Podcast Growth Simplified: The Content & Monetization Playbook with Adam Schaeuble

[00:00:04] Hey guys, welcome back to Content Is Profit. I'm very excited for the episode that I have for you today. This person that's coming on today in this episode actually came in episode 144 I'm reading here. Adam. Adam is like a cornerstone for us. He's been massive support in the industry. Every conference that we go to, he's there speaking, telling all the secrets, right? He's also the host of Podcasting Business School. He has an incredible coach.

[00:00:33] He works like three times a week. And you know, that's a dream for a lot of people. He has an incredible family. And today he came on because I asked him specifically, it's like, dude, I've seen you on threads, killing it on threads on the on the on that platform. Your podcast does really good. He's way past a million downloads. He was he used to be in the fitness industry. He's not there anymore. But also he had a great business over there with publishing. And I just see Adam and I see

[00:01:03] simplicity, simplicity, simplicity, like, you know, clarity, all the things that as business owners, sometimes we're chasing. So I'm like, dude, come on the pod. Let's talk about these things. And let me tell you, he blew my mind. He gave us the entire roadmap that he has with his current publishing strategy. And he's super simple. It doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't take a lot of resources, which a lot of businesses and people think, right? The right equipment, the right things to use.

[00:01:31] So I'm so excited to bring you in some of the things that we talked on the first episode is actually understanding how to close the gap, being profitable as well. The perfect podcasting ecosystem, turning your small audience into raving fans. So that's episode one. And today is almost like the continuation of that. So if you have some time, go to episode 144 with Adam Shelby, turn your podcasting hobby into a lucrative site. Awesome. We're going to link right below. But also continue to listen today because

[00:02:01] he's so impressive what he's been able to do. And he literally gave the roadmap on, you know, how to create it, how to produce it, very low friction. But at the same time, it's like, how do you make that connection with monetizing the podcast?

[00:02:14] And he's, he shared with us how he does it with a newsletter, with a thread, with his podcast, and how he gets people on the calls and how he's, you know, making people solution, like helping people solve their problems and living the life that he wants to live and that he designed. So anyways, I'm stoked. You can clearly tell. So enjoy the episode. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Content is Profit. Today we have one of the Hall of Famers here in the show.

[00:02:43] Every time since we've connected with this person is nothing but labs and knowledge and podcasting, golden boulders. Adam, welcome back to the show, my man. Thank you for coming here. I wear my hat in honor of you. Yeah. Backwards hat, gray, gray hairs and the beards. I thought, I thought this, this was Bruise and Bros. I thought that this isn't Bruise and Bros podcast. Oh, it's Content is Profit.

[00:03:11] Yeah, yeah. We have, we have the official sign, you know, right behind here, but the Bruise and Bros, that's like OG material right there for those like new listeners. The first episode of Content is Profit was actually called Bruise and Bros. that we had to like sunset that, that show very quickly. After half an episode, that one got canceled. Yes. Yeah. I almost lost my laptop because of it. You know, a beer just like spilled on it. It's like, yeah, don't, don't drink beer while you're podcasting. If you have your laptop next to you.

[00:03:40] Pro tip. But dude, Adam is, you know, we're just chatting here offline a little bit and funny story about my beard. Luca came the other day, my six year old. He's like, Papa, your hair is changing colors. And I'm like, yeah, that's what happens when you're like, you know, you're smarter and you know, the smarter you become, the more white you're going to see. Yeah. It's like that, that guy in, in Lord of the Rings, gray beard, man. Yeah. Smartest guy in the whole thing. Absolutely.

[00:04:09] For those who don't know, Adam, you guys can check him out. Episode 144. Can you believe that Adam? Like this is like 500 something and that you came in in 144. I mean, I'm just glad to be in that top two, the first 200 to experience content is profit and drop some golden boulders and have fun with Luis and Fonzie. Shout out to Fonzie, new father. Yes. New father. Yeah. Very excited about that. Yeah, man. So it's a little bit of a shame that we don't have him here with, with us.

[00:04:37] He's the one that, you know, brings the fire and the knowledge. So I'll do my best to maybe, you know, steer this conversation. But we've connected recently in a couple of conferences, every single podcasting conferences, you're there, man. It's always a pleasure to see you. And like, you have an incredible community. You have an incredible group of people that you help and support in this world of podcasting. And very excited to chat a little bit about some of the things and strategies that you're using today with, you know, your own show.

