07:56] You earned a doctorate in 2015 for research into online education.

[00:08:01] You launched Aliton 2018 right?

[00:08:03] A web app designed to simplify the podcast creation process by automating technical tasks.

[00:08:08] And I think like that's probably one of the main things I really want to go on.

[00:08:12] But you know we're very we're also like very money positive here in the show

[00:08:16] and we really want to show a path for people to be like okay how do I actually connect the content

[00:08:20] to the profit of my business and different things.

[00:08:22] So you've been creating for so long right?

[00:08:24] Well in my eyes that's so long maybe somebody else is like 14 years.

[00:08:28] I mean 14 years is quite a long time.

[00:08:31] And so if you've actually put out a lot of information out there

[00:08:34] so maybe can you share a little bit of maybe what are some of the lessons

[00:08:38] or like connection points from that content to your business right?

[00:08:41] Maybe even if you want to share like how much it has generated

[00:08:44] maybe just on Aliton or something else that you did before

[00:08:47] because I'm guessing you probably did something beforehand right?

[00:08:50] Yeah sure. I mean I'm happy to share any of the details yeah for sure.

[00:08:53] So just anything you want to know specifics just let me know.

[00:08:56] But I mean potentially that maybe the most interesting part of that

[00:09:00] then is the early days where like you say started blogging in 2011.

[00:09:05] I was still working full time at the university at the time.

[00:09:08] So that's how I got into podcasting.

[00:09:10] I was a student at the time and I was teaching lecturers

[00:09:13] how to use technology to teach students.

[00:09:16] So I really enjoyed that job.

[00:09:18] We got to mess around with all sorts of different stuff

[00:09:20] and podcasting was one of the interesting new technologies

[00:09:23] that came up back then.

[00:09:25] That was actually around 2007, 2008 I first started learning it

[00:09:30] and it was in 2011 I started turning that into something of my own

[00:09:33] like just what I was learning reading about mics and mixers

[00:09:36] and growth and monetization all that kind of stuff.

[00:09:39] So it was about two years I think.

[00:09:41] I remember looking back not that long ago.

[00:09:43] I launched a blog in 2011 and it wasn't until about 2013

[00:09:48] that I got my first penny from it.

[00:09:50] And it was actually just a check came through from Amazon

[00:09:53] like $50 I think that was their minimum at the time.

[00:09:56] So this just pops through the letter box

[00:09:59] two years after I started writing the first blog post

[00:10:01] I'm like oh my goodness this can actually make a few pence.

[00:10:05] And that just grew over time.

[00:10:07] The next year, the next two years that went up to

[00:10:11] I think by the time I turned it into a full-time business in 2015

[00:10:14] the site was earning about three to four thousand pounds

[00:10:18] so five ish six thousand dollars a month in affiliate revenue.

[00:10:22] And really that was the kernel for the whole business

[00:10:24] was that affiliate revenue because that let me go full-time on it

[00:10:28] and then it let me hire alongside actually some lucky enough

[00:10:31] to get some grant money from our local government too

[00:10:33] that kind of matched some of that to hire another person too.

[00:10:36] And that's where we went from there.

[00:10:38] That was how it kind of took off at that point.

[00:10:40] That's so cool and thanks for sharing those timelines right

[00:10:43] because a lot of people I think they come in

[00:10:46] into content with maybe different expectations right.

[00:10:50] Especially in podcasting right like hey yeah we're going to be famous

[00:10:53] or we're gonna get all these views

[00:10:55] and then we're gonna get sponsors and different things.

[00:10:57] So you took the route off obviously.

[00:10:59] Can you walk us through your content map right?

[00:11:01] You started blogging right and I'm assuming some kind of podcasting as well at that point.

[00:11:05] Was it all affiliate content?

[00:11:07] Like how many times a week were you doing this stuff?

[00:11:10] Like how are you sustaining this map?

[00:11:13] Yeah I was only blogging once a week or so.

[00:11:16] Probably not even that often.

[00:11:18] Those early years like 2012, 2013 maybe getting out at least a couple of months.

[00:11:23] So maybe bi-weekly because it was just a part-time hobby thing really back then.

[00:11:28] And like I said as soon as that money started coming in

[00:11:31] I was like oh maybe I should take this a bit more seriously.

[00:11:33] And I remember going through a period not long after that

[00:11:36] I must have only been at like a few hundred potentially per month

[00:11:40] in affiliate income where I thought you know I'm gonna just write a blog post every day for a month

[00:11:45] and see what happens from there.

[00:11:47] So I spent a month doing a post every single day.

[00:11:51] Just weekdays so it was like 20 posts I think over a month.

[00:11:54] And that really that was the game changer actually.

[00:11:57] Because in most niches I think with content

[00:12:01] the vast majority you can cover like 90 plus percent of the search traffic

[00:12:07] for that niche in like the top 20 questions.

[00:12:11] So even less usually like usually the top like 5, 10 questions

[00:12:15] actually cover 90 plus percent of the traffic in that niche.

[00:12:18] So with podcasting it was always like how do I start a podcast?

