Binge Factor Media

There are many paths you can take to monetize a podcast, even if you’re serving a tightly-defined niche. After more than 200 episodes at Real Estate Investing For Women Podcast, real estate investor Moneeka Sawyer proves that it can be done if you have the passion, perseverance and just the right bit of know-how. She may be passionate about it now, but she hated podcasting at the get-go. When she saw how dramatically increased traffic to her mastermind, she was sold. Now that the mastermind’s off the table, she is using affiliate links to get sponsorships. In this interview with Tracy Hazzard, you will learn that when you just come from a place of authenticity and curate content to help out a specific niche, karmic forces will make sure your production costs are covered, at the very least. Known in her circles as the Blissful Investor, Moneeka is full of energy and reeks of the passion she has for empowering women. You are going to enjoy this episode.

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How To Create A Niche Podcast That Builds And Empowers Investing Women With Moneeka Sawyer Of The Real Estate Investing For Women Podcast

I am talking to a blissful millionaire. I’ve got Moneeka Sawyer on the show. She’s reached her financial freedom by turning $10,000 to over $5 million working only 5 to 10 hours per month with little stress. You can see why her podcast is attracting people. She’s on a mission to help as many other women as she can do the same. Moneeka host the top-rated podcast and radio show Real Estate Investing for Women and has interviewed prestigious guests, such as Leeza Gibbons, Dr. Joe Vitale, and Hal Elrod. Moneeka has also been featured on stages with Suzanne Somers, Martha Stewart, and Ice-T and Coco at places like the Nasdaq Marketplace, Harvard, and Carnegie Hall, and on TV on NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox and it reaches over 150 million people. I love The Blissful Investor. She’s amazing, but I love Real Estate Investing for Women. I wanted to make sure that you get to see how this community-building podcast works and how Moneeka is building it to have a community surrounding it. Let’s learn from Moneeka.

Moneeka, I am glad to talk to you. I want to get to the heart of your story. How did podcasting come across your desk like, “I got to try this.”

Tracy, first of all, thank you for having me. This is an honor. I got into podcasting kicking and screaming. Someone made me do it. I did not want to do it. I was a coach and I had a coach. Here’s a tip, always hire somebody better than you to help you with your business. We were looking for ways for me to get my name out there and fill my mastermind group. She said, “Moneeka, you’ve got this great voice, start a podcast. That’ll be the beginning of your funnel. You do a podcast, you invite people to get a download, then in the download, you invite them to a session with you for 30 minutes. You upsell them to the mastermind.” I hated podcasting.

Why did you hate it? What about it?

I don’t like my voice and all the tech. There was so much tech, for me, because I’m not tech-savvy. It felt too much figuring out the editing and all these things. I was like, “Another whole thing to learn from marketing,” but it worked like magic. I ended up within a month filling my mastermind. I had a 75% close rate on those phone calls to my mastermind. I realized, “This is magic.” People get to know you and then they want to work with you. It was amazing. My coach was right and then an interesting thing then happened. I hated running the mastermind so now we do a flip. I was like, “I can’t do this anymore.” After two years, I stopped the mastermind, but I loved doing the podcast. I was like, “What do I do with this podcast?” I kept doing it until I could figure out some other form to monetize it. That’s how the whole thing started.

You’re a little over 200 episodes. You’ve been doing this a while. You do two episodes a week, but did you always do that?

No. When I launched, I started with five in the bag and then I did five that first week. For the first couple of months, I did two a week and then I went down to once a week. This was for my own scheduling. I know that a lot of content is a good thing, but I also needed to keep it manageable for me. I went to once a week and when I had my summit, I was doing five a week. It was with all the guests or the speakers on the summit or book launch. Often, I will have two a week or something like that. Now, I’m doing it because I’m doing a video journal. It’s a complete experiment. Ironically, my audience loves this more than any of my other shows, which is interesting.

I hope you’re going to talk about your journal because that’s why I was mentioning two days a week. Moneeka’s set up is she’ll do an interview one day of the week. The other day what is called her journal. It’ll be a conversation where she was having some thoughts. She’ll talk about an idea, concept and maybe pushing through to opportunity. There’s all whole bunch of it. It’s all over the place and all the different things that you talk about. There is always a little bit of pushing through the fear of getting to be an investor. I feel like there’s an obstacle model that’s going on with your journal entries. I hadn’t realized it was also a video journal because I looked at it on the podcast. It’s a video journal first and you’re airing it, but this is the thing that I hear again and again, that when people have been podcasting for a while doing the guest model and all of a sudden, they start to do more one-on-one or talking to their audience alone the solo shows, they get a great response and you’re finding that.