[00:05:04] And, and the people that you help to kind of grow it and keep people interested. Before we get started, I want to highlight one of your claims of fame is that you work like three days a week ish. And you're very successful. You live the life that you design. So for a lot of people, a lot of creators or business creators, that's super attractive. Yeah. And my theme for 2025 is less but better. So I'm, I challenge myself to simplify everything.

[00:05:34] I always ask myself, do I actually have to and need to be doing this? Do I need to and have to create a new offer? Do I need to and have to accept a new client or a proposal from somebody to work together? Or just simplifying everything, even from my, I took my show from two days a week down to one day a week because I'm really doubling down on my newsletter, which I consider my second piece of valuable content. So lots of things shifting around. I'm always looking to optimize and simplify.

[00:06:01] So cool, man. I think that's so important, you know, because, you know, with a lot of people that come to the studio, we chat about it. It's like, you know, what else can we do? And they just keep adding things to the play. And sometimes we get in that, in that train as well. And it's like super scary sometimes. And, you know, like we just talked about Fancy becoming a dad and I'm looking at the next like two months with like the plans that we had in our boards.

[00:06:24] And I'm like, hmm, I think maybe it's time to maybe scratch off some of those things and not do them at all. Yeah. I think in the content creator space in general, we feel the need to be everywhere and do everything. And I feel like a lot of people's brands and podcasts specifically, they feel like they aren't growing because they aren't doing enough. But it's actually the opposite. They're doing too many things and too many things not done well leads to no progress.

[00:06:54] That's where the whole less but better. Like, OK. Yeah. You know, like even on social media, you can be and post on lots and lots of platforms with AI and repurposing and all that. You can show up, you know, so to speak, but you can only really effectively engage on one, maybe two platforms. That's right. So we got to think in different terms now as content creators.

[00:07:16] Yeah. No, I love it. I think, you know, part of the service that we offer too is like giving those tools for people to kind of be, you know, a little bit wider range in platforms type deal or if they want to go like higher volume. And I do believe there's everything, everything has a place. But at the same time, you know, we have reduced the frequency of our show as well, like from three times a week now to two times a week. And we've done some reruns and we've been running some experiments in the background. And for those listening, check out the latest episode.

[00:07:46] We talked about some experiments we're running on YouTube for our video podcast side that we like never really paid enough attention. Like our main platform is audio. And so there's interesting things there. And one of the things that I admire you, Adam, you know, from you is like the fact that you are hyper focused on how you do your promotions and how you, you know, keep track of the things that you do and just continue to simplify.

[00:08:12] So, um, you know, will you mind sharing maybe some of the things that you're doing today? And you, you know, you're the thread king, you know, that platform that came out, what was it like? Maybe like a year ago, year and a half ago. And everybody was like, this is so hype. And again, maybe I posted a couple of things there, but not intentionally. So I'm very curious specifically on that side, but also, you know, what are you doing with your newsletter as well?

[00:08:35] Yeah. So those are kind of my two big, new, important focus points are the threads, social media platform in my email list growth via my newsletter. So, uh, first things first, like with threads, I'm not going to be that guy that tells people that they have to be on a platform, you know, like, oh, you're an idiot. If you don't post on threads and people are like, what is threads? I've never even heard of it before.

[00:08:59] Um, so threads is, is meta's version of Twitter. It's their competing variation of Twitter. It's a primarily text based platform. And it opened up like basically a year and a half ago. People did go hard with it at the beginning. They're all excited about it and they kind of burn out and go, well, it's like kind of, this is the next clubhouse. I heard that a lot. And my, one of my entrepreneurial superpowers is implementation.

[00:09:30] And I'm not the smartest or the most creative or the best looking or the richest or whatever, but I will out show up my competitors. And that's just period end of story. So I saw a lot of people bounce in and bounce out. And I, I bounced in, I just kind of sat back and I waited for people to learn. And then about eight months into it, I found some people doing it the way that I wanted to do it. And I paid them to teach me, which is a pro pro tip. That is the first golden boulder of the episode.

[00:09:57] Like find people that are doing what you want to do and freaking pay them to teach you how to do it and implement their strategies more efficiently and effectively. So I paid a couple people and I really started getting traction to the point where I have just like for Instagram, I've scratched and clawed and fought to get to 2,900 followers. And like since 2018.

[00:10:21] And I've been posting consistently on threads three to eight times a day, pretty much every single day since November. So we're going on about four months and I'm going to pass my Instagram of four months as to what it took me to, you know, five years, you know, seven years on Instagram. I'm going to pass that amount of, I'm getting clients. That's the other thing. That's the important part. Yeah. Engaged listeners, clients, newsletter subscribers. And the thing I like about threads is that it's text. So don't post video.