[00:12:21] How do I record a podcast?

[00:12:23] What's the best microphone?

[00:12:25] So those searches alone were actually like probably three quarters

[00:12:29] of all the searches in podcasting for that key term.

[00:12:32] So that month of blogging actually let me tackle pretty much

[00:12:37] all of the searches I needed to and from there I built on that

[00:12:41] really building out services and education

[00:12:43] and try to think really about how to monetize it from that point.

[00:12:45] That made a big difference.

[00:12:47] Awesome. Yeah that is very interesting.

[00:12:49] I'm curious if you were to start today, right?

[00:12:53] Or you were already kind of like on a little bit of a flow today

[00:12:57] would you do the same exact thing or would you do it through a different medium?

[00:13:01] Because I feel like now competition is bigger, right?

[00:13:05] A lot of people are into it.

[00:13:07] Obviously content I would say is mainstream

[00:13:11] in the sense of when people think about marketing

[00:13:14] they think about content creation, you know?

[00:13:16] Whether that is Reels, SEO, whatever.

[00:13:19] So I'm curious what would be if you were starting today

[00:13:22] how would you do that? Or would you do the same?

[00:13:24] Well one of the interesting things I discovered back then was that

[00:13:28] I was writing about podcasting.

[00:13:31] I was writing about an audio medium.

[00:13:33] I was running podcasts too.

[00:13:35] I'd run a podcast since 2007.

[00:13:37] The show we run these days called Podcraft

[00:13:39] which is about how to run a podcast.

[00:13:41] That was the one I started to teach lecturers back then.

[00:13:44] That's been going, what's that 16 years?

[00:13:47] That's a bit mental.

[00:13:48] But anyway that show has been going for a while.

[00:13:53] The interesting thing is yes,

[00:13:55] the blog really was the wide part of the net.

[00:13:59] People would find us that way because they'd type in a search term.

[00:14:02] They'd find our content that way.

[00:14:05] Because people love listening to podcasts

[00:14:07] but when they want a quick answer to something they just type it to Google.

[00:14:10] You're not going to listen to a podcast to get a quick answer to something.

[00:14:13] The interesting thing was they found us that way.

[00:14:15] They found our 50-60 blog posts at the time

[00:14:18] and they generally found our podcast in one of those blog posts

[00:14:22] because I would embed the audio into there.

[00:14:24] So they'd end up listening to an episode based on building a bit of trust

[00:14:29] by reading that blog post.

[00:14:31] They're like, alright I'll give this podcast a chance.

[00:14:33] That was what made the difference to turn them from just a casual visitor

[00:14:39] into actually somebody who followed our work.

[00:14:42] That was the cool thing.

[00:14:43] The podcast was never the volume creator or the money maker necessarily

[00:14:49] but it was what turned those casual visitors and captured them

[00:14:52] brought them into our ecosystem and made them stick around, come back,

[00:14:55] week after week after week.

[00:14:56] And that's what I believe turned into that affiliate income over time

[00:15:00] because that revenue in the early days, it was all recommendations.

[00:15:03] It was all like, what kind of software should I use for my hosting?

[00:15:06] What microphone should I use for my recording?

[00:15:08] We'd get a bit of commission off those recommendations.

[00:15:11] We were always very honest and open about the pros and cons.

[00:15:14] We did everything really fairly.

[00:15:15] I think we built trust that way.

[00:15:17] But primarily it was because of that podcast.

[00:15:19] They listened to the show.

[00:15:20] They got to know us, me and Matthew through our voices on that podcast.

[00:15:25] And that's why they kept coming back for recommendations.

[00:15:27] So like I said, interestingly the blog was what made us our money

[00:15:31] because it was through the recommendations people found there.

[00:15:34] But it was definitely the podcast that really built that trust that enabled that.

[00:15:39] So we're doing this again today.

[00:15:41] Sorry, come on here.

[00:15:42] But like I would do that exact same process again because I think even more so now

[00:15:48] that trust, that personality, that humanity is what we need right now to stand out

[00:15:53] amongst the infinitely more, much bigger volume of written content

[00:15:59] that's coming out now with AI writing, all that kind of stuff.

[00:16:02] So now you've got to write.

[00:16:04] But I think you really need either a podcast, a video, some kind of media behind it

[00:16:09] to really show that humanity, build that trust behind it

[00:16:12] to drive people in and make them come back.

[00:16:14] It's almost like that written content.

[00:16:16] We just assume it's going to be a consistent thing across the industry.

[00:16:20] People just understand that every single business will have that.

[00:16:24] So then we need to go a level above and be like,

[00:16:27] what else can we provide as value or trust building vehicles

[00:16:32] that people are like, oh, these are actually real people behind this company.

[00:16:35] And it's not just a random AI or a faceless brand or a faceless thing,

[00:16:41] which on our side I think that's very valuable.

[00:16:44] Yeah, definitely building trust at the core of podcasting.

[00:16:49] Like Fonzie would say, dude, think.

[00:16:52] Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:54] I'm definitely not a fan.

