Binge Factor Media

At the end of the day, podcasts hinge on our ability to attract listeners because it is them whose time we are asking. So how do we make it worth their while? How do we attract them to not only listen but binge listen and stay engaged? In this episode, Michelle Nedelec of The Business Ownership Podcast joins Tracy Hazzard to give us the answers. She narrows down on the importance of building an effective podcast model the same way that you would build a business. She dives deep into opening her guest list, creating a platform for her network, asking the right questions, and overcoming pod fade. Not many shows can keep the momentum with their listeners. But that doesn’t mean you have to be one. Tune in to this conversation as Michelle extends her wisdom on scaling your podcast and even your business.

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Building An Effective Podcast Model To Attract Binge Listeners And Keep Them Engaged With Michelle Nedelec Of The Business Ownership Podcast

I have Michelle Nedelec on the show. She is The Business Ownership Podcast host. She is talking about awareness strategies and things that might apply to you. It is a great episode for you to read and a great show to check out. She is an expert in entrepreneurialism and the Founder of Awareness Strategies. She has run her own series of companies for several years and has been helping sales reps, entrepreneurs, and executives to continually double their profits and revenues.

She not only has what it takes to help her clients build a $1 million business, but she does it all the time, and she does it time and time again. Michelle particularly loves to talk about marketing, automation, systems, integration, and support both on and offstage. She teaches the key components of scaling a business strategy, system support, and state of mind, so you know how to continually elevate all four components to build a healthy, thriving business.

For the past several years, she has been focusing on helping entrepreneurs bring their businesses online from conceptualization to Done For You IT automation. I was fascinated by Michelle’s thinking about this because the reality is if you took what she was talking about on her podcast and not only applied that to your business but apply it to your podcast, you have two successful pieces. That is what I decided to dive into in with her.

Michelle, thanks for joining me. The Business Ownership Podcast, I love that you are talking about ownership. That is a good title. There are a bunch of owners, but no one is saying the word, ownership. I did not find a lot of podcasts with that word in it. That is a distinctive difference between you and others. What made you choose that?

There is a progression that people take that entrepreneurs take from growing through their businesses, from solopreneurs to getting some staff around them to having some support to ultimately grow to a business ownership state where they own the business. They can sell the business. It is a matter of facilitating the ability of your staff or your team to take those tasks they have to do and run with them. Eventually, your business runs like a well-oiled machine, with or without you. Both are great. When you move into that state, you have business ownership. You own that. You can sell it. It is a different thing than being a solopreneur going, “I bought myself a job this size.”

It is smart because you are sending a signal to the audience for their mindset. Whether you are using your podcast to attract clients, whatever your purpose is, it still sends a signal that they are at this thinking stage. They have used this term before. This is something that they aspire to have, or they wouldn’t come to your show. That is smart. Sometimes people pick too generic names and titles that it doesn’t realize.

When I speak on stage, people always say, “Introduce yourself or say something about your company.” I don’t say I’m the founder of. A founder is a startup stage to me. Even though that is true, I say, “I’m the owner of the largest podcast post-production company.” I will say I’m the owner of. It is a different model and mindset in a different setting stage without my saying, “We are this big. We have this many employees and clients.” I don’t have to say that. I have already said it by using that term. You are setting that by attracting the people who use that term or want to use that term.

I love that you refer to yourself as the owner of it because it does bring on a different state in people’s minds of what they visualize when they create it. I got another linguist going on with me, which is awesome because anytime we say anything, it has to create a visual in the mind of the people that are listening to it. If it doesn’t create one, they say, “I don’t get it.” If it creates a negative one, they are going, “I’m going to stay away from that.” If it creates a positive one, you have something you can click. You can move forward without a person.

It is important to make sure that all of that marketing, especially podcasting, has that imagery so that people are attracted to it. They can sell, filter, and move forward with that view. If you are a networking inventor, you are introducing yourself. You are going to attract people that are wanting to buy businesses or network with people who can sell their businesses. It creates a whole different level of conversation, if nothing else because you are going, “That sounds empowering. I like that.”