I am. Tracy, maybe you can help us to understand this. First of all, I have a hard time being all about me. That started about me, like a talking thing. It didn’t feel as engaging. I find that when I listen to podcasts, I like a little bit more variety in the voices because it’s in your ears. I feel like if I had started that way, the podcasts would not have seen the level of success. After a couple of years where people have gotten to know me, now they want a little bit more of my own opinion. Do you feel like that is consistent with what you’ve seen elsewhere or it happens to have been what worked for me?

You could have started in a model of not doing a solo show. We find those are a bit harder out of the gate when you don’t have an audience to start from. You don’t already have an engagement or a following somewhere. If you have a show where you’re doing guesting and you do a solo show, and you’re balancing that out doing two episodes a week, like you are, you can’t start that way. If you wait until your audience asks for it or until you realize, “I feel more comfortable here. I’m ready to demonstrate my curation ability to hit on a topic that people are interested in,” then go for it. In this particular model of the show, only the guest interviews, but the Feed Your Brand, we used to mix them together.

With Feed Your Brand, it usually my partner, Tom and I. We would go out and do shows together. Sometimes we do them separately when we have a topic, but we always had an interview with successful podcasters. Eventually, we ran it into its own entity because that was being asked by our readers. They wanted an easy way for them to get all the interviews because they wanted to hear from you guys, the podcasters. The ones that wanted to consume us, they wanted to consume us and binge read and learn all the lessons separately. In our case, we had the split it because that’s what people wanted but I think everybody’s different. I think yours works for you the way that it is right now.

Thank you. That’s great feedback. I did wait until my audience asked. I kept doing it and eventually, I started getting these emails, like, “What do you think about this?” When you’re doing the whole thing that started with me is, “Moneeka, what do you do when you’re starting a new project or thinking about starting a new project? Do you go into any fair?” I kept hearing it and then I had to wait until I was starting a new project because I wanted it to be real. I didn’t want it to be like this intellectual philosophical thing. I wanted them to see me going through my own process. That’s how I ended up starting that.

Were you adding video before or is this the first time you’ve added the video component?

I’ve had a video component forever. I’m on Roku.

Sometimes that can be daunting all of a sudden and it is not a bad way to go. If you want to test out and you’ve been podcasting before and you want to add videos to try this new model with the video.

It’s fun now because you load up to Roku and then you get on Amazon Fire and all of these different platforms. It does the same thing. It takes a little more focus because you can’t rub your face when you’re recording.

You got to the lighting right. All of that has to go on it. That’s why I started podcasting without video because I did not want to have my hair done.

I can relate.

The thing about it is that even if you’re podcasting out there and you are putting your show on YouTube, you’re already on all the smart TVs because YouTube in general is easily accessible from almost every smart TV. If you talk to your TV, like I do because I hate to type in a channel. If you ask your TV to play whatever show it is, it’ll go to the YouTube version of the show before it will pick it up on Amazon Music or anywhere else where you go. It’ll happen to pick up the YouTube version first. I don’t know why that is, but it always seems to do that.

It’s a fun thing to try because I love walking into someone’s house, which we don’t do it now. I’m like, “Amazon, play Real Estate Investing for Women podcast now.” My voice then fills up the house, I’m like, “This works.”

All the real estate agents out there, go ahead and start putting this podcast on. It’s going to help. You are looking at a different model of business than when you started. You were filling your mastermind, which I love that model because it is working for you. That’s a 75% close rate. That’s amazing for a mastermind. What of the business model are you finessing and how do you have to change the podcast to adjust for that?

I haven’t figured out the new business model. I love podcasting and so I am feeling something’s up. I went to the New Media Summit and Steve Olsher talks about the way that podcasting fits into marketing. What he says is you’ve got your marketing tree and podcasting is one of the branches. My intention is that podcasting would be the tree and there aren’t that many people out there successfully making it the tree. I’ve had to experiment with a lot of different stuff to figure it out. The first goal was to not be losing money to be able to pay for production. It’s a fun thing. I’m not like bleeding. We’re now upgrading to some different things. What I ended up doing were affiliate links and sponsorships. Once I got to a certain number of downloads, I was able to start selling sponsorships. It’s an interesting model.

Our readers want to know this. This is the number one question. How do I monetize my show?