[00:16:56] I mean, I know AI has its uses, but when people just use it strictly to just create the content

[00:17:03] that they're going to pump out, that's what bothers me.

[00:17:05] I'm like, dude, if you're a thought leader, think.

[00:17:09] Put your thoughts out into the world, your thoughts, you write down the words.

[00:17:13] Now I'm pretty curious on throughout 14 years, how have you monetized content change?

[00:17:21] So affiliate at the very beginning, right?

[00:17:24] And now you also have a software that you're developing, right?

[00:17:28] And you're selling what happened in the middle.

[00:17:31] What change do you, I don't know, realize value of relationships, partnerships,

[00:17:36] the use created a product?

[00:17:38] How do you monetize in between?

[00:17:40] Yeah, yeah, it's been a long and winding journey, to be honest.

[00:17:45] You've probably the same for you guys.

[00:17:47] Like you try something, some of it works, some of it doesn't.

[00:17:50] You throw out the bits that don't, you iterate on the bits that do all that kind of stuff.

[00:17:53] I mean, to the big bits maybe we're sharing our one thing.

[00:17:58] One of the first things we tried was production.

[00:18:00] So editing, have you guys ever delved into that world?

[00:18:03] Oh, yeah, that's exciting.

[00:18:04] As a world we live in.

[00:18:05] We do it right now, baby.

[00:18:07] Perfect, right.

[00:18:08] So you know this better than anyone then.

[00:18:10] That's excellent.

[00:18:11] So we did that.

[00:18:13] So in the early days, we wrote all that content.

[00:18:15] This would be about 2015.

[00:18:17] We decided, right, we're going to start producing for people.

[00:18:20] Seems like the obvious way to monetize.

[00:18:22] We're going to create an agency, B Production, people.

[00:18:25] And we took on about 12, 13 clients over about six months.

[00:18:30] So it was plenty of demand.

[00:18:32] We had people bringing on.

[00:18:34] And it worked OK for a little while.

[00:18:36] But the trouble was it never, it took away from the time we were creating content.

[00:18:42] Basically we saw that it was just me and Matthew.

[00:18:45] So it was two of us working on this.

[00:18:47] We're both doing a bit of production, a bit of content writing.

[00:18:50] If I'm honest, both of us just really enjoyed creating the content.

[00:18:53] And we were making good money out of the affiliate sponsorship, all that kind of stuff.

[00:18:57] It was hard work doing the production.

[00:18:59] It's like you guys know this, I'm sure.

[00:19:01] It's like it's really hard to manage in some ways.

[00:19:03] There's so much volume.

[00:19:04] There's like growing at the same time as actually producing your existing clients, all that kind of stuff.

[00:19:09] It's a great business for some people.

[00:19:11] But it wasn't a great business for us.

[00:19:13] So we abandoned that.

[00:19:14] What's your experience of it?

[00:19:16] Yeah, I think we have mixed feelings.

[00:19:19] They're not mixed.

[00:19:20] They're straightforward.

[00:19:24] I think on our side we owe a lot to the production.

[00:19:27] Because before we actually launched the production house and the podcasting platform side,

[00:19:33] we were spinning our wheels for like four years.

[00:19:36] It was like a side gig or how we call it in Venezuela, like killing tigers.

[00:19:40] We will do this little job here and the other job over there.

[00:19:43] And we will bring some revenue here.

[00:19:45] And we were working full time slash part time and then doing this thing on the side.

[00:19:50] So the production and the service was actually what allowed us to do this full time.

[00:19:55] So obviously we owe a lot to it.

[00:19:57] And there's advantages because you have cash flow kind of flowing in on a monthly basis

[00:20:02] if you have the right structure and so on.

[00:20:04] But like you said, as you scale you have to build these systems of like,

[00:20:08] okay how do we produce it?

[00:20:10] Team members, there's different pieces to it.

[00:20:13] And we have an account manager that makes sure that every single person is receiving what they requested and more.

[00:20:19] And how can we over deliver and all this stuff?

[00:20:23] Just in January, we were in this conference and this person was talking on stage

[00:20:27] and he was saying how he had an experience where sometimes we weren't able to deliver the results maybe

[00:20:34] or to the expectations that maybe that client has and there's some miscommunication

[00:20:38] but then they also over deliver and achieve better results.

[00:20:41] And in both cases, clients fell off.

[00:20:44] So you lose, you lose a client. You win, you lose a client.

[00:20:47] So to him it was like why do I...

[00:20:49] because they got so many leads that they were like oh we're good for the next year or so.

[00:20:53] We don't need the services anymore type of deal.

[00:20:57] That was also a light bulb moment for me because we just started to experience something like that

[00:21:02] where we were crushing all the objectives, we were making sure that everything was consistent.

[00:21:07] They were very happy with the outcome.

[00:21:09] And all of a sudden it was like guys we are moving on to something different.

[00:21:12] I was like but why?

[00:21:15] To the point where it's like okay we need to be very, very picky.