I like how you said that about the negative side of things because podcasting is like somebody choosing to listen to your show. It is a choice. It is not being pushed into me. The negative doesn’t work in podcasting because we choose to listen to something that we think is going to align with our values or give us what we need because we are giving and sacrificing our time in exchange for this listenership. We rarely do that for something negative. Negativity happens in social media and articles. Things go viral in a negative way in other places, but it is usually pushed and not pulled.

Marketers love to solve and point out problems. We love to do all the things, but a podcast is like a signature program. That should be the solution to their problems. They can identify it is not necessarily the podcast for people with broken legs. It is recovering from them, creating healthy lives, or strengthening their legs. The people with broken legs will go, “I want to listen to a show about strong legs because it does create that attention to where they are going with it, and they are going to stay long term because it is not solving the problem I have now. It is going to bring me something in the long term.” It is important when naming a show to recognize what is probably going to happen and what you are going to do with it.

I advise my clients a lot of times, and for everyone who asks me about show names and shows names, I set the tone for so much. They do a lot of heavy lifting. I don’t want people to get like bogged down and caught up in it, I do want them to carefully consider this. What I normally say is, “You want to live in a point of action or aspiration rather than pain.” That is what we say when we write headlines, copy things, and emails. Another thing is you go for headlines that are about pain. I don’t like that in podcast titles. It doesn’t work. If you are talking about pain, it is giving an action word on it that is helping you move out of it or shifting from something to something from pain to aspiration.

In the whole email campaign of things, if you have been fortunate enough to bring people to your list, subject lines still work good for the three things you want to avoid in blowing up your business. One of the solutions is The Business Ownership Podcast. You will get a ton of tools, tips, and tricks to be able to afford those things. You can still have the negativity in the marketing to grab people’s attention or to hook them in. When considering the show, that’s the solution, your signature, and what people are aspiring towards.

That is a smart choice that you have made there. It sets the tone for it. Did you plan out who was going to be the ideal listener? Did you plan out your show when you started it that way?

I started my show as a transition. I used to do executive coaching and work with entrepreneurs, especially people that had a buyout and went into the entrepreneurial world and went, “I was successful over there. Why am I not successful over here?” To be able to get them back into that state of, “You are where you need to be. You are doing things awesomely. Let’s get you into that position where you are in the position ownership position.” I’m not going to say just in an entrepreneurial position because I love entrepreneurs. They are all awesome.

You got to move beyond that if you are going to take to the next step.

People get frustrated in that stage of I’m still the one doing all of this. I’m still the chief cook and bottle washer. I want to be able to get to the point where I can afford to hire a team and get to the point where I want to bring these people on. I wrote the book the Business Ownership Mindset. It is all about understanding the different phases that we go through in life, why we think a certain way, and what makes us successful in those different positions.

Business Ownership Mindset

In transferring over into the world of entrepreneurs and the technology that they need in order to be able to structure the business and grow with that, it takes a different mindset, and it requires a lot of support from a lot of different people. What I intended was we going to look at the scaling stage of a business. How do you take a successful business and scale it? I backed up the bus and went, “They are still in that growing stage.” I did some surveys and things for my audience and people that were listening. I found out I have everybody from wantrepreneurs to retired people that care less, but they like listening to business still. I’m like, “We get to open up more.”

You don’t know what you are going to get. I always joke that in my first podcast on 3D printing, I thought I was going to get a bunch of fourteen-year-old boys in their garage. I didn’t know that I was going to get retirees and teachers out of the Midwest and that I was going to have such a wonderfully diverse community. Once you start to get into it and find that out, you shift your show. What were some of the changes that you made?

I started to open up my guest list to people that helped serve and support the transitioning people into entrepreneurial because that mindset that we transitioned to sometimes as veteran entrepreneurs, we lose what got us into this in the first place. It is important to keep reminding people the excitement that you have can be perpetual. It doesn’t have to fade away. Here is how you keep it alive and well.