I get an affiliate link. I don’t make a lot of money on affiliates, but what I do get is some trackable link or analytic that says that people came to their show, their product, or their company from my podcast. Whether I make money or not, I have authority with the guest that was on the show because they’re saying, “Moneeka’s readers are responsive. They are interested in what I’m having to say. They get to do follow-up calls and often, they’ll make a sale.” I might get $5 or $3. That’s not going to help. That much is fantastic. I am appreciative of that, but that’s not the way that I’m going to pay for production. What happens is they’ll send me a check or something and I’ll say, “How many people was it that responded to you?” They’ll say, “We got fifteen people that are unheard of. I never get that on a podcast.” I’m like, “I’m glad my audience loves you. Would you like to be a sponsor on my show?” It’s already a proven entity and they’re always a yes.

That makes it worthwhile. I’d love that proven model. You’re already showing them the conversion and activity rate because what most advertisers and sponsors are struggling with is what you’re finding out is that they never get that response. They do these things, they spend money, or they build affiliate and they take the time to do all of these things and they don’t turn into anything.

A couple of good leads can be exactly what makes it worth it. They have to know where those leads are coming from. It is interesting because I have had situations where people are like, “Moneeka, we don’t even know each other. You’re asking to make money off of me.” I’ve had people say that. I’m like, “I’m not asking to make money off of you. I’m asking for the ability, for analytics. Whether you pay me or not, it doesn’t matter, but both of us benefit from understanding if this marketing is working for you.”

Niche Podcast: Selling sponsorships through affiliate links can be an interesting podcast monetization model.

We have had a few people who’ve mentioned over the years of doing directory. They would do this model or they’d create a trackable link, whether or not they got permission or not for it, but something that they could track. What they would do from it is that they say, “Here’s the analytics of what’s happening. I have this listing.” It was from more of a directory. It’s something more on the web that you could track a little easier than it is from your show because you have to create all those links yourself on the show or the mentions, but it still works. They then would say, “Look at how many people went to you in the last 90 days because of clicking through my link to you and because of that, you should pay for your listing and it’s $50 or $25 a month.” It was not expensive, but they could get lots of different people to then become a member of their directory.

That works, especially if you create in a niche market and a curation, which in some ways you are, because there are regional title companies. They’re all over the country and you don’t know where your listeners are. Having a directory listing, that might be a future idea for you. We have had people, but it is by showing them that the links happened that they sign up. There’s no question about it. They don’t even know they pay that much money for the Yellowpages and the Yellowpages has no clear connection to anyone to look me up that way anymore. I’m a little old school here. I know it still exists, but I don’t know anyone who uses it anymore.

I love that directory idea. I’ve looked at the possibility of a resource page. That’s a great idea. There’s a lot of different people doing resource pages in different ways too. That’s a great way to utilize that.

You got a great niche, Real Estate Investing for Women. You have a great touch. Let’s talk a little bit about your bingeability. Did you know you had a bingeable show? Has anyone mentioned that to you? Did that occur to you that it was going to happen?

It occurred to me, “Why would anybody even want to listen to my voice?”

That is exactly the line I said, Moneeka. I’m not kidding you. When I had the first person reached out to me and said, “I’ve binged on all your 50 episodes and I’ve got 50 more to go. I’m hoping you’re covering this. If you’re not, can you record it by the time I get to it?” That’s the first thing I looked up at and we go, “Who wants to listen to me for 50 episodes?” That’s what went through my head like, “What is wrong with us that we think our voices are so bad,” but that didn’t occur to that person.

It didn’t even for a moment occur to me that anybody would want to binge on this. I get emails all the time or when I talk to somebody, they’ll be like, “I’ve listened to every single one of your episodes three times.” I’ll talk to somebody on the phone and they’ll be like, “Your voice stuck with me every single morning.” It’s fun, but it was a huge surprise.

Do you have any sense of why they’re bingeing on you? What your bingeable factor is?

I have no idea. This is such a funny paradigm for me. People love my voice. I hear the first thing in the morning, “Hello” and I’m like, “Yes.” That’s what people have said to me. They like the uplifting, entertaining vibe of the show. I’ve also gotten people that have posted on iTunes that they hate my voice. They can’t listen to the show. They wish they could get those content. They can’t stand this fake overly enthusiastic voice. That voice is mine. That’s who I am. We’ve got some people that will write horrible reviews about, “This woman is a crazy woman.” We’ve then got people that call me and like, “That voice uplifts me every single day. I do it with my workout every day to hear the hello.”