[00:21:18] Like if we're going to pursue this, we're going to be very, very picky on who we allow in our space,

[00:21:23] who we allow in our company so we can provide the best service possible for them and also for us

[00:21:30] at the end of the day, right? For us, for our team to make sure that...

[00:21:33] So that's why I say there's a lot of learning obviously in there.

[00:21:36] Lots of lessons. We absolutely adore every single person that is working with us right now.

[00:21:41] But at the same time we also have the sight on what's next.

[00:21:45] Like for you it was the software, right? For us it's like okay what's next and we're in that stage right now.

[00:21:51] Yeah, that so resonates. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

[00:21:54] You've got to choose... It's a privileged position to be in, isn't it?

[00:21:57] To be able to choose as opposed to you know you have to do something to pay the bills or whatever.

[00:22:02] But we were the same. We loved every client we worked with. They were all great.

[00:22:07] But it was just not the work that we really loved doing.

[00:22:12] And I saw the option to try and scale like you're talking about, like take on more team members,

[00:22:16] take on more people but it just wasn't the business I wanted to run.

[00:22:19] And I feel lucky that I was in the position to be able to say no to it because of that.

[00:22:24] Do you remember at what point of revenue wise, right? Because you know we've also shared in our story

[00:22:29] and I think a lot of people have followed the steps on the service side because it creates that initial cash flow.

[00:22:36] Do you remember at what point for you guys make the switch that it makes sense economically, right?

[00:22:42] Like you said that you guys didn't need the service but then obviously you know developing a software is not easy feat.

[00:22:49] So do you remember where was that and be like okay we have a six month runway or we have an eight month runway.

[00:22:56] Do you guys seek outside investment was all self-financed?

[00:23:00] Yeah, what came next? So I mean I think we were it was still relatively early days when we quit the production.

[00:23:06] We were probably at five, six ish on the affiliate income at that point five or six thousand still.

[00:23:13] And we only got the production up to maybe about the same.

[00:23:16] So we've probably got the production up to mid, mid, mid 10th. Yeah, five, six, seven thousand ish I think.

[00:23:23] And then cut it. And we kept I think we if I'm honest we kept on two or three people who were the kind of easiest of the clients just to have that little bit of revenue there as a wee extra, easy enough to manage.

[00:23:34] But it was actually education we went into next. So we decided at that point you know we love creating courses.

[00:23:40] Sorry we love creating content so why don't we create some premium content that we can try and sell as well as an obvious upgrade from the blog.

[00:23:49] And that's more evergreen. It's more scalable all that stuff. So that's where we went next actually designed what we now call the podcast host Academy.

[00:23:57] We created our launch course which taught people how to get a podcast out there.

[00:24:01] We create a set of courses around all sorts of different stuff related to podcasting and we ended up with a ecosystem of about 12 courses.

[00:24:09] I think a community where we had hundreds of people in there podcasters that were learning from us and we were learning from them as much to be honest.

[00:24:19] It was great. And that was what we did for the next couple of years. Yeah.

[00:24:24] And I think the software came in so that would have been like 16 17 20 16 or 2017 and it was about 20 17.

[00:24:32] We started looking at the software and you know that all really came about because of that audience.

[00:24:37] It was because of readers of our blog listeners to our podcast but also that community audience and just the fact that we got so many questions from all three of those areas we get emails and like we got like 15 or 20 emails a day coming in from our general blog readers and like 12 13 of those 15 emails would have been like how do I make editing easier.

[00:25:00] I hate it. It takes ages. It's like EQ and compression and all this stuff that I have to learn. It's like I don't want to be an audio engineer. So I'm like there's a problem to solve here.

[00:25:11] So that's when we jumped into that. That is so interesting. I feel like we are literally following your footsteps. Yeah. Right.

[00:25:21] I mean we skipped maybe the affiliate part and we went straight into agency work but literally our thought right now is how do we transition into the educational space.

[00:25:34] We want to build that community. We've done things in the past right. We have this challenge we call the 45 life go 45 days in a row live on Facebook and the third time we did it.

[00:25:46] Well actually not just live on Facebook live whatever you got whatever you want to go. We did it on Facebook when we did it and the third time we did it with decide to bring people on and do it you know with that community without it would be fine.

[00:25:58] And actually it evolved. You know we had about 100 people signed on to the challenge. We were doing it for free then we just wanted to test the idea. We created like bingo cards you with many challenges like record a live video live in public for example right.

[00:26:15] And if you did your bingo card you have a person to win certain prices. We were doing one class every single week for the period of the 45 like it evolved into a full fledged thing and we're like wow this is actually really really fun.

[00:26:29] And we haven't done it again but we're like we are now thinking that could actually be an educational product right. Bring people into the challenge to build that consistency and then if they want to stay in the community right in the ecosystem after we can do so they can stay.

[00:26:46] So I'm having a little bit of foresight here I'm like well I guess after that we're going to have to build our own software.

[00:26:53] Oh yeah totally that's the next step. Was that one of the challenges free or was that a paid thing?