When somebody is new to the entrepreneurial world, some of them are continually being barded sometimes, depending on how they set it up. They are continually being bombarded with, “Why don’t you go back and get a job? Why don’t you go from this point? This isn’t working. Do it right.” That mindset is beneficial to everybody along that entrepreneurial journey.

I opened it up to people that are helping them transition. When we exit a business, there are certain things that we have to take into account, like the goodwill of our business, the assets we have, and the transition ability of not only the name of the company but the deliverability of what it is that we are offering people. It is a lot easier to sell a company like Koch. Nobody cares who the owner is, but it is a lot more difficult to sell John’s Plumbing. We have to identify those things earlier than just, “I’m ready to sell. What do I need to do?” early in the business. Even back at the starting page of, “I might want to start a company,” it is helpful to know the goodwill of a company and what my assets are.

I’m glad you are focused on this because I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and business podcasts. They are saying, “My audience is broad in general.” They broaden and generalize what they talk about instead of still taking the angle. That is the important part. I was lucky enough to interview on stage at an event, Greg Shepard, the Head of BOSS Startup Science. He said something fascinating that I had not understood.

As it has been hitting my head, your show is the perfect point to intervene and set that tone. He said, “The number one reason startups fail within the first five years of business is because of a decision that was made in the first year and the decision that was made because they didn’t understand their exit strategy in mind.” It doesn’t mean they have to know exactly the destination, but they need to know the direction they are taking.

If I’m going to sell my company to Google, I need to have that in my mind. I might sell it to Amazon, but it still worked and is in the right direction. If you’re not thinking that way, the decisions you make, like how you name your company and what you do in that whole process of asset development, can go wrong and make the decision of making it so that you can’t sell it later. There is no exit plan for you. In the end, you fail.

Part of what we do is explain to people that there are four steps to their businesses. One is that setup stage where you are throwing spaghetti up against the wall. You are hoping something sticks. I don’t know. Do we do Facebook Ads? Is our biggest seller stay-at-home moms? Is it 15-year-old girls or 15-year-old boys? It doesn’t matter what the thing is. You are trying to figure out who is doing what, when, where, why, and how. Some will work, and some won’t. When we get into that growing phase, it is because we start to realize that this one product I have has some good profitability, which is important in a business for most people.

Most business owners will sell what they love to sell and not sell the thing that is profitable. We have to figure out how to love it or love it and have some longevity to that. As soon as we hit that sweet spot, we can start to grow a business because we start to let go of all the other things that happen, even if it was shocking and surprising. We thought we were going after stay-at-home moms, but it ended up the fourteen-year-old boys buy this thing more often. I don’t know what it is. I’m just making stuff up.

I hope not because they don’t buy anything. I hope stay-at-home moms, please.

Having done it in there, it wasn’t soap, that is for sure, but being able to hone in on that thing. We get better at messaging, bringing people in, and building that business. That is the growth phase. Once we have that honed in, it is like science. We know exactly what it takes to be able to bring people in. We can start to get to that scaling phase whereby we are not growing one at a time. We are growing 10 or 20 at a time. We have that exponential growth.

We have to go through those two phases first because then, and only then, we start throwing money at the bonfire that is Facebook Ads or Google Ads. We know they can convert. I will spend $1 on ads to make $2 every day. It seems ridiculous when some people are spending $2 million a month on Facebook Ads, but they are making $4 million. Their expenses aren’t $2 million on top of that. You got to know your numbers inside out, upside down, and backward to get to that scaling phase. When you are scaling, you sell it to somebody like Google because they are going, “Why are you paying me $2 million to do the ads when we can run the ads and make $4 million?”

How do you approach your podcast? Some of the things you are saying there apply to treating your podcast like it is business. That same model of stages works within the podcast. How do you personally treat your podcast? Is it a piece, marketing, or advertising? How do you approach it and look at it?