I’m going to give you your binge factor. I’m going to do a psychoanalysis of your show. That’s why you’re here. They were like, “I want to be on your show so you’ll tell me my binge factor.” I was like, “I hope you’re going to share something exciting in addition to my psychoanalyzing your show.” Here is the thing, you’re in a fabulous niche where there are not enough women that are out there speaking about it, talking about it, sharing information and resources. I need to build trust with someone. Your voice is real. You’re my girlfriend. You’re the woman down the street, who’s got great ideas. It’s important that you keep that personality of who you are. That’s why those new shows, The Journals, are doing so well because that’s why they’re coming to you in the first place. They’re coming to you because they know you won’t put someone on that show that you don’t trust, that you can’t learn to build trust with, that isn’t going to be something valuable for them to hear. At the end of the day, that’s what we’re looking for. Real estate is so full, especially the investment community with slick salesman.

I say that salesmen because most of them are men and you’re providing a niche that isn’t being filled now. Keep doing it. It’s your thing. This is the other thing I want to say to all of you women out there, you are the only ones who will receive the hate, your voice messaging. It’s awful. I had a high powered executive to give a speech once. I want to say he was like CNBC or that level. He said, “It doesn’t matter who we put on, how great their voice is, who they are.” In his entire 25 to 30-year career, the only time they ever receive a complaint about a newscaster or a broadcaster is when it’s a woman and always the complaint is about the voice. It is a way to bully you. It is a way to try to undermine your confidence. Don’t let it because it is not why they’re doing it.

It’s interesting because it’s usually women. My husband said something to me once. I was on a radio show and reached 26 million people and I got this huge amount of fan mail, but I got some angry, ugly emails too. My husband says, “If you’re not getting flame mail, you’re not big enough.” I think he’s right. The more listeners I have, the more people are a little bit disgruntled, whether it’s my voice or a topic that I cover or whatever and that’s okay. It still feels bad. I’m not good at it yet.

We all take it to heart a little bit. This is the thing, any hate mail is not about you. It’s about the place where that person is. I had to do a show about that because people who start a show, especially women don’t expect it. Some of it are like, “How did I manage to touch a nerve on something you decided to subscribe to?” I did not force you. You decide to listen to the whole thing. They didn’t expect it, but it does happen. I’m glad you point that out and you didn’t let it discourage you at any moment in that time because it is your superpower here. It is your binge factor so keep it up. Let’s switch a little bit and talk about some of our tips because I do want to get to talking how you go about finding your guests, which is one of our major tips here. That’s part of your specialness is the fact that you’re curating this group that I can trust.

It’s been interesting to me. I do not go after guests at all. What ended up happening is when I did a launch, I did an amazing launch because of my amazing community. Everybody logged on and I started ranking high in the podcast lineup. If someone puts in real estate, I literally, within the first two weeks hit the top ten. What ended up happening is people started seeing me a lot. Also, who ended up seeing me where all the agents that represent guests for podcasts. I started getting bombarded by all of these one sheets like, “Will you have this person on your show?” There were some big names in there and I thought, “I’m just me.” That’s how we started. Every single time I have a guest on the show, I ask for three references. Sometimes I get ten, but sometimes I might get one, but I always ask for a reference. It turns out that I ended up recording six months out because I got many people wanting to be on the show.

How do you decide that? This is a common problem. When we’re looking for great guests and we don’t know these people and we’re being pitched with a great slick one sheet and a great publicist, how do we know if we should have him on the show without doing a pre-interview and tons of work?

First of all, I listened to other shows that they’ve been on, hopefully, if they’ve got them. I’ve only had one that didn’t. I also go online and I look them up. In my industry, the holding place for most of the reviews and stuff is at BiggerPockets.com. There are all these forums and you can see who’s got a good or bad reputation on what’s been going on. I will always look up my real estate people that way. If it’s somebody more of a mindset thing then I look them up on Google and make sure that there are no bad reviews on them.

I have ended up with some people on the show that ended up having a business problem that was not completely their fault, but still, it shows on them. People email me. They’re like, “Moneeka, you shouldn’t be representing this person.” I did my own research. I called them and asked them about it and they gave me the story and I trust them enough. I had gotten to know them that I felt like, “I’m not going to remove that show because there are things that go wrong in business all the time.” It’s impossible to run a business without things going wrong.

Especially in real estate. There’s going to be someone disgruntled.

Unfortunately, this was visible, but I trusted them. I didn’t remove the show. I’ve had one other person where I found out afterward that they were having some problems and I know them. They’re in our community. Some of the people that I know our community and they were like, “It seems like he got a little bit over-enthusiastic at marketing and wasn’t able to keep up.” I can completely relate to that. The intention wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t performing during that time. He’s gotten that handled. If I start to see problems, I take a look at what’s going on. There have been people that have been removed from my show. I had them on and they treated me badly in some way, shape, or form and I decided not to air them or to take them off of the show.