[00:10:51] Don't post images even. Don't do well. And I can just have a thought. I can post eight times a day on threads. That freaks people out by go. It takes me one half the amount of time it takes me to create an Instagram reel to post eight times a day on threads. And they're like, mind blown. This is crazy. And it's written content, which I love. And it feeds right into my newsletter, which is also written content. And I can repurpose a lot of that. A lot of my threads are my content flywheel as podcast episode.

[00:11:20] Then I eventually talk about that topic in my newsletter. I take all that text and break it up into threads posts and it all just works together. So that's the thread strategy right now. That's so cool, man. Yeah. And recently we've been talking a lot about these six phases where we've identified, at least in our creation process, and we've kind of confirmed with a lot of people where it's like, you know, you have your message, which is, you know, the things that you talk about and you have the process of creation. So obviously right now we're in a video podcast.

[00:11:47] So, you know, that involves, you know, what do we do with the camera, the thing, and then the post-production, which is, you know, you're editing your final product. Then you have your distribution, like, where do we actually put in this thing? And that's where a lot of people kind of miss it. They think, you know, by creating the podcast, I'm doing marketing, but we also have to promote the thing. And then you have, you know, how do we connect it to the business side on the revenue side? And then how do we manage all that? So again, I want to break down the process with you too.

[00:12:15] Like you kind of mentioned there, you know, you have your podcast as your like main way. And then you turn that into your newsletter and then your newsletter into several threads throughout the week. Like, and then how do you connect that with like your business, right? You have, you have your, your coaching business, correct? And then like, how does that connection work? I think that's where a lot of people might be missing the connection. You know, they put it out there.

[00:12:38] And then because they put a lot of effort in trying to create these podcasts, almost like they get to the finish line and then they're faint. Boom. And then we're like, okay, well now, now we have to figure this out. Yeah. Okay. So let's start high level and kind of dive down into it. So the three core pieces of content per week, like this is my weekly content strategy. One really high value podcast episode. One really high value newsletter. But here's an also a recent shift.

[00:13:08] My newsletter is not like a regurgitation of the week's podcast episode. And it's not just a promotion of the week's pod. I don't need, I'll, I'll barely mention it, but it is an independently valuable piece of content. But what I will do is take a topic that I have covered on my podcast within the last maybe 90 days or six months. I just don't want them to be the exact same thing because I want people going, I need to consume both. Okay. That's a key thing now.

[00:13:34] And that's a strategy I've implemented over the last maybe two months. And I'm getting a much higher open rate. My open rate's at 70%. And I've got, you know, a 3,000 person list. So it's not a giant list, but it's, people are opening. They're like, I have to go and get this. And since I've stopped doing two podcast episodes a week, I dive, I take all that extra time and put it into my newsletter and make it robust. Like people are going like, I had people at PodFest this year.

[00:14:04] They come to me and go, I read your newsletter every week. They didn't say this in my podcast every week. At PodFest. That was a big deal to me. Wow. So those are two core pieces of content. And then threads three to eight times a day. One super deep dive long form, what's called a super thread. That's like, you know, an example would be podcasters need to quit accepting every single guest on their show.

[00:14:32] So here are three filters that I use to curate really, really good interviews or something like that. And then it's like post one, post two, post three. So that's a super thread. I do that every day, once a day, but I save them all and you can repurpose those, which is cool. I save every post that I write on threads because if it's a winner, you can use it a month later. I've had one post that's just like, it talks about a podcasting stat about download numbers. And I get hundreds of followers every single time I post that thing. And I've posted it probably five times.

[00:15:01] You know, like this is my second Tuesday of the month winner. Yeah. Bam. So that's what the, that's the big picture content wise. Now, how do I get clients? I establish expert positioning in all three of those. So for me on the podcast, that's solo episodes and coaching episodes where I am teaching in a solo episode for 15 to 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes on a topic that positions me as an expert. Yeah. On my newsletter, obviously I'm teaching a lot. And it's just strategies and tips.

[00:15:31] And then on threads, same thing, especially on those long forms. Like that's me teaching and deep diving on a topic. So that's me positioning myself as an expert where a lot of people that get into podcasting and content creation. Well, and podcasting specifically, it's really hard to convert listeners into clients. If you never show off what you do as the expert, you're viewed as the person that only interviews experts. And that's a problem when it comes to sales. That's a layer within all the content. And then here's the pro tip.

[00:15:58] This is the simplification step that more content creators need to take. Like in my experience, I've been doing this for 10 years now. So I feel like I can say, I've been doing this for a decade. I've got a thousand episodes. I've crossed a million downloads and all that stuff.