I started it off as a lovechild. It got me through. I want to talk to business owners, people who love talking about strategy, and people internationally. I wanted to find my posse on the planet, and it was working stellar. When COVID hit, I was fantastic because this was my sanity. I wasn’t stuck in my house, which would have been quiet. I like to be a little more vocal and all that fun stuff.

It was the saving grace, and being able to look at it as this could turn into a course. We have the four pieces of the business scaling program. I could go back into teaching strategies and business growth to a business. I was like, “Here is our online component for the startups. If you like it, go and talk to the podcast guest because they have the next stage that you need to be able to do the thing that you need to do.”

It is becoming more content-based. I can take all of this information and turn it into not only marketing for our company, but we can also turn it into content for learning and education. I can take all the top people that are the ones that I love to work with and are helping online businesses get online. We do a summit once a year called the Ultimate Online Business Resource Summit for businesses that are going online and what they need to know. I can handpick all my podcast guests and say, “I have a speaker event coming up. Will you speak and help promote the event?”

I want to point that out to people because I have had guests on the show who do a summit and those become podcast episodes. I like that you are doing it in reverse, where you are inviting back your podcast guests because you learned more about them. You got this in-depth, where sometimes you get into the summit, and you were like, “That was good content altogether.” You are curating that better this way. It is a second touch point. You already have a relationship that you have been building with them both by putting out your podcast and having that interview with them and promoting it. They already have a sense of how you work and are more likely to say yes.

When I look at the niche market for my business, whom do I want to be classified in there? I don’t think that brings enough entertainment, value, or content to the listeners of the podcast. There are a lot of podcasters out there that say, “You want to have a conversation with these people. You want to talk and network with them to find out who is their center of influence and do business with these people.” I go, “That is awesome. Some might be in the right phase. Some might not be at the right phase.” I still want to get to know them, do business with them, and know what they are up to and what crazy and interesting things are going on the earth.

I didn’t want to hone in on it. What I wanted to do was create a platform for people that when I was networking and going, “Tracy, you are awesome. Do you want to come to my show?” You go, “Let’s go on your show.” It is way better than, “Let’s have coffee.” I’m having coffee with you, but I’m recording the conversation. I’m sharing it with the world. Is that okay?

They are more likely to be straightforward, honest, and to the point. Because they have gotten to know you a little bit, they are getting into the idea of giving your audience something valuable. That makes a huge difference. Media interviews are so canned, and podcasts are the opposite of it.

My favorite question is, “Give us an example of one of your Cinderella stories. One of your clients went from miserable to awful. After they worked with you, what did they get out of it? While I’m explaining that, it gives them a chance to go, ‘She wants that client.’”

She wants that story. It is running through my head. I love that. You gave a great image. This is a skill that Michelle has. As I was listening to the show, the way you pose a question to your guest sets the tone for the way you want them to answer it. You are not telling them what the answer is, but you are making sure they are giving it to the right audience view. You are painting a picture for it, making them build that story in their head. Give that example. I love the way you ask questions. It takes skill to ask questions like that. You have been doing this for quite some time, and it shows. What makes your show bingeable to me is the way that you ask those questions guiding the conversation but not narrowing it.

I have been a guest on a couple of podcasts, and they were going, “Give us your three pillars for your business.” I was like, “I have never thought of my business as having three pillars before. Now I got to make something up.”

I had a host once ask me something like, “There is an animal outside your window. What is the animal?” I was like, “What the heck? I listened to your show. How did I miss that part? What was going on?”

Maybe it is for your eyes only, Tracy. I got to do this. It is blurry. I happen to live in a spot.

There are animals outside your window. It was one of those things. I’m like, “I don’t know what this has to do with your show. I’m confused.” I said something crazy like a giraffe. I couldn’t think of anything. I could see by his face it was not what was expected. I’m like, “You should have asked me a more typical question.”