That’s the benefit of recording so far in advance. You have time to have some experience with them and decide.

Later, sometimes we end up making bad decisions in business and that’s our new business model and I don’t agree with it. I can take you off the show. Things change for everybody.

It’s not set in stone. It’s a work in progress. I love that approach to it. I’m glad you’re doing some great guests vetting and sharing that with our audience here because I find that sometimes what goes wrong in a show that they aren’t taking the time to find out, is this person worthwhile? Are they going to be interesting? Listening to them is one good way to check that out. Besides getting great guests, the next biggest thing that most people have difficulty with is, how do I increase my listeners? Do you do anything? How are you getting in listeners? Has it changed over the couple of years that you’ve been doing this?

This is not something that I excel at. I have to confess.

You’re not alone. This is the number one place everyone says, “I’m going to admit that I’m not good at it.”

Initially, when I did my launch, I rated in the top ten. I probably rated in the top ten for the first year. People found me organically. They’d looked for real estate on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, they would find me. A lot of the growth happened organically. I do ask every single one of my guests to “share it with their whole world.” Some of them do it, most of them don’t, which is neither here nor there. It’s the way things are in the industry. Maybe you’ve got some tips for me on that, but I have had a hard time getting my people to share the podcast and getting it out there. The other thing that has been interesting is I’ve been on television a lot. A lot of people, after I’ll mention that I have this show, often, after I’m on television, you’ll see a big bump.

If you’re watching it on our phone, watching TV or streaming, for us to go, flip over to our app and click it so we don’t forget. That happens a lot for me. I’m a reader and I’ll flip over to my Kindle app and I’ll save the book in my save list. That’s my way of remembering, “I saw someone that I want to investigate them.” It’s not necessarily that I was going to read their book, but I want to remember who it was so I don’t forget. A podcast is an easy way for them to save you and come back to you and find out more. That’s a great strategy. I’m going to suggest because you asked. If nobody minds now, I will make a little suggestion that in order to get guests to share you more, one of the things in the criteria of when I accept guests from publicists specifically, I ask for who is going to be sharing the show. “Is there a social media team? A social media company? Is there somebody else?” Typically, so-and-so was a part of the show when you send it to the publicist and you don’t have direct contact with the guests themselves, but you’re going through the agent. Their job is to get the placements, not share the placements and that’s where it can fall apart.

Niche Podcast: It’s impossible to run a business without things going wrong, especially in real estate. There’s always going to be someone disgruntled.

Those people who have a team are not attuned to forwarding the emails, just don’t do a good job of that for you. If you can get that in advance in any way, shape, or form by whatever your intake form is by asking at the outset before you agree to have them on the show, getting that email address of who is supposed to be sharing this, whether it’s an assistant or another firm, then you’re going to have a higher likelihood for success in your process. The other thing you can do is buy in your vetting process of checking them out, check out their social media, and see if they share stuff. If they only post their own stuff, then I won’t have them on the show. That’s one of my cut criteria. You can do what you’re already doing, but add another check box that says, “That makes them more worthwhile, more valuable.” You’ve got six months of backlog, so you can be pickier.

That occurred to me. I don’t know why I’m eager because at six months and it also feels bad because their show is released so long after. Sometimes they don’t even remember, “I did that show.”

That’s also a factor. I know for a lot of you out there, there’s a financial impact on producing a show. You’ve got an editor and you’re doing production services, but if there’s any way for you to shorten your timeframe to be no more than 60 days, you will do have a better chance of having the excitement of the interview still leading to posting. That’s the only thing I can say is that, at some point, that’s part of the luster of the fun they had is off and they don’t even know what to say when they share it this time. They are like, “How long ago was that,” or their business model has changed. I’ve seen that happen too. Those can help both.

Let’s go on to some of the other things. In full disclosure, Moneeka is a client, and I’m bringing her on the show. I’ve told you that I bring a few clients on the show, but the ones that I bring on is behind the scenes, I can see the growth in their show. I could see that they have a stable, organic growth show, which means that some tips she’s going to give you, you’re going to be able to model. My next question is about producing in a professional way. I want you to do the stuff that you do that makes it a professional production.

I just moved over to you guys so I had a full production process set up before that. I will say for your readers, that the production process is much nicer now because I’m not in the middle of it. Thank you, Tracy. Before that, I did not do this myself here, but all of us are different in what we love about podcasting. Some of us are into the tech, being able to manipulate like how I edit it. We think to slow down, where I hit music. I know podcasters who were like, “I love the editing process.” For me, until my whole brain would blow up and it took forever. It was not the thing that I wanted to do.