[00:16:15] So I found that it's much easier to make sales when I use a single call to action across my brand to a discovery call instead of a direct pitch to an offer. Okay. So like if you only have one offer, maybe that'll work. But if you've got a few different things, I can help people at a few different points in the podcasting journey from the launch, the growth, to the monetization stuff.

[00:16:42] So I will just put a general call to action. Like if you are ready for some help with your podcast launch, your podcast growth, or your client conversion strategies, hop on a discovery call. I'm not pitching to an offer because somebody listening to my show while they're walking on the treadmill or mowing their lawn or driving their kid to school, you know, podcast listeners are much more likely to take that little extra step. That's free to hop on and discuss working with you versus making a purchase right there.

[00:17:12] Well, like they're driving their kid to work. They're not getting their credit card out and buying something, you know, if they're driving their kid to school. So I just hammer that discovery call link. And I talk about it on my show. I talk about my newsletter. I talk about it on threads. And every once in a while, like I would say 85% of the time, my call to action is discovery call. The other 15% I'm doing a specific, if I've got a time sensitive product, a new product launch, raise some awareness around it.

[00:17:39] Or if I'm sharing testimonials, if somebody is in my online business academy for podcasters and they drop a testimonial, I will mention that, you know, hey, do a 10 day free trial. Go, go get it here. Yeah. So that's the only, that's kind of where that other 15% mainly comes from is from testimonials and testimonials. Again, we layer those in expert positioning every week. First thing you hear on my podcast is a testimonial. It's not an ad.

[00:18:05] It's not me talking about me undies or a mattress company or anything. It's not even me talking. It's a happy client. First audio you hear. Then newsletter, testimonial, threads, testimonials, Instagram stories, testimonials. So that's from high level down to deep dive. That's how I'm converting listeners into clients. Dude, that's so, that's so enlightening. Right. Because I think a lot of people get into this game and they might have, you know, two to three offers. Right. And part of it is a confusion to like, where do I actually send people?

[00:18:35] And what we do is like, we say everything, we confuse and then, you know, people don't take action. And we had that, we had that issue when we, when we jumped on the studio opportunity. Right. Because, you know, we were, we had a very solid offer when it comes to production side, where it's like, you know, we're your fractional content team. And that's what we did. And now all of a sudden we're like, oh crap, now we produce podcasts too. Cause we, you know, we acquired this business and where do we send people? And it was so confusing for a lot of people. I think it still is. I think it still is like, we're still working on it.

[00:19:05] So, you know, the studio comes people and they think we only do, you know, podcasting and then we have a discovery conversation, like I said, and then we go into, hey, there's possibilities down the road. If you want extra production, here we go. But now we have business creator club that is launching, you know, we're having it on presale and it's a community aspect of it. So it's super interesting because that's, you know, a lower ticket access point where people can join in, they have resources.

[00:19:30] But I love the fact of the discovery calls and, you know, that's how we got traction initially with our 45 life. We're driving every single conversation to a 20 minute, 15 minute call where we wanted to learn a little bit more about what they did. And that's how the service was born. So it's, uh, this is maybe the universe telling me go back to basics, simple fly. Yeah.

[00:19:52] And, and like, okay, when people are doing discovery calls, I'm actually, this is so top of mind because I just, I just wrote a long form super thread about this I'm posting today. So this is great. Awesome. But I feel like there's two key things that you have to acquire knowledge wise in the onboarding process for an effective discovery call. One, you have to ask this person, what are their pain points? I like to give them like a little checklist, every little check box that they can potentially check. You have an offer that can solve that. You know?

[00:20:22] So that's how we come up with those checklists. And then the next question is, what is your budget for solving these pain points? So now we know their, their pain points and we know their price point so that when we get on the call, we are actually talking about, okay, let's reaffirm the pain points. Makes sense. Here's my action steps. I would recommend taking. And if you want me to help you accelerate through all this, here's the one offer. That's the best fit. It fits your pain points. It fits your price point. This is what I want you to do.

[00:20:52] So much simpler. And this is why everything else that we talked about with the testimonials and expert positioning. You know, if I do 10 discovery calls, eight of them are jumping in and saying yes. So that helps a ton. Now that's awesome. I've got an idea for you. Yeah. I got an idea for you. Oh boy. So let's workshop it out. Podcast with any membership style of an offer. Like you've got your club now you've got, it's a, it's a group, right? It's, it's people, it's a community.

[00:21:22] So this worked for me for my weight loss show. It works for me for, with my, uh, my podcasting business school show. I recommend the people with that membership community style offer, start grabbing people out of the community and start doing hot seat coaching episodes and release those as episodes.