[00:26:59] Yeah so that one that we did was free. We put it out there and we said hey look we're going to do the 45 live again. We shared the story a lot so a lot of people knew what the 45 live was but we just wanted more accountability more community and we did it for free that one time.

[00:27:18] Which we got plenty of testimonials so I feel like now we can definitely put a paid plan together right to run this.

[00:27:28] That's a really smart way to go about it isn't it? You do that as a free challenge you test out the process you get some really engaged people in testimonials all sorts of referrals. That's how you jump into it.

[00:27:39] It was born very naturally. It was actually a team member that was like I'll do it with you guys but he didn't want to publish he wanted to go work out for 45 days and we're like sounds good and then we just put a post out there.

[00:27:51] We're like hey we're kind of taking in people that want to do this concept and that's how it was born. But thank you for showing the path right now.

[00:27:59] Now you have a software on our site we have these six levers on our content creation process or how we orient or tell people what was the easier path for us and the trends that we've seen across the industry with the people that we help.

[00:28:16] So you have anywhere from like the what do I say to the how do I create it how do I produce it right and obviously you guys with your software you guys kind of fall into that production mode right and we can definitely talk about what the software does and then distribution and then monetization.

[00:28:32] And that's why these are why the conversations around that. Now I'm curious now with your software right. What's have you guys evolve into a model of like you guys still blog you guys still podcast you guys get out there you guys are in events right like a lot of people ignore events for this type of stuff but it's crazy every time we go to events everything you know grows from there.

[00:28:52] Do you guys are you guys doing paid media what's the process like.

[00:28:57] Do you mean how we are you talking about the kind of connection between the content and the software correct grow the software. Yeah I'm assuming the software is the main thing right now right or do you guys still have the community.

[00:29:10] Yeah yeah but we still have the rest so yeah we're we we essentially have to what we actually legally have two different companies now it didn't start this way but I spun the software out into a separate company.

[00:29:22] So that we could basically future proofing so that we could take a bit of investment in the software alone so we could sell the software and future potentially it's more of a planning for exit type of company that awesome.

[00:29:35] But we don't align potentially so yeah they are technically different things but we still obviously have a really close like I own them both basically shareholders in the software but not the content.

[00:29:48] So the content still really heavily promotes ality the software really we almost treat it as an affiliate products like a really closely related affiliate product in the same way and we still make it really work.

[00:30:02] We're still very careful to keep our content site the podcast host quite or very like utterly fair and unbiased.

[00:30:10] So we do mention ality a lot but we always say like it's not for this or this type of person actually this competitor is better for this type of use case.

[00:30:18] We review all of the competitors and so we keep our I'm really I'm really keen on keeping our trust with everyone and never really pushing ality just because it's ours.

[00:30:28] And that's always been important and we have engineered that in a way through that separate company thing relatively separate teams will know each other but it is definitely a different content team to our software and software growth teams.

[00:30:40] So yeah it's quite separate that way.

[00:30:43] That's awesome.

[00:30:44] I love it.

[00:30:46] I have a question on the creative process but I'm not sure before I don't want to fully do like a full 180 here unless you have some other questions about monetization.

[00:30:54] I think and then Colin you see the dynamic where like Fonzie is like the content creative thinking guy and then I'm more like the upside.

[00:31:02] So I've been like consuming a lot of content around customer journey lately right.

[00:31:05] How do we extend the lifetime value of our customers like and something really interesting I listen to it's like okay if you have X amount of contacts ahead of time you know blog post your podcast your you know content calls whatever that is.

[00:31:19] Flip it on the other side once they become customers right and it's like okay if you have 20 contacts can we have 20 contacts after they become a customer and then we start you know product marketing and different things.

[00:31:29] So I think my mind is racing there a little bit but I want to talk about Fonzie was saying more on the creative side and if we have a little bit more time we can go on there because I think that's super important especially if you have a monthly subscription model education model and software like you have.

[00:31:45] Quick one on that before we switch over then just very quickly in terms of how they do link because there's a really interesting one there that we've been playing with a lot in the last year which is we've written a bunch of books.

[00:31:57] Just because we have so much content we can return some of it into books and then we write custom books as well because because we're quite enjoying it's quite cool having books.

[00:32:05] So we've got one called finally start your podcast which we spent a lot of time on last year primarily Matthews John Matthews a great writer he's our real content guy and we got it all really nicely designed and stuff so it's actually this beautiful little thing I'm really proud of actually even though I can say that because I had very little to do with it was all the team.

[00:32:20] But this thing now what you were saying there around our subscription products so Alitu is on the premium end of the scale like includes everything you need to podcast and we've made it really custom we've made it really specific to podcasters so it costs a bit more it's $38 a month but it does includes everything it's actually cheaper than buying them all separately but that $38 is you know it's perceivably on a premium end of the pricing scale.

[00:32:39] So getting people to sign up on a monthly basis to a subscription of that size we do have a bit of friction we have a bit of friction getting people to just give it a go and find out that it's worth it.

[00:32:50] So we have been playing a lot with funnels whereby we're giving people our free content first people find a blog post or a podcast episode or a YouTube video they get away with it.