My eyes were glazing over and I own a production company.

There are many moving parts. The first thing that I did was to start to get everything into one place. Guests pushed back on this all the time, but it is the key to my success, which is they get a form. When that form gets filled out, it all goes into a spreadsheet. My VA, my production guy who manages production, gets to go to that spreadsheet. This was before I was working with you because you have a different system. My VA would go over and he’d take a look at the spreadsheet. That’s where he would pull my show notes. That’s where he would pull what we talked about. That’s where he would pull the guest affiliate links. That’s where he would pull the picture. It was all in one place. If it wasn’t fair, it didn’t get put into the notes. That would upset the guest, but people need to be clear that there’s a process. We all have busy days and there are many moving parts that if you’re constantly scrambling, it’s too hard to run a business and show.

You have to streamline it to do the one thing that you are good at. I don’t need to gather those things. It makes my life more stressful later, but it’s going to make for a better show. Everybody benefits from it. If they can’t afford the time to fill out the form, then maybe they’re not the right guests for your clients anyway. Your listeners won’t be fully served by them.

I’ve had people say, “Moneeka, you didn’t put my link in the show.” “You said, you’d get back to me,” and you didn’t. I don’t remember every single thing that I needed to follow up on every single guest.

That is why I use notes over here that you see me occasionally because if I don’t do it now, I won’t remember to do it either. This is trash as soon as I’ve uploaded it. It’s gone. It’s out of my head and I’m not going to think of it again.

We need that real estate for other stuff. I say it in the instruction form. I also have somebody that manages the rest of the process. He did the editing personally, but he had a team member that did the graphics. He had a team member that did videos. He loaded everything up to Libsyn back then. He did the show notes. He put together my email that would go out to the guest. He also put together the email that went out to my list when the thing was released. He did all of those things. He managed that whole process and then once a week, I would sit down and edit whatever he had done, not edit but review. It became that I trusted him, so then I would do it once every 2 or 3 months, I would do an audit, but that’s how that worked.

You made some space in there for being able to make sure it was professional, but you don’t have to stay involved in every little detail all along the way. You’re hearing from your listeners because they’re the ones who said that they love your journal shows. How are you getting them to engage with you? How is that working?

I asked them to call me on the show. I’m like, “You can contact me. I love to hear from you.” I say that frequently. I’m starting to do a new thing and this is a test. Originally, they would get the free download and in the free download, it would give a link to get on my calendar. I used to get 3 to 5 a week in the early days, which was amazing. I’ve got exponentially more listeners now and fewer people sign up. I’m like, “I’m not sure what’s going on there.” I’ve started to ask and then I’ll talk about people that called. When I’m on the show, I’ll say, “I had a listener that called me and wanted to know this, and that’s why we’re covering this and this show.”

People can know that I’m paying attention and I’m wanting to give them what they’re asking for. When I do a call because it’s a free call. I’m recording that call and I’m letting everybody know that, “This is a coaching session with so-and-so. I wanted to share it with you because it’s valuable. If you want to be on the show, or if you have a question, please let me know. I’d love to record you so that we can help the audience.” I’ll say something like that. The ladies are loving that. There are some women that are like, “I want to talk to you and we can’t record.” That’s neither here nor there, but most of them are excited.

Let everybody know out there because I’ve interviewed two of them that have a great model and Moneeka is talking about this here. Hers is great as well, is that these are three models by which you can do on-air coaching, which helps to sell people into your normal coaching. Kim Seltzer does that on The Charisma Quotient. It’s her third episode that she does. She does an interview. She does a solo show and she does a co on-air coaching. Pat Flynn also does that with his Smart Passive Income podcasting show. It’s SPI. I’ve been on his show now. He does that as well.

He has a model where if they choose not to do it on air, then there’s a payment model and it’s not huge. This is like, “You’re going to pay me for my time to do this.” I used to do that on the Product Launch Hazzards podcast that we used to have for the product side when we used to do a lot of product stuff. I used to do it there and I would charge if you didn’t agree to the on-air guest model and on-air coaching, which many of them did not because they didn’t want their ideas stolen. They didn’t want to talk about it publicly. It’s a lot of inventors. I used to charge $500 an hour for that. Now, I charge over $1,000, but I do it so that no one will take me up on it. Once every three months, someone will take me up on it. I’ll be like, “I got to have the call then.”