It was one of those Barbara Walters’ questions where they are trying to take you off guard and how you respond with the behavioral analysis of it. I have been through many behavioral analysis applications as a young kid to go, “This has nothing to do with my job. Why would you ask me?” Instead of doing that, I’m like, “Sure.”

I have to go, “If you had a superpower, what would it be?” That one has been asked many times. I like the way you ask questions. You are trying to shift the mindset of your audience. The way you ask the question is doing that of your guest, which is making sure that the conversation furthers the ultimate goal that you have.

It is important, as a host, to understand when you have to articulate your thoughts and visuals. You may or may not be a visual person, which is fine. You can be an audio baby and love the sound, and the notes that somebody’s voice hits and go, “I could listen to that voice all day.” If they are not seeing what is going on with their hands, to be able to explain it to the audience and go, “Tracy is showing us her book cover, and it is got a great picture of blah on it.” To be able to draw them in at least sometimes, even though the majority of your vocabulary might sound great, vibrates with my audience. Everything you say sounds audio-esque. It is important to understand that not everybody, even though they are listening to it, thinks that way.

You and I are on video right now. I had always done the video even when we didn’t use it because I’m better at connecting eye-to-eye with someone. That is how I feel about it. I want to see your hand movements and energy because it helps me do a better job of interviewing and connecting with you. That is my purpose for it. It is not the video output, but those that live stream, those that are video first tend to have this like, “Everybody watches the video,” attitude.

Forgetting the consumption of the audio is a different animal. It is its own thing. We do need to paint pictures. A lot of times, what they don’t realize is that anyone who looks at the YouTube statistics should know that people don’t watch the video. They are listening to it, but they are zoning out. They are not watching it most of the time. If you want them to take a look at that book cover, saying something is going to trigger them to look back at the screen and pay attention. It will make a difference in the conversion and popularity of your video.

I have years of experience. Back when I was in high school, we were doing the yearbook manually with photographs, cutting and pasting with knives, scissors, and glue. There were some certain fundamentals to it of making sure the faces are pointing inwards to the spine, and your arrows are pointed and things that you want to point out to.

Those little lessons become important and ingrained in us to understand and, more importantly, to empathize with the listener. As a host, it is important to go and listen to at least one of your shows. How is this coming across? I know I sound different and hilarious when I’m listening to myself. When I listen to the recording of myself, I’m going, “I laugh a lot.”

We can’t be too picky about it, but it is good to listen back and learn a little. We don’t always take that reflection. I find a lot of podcasters never listen to their own episodes. I’m in the moment. I did it once. When I’m interviewed on another show, I like to listen because it is not my show. I’m not in control of that. How did that come out?

I listen to myself on somebody else’s show occasionally to make sure to respect the fact that they may have said things before and after that I didn’t hear when I was on the show. I want to respect that. I will share it properly later. That is the one thing that I do more regularly. I only spot-check my show nowadays. You were way over 100 episodes. You got to get like, “I’m not going to check it out as often anymore. Something is working.

If somebody is listening to it, that is awesome. Thank you for listening to it. I appreciate that.

Before I get to the three things that I ask everybody, what I would love to know is that as you get over 100 episodes, there are new challenges to the show itself. What have you found to be the most challenging over 100 episodes, and what is next for you? What are you going to double down on or do more of or do less of?

I was focused at the beginning of getting episodes out because when I first got my coach, they were like, “Podfade always happens at thirteen episodes. You got to get thirteen episodes out.” When I published my show, I had thirteen episodes in the bucket. We went live with thirteen episodes. I go, “I’m not going to have podfade.” I’m already past thirteen. We started, I have thirteen, and we are golden. They all laughed at me. That is not how it works.

I hit podfade, and the thing came crumbling down. I realized, “I got to get these shows. I got to prioritize this. I have to put this in my schedule, make it a thing, and make it happen.” I had to get support because doing all the editing, finding guests, and all that fun stuff was getting in the way of my real job. I’m getting that support.