[00:32:59] We send them to another bit of content another bit of value and then we show them one of our books and the books only maybe $15 so they're like oh I'll take that it's only a one-off payment give me some value they'll buy it yeah and then they build more trust because this thing's actually genuinely really good.

[00:33:13] And then we sell them on our course we're like okay we're going to get them all the way they're going to buy it and then they build more trust because this thing's actually genuinely really good and then we sell them on our course we're like okay this is going to be a good thing to do.

[00:33:23] And it's a classic model you've seen this everywhere before so we upsell them on a $99 course it's still a one-off purchase but it's higher price yeah and they're bought in and we've given them so much value at this point and that's all I like to think really good quality and that's what then gives them the trust in the software.

[00:33:37] So even though we're having we're working on a content funnel like it's the free content a small one-off we're giving them a little bit of a trade-off and then we sell them on our course and then we sell them on our course.

[00:33:47] So even though we're having we're working on a content funnel like it's the free content a small tripwire product a bigger product blah blah blah it's the same thing you've seen everywhere with content we're tying in subscription based software as well and finding that that's actually working.

[00:34:04] Yeah so it's like a way of lowering the barriers to that subscription basis I think that really give them a different type of value but it needs to steer them towards that.

[00:34:11] Absolutely have you seen an increase in lifetime value of your customer once you started implementing like that pre-software sale right because you see a lot of software is like obviously you know the one that we're using right now Riverside right?

[00:34:20] They don't have any of that or at least I'm not aware of it right and then it almost is almost like a transactional where a competitor comes and be like hey we have these other features.

[00:34:30] I'm like well I don't really have a relationship built with Riverside or Squadcast or any of those right so I could just jump on a bunch of different products and I'm like oh yeah.

[00:34:40] I can jump around depending on like my objective but if I have that relationship developed is going to be a lot stickier for me to stay with that person right or that company or that software so once you start implementing that do you guys see like any difference because I think this is really useful even for people that provide services.

[00:34:57] To develop that right obviously we assume that because we're providing the service on a consistent basis that's like our way to communicate with the client but the truth is and this is we can definitely get better at this is like what are the updates that we do along the journey.

[00:35:12] What are the things that we continue to release and maybe add more value to that relationship right and I have to give kudos to Fonzie because he's always thinking things like that of that nature so have you got do you guys see a significant difference in your relationship?

[00:35:27] Like your value?

[00:35:29] Yeah it's always hard to tell what actually changes something like LTV because it's such a lagging indicator like people have to stick around for a fair amount of time to make a big difference to it.

[00:35:39] LTV just now on Alitu is about what was it last time we looked at 275 pounds so it's like close to a year lifetime value so you need people to be sticking around a long time to make a difference to it but it's definitely been going up in the last year or so.

[00:35:57] So yeah hopefully I think that's a factor.

[00:36:02] Last thought sorry Fonzie and I think that's super important especially for podcasters right because you see the top 10% is people that publish 12 or more episodes right so if you have an average of one episode a week that's about a year right and then people are staying consistent right so at that point I think you're helping them through the entire journey of that growth and then at that point they're making the decision.

[00:36:26] Either we continue or maybe this is not working for us and then maybe at that point they need to talk to us and see.

[00:36:32] Or maybe like they hire an internal team or something like that like I'm sure you guys saw a point.

[00:36:38] Interesting I love that and like you said it's such a lagging indicator you know you would have to just test one thing for like a year to see if it actually increases you know to be actually able to pinpoint the increase of lifetime value to that one thing so that's a challenging one thing.

[00:36:55] Challenging one to measure but I love that I love funnels I love direct response marketing that's actually our way into entrepreneurship as well so anytime I see a software and I'm like let me go through the purchase process and I see all the offsells and stuff I'm like yes screenshot you know funnel hack let me see all this stuff I love that thing.

[00:37:17] Thank you for sharing now the creative process I know we only got here a couple minutes left but it's difficult to stay consistent for 14 years you know it's difficult to stay consistent for 30 days and for some people it's difficult to stay consistent for a week right so first of all I'm curious on.

[00:37:35] What process you have in place, if any, to stay consistent for so long.

[00:37:42] Yeah, I think there's a few things that worked really well for us and one was that consistency in the early days the fact that I was working with to con Matthew relatively early and the two of us start working together and that makes a difference just being accountable to somebody even though I was kind of.

[00:37:57] It was my company Matthew is technical employee I still felt accountable because of somebody else now working for me so if there's any way you can engineer that as a content creator even if you don't employ somebody whether it's like somebody else that similar goals and you both say to each other like here's my goal for the next three months.

[00:38:14] And it has to be somebody I think going through the same experience I think it has to be somebody with skin in the game that understands it.

[00:38:21] You can't just go into like a community and say right I am to do 12 blog posts in the next 12 weeks it just doesn't really have the same effect I think it has to be about more personal than that so definitely that is one thing I think the other is that we have always had.

[00:38:36] A real kind of close attention to our time our time blocking as well so Matthew and I are both like big fans of Cal Newport for example and deep work that approach and we've often had time blocking.