That’s how you value your time in terms of setting what the value of it is as well, which is important for you. The next question that I asked, the fifth thing that we look for tips on is monetizing your show. You’ve been through multiple and moving into another model of monetization. The mastermind was the first one and it was a successful monetization. In your estimate, do you think you can get there with sponsorship? Could you think you can match that? Do you think you’re going to have to do that with other things like perhaps coaching?

I’m not going to do coaching. That’s not in the realm of what I’m going to be doing. I’m clear on that. I have a clear path. I’m already cut even on the podcast. I’m good with that. Some of my affiliates are kicking butt. They’re doing an amazing job with my audience. I’m starting to get some nice affiliate links. I want to be clear that I don’t pick somebody because they have an affiliate link. I pick somebody and then we have a conversation about how they can support the show and how we can figure out what the response is going to look like.

It is more of a partnership than an affiliation. I liked that you’re joint venturing.

After years of doing this, I’ve developed some close relationships with guests that have been on my show several times. I do business with them and those things. I can bring them on and we can start to do something. We’ve got a couple of webinars that I’m doing. I’ve got a couple of classes or if they were on my summit and then they had an affiliate link, especially for that summit or some things like that. Those are the things that I’m starting to look at. As far as covering production costs, I’m cut even on that now.

You found some ways to monetize your show. You said that your voice was holding you back. You’re like, “I don’t want to do this.” What’s your advice to someone aspiring out there, especially the women out there who are thinking about podcasting, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet?

Just do it. It’s fun. You’re not getting married to it. You can start your podcast for $150. You needed a good mic. You need a computer that you can store it on. You might need a Zoom membership. There’s not a lot that it takes to get started. You’re not married to this project but try it. There are a couple of things. If you try it, be consistent because if you’re consistent, people listening to you, you’re going to start to see your responses and reviews. That’s inspiring. It pulls you forward to keep doing it. Do that, be consistent and give yourself three months. If you hate it the first time, don’t allow that to be the thing that stops you because you get better. If with anything else, you get better. Give it three months and you’ll get to see, “Is this a skill I want to continue to develop? Is this still going to fit in my marketing model or whatever you started it for? Is this gratifying for me?” You can revisit that. Most podcasts don’t go past two years.

You can, because Moneeka did this way. She did 25 episodes in 90 days. You did more than that. If you can give it 25 episodes and commit to that amount, you will have a better sense of commitment level from your audience. You’ll feel like you’ve settled into a place, but if you only do 90 days and you only do one a week, it’s not quite enough to hit that place. That is what I found over time from the consistency of my clients. A quick spot tends to be eleven episodes is the low-level quit spot. It’s because they dip their toe in, but they didn’t fully commit to stepping in the water. That’s what that is. If you’re going to do 90 days, do more episodes like Moneeka did because you want to commit to that, boosting it to giving it everything you can from the beginning. That’s what you did well that served you because you also force yourself, pulling off the Band-Aid, getting all the stuff, figuring the model out because you got to do it.

You made that happen in that period of time because of the number of episodes she did. The follow-up that I want to ask is thank you for saying consistency because I say it to this audience all the time. Do you have any recommendations, especially those that have been podcasting for a while to avoid burnout? What’s your recommendation for trying not to get to that place of like, “I can’t do this again?”

First of all, make sure you enjoy the conversations you’re having. If you’re using the guests’ model, make sure you’re talking to people you enjoy talking to. That’s why I have repeat people come. When I start to feel burnout, we all get there. I’ll call one of the past guests that I love and say, “Do you want to do a spontaneous show together?” We then get to have a great conversation.

That’s a great idea. I love that tip.

Niche Podcast: It doesn’t take a lot to start a podcast. You don’t have to get married to it from the get go. Just try it.

It’s fun for me. This show is about expansion for myself. I’m serving my ladies and I’m serving my guests, but my guests are serving me. They bring new ideas, a new vision and new excitement into my life that I didn’t even know was possible. Make sure that the people you’re talking to expand you and give you what you need and fill you up. I used to think when I started this show that it had to look a certain way. It had to be all real estate all the time, which would make me nuts, but I was listening to a big podcaster and he said, “At this point, I do shows that make me happy. I talk about what I want to talk about and the listeners can be happy with it or not.” He’s got a hugely successful show. I thought, “I’m going to talk about what I want to talk about.” That’s when everything changed for me because I get people on the show that I’m like, “I got to have that conversation.” That’s how I keep myself inspired.

You could see why I invited Moneeka to be on the show here because she is truly serving in her niche. Before we go, I want to make sure that people get to understand why you’re passionate about investing for women. You told us a story about how you started investing in education for girls at the age of sixteen. Could you tell that story to my audience here? This is the key to why this is in your DNA.