It transitioned into, “Now I got all this good stuff, I want to get on other podcasts and become a guest. I want to get on more stages and bring all of this content to the live realm.” That is how some of it has transitioned. I decided to start other podcasts, which are also fun. I’m like, “Let’s not do one. Let’s do five. Five podcasts would be awesome.”

You and I are like that. What is good? More is even better. What are some of the other shows you got?

One of them is a little salty. I have a special right now called 7 to 8 Figures. It is all about interviewing people that have made $1 million or more in twelve months or less by incorporating some speaking into their business. Whether it was paid to speak, speak to pay, keynoting, getting contract work to do, or public presentations. I was looking for people from A to Z. It could be on astrology or zoology. I didn’t care.

How do you bring speaking in? The more entrepreneurs can learn to articulate their thoughts through the speaking realm, whether it is through podcasts, podcasts guesting, or all of these things, you can add a substantial amount of revenue into your business, especially if you have the strategy in place to set that up and how do you accomplish that. I thought that was important.

Podcast Model: The more entrepreneurs can learn to articulate their thoughts through the speaking realm, the more they can add a substantial amount of revenue into their business, especially if they have the strategy in place to set that up.

The next one I had was Happy To Offend You, which is because you are offended by something doesn’t mean you are going to die from it. If you understand why somebody is not offended by the things you are offended by, it helps create connection and more understanding in the world. I still am looking for comedy club owners, comedians, drag queens, a bit of completely politically incorrect midgets, and/or redhead Irish people.

You can say that you are a little redheaded.

I’m a redheaded Irish person. By existing, I offend people. You don’t have to be offended because I speak to women, and they do the things I do. Being able to laugh at these things and show how I’m going to offend you because I have red hair, I speak my mind, and I like things, but you don’t have to be offended by it. Here is how.

I like the name of that, and I am intrigued by it. I would check out whether I stuck around like that, but you could get me with those kinds of guests. There is something smart going on with the way you got that one planned out. I like that.

We have The Little Blue Pill for Business, which is all about getting it up and keeping it up. We are talking about revenue and profits.

I like that. You said salty, and you are not wrong.

If you like a little tongue-in-cheek and not physically, this podcast is for you. That one is a rated show. It got a lot of innuendos, fun stuff, and anything goes. We are still talking about business and how you build a business. Revenue and profits are a raw conversation about how we do that.

You got the podcasting bug, and you got multiple shows going on. There is a challenge in that because every time you start a new one, you got to start a new audience. You don’t get to take the current audience. Hopefully, you tell them about it, and they try the show too, but you don’t get to take them with you.

It shows like The Little Blue Pill is not for everyone, and I get that. It does have much slower growth. I talked to a TEDx coach, and he was like, “That is your second talk. That is awesome” I’m like, “I wasn’t thinking that.” He was like, “We are going to make this rock. I’m like, “Okay.” He was like, “Happy To Offend You was your third talk.”

Now you are a serial TEDx speaker. I love it. Let’s talk a little bit about these three things that I talked to everybody about. You mentioned this. It is like your guest shifted after you started your show, and you realized what your audience wanted. How do you go about getting great guests, and what do you do to vet them?

It’s just having a conversation with my guests, especially for the Business Ownership Podcast, and understanding, “What do you do? How do you do it?” It is usually people at networking events that I meet and I go, “People need to know more about that. Would you be interested in coming to my show?” That one is organic and natural.

As I got a lot more shows and listeners, I started to get more people that represented guests and said, “We have a potential guest for you. Would you be interested in this?” I’m at the point now where I can listen to those people and never have to find my own guests anymore, which is also awesome. I keep going. The world needs to know. I keep bringing them all.

You got multiple shows. You got to constantly be feeding yourself and trying to figure out where to fit them in. You all read it here. She is looking for comedy club owners and midgets. You name it. She is looking for it. You got to suggest. You got to put that out there that you are looking for that, and hopefully, they will flow.