[00:38:48] We've always had time blocking in our calendars as in a Tuesday morning is nearly has nearly always been a podcast recording morning for me for literally 16 years blogging on a Thursday morning they've moved around a bit over the years but there's always been a half day for people to be able to do that.

[00:39:04] There's always been a half day for podcast recording a half day for blog writing every single week at a minimum and they'll probably be more somewhere but that has always been in the calendar and it's non-negotiable.

[00:39:16] It's not this is only if there's no other fires burning. It's like this is the fire. This is the thing I need to work on.

[00:39:22] Like this is the thing I need to fix is get a blog post out this week.

[00:39:26] Makes sense.

[00:39:27] So yeah totally like yeah it's just I think there's it's really really important and the final part of that as well.

[00:39:34] The third is I think not a lot of people are not enough people put enough work into defining their audience and really figuring out what it is they're solving for their audience.

[00:39:45] Like most people just pick a topic like I want to talk about podcasting or I want to talk about content or I want to talk about cycling something like that and then you start talking about it from the one point of view.

[00:39:55] But it really changes your motivation.

[00:39:59] It really changes the ideas you have.

[00:40:01] It really changes your feeling of satisfaction when you get a piece of content out into the world when you have this really clear detailed image in your mind of the person you're serving and the problem that that person has because from then on your whole job is just to solve that problem for them.

[00:40:20] That person that virtual person in your head is asking you questions every day.

[00:40:24] What are the questions they're asking you about this topic.

[00:40:27] That's the thing you're going to solve.

[00:40:28] That's the thing you can write ideas come so much more easily.

[00:40:32] You never run out of content topics.

[00:40:34] You just it's so much easier to create content and it's so more motivational to do it as well when you do that.

[00:40:40] So spending the time on that is so valuable but so many people don't bother.

[00:40:44] Yeah absolutely I love this two things.

[00:40:48] First I'm making a note to myself when we go to Scotland.

[00:40:51] Do not invite calling for coffee in the morning because he's going to have that time.

[00:40:56] He's going to have that time blog so any other day we can definitely go grab some coffee with him.

[00:41:04] And the other thing I love what you just mentioned.

[00:41:09] I think that is what we call the golden boulder of the episode right.

[00:41:13] Golden boulder just like a golden nugget just way bigger.

[00:41:16] And TM.

[00:41:18] We need to trademark that thing.

[00:41:20] But it's it is true right.

[00:41:24] Once you have that quality it becomes way easier.

[00:41:27] And I think we experience that after a few hundred episodes here on the podcast as well.

[00:41:33] Right when because we were we're very curious so we dive into people's stories and all this thing.

[00:41:37] And you know it was very broad and it was very satisfactory for us to have those conversations.

[00:41:43] They also help build their rapport with people.

[00:41:46] But now that we're part of a network and you know some of the goals have changed a little bit.

[00:41:51] We're like maybe we need to pinpoint change a little bit.

[00:41:55] I'm here with the idea but we need to pinpoint the people exactly in their problem that we're trying to solve.

[00:42:01] So as you were saying this I'm like we need to change your intro.

[00:42:04] I have a new one.

[00:42:06] That's a really good point like it does it changes.

[00:42:09] That's the thing that sometimes stops people doing it.

[00:42:11] I think actually that they're afraid that they'll kind of lock themselves into whether it's maybe a small niche audience that will never be able to escape from or whether it's something that they might get sick of.

[00:42:21] But it does it changes every three six twelve months.

[00:42:25] You can redefine your audience you can change it but you'll carry along a good proportion of the people that have been listening already.

[00:42:30] You might lose a few but that's fine because you're changing and you're iterating you're growing.

[00:42:34] So yeah absolutely.

[00:42:36] The worst thing is not to do at all.

[00:42:37] You need to actually just do it and then kind of a tree from there.

[00:42:40] Yes that is right.

[00:42:41] Not doing at all is also a decision you need to make a decision.

[00:42:45] Right.

[00:42:46] Either create or not create and not doing anything is a decision.

[00:42:49] Now I'm curious last question from me I know we're about to wrap up but you know I was listening to your podcast to podcast recently and I noticed you change the format a little bit.

[00:43:00] A little bit.

[00:43:01] Right I don't know if this is recent or if you've done this in the past but I can like scroll down and listen a little bit to the early ones and you know you have some solo episodes some interviews.

[00:43:09] But I really enjoy what you're doing right now which is it kind of reminds me a little bit to the nudge rather like as we have the host here on the on the show as well.

[00:43:18] And you have conversations with multiple hosts and then you kind of like have a specific thread that you want to cover for that episode.

[00:43:28] And it's a mix of narrative with the answers from the interviews that you were doing with them.

[00:43:34] And I think that's absolutely amazing like they've the production value and that is great.

[00:43:39] I think you're covering one topic per episode which is great and it at the same time looking at the strategic side of it as a host is allowing you to build multiple relationships per episode that you're putting out there.