When I was sixteen, I went to India as a foreign exchange student. One of the things that horrified me is the way that women were treated there. Even me, there was an expectation that I would have an arranged marriage. My parents were going to pick my husband. We had to put together a certain amount of dowery and we’re to make that happen. I was like, “You can pay somebody to marry me. Are you kidding me?” They would brag about when a husband dies, a woman who loves her husband will jump onto the cremation pyre and burn herself. That became the thing is called Sati. This is horrifying. Women were thrown onto the pyre.

Women are burned alive. That’s not even talking about day-to-day abuse and all these other things. As a sixteen-year-old child, I was horrified and traumatized. There was much emotional stuff that happened to me. I started to study what was it that was different in the United States or in more of the first world countries that were not happening in a place like India. A lot of it was the education of the girls. Girls were brought up to be married off, make babies and cook in the kitchen and be a source of dowry to some guy. They were brought up with a different mentality and I couldn’t stand it.

At the age of sixteen, I had found a school in Poona where I was living. That was about education for girls. In India, there are public schools, but public schools are not what you think of as here. The kids don’t get books. The teachers often don’t show up. They usually don’t get their lunches. They’re often sitting in the mud. They don’t even get desks. They don’t have pencils or pens or whatever. Public education is not what you think, even though they say they had free education, they don’t. You have to go to private schools.

In most of the private schools, parents will only pay for their sons. There’s a whole traditional thing around why that is too. There are some schools that focused on scholarships for the girls and then those girls are allowed to go to school. I started at the age of sixteen getting my little $5 a month to one of these schools. Through the years, I started to become a founder of a school down by Bangalore. I give quite a lot of money there because that’s where my heart is. That’s how my path has been. That is the education. India which is my homeland, even though I was born here in the United States. To me, it was something that was close to my heart. I have continued that since I was sixteen. My whole mission since being a young woman was to uplift women to be able to live a life of their choosing.

That is why you’re passionate about investing because then you get to live a life of freedom and choice.

That’s why I focus on women because there isn’t a lot of leadership for women. We do deal with different things. I’m going through menopause and it’s hard. With guys, you’re going to talk about that. You plan your schedule based on your hot flashes. I’m not kidding.

I’m way too close to not know what you’re talking about. I wish I could pretend I didn’t know that. This is why I wanted her to end with this for all of you because this is the heart of what she’s bringing into her show. This is why those more personal journal episodes are working because there’s a true passion here. Thank you, Moneeka, for bringing her passion to the real estate investing space for women. That’s critically important. Thank you for bringing your passion to podcasting as well.

I love doing this and thank you for having me on the show.

—

Often on the show, we bring on hosts who have great shows. Moneeka is going on the 30,000 plus listeners. She’s got this great show going on and a tight, narrow niche audience, but yet, she’s still ready for what is next, “How am I going to get sponsors? How am I going to grow this show? What’s next on it?” I love that we can bring people who are like you. Like all of us struggling to figure out what the next step is, what that looks like, how are we going to do it out there experimenting? Maybe Moneeka is about five steps ahead of you. Maybe she’s one step behind you and she can learn from you. That’s the part of what I love about The Binge Factor Community.

I love that you all reach out to me and send me messages and tell me about great shows and great hosts that you’ve been learning from. Ask me questions what you’d like to learn more about. Community building is the one thing I hear again and again. Moneeka Sawyer is onto something with her Real Estate Investing for Women. She’s got this tightly defined audience and community that she wants to serve. In serving that community, she’s curating her message to perfectly match it. That’s a recipe for a great investment of your time. It’s a recipe for a great result for finding sponsors that want to reach that community as well. While she may not have to find the right formula for getting that monetization moving just yet, she’s on a good path to do that.

Thinking about that ahead of time, maybe it is a great strategy for your show. Planning that from the beginning with that perfect niche audience with your curation and careful deep knowledge of how to serve that community, that matching those things together could be a great path for future monetization of your podcast show, podetization, we like to call it here. As always, thank you for joining me. You could also apply to share shows with me. You can nominate shows, you can share your show, and tell me why you should be the next guest on the show. Thanks, everyone. I’ll be back next time with more binge factor.

Important Links:

• Real Estate Investing for Women
• Moneeka Sawyer
• Video Journal
• Feed Your Brand
• BiggerPockets.com
• The Charisma Quotient
• Smart Passive Income
• Product Launch Hazzards
• Kim Seltzer – Previous episode
• Pat Flynn – Previous episode

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