[00:22:05] And then sponsor that episode with an intro, you know, if you're a member, maybe it's just a newer member thing or whatever. Yeah. But it is that style of an episode helped me fill my weight loss club membership with my health show. And it's helped me fill things like download growth club and online business academy. Like it's really just proof. It's, it's, it's, it's expert positioning. It's a huge value for them built in testimonial and it works extremely well. That is, uh, that is so awesome.

[00:22:30] And I remember, as you were mentioning, I remember part of your presentation in the conference is like you, you, you show that, you know, uh, stack of, you know, content types, I guess that, that you've been doing. And I, and I love how, you know, you got into a very solid system to continue to, to help people out. And, um, dude, that's so awesome, man.

[00:22:50] And I think that you gave like a very solid path for a lot of people and like a very clear example on how without a lot of time, you can also be successful, uh, creating your content. And, uh, that's awesome. And we sometimes, I tend to overcomplicate everything. I'm like, and we can do this and we can do the other thing. And, you know, we, then we end up with lists of things and open containers that create just more pressure. So, um, I appreciate you, man, for coming in today and, and, uh, dropping these golden boulders, giving me live feedback.

[00:23:19] Which I always love and adore. So, uh, I have some homework to do, man. And I, and I think for me personally, and I hope for the people listening and watching, um, we gain clarity. You know, sometimes you need to, to listen from an outside source. You know, just this morning I was meeting with our, with Mal, our podcast producer. And we have a list of like solo episodes that we've done that could be like a really good written content type deal. And about Fonzie is the one that writes everything.

[00:23:46] So I'm like, okay, now how are we going to, what's the, what's the game plan. Right. And it's, uh, we've considered reducing frequency as well. And it's like, how can we deep dive in some of this? And we did some research on, on podcast growth recently. There's a lot of like good information there. And I'm like, man, like this is good. Maybe that's the path that, you know, that, that we got to take. Maybe that's a newsletter type thing and we don't have a newsletter. So maybe that's the thing that, you know, we, we attach. Uh, but yeah, man, dude, thank you so much.

[00:24:13] Do you have anything else that you want to add before, you know, we head out? You came in, drop the fire. Last, last bonus tip. This, this was my, this is my golden boulder aha moment of the year so far. Okay. I used to have a ton of lead magnets and I've got rid of them all for one. My newsletter is my only lead magnet, my high value weekly newsletter. And here's why this is, this is the moment that it was like the frying pan of truth whacked me over the head.

[00:24:41] They, the guy that I hired, he said, when you have a scorecard or a PDF download, people just want that. When they opt in for your newsletter, they want your emails. And I was just like, mind blown. Like that they want the emails. That is the value. So they're going to, so that's why my open rate is so high. Yeah. Because a lot of people get the scorecard and then they unsubscribe. Like, I don't want all these emails. And that makes so much sense.

[00:25:08] If you have a high value newsletter, which you enjoy and love writing. I mean, it could be the only lead magnet that you need. And I've been putting hundreds of people on my list with this strategy since I flipped the switch and said, there's no other lead magnets necessary. You just need to get on this newsletter. And it's great content that we blow up and put everywhere else. So the flywheel. Continuous. Wow. So do it. I'm going to peer pressure you and Fonzie to get a newsletter going. Oh, yes, dude.

[00:25:37] A hundred percent. I mean, you have to tell Fonzie twice. Well, right now he might be a little overwhelmed. He hasn't slept in like five days. But he doesn't need to be writing a newsletter in this. He's like, what? He's going to be starting writing content. I'm finishing writing on like how to put a baby to sleep. And, you know, that's why it's in his head right now. Poopy diaper episode. The poopy diaper episode. Oh, dude, man. Wow. Okay. You closed the episode with a massive golden boulder. So, Adam, I cannot thank you enough. Thank you so much.

[00:26:07] You're always, you know, a great figure in the podcasting industry. And every time we see you at events, I can't believe you're that tall. Well, I mean, since you're six foot three, I mean, that's saying something. You know? I'm like seven foot two. Yeah. For those listening and watching, I am really six foot three. I mean, of course he is. Uh, but no, as always, man, it's been a pleasure. And like, this is your home.

[00:26:33] Uh, we're going to have you back for the business creator club once it finally opens. And we're going to, you know, talk some tactics and, you know, hopefully, you know, introduce you to some awesome creators. Uh, with that said, guys, thank you so much for tuning into the content is profit podcast. We will see you on the next episode. Take care.