[00:43:52] So I'm a little bit curious on why do you change from that previous format that you had to this one if there's any sort of strategy behind it.

[00:44:00] I just strictly you wanted to you know try something new in the creative ways.

[00:44:06] Yeah it's a good question. I appreciate that. Thank you for saying that. Yeah we've put a lot of work into it so it's definitely more work than your average podcast episode.

[00:44:15] So I'm glad it's coming across well. It was a decision about three four months ago when Matthew and I were talking about the next season.

[00:44:24] And we were like you know we've done the same old we're in season 20. We've done the same old for that long. Do you want to do something special this time around like for season 20 should we do something different.

[00:44:37] And Matthew has like a real he's an audio drama guy by background. So he creates these massive soundscapes and like drama dramatized like epics and stuff like that.

[00:44:49] So it's kind of it's almost along the lines of that like bringing together our narrative create a story bring all these people together.

[00:44:57] So we just interviewed the same kind of number of people we would for a normal season. It's just that we're breaking up their interviews and bringing them into one episode.

[00:45:07] So the narrative the narrations a bit more work like I do that separately. We write the script for that all kind of stuff. But yeah really it was we wanted to do you know what can I be a bit modest for a second.

[00:45:16] We want to show off a bit because we've been doing podcasting for ages. Sometimes you just need to actually do a really good job with it but more work and polish something up make something really cool that actually is like a really good product.

[00:45:26] That was part of it. We wanted to just make something really good. And yeah talk to a whole bunch of people doing great podcasting stuff too.

[00:45:34] That was a big part of it like bring together all these indie podcasters who are actually doing amazing things but people don't really talk about it because they're not making tens of millions.

[00:45:44] They're just like making a really good living making really good products going out to tens or hundreds of thousands of listeners.

[00:45:51] I love it. Thank you for sharing that and you know thank you for also stepping into your your I'm going to call your greatness right now.

[00:45:59] So you know what like we actually wanted to do something great. And you're totally right. You've been doing it for so long and it gets to a point where you want to be on your own.

[00:46:07] Right. In a sense and I feel like a lot today you know with the amount of volume of content that is being published you know you unfortunately you scroll through social media and you're like well it all looks very similar right.

[00:46:17] And there's very different ways to do it. So I think that's one of the things that we've been doing for a long time.

[00:46:23] I don't remember her name I wish I knew it but this girl popped up on my Instagram and she's like she's like I'm going to be a

[00:46:46] And she was doing an instrument reel in a very similar way that you guys were doing the podcast right.

[00:46:58] He was crap. She was crafting a narrative around an idea I'm pulling in sources in between to kind of like prove her point.

[00:47:08] But at the same time she was sharing her own expertise and positioning herself you know as the expert. And I was like this is amazing. This is very different.

[00:47:16] This is uncopyable nobody I haven't seen anybody do something like this. It takes work to put something like this together.

[00:47:26] So most people are not going to do the work to copy that thing. And I think that's what your episode reminded me I started listening to I was like wow like this is epic.

[00:47:35] I was like do they do all their episodes like this is a lot of work right. And then I noticed that you guys changed the format so I was very curious about that.

[00:47:43] But yeah what you guys doing it's absolutely amazing definitely recommend go check out Podcraft.

[00:47:48] Colin Fuzzy has an issue he doesn't look at the clock whenever we're doing interviews.

[00:47:52] Yes I apologize.

[00:47:56] He just you know gets empire and goes but you know as we wrap up the episode you know I want to highlight the fact that you guys are creating the content you know for the people that you guys actually serve answering that.

[00:48:10] But also you guys are doing your own thing what you want to do. You're not following any other trends you know you sat down and you're like season 20 we're going to be doing something different.

[00:48:19] And then you actually share with us three set process to create content for 14 years let's go right.

[00:48:24] And it's like this the things of being accountable attention to time blocking which has been one of the big things for us as well.

[00:48:30] I'm working to find your audience which is really good and obviously many many other things that that was like very very specific and you guys actually show a path to profit from the contents.

[00:48:41] Thank you Colin for that. Is there anything else that you want to share with us and the people that listen to the show.

[00:48:48] I think the main thing is I always tell people is just to get there and do it and create the content like it's just so much fun.

[00:48:56] And you build the eyeballs. You get those ear balls you you find people that are your tribe that come along and follow your stuff that grow to trust you that become your great fans and then it does turn into an earning over time.

[00:49:11] Yeah, so good. Fonzie anything else? No I'm kidding.

[00:49:15] I was just going to say thank you Colin. I appreciate you for coming over to the show absolutely amazing and one last thing next time we see each other you can definitely come over and say I've been in your show.

[00:49:27] And I was like yes you have Colin. Yes you have.

[00:49:30] I'll be right this time. I'll be right.

[00:49:32] Guys with that said, thank you so much for tuning into the Contents to Profit podcast. Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform and on social media at Vizbrosco.

[00:49:43] That is Raneev Colin here. Help you become more consistent with your content. Please don't forget to share this episode and of course don't forget to leave a five star review. See ya. Bye guys.