With The Little Blue Pill, at first, it was like, “If the guest was interested in being on the show, come on the show.” I found that what they said in the green room was fantastic. As soon as I hit record, it was like, “I’m strait-laced. This was fun.”

I didn’t think about that because there is an association with it.

Some people get stressed out. All of a sudden, their frontal lobe’s not kicking in. They are not as creative and have comebacks.

Do you get only men on your show, or do you get women, too?

Mostly women.

You are not afraid to talk about that then. Increasing listeners is every podcaster’s problem. They all want a solution to it. What do you find that is working for you? What do you wish would work better?

What I found was that having a consistent support team, somebody putting out the shows on a consistent basis, making sure that the branding was consistent, that the hook and the naming convention were consistent. As soon as we got consistent, we had more listeners. The more consistent we get, the more listeners we get. They are starting to have that little app hook. It helps in being able to put that message out to all of them because I have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. I could not be bothered doing any of that. It was like, “Do you got a show?” Whereas having a person that posts all of those and makes sure there is interaction. That is what people love and engage in.

What do you wish worked better?

It’s having the conversations afterward. As soon as we stop recording and start talking about it, I always ask, “Who do you want to know?” I have met many people. I probably know somebody who knows somebody that can get you where you want to go. I’m honing in on those conversations so I can hold onto those relationships better.

If I have five podcasts in a row in a day, I will forget whom I talked to first off and what was going on with that. I will often make sure that I do the emails and things like that at that moment. I don’t let anybody lose. I would love to be able to hone in on my capacity to be able to hold on to those relationships a little bit better and maintain that because podcasters are awesome. They have cool stories and do awesome things for people. You are going to move it and shake it. I love it.

When you are thinking if you get it right, your audience is growing because they already have podcast listeners. It is easier. I do think that is probably something almost all of us could do better. I have a long list right here of referrals that I need to make. I have been traveling for the last few weeks. It is gotten stacked up, which doesn’t usually happen to me. That is a lot of stacks that I still have to get through. I hate that I’m not doing it because it is not keeping that relationship going as it should. That is exactly the reason.

It is smart to keep it all in one place. I can start a book. At least I have it all in one place. I can go back and make notes all over the place, going, “They were awesome. I need to talk to so-and-so about this because that will help trigger my brain and keep these people alive.” Several years ago, in doing interviews, keeping those relationships alive was important. It is not a one-and-done, and wham bam, thank you, ma’am, but Tracy was awesome. I want to keep that aspect. If anybody ever needs that, I want to be able to make sure that your name is front and center. I can refer you.

It is old school term, but my Rolodex has gotten huge. My ability to scroll through it and touch one person is easy. I love that part about it. The last thing I ask everybody about is the monetization of podcasts. It could be any form of monetization. Your business is growing. You are getting more speaking events. Your books are selling. Whatever that version for you of your return on investment and the time and money you are putting into the podcast. What is working for you on that monetization side?

In a weird and blatant way, I added to our intake form, “Would you like to sponsor the show? If so, click here. Put a deposit down.” It was $4.97. People clicked it. It was like, “Now we have to come up with the product to figure out how we are going to give them the value of that.” We over-delivered at first because we were excited that somebody had done that. I’m like, “You gave me money. That is fantastic.”

It has helped immensely in my networking because people remember that I have a podcast. It is a form of notoriety like being a broadcaster. They were like, “That is awesome.” They remember that. Speaking engagements, things like that, and the creative juices of Happy To Offend You and The Little Blue Pill have got me some extra notoriety, which is always fun and entertaining.

It makes you unforgettable.

I get clients off of that, and that works awesomely.

Flow through to clients is what you see is probably the most often path for you. You are doing all the things right in the process by narrowing your focus on the stages of it, even if they are listening at various stages. You are keeping their mindset focused on getting to where you want them to be. When they hit that stage, you have already been in their ear for a while, and they are ready to go.

It is exciting to get people engaged. We got a lot more people sharing the show, which is awesome. I love that. I make sure that I thank everybody who shares the show because some people may feel obligated as a guest, but my listeners don’t feel obligated at all. They do it. Every time I see somebody retweet or share on whatever modality it is, I’m always sure to lay on the love and thank them because it is important we get the word out that people become entrepreneurs. They can empower themselves and start to let go of, “The world controls me.” They start to hold onto, “I control my reality, and this is what I want to happen.” Entrepreneurs will inherit the earth, and that is my mission.

Podcast Model: In getting people engaged, we get a lot more people sharing the show.

Your company is called Awareness Strategies. I would love for you to leave us with some tips on how to make more awareness for your podcast and ways in which you think those out there with great shows wishing they had a bigger audience and visibility could create awareness. What are some tips that you can give us?

The big one is to make sure that you have the right name and that you are focused on a certain group of people so that they self-select and understand who the show is for. Those people will become loyal listeners. If you have a show on autism, they are going to talk about your show a lot. If you have shows about putting kids through college, that is a huge issue, and it becomes a raveable thing. A lot of people are a little too stuck on, “It is not going viral.” If two people share it, it is gone way more viral than it was when nobody was listening to it.

Enjoy and embrace those because that leads to something. You start to notice, “What about me do they like? What about what I’m putting out there is more fun or shareable for them?” It is not that you have to become somebody different. That aspect of you is what they are honing in on. You can deliver more of that. A lot of people that I have talked to went, “I was trying to hide that, and people saw it. That was the thing they wanted to share.” I’m like, “That is weird. I found my people. This is awesome.”

I said this earlier, and maybe not as clearly away as I normally do, which is what your binge factor is, and you hit on it right there. The self-selection process that you are using when you curate the questions and guests, and when you are leading where you want the conversation to go, all of those things are helping your audience choose you and choose to listen to the next episode and continue forward.

I always think self-selection is a good thing because that is doing a lot of the heavy lifting of sales that you don’t have to do to screen out the wrong people. Self-selection is powerful. If it is your binge factor at the same time, you got something that is doing it, and you aren’t even involved in the process except at the front end recording and doing what you love already. That is networking.

You get to talk about what you love to talk about

That is a brilliant process right there, but it is truly why your show is bingeable. It is why people are continuing through because they continue to vote with their time. They are self-selecting each week. That is powerful. Michelle, I’m glad you got The Business Ownership Podcast and some others in the works because it sounds fun to have you a part of the podcasting industry and keep this going. Let’s think about podcast ownership next, not just business ownership. That was fantastic.

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One of the things that were fascinating that we dived into was this idea of the audience doing the self-selecting. Their choosing to listen to your show is an important thing. It is happening all around. All the different choices that you make, how you name your show, how you name your episodes, and how you attract an audience. At the end of the day, if they are not right for your business or for what you are trying to do, they are going to self-select out because it is not resonating with them. Making sure that you are continually curating what you are doing and staying true to your focus is critically important if that is your model of it.

I love that Michelle brings that up. It is important, and it is a business ownership model. If you are having your audience be self-selecting, your sales are happening in that process. You are going to have better satisfaction. You are going to have better flow through. All of that process becomes a lot easier when they are self-selecting into that process.

Think about your audience and how you are going to attract them, how you are going to keep them engaged over time, and how you are going to become a binge listened-to podcast like Michelle Nedelec, The Business Ownership Podcast. Make sure you check out our show at TheBingeFactor.com. Get all kinds of other resources while you are there. Check out other episodes and hosts that might interest you. Thanks, everyone, for reading. I will be back again with another binge factor podcaster for you to analyze, think about, and get inspired from.

 Important Links

• The Business Ownership Podcast
• Awareness Strategies
• Business Ownership Mindset
• BOSS Startup Science
• Happy To Offend You
• The Little Blue Pill for Business
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• YouTube.com – MichelleNedelec

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